Murch240z

Tony, the only thing I saw as an insult was your "holier-than-thou" approach to informing me about my "attitude". Yeah, I snapped at the first person that made a post with useless information that I had specifically asked people not to do in my original post. I also apologized for losing my temper. From that point on you took it upon yourself to read pick a single word or phrase from each of my posts to disagree with. Not the concept that the post was trying to portray, just my choice of wording. To that effect I offered to refrain from using unnecessary adjectives that may have been adding to the confusion. Yeah, horrible attitude there. And yeah Tony, I noticed that there were new posts that likely brought this thread back to your attention, did you notice the 4 month old post date? You say a lot of big talk about other peoples attitudes, but it all comes from the top of the same high horse. Perhaps when you stop talking down to everyone I'll want to listen to you. For now, bugger it all, this is freaking pointless. And Woldson, I'm not holding on to anything. I haven't even thought about the silly little back and forth on this thread since, well, JULY when I last posted. I started the thread so apparently it stayed subscribed for me and I checked my email to find Tony telling me I had a bad attitude. Yeah, I responded, how is that holding on to something? I'd say the person that responds to a post with a 4 month old date on it is the one that can't let things go, perhaps you should be directing that at Tony. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Ridiculous.

Y'know, it's an interesting experience to check my email and find out that I've been randomly insulted four months after the fact... Okay Tony, I'll bite. Please, point out where my attitude was so out of line in that response I made back in July. Out of a three + paragraph post you picked a single term, "old school," to disagree with and proceeded to lecture me about how ignorant I was when in reality all I was referring to was taking 70s tech head and mating it to the sort of cam that was so effective at that time. A technique that I have seen many people, yourself included, say the mod community has had to "re-learn", i.e. semi-lost knowledge from 40 years ago. To me, that is the very definition of "old school." Even in the face of that perspective, I ceded by allowing that I should refrain from using unnecessary adjectives so as not to confuse people as to my perspective. What attitude? C'mon Tony, I respect the wealth of knowledge that you have, I did my best to be respectful to you in the face of nitpicking that seemed aimed at nothing other than getting a rise out of me, and now FOUR months later you pop into a thread just to claim that I have a bad attitude. So, I have to ask, what is it that you are looking for? If my personality is really that abhorrent to you, why do you persist in making goading responses to me? If you have deemed me unworthy of your knowledge, fine, plenty of people have managed to make fantastic cars without your personal aid. Sure, having access to your wealth of knowledge can make a lot of things easier, but if it means that I have to try and win at a game that I can't make sense of in order to be deemed worthy...the hell with it, I'd prefer if you just ignored my threads/posts completely in that case. I'm finished trying to figure out how to get past the little problem you seem to have with me. If you don't like me, just bloody well ignore me.

Tried with channel locks, vice grips, it's wedged so tight that it can't be twisted. It seems that whatever process was used to make the tabs created a small ridge on the inside of the hole that's keeping the caps wedged in too tight to be moved without applying a very large amount of brute force. Finally ended up getting the first u-joint half out before I called it quits for the night, took calling an extra set of hands/eyes in, beating it in the other direction and then we managed to get a chisel on the backside of the cup and drove it out (not without a good deal of difficulty, but it came out). Even knowing how to get them out with the ridiculous tabs it's not going to go quickly tomorrow (takes a lot of work to have any effect on the metal that's been forced to hold the cap in place), but at least I know that they WILL come out. Here's hoping that it's not my halfshafts knocking because I'll have done all of this for naught. Well, not quite nothing, at least I won't have to go through all of this trouble the next time I replace them.

Oh yeah, it's the front yoke that I'm working with now, so where I said the flange flexed I suppose it was more of the yoke shifting position rather than any actual flexing.

(1973 240z) Well, my u-joints have been clunking for awhile, so I figured it was time to get off my arse and replace them. Little did I know what I was getting myself into with this driveshaft, and now I'm out of ideas on how to get the cup out of the hole. Step 1 - Remove snaprings.........where the hell are the snaprings? Not the C-ring inside the flange.....and not a D ring in a groove on the outside....wtf? Upon closer examination I see that there is a step inside the flange hole (camera's broken or I'd take a picture) and someone seems to have used a chisel or some such to notch it and leave tabs to keep the u-joint in instead of actual snaprings. Step 2 - Chisel off tabs of metal and carefully use drill bit to smooth leftover metal - Check. Step 3 - Position in vise w/ large and small sockets to push out the other side. Attach breaker bar to vise handle, get some real torque on it and *POP* it pops through the outside. But wait, the cross of the u-joint hits before the cup is clear of the hole. Step 4 - Position flathead to use as pry-bar on the underside of the cup. Pry with everything I've got....it moved! Oh wait, that was just the flange flexing. But there's some extra "shoulder" room before the cross hits the flange now, back to sockets and vise....lookie there, all it did was un-flex the flange. I've tried everything I can think of to get this F-ing thing off of here. Tried drilling through the top of the cap in order to hook something inside and yank it out...drill bit won't make a mark even when I punch the starting point first. Hacksaw won't make a mark either. Don't have a torch, try the heatgun to heat up the cap and try a few angles again....nothing. So, I've destroyed the built-in snapring and shredded the rubber seal on the u-joint itself making sure there wasn't a "real" snapring I was missing, so, clunk aside, no way I can still use the things. Any ideas as to how I can get this damnable thing out, or am I just stuck paying a machine shop to deal with it? I'm out of ideas, it's my daily driver, and my bank account is running just about on empty, so I managed to set myself pretty far up the infamous creek without a paddle. If anyone has the slightest insight into my issues please suggest anything you know of, I'm about as stumped as I've ever been.

High compression N/A. If you're going to do a turbo on carbs, I wish you luck. And, btw, I've never heard a good word said about the cartech setup, the general consensus is that the air box is practically worthless. Might as well make yourself a plenum out of plain sheet metal for all the good it'll do you. As I remember it has basically nothing in place to equalize the airflow to each carb, therefore you'll never be able to get it running like it should. And as far as I know stock internals can't be destroyed by 'boost'. It's your resulting power output you need to look at for that answer. I suggest you do LOTS and LOTS of research, make thorough use of the search function here, then do some more searching and research. And just when you think you've got ahold of the subject, research some more. And throw that cartech in the trash. If you want to run a carb'd turbo I suggest you try and find an SKS setup (I seem to remember there being another quality setup but can't remember the brand). The end to pretty much every carb'd turbo build that I've read is "And then I got tired of messing around with it all the time so I went to fuel injection." Or, "I needed the car to be a reliable daily driver so I pulled the turbo off."

Well, considering I have read comments time and time again about how the industry has had to "re-learn" about asymmetrical grinds I didn't think it was out of the question to term it as "old school." And I didn't say "original school," either, it's fairly obvious that if asymmetrical was "original" then there would be no Racer Brown Article to begin with as it would've been completely unnecessary at the time. Perhaps I'll just refrain from using any unnecessary adjectives entirely from here on out so you won't get the wrong idea about my perspective on the subject, would that help?

Hrm...according to his Dyno thread he has a one-off N42, but he is running about that CR. Now, my understanding of the subject is extremely flawed as I haven't made it through much of the Racer Brown Article but am I correct in the idea that cam selection has a great deal to do with how an engine runs at a particular CR? I have to admit that the more I think about it the more I like the idea of an E31 with an old-school asymmetrical grind cam. Am I correct in supposing that the erosion issue with the E31 is to do with the age of the core rather than an under load issue? As for the quench pad with the MN47, I remember reading once (and again I might be completely mistaken, I'll do a bit of searching and see if I can dig the thread up) that someone (think it was 1_fast_z) assembles the motor and uses a marking agent when "bump"ing the piston against the head to mark out a custom dish area on the piston to allow higher CR without detonation. That's my hesitancy with the MN47, I'd want to get the very most out of the quench but I don't know if I could find a machine shop locally that I could trust with such delicate work and I would think it's something that has to be done on an engine-by-engine basis otherwise it could do more harm than good. Now, to search for the thread... Found it! He mentions the P90 head in his description of the process but it's in a back and forth about the MN47 and maximizing the quench. I'm not sure if I could manage it locally and be confident in the results of such sensitive work and outsourcing the entire motor just really isn't an option for me. This might all be something I should be discussing with whoever I end up paying to do the head, but I suppose it can't hurt to muse.

Excellent, I'd been trying to figure out a combination to get flat top pistons but never figured out that the L24 rods matched up to the Z20S pin height. What are your thoughts on the bang/buck combo using an E31 head instead of MN47? I still haven't decided between the two and I'm not sure about my ability (or that of local machine shops) to match the tight clearances in order to maximize the quench of the MN47 to allow higher compression without detonation, which as I understand it is the biggest bonus of said head. Whichever head I choose is going to get a professionally done port etc job so that end I can be confident in (as I've no issue shipping a head to wherever the pro is) but as for the bottom end work I'm aiming to do all of the assembly myself. If I'm going to buy and have an MN47 built I'd really like to do it in such a way as to maximize the quench as much as possible. I already pump nothing but 93 octane into it so I'm going for a premium gas build regardless. If I were to go with an E31, would I be aiming for the same general CR, about 10:1, or do the detonation qualities differ?

I don't have some specific source that made the absolute statement that it can't be done. It's simply that from the disjointed information I have gathered so far that the cost and difficulty went up considerably after 85mm, therefore implying more complicated and expensive procedures needing to be done. If that is incorrect then great, I have more options than I thought. Like I said, it was a gross oversimplification, not something I meant as a definitive statement of absolute fact.

It was a gross oversimplification, Tony, I know that lots of things are possible. I should have clarified with by conventional methods, or basic methods. Or perhaps simply that there is not as much room for displacement increase as in an L28? As I remember (though I've already proven that faculty flawed once already in this thread), doesn't one usually run into water channel issues in the L24 block when overboring past 85 or 86 mms? That was my thought process and if you add the 'by basic methods' onto it, the statement holds at least a fair amount of water, I think. Perhaps, "it takes highly complex modification for the L24 to match the stock displacement of the L28". Or a crankshaft as long as the LD28 to go with a 2mm overbore (I think I got it up to almost 2.9 playing around on the ozdat calculator once). Right...I grossly oversimplified in response to a simple question when nothing in regards to these engines is truly simple.

Same basic design, yes, but not the same block. The L24 doesn't have the meat to be overbored to match the stock L28 displacement, not to mention past that.

Like I figured, I came off like more of a prick than I intended to, for that I do apologize. It just seemed like the statement was made to belittle the way that I presented myself (mainly the way he put 'stroker' in quotations, usually such punctuation is used to indicate a sarcastic tone in regards to the term within) and I overreacted. I shouldn't have. Thanks for the link, alexdeprat. zedman240, sounds like you've got quite the unique build going, I'll definitely be interested in seeing the finished product. Tony, if you're referring to the comment about modifying the L28 crank it's probably a memory misfire on my part, I can't seem to re-find the thread with the bits of info my brain logged in amongst all the others. If my initial reaction put you off from posting that's unfortunate (though understandable, all things considered), yours was an opinion I was quite hoping to get.

And your point is what? That because the L26 is the same dimensions as the L24 the term "stroker" is no longer applicable to the L24 engine in any way even though block is stamped L24 and has a crankshaft with a larger stroke than stock installed in it? Well that just plain defies all linguistic sense, not to mention being irrelevant in every way. I understand if people just plain aren't interested in the subject but please don't pop in just to make a snide remark, I think I plainly stated that I'm looking for technical discussion, not to banter about basic semantics. Now, does anyone have an actual opinion/knowledge pertaining to an effective way to build an L24? Whether you agree with my decision or not surely someone must have the technical knowledge to form an "if you had to for some freakish reason" opinion. Perhaps if I pose it in the theoretical sense, say I am limited to the model specific engine block, if you need to include the E31 for the head into your thoughts then go right ahead as I haven't ruled out that option (assuming I managed to come across one, that is). Hell, for those of you that think I'm completely batty just play devil's advocate and help me figure out the best way to follow through on my concept simply in the hopes of seeing me disappointed with the results. Moreover, feel free to tell me that I'm an idiot as long as it's immediately followed by something applicable to the subject at hand. I know this is only my second post here and all and I am probably coming off like more of a prick than I intend to but I don't understand why everyone just dismisses the concept outright. It's not your car, I'm not even wasting an engine block anyone else would want so why not have a theoretical discussion and lend a hand to a guy that just wants to set his Z up *his* way?

Okay, let me start this off with a short disclaimer. I know what you're going to say about choosing to build the L24 instead of the L28, so I'll say up front that I don't care. I am not trying to build the highest power number that I can within a certain budget, I'm trying to build the best L24 I can within my budget. Feel free to consider me as much of an idiot as you like but please don't share your thoughts in this thread because there is nothing you can say (short of "I'll give you an already built L28 for free" ) that is going to change my opinion on what I want to do. I'm not a new owner that just doesn't know any better, I've had the car for 4 years now and been gathering all of the information my brain can hold since the initial purchase. So yes, I am in fact knowingly and intentionally going to spend the same amount of money to get less power. Now that I've gotten that bit out of the way, if anyone is still reading I'll get to the point of the thread. After 4 years of working towards this point, I'm finally getting close to having all of the necessary funds to begin my engine build so I figure it's about time to start gathering parts. Therefore I came to the conclusion that it was finally time to post here rather than just silently observe. The basic plan I have right now is to use L28 crank and rods along with a 2mm overbore (as I remember that being the common sense limit of the L24 block as I don't want to sink the money into sonic testing or sleeving) and a somewhat mildly built MN47 head. I do have a couple of things that I'm looking to get clarification/advice on. From the info that I have found, L18 pistons are what are normally used with the 2mm overbore. I am curious as to whether anyone knows about how well the L18 pistons mate with the quench of the MN47 head. I'm hoping to maximize said quench as much as possible to offset the potential detonation from my sticking with carbs (once again yes, I know MS would be more stable and maybe I'll eventually convert it to EFI but not with the initial build). I hope to be able to keep the 3 screw SUs, possibly even have them overbored if necessary for them to deliver enough fuel. My other main curiosity is in regards to the crankshaft. Despite my warped desires for the engine build I'm fully aware that it would be a waste of an LD28 crank even if by some miracle I managed to come across one for a price I would pay. That leaves the V06 (that's the L28 crank code, right?). I have read that the V06 can be modified to increase its stroke (can't remember the original poster, but I think it was Tony D or 1_fast_z that pointed to the Rebello 3.2L and 3.3L engines as an example thereof) and I was wondering if anyone knows the cost effectiveness and availability of having said crankshaft modification done. The '73 is my daily driver and the only S30 I've ever owned (so far) which I think explains my hairbrained engine desires. I don't want to build the fastest 240z on the block, I want to build MY 240z and for me that requires keeping the L24 block (Insane or inane, take your pick but it's what I want). If anyone has ideas/knowlege/exprience (and I'm sure that pretty much everyone one here can outmatch me in all three arenas) that falls outside of my build ideas I'm more than happy to take in any extra information available. I know that a lot of threads get started here by people thinking they want to build the L24 simply because they don't know any better, but I've known better for 4 years now and it hasn't changed my opinions. I'm open to any and all suggestions as long as it's not "Go buy an L28 block and build that instead". The information I have as of now has been gained from a bunch of disjointed sources (which is completely logical considering how few Z owners are as hairbrained as I am about block selection) so my plans could REALLY benefit from a cohesive discussion of the subject. Thanks in advance.