Brad-ManQ45

I will be installing mine with the car sideways on the rotisserie.

Pete: I think that 4 Barrel carbs are (flow) rated at 1.5" Hg, and 2 barrel carbs at 3" Hg....

If you do a search, you will find that a great deal has been said by RacerX about Zero Rust. He has switched to that for all personal and most custom work - except where customer insists on POR-15. This stuff is great for inside and underneath the car - I would use a good epoxy primer on exterior/underhood. No matter what you use, treat the metal with PickleX before either type of primer and you won't have problems, as long as you get off the major rust first.

you could have the turbine cut down to fit the housing, but that process could cost as much as getting a hybrid to begin with once you factor in the cost of the complete T4. Why bother? A TO4E with stage 3 aor 5 turbine and .63 - or even .82 housing if you want BIG numbers and only drag race, will be more than adequate.

To wel aluminum on the Miller or Hobart all you really need is a teflon lined liner. Just as with the Lincoln, you have to keep the liner from the MIG unit to gun straight for the aluminum wire...

Greenmonster80 - where did you get the custom exhaust manifold?

Dr_Hunt: I used to live on Eubank Blvd in Albuquerque in '85...

For sheet metal, you might want to look at JW HArris TwentyGuage - it is a powder-core wire .030 in diameter that you use with gas and will help in not burning through. The nice thing about the Hobarts is that they go down to 25 amps, not just the 30 thhat the small Millers go down to. With the TwentyGuage, you shouldn't have a problem with either machine - or the small Lincoln's either, and the Lincoln goes down to 25 amps also.

I have a 19" long UltaFlow oval muffler, 3" straight-thru, that I LOVE on my '83 ZXT. Had a FM on before and hated it...

I personally made my choice of the Miller 175 before I even took welding classes - I actually got it while I was in class (mail order). I did my due diligence, and while I learned on Lincoln, I love my Miller. One of my main reasons for going with Miller is their customer service (Hobarts' too!). All you have to do is look at who sponsors web forums for welders to see who puts a premium on their customers. I read almost every message regarding MIG on the Hobart site (even the OLD site) when I made the decision to get one for restoring my '75 280Z. That was 4 years ago, and I took my classes 3 years ago, then got too busy being taken advantage of on my old job to do much. I welded a rotisserie for the car so I could put in new floor pans and subframe connectors without overhead welding, as well as to make life easy in completely stripping off old undercoating. I have built a sand blast cabinet 4'X2'X2'. and all my neighbors come by to have me fix stuff onced they saw the rotisserie. I have had a blast cutting and welding metal, and can only caution you to not get a cheap welder. Buy a good one, use it, then if you no longer need it, you can sell it and have more money than doing the same with one of the cheap ones. You will also find that even pro's can have problems with the cheap ones, amateurs have even more! I'm gonna keep mine, but htat's because it will have paid for itself in savings over having someone else do it (that includes cost of the lessons at the Vo-Tech) before I'm even finished. I'll sell the rotisserie before I sell the welder (but only after I'mm done with it!)

Not just ignition, gas cap and hatch lock too. I replaced a gas cap once (wife left it and couldn't find it when I went back), thern when my ignition switch started ggiving me problems, I had all the locks changed. About $500 total. I'd call a good auto locksmith, or as Warren for advice in a PM....

I was thinking that you might want to look at a 280ZX windshield, It's laid back and might be close - easier to fab metal around it than custom glass... I have a '75 and an '83 ZXT and it could possibly work.

I have a full 3" from stock downpipe back - including cat on my '83 ZXT. Were I you, I would start with the downpipe. Tim240Z was spot on in his recommendation and reasoning. The stock downpipe is definitely more of an inhibitor than your 2.5" stuff hanging far away from the turbo.

I helped my brother with a short windshield 1600 ground up project. He wound up putting a 2000 crank and pistons, 5 speed and 4.11 rear end in it. He had it on the road about 6 months before some dumb teenage girl hydroplaned into his rear and totaled the car and screwed up his back.

The welding process also makes the metal a bit more brittle. A lot of people thaink that a solid seam is better, but racers have found that a solid seam in a torsional area will crack on one side (or both sides) of the seam. By stitch welding, you leave some of the metal a little more flexible/tensile and get the benefit of having more area welded together as opposed to the standard spaced spot welding.

You want a bias toward less overlap and wider lobe separation angles. A slightly longer than usual exhaust duration can help in reducing backpressure and clearing the combustion chamber under boost. If I remember correctly, crane may have some decent grinds for turbo apps. It can't hurt to call them.

I personally will go with the MM kit for using stock Cobra brakes on my V8 Z project, along with their kit for 240SX rear calipers. I want to use street brakes for reliability/dust covers. With 400 lbs less to stop this should be a radical improvement over the stock setup. Of course this is for an autoX type of car. For drag racing, getting some good pads on it should be all you need - you aren't doing repeated stops/braking.

If all you are gonna do is drop in a carbeurated V8, you shouldn't have much problem, if you haven't had any problems removing the current engine and tranny. You haven't specified what year Z you were going to do this to - obviously a 240/260 would be the easiest, because the JTR manual spells everything out for you. You start having to know more in dealing with the wiring harness on the Fuel Injected cars. If you plan on doing a fuel injected V8, then it gets a bit more involved - but a lot of that goes away with money used to buy prefabricated wiring harness for the computer. If this is the scenario, and you wsill use the factory FI system, then it will be a matter of eliminating extraneous wires from the factory harness and knowing which wires to hook up to the bought harness. If you understand wiring diagrams, not too difficult, if you don't - go carb. I myself have jumped in headfirst with a '75 that needs new floor pans, fender patches and new rear quarter panel. I have bought a welder, taken lessons, built a rotisserie, in the process of building a 4' X 2' blast cabinet. All this before I stuff in a Twin Turbo Chevy LS1/2 w/automatic and a R230. I intend to do everything myself, but I have removed and rebuilt engines before, done brake jobs, done suspension work, wired car stereo's, etc. I don't care how long it takes - it is simply something to do in my spare time and have fun doing and learning along the way. If you need the car for transportation, then keep it simple and relatively low powered and don't go overboard with modifications

I believe one of the Cobra Kit car companies can supply either a MustangII front suspension or one of their own custom front ends - can't remember which one, but you might want to search and see if this might be a viable alternative...

I don't think I'll be able to make it - I hope to be opening our first Zero's Sub shop that weekend.

I will NEVER do business with that junkyard again...

I have workedc on my cars in the past, but with my acquisition of my '75 V* project car, I started accumulating air tools, a compressor, welder, took welding classes, bought tubing and made a rotisserie, bought tool carts, made shelving in garage and uin basement, run air piping from compressor in basement to woodworking workshop in same and garage upstairs, run wiring for welder and more electrical outlets in garage. This is before I've done much more than remove Engine, tranny, hood, valence windshield, hatch glass and gas tank. I am continually trying to find better ways of organizing the samll garage space to provide the maximum elbow room and have tools close at hand - did I mention multiple carts? I bought a couple of those wheeled 3 tray carts at HF for $30 apiece, 4 pieces of steel angle w/holes and added pegboard across the back of both of them to hang tools on, and have space to have air tools on without having to walk across the garage for a tool. The money I have soent on tools for this project is nothing comparted to what I have to spend on her every time the better half starts in on the mess I make. Most of this mess was in cutting and drilling metal and welding the rotisserie, but every time she she's me come in after taking off parts of the car all sweaty and dirty I go through a mini version of the taming of the shrew - as opposed to the full blown version that I still don'twant to repeat. (My wife is anal compulsive about a clean house - I try my best, use mats to wipe off feet, wear latex/nitryl gloves, blow dirt off clothes - but of course nothing is ever good enough). The nice part of it is that I have impressed the neighbors with the other projects I have done efficiently because I have these tools and know how to use them. I rarely have to buy drinks because I'm able to fix stuff for them with just a little time and energy and they never complain about the noise from the tools because thay have all benefited from my having them.

I have been to LS1.com and have perused LS1Tech.com, but am finding it a little daunting to find the exact differences in blocks and heads between the engines after the LT1. I am particularly interested in any differences between aluminum and cast iron blocks. If someone courld recommend a couple of good sites for me to learn more about these engines and blocks, I'd certainly appreciate it. TIA

Plus, don't forget that the stock ECU starts going leaner around 4000 rpm. Honestly, the first thing (aafter exhaust) would be to put an aftermarket ECU in there with bigger injectors to make sure you don't lean out. I have an '83 ZXT with T3/T4 S-Trim T04B w/clipped stock turbine (put on in '94 before all the new stuiff was available) and 3" mandrell exhaust w/stock downpipe. I haved been battleing the stock ECU shutting down when really getting on it, and the engine shutting off when underhood temps get hot at idle. I don't want to throw any money at stock stuff any longer - I'm waiting for UMS to come out, then I'll get bigger injectors and do a good downpipe and upgrade the turbo to a TO4E w/stage 3 or 5 turbine and external wastegate. I do have the advantage of not needing it or the '75 V8 project car for a daily driver though. You may want to consider simply going with the 300ZX computer and mass air stuff with stock injectors - you'll probably get better gas mileage too....