Michael

Part of the purpose of punishment is supposed to be deterring hypothetical criminals for committing future crimes, by beholding the sad fate of those already convicted. Some it’s about prevention, not retribution. This may work to some extent for thing such as stiff DUI penalties, but I don’t think that it will help to clean up the financial world. No matter how Medieval we might get on this guy, the upside potential of fraud and nefarious machinations still outweighs the downside. It’s hard to consistently beat the stock market, and these days even by tracking the stock market it’s hard to beat the returns that one gets from burying one’s money in the back yard and forgetting about “making your money work for youâ€. But people can and do try. Many will attempt to cheat their way to profit, punishment or no punishment. The real financial tragedy in the past 15 years has been the lack of good things in which to invest. I remember griping a few years ago on this board how the local real estate market where I live (Dayton, Ohio) is so stagnant or even declining, while people on the coasts are making a killing just by staying in their dumpy old cottage, let alone by speculating in real estate. I was excoriated for my idly cursing the darkness, instead of getting off my lazy butt and finding real estate opportunities a few states over. That was oh-so-2006! Where is that advice-giver now? He was no fool or gambler; but I’ll wager with no fear of foolishness that he has less money now than he did 10 years ago. If even the wise and the longsuffering systematically suffer misfortunes, how can we not expect greedy charlatans to swoop in to take advantage of the less wise and the less knowledgeable investors? No amount of regulation or stiffening of penalties will fix that.

Congrats to all the happy new owners of BMWs! I bought a 1992 325is about 5 years ago; had 110K miles then, and about 190K miles now. Reliability has been moderately good; only major repair was the clutch throwout bearing. However, I have low standards; as minor electrical components and interior trim fail, I just ignore them. These cars make decent highway cruisers, suffering from the usual drawbacks of cars in their teenage years… road noise is getting harsh, air conditioning is wheezy, stereo is failing, clearcoat is flaking off, shocks need to be replaced, and so forth. One gets what one gives. My main complaint on this car is the lack of low-end torque. Long-time HybridZ members know that I’m a lazy and unskilled driver, who would rather cart and whine than strive for self-improvement, and therefore I should probably be driving a diesel pickup with a slushbox…. but that said, on the 1992 325is (before VANOS and all those midrange torque augmentation bits) you really have to whale on the rpms to get the car moving. Handling, however, is almost as good as the hype. My second complaint is the rather mediocre mileage. Even in lazy highway cruising, 25 mpg is about the upper bound. In urban stop-and-go traffic, you’re looking at under 20 mpg. For a 3000 lb car with a rated 189-hp engine, this is poor mileage. Late 1990’s M3s are really coming down in price. The local Craig’s List has a 1999 M3 for $7500. Not having much need for transporting passengers, what would most interest me is the BMW M-coupe – basically the hard-roof version of Mike Kelly’s erstwhile heartthrob. I like their aesthetics and interior layout. But these cars are probably rarer than even M5’s, and carry a hefty premium.

Yes, many V8 conversion projects suffer from interminable garage-queen status. But is that due to the swap itself, or issues with the engine? I return to my earlier point: the swap itself is not difficult. The difficult part is starting with an empty shell of a Z, and building a hot rod out of it… including assembling an engine from scratch. If you have to build a turbo L28 from scratch, would it be any easier than a Detroit V8? If you can find a cheap but complete and running vehicle with the engine of your choice, then that’s a superb swap candidate – V8, turbo, V6, whatever. I’m really not a turbo guy at all, but if I came across a $1000 turbo 280ZX, I’d buy it and would consider it as a serious swap candidate, just because it is so much easier to mate two running vehicles than to build one running vehicle from scratch. So the enduring lesson here is: complete, reliable recipient car + complete, running, reliable donor car with suitable engine = low-cost, low-effort, highly successful swap However… Recipient car with lots of problems and/or “upgrade needs†+ pile-of-parts for swapping = high cost and years of headaches. The particular choice of engine is itself secondary!

Actually, there is a "best". The best engine is the one with which you are most familiar, from your prior hot-rodding efforts and experience as a mechanic. If that's some compact 4-cylinder with a turbo, then that's the best engine for your swap. If it is a pushrod V8 from a major American manufacturer, then that's your engine. If it is a Toyota or a Jeep or a Packard L6, then that's your engine. From my experience, the hard part is not the swap itself, but the care and feeding of your engine. No "stock" engine will ultimately be satisfying, so plan your swap around your engine upgrades, rather than around the vehicle into which the engine will be swapped. Knowing your way around that particular engine will make the swap smoother and more satisfying, even if your preferred engine is not the most powerful or the most-supported by the aftermarket.

All sorts of arguments can be made about the aesthetics of the headlight placement, the airdam, the windshield and so forth, but the broader question is: does this car succeed as a true light-weight 2-seater? We have lots of "sports cars" these days, with admirable performance... but most are north of 3300 lbs. It has become essentially impossible to find anything <2500 lbs, unless it is a Lotus or some dilapidated econobox. So if this new orange car is truly light weight, then three cheers! - regardless of what it looks like!

A few months ago I was in Melbourne, Australia. RWD Holdens where everywhere... coupes, utes, and sedans. None were particularly beautiful, but the performance was great for what's really intended as basic transportation. My main data point was riding in a colleague's 4.0L I6 ute. GM's overseas brands are mostly higher-quality, higher-style and better performance than what we get in the US. This holds for Vauxhall (England), Opel (Germany, continental Europe) and Holden. I've driven many rental cars on business trips to Europe, and none were dissappointments. All were superior to Cavalier/Malibu types of vehicles on US rental car lots. A good example was the Opel Vectra GTS, which is only a FWD 2.3 I4, but easily held 220 km/h without groans or scary manners. GM would do better by reorganizing its American operations on the basis of Opel and Holden!

240Hoke is exactly right about the math. Some of you more hands-on types might get by with a few handbooks and practical know-how, but the other side of engineering is the fundamental sciences, and that is all highly mathematical – even with today’s computational resources. I do engineering-research (aerospace) for the federal government. There is a lot of overhead, euphemistically called “program managementâ€, but the fun part is that I essentially have my own lab – a “water tunnel†where I run various experiments. After many years of graduate school, I still often feel like I’m in school, because the daily work is very academically-oriented. Depending on how the various career threads spin, eventually I might look for a professorship somewhere – if I can get tenure without having to struggle for it! Public-sector vs. private-sector employment is its own debate – many pros and cons. But in this economy, a public-sector job trumps the many indignities of working for “the manâ€.

I just bought a 1987 NA 300ZX automatic for my wife as a daily-driver. Her commute is 25-miles each way, 4 days a week. The car has some rust and 180K miles, but the price was low and the interior is in great condition. The hope is that it will last for 8-10 months without major maintenance. It idles at 2500 rpm and lurches sharply when the transmission is put in gear. The exhaust leaks, the hood hydraulic posts are shot, and the a/c is depleted… but even so, it’s pleasurable to drive, and at least FEELS like a sports car. I miss that feeling, driving family sedans and economy cars. For me the Z31’s are a good compromise for daily or semi-daily drivers: cushy enough for regular commuter driving, but old enough to feel like a “sports carâ€. I have no performance aspirations for this car, and no intention of modifying it. But, by way of comparison, it is noticeably faster than my 1992 BMW 325is, which currently has 185K miles, and is fading fast. I doubt that it will make it past 200K without major maintenance – which I’m unwilling to perform. As I often say, if you prefer RWD and don’t want a truck, but prefer something reasonably economical, the choices are small and are diminishing every year, as 80’s and even 90’s cars disappear. I drive rental cars frequently on business trips, and am continually impressed by the acceleration of modern V6 family sedans – Maxima, Taurus, Malibu and the like – but to me, there is something emotionally unacceptable about FWD.

I guess that I'll take my turn at asking what's hopefully a serious, practical question.... It has to do with oil leaks. As Grumpy already knows, I have a Mark IV 454-based big block, originally from a 1978 Suburban. The block is 0.030-over, decked, but otherwise stock. The crank is ground 0.020" on the mains and balanced, but otherwise stock. The rods are resized and fitted with ARP bolts, but otherwise stock. The oil pump is Moroso something-or-other high volume (sorry, can't recall the PN) with a pickup welded out-of-the-box. The oil pan is a Hamburger 8-quart, and uses a single-piece gasket from Napa. I have a stock 8" damper. Now the question... whenever I spin the oil pump with a drill, there is a significant leak of oil from the back end of the oil pan. It is not profuse, but enough to make a foot-wide puddle after 15 minutes of vigorous spinning of the pump and turning of the crank with a wrench. I can not, however, find an obvious area of the oil pan where oil would be dripping. The flywheel and the surrounding area, to the extent that it is visible, is however moist with oil. Do I have a leak through the rear main seal? Or can another cause be impugned? The engine has a total of 43 miles on it, and has not been run in 2-3 years. And would the leak go away if the engine is actually running, instead of being hand-cranked, because of net suction inside the oil pan? I most definitely do NOT want to do another rebuild, as it will have been the 4th rebuild so far (so, that averages 10 miles per rebuild!!!). BTW the oil windage screen is 3/8" above the sump floor - I verified with clay. And the oil pressure rises to 60 psi about 3-4 seconds after I start spinning the pump with the drill motor.

A truly stock engine pulled out of a car that’s cheap enough to sacrifice for a swap – in other words, a 1970’s-1980’s clunker – will NOT be a “high performance†model and will probably be quite worn. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Chevy or a Ford or a Ferrari engine – it probably will not be all that “fastâ€. And it may not even run. The JTR book refers to stock engines in good mechanical condition – which may not have been such a rare find in the mid-1990’s, when the intro to that book was probably written. Not so anymore. An engine swap by itself – into a 280Z that is itself otherwise stock – will not be a performance panacea. That would require modding the engine. Which brings me to my point: modding the engine can and generally is a bigger project than doing the swap itself. It will cost more and will consume more time. Engine mounts, radiator mounts, fuel line routing, subframe connectors, custom shifter – these really aren’t that hard or that expensive, even if you have a custom installation. But building a custom engine can easily cost more than the rest of the swap put together – and can take longer!

If you get a “5” on your AP exam for Calc BC, that should get you out of the entire freshman calculus sequence in college. In college, freshman classes are poorly taught. Most high school math teachers will care vastly more about the subject and about their students, than would the graduate students who teach freshman calc in college. And once you graduate, take multi-variable and/or linear algebra at the community college over the summer. AE is a risky engineering discipline! You’re tied to the defense sector, will have limited choices for geographic mobility and a very tough time getting interviews at the college career center. Consider EE instead.

ZZZeee-my TSP is also split evenly across C/S/I funds, and the losses since October 2007 are knocking on 50%. I'm approaching the midpoint of my career, and should have been more conservative with my investments. It would definitely have been wiser to stay in CDs or the equivalent of CDs. If you're just starting out, your portfolio will grow much more from additional savings than from return on your investment. Consider: if you have saved $5K starting last year, and earn 10% return, you'll make $500 this year. But you will have saved an additional $5K this year. Now suppose that you've been doing this for 20 years. If you save that same $5K this year, that's great, but it is a relatively small contribution, compared to that mythical 10% rate of return on what you've already saved from prior years. So the paradox is that when you are younger and can most afford to take risks, the benefit of a high return isn't that much. But when you are older and can afford less risk taking, the opportunity cost of not taking risks is higher!

The subject of laminar to turbulent transition is exquisitely complex. Please don't believe that a few general principles are enough to give accurate estimates of boundary layer physics. That said, cars are incredibly "dirty" aerodynamically, and the extent of laminar flow for a S30 Z is negligibly small. I would seriously doubt that one could perform enough aerodynamic enhancements to obtain measurable mileage improvement while driving a "legal" speeds.

Which Top Gear episode is that? I thought I'd seen them all, but don't recall that one.

Trouble is, crashing gas prices are symptomatic of a crashing economy. I wouldn't be surprised if in some parts of the US the price bottoms out below $1/gallon, where it was back in 2002 or so. Will it return to $4/gal? Yes, of course. But perhaps not after a long, tiresome and troublesome struggle in the economy.

If you're an investor, then in a very literal sense THE economy is YOUR economy. I'm at a stage of life where gas prices don't really matter to me. And barring some calamity or gross stupidity, there will always be food on my table, even in a "depression". But how the dollar fares against the euro - I feel that. What happens to Lehman, to Wachovia., to GE - I feel that. If you invest, you feel the ills that threaten America's corporate giants. When they go down, you take it in the shorts. And that affects one's daily outlooks, which will psychologically constrain one's spending. When my investments falter, I feel like a fool - a greedy, short-sighted, gullible fool. After today's events especially, I am horrified at what’s going on in the markets, and feel trapped. I’m in early middle-age, and have been saving diligently for 15 years. I was looking forward to spending my 40’s as many professionals spend their 60’s: still working, but enjoying a materially successful lifestyle based on wise decisions made earlier in life. Now I see 15 years of work disappearing. I feel, perhaps, like the formerly proud parent of a model teenager, who got excellent grades and was admitted into a top college - and then got busted for drug abuse. The apple of my eye has been plucked out, leaving behind a nasty, oozing mess. And it is doubly embarrassing, because in my gut I knew that such a crisis was coming, but the stupor of smug optimism prevented me from acting to preserve my nest egg while there was still time. So what are the practical, day-to-day consequences? Well, day-to-day means that hobbies and frills are on-ice. I'm not buying parts for the Z - there's just too much guilt to be thinking about luxuries, even if "affording" them is utterly irrelevant. What happened today, what has been happening in September, what may yet unfold - that is not some mere setback along a shining path towards a prosperous future - it is a catastrophe. And I am baffled why people don't appreciate that it is such a catastrophe!

I don't know guys, if I could have averaged 6% interest over the past decade, I would have be really happy! But keep in mind... you're paying about 35% tax on that interest. Will your after-tax returns keep up with inflation? So, if you have $1M, and want to keep that $1M after taxes and inflation, with a 4% annual rate of return, your available annual income is probably negative. And if you earn 6%, you're just above breaking even. Nevertheless, that is much, much better than the market has been doing for the past decade.

OK, here's one: what causes BROWN smoke (I mean, like chocolate) from the exhaust? Happens at idle, but especially when blipping the throttle. Not blue, not white, not gray, but brown. This is on a very low-mileage motor that has been sitting for a long time (big block with a carb). Hint... animals may have been nesting in my exhaust system over the years.

One of these might be for sale in my neighborhood; a mid-70's model (don't have detailed info) that has been sitting in an acquaintance's garage for quite some time. What are these cars worth? I have found what appear to be restored creampuffs on E-bay for around $10K, and basketcases for $1K. Since the potential seller is not a stranger to me, I'd like to make him a reasonable offer.

Not sure if this is relevant, but on a BBC the Comp Magnum steel roller-rockers fit under a stock-style (short) stamped valve cover if you use thick (3/8") valve cover gaskets. It may be similar on a SBC. Of course, it also depends on the height of the heads' drip rails. I have Brodix Race-Rite heads, which are notorious for short drip rails.

One reason for building it yourself, which so far has gone unmentioned, is knowing what to do when your hobby-car breaks down. If I bought some one’s immaculate high-hp V8 conversion, at some point is would break – and then what? Would I be fully aware of the maintenance issues, the troubleshooting, the tuning, the personality of the car? My great Z frustration for many years has been the simple matter of troubleshooting and tuning my engine. It would have been no different and no easier had I bought a V8 Z, a classic Camaro/Impala/Mustang/Barracuda/AMC, or even a late-model tuner car. I like to tinker and to build, I take pride in my ideas and enjoy at least attempting to nurture their execution in practice, but I’m hopelessly careless. I’m a “vision†guy, not a “details†guy. I can’t tune an engine because I can’t pay attention to the little things that make or break it – nor have I mastered the mere “details†of the mechanic’s art. It takes a particular maturity to render due diligence to the seemingly mundane. So far I have not developed that maturity. The other problem is time! I’m not a rich man, but I definitely have more money than time, and I would gladly pay a shop $80/hour to get my car running reliably – if I could find a competent and trustworthy shop that wouldn’t soak me, wouldn’t goldplate the job, would stand behind their work and would look out for me on my next maintenance disaster.

2002-2004 C32 Amg

On the 1978 doors, removing (grinding/cutting) out the crash beams but leaving intact the window crank and lock/latch mechanism saves 8 lbs (4 lbs per side). I determined this by collecting the bits of metal removed from the operation and weighing them all in one bunch. It's a personal call as to whether the resulting weight savings is worthwhile.

Sounds like a systematic and well thought-through plan. It would be interesting to compare the “before†and “after†performance of the car – same track, same driver, same tires (as far as possible)

Where in Ohio are you? If in the southwest area, PM me and we'll discuss in more detail. In short, the main issues will be driver's side exhaust header vs. steering linkage, oil pan and possible harmonic damper vs. steering rack, and most likely custom mounts to the frame rails (as opposed to the steering cross-member). S30 are far more common and generally regarded as easier than S130 swaps, but there are plenty of interesting exceptions. One member here has fit a 454 BBC into a S130, and several (myself included) have done a BBC into the S30. B-O-P "big blocks" are a little different (do a search on "engine dimensions FAQ") but the problems are not insurmountable. Personally I think that upgrading and tuning an engine are harder than doing the swap itself, because doing the swap is largely a matter of crafting bits here and there, while building an engine requires detailed knowledge and angelic patience.