Michael

I drove a 1978 280Z from Los Angeles to Dayton, Ohio in the spring of 2000 (and then continued to Washington, DC); the LA to Dayton leg took days. On I-70 in Colorado there were some snow issues, but the bigger problem was the car gasping for air at altitude. Since it was early spring, there was not much need for heat or air conditioning (fortunately!), and cabin noise wasn't too bad since I drove with the windows up. Mileage was rather poor (20 mpg at best). The lack of cruise control really didn't bother me. The first few hundred miles were scary, as I was worried about breakdown. But soon monotony took over as my main concern. Of course, that was 8 years ago - these cars were younger then, with less wear.

For a number of years my DD was a 1991 Toyota Corolla. Good gas mileage, reasonable acceleration relative to what one would expect for such a car, and good A/C. But I hated to work on it, and eventually minor issues such as exhaust leaks and a bad starter caused me to park the thing. (228K miles). Mileage was in the low 30’s. The next one was a 1990 Nissan Sentra. Low on power (much slower than the Corolla!) but comparable mileage. Ran fine through >200K miles, until I slammed into a deer at 60+ mph. Then I ended up with a 1990 Honda Accord. Another decent car, but not as reliable as advertised (alternator, radiator, exhaust manifold, window crank mechanism, heater core, etc.). The power steering failed at ~180K miles. When the odometer rolled over 200,000 miles I parked it. On and off my “nice†car was a 1992 BMW 325is. Now it’s my daily. Mileage is putrid (22 mpg in mixed city/highway, on premium gas) and off-the-line acceleration is no better than the 4-cyl Honda, but at least it is RWD! So far reliability has been OK (an ignition coil, ball joint, thermostat, dead trip computer, erratic window regulator) – knock on wood! Planning ahead for when the BMW fails, my backup car is a 1995 Toyota Camry V6. That 3.0L is a sweet engine – the Camry is noticeably faster than the BMW, although the steering is not as precise and the automatic transmission ruins the feel of driver involvement. The late 1990’s Japanese V6 family sedan is probably the best all-around reliability/performance/comfort deal on the market, if you don’t mind FWD and automatic. But if you do insist on RWD and stickshift, the options are poor. Personally I plan on avoiding German cars, not because they’re necessarily high maintenance (though some certainly are) but because I am not impressed with their torque delivery. As an alternative daily driver I’m on the lookout for a pre-SN95 V8 Mustang LX (hard to find, and command a high premium!) or a Gen-IV V8 Camaro/Firebird.

It would be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison of itemized costs based on (1) a donor vehicle and (2) purchasing the engine from GMPP and the transmission etc. from a transmission vendor. As a wild guess, the engine will be $5500, the transmission $2000 and the “stuff inside the bellhousing†another $1000.

I have the same question! It appears that the Summit coil and ignition box are rebadged Mallory – which from anecdotal evidence is bad news. Their distributor however appears to be rebadged MSD – which also from anecdotal evidence is good news. What happened to your Crane Hi-6? I was going to buy the Crane Hi-6 and LX-92 coil, but your post is giving me second thoughts….

Rumor is that to most track safety inspectors, all IRS systems are the same. They do not distinguish between C4/Jag setup, Chapman struts (S30Z) or double-wishbone. Some may require safety loops around the halfshafts. The fuel cell issue is another one for the rumor mill. Some inspectors may require building a firewall separating the hatch area from the cabin. In my car the fuel cell is bolted to tabs welded to the spare tire recess; it is literally sitting in the hatch area, with the stock floor untouched. That takes care of the underbody debris problem and isolation from the exhaust. Between the rear strut towers there’s a sheet metal firewall, against which the fuel cell is pushed. But I still need to build a wall going all the way up to the hatch lid hinge area - and if nitpicky, to also build partitions outboard of the strut towers, going to the quarter panels. But that is bordering on silly. If I do build the aforementioned wall, I will remove the hatch itself, and will try to build a cover for the fuel cell - a sort of Pantera hatch.

Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but why has no one raised the subject of difficulty of living with a 5-point harness in a daily driver? I tried this in my Z on the street, and while it can be done, it’s unpleasant, inconvenient and ultimately will cause you to slack off (literally) and not engage all 5 points. Once you strap yourself in, you can not reach the handle of an open door, you’re helpless if you drop your keys, and while driving it is hard to turn around to check in your blind spots. Eventually I gave up and reinstalled the stock seat belts, in addition to the 5-point (Simpson rapid-release) harness. This is with a Kirkey “drag race†seat.

I’m dumb, lazy and risk-averse, and therefore only invest in non-penny stocks and in fact primarily in index funds. The objective is to hold real companies with real earnings, real earnings growth and a real track record. Over the past few weeks my losses are - unreal. Over many years the track record has been… OK. But it beats a money market account. MACD and all that are nice concepts, but if the underlying fundamentals are not sound, there is not even a pretense of it being an “investmentâ€; it is a pure gamble. And though it may be whimsical to regard the stock market as a gamble, it shouldn't be as such - I mean, all of life involves some risk taking, but there's prudent risk and then there's wild risk. My situation is a little different from most of the folks who have posted in this thread. At my phase of life “wealth†preservation is more important than trying to make something out of nothing. I’m quite happy with a 8% annual rate of return. But in any situation investment requires considerable study and patience. It also requires the right set of character traits - or as some people would opine, “the right attitudeâ€. If you are truly dispassionate - great, I applaud you! But that is very, very hard to achieve in practice.

Please consider: 1. She’s your girlfriend, not your wife. 2. You don’t have children (right?) 3. You’re not caretaker for a relative (elderly parent, ill younger sibling, etc.) That pretty much discharges your responsibilities to your family. Continuing… 1. Your car hobby doesn’t cause your performance at work to suffer. 2. It’s not adversely affecting your health (breathing paint fumes or skinning knuckles doesn’t count). 3. You seem to have plenty of money to spare. And that pretty much discharges your responsibilities to yourself. Now I agree that you should trade quality for quantity and reduce your stable of Z’s to something more manageable. Nor is it wise to harbor a dismissive attitude towards your friends or girlfriend. But in the end, you already have the basics covered. And therefore there is no reason to be kicking yourself.

This may not be the most convenient point to resurrect the subject, but... ...what is the latest in our collective wisdom on distributorless ignition systems for old-school (Gen I SBC or Mark IV BBC) V8 Chevy engines originally equipped with points or HEI? By that I mean: 1. What are the current best options for junkyard solutions (Ford EDIS?)? 2. Other than stand-alone complete engine management systems, what are the aftermarket ignition-only options? 3. Pros and cons of DIS vs. the more common distributor-based solution of ignition box + magnetic/optical distributor (MSD, Crane, Summit house-brand, etc.)? Cursory perusal of distributorless ignition threads reveals that the vast, vast majority of the content is for L6 or other Nissan engines, or TBI/TPI. Has anyone successfully done a carbureted SBC/BBC with DIS?

Looking good!!! Out of curiosity, what were the flairs, what size are the tires, and how did you fit the combo with [what appears to be] stock rear suspension and drivetrain?

Computer usage policy at work largely comes down to the nature of the business. If you run a catalog sales or tech support business, it probably makes sense to have computer usage nanny software. But what about a biotech startup or software development firm? Creative people don't take kindly to baby sitting. My employer has extensive monitoring of computer usage and just about everything else, but that comes with the territory. Employees don't resign over this or other invasions of their privacy because they have weighed the pros and cons, and decided that the job security, the high pay and generous benefits are worth the infantilization or monitoring or other trespasses on one's space. Then again, it takes a certain kind of personality to countenance employment where I work.

Same here! I only have a dialup connection, so I can't watch videos, participate in gaming or download much of anything. Nor am I a member of any forums other than this one. But I spend "who knows how many" hours a day reading posts on this forum, following current events in online newspapers, and "researching" finance/investment. Lately, with the stock markets worldwide in a horrendous crash, I'm morbidly paranoid about the economy - mostly because I compulsively follow it online. And because even the most basic page takes so long to load, I idle away the time by playing solitaire or tetris. At work it's a different but related problem: e-mail. Probably 3 hours a day is sunk into answering or "following up" on e-mail. People expect a carefully crafted response, so there is pressure to revise and polish one's writing, akin to essays in freshman English class. But most astonishing is that I don't mind this; quite the contrary, I enjoy writing long and flowery e-mails, and enjoy the "thank you" responses for thorough answers. Electronic communication is indeed a great thing - if only we could attain moderation.

I'm a few miles south of Xenia, in the boondocks - and have a S30 with big block Chevy engine, currently (again) non-running. Also hibernating on the premesis is a turbo L6 Z belonging to Garrett. There are 3-4 more HybridZ'ers in the Dayton-Cincinnati area, but to my knowledge we have never had a meet. Maybe it's time to change that? PM me for more specific contact info....

Asking a somewhat transparent question… how does the low-end and midrange torque of the E46 330 compare with the 350Z? I have a love-hate relationship with my E36 (1992 325is). I love the RWD and the overall dynamics of the chassis (well, at least at my level of driving “skillâ€) but I’m deeply frustrated with the lack of torque. My 1990 4-cylinder Honda Accord has more torque off the line, and that is a very embarrassing admission! A fellow at work recently bought a Porsche Cayman, base model (not “Sâ€). Though of course the market segment is rather different, soon after buying his Porsche at my request he test-drove a 350Z. His report was that compared to the Cayman, the Z felt more sluggish in moderate-speed corners, but was at least as fast in straightline acceleration.

We don’t need FEA for a back-of-the envelope analysis. The JTR-type brackets can be thought of as beams (roughly speaking), with the engine as a point load on one end of the beam. The moment at the root of the beam goes as the distance to the point-load squared; 5.5†vs. 3.5†cantilever --> ~ 2.5X more moment. Meanwhile, if you double the depth of the beam then the moment of inertia (strength) goes up by a factor of 8, but that’s not what we are doing here; here we are doubling the thickness of the beam, and that is a linear increase in strength. However, as Grumpy pointed out, 1/4" steel plate is already thick enough, since it is much stronger than the crossmember’s mounting pads. In my Z the engine has 6.25†setback (altered firewall). The engine-mounts go to footers welded to pads welded to the frame rails. This is almost atop where the tension/compression rods protrude, as johnc suggested. And the aforementioned pads spread the load to avoid stress concentrations.

Moving from urban (and urbane) California to small-town Middle America can be a traumatic experience. I moved from Los Angeles to Dayton, Ohio in 2000. It felt like political exile to Siberia! The shock was staggering, and I’m still working through the depression that the move induced. I travel to Reno annually for an aerospace engineering technical conference; in fact, just came back from there last week. While every town must surely have its strong points, after a decade of annual trips to Reno, it strikes me as dreary and benighted. Unlike small towns in the periphery of a large city, Reno is isolated, and must fend for itself. But it lacks the authenticity of a self-sustaining town, trying instead to be a tourist trap like a mini-Las Vegas. Oh, and the winters are almost as brutal as in the Midwest. Regarding formal education vs. personal initiative and ambition… clearly one size doesn’t fit all, so consider: if you prefer a structured environment where you can concentrate on your technical area of expertise, then “corporate slavery†is the way to go, and an embossed fancy piece of paper is how to get there. Big corporations - and especially the biggest corporation of all, the federal government - loves fancy pieces of paper. If on the contrary you prefer seat-of-the-pants improvisation, devoting years on formal schooling may not be productive. Small businesses seem to care more about targeted expertise, such as familiarity with the latest programming language. Who among us doesn’t crave the romance of entrepreneurship, or at least the laid back social environment and “get it done†focus of a small shop? Big bureaucracies dawdle and run in circles, while small companies are agile and reward competence and hard work. Well, maybe. But later in life many people realize that the security and insulation of working for a large institution also has its benefits. This means that we lie to ourselves regarding our tolerance for risk, eschewing compromise from hubris rather than from conviction. My recommendation is: stay in the Bay Area, and take classes part time at the local community college while keeping your present job and looking for a better one. After a year or two at the community college, you can decide whether to get a technical certificate (Microsoft network administration, automotive electronics, whatever) or to transfer to a 4-year college for a Bachelor’s degree.

When I moved to Ohio in the spring of 2000, my only vehicle was a stock 1978 280Z. I drove it through the winter of 2000-2001, which included perhaps a half dozen snowfalls, each of moderate intensity, and each followed by rather haphazard plowing. On level roads there were no problems if driving modestly. But on one occasion I decided to try a slide, taking a turn going downhill at an unplowed intersection one night. The result was a spin, with the driver's side rear wheel hitting hard against the curbside. The collision caused no body damage but bent the rear suspension, causing ridiculous toe and camber on the affected wheel. From then on, a tire would wear from moderately-used to dangling steel bands in about 3000 miles, maybe less. I retired the car in the summer of 2001, when the left-rear brakes seized. Moral: drive conservatively and you'll be OK.

Actually, this sounds like a clever swap. Relatively cheap, lightweight car with anemic stock engine, and moderately roomy engine compartment. The main trouble spot will probably be exhaust header clearance between the strut towers, and clearance between the driver's side header and the steering shaft. But fiscally... the LSx will be a lot larger than a Gen-1 SBC, because of economies of scale, supply and demand, etc. Sorry, couldn't resist!

Too late now, but why not, instead, 1. Buy a $3000 beater (like a mid-90’s Corolla) that would only need liability insurance. 2. Put $4000 in a Roth IRA for 2007 in the kid’s name, and add $5000 for 2008 3. And if he’s a good boy, contribute another $5000 when 2009 rolls around? That way you help him out financially, don’t throw good money after bad, and the investment is in an account that he can’t [easily] touch?

Z’s are even rarer in the Midwest! In the past 8 years, I have seen one of the road, one in a used car lot, one in a parking lot and three in a garage (those three belong(ed) to a HybridZ member). But on business trips to Los Angeles, I typically see at least one Z per trip. Z’s are old enough to be distinguishable from the modern imports, so that even diehard Midwestern muscle car fans tend to give them at least glancing appreciation. But V8Z’s are another matter entirely: they’re disdained by the domestic and the import crowds alike. But that, I suppose, was one reason what this site was started!

On the other hand, this new Vette will weigh about 200 lbs more than the Z06, will cost 2/3rds more, will have less engine displacement, will be more complex, and ups the Hp only by around 100 over the Z06. My hope is that with the Z06 no longer being top dog in the Corvette lineup, Z06 prices will ease a bit.

Driving Pete’s car with the 327 and Tremec was challenging for me. It was actually my first drive in a quality-built V8Z with a manual transmission. The clutch felt finicky, the shifting was troublesome and the overall feel of the experience made me nervous. But by personal admission I’m not a good drive and have little experience with powerful engines and the generally notching transmissions that high torque-capacity seems to accompany. So I almost stalled Pete’s car trying to ease it into his garage in 1st. On suburban streets, I would shift too soon, and probably ride the clutch too long during shifts. With more seat time in Pete’s car, I would have gotten more comfortable with the clutch and with handling the car off the line, but my general squeamishness about high-rpms would have made it difficult to take full advantage of Pete’s car, even with considerable experience. My big block Z - when it ran (engine still disassembled, hope to drive it again in the spring of 2008) was an entirely different animal. Engaging first gear was difficult - harder than in Pete’s car. But for whatever reason, aggressive upshifting could be done with some precision - just by shoving the shifter back (1st into 2nd , 3rd into 4th) or forward (2nd into 3rd, 4th into 5th). Often this was accompanied by crunching noise. More leisurely shifting, such as in traffic, was oddly enough MORE difficult than violent shifting on rural backroads. Clutch effort was similar to that in Pete’s car, but the clutch was more forgiving. The main difference was the torque: an aluminum-head roller-cam 454 in a 2600 lb car vs. a more high-strung 327 in a 2800 lb car and ~200lb more of passengers. Gear ratios were almost the same, except that that Pete’s car has a 3.70 differential and mine has a 3.54, and his has an overdrive 5th. Actually, if I were doing things all over again, I would give serious consideration to an automatic with overdrive, perhaps manually shifted. Being “in the right gear†just doesn’t have the same importance with such an excess of torque. Heel to toe and the other fancy stuff seems impossible with the sort of brutal manual transmission necessary to handle the torque, and probably isn’t necessary any but the most sophisticated application - which mine is not.

I used to have a 1990 Toyota Corolla with “16 valves†stamped on the rocker cover, but I’m pretty sure that it was SOHC.

Like all tools, CFD can be very useful in the right context, but otherwise becomes just another hammer. That context is a “tuned†setup where various configurations have been gridded and run through the code, with validation relative to experiment. Once such a setup is in place, it is straightforward and productive to make configuration changes (add spoilers, lower the ride height, block off the radiator grill) and so forth. The incremental effect of replacing air dam A with air dam B becomes believable. But until all that infrastructure is in place, all CFD answers will be clouded with doubt. The “ballpark†figure will probably be correct, but the increment between air dam A and air dam B will be smaller than the uncertainty in either of the answers. But as I’ve been mentioning elsewhere, car aerodynamics is actually harder than airplane aerodynamics. Much of the car aerodynamics business remains in the wind tunnels, while today perhaps the majority of airplane applied aerodynamics is done computationally. Computations are generally cheaper, so wherever the industry can get away with doing stuff on the computer, they will. There are many reasons for why the automotive world still largely relies on wind tunnels, but I think that the main reason is that numerical methods are so tough to “tune†to work for cars. So the bottom line is: CFD is not necessarily intractable for our Datsuns, but odds are that it will be easier, cheaper and more productive to stick with the wind tunnel. I still believe that we should consider option #3: testing scale models in a university wind tunnel. I don’t mean Franklin Mint 1:18 models, but 1:5 clay/wood models that we would custom-make ourselves. Here’s another thought: the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan has a beautiful display model of the 240Z, at around 1:5 scale. While that won’t work for a wind tunnel model, wouldn’t it be nice if we could make molds from that model?

This is something that I would love to one day do with my 1992 325is. Stock it had around 180 hp, and in present condition probably makes less. Off the line it’s slower than my 1990 Honda (2.2L 4-cylinder), and the Honda is in dire beater condition. In many regards it is a very satisfying car to drive - good handling, reasonable creature-comforts without lavish ostentation, pleasing aesthetics and compact external dimensions. In many regards it’s superior to present-generation coupes. It just lacks power. The engine bay is relatively roomy, as is the case for most L6-equipped cars. It’s just begging for a LS3 swap! But to me the complexity of such a swap would be overwhelming. It’s a 15 year old car, but when I open the hood, any enthusiasm to work on it becomes instantly drained. Recently I did manage to replace the thermostat - took several hours, amidst much cursing. The clutch throwout bearing gave out over the summer - I didn’t even consider doing the job myself. It seems that everything in the European-car aftermarket is a ripoff, but if I were to act on doing the BMW V8 swap, at this point I’d just pay a shop to do it.