zack_280

No running yet. I got megasquirt connected and it looks like all of the sensors are reading correctly. I cranked it for a while without the ECU to see if I could read oil pressure on the gauge, then my starter stopped starting. The battery was reading low (12.6V), but I don't believe that was the problem. I tried connected a starter/charger, but the starter was still dead. I ended up taking the starter off and checking it off of the engine and it seems to be working, so I put it back on and I'm planning to try again tomorrow. I ordered a 'new' starter from Advance, so if it is a starter problem I will have one on standby.

I know this is a kind of older thread, but it was the only one of relevance that I found when I was searching this subject, so I thought I would throw in my 'solution' to priming the oil pump and oil system. This will only work if you have an oil cooler, but it works well, so I thought it would be relevant. I filled/primed my oil pump and oil filter with oil prior to installation. I then proceeded to crank the engine for 20-30 seconds and didn't see any oil pressure on the dash gauge. That made me a little uneasy, so I did a search here and ended at this thread. I basically used the idea from this thread and modified it to better suit my application. I have an oil cooler and I just unhooked the return line from the oil cooler. I then loosened the oil presser sender. Then I took my handy hand pump and pumped oil through the cooler->filter->oil pump. When I saw a few drops of oil coming from the loosened sender I knew that I had oiled everything from the filter to the pump so I put it all back together with a little more peace of mind.

Well hopefully I will be able to start the car today. I have a few more wires to land this morning and I have to calibrate my sensors and some other misc stuff, but then I'll be ready to start it. Here are a few pics of the intake going in. Here is the 90 deg bend that connects to the throttle body. I had a local welder weld the IAT bung on it. I also got the 3"-2.75" reducer coupling from http://www.siliconeintakes.com. I am very pleased with silicone intakes service, price, and quality. Here is a pic of the 4" intake to the turbo. All couplings/aluminum tubing from silicone intakes. The Spector filter was courtesy of Autozone. And here it is installed. I think it turned out fairly well. Then it was on to the wiring. I'm still not finished, but I am thinking that my wiring and I have a mutual hate for one another. Hopefully I'll be able to post a video or news of it running later this weekend.

This is driving my crazy. It is PCV, not PVC. PCV. PCV - Positive Crankcase Ventilation (Usually at least on this forum) PVC - Polyvinyl Chloride (Usually) Here are some alternatives for the same acronyms http://www.acronymfinder.com/PVC.html http://www.acronymfinder.com/PCV.html

You might also want to consider a larger gauge wire for charging and for feeding your accessories.

4" pipe plugs + belt sander = gauges mounted happily in the old housings and lots of pvc dust.

Are you going to put a heat shield between the exhaust and the diff? I would think the exhaust being that close would cause it to heat up quite a bit.

I had the same question and I have an 87mm bore as well. This post was enough to convince me that it is ok. http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/53332-help-87mm-or-91mm-metal-head-gasket/page__p__487621__hl__%2Bmetal+%2Bhead+%2Bgasket+%2Bbore__fromsearch__1?do=findComment&comment=487621

I was lucky enough to get to instruct for someone driving a Laguna Seca Edition at an HPDE at Memphis International Raceway this past weekend. I must say that the car was very capable. The only problem was that the car was overheating when driving hard. Adding some water wetter seemed to help. I have to say it was a blast to ride in.

There are other things in this picture that are a little more out of place than a motorcycle. Like why is there a baby ewok on that motorcycle in your living room? or Why is there a painting of a red horse with a fat a55 on your wall?

Thanks for the help everyone. I didn't notice that the temp sensor connector was the same as a fuel injector.. I picked one up today and it worked like a charm. Problem solved.

I need the wiring connector for a coolant temp sensor located in the P90 head between Cylinders 5&6. It should have been on the 280ZX Turbo, not sure if the non-turbo uses the P90 head, but I would assume that it does. If you've got one and your're willing to part with it. Let me know. Zack

And they have great background music!

Hopefully ~400HP at 18PSI. We'll see where it ends up though.

The engine build has been going slowly, but it has been going. Here are a few pics from today. Here it is this morning. And here it is this evening. Intake/Exhaust Side Oil Filter side Bottom (AZC oil pan)

Thanks Turbonat. I don't have a lot to update, but I have done a bit since my last post. First thing...I have installed camber plates and fully adjustable suspension components with the wheels. That makes it easier for them to fit under the stock fenders. I fully expected to cut the fenders, but it looks like I may not have to. We'll see how it ends up when I get the front fenders back on. For now there is no steering problem at full lock. I have installed the bearings, crank, pistons, and head. I timed the cam today. I didn't really know what I was doing, but after a little trial and error I think I got it exactly where I wanted it. I actually didn't adjust the cam at all from the factory settings. I bought a cam timing kit from Summit Racing. The one below to be exact. After a little research and a some trial and error I found that the cam was timed exactly at the ISKY recommended settings. http://www.summitrac...arts/PRO-66787/ I bought the head from KTM on this forum. It had the standard ISKY 'Turbo' 0.490 lift cam installed. Here is the link to the classified section. http://forums.hybrid...__1#entry936681 I have an EDIS wheel kit on the way from Derrick. It is his first attempt at the 'cheap' single pulley MSA damper. Unfortunately it was supposed to be delivered yesterday and I still don't have it. Why must the USPS be inefficient when I need them so!? Anyway, I will try to post some more pics/progress tomorrow. Zack

Thanks again for your answers. I'm going to read a little further into this, but it makes me feel better about re-using them. Even more so since I've already put the pistons/rods/bearings back into the block. As you guys have probably already noticed from my previous posts, I am far from an expert. But I can read gooder than some people and I can soak up the info from the wise counselors here. The rods are not Nissan. I'm not sure exactly what manufacturer they are. Zack

Can someone let me know if these rod bearings are the wrong bearings? I know that they look wrong, but this motor was built by people who build good motors (Sunbelt). Take a look at the picture below. Notice that the bearing is has a smaller width than the rod 'seat' and the tang is much smaller than the indent on the rod. Other than the fact that they look wrong, they have been on this motor for some time and they appear to be in good shape. Due to the fact that Clevite bearings are not in stock anywhere that I can find, I would prefer to reuse these. Thanks again, Zack

Thanks for the compliments. The Enkei's are +18 offset. They are 17X9.5. The 5-Lug kit is from Arizona Z Car.

Good luck. I'm just about to start putting my engine back together and wiring up my MSII. I'm hoping to have everthing back together before ZCON in mid July, but I realize that's going to take quite a bit of things going right when I've had nothing but things going not quite right up to this point. If you do end up finding a solution (or the pros do) let us know what it was. Zack

Thanks, Supra510. I was a little unsure of how they would look when I ordered them, but I'm pretty happy with the result. Update: Yesterday I spent 2hrs making up 4 3-pin weatherpack connectors. I'm starting to think that maybe I should have orderd the special crimper. I'm going to take a few days off and I hope to get the block back from the machine shop next week. I'm planning to start the engine back in together and back in the car as well as paint the engine bay (hopefully this will be done by next Sunday, but somehow I think I will run into some problem or need a part that will take a week to get)....We'll see.

Well, I probably should have started this thread a while ago, but I didn't plan on this being as much of a project as it has become. I guess it's better late than never. I bought the car about a year ago from a guy outside of Atlanta, GA. He had a motor built by Jim Thompson at Sunbelt. He spent entirely too much money on it and got married and didn't drive it. So I did a compression check on the motor and talked to him in detail to get an idea of what exactly the back story was. He seemed legit and everthing checked out. He had done some body work and painted it. He had deleted the back bumper and welded in sheet metal over the uneven areas and smoothed it with bondo. There was some sign of the bondo cracking and the paint was chipped in a few places. Overall it looked pretty good. The floor pans had been replaced also by the previous owner and the welds didn't look that great, but everything seemed to be pretty solid. He also re-wired it and the wiring was in need of some serious work, but I am an electrical engineer and therefore qualified to do not much in the real world, but theoretically I can fix any wiring problems with my circuit 101 witchcraft. It looked like he (or maybe some other PO) had spliced every wire in the car. I figured that rewiring it would be a nice way to pass the time during the frigid Tennessee winter. The motor had everything that about $14000 will get you from Sunbelt. That price included the head, turbo, block, ECU, and some dyno tuning (not sure if this was done on a local ECU or the one that the PO used). Speaking of tuning...That was another task the owner undertook on his own. He had installed a Jim Wolf Technology reflashed ECU. This was supposed to include 420CC injectors IIRC. Well, when I picked up the car it wasn't running right. I'm not sure if it was a wiring issue or a tuning issue or what. So I had the car delivered to a shop near where the PO lived. R&D Automotive run by a character who calls himself TurboDave in Powder Springs, GA. They cleaned up some of the wiring and piping and dyno tuned it. It was still not running exactly right but all of the quirks seemed to have been taken care of. So I drove the car home and whenever I got on the gas as soon as boost started to build it would completely lose power as if the car had been turned off. So I took it for a test drive trying to diagnose the problem and it completely died. A fuse blew. I'm not sure what the fuse was powering as there were now two fuse boxes in the car, but the ECU appeared to be fried. I did manage to find 3 shorts with my trusty multimeter and a little patience. So I fixed that and tried to determine the damage to the ECU. That was when the odessy began. Since the JWT ECU is pretty rigid I decided to go the Megasquirt route. I bought a preassembled MSII and some sensors and 6 IGN-1A ignition modues from DIY Autotune. Then I bought the EDIS stuff and Derek's adapter kit. I took the car back to R&D Automotive and ordered some shiny suspension parts from Dave at Arizona Z Car. He makes great parts by the way and he is great to work with. Well all of the stuff from AZC finally showed up, but for some reason nothing was getting done on the car. Eventually I ended up bringing the car back to Chattanooga where an ex-employee from R&D who was also kind of on a Lemons team of mine was going to work on it. Well things were happening pretty slowly and I was pretty busy with work. I actually worked out of town from September through the end of the year. So I brought the car back to my house and have been slowly working on it myself. I was under the impression that the motor was pretty solid, so the plan was just going to be to do a brain transplant and a new suspension. That is until I broke the cam gear dowel while trying to remove the front pulley to install Derek's kit. (I know I should have held the flywheel instead of using a vice grip on the cam, you live and learn). Some other dumb stuff happened that I don't need to get into and then I removed the head. To my surprise there was a noticable amount of pitting on the combustion chambers and what appeared to be water damage on the block. The pistons looked fine on top. Then I took the head to a shop where I paid them some money and they didn't fix it (but they were good to work with) and I bought a new head from KTM on this forum. Since the bottom end except for the block was in pretty good shape, I decided to find a new block. I ended up trading the old suspension parts for a new F54/P79 long block and two fenders. The block is being bored and decked at a local shop. That's basically where I am today. I had made a bit of a mess in my clean (I use that term loosely) garage, so I decided to roll it out and clean up the garage. I think I'm also going to paint the engine bay while I'm at it. Here are the pics I took after washing the car (the garage still needs a bit of work). Note that I have removed some parts and it is awaiting the heart/brain transplant. I am also in the process of cleaning up the new wiring. I'm not going to put the fenders back on until I get all of the wrenching done. Enkei wheel. This is a 17X9.5 wheel with 255/40/17 Kumho Ecsta Xs Tires. They seem to clear everything without the need for flares or rolling the fenders. I'm going to have to finsh setting up the suspension to be sure, but it looks doable now. Empty enging bay Zack

The Tomei was $261 plus shipping of $17. I bought it from EDO performance. I have never bought anything from them, but they were very good to deal with. Here's a link to their product page. They also have a 1.2mm and a 1.5mm gasket on their site for the same price. http://shop.edoperfo...mm-p-10154.html *edit accidently said Kameari instead of Tomei

I was recently on a quest to find a 1mm Metal headgasket. While I was on this quest I ordered some stuff from MSA and asked about the availability of the Kameari headgasket. It was going to have to come from Japan and would take 3-4weeks. So I called EDO Performance to inquire about the Tomei gasket. It also had to be ordered from Japan and there was a 3-4 week wait. I went with the slightly cheaper Tomei brand gasket. To my surprise MSA charged me $300+ more for my order than it was supposed to be and both gaskets came in at about the same time (actually the EDO one came in a few days sooner). So I thought I would do a quick comparison while I had both here and post up some general information for those of us who may be considering dropping way too much on a metal head gasket. The comparison result is that these gaskets are identical in every way. At least as far as I can tell. The coolant/oil passages are the same, the finish is the same and the construction is the same. The only difference is that the Tomei gasket came with some stickers and the Kameari gasket had none. I would say that rare Japanese parts manufacturer stickers are worth at least 10RWHP not to mention the aerodynamical improvements. So I guess the Tomei gasket would be the better performance choice of the two with the added benefit of also being the economical choice. See pics below for details. I put the Tomei gasket in a Tomei sticker sandwich, so it would be easy to tell which is which. Zack

Thanks for the good news Tony.