seattlejester

Are they laid out in order? I would kind of expect pairings if you are running triple webbers. Have the carbs been balanced? There does seem to be a little bit of oil residue, but the plugs don't look wet or saturated with them. Any smoking out the exhaust? If it is a fresh rebuild it might take a while before the rings seat completely.

2mm head gasket would be a start, ARP studs would probably be a good idea while you are in there. Also keep in mind using a thicker head not only means increasing your deck height but also shortening the chain tension by 4mm as well. You can get away with high compression engines nowadays with modern ECU systems and good tuning, less room for error. You will need to find a source for oil for the turbo and a port to dump oil back into the motor. Fuel: Do a bit more research for the lazy among us, what is the flow? A real general rule would be a cc/min = hp in a 3L 6 cylinder using gas. You should probably consider fuel lines as well. Management: Megasquirt is going to need a TPS signal which the ZX does not have, you can reuse the coolant temp sensor or use the supplied one, IAT sensor will be needed, a port for the MAP sensor. You will need some kind of spark trigger signal. Whether that is a HES or VR sensor triggered by a trigger wheel or an optical sensor in the distributor will be up to you. Wastegate: Good for you? Make sure it is big enough to bleed enough exhaust to keep your boost low. Also keep in mind size takes a hit with priority. The stock manifold does not have anywhere to mount one and welding to cast is a real hard task. Intercooler: Standard go to was the Isuzu NPR one. Really any decent sized one with your desired orientation and outlet size will be good. You want at least 2.5 inch pipes if you don't want to come against aerodynamic drag if I remember the term correctly. Keep in mind your transmission may not be happy with what you are planning. Neither will your brakes, and neither will your axles. If you know you are going to get flamed do some more searching, the only reason people complain is when the post really shows a lack of searching whether that means not spending the 20 seconds it takes to do a google search and scan through the hits or taking a gander at the FAQs or a quick glance in the last couple pages to see if something similar has come up. Hope that helps

"I replaced it with a S364.5SXE since this is a street car" Lol, you crazy! That turbo will flow 80lb/min at peak although that is like 45lbs of boost. What are you aiming for?

Don't really want to post this because it is another me being stupid thing...but to keep with my initial point. I checked my alternator wiring. That was kosher. Lamp = on the datsun is black with a white stripe = 7mgte Yellow with green stripe = 2jz Blue with red stripe (far left when looking at the plug with the wires going away from you) Ignition = is a separate wire on the datsun, I used the wire that goes to the coil = 7mgte Black with yellow stripe = 2jz red with blue stripe (center when looking at the plug with wires going away from you) Signal = datsun is yellow = 7mgte white = 2jz white with a stripe (far right when looking at the plug with the wires going away from you) Then I picked up the new battery and installed it. I must say having a volt meter display in the car is great for little trouble shoots. Started the car up at 11.9 volts and it slowly drained to 11.8 volts then to 11.7 volts. Checked that the alternator pulley was moving. Shut off the car. Thought for a little bit and thought "alternator tested good, but battery is not charging...what is going on?" Then I spotted a fuse holder going from the alternator to the battery. Popped it open and For f*cks sake...Blown fuse = no alternator charge = megasquirt freaking out. When I wired the alternator I thought that the most it would ever have to deal with was the electric fans kicking on. I basically used the stock wiring thickness. Really you should build your car with some thought of the future. I would go back and kick myself in the balls for how many times I made that decision not to size up. In the future I'm sure I would want to kick my current self in the balls. Probably a never ending cycle. That was also before I converted to a fuel injected, individual coil pack driven motor with an EFI pump. Honestly I'm surprised this guy survived for how long it did. My best guess is when the battery went flat and with the bad cell, trying to charge it up caused the alternator to output max amps for a sustained time and blow the fuse. On an unrelated note managed to snap a picture of the tablet holder contraption.

Pulled the battery, which barely barely comes out without me having to remove my strut brace. Interesting fact, battery fits some later model kias, but the first hit was for an AMC pacer. Good enough to turn over a 4.2L engine then good enough for a 3L Then I pulled the alternator which is a massive pain. You have to pull the turbo intake filter and intake pipe, then undo the bolts, undo the wiring, then squish the lower radiator hose flat to give it enough room to pull out and clear the water pump. Definitely a tight fit. Also turns out like my water pump, the alternator was for the VVTI 2jz difference being the oval plug vs the round plug and the 80 amps vs the 100 amps of the earlier unit. Another lesson in finding out what you really have. The guy at the local parts store is a Z guy, and he helped me figure out some things. He took me into the back so I could watch to boot. He threw the alternator on the tester. It passed all 3 conditions. Just to make sure he ran it again. Second pass with flying colors. So it seems the alternator is happy enough. Next he threw the battery on the charger prior to testing. He sent me this picture as I stepped out to grab a bite to eat. Battery had a bad cell. At first that was a bit confusing as for sure I thought it would be the alternator, but if the battery is failing in its duty as a capacitor of sorts the additional strain from say the electric fans would deplete or strain more then the alternator can supply at idle at a given notice, causing problems. New battery on order. Should pick it up today.

For my 440cc low impedance supra injectors with a resistor box I have it set to 1.150ms for dead time. Is that chart correct for having the resistor inline on a low impedance setup? Adding the resistor would raise the impedance and require more dead time, of course the resistance of the resistor would play a factor as well.

The video I watched, the guy's goal was to impart rusting into his final piece so he just used iron powder that is commercially available to I think something like fiberglass resin. Gun guys do something similar or you could just go out and buy devcon steel putty if I remember the name correctly which is a steel imbedded resin. I did not not know 3d hubs offered CNC, that is pretty neat. I had some parts quoted, basically anything that can safely stand up to engine bay temps are going to be quite spendy. Remember that the radiator is going to be pumping air through a matrix heated to near boiling, not to mention the engine especially with the exhaust on the same side is going to be hot to start with. Overall it is a pretty simple shape. I don't know how the machine shops in Norway would work, but you could take some pieces to a machine shop or engine shop here and they could build it for you for a fairly reasonable cost if you supplied the right diameter material. Then again this could all be overtly cautious. I honestly haven't even thought of trying to have anything made for inside the engine bay, maybe one of those materials would be happy. I mean there are plenty of plastics in there to start with.

Wow, I appreciate the effort, I honestly wasn't even considering OEM to be honest. I figured it would be way out of budget or NLA. I already placed the order from zcardepot, but I might just pick up the OEM one while I can as well, granted not sure if this is NOS, at that point I might be concerned just given the age. ^Goodness all those acronyms.

I was thinking about doing something like that. I did buy illuminated push button switches for that purpose a while back. Maybe I'll have to look that up. My fear is that given the relays that drive them if you had some lower voltage you might not even be able to trigger them, and there was always the question of if they will fail to trigger during the cranking voltage drop. So if you were cranking and it fell below 9 or so volts would it just stop sending an ignition signal and you would no longer be able to start your car. I ended up ordering a replacement ignition switch, just the electronic portion from zcardepot along with some other small parts. We will see how that goes.

Looking for a replacement. I am assuming mine has gone bad and would like to get parts in hand. The last one I got was from thailand. It lasted a pretty good time, but would very much not like to be stuck like that again. The ones from Zcardepot look to be very similar, so I am a bit hesitant. MSA I think charges more for pretty much the same. Anyone have recommendations on a new ignition switch that they have had some long term success with?

Those tips were very good. My concern would be the heat involved. I did see this thing on cold casting. Basically you print the part, then you make a mold using silicone, then you cast the part by using iron added to resin or JB weld. Fairly low buck compared to say a sintered print. Although the sintered print would be much more direct.

Long flywheel bolts will bind the clutch disk for sure. I would point you towards all the reading on the aluminum crank pulley not being a good idea. I think even Aaron doesn't run one on his car, and he makes a kit that includes one. Basically the crank pulley is actually damping things, remove that damping function and the soft aluminum pulley will deform from vibration especially near the key way and cause problems. The stock one isn't all that great either as the rubber can separate. Definitely between a rock and a hard place here. The solution looks to be on of the $300+ dampers from ATI or what not.

So the Z didn't make it to the drive. Might have been a blessing in disguise. We had very long runs at fairly high load, some very tricky corners, and the coup de grace a 2-3 hour traffic jam on the way home. I was very happy for the automatic transmission, air conditioning, and firm brake pedal of my daily. I did miss the passing power of the datsun. I figure I try to help trouble shoot people all the time, so I should try and trouble shoot my own problem the same way. First off the background, TL;DR below. I started the day by swapping my BKR7E spark plugs to BKR7EIX iridium spark plugs in hopes that it might help with an intermittent miss I could hear. Also tightened the fuel rail which was loose, reoriented the coil packs, electrical taped some wire bundles all things to clean things up. When I tried to start the car I realized I ended up killing the battery, it was reading a measly 3.2 volts. While installing my tablet dash I must have hit the light switch and not noticed it being on. So that was an easy fix, I threw it on a charger for an hour or so and it was charged up enough to start, car started and voltage was reading 15 volts. I got everything as buttoned up as I thought I would and pulled it out for a pre-wash drive to work out some kinks.. Car was running in paramters so I let the car warm up and was checking over little things like sealing up the shock tower holes and such when the car started running rough and stumbling. I peaked my head in and looked at my new dash to see it running and AFR of 19-20 and stumbling. I hurriedly reached in and shut the car off. Car wasn't going to make it until I got this sorted so I decided to put it back inside where I could work on it only to find that the key did nothing. Turning it to ignition on didn't kick on the gauges, megasquirt, lights or anything. Turning the key to crank would not even actuate the starter solenoid, no click. Thinking that was odd I spent the next hour and a half pushing the car near an outlet to try and charge up the battery again. Turns out battery was still holding a charge at 12 volts, although it had dropped from 50% down to 28% according to my charger Finding it odd that nothing at all turned on even with 12 volts, I ran a wire straight from the battery to the ignition signal wire. ECU, gauges, and fuel pump all kicked on. I tried starting again and nothing, so I unplugged the starter signal wire and tapped that against the battery and the car started right up. It was still running rough very high AFR's although they would drop if you revved them down to about 16-18 (should be below 14), some numbers I was able to grab was that the fuel pump was still generating about 30psi of fuel pressure, voltage was only reading 13.8 volts with the engine running. TL;DR Killed battery by leaving lights on Installed new spark plugs, taped up wire bundles, tightened fuel rail Charged battery for 1-2 hours Car started and ran within parameters, generated 15 volts After a few minutes car started leaning out 19-20 afr, 16-17 when reving engine Shut car off, tried to restart and ignition switch no longer worked (no lights, no starter) Battery voltage was still at 12 volts Hot wired car Car started, ran very lean like before So couple things come to mind: Discharged batteries will cause weird problems, fault is in bad battery (battery is quite old, it was put in with my 7m which was at least 3-4 years ago) Could be the alternator going bad, it was a replacement alternator that came with the motor, but I never had it tested, looked shiny and maintained 14+ volts. Faulty alternator would explain the discharging voltage and why the car started to stumble later rather then on start Could be incorrect alternator wiring, there are only 3 wires, one is obvious, the other two can be confusing, thought was if I had it wrong I would switch it, but it seemed like I got it right the first time, can go into more detail later. Bad ignition switch would explain why the key is not doing anything Could have damaged or pulled something while manipulating the dash trying to pull the gauges out. Could be the tune in megasquirt not liking the voltage differential and correcting itself to an incorrect scalar (would explain why the AFR's do drop means that it is adding fuel) Or could be a combo of several things Next post will delve into what I find out, what tests I run etc. Thoughts very much appreciated.

Filets are a radiused curve usually found on corners. So instead of your part meeting at 90* they would meet the corners gradually. It helps to add structure in parts, in 3D printing it helps prevent separation from objects since it forces your cutting program to make that area more top layers. If this is a prototype for something you are having machined out of billet then no real worries as it is one piece. If it is a prototype for something that will be made out of several pieces, once again no worries as you would most likely be welding the pieces which in and of themselves would act like fillets. If you are printing then fillets will be your friend to help support shapes.

I don't disagree, but being neither a professional nor a pirate, can't really beat fusion 360 for price haha.

Looks good, I would say from my limited experience that it might benefit from filets. Also not sure what material it is, but many of the easy to prototype plastics have really low glass temperatures.

Good eye, it is fusion 360. Doesn't seem as intuitive as say solid works at least to me, but I'm really inexperienced so just might be my lack of comfortability with the software. I don't quite recall what printer he is using. Looking around a prusa I3 looks similar. It came as a DIY kit. ~3-400 if that helps.

Now for something a little different. A friend recently got into 3D printing. I had been wanting to learn 3D design for a while, and figured it was finally time so I asked him to show me some basics. He gave me an over view and went through designing some parts. I went home and found once the basics were learned it wasn't all too bad to figure out. After maybe 30mins of video and a 2 hour or so lesson, I got enough of a hang of it to make some parts for a little project. To a real physical print Like all gear heads, this then turned into using the acquired knowledge to improve my car. I made up the next couple parts. Designed this piece to join the two pieces of the plug insert. Then designed the all important tablet holder. Then all the pieces came to life. My nexus 7 worked, but was frankly ancient in tablet terms, the GPS signal was touchy, and frankly it was just slow. So I went online and picked up a used samsung galaxy tablet with a decent GPS suite. Not the best option, I would have preferred the 8, but they for some reason jumped up in price to double what a 7 inch was. Then my friend came up and printed these. I was really content with just simple friction fit plugs, but he said it could be better and a lock fit. So he printed this chamfered outer ring Then the conical inner insert Confused? Well in the past when I needed a tachometer I removed the stock one and went with a cheap 4.5 or 5 inch universal. Turns out it would fit right in the gauge hole with just a bit of friction. It stayed that way till I removed it nearly 4 years later. Needing a speedometer, tachometer, boost gauge, and a coolant gauge, and figuring I didn't want to buy all those separate when megasquirt would happily output all of those I decided to mount a tablet. The original plan was to just cut out the gauge pods and flat mount a tablet, but we talked about it and came up with this nice solution that doesn't require any modification of the factory dash. So first these pod adapters go in Then the joiner and the tablet holder and voila One custom tablet holder. Tablet can be removed from the car by sliding it out of the tablet holder for security. Mount is fully removable. Needs a little bit of adjustment, but overall I think it is amazing what you can do.

Tubular front bumper, maybe a little bit of a front splitter and a block off for the front spoiler (local guy has made one that looks excellent), maybe a little bit of a subtle rear diffuser (get the air out from that area where the exhaust tends to pool). Possibly some new wheels. Color wise I still generally enjoy white. I've done blue on my daily which was fun, but I'm not ready for the flashier colors and the attention that brings (red, orange, yellow, green). I do plan on getting my feet wet in vinyl wrapping if that goes well the world will be my oyster.

If I'm not mistaken I believe a lot of cars will go dog bone to remove that rear RLCA mount. Getting everything into alignment now would be better then finding out that it is causing some pre-mature wear and having to have your axles shortened, spacer made up for the drive shaft, and the mounts moidified. The only concern is that even in cars with a lot of axle movement they tend to line it up in one plane. Having the axle angled back and then moving it up and down in that plane would cause the secondary angles to be higher at the extremes via the hypotenuse of a hypotenuse type of situation. On the other hand, I would say getting a better measurement standard whether that is plumb bobs and such Calculating the angle wouldn't be too difficult. If it falls in the range of the CV joint you pick then overall there is not much of a problem as you will be working in the rated range.

I flipped my mustache bar and built everything to suit and ran my car with that misalignment for 1-2k miles. U joints were still tight. Is there a reason you can't move it back? Depending on you you mounted it or how the mount is made doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to correct that now unless you have a drive shaft and all that made up already.

Not great to be too misaligned. Also depends on your axles. CV joints will take more angle. With U-joints you might be at the limit of what it is happy at depending on your suspension travel. As above do you have a measurement? That would get us the angle of misalignment.

Never too late , seems like you have a really skilled friend working on it right now who can do aluminum (means he can do stainless). Might be worth addressing now before all the pipes are finalized. You will have to let me know how solid trans feels. Mines still on rubber, I'm planning on getting poly, but if solid is doable then maybe I'll just jump ahead.

Wait...why do you have your hood on. Why are you putting on your front spoiler... Guys, it runs Introducing the running and driving 2JZ NA-T swapped Datsun 240Z! Went on a little drive today. Picked up some gas, and put a bit of air in the tires. Definitely immensely nervous. I'm so afraid of something going wrong, really so much has been changed without much proving miles (suspension, differential, axles, engine). Still it was really nice to get some seat time, I'm trying to be conscious and break in the clutch before I give it the full beans, I bought a clutch that is a full face which should hold about 450ft/lbs or so, but I've read that not breaking it in properly can make you loose as much as 100ft/lbs of holding torque. I have yet to go anywhere near full throttle I do definitely feel the boost ramping on much harder with a functioning map and boost controller. Pretty terrifying to be honest, hehehe. Well it has been a while. Some bits just took a long time, and some life stuff happened. Still working on it though for sure. Learned some new things that I'm hoping to apply (look forward to the next post in a couple days), and potentially may be moving to a better work space. So some thing to catch up on. Drain plug was a strange thing. I bought OEM toyota gaskets and was confused when they wouldn't fit. On investigation the plug had the word METRIC printed on it, which was odd. Measuring it found that it was oversized by 2mm. With that dealt with I could fill up the car with oil. Cranked the engine over until I got oil coming out of the turbo drain (real important to get it from the drain and not just unhook the feed as that deprives pressure to the block). Then I had quite a bit of trouble with the timing as can be found in the ECU section. Not sure where it went wrong, it is down to either the tuning cable being sub par or the fact I am using a Macbook making the communication somewhat faulty. I did kind of get it down that if I reset a bunch of times and sent the files and tweaked some other parameter I could get it to write. It is confusing as it is reading the written value, but wouldn't apply it right away. I think I'll have to buy an old laptop just to run megasquirt on, I do have MSdroid which apparently has the capability to write to the controller so I'll have to see. Had to shorten the throttle cable as well. The manifold sits close so it was a given. Also found out that there is some disconnect now as I can't get 100% throttle. Going to have to do some trigonometry to sort the problem there. Right now I get 0-80% which is enough, but I'm definitely leaving some stuff on the table. Also found out that I had my settings wrong with my boost controller. It had no shot of ever working the way it was programmed. The signal was being sent too frequently for it to react, and I had a very progressive map for most likely a tiny turbocharger. That meant if the solenoid could react to the signal that was being sent way too frequently it would not be doing much anyway. So that was a big fix. Some friends mentioned wanting to go on a drive. The way it is planned is about 400+miles in a day. I'm honestly not sure about that. For one I'm pretty sure I am still getting fumes in the car, and really just got it driving. I figure it will be motivation to kind of get the car better sorted. With that spirit, I found a spot for my oil catch can. Definitely not ideal, but better then having it sit right above the exhaust. Still need to find a permanent mounting solution, but for now it should help to keep some oil fumes out from the intake. Then I mounted my radiator overflow bottle. A couple U-brackets off of the shroud bolts made it pretty easy. I did panic when I noticed a pool of coolant while the car was running only to realize it was bleeding out of the top of the radiator. The overflow bottle has a long tube running nearly all the way to the top so it won't bleed onto the floor until it is at capacity. Working on just cleaning things up and making it easier to use. Aesthetics definitely coming soon.

That is really nifty. A consideration would be to monitor where the exhaust crosses over the diff. It can be quite tedious if the exhaust covers the diff or gets in the way when you are trying to pull it.