seattlejester

I know I pulled mine out that way on my 240 and the 280z at the JY not difficult just awkward when they are attached. I think crazy octopus even had the control arm mounted on the car when he had his coilovers welded, just leaned them out of the car. If your bushings are good on the spindle pin, it might not be worth the effort to remove them. You can just drop the rear setup strut and control arm stuck together. Although I will say that with a bolt replacing the spindle pin, I can drop the strut so much easier. Might be worth doing if you are going to revisit it for coilovers down the road.

Rough estimate of cost? Would be interesting to put it in perspective to other options.

I believe that is mckinney which offers that option. Similar in a lot of ways, so the confusion could be easily made. The concern on my part is that those top mount insulators are old. One side completely crumbled when I removed it, I can't imagine they are doing much NVH dampening at that point. With shock options in mind a GC/TTT setup might be a better option. You can literally run whatever fits in the housing. With the BC/Mckinney/Sakura you are more or less limited to what shock comes with the unit.

Bushings, ball joints, and brakes would be a very good place to start. Granted taking out the control arms leaves you 1/2 way there to pulling out the struts. If you get the Energy Suspension Bushing Kit, do not install the tension arm bushings. Spend a bit more and buy G-machine ball and socket setup it is a much better design. You are going to have to fight the rear spindle pin, so buy the puller setup or borrow it or find a way to make something similar. Also be safe. It seems like you aren't a stranger to cars, but use jack stands and such. These cars are light, but chances are you won't be able to bench press it off of you. Your decision on how you want things to go, but I think you have the right perspective. Fix something drive it around a while and see what you need next. I had my 240z on 280z springs which made it taller then stock for a while so I know what you mean, but at the same time it is not running now which makes all the money spent on adjustable suspension and ride height seem moot when it won't even run.

Your apprehension is understood, it could be troublesome if you couldn't get it back together, I was apprehensive myself when I started. Buy the how to restore a datsun z car book and you will have a step by step picture guide to follow along. As long as you are safe and attentive these cars aren't hard to work on. Chances are you will find things that need replacement like bushings and ball joints. If you aren't setup to deal with replacing parts as needed as you go, then best not to take it apart quite yet. You have to weigh the fear of not being able to get it back together vs the financial gain as well as the sense of achievement of doing it yourself. If the fear trumps and you can afford having someone else do it then by all means, just make sure that they are familiar with the install and have examples of welds they can show you, the local shops here either charge and arm and a leg, or charge very little and you have to deal with subpar work, made it an easy choice to work on it myself given my options. There is something to be said about the apprehension, there are people who gleefully take things apart and never put them back together. Sit down and think about it and look through the book and see if you can manage, if you can't then start stalking people's build threads and location tags and see if you can convince them to help you out or know someone who can direct you towards somewhere who can do the work. The front is easier in my opinion, it has more connections (tie rod, tension arm, etc), but you don't have to deal with the drums and the axle. Personally I did take my car to an exhaust shop for more then exhaust work once. The guys did a good job on my exhaust and I would go back to them for exhaust again, but on other work I did find that the mount that they made for me needed a lot of finishing work and a long time rattle was caused by a piece of metal in the mount pushing up on the transmission. If you do decide to do it yourself you might want to see if they could lay the bead on the tube if you cut it and all that. Keep in mind custom suspension stuff some places may reject as they do not want the liability associated with it, you might do better finding a "fabricator" on craigslist or something of that nature who is used to things of that nature. An off road shop would also be able to put down a solid bead for fairly cheap. Also I never got around to finishing it and the commentary isn't great, but here's a basic overview of the install It goes into more detail as I did the TTT GTX-2 arms at the same time, but if you are just doing the BC's it really isn't too bad. My build thread also has pictures of the cutout you have to make to the adapters to make them sit flush. TL;DR: If the car hasn't had regular service you will indeed probably run into things you need to replace Things that come to mind: control arm bushings, brake lines, rusty bolts, knuckle o-ring, ball joint, tie rod, drum brake hard ware, caliper hardware, rotor, wheel bearings etc etc etc. If it is a daily driver, this most likely won't go back together quickly unless you have everything planned out to the T They are both similar, but the front was faster. Be ready to address the snafu's above. Plenty of penetrant, the right tools, torque specs, work gloves, tension arm will be under tension be prepared for that to snap up when you undo the bolts. Exhaust shop might be able to weld a good bead, but I have seen more bad work from exhaust shops then good. Might want to try and find an off road shop or a shop that does roll cages and such.

S366?

If I was being semantical, technically you are a coilover guy unless you are running leaf springs or torsion bars, the stock system is a coil over shock aka coilover . No worries, I looked into a lot of this stuff before I ordered so it is still pretty fresh. There are no rubber insulators. Part of most coilover conversions save for I think mckinney which offers a stock top option forgo the insulator in preference for a pillow ball. Basically a spherical bushing in a plate. The rubber insulator in addition to absorbing NVH helps the strut flex a bit for and aft, the pillow ball setup takes this job in most coilover systems. The BC coilovers have camber plates. However to adjust camber due to the small size of the strut hole one has to drop the strut, as in physically remove it from the car (undo the 3 nuts), from the top to snake an allen key to undo the bolts to adjust them. If you had traditional camber plates from places like Sakura garage, TTT, GC or others you would adjust camber via the top without having to drop the strut, however those systems are not bolt in. As most coilovers run a sliding system I don't think you can run both, although you could slot the top 3 holes I suppose to increase a bit of camber adjustment. Best bet would be to convert to something like mckinney's top mount if you needed lots of camber adjustment. Originally there was talk of making it a complete bolt in setup as they do make bolt in setups for AE86's that have brand new cast and machined front spindles, but it was noted that we would also need rear hubs, which is quite a task to cast and machine, other manufacturers I believe make a setup by welding pieces, but that whole conversation ended up being that they could potentially do it, but it would be at a much higher cost point, I think it boiled down to the fact that if someone wanted a full bolt in setup they would go for TEIN or something and the R and D to do it wasn't financially worth it so we have what we have now. It is less work. A traditional TTT/GC coilover setup requiring sectioning struts usually involves: Removing strut Grinding off spring perch Cutting out a section Welding on new 2.5 inch spring perch Welding the housing together Grinding down the weld to fit the spring Cutting strut mount out of car (unless you have a drill and bolt plate which requires I think 8 holes drilled) Welding in slotted camber plate (or bolting in the camber top if you have a bolt in style) Reinstall strut In a BC setup it would be: Remove strut Cut off strut top Fit adapter Weld in adapter Screw in coilover into adapter Reinstall strut ^Much shorter list To be fair for a couple hundred more, you could buy a premade setup from TTT that would essentially bolt in minus the camber tops for the GC style coilover.

I'm pretty sure I have done this earlier in this thread or the sister thread, but.... To adjust height you undo the locking collar on the very bottom. Grab the bigger wrench and turn the very top collar, this rotates the body down or up. You can find a bunch of videos online, almost all coilover systems of this style are identical in this fashion. Once you get the adjustment required, lock the very bottom perch. Notice you never undo the ring in the middle right under the top collar. To install you undo your stock system, cut the strut, weld on the adapter tubes, thread on the tube and reinstall reverse of how you un installed. I have a terrible video series if you have about an hour to waste that goes over installation. It really is quite simple. For spring rate I wouldn't go above 5k which is 330lb/in. Stock is 85-100 or something of that nature and an agressive setup is 200F/225R. If you plan on staying low then a higher spring rate will help, but going much above 300lb/in or 5k you are going to have suspension that is harder then your chassis flex, which means the chassis will absorb bumps at stress points over the suspensino. For 3 bolt vs 4 bolt. If you go anywhere near low (2-3 inch drop) then you will have to max out the camber plates to positive on the 3 bolt setup and that will still yield quite a bit of negative camber -1 to -2. The 4 bolt will give you a little more room, but will require drilling another hole. The camber plates themselves are not possible to adjust on the car, you have to drop the struts to do so. Not terribly difficult if you unhook the sway bars and use a jack to lower the suspension it is possible to do with relative ease, but as mentioned these will pretty much be pegged at positive anyways. At positive they will not clear the factory center strut hole so it will need to be lengthened or you will have to use a remote adjuster. For dampening these are a simple valve as in only one adjustment for both rebound and compression. As a general rule, start in the middle if you chose your spring rate reasonably this will be stiff, but compliant. With wider tires I was rubbing, so I stiffened it 5 clicks in the rear. That caused the car to porpoise as the stiffer shock caused the rear to oscillate less causing the front to oscillate more, the plan then is to adjust the front stiffer until the porpoising goes away. These adjustments really aren't that difficult due to their simplified nature. Make it too stiff via the shocks and you will hurt the life expectancy, similarly make it too soft and you will hurt their life expectancy. For regular vs extreme low. If you plan on hitting stock height in your realm of use for people who prefer to make the car look lower with flares while maintaining ride height, you want the regular. They will max out from what we have seen at about 2 inches or so below stock height. The extreme low is suited for those looking for more then a modest drop. If you want there to be a one finger gap or less between the wheel and the fender this kit is most likely more suited for you. You won't get the height adjustment to go up to stock height, but you can go low enough that you will high center on the most modest of speed bumps. I have the extreme low on my 240z and found that even with adjustment to go 2 inches lower, I high center on my garage lip. Going over a 1 inch steel plate on top of a curve made me dent my fuel cell cover.

I had a friend who lived in Bundy's old house. It actually is still used as a rental property near the university. That is quite the road you have ahead of you. The FSM is probably your best bet. Ideally your jig will bolt up to the important chassis points (trans, rear mustache, front cross member mounts IIRC) and square those points out, then it would just be a matter of keeping the spacing even. The only things that bolt up to the engine frame rail is the cross member and the tension arm, the real question will be if the strut tops are correctly located as those in relation to the cross member will affect your alignment.

Short of the welding portion, and the fact that it is a rotor/hub combo, it really isn't that much more different then a traditional setup. It depends on what you have to work with. If you have the space to have your car lifted and can pull the uprights and have them welded then you can save quite a bit of money. If you don't have the space to do the swap then you unfortunately are going to have to farm it out. Alternatively you could try and buy another set of uprights and have them welded ahead of time. Swapping out just the uprights would be a much shorter job if farmed out.

Correct, however to adjust them you will need to drop the strut to do so. Also if you are planning on going anywhere near low you will be maxing the camber out of the box and will have to trim the center hole for clearance for the adjustment knob. If I am not mistaken, Fernando, from Jpngarage the guy that setup the kit for sale is located down there. He should probably be able to point you towards a decent installer. I would expect probably $1000-$1500 (about 3 hours labor per corner plus cleaning, painting, welding) to have a shop do it for you as in you drive your car in hand them the box of coilovers and they do the rest, keep in mind you will probably need a custom or advanced alignment afterwards which will also run $150-$250. A competent welder could have you squared away for a couple hundred if you brought just the bare bones parts to be welded, granted you have to really be mindful of who you choose.

You have some misconceptions. Clutch fan isn't really a source of parasitic loss it would be things that put a load on the crank like the ac compressor and power steering. As far as I know the water pump and fan really have no real affect. Lightened flywheel also doesn't have much for parasitic loss it is more of a response dealio. Don't settle. If you are thinking V8 swap, don't settle, because you won't be satisfied and this will only delay you financially. If you think that will be enough, find a local who has similar mods and see if he/she would be willing to offer you a ride and see if it really is enough. If turbo is on your mind, flat tops will make it less happy. A turbo is basically nitrous on tap. It will get you 20-30 easy and if you wanted could push you even more. If you have all the parts and as it seems pulling and rebuilding an engine doesn't seem like a problem, I would be tempted to say work with what you have. Swaps can be fairly involved and time consuming, if you don't have enough time to fill up oil to the point where your pickup is cavitating then I would be worried you would never really have time to finish a turbo swap. You are in the ether right now, I am positive there has to be some locals with Z cars, see if you can get in touch with them. Find out what you yourself would be happy with. I know a hopped up NA L28 was a real screaming blast, but I wanted a turbo, I sold my motor for half of what I put into it before I moved on.

Interesting, when I put my pinion flange back, the guide I looked up had a preload setting in in/lbs, I think I had to get up to a pretty high torque rating to hit the right level. Very interested to see what the problem will be.

Slightly convoluted with all you have done. Maybe best to focus on one thing at a time. For the ignition problem: Off the top of my head, I thought white with red stripe thick gauge is constant power and the black with yellow stripe is ignition signal, aka ignition on. You might have hooked all that up to the wrong side of the ignition switch which would explain quite a bit, basically you shorted your circuit to bypass the switch. I would take a step back, unhook those wires for now and turn the key and see which wire becomes live when the switch is in ignition and start. You want to tap into that wire for the power signal. Ideally you are tapping into it for a signal and the power itself would be coming from a relay. My ignition signal comes through one wire and I have a relay box that distributes the power. For gauges: You usually have a couple connections, one is power for the gauge, another is the LED signal itself that you usually tie into the headlight signal so that it lights up when it is dark, unless we are talking about full LED gauges then you usually have a dim and not dim signal so that the LED's are visible during the day, but don't blind you at night. Easiest way would be to look at the back of the factory gauge, the same circuit lights up all the gauges, so that would be one wire, the gauges get their power from a common source so that would be the power wire and the factory gauges I think actually grounds through the metal dash for some of them so that one might not be visible, but pretty easy to address.

Sounds like you are getting a constant power signal sent to the starter. It could be something as simple as a bad ignition switch or something more complicated like a short or a bad plug. I would really refrain from hooking up the ECU until you are sure your wiring is doing what you want it to do. I know someone cooked their ecu in this section from mixing up one wire. Did you tap the stock rail for AN fittings? Or did you use an after market fuel rail? Also I would use the zip tie separator method on the braided lines, it will keep them from rubbing together and fraying the braid. I would also advise to clamp it to the chassis every foot or so. I had a knocking noise that I finally traced to the fuel lines bouncing off the transmission in a part that they sagged. Progress looks good!

I think the one I saw was for a holden and was a fuller top and bottom design, I'll have to see if I can find the post. Edit: Hah found it, thought I was loosing my mind for a bit, it was a picture on a link from someone on this forum http://www.viczcar.com/forum/topic/12048-tutorial-holden-diff-fitted-to-a-240z/ Post number 6

I'd really love to see a full cradle as well. I forget who, but we had a forum member from down under post a picture of his holden differential cradle that tied in the control arm pivots, basically making a subframe and that made me really happy. While in this discussion, is there a fairly known number the 280z stub axles are unhappy at? I see some cars that seem like they have stock stubs pushing way more hp/tq numbers then I think they should be able to handle.

I was also going to say a 25-50 shot of nitrous, that is the "best" way if we were a group to use such a phrase. If you have all the parts for a turbo, I wouldn't see why you wouldn't go for that route. Granted you are explaining relatively high compression NA build which might not jive with a future turbo build, and ultimately you are talking about a v8 engine swap. Kind of all over the place here. If an engine swap is in your future, then don't dump money into this motor, if you really feel the need you can throw on some performance headers and exhaust and hear it sing. Keep up on the maintenance, rotor/cap/spark plug/wires/injector clean/fuel filter swap and save for what you really want.

Thanks for those pictures! You will have to tell us your first impressions when you get it running!

The cheapest one I can find near me is $2500, problem is space for me. I don't have a lot of it. I have to play tetris as it is now to even have room for the engine stand and crane, the things i would do if I only had the room...more of a passing thought, I am already committed to the ge engine and head as parts have already been ordered. Right QSV's are found usually on open manifolds feeding twin scroll housing'd turbo chargers. It depends really on how the manifold is located and the size of the manifold, the flange itself is only about 1/2 an inch or so from what I can tell. We will have to see how things go, with my 7m with the stock cast manifold I had quite a bit of room, although that was a fairly small sized turbo. Hopefully the big parts will be ordered in the next week or so, and then I can figure out how much room I have to play with.

Work in progress on this post need to work it out but don't want to type this up again Turbo manifold: There are several options here as well going for a fully custom fabricated tubular twin scroll manifold to a fairly simple cast open port log manifold. Of course there are ebay options or other knock off/chinese options available. It is actually frightening how much power some of these kits are making fairly reliably. The line between you get what you pay for is starting to blur for me, but the downfall is that you never know when the line will blur one way or the other for a knockoff manifold and if and when it does your aftermarket support will be non existent. I went through three ebay headers on another car and finally went back to factory. I can't imagine they would last all that much longer when they have to support a heavy turbo and the pressures associated with them. They key here is that you have to order for your head. The 2jz-gte and the 2jz-ge unfortunately do no share the same exhaust pattern thus you will be limited to the NA selection. It will be up to you to decide how crazy you want to go here. Keep in mind that the turbo will sit awfully close to the passenger strut tower. That means you either want a manifold that will put the turbo rearward, upward, way forward etc. Having it smack in the middle and far out is going to be problematic. Also note that if you have a manifold that puts it too far rearward you are going to run into problems with routing the exhaust towards the trans tunnel. If you were really on a budget and didn't need the hood I think I noticed you could flip the stock manifolds and do a front mount turbo. Personally, ebay/knockoff was off the list for me, while tempting I just felt like it wasn't going to last. I don't think I need the boost response nor the precision from a twin scroll equal length manifold, so I could easily decide to use the cast stainless steel manifold with a lifetime warranty against cracking from treadstone. Even better I found one used from a forum member so it was a no brainer. Intake manifold: This isn't really a required part and you can clear the hood even with the cross over manifold, but I don't like picking up the intercooler piping on the same side and aesthetically it bothers me. The benefit of a front facing manifold are easier piping for intercooler, a chance to clean up all the boost/reference lines, and easier access to spark plugs. You have a couple options here: D tube with a flange: simplest option you can actually buy the D-tube and a cap and make it yourself or you can find one pre-made. Downfall here is that these usually bolt to the lower intake runner on the stock manifold that means there is always a possibility that you can loose hardware into your engine. Stand alone aluminum manifold: these while being similar in design can vary in price from $500-$2500. These are straight replacements and will bolt onto the head. I have the cheaper one of these on my 7m. When I first started the car up it idled at 3000 rpm with the throttle body closed. I took it to a machine shop and it was found that the manifold flange was extremely warped, I believe he said he had to do 2 or 3 runs on the belt sander to even it out. 2jz-gte JDM intake: apparently it is possible to bolt with some minor modification a specific JDM 2jz-gte intake to the lower runners. This locates the intake much higher then the engine which might be problematic with how the hood is shaped, thus I am not sure this is a good fit. Custom: Usually requires some use of the lower intake manifold but other then that it is pretty much fair game as to the shape. A competent welder with aluminum should be able to make one for you for a relatively good price. Personally I went with the XS manifold to bolt to the lower intake runners. Dexter has them on his car and looks like it works without problems. He blazed the trail here on this application and I am just following. While I was tempted to do a stand alone aluminum manifold at $500 or more on top of the price of the D tube, I couldn't justify it. I may end up turning this into somewhat of a custom affair though and weld the D tube onto the lower intake runner to do away with the bolts and such. Time will tell. Turbo selection: This one is really going to be a doozy, I'll try and summarize it or provide more real world examples at a later date. Really it is up to the end user to decide, I will try and give a couple of general bits of information and more specific to the 2jz NA-T side of things. First off is some terminology. You have your compressor side which compresses the intake air. This side is connected via a shaft to a turbine or hot side which is bolted to the turbo manifold. Passing exhaust gasses spin the turbine/hot side and the shaft transfers this motion to the cold/compressor side. Cold Side: The amount of air that a turbo will ultimately flow is determined by the speed that the center assembly moves and the size of the compressor side turbine. The thing is that while a small turbo might flow a lot of air if you spin it faster and faster once it dips out of its efficiency range the turbo will start heating up the air that it is compressing as well as start wearing out prematurely. These stats can be found via compressor maps as to the flow characterisitics at what pressure ratio how much flow is generated. Ideally you would want to be close to the max efficiency of the turbo at several rpm ranges. Being off the center island means a compromise of sorts it may mean that while you are in low boost the turbo is efficient, but at high boost you start moving off the center island. Ideally you want a proper sized turbo that will get you to your power levels with a little room above if needed. Hot side: This is the driven side the exhaust gasses are routed through this side and spin the turbine. As you can imagine this means quite a few things. A common number you see associated with hot sides is A/R without going into too much specifics this basically is the area ratio or the size of the housing in relation to the cross sectional area. A smaller A/R means that the turbo will spool up faster the housing is physically smaller and thus the gas being directed to it have more velocity, but on the flip side that small opening at the top end becomes a restriction you risk choking the turbo with the size restriction limiting the speed it can spin at. Ideally you want to spool up quickly while being able to hit your max targeted boost number. 0.63+ is recommended on an S256sx that spools around 3k RPM. Going up above 1.00 is not recommended as that will most likely make a very peaky turbo that will take a long time to spool and have very limited use. So the main point is to be wary of recommendations people offer when browsing supra forums. You have to understand that their cars are much heavier, built with much higher rated components (diff/axle/transmission) and that they can cope with some of the downfalls of a large turbo. You also have to note that strangely enough a lot of people run bandaids on their setups, tricking stock ECU's with larger injectors and throttle bodies and such. A lot of people will also size turbos for future goals which given the stout bottom end can mean some really ludicrous numbers so beware. For our chassis a large turbo is likely to hit harder and have a much higher chance of breaking some of our weaker components such as the stub axles or the axles so we want to size appropriately for our uses. A pretty good option is to actually look for recommendations on the L28ET for 350-400hp or so. The 2jz is slightly higher displacement which will mean it spools a little faster with the same A/R, or that it might choke a little bit more up top if the A/R is too small, so stepping up slightly will be fine. A 60 trim turbo will output way more then a stock chassis will need anyone recommendations of a turbo larger then that should be taken with caution. Some turbos that seem like a good fit for 300-400hp with room to grow Garrett T04E 57trim Garrett GT3071R GT3076R (55mm inducer wheel) Borg Warner S257SX-E Borg Warner S256SX As can be seen a 55-57mm inducer wheel will be fairly adequate for my personal goals, my friend has an S256sx on his 2.8L BMW motor and can't bleed enough exhaust through his 40mm waste gate to keep boost levels below 300hp. I'll go into sizing later as this already seems verbose. A note as to why turbo's cost as much as they do: Building a turbo is a fairly involved process to get the housings for both the cold and hot side, requiring casting and cores for most turbos. Then precision balancing comes into play on the rotating assembly which spin at very high speed. The downfall with the knockoff offerings are the lack of quality control and frankly plain old oversight. Problems range from thin shaft material causing the rotating assembly to snap. Poorly machined surfaces which can cause premature bearing wear, and even drastic issues like glueing the compressor housing to the center assembly or flat out housings separating due to poor material composition. A turbo builder remarked that the demo pieces presented to him were great, but when they made a surprise visit to the factory in china they found much lower quality material was being used. They had them destroy these low quality housings on the spot, but a factory could easily divert these to another seller to be resold on knock off turbos. Ebay Turbo's: This is bound to come up, and having looked into what is available here are my thoughts on the matter. For some sellers it does not matter for them what they sell. There have been reports of people who have taken apart large T4 size turbos and find small T25 size shafts connecting the impeller these would essentially work until they saw load and the shaft would shear almost instantly. Other reports of weak cast material for the compressor and turbine housing means fractures are only a matter of time. Other reports find that the balance is off or the seals are leaking. Those are reports from no name ebay turbos. However, it seems like if you do your searching you can find some of these turbo's and expect some life expectancy out of them. VS racing and CX racing are two companies that have embraced the Ebay Turbo and in some cases making decent power out of them fairly reliably. What you should expect is that life expectancy will be really low, factor in about 10,000 miles before they need inspection or replacement. Given the price of some of these turbo's that may be an easy choice for someone to make. Keep in mind the downfalls: a really blown seal can ignite and cause a run away situation, a sudden loss of boost pressure can cause a massive rich condition, and a blown housing can cause incorrect signals to the o2 sensor which can lean out the injectors. If those situations are acceptable trade offs for saving 1/2 the price of the turbo it will be up to the purchaser to decide. Turbo add ons: To combat the problem of boost thresholds being high with a big turbo, but a lack of bottom end with a small turbo, Toyota opted to go with a sequential turbo setup from the factory. This system closes off one turbo while under a certain boost threshold funneling all the gas to one turbine (acting as a small A/R) and when it gets to a certain pressure it opens the second turbo essentially doubling the capacity allowing the now more abundant gasses to spin both turbos. While this works it does mean a more complicated system with two turbos two sets of oil lines, two water lines and so on. Given modern non water cooled turbos and things such as twin scroll and ball bearings as well as quick spool valves you can get very responsive single turbos that still deliver on the top end. Quick spool valve: A common item in the supra community is the quick spool valve with an open setup. It basically behaves like the old sequential setup, but instead of shutting down a second turbo it shuts off half of the exhaust flow to the turbo. Thus the same theory applies, more speed through the smaller opening equals quicker spool, at a certain point the valve is then opened and the top end can be maintained. Thus with items like these people who run 2jz's tend to run fairly large sized turbos, much more then any sane person really needs in our cars. Waste gate: On the flip side is that these large turbos can build a large amount of boost. The key here is that as your engine speeds up it consumes more air so to maintain this boost pressure the turbo must move more CFM, this is easy as the more air consumed the more exhaust gets put out to spin the turbine, but this relation is not linear! That means if all the exhaust is put through the hot side you will see boost levels climb until the turbine is maxed out or things start to wear and break. The waste gate serves to bleed off exhaust thus diverting some of the gas that has to flow through the turbine thus controlling boost. Turbo sizing is important here. If you pick a large turbo, but decide to run low amounts of boost a lot of exhaust gas has to be diverted through the waste gate. Even large waste gates cannot deal with excess exhaust, which means a second one may have to be added. At $300ish a pop it is not worth it. Size your turbo correctly for your application to avoid this. An incorrectly sized waste gate (as in too small) will cause boost creep as even with the waste gate fully open it cannot divert enough exhaust to slow down the turbine speed. Your main options are going to be Tial and Turbosmart. Other brands exist, but as far as I am concerned these are going to be safe reliable bets with good customer service. Be wary of knock off waste gates, these control aspects of your turbo. Best case scenario they break open and the turbo never gets up to desired pressure. Worse case scenario they break closed and all the exhaust diverts to your turbo which if you oversized it or your map can't compensate for a boost spike means at best a blown off coupler at worse destroying your turbo and engine.

I've heard that it can be buttery smooth after a rebuild, but that is just one persons opinion. I actually didn't think it shifted terribly with the long stock shifter. I switched to a beech performance short shifter just so I wasn't hitting the center console and it is crisp, but notchy. Still grinds a bit going into reverse. Greeko: thanks for the input always nice to see how others went their routes and why. Gen750: Yea I've been keeping an eye out for a 2jzgte head, I am a sucker for valve covers and FFIM which that comes with, factoring in the price of those two pieces alone almost pays for itself, combine that with the higher flow injectors and it is a pretty even score. Haven't had any luck sourcing one though. Just as a general notice, if anyone wants to further add or expand please feel free, I'll try and edit posts to reflect tidbits that may flow better. Just copy the format of BOLD for the categories and Bold and italicized for sub categories for easy recognition and navigation. Also please only add information that is easily verifiable, with part numbers, prices etc etc etc. I would like this to be a useable reference. I have a butt load of pictures and will have part numbers to add to each section as I go through the process of ordering parts. This was originally more of a reference for myself and how I decided things, but if we can crowd source for more info that could prove to be even more useful.

Thanks, still a work in progress still need to add all the photos and such. I would really like to hear feedback on how the rebuilt tranny feels. My plan is to eventually send it down to drift motion to have it rebuilt along with their shift fork upgrades and all the marlin crawler upgrades, but I have heard that it feels no different and still notchy which would be a little sad given the price.

Engine mounts: Now this is a fairly specific affair putting a Toyota 2jz into a Datsun S30, but as testament to how ubiquitous the swap is there are several swap kits. 3 off the shelf kits exist that I am familiar with. Tech2 has a complete kit including drive shaft and trans mount, Betamotorsports had a cross member that used the factory toyota mounts with a cross member welded into the Z chassis which the jig has been purchased by a member here although I am not sure he is still producing them (interesting fact, I actually thought of purchasing the jig at one point when johnc offered it for sale, but had just moved into a smaller work space and decided against it RIP john), and third is the CX racing mount which is just an adapter piece that bolts to the factory cross member and leans back towards the factory holes on the toyota motor and another mount to fit to 73+ transmission tunnels. Of course there is always an option to build one yourself and if you are handy with a welder, have access to a die grinder and a drill or better yet a plasma cutter and a drill press is a matter of a couple hours. However due to my limited space my option is to modify a pre made mount for my use. Since I personally already have a drive shaft built and the R154 transmission mounted I don't need a full kit, and as the cross member is not available and since I actually had a similar design to the CX racing kit for my 7m, I feel comfortable purchasing that one and modifying it as needed to fit up to my R154. The CX racing kit comes in two varieties just the engine mount version for ~300 and another one with the trans mount for ~400. The trans mount looks like it is designed to bolt into the 73 and later trans mount which means that the transmission is going to hang a bit lower. Given my preference for having exhaust and transmissions tucked up in the tunnel and the modification no doubt required, I am choosing to keep my mount and modify the engine mount to adapt to my location. For the CX kit it ends up mounting the engine quite a bit forward and pushes the engine quite a bit to the passenger side. On contact they said it was to avoid the steering column and make room for the intake. As of now, the steering column clears fine in my modified setup so that is not a consideration for moving the engine over. On my setup as well I plan on having the turbo quite close to the passenger shock tower so leaning it over on that side would have been doubly bad so I centered the engine. This requires a spacer for the passenger side and the driver side tabs to be moved back, down, and to the side. Transmission: This may be getting ahead of the game, but it is important to consider as it may determine other things down stream. There are several standard transmission options and then several odd transmission options. Once again thanks to the ubiquitous use of the swap we have a lot of contenders here. Your standard options are from the toyota range: A341E: The standard automatic transmission that comes with the 2jz can be acquired fairly cheaply and can be made to work with some modification. It is fairly svelte and can handle a decent amount of HP, but it will loose more power through the transmission and modifications will need to be made like an external cooler and such to keep the transmission happy. W58: The standard manual transmission that came on the Sc300 is the W58. These are smaller 5-speed transmissions and can handle some power for a small amount of time, but is generally considered not adequate for higher horsepower applications. R154: The larger R154 came standard on the 1jzgte equpped Mk3 supra, and as the 2jz shares the same bell housing pattern and bolt hole size as the 1jz, can be adapter to use the R154 with a 1jz bellhousing and 1jz flywheel. There are a few weaknesses to this transmission such as the thrust washer breaking and weaker shift forks. Not to mention this is a massive transmission, you will need to cut out the trans tunnel mount in later cars 73 and later. These are suffering from a supply shortage, although they came on the Mk3 supra, being the affordable strong transmission option for 2jz swaps means that their supply has been quickly diminishing. These are fairly hard to find for under $1000 and rebuilds can be time consuming and costly. V160 and V161: This 6-speed was jointly developed with the famous Getrag and is said to handle a ludicrous amount of power with several 1000hp cars running them reliably. At a cost of 3k+ this is probably not going to be on the list for many individuals. This came standard on the twin turbo MK4 manual cars and I believe the last year of the NA supra also was given this transmission. As mentioned given the status of the 2jz it has been used in several swaps on several makes meaning quite a few off the shelf adapters are available for use. Your odd options: T56: Use behind a lot of late model american V8's these can be adapted with a bell housing and other bits. Given that a lot of people like this transmission and is a popular swap for a lot of cars including american V8's these tend to stay high in price GM auto: several GM automatic transmission will bolt to a 2jz using an adapter housing. Popular for drag racing and such these transmissions can hold quite a bit of power and can be had either very cheaply or you can find ones from vendors that are built to handle high hp abuse for a tidy sum. CD009: The late model 350z transmission has become more popular. Collins adapter makes a fairly comprehensive swap kit to get this transmission behind the 2jz with an adapter plate. A shifter relocator will have to be used. These transmissions seem to be in that special twilight area where you can find them very affordably or not usually under $1000 at the moment. BMW ZF or Getrag: A seemingly new swap to the field at least for the US. Collins adapter is offering a kit to swap one of these in fairly pain free. Asking a friend the listed transmissions especially the ZF ones can be had for cheap and can hold quite a bit of power. These kits have been around in europe for a while as the 2jz is a popular swap to replace BMW inline 6's of the E30, E36, E46 era, now available through Collins adapter. One such transmission is available locally for a meager sum of $400 AR5: Most recognizably used in the pontiac solstice and saturn sky, these transmissions are apparently a derivative of the R154 with the kinks worked out. Supposedly these can handle just as much power, these can also be found in later model Chevy S10's in the RWD manual variety. These will need an adapter for the rear output shaft to a more traditional setup, most likely a shifter relocator, and some modifications for the bearing retainer and input shaft. For me personally I have an R154. I already have a driveshaft and a trans mount bespoke to this installed and I even have a shifter relocator kit waiting to go in. While some thoughts have crossed my mind and I do have some reservations regarding my transmission I think I will stick with it for now at least to get the car on the road. Boring, I'm sorry, but the benefit of going from toyota driveline to toyota driveline. Clutch: Crankwalk seems to be a thing with aftermarket pressure plates. Although this has been documented on automatics as well which is more of a confounding variable. It seems advice is to stay away from ACT pressure plates as the pressure required to push or pull depending on transmission seems to cause wear on the floating thrust bearings that this motor has. General advice seems to be use good oil and to go with a clutch switch delete, start the car in neutral, then clutch it into gear.

Yea I was tempted to look north for an import especially with the strong US dollar or I guess the falling Canadian dollar, but organizing transport seemed a bit tedious. I am planning on covering transmission and turbo options in a later post. I've done quite a bit of thinking and searching, so somethings I may have come across may be new to some who haven't kept a pulse on the new things coming into play. I'm pretty sure I've seen a few twin turbo setups on S30 cars, I guess it depends on how you mount the engine to some degree. Will hopefully cover that in some good detail in a little while as well.