seattlejester

That makes sense, so just compress it a bit, get it in the hole, then use a socket to keep it flat and push it in until it hits the groove and snaps in. Sounds reasonable enough, thanks Newzed!

Hey guys, So planning on putting my diff back together and realized that one of the clips came out with my diff input. I've been told to hammer it back in, but the problem is that the clip came out on the axle is on the side that I will be replacing. The replacement axle is the 280zx turbo axle so it doesn't have an input flange, just the axle itself which is spring loaded on one end. Is there a tool for compressing the clip to put it back inside the differential?

Seems like you have quite a bit of the parts. The GT35R seems a bit large for keeping the PSI's down at that level. You would be dumping quite a bit of exhaust out of the waste gate. Maybe consider a smaller turbo? It would spool much faster and you wouldn't have to waste as much exhaust. I have to agree the 3.9 is fairly short, I can't imagine boosting my car when it was NA running a 4.11, gears were so short that there would be no time for the boost to build.

So if I understand your explanation, you are planning on making an insert to the old frame rail and then drilling through both the frame rail and the insert and spot welding, then finishing off with a butt weld on the outside with the replacement rail slipped over the insert? That is going to look real nice. I'm a little skeptical of using por-15 in the area to be welded. I think the fumes would contaminate the welds pretty quickly.

Pretty sure it is a 17, the stretched tire makes it a little hard to tell, but a 15 looks good, a 16 looks right, and a 17 looks a tad too big on a stock body. That looks a tad too big.

Very interested to see what you end up with for the rear end to hold that much torque!

Huh, very interesting, I also learned something new. I figured with the 15/16 master and the disc brake I didn't have any check valves. Dreco, let us know how it feels.

Ah, interesting. Is the plan to drag race or do short sprint events? Or just for cruising around town with the ability to smoke the tires at will? Or I suppose with your quick charge, it should be a matter of having an outlet at the destination.

There are a couple 2jz swaps, so I find it likely that a 7m will fit. The only part that may be problematic is the cross over intake manifold which may need to be converted to a FFIM and the coil packs which may need to be moved or switched to IS300 coil packs. The only other part that may be difficult is the banjo fitting on the back of the head. Gauges are dependent on how much you change. Water temp and oil could be easily retained if you just adapt the factory ones, RPM should read the same depending on your pickup (I think you could even run the engine with the stock Z31 ecu with maybe a flash, plenty of L28ET guys run the ecu or I might be thinking Z32, still a similar setup). Speedo may need a conversion box.

Very cool, there is a local guy doing something similar in a zx, but the motor is nowhere near that big. Keep us posted! Would love to see what kind of mileage you get with this.

Maybe try alumaweld rods? I know a couple guys who would do that kind of work just to fire up their TIG machines, it just depends on finding someone local who is looking for practice.

Ah, well that is a bit of a bummer that the exhaust still has to run near the steering column. Keeping Vtec as an option trumps that inconvenience though. Keep it up sir

If you are going for stockish as in seats and such, I would grab some replacement floors if they are bad. If you have a couple holes to patch, 18 gauge is thicker than stock and would handle fine. If you are really concerned you can even go for 16 gauge, although that makes it much hard to fabricate. I knew I was going to drop my seats down to make more room. My 20 gauge floors flex. When I first noticed I asked my friend to sit in the seat and bounce up and down while I sat under the car. Noticed some deflection, the seat is mounted on 3/16 thick steel welded to a tubular frame rail so not worried, but if I had to do it again I would go with 18 gauge off the bat, or at least roll a couple beads into the 20 at the bare minimum.

Huh, I failed to notice till now, but did you rotate which side the intake mounts? I swear on my K20A3 it mounts on what would be the driver side.

Car will run fine with the 240z needles the SM needle is not the solution. It will bring up the idle value and lower the high end for the AFR which is generally better, but it will not solve your problems as you state.

Option 3 and 4 are out of the question, the company said that it would be too thin to have a usable spline machined onto it. That means I am more or less relegated to using the axle as is or getting a full custom axle, about 330 or so just for the one. JohnC's bench racing article states that at a six inch ride height the axles have a 7.5* angle and is 1/8th from bottoming out. I am curious if that is the shortest they will ever be or if they can get even shorter. I don't quite recall if at that ride height the arms are pointed up or down. However it is a point. JohnC's article also said at this height the passenger axle is 7/8 from bottoming out. While it is piss poor to make this assumption, given that my setup will make it very difficult to measure, I am going to say that the passenger side will have a minimum distance of the driver side + 6/8 of an inch. I found an old thread and asked a forum member if he recalled the values of having run the axle thorough the suspension travel without the spring and replied with a measurement that it is about a 1/4 to 3/8 from bottoming out when just running through the travel on the driver side without the spring with an R200 differential. Thus the lowest measurement for the minimum passenger axle length is found via... 12 3/16 + (1/8) + (1.442 * 2) + (6/8) = 16.009 The highest measurement for the minimum passenger axle length is... 12 3/16 + (3/8) + (1.442 * 2) + (6/8) = 16.1965 The math in the above post was done with 16 1/8 inch axles which is 16.125 inches. Redoing the math with the shortest possible minimum length and the longest possible minimum length brings us to a minimum range of the axle in total having to be from 13.66 inches - 13.84 inches. I will have to reassemble the axle and get a real accurate measurement, but that should mean that the axle I have as is would have a very tight but very real margin from bottoming out. I can also lengthen the arms a bit to make additional room.

Regarding the alternator: What did you upgrade...that is almost offensively vague, that pretty much just says you touched the alternator, your definition of upgrade could also be very different. Is it a one wire race alternator? Is it the common Zx alternator with 60amps and the voltage regulator delete, is it the high output alternator that requires a pulley change? Might as well go to a doctor and say, "I hurt." Not too revealing. Regarding back fire through carbs: Check timing order, remember the cam can be 180 out, engine rotates twice for each cam rotation. Take the valve cover off or look through the oil filler cap and see if the lobes on the cam is pointing up, check the timing chain is on the right link, check that the motor is at TDC and check that the distributor is pointing at the right cylinder. This should be basic stuff when swapping heads and ignition systems. After that is done, confirm spark by removing spark plug, placing it on valve cover and confirming actual visible spark if you don't have a spark plug firing indicator. You can fire though the carb if your timing is off, or if it is really lean and detonating before the intake valves are closed. Lean can be caused by too much air or not enough fuel. Too much air can be caused from worn throttle valves, leaking gasket (or if it has blown through the carbs, then very potentially a blown out gasket). Not enough fuel can be plugged fuel filter, gummed up lines, rust gas tank, weak pump etc. Also please make an effort to follow forum rules. Proper grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, or at least an effort will make posts much more pleasant to read and easier for someone to look up posts using key words.

True a bent/bound control arm or a bound sway bar could be holding the car up in place, preventing it from settling. A picture of the spring would be nice, if it shows minimal distance between the coils then the spring could be very wrong.

Ah, then it seems like you might be golden. My thought is that just make sure to do all the really crummy jobs while the driveline is out, clutch, lock-tite on the flywheel bolts and pressure plate bolts, RMS if leaking, oil pan gasket, making sure the fill and drain plugs on the transmission can be removed, etc etc. No worries, I didn't mean to downplay how much you will be wrenching, I just didn't follow the question as to what you were looking for. There is a compression calculator online, although I'm not sure if it has the shimming in place. http://atlanticz.ca/zclub/techtips/calcs/engine%20builder/index.html You would have to find out how much shaving the 0.80 affects the volume to get the exact number, other then that you could go based off of that guys numbers with your head gasket to figure it out or do backwards math to find the chamber volume to find out the compression on yours. Installing a cam is pretty easy on these cars. If I remember there was something about never removing the cam towers in one of the books because of line honing or something of that nature and potential cam binding, but they are numbered, and they go back in pretty easily with dowels to boot. Obviously yours were removed at some point and hopefully individually checked for height and trueness prior to shimming so if you wanted removal via cam towers is an option. I remember I even had my towers mis-ordered and it went back in pretty easily, I slid it out the front the first time when I was messing around with a couple stock cams, but removed the towers and just popped it off the more times I did it as removing the radiator each time was quite a chore (the towers are numbered via square blocks on the side denoting position). Advice would be to make sure the radiator is removed and the hood is off, then insert the timing gear chain holder thingy (a piece of wood or plastic to keep the tensioner under tension and prevent the chain from falling into the timing cover, pull off the cam gear after bringing everything to TDC with the cam facing up and the distributor at the number one position (make very careful note of this, it is not unheard of that a lazy builder will just alter the plug order after installing the distributor incorrectly, so just take note of where the rotor is pointing prior to removal), and then slide the cam out the front. To remove the cam gear you may need a very big wrench to hold the cam on a designated slot/square pegs or a big screw driver to jam the cam from moving. I would circulate it a bit prior to any removal so that the cam is lubricated and wants to come out nicely. If it is just a regrind the cam should definitely fit back in without problem. Another point of advice would be to make sure for the fuel that you have a high volume low pressure pump. Don't regulate the FI pump down to the 2-4 psi for the webber you will make it very unhappy. Also I would just go for some good hose if you are redoing the fuel system, that was one of my bigger regrets, I spent a lot of time and effort installing very small hose very securely, only to find that when I stepped up to FI all the lines had to be replaced. Regarding the webber carbs, I think more or less there are two camps, one is to have a tuner that can mess with it for you and sync it for you, stock all the parts and adjust it for you when the weather changes, and the other is to become really intimately knowledgeable about all the jets, valves, etc and order the full tuning kit so you can adjust it as the weather changes or if you change elevation etc. Other then that a synchrometer will help to set them so they are all breathing in the correct amount, and an AFR gauge with an O2 sensor will let you know how good the tune is. A good tachometer will help you

That was my concern, unless they factored in the height of the stock flange and adapter plate a lot of people run. Would be worth asking.

My apologies, Z car depot https://zcardepot.com/driveline/rear-axle/axle-stub-companion-flange-chromoly-930-cv-racing.html?search=axle

Sounds like a typical hop up on the L engine. http://datsunzgarage.com/p90/ The rest seems like a pretty good rebuild. I would fill it up with oil and crank it now to see if it builds some oil pressure and also see if it leaks, doing a rear main seal or worse the crank seal strips after it is in the car is going to be a real real bummer. I would also be tempted to take the oil pan off to check for excess silicone or debris. Has it been run before? He mentions the start up lube, has it been started and flushed? So what is the main question here? Which cam to run? How to install the triple webber? Delta cams I think is in Tacoma, when I had my head rebuilt, the builder recommended I hop over to delta and have them grind the cam if I was going for more high end, that would to me suggest they have quite a bit of experience with our cams if they could do it on the spot. Triple webber install should be as easy as pulling off the intake manifold and installing the adapter manifold, the carbs, and the linkages (make sure the stock datsun linkage is in good working order, they have a tendency to bind with age and there are well documented checks and fixes). The question will be setting up the carbs to run correctly. You could probably find some base values and order a set of jets and what not, and installing an O2 sensor would really help dial it in. I have a synchrometer that should work when it comes to that point as well, but I know that Fairlady Z motorsports has experience setting up carbs on the Z cars, but I haven't heard any news from them in a while and I'm not sure if they are still around.

I would make sure the springs are in the hat completely, that might require jacking up the car and manually setting the spring in the hat. I was going to say a 225/45/15 is quite a bit smaller then stock. It is a one inch difference between a 225/50/15 and a 225/50/15 is about a 0.4 inch difference from the stock wheel. I vote for making sure the springs are sitting in the hats completely and roll it around a tad.

I mean if money is a problem I would say go for the old school tried and true method. R200, 280zx turbo adapters, 280zx turbo axles, 280z stub axles, new bearings and call it a day. Should be less then 1200ish. I don't think anyone makes a new billet companion flange for the stock 4 bolt pattern, the most stout option would be to go with the white head porsche companion, but that would mean finding out if that changes the length of the axle. They are also quite a bit of money. Just in case you missed it, if you swap out the stub axles that means new lock nuts, new grease seals, new inner and outer bearings. That's about 150-250$ depending on the quality you go with.

Whitehead makes a one piece companion flange to adapt to the Porsche CV You were questioning the strength of the R180 and moved onto the R200 maybe even thinking R230, stepping back down to the R180 is probably not a good idea. The STI diff is I think 4 pinion, so it is stronger then the 2 pinion R180 that comes stock, but the subaru guys stick with the R180 because that is as big as subaru ever went. I've heard some interesting rumors that some of the guys even move onto R200 for the drag cars from our cars or early zx's. If one post is enough to convince you that the wolf creek axles aren't worth it, then I would point you towards the two posts in the drive train section of people snapping the input shafts. Granted it isn't the same and probably not the same material, but just putting it out there. I looked into it since I was in the same boat, I had a CLSD R180 from an STI and decided to sell it as it probably wouldn't last for the activities I wanted to do and my power levels. With all that said, there are people out there running this setup behind some pretty powerful cars.