seattlejester

Why thank you. I think I am planning on painting the front chin white at some point. I really am enjoying the white on chrome so I think I will leave that as is. Yea, I feel like these cars hide a lot more then they let on. Good luck sir. I've ordered a 2.75 to 3 inch adapter to put a filter onto my turbo, as well as a new fuse/relay box. During the breakdown, the power to the car was uninterrupted, but the ECU and all the assorted bits would cut out and experience sync loss. I think the cheap relays are to blame so I have ordered a prebuilt unit. Wiring should only take a couple hours, and the exhaust shop I have used in the past and am happy with is less then 2 blocks from my storage unit, so should have an exhaust soon after.

Car is safely back home, only broke down 3 times on the way back! I'm thinking of tossing out my relay/fuse box and going with one of these units http://www.leashelectronics.com/4-Relay-Power-Board-4R2012.htm I had shadow dash running, but it cutout and stayed off on the later half of the trip. I'm thinking of moving over to MSdroid, it seems a lot happier running and has a hard wire option. Will have to see how the whole tablet idea pans out. Family is moving, so I can not order any parts without confirmed shipping dates. Quite a challenge trying not to order things. Need an exhaust system, replace the driver side window/door, and I think I am going to ditch the fender mirrors and go with a traditional setup. Trying to merge back onto the freeway trying to see oncoming cars through that 2 inch mirror from 4 feet back was a challenge to say the least. I must say, that surge of power in 5th gear is pretty ridiculous. Just rolling onto the throttle in top gear and feeling speed build up and the boost gauge climb, just something really awesome about that feeling. Once those few things are fixed, focus will turn to suspension and rear driveline components. Then hopefully I will feel comfortable enough to really throw some miles on this car.

Surprisingly that's not as bad as I thought it would be, but that amount is definitely enough to cause problems in a small fuel line/filter. Hopefully that does it for you. Only option after this is the fuel lines and the pickup. Good luck!

That looks really nice and simple. May I ask how you plan to keep the mount from rotating?

I always have thoughts I'm not particularly knowledgeable per say, I have installed the standard upgrade though, and I did plug numbers in a spread sheet to generate the brake bias with help from people on the forum though. Honestly I think you are in the right mindset, you have upgraded the power so looking for better performing brakes is not a bad idea, but the combination of a variety of parts introduces some additional problems, so bringing up the stock setup is not a bad solution to maintaining stock balance while increasing performance. I doubt you will be overusing the stock units any times soon. That isn't a challenge, just an observation. Unless you live on a large switch back and like to push it hard in corner entry etc, you probably won't encounter too many problems with a refreshed stock setup. So I see no problem with holding onto the stock setup for now. Replacing any cracked or dry rotted lines, replacing any kinked or rusting hard lines, putting in higher temp fluid, new pads, rotors, and a complete bleed should bring the system up to spec and by complete I mean using like a whole bottle. Doing the following will be great for when you can afford to do an upgrade as all the lines will be fresh. Honestly the slots and holes in the rotor won't gain you a lot of benefit, if anything it will eat through your pads a bit faster. I've auto crossed and locked up my wheels with good tires way before the pads started loosing bite. I've lost pedal feel going down a switch back, but that wasn't a glazing pad, that was boiling the brake fluid. That was also the consensus of some regulars who visit the track regularly, that drilled and slotted was overkill unless you really needed that extra bit of bite, most of them were running blank brembo's. Their thoughts was that the money was better spent on saving up for the next set of rotors or on a thurough bleed with high quality fluid. If it is for looks, nothing wrong with that at all. Regarding a core charge, you can always pop into a junkyard to get the cores. I think it was 10$ or so for each caliper and I returned them for 60$ in core credit or something of that nature. Took maybe 5 minutes since the wheels were gone, two bolts for the caliper and a wrench to get the hardline off and voila, instant core. I would definitely check the box for when the time comes, I have had the 4runner brakes delivered when I ordered 4x4 brakes and I've heard vice versa. Unless MSA has their rotors custom milled from blanks, the source should be out there. They are more of a vendor then a producer, so either someone is making it and MSA is repackaging and selling. Or someone is modifying blanks and they are repackaging and selling. Either way you should be able to find the source.

Hmm are you clogging the filter? Fuel cell or original tank? Genuine curiosity. I have a bosch 044 unit as well, would hate to hear that they are unreliable. Mine's running a 20 amp fuse and I think 14 gauge wiring. It's never been on for more than a few minutes though. Only time it gets loud is on initial pickup, once it's pushing fuel it seems happy.

Yea the new ethanols can really play havoc with any treatment system. That's why I am a bigger fan of acid treating and keeping the tank full, granted I moved to a fuel cell. It can be quite a bit of work though and you get a whole new slew of problems switching ton one, so my advice would be to stay away unless it is needed. As long as the wires are sealed and you don't plug or unplug it it should be fine. Static is probably a bigger factor then some fan arcing all of a sudden. Just be mindful and you will be fine. Make sure and post pics, I'm curious what will come out of your tank.

Yes correct R200 from late 200sx turbo is an open 4.11, I have one myself as well. Edit: wrong thread...my bad

Sounds like a good plan, honestly I was thinking like a couple of used T shirts/cloth just to catch the sediment. The most practical would be to make sure you have less then 5 gallons in the tank, drain into a 5 gallon jug, pour that jug into a new jug via a filtered funnel (funnel/t-shirt/funnel sandwich). That should catch any major sediment without having to wait to try and flush it through a tiny filter. Just be sure to be careful, you are dealing with large volumes of gas, and it only takes a curious person walking by with a cigarette to turn the whole operation into a big fiasco.

The Z31 ECU upgrade is a way to get a more advanced ECU into the vehicle as the standard ECCS or what not is not very intelligent. Not really much you can do with it, wire it up and it does it's own thing. Nistune is a chip/mod service, offered from australia if memory serves, that basically allows you to modify parameters on the z31 ECU which makes it tunable. Regarding the driveshaft. I don't believe there are any replacement input shafts for that transmission. So you have to have an old drive shaft which you can take to a shop like Drivelines NW and they can make you a new shaft with serviceable joints from the back of the input shaft. My understanding was that the nissan T5 has a different splined output (either in spline count or diameter) then the common tremec T5's thus it makes it very difficult to connect the transmission to your differential without the factory one. You have a bit of time since you will need the exact measurement from the output to the differential flange, but the earlier you work on it the better.

You have to think a bit, how did sediment get in your tank. Unless you have been putting sand in with your fill ups, or it sat around for quite a while with the gas tank open, it unfortunately is probably rust. If you can get a magnet in their I suspect it will come out covered in bits. Rust never sleeps, so if it is in there it will continue to rust and flake off, until a hole forms. If you do plan on having it cleaned at a later date, you have a few options as a stop gap. You can empty your tank via the drain hole, then filter the gas and run it through again and again until it comes out clean. Gas evaporates quickly and the nicer gases have some detergents in it so that should help get any free floating rust bits out. Benefit is you are only running fuel, so no problem when you fill it up again. Alternatively you can drain the tank and run evapo rust/water mixture. The only problem is unless you have money to spend on a large amount, you will only be able to coat the bottom even in the diluted form. I've thrown in bolts that I considered garbage in a bucket of the stuff, and they came out clean. The only fault with this is that it did leave behind a residue, which would be very difficult to vacate without being able to shake the tank with soap etc. There are some other treatments on the market which essentially coat the inside of your tank sealing the rust bits onto the tank (think glue). This works, but some people have reported that they had black residue clog up their filters with subsequent fill ups, the worst story I read was some guy had his fuel lines clogged from the paint (not long enough dry time). Finally you can just run multiple fuel lines and filters. Once 1 fuel filter clogs up, swap to the next one with the filter, repeat until no more sediment comes through the line. Hard to paint a picture but think about it like a ringed circuit. So you have two lines coming out of the tank (split the line via a tee), then you have a side of the tee go to a valve and filter and the other side go to a bit of hose with a valve on it. Both of these lines T back to 1 line. Split and repeat. Essentially, you close the valve on a filter line when it clogs, and open one of the non-filtered lines as the filter clogs. With 3 circuits you can get 3 filters full of crud before you will have to take it apart. Alternatively you can run several filters in line and carry barbs and bits of hose in your car to pull the filter and bypass them as they get clogged. Quite a bit of work involved in this one, at which point dropping a tank and rinsing it out seems like a much easier solution. Honestly I would find a friend with a garage where you can drop the tank. Make sure you have replacement hoses if any seem cracked or you don't think they will be able to be removed without cracking. Take the tank off and throw in some small washed rocks and tumble it. I do understand that this may be difficult, not everyone has space or tools, so if that is the situation, I would run the gas through the tank a few times as described above and then install a few filters inline and keep bits of hoses and barbs to remove clogged filters. If you can get a majority of it out and keep your tank full so no rust can form (rust needs oxygen) then the sediment that comes out will be the larger bits that weren't able to fit through the drain hole disintegrating over time. That should be more then fine as far as stop gaps go.

That's good some real headway. The post filter on my car never filled up. It bothered me, too as I would expect it to. Unfortunately most solutions will require dropping the fuel tank. The cheap method is to DIY rock tumble the inside via pouring gravel into the tank with a bit of solution (can't remember exactly what it was) and then shaking the bajebus out of it. Method is readily viewable on youtube I believe. More professional method would be to tank it to a radiator/tank shop and see if they could do it for a reasonable fee. Most places can sonicate to loosen the rust, clean out, acid treat and coat the inside. If the shop is thurough and familiar with tanks they may even separate the tank to really get in there. Without cleaning out the tank you are kind of at the mercy of time. You can try manually pump some evapo rust or something in there, but any big sediments or chips are going not necessarily going to drain out of the drain hole. And it will just be a matter of time before the sediment/chips break down, moves around, and gets picked up. The only difficult part of dropping the tank is all the hose connections, the tank is just held in with a couple straps held by J-bolts. I think it would be a very good piece of mind to clean it out off the car even if not very much comes out.

Unsolicited advice number two, find a drive shaft quick, or at least the input shaft (forward half of the driveshaft) for the transmission. Very difficult to find the input shaft for the nissan T5, and I haven't seen any replacements offered when I was on the hunt for an L28et swap. ^echo'd as above, the wiring for megasquirt is very manageable. I had the motor wired in I think 3 nights after work. I bought a stock harness for my 89 motor, and I used 3 wires from it as the plugs were cracking and quite a few of the wires were oxidizing green. I can only imagine a 81-83 motor would be that much more corroded/abused. Good luck, keep the thread updated!

Alright, so that was a much longer ordeal then it really should have been. As with most things, a lot of it ended up with stupid user error. Really big thank you to those who helped in the ecu section. Some gremlins would have never come to light otherwise. So coils had been firing at the going high setting, should have been going low. Should not have been using a cheap timing light to diagnose which coils were firing, should have been using a coil tester from the start. Managed to get the car starting reliably, although with a high idle (3000rpm). Took the entire intake side off to trouble shoot, to find that there was a vacuum port on the throttle body I had missed. It had been filled with carbon, so when I blew on it I didn't feel much air in the throttle body, so I thought it was a coolant passage. Turns out it was a vacuum port to what I am guessing is the charcoal canister or something of that nature. Welded that shut and am waiting to bolt everything back together again. It was a good chance to route the vacuum lines a little better and work on the throttle body. There should be minimal problems from that aspect now. Had a pretty sizable oil leak which had left me bummed out. Turns out as with the previous engine, it was a valve cover gasket. This time with the non black colored block I easily traced it to the top of the head and found the valve cover screws to only be hand tight. A bit more torque and it seems the problem has subsided for now. Exhaust, seats, radiator, intercooler, radiator overflow, oil catch can, tune, pre-swap mods (cabin heater, cabin fan, turn signal stalk delete, sealing seals, checking body leaks, etc), and probably a few things here and there and we should be golden. Hours spent probably close to 200 hours now.

That really does suck. Hope they are decent human beings and sort this out. I'm guessing the welded spots have been heat treated so continual baking caused it to become brittle and separate? If it was caused by an impact you would expect it to be right next to the weld.

Give us an idea on how small you are thinking? Ducting and shrouds are a good idea no matter what radiator you run. Too small of a radiator could pose problems with the coolant not having enough time in the radiator to cool down before passing through. An idea of what you are looking at will help paint a nicer picture.

If it is an R180 unit, then the mustache bar should be flat, the R200 units have a little curve in them to push it backwards. You would need to source an R200 mustache bar if memory serves as the front diff mounts do not change. I think the consensus is that it makes a difference when you are going around a right hand corner and shifting weight to the left which is the short side? Or it might be the other way around. No real way to address it other then changing to different axles, lengthening LCA's, or running the R180 diff. Newzed brings up a good point. If you don't need the R200, the R180 may be preferable. It's substantially lighter and you won't run into the binding problem. This is all still guessing though. Easiest way to determine for sure would be to take a tape measure and measure the width of the cover and compare it to the r200 you have.

I'm pretty sure I'm using my R180 axles on my R200. My understanding is that there is no difference, which is why the wider R200 can cause one side to bind. Someone definitely has been under there with the bolts instead of the studs. Once the unit is removed a picture of the unit would be much more telling. It does look like an R180 from the size (more rectangular rear cover then square), but other then that it's a little hard to tell. ^blu beat me to it lol.

Yea, that was going to be the next step to actually confirm physical spark. I know it's been done a whole bunch, but just something about leaving an open spark plug bothered me so I spent 15$ on spark detectors. Yes, I believe you are correct, the wasted COP setting is more likely for MS3x where you can wire in individual cylinders, but you just run them in wasted format. Not having the latter half is probably problematic for the whole setup. Really really really really really looking forward to that aspect.

So, it all goes back to my method of checking which coils were firing. The cheap timing light. I don't know how or why, but that seems to be the source of a long goose chase. I replaced all the coils without problem, tried starting the car to no luck. Took out the spark plugs, gave them a good clean, and plugged them back in to no dice. Changed the setting from wasted COP back to wasted spark, and I was getting at least signs of life, but still the stalling etc. Checking with the timing light confirmed the same behavior as previous...except, this time the light started blinking and then just stayed on. Running test mode, the light would just stay on. I realized the 10$ light was junk and that I had yet to actually check the spark coinciding with each channel. I had bought some inline coil testers at harbor freight (easiest way to check a coil on plug by the way, very visually friendly, only problem is the pin doesn't quite fit into the COP, I imagine it is american size so it needs to be turned down a bit). Even with a poor fit, it would be the best route to ground and so at worst it would easily ark for a quick test. I had bought three to check the actual channels. So I checked A, coil 1 firing, checked B, and coil 3 was firing, and I checked coil C and coil 2 was firing. Looked up to quickly confirm that firing order should be ABC, reordered the two channels. And she started right up. The error was the bloody equivalent of the wrong plug order! Freaking level 1 mistake there. I really wanted to shoot myself... I think the error came from when I soldered in the pins for the spark output on the DB15. I do remember there was some confusion with pad B and pad C being out of order that I mentioned somewhere. I had ran both wires of the same color and labeled the ends. At some point the ends were removed and the wrong plug was plugged into channel B and the remainder must have been plugged into the open port. Most of the wires that I added were grey so I am guessing the confusion is coming from there. I had only checked continuity on the spark A output on the harness as I had assumed if they were firing at the same time, the continuity would be present in the harness. I guess my biggest mistake was trusting the timing light as reading true. It must have been picking up a stray signal and actuating the flash, I'm willing to bet my coils from my old set are probably perfectly functional. Things to note was that, the car would not spark in wasted COP mode. I'm not sure exactly why. Maybe the board recognizes the lack of channels DEF and cannot pair the ABC inputs and doesn't want to fire or something of that nature. I've lowered the amps to 20 and the coils are still firing very happily. Literally two or three cranks and she fired right up. Really caught me off guard with the 3000rpm idle though, I thought the throttle was open so I quickly grabbed the accelerator with the front of my shoe and pulled up only to find it was still running 3xxxrpm with the tps at -0.1% (tps was calibrated, so closed tight). I'm not to uncomfortable with saying the intake manifold is at fault here as I did notice a puff coming from the cold start injector block off plate when the car had backfired in the past. Engine is getting air from somewhere to idle that high, and quite a lot of it. Once I check the surfaces on tighten the hose clamps on the boost reference lines, I'll test with a bottle of brake cleaner to look for vacuum leaks and then adjust the idle plate to turn it down. Thank you very much for the assistance guys. From the beginning I had a feeling it was going to be something stupid on my end. Thanks for being patient with me and going over several settings and entertaining my ups and downs. Car is registered and insured, so hopefully I'll be able to wrap up this thread with the final settings for my given setup and a success story at the end.

So yea...I'll write up everything when I am in front of a computer instead of my phone...but yea pretty much a level 1 mistake was the cause of my problems. Current issue 3000rpm idle. Most likely cause vacuum leaks probably have to take the manifold off. Reroute lines etc.

I'm not really sure what you are thinking. My statement was that the L-series is an older design, and that it is easier to extract power from newer engines, which is to answer the OP's question of why not many people aim for higher hp with the L-series motors. Your rebuttal was to laugh and say that 2 valves/cylinder and a single OHC is not an old design because it is still used specifically in the LS motor. My statement was to reiterate that even though it is still used, the L-series motor is still an old design. Your rebuttal was to state that if it isn't broken don't fix it. Also stating that an engine based off of an old design is still capable of getting 700hp. You have completely missed my point. My point was to answer the OP's question why people don't pursue high hp L-series builds. The short answer is because it is of an older design. It takes skilled professionals and quite a bit of work to extract that much power from an older engine like the L-series motor. Where as many more individuals can install a V8 of any sort or an RB or a JZ with comparatively minimal effort using pre-existing mounting kits, bolt on a big turbo and supply extra fuel and get into a high hp range easily. To reiterate. The reason that many people don't do high hp L builds is because it is easier to extract power from a newer motor for those without the knowledge or the shop capabilities to do so. Take it however you want I suppose. 700hp for a fun weekend car with a full cage doesn't sound like a very good idea. Interior is pretty small, if you are of decent height your chance of hitting one of the bars will be pretty high. Please document the build process, would love to see the work involved. Granted I have seen a chart out there that shows the flow rating between heads. Even a well flowed P90 was below the flow rating for the head off of a KA24de motor. It's going to be an uphill battle if you decide to go L-series, still hoping you do though.

Pics really do help paint a better picture. Thanks for that. If you are overbooked, just let people know you need time. I don't think anyone can fault you for that. You haven't taken anyone's money, and you have peaked some interest in people. I think it's the long silence that gets people. Just excuse yourself out until you are ready. Parts look pretty good will be nice to see how things all come together. I do vote for a picture of the uprights on the car when you get the chance.

^ I believe that would work. If you wanted a more stock look, you could potentially melt the plastic and try and secure another stud in there. On housing with the rusted/broken stud, I drilled out both and sealed the entire surface of the housing using RTV and put it under compression for a few hours. I had grass growing in mine, so I decided fully sealed may be preferable.

That's a good point, I was running a pretty unreasonable dwell timing for the spark based off of internet threads. I think it would indeed be best to start from the bottom and work my way up. I am finding some definitive safe dwell times for people using toyota cops and MS2. I really should have read more on the miata forums then the toyota forums it seems.