Daemione

cool . . . not quite what I imagined, but you've got the later style bumpers. 79-80 non-integrated style might be easier to trim? Hard to tell. What front lip is that? Nah, I don't agree. Just looks different than the bulbous stock bumpers, and that's all we're used to without totally covering them up with other kits.

Sure do! I buy a car because I want to drive it every day, and not suffer driving something else while I wish I was driving it. If I ever find the reasonably priced, non-molested, manual transmission equipped '88-91 325ix I've been wanting forever, I'll use that instead.

Thanks for the update - I've been keeping an eye on this thread, as I'll be due for a rotor & pad replacement in the near future. Fitting under a set of 16's is great, although I've been using my stock 14's as winter wheels. :/

Thanks, I'll take another look at it. Is it spring loaded? Got the horn to work a few times today, but it's still not consistent.

Every time I pull my steering wheel (been fixing/refinishing my dashboard), my horn stops working after I reinstall it, but eventually starts working again after a few months. I can't find anything specific on it in the service manual. However it looks like there's a contact that glides around the hub surface. As far as I can tell it's still making contact, but horn function is intermittent at best. Is there a trick to getting to work again right away? I haven't had much luck, and I need it to pass an inspection in the near future . . . Thanks!

I'd love to see some decent pictures of an installed Xenon urethane air dam . . . It's up on eBay all the time, MSA has it here. Or the one with brake ducts here - I'm pretty sure they're the Xenon ones. But the pictures on MSA's site don't help much, and neither do the few others I can find online. They're all either at a crappy angle, poor lighting, or totally unpainted & the hood up at the same time.

meh, double post. No way to delete a post on this forum?

Mine's a '79 - I haven't taken them apart before, so I don't know how much they really compress. But any amount of push in would take some cutting to make the covers fit right. Took a couple pictures, and painted in a couple rough lines for what would need to be trimmed/chopped. I've looked at a lot of pictures of shaved rear ends, google image search brings up a lot of results. Using the terms "shaved" and "ass" brings up quite a few more. But I don't think I like it on a 280zx - and it's a lot more work than I want to put into it. Frankly, I've got bigger fish to fry, so I'm looking for something relatively quick to do as it's getting ready for bodywork & paint by the end of the summer. The bumper supports are all rusty, so they need to come off anyway to be sandblasted & painted, and I want to use some back-to-black on the covers, they're very faded.

Um, did you read my post? That's exactly what I want to do. But if I compress the shocks all the way, I'm pretty sure the covers are going to need some significant trimming to fit right. Just wanted to check in & see if anyone's done it before on a ZX.

I dunno, it'd take more than half a foot off the length of the vehicle, which I'd consider dramatic. The stock bumpers sticking out so far is a huge eyesore, although I guess they're handy for resting bags of groceries. I'm trying to remember the last time I hit anything (or was hit by someone) at less than 5 mph. At least half a million miles of driving, it's never happened. And I'm pretty sure that at 33 years old, the original bumper shocks are totally seized anyways.

I've looked around quite a bit, and haven't found anyone who's really tried this on an s130. Basically, I like the styling of the s30 a lot more than the s130. I like everything else about the s130 more than the s30 . . . especially the price and availability of non-molested rust free examples. Styling wise, a big problem (in my mind) the ZX has lies in the bumpers. Has anyone taken the stock bumper dampers, compressed them (like you'd need to do for some bodykits), and just remounted the stock bumpers & covers? It'd take some careful fab work with a cut-off wheel to trim off the rubber not needed anymore, but other than that it doesn't look like it'd be that involved. And potentially the chance to make a dramatic difference in the overall proportions of the car. Thoughts?

Great, thanks for the input. Have any of you put the carpet back in without it? How badly does it affect fitment by not having it in there?

So I've recently pulled most of the interior out of my '79 2-seater. The plan is to track down some water leakage, add sound deadening & insulation, replace all the carpet, and refurb/replace the all the interior panels. In poking around, it looks like the entire metal box/cage area behind the seats will unscrew & come right out. I'm talking about the frame that the cubbies are mounted into, and that the stock speakers screw into. Anyone have any experience in doing this - I want to make sure I'm not impacting something important by removing the whole thing. I'm thinking I could either carpet over where it used to be & enjoy the little bit of extra interior volume & marginal weight reduction, or fab up a simplified version of it that would hold a small amp & subwoofer. I guess my main concern (without having pulled it yet) is what it's role is on body stiffness - or if it's possibly some sort of safety buffer between occupants & the fuel tank.

Hi! I'm looking to replace the under-dash door chime on my s130. The one I've got now is goes bonkers every time I make a right hand turn. While amusing at first, the novelty is wearing off.

Sort of an old thread - but I'll chime in & support the Cipher seats. I got a set of the CPA1019's. They're very nice quality, and appear to be comfortable & supportive in all the right places. What I would NOT recommend are their brackets. They outsource them to a company called Wedge Engineering, and the ones I got were terribly designed (less than 3 threads holding the seat onto the bracket), and badly fitting. e.g. on the passenger seat there was 4+ inches of extra room on the inside, but I couldn't close the door because the bolster stuck out so much on the outside. I'm still fudging through designing some brackets of my own, but it's slow going with the limited amount of spare time I have.

Awesome - thanks for all the data points . . . interesting stuff. Maybe it's just me, but I get the sense that a lot of info on this board has a "been there, done that" attitude, and information like this is becoming more and more difficult to find. e.g. every search I do simply brings up 100 threads telling me to search. Not to mention the 15 second "flood control" time out that makes finding specifics EXTREMELY tedious. I'd love to see some ballpark prices on a Rebello setup. I'm still at least a year away from this kind of work on my car, so nowhere near the point where I'm going to waste their time by calling them up. But I'm curious to know what to expect from a comprehensive build-up outfit like that.

Maybe I'm missing something - but isn't BMEP just another way of calculating what we're already talking about? BMEP = 150.8 x TORQUE / DISPLACEMENT Now, this is obviously a tangent . . . but definitely relevant to the overall engine approach for the best performance. Intake: Most of this discussion has used carbs as an example, but I, for one, am not excited about the idea of swapping carbs onto my fuel injected car (antiquated as the EFI system may be). I've read a lot on how the stock EFI manifold is the bottleneck in the system, but haven't found much on the most cost effective solution to the problem. Porting the stock manifold is of limited efficacy, and there's the lonewolf manifold, which gets pretty mixed reviews - and as far as I can tell isn't ideal for a NA application. Seems to me that there's a void in the market - a piece that supports some headwork and a bigger cam, but avoids the cost & pitfalls of designing your own, or the complexity & tuning requirements of ITBs. Bonus points if it makes an upgrade to Megasquirt mechanically simpler (throttle body & cable included?). Anything I'm missing that's out there?

Again - how long is your ruler? Manufacturer's spec? Engine dyno? At the crank? Flywheel? Just trying to compare apples to apples. And obtuse? If anything, hp is the obtuse/abstract measurement. For a street car, if we're not going past 7k rpms, stock gearing options are really the only option. And unless we're planning on (much) higher redlines and major changes in gearing, a big hp number is useless. After all, if we move a torque peak up from 3k to 5k rpms, we'll probably have a lot more hp . . . but will it be faster? Nope. The general argument has evolved (devolved?) into whether we can really expect to see massive gains in torque efficiency. The way I see it, HP is just a number - one that's value is dependent on several variables. If we're not going to be changing those variables to take advantage, then what's the point of paying attention to the figure? :shrug:

I agree, definitely more common to have an underrated engine. But even from a company that rigorously adheres to what their engines actually produce, they're still quoting flywheel horsepower, under more or less ideal circumstances. So not comparable to the #'s in question - torque at the wheels. I'm only a casual F1 enthusiast . . . but my understanding is that the "restrictions" placed on their engine design only serve to make it a better comparison for a street engine. e.g. they're limited to a certain engine layout, number of valves, maximum bore size, maximum rpm, etc. Exact numbers for how much those engines produce are understandably difficult (impossible) to find, but every source I find right away lists 20X ft/lbs. of torque as about what they're capable of . . . translating to no more than 87 tq/l. Flywheel? I'm not sure. Maybe the rev-happy oversquare configuration they favor sacrifices a ton of torque, but in looking at torque numbers from hugely oversquare bike engines, I'd be surprised if that were the case.

It must be a blast to drive . . . and a very nice tq/l figure. But I'm guessing that a 12.5:1 compression race fuel engine is outside the boundaries of what the OP is looking at in his calculations. So I'm not sure it proves an exception to the streetable ~65 tq/l idea. But maybe 70 is a more realistic goal for a daily driver? :shrug: So hard to compare when all dynos are different. I'm the first to admit, I don't have any hands on experience building up an L6 - but I'm frankly very surprised at the claims of amazing torque efficiency people are managing to get. Figures that exceed the most advanced engines in the world right now, from a 40 year old engine design. I think some skepticism is both understandable and healthy.

I've enjoyed reading this thread . . . and I honestly believe that all the "conflict" here has a very easy explanation: differences in torque estimates and measurements. I see people quoting manufacturer's engine specs (some of which are known to be generous), others quoting torque on an engine dyno, and others torque @ the wheels using who knows what dyno method. I think the small percentage of difference being fussed about is EASILY explained by the variance in dyno types & methodology. Bottom line, I agree with the OP's usage of a general maximum of torque per liter. For claims of 80+ ft/lbs of torque per liter, I feel it should be pointed out that F1 engines are only slightly more efficient than that.

I kinda like it . . . looks like a custom race job, but the fit is obviously factory. Just grind down the sharp edges & paint it a matte color so there's no glare. My S130 dash is out of the car right now to get the cracks fixed - and now you've got me thinking.

I've been driving mine all winter, I'm up in NH. It's got snow tires, but they're not good ones. It's not a hard car to drive in the snow, for a lot of the same reasons it's not a hard car to drive in the dry. Predictable handling, responsive, communicative, etc. Once traction issues are handled with the right tires, the only thing holding it back are problems inherent with the body style. e.g. low clearance means you snowplow, the sugarscoop headlights collect snow & make any night blizzard driving a non-option, and the rear wiper isn't burly enough to clear much snow. And just bear in mind the obvious lack of ABS and the open diff rwd. For tires, go as skinny as possible. Mine are far too wide @ 205mm. A light car like a Z needs 175's (or skinnier, if you can find them) to cut through the junk. fwiw, I don't recommend sandbags in the rear unless it understeers HEAVILY because of a severe frontward weight bias (i.e. an old 2wd pickup or something). Adding weight in the back might give you a little more traction off the line, but is going to be dangerous at every corner since it'll oversteer & not want to recover because of the increased pendulum effect. I just looked up & saw that you're looking at an '81 turbo . . . that's gonna be tougher. More power to try and put down, and the automatic tranny isn't going to be of much help.

Stayed/staying with the Datsun L6 - like others have said, because it's what I've got. And if I can get a reliable 200whp from an moderately priced build, and spread that out over a year or two while still daily driving the car, that's a BIG win for me. I wish I had the opportunity & inclination (ability?) to use an extra couple hundred whp, but the fact is, I don't.

Mine was sticking earlier in the winter as well. Some WD-40 & a hammer to knock it back & forth a few times did the trick for me, but if it doesn't work you'll just have to remove the e-brake to disassemble & clean/lube it more thoroughly.