s3079893

Hi mate, I'm doing a similar swap to you on a 83 zx. Propably my biggest tip to you is to keep a keen eye on everything to do with the oil system. If you mount the engine close to the firewalll the oil pump and sump get will get in the way of the cross member and the oil filter will also require relocation. other than that the swap shouldn't be to hard. Keep up the good work Cheers

I know one or two people are want to know whats the situation with the oil filter and oil pump clearance. The oil filter will have to be relocated, to the best of my knowledge (for the mounts how i have them now) there are suitable relocation kits on the market, thay all require too much room. that means i have to make my own one. The oil pump has just enough space to clear the crossmember but as i already said the power steering lines have to be moved (this could be different if you have a left hand drive car). Also i will have to weld up a totally custom sump. In my opinion these problems can averted by positioning the engine more fore, of course your steering response would suffer abit as a result, but it would make life easy and to some extent worth living.

Ahhhhhhh, thats looks totally different. Im geussing that this is probably common for all left hand drive zx's but am not sure. For your info too my zx is 1983 (dont know if this is relevent). From the pics it seems a swap for your car would be easier, i have to relocate a bunch of power steering pipes and modify the sump etc... btw i like your signiture pic :>

for some reason only sme of the pictures made it up. I'll post the rest tomorrow

Holy crap thats tight, you must be extremely brave, i steered clear of this swap for the very reason of clearance troubles. Top work though, that car is going to be one of a kind.

Hi alll, i have been spending time on the z again recently as I just went on mid year break. Here are some pics of what i have done so far. I no the pics of the mounts are long overdue as I promised some guys them ages ago. heres the link http://photobucket.com/albums/d34/s3079893/?sc=1 the photos are uploading now so maby give it an hour or so. Cheers

From my 'limited' experiance with the SBF. I found that if you are planning on making 'highish' power (350-400hp (flywhhel) ) it's ALOT cheaper to go carby. I bought an EFI windsor and im converting it to a carby strait lpg/propane setup because of this.

Thats an extremely good point maxtor, that to be honest i didn't look into before doing my conversion and probably should have, i geuss i dont have any short terms plan to sell my car though. Please maxtor if you do decide to build a corbra, keep as informed with your progress on this site, because i know my self for one would love to see that sort of thing come together. wingnutthehutt, please dont try to belittle me, ive been studing dynamics and mechanics for the past three years at uni. Power to weight ratio for the said car would be excelent btw. Sure you could achieve a similiar power to weight with a smaller engine. however the low down torque of an engine as large as a 427, would give throttle pick up second to none, it would be an amazing car to drive. I'm sorry if this post came on alittle strong, im not trying to put my point across agressively, i'm just trying to be constructive here

Once again the point i was making is that just because the car is light doesn't mean it can't have a heavy and powerful engine. Yes the z and gt40 are obviously very different cars i know. The points I were making were purley 'what if' and not nessaraly direct advise for maxtor. If you were however going the go to the effort of cutting out the sides of the enginebay to make the engine fit you probably would consider cutting the fire wall back a bit as well. This would give you a good mass distribution and the car could corner well. This car would be MID ENGINE yes? The list of cars which have successfully used heavy powerful engines with a (front) mid engine configuration is also large (perhaps i should have measinged one of these cars rather than the gt40 to begin with) Maxtor if your looking to make money, there are probably better investments to be made than modifing cars.

Yeah Scottie this is true, i believe though if you gut the firewall a little bit and sit the engine as far back as possible you could acheive a mass distribution similar to that of the gt40. How much does the big block weigh (with the aluminium bits) anyway?

Typical South Australian comment by the way ;>

the point i was making about was a huge engine in a 1000kg car can work (as seen with the gt40). I wasn't trying to say that a 1000kg was fantastic although it is fairly light.

didn't the mark 4 gt40 run a 427? Sure the book im reading this out of quotes that it had 510bhp and only 347 Nm @ 5000rpm. running quick calculation, tourque at this rpm would give about 181kw which is hardly 510hp. Anyway the point im making is that this car weighed only 1000kg and was an awsome track car. I say forget building a drag car, rather build track car, way more fun. If you have to gut the wheel wells to fit the engine in, you might as well gut the firewall back a bit so you can mount the engine further back and achieve a better weight distribution on the rear. You could also run a lower ratio gearbox to reduce the amount of tourque through the rest of the driveline, then i reackon you could easily get away using just the r200 diff and IRS. The car wouldn't be as much of a pig, but the fact that the gears are so long would be really cool. Lets face it you probably wouldnt even loose any acceleration through 1st and 2nd since you are totally traction and not power limited anyway.

I hope you recover quickley, btw u r quite the artist

sounds like you have some awesome cars lying around. my email is s3079893@student.rmit.edu.au . btw a well designed rollcage will probably stiffen the chassis up the best, and does not require an engineering certificate as long as you keep within the requiements they put out.

Hey mate Currently ive got the engine mounted and tranny mounted but i still have to build the motor. Im planning on going with afr heads and im aiming at 400bhp. im also useing a ba xr8 5speed. It will be street legal. I havent given much thought yet about what im going to do with the suspension or brakes yet. I have a 5week holiday coming up and hopefully i can get alot of work done over this winter break. btw: your car looks awesome have you got more pics? -how many zeds do you have, whats the set up like on your rb30 zed? -Have you had any problems running the lpg with a manual box (backfireing etc)? Cheers

just joking :> thats really cool! have you got pics?

Get lost f@ggot, go get a real car like a z

that the coolest car i have ever seen in my life. who built it?

Oh and the release bearing and cylinder are already in the gearbox which makes it easy. The starter motor requires some attension to get it to fit aswell. 1 more thing my gearbox is off an aussie ford falcon BA XR8 and i dont know if it is the same as the mustangs one. Probably email tremec to find this out.

Hi I have a 5.0L with TR3650. The gear stick pokes out about 150mm further back than stock 280zx. tremec quotes the torque rating at 390 ftlb, the engine bolts prettymuch straight to the gearbox, and the centerlines on the input shaft and crank are perfect. Although the input splines on the tr3650 and t5 are the same diameter and have the same amount of teeth they are not the same, so you need to go to a clutch guy to hook u up with a clutch disc from a mustang and a clutch housing from a 5.0L

Sorry to change the subject but i've just bought a nismo r200 lsd centre and it is currently on its way to me from japan. How do you guys find them? any comments on the performance of the diff?

u have a keen eye kenny good pick on the tail light. the hubs are very rusty, surpringly the rest of the rear suspension assembly looks pretty good (if the car rolled u would have to make sure that it is straight). How much does all this **** cost?

yeah thats true

sweet thx mate. because i'm using a tr3650 gearbox out of a ford falcon xr8 (i think it's also in the new mustang 5spd). I need a xr8 clutch disc with a 5.0L clutch housing (possibly king cobra). I no that this is a bit queer but aparently the input splines between the t5 and tr3650 (although have the same diameter and amount of splines) aren't the same.