BRAAP

http://www.johnforce.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Force

:lmao: HBZ quote of week right there... :lmao:

He who cheats best... WINS!

Prox, Phlebmaster and his lovely daughter showed up tonight and she got the L-s4 long block tore down in great time! (she got to drive the John Deere tractor around a bit as well). Thanks Aaron for coming out and tell your daughter she is welcome to come wrench here any time. I’ve got an R-200 I need pulled from a Z-31 if she is interested? The rods look GREAT, L24 rods with 9m bolts! Engine was recently rebuilt, fresh bearings, ground crank, bearings all look very good, crank still looks new, the timing set even looks new, (Phleb got the timing set) Rods do have some surface rust on them, but is light. Complete set of six 9mm L24 rods, How about $100 SHIPPED! I’ll leave the bearings in the rods as well. Some pics from tonights tear down. Gotta love a girl that is not afraid to get her hands dirty and gets excited when cuts her knuckle on a long block tear doesn’t! (All pushing/pounding to remove the rods was done on the bottom of the pistons, not the rods). Aaron? Your hands are dirty?

Check your head light fuses. Your symptoms are exactly what will happen when one blows. Happened to me. Let us know if you find it. Paul

Ooops. Sorry about that, didn't mean to leave you hanging. We should have them out tonight, I'll let you know then. It'll be a closer to midnight or so Pacific time.

Tad, Doc’s post should be your starting point in figuring out what is going on. Air flow is EXACTLY where I’d start as well. Been there done that trying to improve coolant flow, capacity, time in the radiator, LOTS of different thermostats, temp ranges and styles and none of that helped at all. Air flow mods is what helped the V-8 Z car stay cool. Also, regarding the Thermostat, it seems to get a lot of attention whenever overheating comes up and most of the advice given will be centered around the thermostat. Granted, the thermostat is a common fault in some overheating situations, but when a few different thermostats have been tried and there is no change in "how" the overheating react, chances are the "cause" for the overheating is related to something else. Due to how A/C functions, when it is operating, it is pulling the heat out of the cab of the car and expelling that heat to the atmosphere just ahead of the radiator in the condenser. As such, when the A/C is running, any air that goes through the condenser first is getting preheated so by the time it gets to your radiator, what air flow you do have through the radiator doesn’t have as much "room" left for more heat, (delta "T") i.e. the air through the radiator is already hot, so it can only accept very little more heat so the radiator remains hot! That is why your over heating issue is worse with the A/C running vs not. As mentioned earlier, when the A/C compressor is running, it is loading the engine a little bit more, causing the engine to work just a little bit more, absorbing a few HP at most, but that is nothing that would make the difference between overheating or not. Remember, your cooling system and even the A/C system, in their simplest forms, are merely “heat exchange systems”. Cooling system is exchanging heat produced by the engine out to the atmosphere through the radiator. This system works pretty well in most cars, adequate for L-6 Z cars, barely adequate to not adequate for most V-8 Z cars. This inadequacy is mostly due to inadequate air flow thorough the radiator so the radiator can do its job in exchanging heat that it pulled from the engine out to the atmosphere. Chances are your radiator is up to snuff. Your water pump and its driven speed as well as the thermostat are up to snuff. When the car starts to get warm, I'd be willing to bet that that temperature of the fins near the out of the radiator into the water pump is not much cooler than the fins near inlet of the radiator, where the coolant come in from the T-stat. Blow more air across the radiator and that temp difference from inlet to outlet of the radiator should become much greater, and the engine temp will also come down, i.e. cooling system is up to snuff, inadequate air flow "across" the fins of the radiator! My first V-8 I struggled with wanting to run warm as well. Using that formula that Doc supplied, I spent several months making changes. Every change I made to improve coolant flow and soak in the radiator made NO difference! Every mod I did that improved air flow to and through the radiator, DID make a difference. Then after the wind tunnel testing results came out, that solidified my finds that the Z car is weak in the are of air flow “across” the fins of the radiator, and a super wonder fan, in itself is not the wonder cure. Here is a brief run down on what I did. Car; ’75 280-Z, non vented hood, mild SBC 350, T-5 trans. No front bumper, no air dam. Car ran consistent 12.3 @ 113 MPH, was a daily driver! JTR GM radiator, Cheapo 14” slim fan. As much under drive for the water pump as I could get with stock pulleys. I first approached coolant flow mods. Like everyone else, I thought it was flow related. 1) Tried colder Thermostats, high flow thermostats, no thermostat! No change, car wanted to run warm, different thermostats only changed how fast and when it happened. 2) Found a crank and water pump pulley that went from under drive to over drive! No change! Still wanted to run warm, warmed up at the same rate etc. . 3) Disassembled the water pump, added a backing plate to the impellor and pressed the impellor closer to the housing, i.e. less clearance between the impellor and the housing and made the impeller MUCH more efficient at moving water through the engine! NO change! Still ran warm and heated up just as quickly! Though with the rad cap off and when the thermostat was open, (car running warm), there was noticeably more/faster running coolant through the radiator. 4) Removed the water pump and tapped the coolant bypass hole in the passenger side of block just under the water pump for a pipe plug, plugged it and drilled a small hole in that plug to restrict the amount of coolant bypass (thinking it may be short cycling too much hot water). NO change, car still ran warm, warmed just as fast! 5) Removed the engine from the car, (forgot exactly whey, I think it was oil leak related and ended up replacing all the gasket on the engine). Any how, when I removed heads I used different head gaskets with slightly different cooling passage ports! No change, car still ran warm! Then I looked at the amount of coolant thinking it didn't have enough coolant and was just passing what little coolant it had through the radiator too quickly so it didn't get a chance to exchange the heat to the atmosphere! Bought larger NASCAR Style radiator, (3 gallons of coolant vs 1 gallon). Theory was to more volume of coolant in the radiator has more time to exchange its heat to the atmosphere. Car still ran just as warm, just took longer to get there, but also took longer to cool back down as well! The added volume of coolant acted as a heat ballast/heat sink! In other words, no change, car still ran just as warm, just took longer to get warm AND longer to cool back down! Played with the car sitting still at home, allowed it to warm up and get up to approx 210 degrees, then lightly misted the radiator with garden hose, temp came right down! Let it warm up again, blowing air across the radiator from a distance with an air nozzle, (don't get too close or the air blast from the nozzle will deform the rad fins). Temp came right down. Ahh haa... With that I started to make changes in air flow through the radiator. Not having any of the info from the wind tunnel, I was going at it blind, so only made few changes and they ALL helped, making noticeable difference. Sealed the radiator to the core support air tight so no air could go around the sides of the rad, but only through it! Plugged all the other holes in the core support except the big one in front of the radiator! Sealed the hood to the upper rad core support so no air could flow between the hood and the core support! All this made the biggest difference of everything tried, improved the running warm situation noticeably, almost curing completely! My license plate was in the middle of the grill, removed it, that made just a little more improvement. That is as far as I got with it. With what I know now, I would’ve ran the smallest lightest radiator, (JTR radiator), done an air dam and a flat plate from the air dam back to at least the rad core support and sealed all that air tight. Built formed sheet metal air entrance that starts at the same shape as the grill opening and transitions to the hole in the rad core support. Hope that helps, Paul

Common in OE. Crank centerline is offset to the passenger side in the BMW E36 too. JTR V-8 Z is offset to the passenger side! If you stop to think about it, it makes sense to offset to the passenger side on a few levels. 1) For a track oriented, left hand drive sports car, a slight passenger offset of the engine/trans offsets the drivers weight for more equal left to right weight distribution. 2) As mentioned, for US market left hand drive cars allows more steering-to-engine clearance. 3) Lines up truer to the diff input! The diff input is offset to the passenger side in rear wheel drive cars. Some manufactures will offset the diff case back to the driver side a smidge, but in most cases, not enough to center the diff input to the center-line of the car. In the case of the BMW E36, the diff case is centered in the car, so the input of the diff is offset to the passenger side by 1”. With how BMW designed the piloted driveshaft/Guibo trans coupling, they offset the engine and trans centerline to the passenger side by the same amount for a straight and true shot to the diff input.

Thaniel! Didn't know you were a long time member here? Belated welcome to HybridZ. Take a gander at our BMW Daily driver thread, and please share your LSx E36!... (when I started my LSx BMW M3 conversion I may have mentioned/linked your build in that thread...) http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=147547

I likey the look of the deep inset gauges. Looks good Hoov!

Are you getting spark at the spark plugs? If not, start troubleshooting why the plugs aren't sparking, i.e coil power, EFI power, etc. (just in case, firing order is 1-5-3-6-2-4). If the plugs are sparking while cranking the engine, then good chance the dizzy drive still may not be clocked correctly, (so longs the EFI is also firing the injectors. They will click audibly while starting the engine, and also verify fuel pressure at the injectors). If the front cover was removed, even with the quill shaft in the front cover, when it went back on, it still can easily move and be off a tooth. If you are getting spark at the plugs, use timing light while a helper cranks the engine to verify the spark is happening at the correct time, near TDC. You mentioned the rotor is pointing to #1 with #1 piston at TDC. Is that TDC of the firing/compression stroke or TDC of the valve overlap event? This is to easy figure out. Remove the valve cover and look at the front 2 cam lobes for the #1 cylinder. If the lobes are pointing up equal amounts, (intake and exhaust lobe both point mostly up at the same time), that is the TDC of the compression stroke and your timing should be close. If the lobes are both pointing down by the same amount, that is TDC of the valve overlap period and your dizzy is phased 180 degrees from your cam, i.e. all of your plugs are firing on the valve overlap period! Quick and dirty fix for that is swap all the plug wires to the opposite side of the dizzy. I.e. swap plug wires 1&6, swap wires 2&5, and swap wires 3&4. The more correct fix would be re-clock your quill shaft 180 degrees, either will get the ignition spark at the correct time for the cylinder. Hope that helps, Paul

Cool, but doooood? A Honduh emblem on your Z car dash screen?

This Z car forum is more of an extreme performance Z car forum, a supplement to a shop manual for those projects above and beyond what a simple Haynes manual does not cover. This forum is not really a replacement for a basic service manual, again geared mostly towards extreme performance modifications, i.e. HybridZ. Even the simple cheap Haynes manual has good wiring diagrams for the car, as a Haynes manual is good investment, especially for problems such as troubleshooting electrical gremlins. Hope that helps, Paul

WOW! Apparently we weren't clear enough or he read the wrong rules?! Yet another next day bump?! ?

'95 M3 with Modified 6.6L LS2, T56, for sale, runs and drives… http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1300029

Is this a fresh rebuild? Core plugs left out, front of the block under the timing chain guides, or plugs left out of the the top of the head if removed during rebuild would cause this. Head gasket not sealing correctly, installed improperly, or as you eluded to, the front cover not sealing correctly?...

Too bad the L-28 rods are not the same length as the L24... I have a set of 6 in an L-24 long block in the barn, that will soon be removed and available for sale. If the set is good set, I'd prefer not to separate them, but if any of them have any issues, I'd be glad to set you up with one. As for when I'll get to it, dunno? Phlebmasters daughter loves to turn wrench, (how do you think any work gets down on his car?.. ) and I promised her the next time she came out she could tear that L-24 down. Sometime maybe in the next couple weeks possibly?

Gotchya, L24 9mm! Free bump...

Which 9mm rod, L24, L28, L20-B?

Krista, Welcome to HybridZ, the extreme-performance Z car forum. For the record, ALL 280ZX's are inline or straight 6’s, NOT V-6. As I mentioned, this being an extreme Z car forum, this forum really isn’t a basic troubleshooting forum, nor a replacement for a service manual, but more of a supplement to a service manual. Even the simple inexpensive Haynes manual is a valuable diagnostic troubleshooting resource. Also, by agreeing to the rules, you are expected to abide by them. Rule #3 applies to this thread. In the the new members forum this would be Ok, but not out in the technical forum.

Block weight alone, for the LSx engines, aluminum vs iron, is in the 60-70 lb range, depending on 5.3 vs 6.0, LS1 vs LS2 vs L33, etc. Worst case is 70 lbs. That means comparing an iron block truck engine built up with the same exact external components as an aluminum block LS1/2/33, i.e. intake, exhaust, accy, oilpan, etc, you can expect a 60-70 lb weight penalty for the iron block variant, again, the only difference being the block-pistons, rods, everything else being equal!

OMG! Dude, that is just nuts! Glad you are ok.

AWESOME! doesn't even begin to describe your car! VERY nice.. I would love to drive it, just once...