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The aussies love to put in The 1ggte in them. 2.0 lt twin turbo straight six. It fits. What engine is in there now 2t/3t or 18r. If its the 18r any engine will fell like a emprovement. Keep in mind that these cars are similar in weight to the early 240z so if you want it fast you will still need 250 hp. The 4.0 lt lexas motor is starting to sell very cheep here used. I was told of them selling for $400 nzd by some of the jet boat boys the other day. I kind of changed my mind about them when i saw one crap all over the sbc jet boat i was in. Douglas

I would like to see photos as well. While we are on the subject does any one have photos on the frame strenthening done in the how to hotrod your datsun book? I dont want a cage. Just some ideas on where to weld in brakets and the like. Cheers Douglas

Thanks again, Owen I could be interested in the air set up. Shiping to New Zealand is always expensive so let me have a look into what they are worth here. Freakypainter... Practice I will get. I need to finish my race car first so I will get tonnes of practice on that. The paint quality needent be perfect on it. I also have a lot of furnature that i am building for our new house so some of that will work nicely as pratice as well. Its kind of looking like I should regulate the old compresser to runing tools and try to find a cheep three phase one. Doest any one know if you can change a compressors performance buy changing the pully wheels ratio so the pump its self works harder? Cheers Douglas

Thanks for the replies, guys. I was always planing on a new gun for the top coats, now I have a better direction to look in. The thing is thathat you can spend so much $$$ that it would have been cheeper to pay someone else to do the final spray. Also the requirement for a air supply and its accociated gear for the sprayer to remain healthy with the better paints soon adds to the costs. Still working on a solution for converting my orchard spraying mask witha different typr of disposable filter. Might work. I just dont want to find out it didnt the hard way Douglas

While we are the topic of paint guns.....I started to undercoat some moulds I have been making the other day and my compresser doesnt seem to keep up. The gun was just a real cheep one that came with a starter pack air kit i bought years ago. Can changing the tip size make a change on the air requirement? What gun uses the least amount of air. The compresser is old but was rated above 12 cfm. It is a single cylinder howerever. I am hoping I wont need to replace it to paint the car later. Cheers Douglas

Evil, Get a axel from a toyota truck or four runner or similar. If you get a early model one it might also have the four stud. Some also come with a lsd. You might be able to get stronger components that will slot into the starlet rear. It pays to keep it as light as possable. Douglas

I had a semi trailing arm rear end that i was going to put into my ke35 corolla. I think it was a mid 80's rear end. Any way I took most of the rear end out of the corolla to try to get the sub frame up where it needed to be to get the suspension angles right and then realized that the sub frame asmbly was three times the weight of the beam axel. At that stage we ditched the subframe and were going to conect the pivoit pionts directly to the chassis but there was no usefull metal any where near where it needed to be. I scraped the idea and three linked the rear with a panhard rod to locate it side ways. Its still lighter then the supra componets. I think the beam axel will work better for me (road racing). The car is a race track only car. Semi trailing arms dont work that well as far as indipendent suspension goes. They are really one step above the swing axel and from what i have read have to be set up really stiff to minimize toe changes. You can set them up like a true trailing arm and get rid of this but then you will get no camber change with roll. Not good. If i were to go the IRS way again i would make a strong box that held the diff and located the pick up points for the inside of some wish bones and make a proper double wish bone set up or a chapman strut set up. The double wish bones would work better on the starlet. You wouldnt have to fabricate strut towers then. Cheers Douglas

Mike, I will have a go at getting in touch with him. I havent seen him in 18 years or so. ( last time I was in Florida). This will take a while as I will have to find out details through my Dad who answers e-mails when he feels like it and in his own time. I would continue to pursue other options first if i were you. how far is your place from Daytona? There must be fabrication shops there. Anyway i will let you know as soon as I find some thing. Cheers Douglas

ON3GO, I am not sure how far Spring hill is from Orlando but I do remember a hell of a lot of orange trees around the out skirts of Orlando. This means there are farmers and farm machinery repair places around. These guys could whip up the fabrication you want done. Have a look in the yellow pages under engineers or mabye farming and ag. machinery. I have a cousin in Orlando thats a engineer and was pretty in to modifing cars that i might be able to track down if you really get stuck. I cant belive its so hard to find someone to section the struts. Good Luck Douglas

Well I didnt really get to it in time anyway. In did look cheviot up yesterday. They no longer make mags. Turns out mine wernt cheviot anyway. They just have chevoit caps on them. I might pull on off today and see who really makes them. Douglas

Tom, I forgot to call te cheviot people yesterday. I will try again today. What size were you interested in? I will seee if I can get some prices for you. Douglas

The 16 x 7 's on my car were made buy a co. called Cheviot. Its a New Zealand company thats still in the phone book. 0064 9 6343894(we are about 16 hours ahead of tenn). I doubt they are still in production. I will give them a call tommorow as mine are multi piece and I would like to take them out to 16 x 9's. I will check and see if they still do them. There is another company call ROH that does a multi piece mesh. Then there is always Simmons. $$$$$$$ Cheers Douglas

It should be easyer the the rb26 providing you get a rear drive one, not a 4 wheel drive one. They wont put up with as much abuse as the 26 (really high boost) but will make a lot of power. As far as bang for buck goes this of the new gen supra motors have got the rb26 beat. They are just to expensive. I am not a Rb expert but i think you might have to move the intercooler pipes around to get it under the bonnet. The original goes over the top from memory. Douglas

Guys, You are missing something here. The main problem is going to be unsprung weight. You are asking the shocks and springs to control a solid axel (250-300lbs) when the were designed to control a much lighter independent rear end. There is no way they will handel it. I would guess that you are going to need spring rates and shocks that were designed to work with the mustang axel. Springs are pretty easy to change but you might have to get some custom shock like koni's or bilsteins and have them re valved to suit the mass of that axel. Douglas

Is this going to be road or track? From what I have read a spliter has to be run close to the track surface to really work. I dont think you can run a car this low and get it out of your driveway, so i would call it a track only mod. Venting the radiator and haveing a ducted air source for the engine are all going to help reduce lift but its unlikely that they will produce down force. It seems that even the best road cars have a hard time getting past 1 g on the skid pad. I think you would have to get pretty sticky tires to better it. If you are going to run it on the street the best you can hope for is to prevent as much air as you can from getting under the car. Some people run a extension on the air dam made out of convayer belt material (or similar) that can run to the ground and prevent a lot of air from getting under there but this will still eventually rip off, usually taking parts of your air dam with it. Douglas

Mabye you are looking in the wrong places to get it done. Have a look for general engineering shops . Really easy to find them here, but i am rural and farmers are always having things made fixed and modified. I get the feeling that the mod car seen this days is going bolt on and people are forgetting how to fabricate. Coil overs are pretty easy to do. Douglas

None! You will probably still have lift untill you can get the car low enough that its undrivable on the street. You will need to look at getting air out of the front end after it goes in as well. None of these kits fix that problem. Douglas

All the engines I mentioned were subaru units. Subaru's first atempt at a six cylinder sports car came witha flat six 2.7 lts and a turbo. I dont know the name in the states but you did get it. The second one was out of the svx. 3.3 lt flat six with a turbo. This is the engine I would play with although i havent heard of many people doing so. They were auto only, but I am sure you could hook it up to the existing gear box without to much trouble. The last engine was released here ( N.Z.) about two years ago in the legacy. 3lt flat 6. Much lighter then the older units and will come out with a turbo soon. This one will cost you a lot to mod. The most senceable thing to do would figure out how much power you would like and how you would like it delivered(power band) and then work backwards. If you are looking for less then 400 h.p at the fly wheel i would stick to the 4 cylinder. Cheeper , easeier, lighter and the parts are there. Remember the week link in the subaru's is the transmission. Cheers Douglas

Well, as the lads say a rb's not going to cut it. But you have a need for twin turbo 6 cylinder power. So why not use the engine from the svx. They were rated with same H.P. as the Rb26 (280hp ex japan). There is also the newer 3lt six that is out in the new legacy's. They will make a turbo version of that soon from what I have read. The new STi 2.5lt is a nice sounding engine as well. Douglas

There is a fellow on the blow thro turbo group at the moment that is talking about using the su's. Austin rover made a car in the 80's called the maestro (or similar) that was a 1.8 lt blow through turbo trough a single su. They could get 200 hp out of this set up. The su had to be sealed and they ran a high pressure fuel pump like a fuel injection unit and a pressure regulater that kept the fuel pressure about 4 psi over the boost pressure. I am just going from what i remember reading. Aparently they have all the details in the blowtrou groups archives so have a look. Cheers Douglas

I just read the artical in GRM about the spitfire with the s2000 engine. The artical said the engine spins in a conventional direction. Unlike most honda engines. This guy used a GT6 rear end with lsd. Douglas

It would probably work better on the z then the rx7. You see this kind of set up on formula v race cars. They run it very stiff to make the swing axel behave more like a bean axel. Its kind of silly to do this on a the z. You would need to fabricate push rods and rockers and make holes in the unibody for the push rods to go through. I would never do it on a street car. Dont forget the rear of the z is chapman strut as well so the shock need to stay to locate the wheel or you will need to convert to upper wish bones as well. Do post a photo or link though, we might be talking about different things. Douglas

Joe, It all depends! Do you want more power or do you just want something that fits?From the power prospective I would steer clear of those. I am kind of funny about exhuast though. I would rather take the time to make the best one I could myself. Dont always have the time though, hence I will convert the block huggers I already have. I think you will be better of with a more traditional collecter. There are ones out there that will fit. Douglas

Have you done the body work yet John? Bought the rims and tires? Pete P is useing 255/??/17 on his without flares and its lowered. I can get 245/45/16 under mine easy. I wouldnt flare it unless I had to. Douglas

I never read it that way. Have a look a tthe early 70's merc straight 6. SL280 or similar. I havent been able to find out to much info on this. Mabye AMG can help. They raced them in the DTM. Douglas