Careless

As stated in one of my building books (not word for word). balancing the rotating assembly, and then the rotating assembly with the addition of the damper, and then with the addition of the flywheel will get you into a closely balanced range so that any flywheel or balancer you put on from thereafter will be closer to a completely balanced package than a balanced rotating assembly with a separately balanced damper and flywheel. For the same reason, people balance with the disc and pressure plate bolted on too using the same procedure to install on an engine prior to installing the trans. Balancing all these components at once will ensure that further changes of the same parts (if they are zero balanced from factory, like most performance parts... or if you have them re-balanced alone if your engine is already together) will not cause severe imbalance. This is as close as you can get to having a rebalance of the entire rotating assembly (which is ridiculous for a hobbyist if you're changing just a flywheel or balancer) because you actually have something hanging off the ends of the crank that are closer to the finished weight/mass/balance than having nothing there at all.

metal tie straps or metal cv boot bands are awesome for that too. two long beer cans are wicked too. it will last a good couple of weeks if you're really really short on cash to get another exhaust if you're the type to "fix it right when you have money" but "this will do for now".

I never actually paid any attention to how these diff work until I saw the last pics in your post. seems simple enough. makes it easy to see how the planetary gears move power from one side to the other. so are you replacing the cap-screw bolts with 12.9 grade?

as Duke Nukem once said: "hail to the king, baby!"

1.00 USD = 1.23499 CAD

i know. thanks for the sympathy. much needed at this point. i am gonna apply for my passport and try to make it down to Branson Z fest, but i need to get this thing in tip top shape before crossing into the "oh you're from Canada and you don't know anyone around here? that ball joint costs 500 dollars" zone.

good to note that the smidgen of compression you lose in your compression ratio is negligible too. as noted by matt, keeping the gasket away from the ring lands is not a bad thing considering RB pistons have a positive deck @ TDC. this practice is mentioned in the engine building books I have too.

a friend of mine going KA24ET with a big HX35 is going with VIPEC. apparently it's got the berries! the auto-tune feature is intuitive, and from what I hear it uses the same internals as a LinkECU G4. check it!

I know. it sounds stupid. I guess I fried the regulator on my Z31's alternator when I hooked up the terminals on the charger opposite of the global standard for positive and negative (hey i was in the garage for 8 hours straight and went crazy). SO anyways, my battery is SUPER charged at 18.5 volts and I just left the driving lights and accessory switch on in the car to waste the battery out. I'll recharge it in the morning. I don't want the battery boiling up to the point where it explodes and spews ♥♥♥♥ on my engine bay. Now my middle bank driver side injector is fucked. car was idling at 900rpm @ 15 degrees last week when I fixed the timing, and lightweight flywheel will increase idle rpm at proper timing. But I checked the voltage output across the dead injector's clip and it was at a SOLENOID SEARING 16 - 18 volts. So now the car idles poorly, has a miss, and it's going to take out the rest of the injectors if I don't fix this one and the alternator problem. Is there anything short of fixing the alternator and changing the injector that I should be doing before tackling this? Thanks doods.

as said many times... manufactured parts have manufacturers defects. the coil's core may be botched. It does not neccessarily mean that the coils suck. I mean, seagate just had a recall on tons of hard-drives that are excellent performers, but have a firmware defect that makes people lose their data. in reality, great hard-drives... in the hands of a consumer, "where the ♥♥♥♥ are my files" the only thing we can do now is work towards finding the weak link in the coils if they are indeed the problem. here's to hoping that the diagnosis goes in the right direction before senseless expenditures occur. I had a low load, low gas misfire on my engine after rebuilding, and I thought I popped a piston. Turns out that the 6th cyl detonated so hard due to my timing being 30 degrees out that it closed the gap. After removing and replacing the wire with 6 others that I had laying around from a Honda Accord, I found it to be the spark plug.

gang-stew, y0

It's all suspension and weight modifications at that point. no stupid engine to deal with!!! get one used drag slick and cut it on a band saw to make some pads for your shoes, and away you go

All you need to know about dealing with women and making money from home is: get out of your home and find women that will deal with you.

I got my fidanza on my Z31 and I cannot comment on the driveability (as it's not on 4 wheels yet due to weather restraints), but it does feel like a quality piece and it does not vibrate to hell. I'm not sure if I would bother having a flywheel lightened, especially if I was to do racing. I'd rather have an SFI Rated Flywheel for that purpose. But as mentioned in the post above, trekking to have it balanced and machined is a chore, and I would expect my machinist to have machines to do both in all honesty. My Z31's factory flywheel was (from what I know) machined and it was starting to show small cracks in the mating surface. That did not make me feel good. Has anyone tried a KA24 flywheel or something from another nissan with the same trans? It's a good way to get an oem quality flywheel at sometimes 65% of the weight, whereas most aftermarket are somewhere between 40-55% of the weight.

Z32 Turbo rods = upgrade for Z31 Turbo motors, so perhaps Z32 rods are a good option?

LOL. well then I guess scottyM1Z got his 300 dollar RB30 for a good bargain! I sold it after grinding them down smooth and realizing that there was a casting error. Someone else I sent the pic to said "doesn't look like anything out of the ordinary" but I'm not sure if he even checked the picture because the casting issue is in plain sight and I was looking for a comment on it, even if it's "ordinary". It's not something WE see everyday, so yeas.... it did freak me out at the thought of main-webbing exploding right near the oil pan pickup tube at 8000 RPM. But I guess it's ok It didnt cost me any money and someone else on the boards is 0.4 litres up in displacement.

it's ok. just wait till some dude with a stock vette decides to buy an MSD coil kit and you'll get another shot at his coils for 80 bucks. LOL

matt, i noticed that your mainbearing skirt webbing is smooth. do the N1's come like that or did you grind them down to remove the flashing? I did the same on scottyM1z's block and found a small casting error just near the oil pickup. Is that common to find small casting lines (not cracks) in those areas? I mean small cavities like super-man's hair (normal hair would burn. duh!) fell into the mold while it was being poured, and you get a thin line with rounded edges.

Indeed, a friend and I were discussing the same topic just yesterday. He used his ford v8 engine as a comparison to the RB but he tried to tell me that checking for bearing clearances and all the blueprinting is what makes up the difference on an RB vs. V8 machining... RB being more expensive... which I disagree with. I personally feel it's a machinist's "import car tax" and the bullcrap they try to pass off as being "harder" or so much more work. I've read and read and read, and bought all the tools, minus a set of reliable mics and and bore guages and the only thing I can find that is different when doing all this stuff is what tips to mount on the tool and where to stick'em! and ofcourse, numbers. The rest of the nuances, as you say, are the tips that make everything last a whole lot longer, which I think are the more important things that a lot of us have to concentrate on. Do you know of any good books? I had "Engine Blueprinting" which was primarily SBC, and after giving that to someone, it was replaced with the Reher Morrison Top and Bottom end engine building book. I think it's the most comprehensive of what was available to me at the time. There is also an online technical document resource from the ACL bearing company called the ACL Techfax that I've read from beginning to end through multiple bus-rides and I'd have to say it has the most information regarding things always unmentioned like surface roughness, compression and tensile load on studs and bolts, metallurgy in some forms, and headgasket seating on various engines. All good reads!

Great thread. indispensible info because it has pics! everything here can be seen in most SBC and SBF building books, but the pics with the RB's makes it much easier to grasp. thanks!

Great Idea... even an hour a day is not over doing it. especially since today it's about -35 Celcius here with the wind chill.

Everyone says it is indeed easy to work out a proper offset, but I don't have my flares mounted at all, and I don't wanna spend 700 bucks and then they're sunken or sit out too far It's just something I'd rather have a z31+wheel guru help me with. But I think the wheels will be fine with some spacers if too small in the front. Using an offset calculator is a little unreliable because I never had the stock wheels and I don't know how far out or how well to the fender they line up and what the difference would be in comparison to the new wheels... That's why I'm asking for anyones assistance

Do I send my invoice to Fruit of The Loom for making products that don't stand up to beautiful imagery or do I send it to you for providing the imagery that caused this mess!!!!!!

Hi. Hello. Ciao. I had a short convo with someone who bought some mustang wheels for his 280zx and the wheels look pretty badbutt. (can we say @$$ here?). front 17X9 5x4.5 1.04 INCH lip 24mm offset rear 17X10 5x4.5 3.16 INCH lip 20mm offset the fronts could use a 10mm spacer on the 280zx to flush it up and move it away from the coil over. but on the z31 what am I looking at? I'll be using rear 50AE flares on the Z31 and sideskirts too. I just need to know if the sizes will work well on my z31 in comparison to the 280zx sizing.

congratulations! now all u need are some baby bottle extrusions with different nipple-feed taper sizes and a choice of different bottle neck threads and she'll be happy RB25 one is cool, I think there's someone in the RB forums who has a 25DE that might be interested. R31 guys would be too!