260DET

Could be that the North American 280 has a heavier/stronger front Xmember. My '77 260 has a beefier Xmember than the 240's, but is otherwise interchangeable.

Thanks for sharing Jon, its always nice to know that others have had the same problem. But I seem to recall that putting the proportioning valve on the fronts may lead to a problem there. Something to do with inconsistent front/rear balance under varying braking loads? The obvious solution is to fit 2 spot rear calipers which have pistons at least as large as the front four spots. But I have to have a mechanical handbrake.

With 4 spot calipers on the front a single spot slider calipers on the rear, I have never been able to lock up the rears on a dry road. Even with the Wilwood proportioning valve screwed right in.

One problem that I haven't been able to solve when checking for any corner preload with the car on the ground is - unless the ground is level for all four wheels you are going to be out. Knowing that my garage concrete floor is not level, I do the preload check with the wheels on full droop.

What you could do is disconnect the front brake line from the master cylinder and one of the caliper lines. Then blow air through the line to check that it is clear. Repeat the process with the other caliper. It is not a bad idea to do this anyway with all brake lines when doing a brake job. Not sure how the proportioning valve would affect this for the rears though.

The lower one on the right looks like the one on my 5 speed. It also looks to be larger in diameter which may indicate that each suits a different pressure plate. Other than that can't help further, we in Ozland don't have 4 speeds.

Is there any particular lining material around that gives superior performance to the usual lining types? Car presently has a later stock Nissan pressure plate uprated to 1700 lbs. This can be uprated further but I would prefer to use a superior plate lining material that will increase the clutch's torque capacity without damaging the flywheel face etc. And which will still give some progressive engagement. That would leave ceramics out I guess.

Sounds ok to me. The OE (nylon?) vent is a taper fit so you would want to match that with whatever tubing you use, a short piece of copper or steel may be best, with a longer piece of flexible tubing on the end of that. Maybe use Loctite or a metal adhesive to hold the metal pipe in place.

The K-mac eccentric adjusters sound much like the Fortuna ones a lot of us use here in Q. Around A$90 a pair. The pin itself is straight, two outer plates are eccentric so the Xmember has to be slotted. The trick is to locate the slots in a position that will give you the adjustment range you want. I have never heard of any slipping. Just adjust by turning the pin head then lock by tightening the nut on the other end. Simple, once they are installed.

I have seen them fitted to production based cars used for racing, they look a nice piece of work But I have never seen them on a Z for some reason, most Z's here in Oz use eccentric camber adjusters to replace the lower inner suspension pivot, possibly because they are cheaper and you can, I think, set them up to give you more negative camber than is possible with the K-mac kit.

That gearbox has needle rollers in the gear bearings so you don't want a heavy oil. Probably any of the above synthetic suggestions would be good, synthetics retain their protective qualities longer too. But, for the sake of choice, you may wish to try Redline MT-90.

While I'm not familiar with the ZX the usual principles apply. As a prerequisite the suspension has to be in good condition throughout whatever bushings you decide to use. Then, as an experiment, I would remove the rear sway bar completely and go for a test drive. Take it easy at first until you become familiar with the different setup. Too much understeer? Consider fitting a lighter than stock rear bar. Too much body roll? Consider using a heavier front bar, perhaps in conjunction with a light rear bar. Then again there may be someone around here who gone through the process and can suggest a definate setup.

Hmmm. Notice all the external ribs on the two casings, particularly the rear one? They may give a clue. Not like my C series (FS5W71C) box that is for sure.

The only other solution I can think of is to check the gear ratios and then see what they match. As you probably know this can be done without pulling the box to bits, by engaging the various gears and comparing the number of output rotations of each compared with one (360 degree)rotation of the input shaft. Then again, if you are really keen and want to inspect the internal condition of the box anyway, remove the front and rear gearbox casings.

Far as I know there are no ID numbers on the gearbox itself but the donor car may have the gearbox type on its ID plate.

Don't know what gearbox the RB30E engine had but the RB30ET has a huge box. Problem is those turbo boxes are very hard to find in reasonable condition and the ratios are not that great, 2nd gear is very low for a start.

Check out the forum at http://www.classiczcars.com under the What Tranny do I Have? topic. Seems like you should have a Nissan FS5W71B gearbox or perhaps a BW T5 special. The latter has a separate bell housing bolted to the gearbox main case and also a bolted on gearlever assembly, neither of which the Nissan box has.

Good info, Jeremy. My 'turbo' box has turned out to be a C series box, not a B. Not much difference, slightly larger needle bearings for 1, 2 and 3 gears and a different front countershaft bearing. The C box was fitted to the R31 Skyline but not, perhaps, to the R31 GTS which I assume is the GTS you mention. So the GTS guts does fit into the diesel casing? If that casing is stronger than the usual Nissan casing that would be a plus. I don't want to have to go to a much bigger and heavier T5.

If that is the Toyota Supra engine, IIRC an Australian motor magazine covered such a conversion a year or two ago in detail. In a RHD car of course. That is about all I can remember but a detailed WWW search may come up with more. For such a power conversion a stronger bodied 260 (and 280 in the US?) would be my starting point.

The kit is put together by a bearing supplier, CBC here in Australia, I called it a NTN kit because it contains NTN bearings and I didn't want to confuse those out of Oz. One point of interest is that all the main and countershaft ball bearings have a C3 spec clearance for a specific reason. The input shaft, which sits in front of the mainshaft, also has a special bearing being a 3TM-6306CNXRX4V33 which is supposed to be superior to the stock 6306 CNXC3 for its particular purpose.

Dunno if anyone is reading this but it helps to write it down anyway. 8) The problem of obtaining high spec bearings has been solved by getting a NTN replacement gearbox bearing kit from a bearing supplier. It appears that Mr Nissan, here anyway, has been cutting down his inventory by providing universal type bearings rather than special matched transmission bearings. The NTN kit was also significantly cheaper. Live and effing learn.

My 5 speed tended to jam in reverse after hitting reverse accidently when down changing from 5th to 4th. Pulled the box apart and the gear teeth were burred. If the burring is not too bad it can be ground off with care, do this so that the teeth have a lead in angle on the engaging edge of the teeth.

To complete the story, there are 'heavy duty' transmission bearings available from general bearing stockists, not all of which Mr Nissan supplies as a matter of course if you order through a dealership in my experience. One Nissan supplied bearing eg had seven balls, the HD alternative had eight balls. NTM for one have the HD option. On the sealed debris excluding bearings, they appear to be supplied pre lubricated. Which in my mind has the disadvantage of more drag, not good when the aluminium housed bearings tend to spin in the housing. They also don't get the benefits of circulating oil, particularly important when you are using a high grade synthetic gearbox oil. My thoughts of course eg for ordinary use where the gearbox oil will not be regularly changed the sealed bearings particularly on the (lower) countershaft may be a better option.

The whole thing looks too light to me. It is quite common in race cars to have a much stronger rigid bar which doubles as a seat harness rear mount. Never seen one fail yet. 8)

Am I missing something? Moving the Xmember down in relation to the body will lower the suspension inner pivot points, not raise them?