strotter

OK, here's a question: how would the smog laws apply to a generic gen 1 crate v8? I know they're used as smog-compliant repair items in earlier cars. What smog would apply? The equivalent to the original gear in the Datsun?

I'd find a performance donor, or some kind, then swap the drivetrain in its' entirety, dead stock, including the whole donor wiring harness, no mods of any kind other than necessary for the swap itself. LS1, something along that line. No mix-and-match mechanicals. Then I'd concentrate on the suspension, rear end, and interior goodies. My car, though a hoot, is not so much happy piddling around town on a hot day - something, in my opinion, it has to do if it's going to be considered a "car". I'd probably go with an overdrive automatic (left knee has an unpleasant conversation with me after rowing the 6-speed for a while); I would probably pay more attention to "comfort" items up front (a/c, seats, suspension setup); and I'd certainly not worry about having the fastest car around quite as much ('cause it isn't, I don't really want one, and anyway there are too many guys with Vipers, Corvettes, & GT-40's around). I'd let the pros do what I don't like to do (bodywork, paint), stick with the things I enjoy. If I were doing it all over again, I think I'd stop and think more, before I jumped in.

I used one out of a mid-90's Camaro. It's not a perfect fit, but it works well. The thing to be careful of is not so much the fit in neutral, but when fully extended into both 1st/3rd/5th and 2nd/4th/6th. Too stiff, it'll act like a spring pulling back to neutral. I fiddled with a couple of them I had laying around (yeah, I know, it's weird, I had some laying around) that were nice and thick, but too stiff - causing that spring kind of action. Eventually I went to the local Chevy dealer & got a new one. It's a thin, neoprene kind of material, very flexible. The bellows part is also just very "flat", not sticking up too far (which you'll need it to do). The material is thin enough, and the base is large enough, that you'll need to find or fabricate some kind of snug-fitting hold-down on the perimeter. I fabricated one out of a sheet of 0.080 aluminum.

I have a number of these stories. One that comes immediately to mind: working on a dead electric starter of an old Honda 350. A little chain connects the clutch sprocket to the starter sprocket. The thing hadn't been working for the owner, and he had tried to fix it himself, going so far as to disassemble the starter button assembly, so the bare wire was hanging next to the frame. Like an idiot, and without disconnecting the battery, I popped the cover and started fiddling with the mechanism. The moment my fingers wrapped around the chain to check its tension, the owner leaned in to get a better look, shorting the wire. Motor spins, drawing my left middle finger into the clutch sprocket, peeling off the skin up to the first knuckle. Bone jammed into the sprocket, locking it. The starter button wire promptly welded itself to the frame, so motor kept trying to spin. Everybody freaking out, including, frankly, me, though I had enough presence of mind to not just pull it out. I yelled for a screwdriver, which somebody eventually delivered, and I rotated the sprocket backward against the motor torque, freeing the finger. It never occurred to anybody to pull the wire off the frame. The finger-meat had been peeled off all the way to the knuckle, the nail was hanging on by a thread, the tendons were all chewed up (you could see them clearly), blood was gushing (did I say "gushing"?). I figured I'd lost the end of the finger. When I got to the emergency room, they called over a vascular surgeon (who just happened to have dropped by on his day off, who'd have thought?). He gave me some novocain, popped the meat back where it belonged, threw on 15 or 20 of the most beautiful stitches I've ever seen, clipped off the nail, and told me "If it turns blue and stays blue, come back and we'll amputate at the joint". Prescribed some of the "really good" pain killers, sent me home. The thing eventually sealed itself up, the nail came back, albeit the whole assembly somewhat mutated-looking. There was almost no sensation for a long time - though interestingly, some of that has come back, over the years. This episode was one of the reasons I decided to go to college. Keyboards, after all, don't attempt to eat your hands.

I have a '72 with a small-block in it, somewhere in the 400 hp range, t56, runs in the upper 12's, original r180. Traction, what's that? Put about 10,000 miles on it like that, haven't done any chassis stiffening yet, though I hope to soon. Nothing has bent, twisted, crooked, warped, contorted, deformed, bowed, arched, curved, angled, hooked, or kinked yet. If it's a pretzel, it's a rather tasty one...

At this point, ignore the radiator. The coolant circuit out to the radiator should not even be a part of the calculation at temps less than the thermostat cut-off temperature. Confirm the function of the thermostat. ALSO, don't use a cheap auto-parts store thermostat. Pick one up at the dealer. You'd be amazed at how much of a difference such a seemingly simple thing can make. Looking at your numbers, I'd suggest you also carefully look at both your timing curves and your mixture situation. That motor is not behaving correctly, there's more than one thing wrong.

Wow, it has been a while since I saw this thread. I'm glad it helped. I ended up bolting everything to an aluminum plate, mounting it with four bolts with rubber stand-offs. With the bolts out, it "swings" down on the various hoses. Not that I've worked on it a lot lately...

Have to agree with Sideways here. I've got a pair of pumps w/ surge tank mounted in the rear, isolated with rubber standoffs. With the standoffs installed, you have to listen carefully to hear the pumps before startup (the pump noise drove me crazy - I'm a bit OCD about extraneous noises). That said, building the whole thing into the tank is a "cleaner" solution, for sure. I begs 2 questions, though: 1) Will you have access to the pump without dropping the tank? And, 2) Will you have to split the tank to install baffles? I've learned from personal experience that fuel starvation can be tough to beat, and only occurs at the most embarrassing moments...

I had a 327 in my Z, in front of a T-5, for some time. Nice combo. It was injected (GM ECM and throttle body on a single-plane), moderately aggressive cam (Comp Cams Xr282), roller everything, flat-tops, and block-huggers to dual 2.25's, ran in the upper 12's. Once tuned, mileage was in the low 20's overall, high 20's on the highway, subtracting getting goofy with it. Note that it shredded a T-5 within 5,000 miles. Actually, a couple. Then it blew up. Well, actually spun a bearing. I miss it, though.

That sure enough looks like them. There are a couple more parts in the "complete" kit, shown here. Do it.

I posted this reply to a similar question a couple of years ago. I've edited it a bit to match your situation a bit more closely.

You can focus Google on a single site by using the "site" keyword, thusly: bumpsteer faq site:hybridz.org. Try it, your FAQ is the first entry. Check this page for a bunch of options and variations.

Once fit two blondes and a brunette, plus me, in a '74 260. Blonde in the front seat, blond and brunette in back. Latter two squished up against the hatch glass, giggling and waving, and not entirely dressed. That's as much as I'm going to say... ('cause it isn't actually as good a story as the first couple of sentences would imply).

To answer the original question, no, there's no problem with turning them on their side. W/r/t reprogramming them, check out the 3rd Gen "DIY PROM" board here. There's a very good "Intro to Programming" stickied there as well. Also, the guys that did all the original PROM hacking have a library of PROMs at the DIY EFI site. Finally, some of the hardware you'll need for on-the-fly tuning is available at Moates. Very good gear, quite reasonably priced. Any questions message me, I done a fair amount of this stuff with GM components over the years.

No old Lotus, how about a recent one? You could easily pick up an Elise in that price range. Exotic, ultra-pure, and rather economical. I've been told that driving one is akin to being reborn as a wheeled being. Nothing drops the hammer on a car-bragging session like saying "I drive a Lotus". And a huge advantage: easy-to-find drivetrain components.

This is awesome and wonderful and great, and something I wish had been around when I was putting my car together. I've been using a pair of Bosch 75A relays - not "bosch style", but actual Bosch, model "0 332 002 150" - to run my fan since I upgraded the system for operation with my new ECU. You have to be careful when you're ordering relays, the word "bosch" has become like "kleenex", something between a rip-off and a generic term for relay. I opened one up last summer, and it was in great shape, you might say virginal, with a few thousand hours of operation. They're great big things, 1" tall and 2" square, a pair of 1/4" or so space connectors low voltage, screw connectors on the high-amp side, everything plated. Also expensive, as I recall, like $40 each. I put diodes in the system (for the rundown voltage, if that's what it's called, when the fan is spinning w/o power), but there are similar ones with internal diodes. Dan, buy some of these, or wait until BJ builds some for sale. BJ, one other thing you should consider is putting an "A/C override" input of some kind, something that will kick the fan into HI for the a/c. Or, even better, it would increase fan output by one "level" - if the fan is "off", it'll go to low-speed, if the fan is on "low", it'll go into high speed, that sort of thing.

Damn, that's pretty. Sort of the ultimate solution. The ultimate question, though, is "how much"?

What really struck me about the American show as compared to the English was the quality of the cinematography. The English show is filmed just beautifully, as much art as depiction. I was watching a segment recently about a Ferrari - the camera just caressed the curves of the car. In the rain. It was like that scene in Cool Hand Luke, the one with the blond washing her car. Beautiful.

I don't think this is a repost. An absorbing trip through Japanese design history, here. My personal favorite, the Nissan Sprint 1900 prototype, from 1963: No S30's, and many early designs were clearly derivative (or outright designed by european companies). But as you browse, you can see the evolution of a very distinct and truly "Japanese" sensibility.

You should contact Dan Juday, a user here. He had his car in Kit Car Builder magazine a few years ago. Page 1 linked here, page 2 linked here (warning, large files). I have no idea how he went about it, but I'd be willing to bet that they approached him, not the other way around.

Interesting thought just occurred to me; the cars we drive, the very ones, were around during the entire time we're talking about. All those years, all those computers, my Z (and yours as well!) were not new cars. Heck, by the time I came in contact with my first computer, it was an old car. Oh, my, I just made myself sad.

You guys are newbies. Starting in the late 70's: First computer I every used, the mongo PDP-11, for a "computer" class of some kind. Got to it via any one of twenty or so dumb terminals in a lab, all arranged so as to be able to see the massive mini-mainframe through a huge glass window - sort of a cathedral, you might say... I leaned a lot about programming a whatnot, but had to drop out for some years for a variety of reasons. Time passed, but I knew I loved computers. One birthday, I got a gift from my finest girl and all our friends. My first computer at home, a Timex-Sinclair 1000. For $100 you got a computer and unlimited possibilities. Zilog z80 at 3.5 mHz. Came with 2k RAM (the big American version), upgraded soon with 16k memory - so much memory, how will we ever use it? That's the RAM sticking up in back. If you bumped the computer it would wiggle the connector and crash the machine. I've still got this in a closet somewhere... learned BASIC on this machine, all the programming fundamentals, ultimately machine code and assembly. Cassette tape for storage, old b&w tv for monitor. I remember groups of us "hackers" staying up all weekend (literally) programming and figuring out algorithms and arguing about logic, pot after pot of coffee. Made flowcharts that took up the entire wall. Did some cool stuff with that little machine. I would take hand-written copies of our programs down to the other students taking various night classes (years of night classes!), always very exciting. Everyone knew how to translate the various flavors of BASIC on-the-fly, we'd trade code and code them in during the weekend, take our findings back to the next class. Eventually I managed to get back to college full time, now an engineering major. The little Timex wasn't really a "working" computer, but I didn't have much money, so I saved and saved and saved, finally picked up a Coleco Adam: Z80 at 3.6 mHz, 80 KB RAM, twin tape drives, letter-quality (daisy wheel) printer (which was really very nice though a bit noisy). Three hundred baud modem, got me into Compuserve, many hours of fun (after 8:00 pm). Got me through my first couple of years of college. Learned spreadsheets, database basics, got pretty good at word processing, got to know Z80 assembly pretty good. Ran an odd version of CP/M. Later upgraded to a 5 1/4" disk drive (oh the storage!). One day in '86 or so I got a good deal on a blown-up Mac 128 - 128 k, that is. 8 mHz Motorola 68000. Fixed the power supply with solder and attitude. When it booted that first time, it was - spectacular. Amazing. Unbelievable. Graphics, icons, menus on the top of the screen. You move this little "mouse" thing around, a pointer on the screen moves around, you point to what you want and push the button. Things happen. It was breathtaking. When you typed into a document in this program called "Word" by this company called "Microsoft", you could change what it looked like by changing the font, and then when you printed it it looked the same as on the screen! Unbelievable! Later upgraded the memory (with a soldering iron) to 512k (Lord, I was sexy in those days), and got a 1200 baud modem. At about the same time, I picked up an original IBM PC, 4 mHz (?) Z8088, again a bad power supply (hard to find, hard to fix) that had also been dropped. Got it running, saw something like this: No mouse. No graphics. 64k RAM. Single floppy drive. It did have a well-documented BASIC, pretty good for programming. Lost interest in it pretty quick, as I had been given a PASCAL for the Mac. No more "GOSUB"s for me! I understand that later they came out with a graphical interface for the thing, but it was primitive and inefficient. Glad I never looked back... Worked for Apple for a while, as a co-op in college, in the late '80's. Some of the guys there took pity on me, assembled a Mac II out of parts left over from thermal and mechanical testing. (They really weren't supposed to - those parts were supposed to go through a mulcher, but that kind of rule is sometimes forgotten...). A really high-performance rig, grew over the years, more memory, hard drives (then bigger hard drives), faster modems, faster graphics cards, so on and so on. Time has marched on, now I buy new computers periodically. It's weird. Walk into a store, point at something you want, they give it to you. No soldering iron, no coding. Quicker, easier, but not quite as fun.

Austin Healy 3000.

My '72, smallblock Chev, StealthRam, T56. This picture's a couple of years old, the paint needs renewing now, as well as installation of coilovers, lsd, some proper wheels, a thousand other things. This picture was taken immediately after first assembly.

Welcome to Z's, and welcome to Hybridz. • There's a wonderfully concise overview of the S30 series (240z, 260z, and 280z's) at wikipedia, here. • Consider purchasing a couple of books put out by a fellow Californian, Mike Knell, of "Jags That Run". In particular consider the "Datsun 240z Conversion" manual, and the "Chevrolet TPI & TBI Engine Swap" book. Though they're about Chevy conversions, they thoroughly analyze all of those "little things" that you don't usually think about when contemplating a swap. They're surely the cheapest part of the swap, well worth the money regardless of what kind of madness you're preparing to embrace. • Virtually every junior college in California has one or more "how to weld" classes, many in the evening, and they're cheap, too. Some free. • Because Pharaohabq is right about these cars being old, consider buying "How to Restore Your Datsun Z-Car", here. Much of your project will be restoration, trust me on this. • Just start reading Hybridz. Really, just browse and browse and browse. It sounds dry, but actually it's exciting - some of the people here have *ridiculously* cool ideas, many huge money savers, some brilliant, and a lot of them just plain cool. Take extensive notes (pencil and paper, notebook, the whole thing), start calculating costs (know it'll cost more), start estimating time (know it'll take longer), get an idea where you want to go with the swap. When I first started my swap, I probably spent a month reading every night, started at the first post ever made at Hybridz and read every single thread. Every one. Why? I needed to know the ins and outs, the kinds of things that were easy, and the kinds of things that caused problems. I followed threads that ended in sorrow, and threads that ended in joy, and eventually learned how to recognize the difference between "promising approach" and "spiraling down". Thus I avoided the latter, as have many others. • On a related note to the above, don't believe anything you read any place else on the 'web. There's more BS out there than at a petunia farm. Just sayin'. • Also, don't worry if some of these guys try to bust your balls. They enjoy ball-busting, which is why they have really stiff suspensions in their cars. Seriously. Very stiff springs. Good luck. If you start down this road, you might find it one of the most fulfilling and satisfying things you've ever done.