strotter

Clean and simple, nicely done. I'll bet you burned some hours on it - I've learned over the years that a synonym for "clean and simple" is "time consuming and difficult".

I have one behind a '350, and have to agree with Jeronimo and Marcus - it's a bit heavy on the left foot, and also a bit clunky. The clunky part just a little bit, but the heavy part a bunch. I do have a Civic, and in comparison the clutch pedal is effortless. Maximus, if you're following this thead, what's your setup? What master diameter? What throwout bearing? Inquiring minds want to know!

Somehow, the term "soaring" doesn't seem to describe an aircraft moving at speeds approaching mach .4 ...

I have to agree with Typhoone - nice car, but... he put a smallblock in front of a Datsun tranny? Thinking?

One thing I'd do different with a new workbench: I'd make it so there's some place to put my legs when I'm sitting in front of it, rather like an executive table. My current bench is far too high (probably 40"), and I can't comfortably sit in front of it because the lower rail runs all the way across - and sometimes concentratin' just takes some butt-time. An 18" wide area somewhere for the legs, doesn't have to be centered. The thing about rails on the edge, yes, and run it all the way around. Also, I'd put 110v outlets on both ends of the thing, as well as somewhere centered in the backsplash. Also, I'd build some gooseneck high-intensity lighting into is somewhere, ideally a couple of fixtures installed so that they can illuminate items together in the middle. Also, a woman to bring beer and provide encouragement.

I came up with the same solution as burrl - piece of sheetmetal, 8 x 20 or so, mounted to the radiator support, pitched forward so as to catch air moving under the car - though after reading through the windtunnel thread, I may be stopping air escaping from in front of the radiator. Note that my air dam routes the air directly to the radiator, but does not come in contact with the support (as it probably should). In any event, I never had a problem with overheating at speed again. BTW, also using the Taurus fan & shroud.

My mom, who was from Ohio, used to say "prolly" instead of "probably". I think she meant "probably". She also had the theory that, at a stop sign, if the guy ahead of you goes it's OK for you to go right through behind him. How about "That car is quicker 'n hell!" Or, "That car is quicker 'n s**t!" Apparently damnation and waste move rapidly. "He's dumber than a bag of hammers". Huh. "I know enough to know I don't know anything". For sure the latter is true. "If people only loved each other more, it'd be a better world". It'd have to be a different world, I think, and prolly with no people. "Inflammable" just pisses me off. Shouldn't it be "Enflammable"? "Slow Children Ahead". Always makes me smile - I mean, they should at least change it to "Special Children Ahead".

I'm not a diesel guy, but: Why would you do it "inframe"? I would think you'd want to pull the whole assembly just for convenience sake, if nothing else?

Semantic analysis Given: A cake sits before you; you have it. Given: Then you eat it. Observation: Now you no longer have the cake, because you have eaten it. Conclusion: You cannot have your cake if you eat it. Inversion: If you eat it, you no longer have the cake. Synthesis: You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.

Wizard, everything is OK, everything is fine, calm, calm.... crazyFaizy email echoed me the above post, his being pissed and all, and I answered back real calmly and explained why I had been critical, and then he emailed me back more-or-less apologizing and we talked back and forth about a couple of technical things for a while. His question was badly garbled in his posting, but I managed to figure it out. The thing was, English is his third or fourth language, and he had heard that HybridZ was the place where you went when you want the correct answer, especially when the question is a bit out of the ordinary. I'm not sure that he got the Datsun-centric nature of the site, and to be fair, we have quite a bit of stuff here that isn't explicitly Datsunny - I just for example finished looking at a couple of dozen pictures of Ferraris. He just thought it was a site for hyper-enthusiastic super gearheads with too much brains and not enough money, and really, he was right - he just didn't get that it was a site for hyper-enthusiastic super Datsun gearheads with too much brains and not enough money!

I was disappointed that there were so few synonyms for "hard"....

Sponsored by Viagra? That's a hard charging car. The driver seems to have a firm grasp on the lead. The suspension looks to be stiff - almost rigid. The terrain looks rocky, but the road surface seems solid - hope the river doesn't swell.

Perhaps he make them himself - the plans are in the book. The distributor is in about the same position as you describe with the JTR mounts - there's some wiggle room, as people generally slot the mounting holes in the Z flanges.

I remember that ad. Does that make me old? The music is my favorite part - like "Datsuns - IN SPACE!"

I was coming home from a long day at work one afternoon a couple of years ago in a heavy rain, past a little lake in my town, in fairly heavy traffic, when some subnormal kid in an Acura with this just furious look on his face pulls up next to me and bumps his throttle real hard, clearly wanting to throw down right now. Now, when I say "rain", I mean a downpour, a gully washer, a cloudburst, a deluge: and my wipers, as is correct for a 30-some-year-old Z, are heroically stroking the windshield every, maybe, five seconds, so I can see nothing ahead of me other than that wall of water. I look at this kid like he's nuts, he couldn't possibly be serious, and he looks back at me like I've done his sister wrong - he looked livid. He's freaking me out a little bit, so I wave and point up, indicating "the sky is falling, you 'tard, this isn't the time or place," and that sends him into a fit of octane-fueled rage. He clutches his car and just stands on the throttle, and I mean you can see him flex to *stand* on it, bringing to bear the unrestrained scream of two liters of fart-piped fury, the rpm limiter kicking in and out. I'm starting to think I shouldn't go home right away, on account of I don't want this guy to know where I live. At this point, God apparently became angry at me, because the light we were coming up to, side-by-side, turned red and we're the first two cars lined up. I sat there, watching Taureses and F-150's and Hyundas shrewdly creep through the rain-soaked intersection for a full minute, while this guy revved his poor car over and over next to me. "Brimmmmmm buhhhhhh, Brimmmmmm buhhhhhh, Brimmmmmm buhhhhhh, Brimmmmmm buhhhhhh, Brimmmmmm buhhhhhh". It was a long minute, and I was the whole time trying to remember where all the heavy portable objects were in the cockpit without actually looking to my right. Ultimately, the light for the cross-lane turned yellow. "I'll just take off normally, and he'll get bored and go away," I kept saying to myself, so I ever-so-slowly depressed the clutch and pushed it into 1st. My light turned green, and I just as slowly began to release the clutch... ...and the guy went berserk. He dropped the clutch, straight dropped it 'clunk', throttle floored and, as you might expect, nothing much happened. One of his front tires started to spin on the soaked asphalt, scrabbling for traction that just wasn't there, and he just sat, tire spinning, creeping forward at perhaps a foot a second. A little bit of tire smoke accompanied the show, but that was all. I took off cautiously, 'cause it was pouring, and made it perhaps 500 feet before I noticed he had finally started moving, possibly having learned that traction can sometimes be gained by letting off the throttle, not pushing it down even harder. I was just about to my street, a left turn, so I put on the turn signal and brakes and pulled it to a stop waiting for oncoming traffic to clear, when the guy, likely frothing by now, passed me at maybe 60 (in a 35) half way into my lane, missing my car by a couple of inches - I felt the Z rock from the wind of his car passing. That kind of pissed me off, and I considered following him and getting his plate, but it was late and I wanted to take a nap. Not very heroic or anything, but the nap can sometimes be the most important part of the day.

I've had both T-5's and T56's in my '72, the former behind a 327, the latter a 350. I'd recommend either tranny, but the T-5 is a bit easier to install the the T56 because of its' compact size, its' straightforward bellhousing/clutch arrangement, as well as the excellent documentation in the JTR manual. The great advantage of the manuals is, of course, their greater feeling of control over the vehicle, as well as their moderately greater economy. Sports cars, after all, have a stick. However, with the beast that is a Hybrid Z, all those gears aren't really necessary to get into the "peak power" range - you're in it all the time. And, to tell you the truth, one's left leg can get a bit tired pumping that pedal up and down in stop-and-go traffic. Should I attempt another V8Z swap, I think I'd seriously consider an automatic.

Something else to consider when doing the engine build: the "livability" quotient. The more you mod the motor, the more you need to fiddle with it to get it right and keep it right. My 350 is in the 350/400 hp range, and is a bit on the "tightly wound" side. Tuning the ECM is a complex and seemingly never-ending job. It's not undriveable, or even unpleasant to drive, in fact just the opposite; but it's fatiguing going back and forth to work, to the grocery store, to the barber, in the heat, in the rain. It's great to have a powerful car, but it should be built in such a way that you can ignore it when you please. Also: my experience has been that factory anything is more reliable that aftermarket items. Headers, fuel pumps, injectors; factory stuff may not make the most power, but they work when you need them to. More fun cutting an apex than reinstalling some gasket for the ninth time. To me, that's the greatest advantage of the new V8's: they don't make the most power, but they make very good power in near-stock trim. If you don't trust it to get you home, you won't take if far, or often.

If you navigate "up" one level to the "Cars & Trucks" forum, then search on "240", you'll see several Z's for sale, including a nice '70 in my home town. Are they suddenly becoming uncool in NorCal?

So what's it like? Power, torque, smoothness, economy?

Les, I considered just that solution. Problem: getting something with a quart-ish capacity into the tank and fastening it securely. The largest opening in a 240 tank is the fueling inlet, which is, I dunno, about 2"? Doesn't allow much room to maneuver. If you're willing to take a can opener to the tank it's no problem, but that "reassembly via welding" thing is a problem, at least for me.

This is a worthwhile idea. What might the initial topics be? Perhaps each forum could have one or more "Wiki" posts as stickies. No special formatting or anything (don't want to burn up mods implementing it), but limited access to the final product. There would need to be some "standardized" format, no? And somebody would have ultimately be responsible for inserting new information into the article in some structured manner? A check and review process? How about this: somebody writes an article. It's posted as a "candidate" in the appropriate forum, perhaps simply with the word "candidate" in the title. There are already a couple of existing posts around that would be perfect. Forum members will respond to the article for accuracy, inclusion, grammar, whatever - and you *know* people will respond. The original poster is then responsible for updating the article to reflect changes as required. Perhaps all the "critique" posts are deleted at this time, to simplify the process. This cycle continues until such time as the mod of that forum determines that the article has reached critical mass, at which point it is stickied with the work "Wiki" in the title. I don't know how or by whom changes would be made from that point on, as I don't know how the permissions work in the vBulletin software, that's up to the mods. The idea is that we minimize the load on the mods ('cause without their buying into it, there won't be any such thing). Thoughts? Suggestions?

Isn't there "stuff" you can pour into your tank to trap the rust and seal the interior? I want to say it's a two-part epoxy you pour in and slosh around to guarantee that it's spread evenly, then let it harden. Memory hazy, old age catching up...

"With his mower project done and feeling he needed a real challenge, Daeron's attention turned to other things that needed doing..."