strotter

In the 2/11/06 Stockton Record: DATSUN 1973 260Z Not running. Asking $500. 209-463-3516 or 209-598-4063

Dan's car is the one I was referring to in my previous post. My Z runs mid-12's. My brother had a GT-350 that ran low 11's. My friend Adam had a 69 GTO that could break its' tires loose on the freeway going the speed limit. Another friend of mine had an El Camino that was banned at every track in the central valley 'cause he had no cage (didn't like the "look") and ran low 10's. I've driven all these cars, and yes, Dan's little Z startled and impressed me. No, it wasn't *scary* fast, but it was right good fun and would handily whip most any stock car you're likely to see, as well as many beefed-up ones.

To go against the grain here, I'll have to say I agree with the JTR "Fuel Injected motor swapping" book. 305's, though not as powerful as 350's, move a little Z along quite nicely. Stock they idle like silk, are easy to maintain, are quite economical, and the parts are easily available. Also, you won't have to modify your ECU for a stock motor. I've ridden in a dead-stock 305-powered Z that startled me it was so sharp.

With the JTR-type mounts, no, you don't have to cut anything off. However, you'll need to "persuade" the area around the bellhousing.

Has anybody here gotten "Is that a Porsche?"

Seriously, if California had more liberal smog laws - that is, if I could do a swap into a post-'73 car, this is kind of thing I'd *love* to try.

It's much more pleasant to drive the project car down to the parts store than it is to drive something else. Also, I had *far* more fun conversations with people while driving my "project" than I do now in my "car", if you know what I mean. A vehicle that is clearly "in progress" is an open invitation to people to stop, comment, interact a little bit. One afternoon at Kragen a couple of years ago, I spent an hour with a couple of guys, answering questions, rolling around on the ground under the car, drawing diagrams; it was great. I still get complements now and again, but no more Q & A sessions. As an aside, I got the car rolling in about 6 months, but 4 of those was bodywork and painting. It's *still* a project, though; recently installed a Holley StealthRam and a new ECU, so now I have to write some software for my Mac so I don't have to use the cheapo Toshiba to datalog, so I had to learn modern Object Oriented Programming, so I'm thinking about taking a class. Mission creep? Maybe...

"It does naught-to-sixty in two and a half seconds - that's "now" to "now"... "I mean, it has two, four-liter v-8 engines, joined together, to make a W-16..." "...and they've given it *four* turbochargers." "...and the result is one ... thousand ... horsepower ..." "sadly, they have had to limit the top speed to two hundred ... and, um, fifty two ... miles per hour ..." "It's not so much a "throttle" my foot's on, it's a Hyperspace button..."

Another thing to check: did you replace the little bracket with the timing marks on it? This one got me, turns out there are a couple of version with 12° (I believe) difference between them - early and late styles. 12° off on your timing may cause those symptoms.

Actually that's fairly cool - how much is 4,500 yen?

Rather than a "featured ride" - which implies something showey - how about something more tech oriented, a "featured install", or something like that. I've never been terribly impressed by fancy paint-jobs or lots of chrome, but I get a little mechano-woody when I see a beautifully fabricated component, or a really perfect component install, or something adapted from something else. Just a thought.

HybridZ forum - Drove the V8 Z for the first time today - ran 6.74 @ 198. Anyone here with experience installing turbos?

I've been using mine for the daily commute on-and-off for a couple of years now. Down-time is mostly for improvement procedures, 'cause I'm quicker at repairing things than modifying/installing things (I kind of like to "linger" over them, sit and stare at stuff for long periods of time, go in and check my reference books and the web for examples, things like that). That said, I've been through 3 trannys and 2 engines, most of that in the first year. Currently it's down due to the installation of a new intake and ECM. When I'm driving around, I'm always thinking about things I need to improve or change, or ways I can make it more contemporary. It can be distracting. And of course, whenever you drive a vehicle you've worked on, you tend to be hypersensitive to any little noise or bump or creak: though I have a fairly decent audio system installed, I seldom use it 'cause I'm listening for bad mechanical sounds. That said, there's no feeling like driving around something almost entirely your creation: I've never gotten a big grin and thumbs-up in the Dodge.

I can speak up for Dan J here - he took me for a little "calibration" drive in his ever-so-pimp Z, and I can tell you for sure it's no slouch - he had to be real careful with the clutch off the line, and then the thing barked so hard going into 2nd I thought we were going to get sideways, and finally a little "woof" going into 3rd. Remember the *tires* he's got on that thing, you'll be impressed. Torque on that thing (a dead-stock '90 5.0 but for headers and smog delete) was really impressive in that teeny tiny Z. Mine's quicker (a mildly-modified 5.7) but the 305 torque thing is just stupid good fun. I'm sure most of it can be attributed to the TPI, but undersquare bore/stroke has its' advantages, too. Also, it idles like butter (buttah?), which is something I've come to appreciate ('cause mine don't). Boat-anchor, no, definitely. Different from a 5.7, certainly.

Wisk. A truly great degreaser. However, DO NOT have any open wounds, even teeny tiny ones.

Good to be you, man.

The "energy problem" is an interesting one for a number of reasons - not the least of which are political. There was an interesting NOVA (or Frontline?) on last year about energy use worldwide: some of the talking points I took away from it were: 1. The world currently consumes about 5 terrawatts of energy in all forms, including fossil, hydro, nuclear, etc. That number is expected to double in the next 15 years or so (China & India becoming more prosperous, etc etc). And, 80% of *that* is used by 1/4th of the population. 2. Petroleum supplies are expected to satisfy worldwide consumption for at least the next 35+ years, at current and projected growth rates. However, that doesn't mean it's *cheap* petroleum; it's just "available". 3. Coal can be liquified to a form roughly equivalent to gasoline, and fairly economically, too (roughly twice the cost of petroleum? Something like that...). However, the process is dirty (both environmentally and physically) and involves strip mining at a never-before-seen scale. However, there's lots of coal in North America & Europe. 4. You can forget wind farms and solar panels - though they can potentially provide significant amounts of electricity on windy and/or sunny days, you can't store the power, nor can you transmit it very far; therefore you have to have enough "backup" generation capacity to handle the entire grid when the "clean" sources are offline. Do-able in theory and from an engineering standpoint, but unreasonable from an economic standpoint. (A variant, albeit an expensive one, is orbital solar collectors; they can be very large (like miles...), and are online 24/7 and require almost no maintenance once active. But the money, the money...) 5. Nuclear power is not a happy solution, either: besides the problem of handling the waste (which isn't as big a problem as some say, though not trivial, either), there isn't that much uranium in the world, certainly not enough to make a significant dent; this in turn means you need to use plutonium (which you can make for free, in a reactor: weird, huh?), which is fine for a reactor and makes lots of clean power. HOWEVER, powerplant-grade plutonium is by definition weapons-grade plutonium, meaning potential bombs. So, to satisfy the needs of everyone you're going to need tens of thousands of reactors worldwide, with different qualities of security, while simultaneously there are lots of people that'll want to build something different with this material - a "political" problem. 6. Research on nuclear fusion has been cut to virtually nothing in the U.S., mostly because the public doesn't understand the difference between "fusion" and "fission". Also, we've been working on it for fifty years and haven't got it working, so for sure it can *never* be done. (However, the Europeans at CERN are having some interesting results with their magnetic-bottle "pinch" test reactors; looks like they may crack the problem here in a couple of years). If someone can figure out affordable fusion, they'll Rule the World with and Iron Fist. 7. The economies of high-energy-consuming economies are uniquely sensitive to energy costs; it's one of those things that affect (effect?) virtually every aspect of production, transportation, and manufacture. Relatively small increases in the cost of energy have disproportionate effects on the economy. The Arab oil embargo is a good example; a relatively small, short-term increase in petroleum prices (though larger than the increases we have recently seen) triggered a recession that lasted through the rest of the '70's, changed how business was done (and with whom), enabled the ascendency of the Japanese as a significant manufacturer in the U.S.A., so on. As a result, changes in so important a part of the economy need to be glacially slow, giving the economy time to adjust and adapt to changes. This in turn means that those in a position to actually do something about it have to implement changes years before actually necessary - or at least lay the groundwork. Politically, this is difficult at best. Imagine the outcry if the President of the United States announced a $1.00/gallon tax on fuel, the money to be used to research, say, room-temperature-long-distance superconductors for efficiently transporting energy from source to demand, and creating the associated infrastructure; they would be impeached in a matter of minutes. Such things would have to be done almost surreptitiously. People simply aren't willing to spend a dollar to save their children two. Overall, it was a fairly depressing episode.

Perhaps they gave her that job because she's used to carrying bombs around...

I did the same thing as qwik240z - the main problem was the hoses, but once I found a shop to do that work, all came together nicely. I *did* manage to build in a leak somewhere, though, so it worked for three days then quit - but chasing down problems like that are part and parcel for any kind of custom installation. The Honda fan, though, isn't all that ... it's an improvement, but that's all. Not "Katrina power" or anything.

With regards to the rear disk conversions: What will be the status of the parking brakes with the different swaps?

Here's hoping he makes a full recovery.

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You may be able to get a lot of answers from the computer itself. 1st: What computer? TBI could be a '7747 or '8746 or other... 2nd: What error is it giving when the light comes on? (short some of the wires on the ALDL output to get the error codes). 3rd: If you have access to a laptop (ideally an older one with a serial port, but a more modern one with USB will work too), you can fabricate a cable to read the ALDL data out of your computer for about $5.00, then read the data with some free software (such as WinALDL, http://web.telia.com/~u60113744/software/winaldl/winaldl.htm) or others, depending on what ECU you have. 4th: You may have a hardware problem with a sensor, some wiring, or the IAC. You can check the IAC by unscrewing it (with key off), grounding the body of it, and turning the key on. It'll go through it's startup sequence if it's OK, sit quiet if it's dead. Plenty of other computer-ish things could go wrong too, of course. I'm assuming there's no vacuum leaks or mechanical problems.

The E=mc^2 form is for when the object/particle is at rest; the more general form is E^2 = p^2*c^2 + (m*c^2)^2 (the "energy-momentum relation) for arbitrary velocity. The definition of "total energy" is E = rho*m*c^2 = K + m*c^2. The first is the one that really shows mass as energy (and versa-visa). The "energy-mass equivalence" form is E = (m*c^2)/?(1-(u^2/c^2)). Is that the one you're talking about?

And *I* am happy to report a vortec-headed-conventionally-aspirated 350 with T-56 and 3.36 rearend I got 28.9 mpg (once) while cruising in 75-85 mph traffic on the freeway, including a couple of spirited moments when a 300ZX was next to me (briefly). Fuel control by Holley 670 TBI & 7747 computer, highway mode disabled. HP in the mid-300's, 1/4-mile 12.96 @ 109 as reported by my little G-Tech. (Yes, I'm burning up my tires in 1st. Sue me). However, around town and on my daily drive to work (which is mostly country secondary roads with lots of intersection stops) I have only once gotten even 15 mpg, and doing so involved my driving - well, OK, I'll say it, FIFTY-FIVE MILES PER HOUR for several days in a row. SEVERAL DAYS! AARGH! This is driving me nuts as I, too, am trying to at least match the L24's economy (in the high teens for this same drive). I'm installing a Stealth Ram here in the near future, which (along with a '7730 computer) will give me considerably greater control over my tune. About the aerodynamics of the Z: you've noticed, of course, that the thing is a barn door at speed, haven't you? I mean, pull it up to 80 and clutch it and you'll be going a legal-fast right quick. It's like the emergency brake is pulled all of sudden. My Dodge Intrepid will, if thrown into neutral at the same speed, coast from here to L.A. and back. Aerodynamics 1960s vs 1990, no contest.