Mack

I put 500 miles a week on my car, and that was around town driving. no problems. even got 22mpg. cruising, pulling a trailer with rims and a lot of crap on it, I averaged 25mpg over a 4000 mile trip this summer. Fargo to Phoenix to MSA to Modesto to Oregon to Fargo. not a problem. half the trip was with stock FI, the other half with MS&S_E, running spark as well. the motor is close to stock-ish. L28 flat-top block with a mildly ported Maxima N47 head. portmatched and cleaned intake, 60mm TB, and a 2.5" where the cat SHOULD be back exhaust. granted, its no 350HP, but it REALLY wakes the ole L28 up. and I havent had ANY reliability issues once I got MS&S_E sorted.

oh, but I hve a VG30DE!! would have to be custom anyway. as far as the KA goes, I know ghow much of a pain in the ass it is!! I put a 240SX KA into a 4wd hardbody that already had a KA in it!! never again! teh blocks are different as well as the oil pans and the SX KA has a girdle on it as well, which the truck KA doesnt. Anyway, I know a guy here locally that has turbod some interesting vehicles. VR6 VWs, tegs, corados, audis. he can make it fit. I already have a VG30E that came out of a 4wd pathy (blew a timing belt) so, I have the 4wd pan and both E and DE VGs are girlded. I think I will go to the junkyard friday and take a tape measure with me and a note pad.

yes, but there is a difference between AWD and 4WD, thats why I want the skyline trans. Ill have to look at teh 4wd frame and 2wd frames some more, I didnt think there was that much of a difference as Ive had both, but never really took a long hard look at it. and I wouldnt put an SR in it, a DOHC KA can make 300 to 350rwhp on stock internals and have a LOT more torque than an SR at similar power levels. I ws just considering the VG because I already have it and its not going to get used for prettymuch anything else. would make lots of torque and lots of HP with a small T3 or even a hybrid.

I came across a 2wd 1990 hardbody pickup for $350. runs and drives, just has a bad leaf spring. got to thinking.... Ive got a spare VG30DE with harness out of a J30. Seems as though people basically throw away skyline AWD transmissions because to us, they are useless.... arent the early R32 AWD 5spds the same as a VG30DE(TT) 300zx 5spd? put an R200 VLSD carrier up front and get a pathfinder LSD R233 rear..... could be a wicked street machine. if I went to a U-pull-it, I could get all of the front suspension and crap for the 4wd for $100 MAYBE $200. stick a single turbo on the VG and have a little fun. think its feasible?

+1 for megasquirt. I havent looked back since installing it on my 280ZX.

Ive looked into a few swaps and it seems that the KA24DE would be a great swap. very identical to the L engine swap, they are everywhere and they are still dirt cheap. check out 311s.org for a lot of info and know-how. also, CA18DETs seem to be a great swap.

where are you oging to college at? I found quite a few in the sub $1000 range. some as low as $500. car-part.com is your freind!

oh sorry!! misread your post. yeah you could use the LD28 rods and an L28 crank and custom pistons. I beleive the LD has 1" wrist pins. you could get them bushed for smaller pins and custom pistons and you would have the perfect 1.75:1 rod:stoke ratio. there have been rumors of people using L20B rods in L28 blocks with LD28 and L28 cranks. thats one SHORT compression height!

you can think of the X as meaning luxury. I wish they had different OPTIONS packages. like offering a 350Z and a 350ZX. that wold make sense. to make a coutnerpoint ot the point I just made, for the first 2 years, you could get a 280ZX as a stripper. no power options, manual steering, no AC, nothing. Me thinks it would actually out-perform a 280Z. the ZX was actually a little bit lighter (with similar options) than the outgoing 280Z. and it was QUITE a bit stiffer and more structurally sound.

If you are worried about it, you could always go for a VH41DE, I hear they are a few inches narrower. they came in what, 95+ Qs?

tons of misinformation going around already, and this thread is only a few posts long. first of all, the LD28 rod is only 140mm long, and only weighs 80 grams more than an L28 rod. EDIT: might have been L24 rods we weighed it against, cant remember. 80 grams aint crap tho. IF you were goign to do it, and go all the way and get FORGED, CUSTOM pistons. Use the LD28 crank and block and get uyourself some longer L20B rods, or maybe even Z20E or Z20S rods. as long as you are using the 19+mm higher deck of the LD28 and you are going complete custom, may as well go all out. You can find some of those older 4 cyl rods on 510 sites for DIRT cheap. for the sake of arguement, the LD28 piston has a 46mm (me thinks) pin height, while a regular L28 has a 38.1mm pin height. If you went with an LD28 block and crank, then got some Z20E roids, a custom piston with a 33.5mm pin height, you would have a motor with a rod/stroke ratio of about 1.83:1.

That looks good! a step in the right direction! still doesnt solve the problems of the stupid small runners tho.

hate to break it to you, but its not going to flow THAT much better than stock if you are using a stock EFI intake. sure, you can clean up the runners and intake tracts on the head to make the air flow smoother, but all in all, its still getting sucked through a 32mm intake runner. MAJOR bottleneck. the work looks good tho! just get yourself a lonewolf intake and you will be set!

the 83 doesnt, but all maximas and 300ZXs share this trait. I have a 300ZX disc in my 83 dizzy and it seems to run just fine. what I am wondering is if there is a way to use this to run a coil on plug set-up or possibly for sequential injection later on when the router board gets up and running. Can the wheel decoder decode that longer slot to mean #1 cylinder?

My runners vary by less than 1/8th of an inch between longest and shortest. thats less than a 2% variance, which is easily tunable with different length air horns. I think I am actually goint to put my injectors right after the TBs. Id like to see how all of these different ITB set-ups turn out! should be interesting.

those are the same TBs 1 fast Z uses. they are 46mm I beleive. the TB on the intake in my pic is a twin 40mm unit and there are twin 50mm units out there that look almost exactly like mine. Im only foing with 40mms as my car is only a fast street machine with the occasional autoX.

are you talking about bubbles? doesnt his car run high 13's on RACE GAS? as far as intakes and ITBs and what not, there are readily available twin mounted 50MM TBs in junkyards all over the place. you just have to know what ot look for. here is a pic of my manifold. not complete yet, but you get the idea.

I dont know what to tell you, man! just wait to hear back from RS about your box, I guess. Im probably one of those people you refer to as "half assing" things. Although, I actually am fairly computer freindly and have experience with electronics, wiring and soldering. I built a v3.0 board for myself and installed it on my L28E with about 11.25:1 c/r. I was running the VB921 for ignition control until I fried it from improper dwell settings (75% duty cycle, OOPS!) then I ran a GM HEI and let me tell you, those are CRAP! finally I found a nifty little ignitor from an 85 to 94 maxima with the VG30E in it. wired it in and Ive been running it since about june-ish? other than the VB921, I had some minor problems for about a week before I got it smoothed out. just minor things like non resistor plugs, TPS wired wrong, no AIT sensor hooked up because SOMEONE told me it doesnt matter, well when the MS thinks the outside air is always -40, it tends to run a litttle rich. anyway, I used a stock harness I had laying around, so its getting power from all the stock sources, I have a crap-tacular autozone alternator, so I dont understand all the voltage reset issues people are having.... The MS itself resides in the stock ECU location. Ive been running MS&S_E since june. Ive driven cross country and I deliver pizzas with my car, working 40hrs a week. the miles add up. keep at it, its probably something stupid that was overlooked. MS is worth the toruble.

or you can get a maxima N47 head and have plenty of CR to go around. look into some Z series 4 cylinder pistons for a little shorter deck height and some wird bore sizes.

I just use the stock cylinder head temp sensor. use easy therm to configure MS&SE for it. although its not that far off from the GM unit.

actuallyl, the Z31 woudlnt require tht much modding to get a VG twin cam in there. they came stock in japan in the 88 model years. it was called a 300ZR. it had a VG30DET, single turbo. that would be the engine to get if I were you. The VG30ET is a good engine no doubt, but the DE/TT IS that much better. stronger everything and also capable of 2000 more RPM of usable powerband. but then what do I knwo, Im an I6 guy just jumping around forums!

I ws putzing at the junkyard the other day and ran across a chrysler 2.2L turbo with the roller rocker arms and found myself thinking "I wonder what it would take to convert it to an L head" then I remembered that you won a set off of Ebay a while back. just curious about the results.....

I think what Bernardd is trying to say is that you CAN'T retard the timing using the stock dist. its a one way thing. it only advances and to my knowledge, no one has made it retard instead of advance. with the old school carbd turbo set-ups, they didnt have to worry about ign retard because none of them ran more than about 7psi of boost, to the best of my knowledge. also, there is no such thing as pre-detonation. its either detonation (which is livable to some degree) or pre-ignition, which will hole pistons and kill motors in VERY short order. and about the SC vs TC thing, boost is boost. SC's heat up just as much as TC's. the only reason an SC map looks like an NA one is because there is no sudden onset of boost. If you had a turbo that spooled at idle, it would look like an NA map as well.

What does the distributor look like inside? when you pop the cap off and pop the cover off of the CAS chopper wheel, does it have 360 slits around the outside ring and 4 little slits on the inside ring? If it looks like a 280ZX wheel except having 4 slits where teh ZX wheel ahs 6, just use that 4 slit inner wheel and be done with it. wire it up EXACTLY like Mobys set-up and you should be good to go.

good catch! Id be intrested in those rims if shipping to MN wouldnt cost me an arm and a leg! HOLY CRAP! just noticed!! its a 5spd too!! NIIIIICE!