Mack

Is that a KA head on an L4? Did you end up finding the 18 tooth gear that almost fits on the crank snout or did you make your own?

Could you not just swap in an entire S130 rear cross member, complete with axles, diff, hubs, arms, all that crap? I am sure you could find someone parting out a 280ZX and just snag the whole damn thing for CHEAP. I would go R200 IF the guy is planning on running more power in the future, especially with the maxima weighing more than the 280ZX. How much weight difference are we talking between an R180 and an R200? 15, maybe 20lbs? Also, if he wants LSD that doesn't suck *cough* viscous *cough* (the R180 clutch types are hard to come by around here, as well as the R200 clutch types), the R200 offers the OBX quaife knock off torsen LSD upgrade for relatively cheap. oh, and all S12s are long nose R200 and R180s. The turbo variant is where all of the 4.11 long nose R200s come from! Also, an Infiniti M30 will have a long nose R200 with 4 spider gears and a 3.9 ratio, but needs slight grinding/modding to the bottom of the diff to work in a 280ZX. To the original OP: I do really like your car! I have been wanting to do a blacked out, tinted out maxima with a 280ZX turbo or RB25DET swap for some time, but those old maximas are getting REALLY hard to find nowadays! Keep up the good work with whatever route you decide to go!

A perfect example of this is Dave Henry. He is a supra (4th gen) guy from Fargo, ND. HE used to run the worlds fastest NA-T conversion, NOW, he is running a set-up with about 10.75:1 and a TON of boost on E98. He is SOLIDLY into the 8's! (like low low low 8s) He is well on his way to 7s.

Not too shabby for a free modification! I would still rather run with either an MSA airdam and stock bumper or a 280ZX G-nose.

I think if one PROPERLY built a car for E85, you would see both higher HP AND higher MPG. I have been researching it for a while on various forums and I have found people running upwards of 12.5:1 WITH 14psi of boost. If you wanted a straight N/A set up, you could run as high as 14:1 compression and still run a boat load of timing. It is a pretty sweet fuel, but to take advantage of ALL of its benefits, you need a lot of compression.

I would almost suspect either something ignition or carb related. Judging by your AFRs, notice how it follows the HP curve perfectly? I don't think you should ever go below 12.5:1, unless you are running some sort of forced induction. For an NA set up, anything lower than that will lose HP. Unless you are running E85 or something....... ALso, if you are losing a cylinder due to ignition break up, it SHOULD go rich! If there isn't any spark in one (or more) cylinders, a lot of unburnt gasoline escapes into the exhaust and probably burns inside the manifold with all the other hot exhaust gasses. If you are missing on more than one or 2 cylinders, then it would go lean, as there would be a ton of uncombusted oxygen escaping into the exhaust system, thus making it LOOK lean.

The head snapped off of the pivot. The trans that's in the car right now (the 95) was on its way out anyway. It had grinds in almost every gear, and you really had to baby it to get it NOT to grind. As I said, the trans in the parts car was completely rebuilt less than 10K ago, so I think its in my best interest to swap it anyway.

I am in the middle of pulling a trans because the clutch pivot broke within 200 miles of installing a stage 3++ south bend clutch. THe car is a 1995 300ZXTT, and I have a 1991 300ZXTT parts car with a completely rebuilt trans and a rod knock. According to car-part.com, the trans are different between 90 and 91, and 92 to 95, with 96 having their own listing as well. Is the gearing different? Diff sensors? Any idea? I would like to know this before I go ahead and rip the 91 out. thanks in advance!

I am running windows xp on an older AMD athalon 2.4ghz processor with 4 gigs of ram, I think it should be able to handle it. no dual or quad core, but still decent. I will give it a shot with the autocad! thanks! There are full coilover kits available for the S13/S14 with ride height adjustment, damper compression and rebound adjustment, as well as a whole host of spring rates. And you can find most of these kits in the sub $1000 range, hell, a lot of them in the sub $500 range. Not to mention the cheap and easy brake upgrades available for the S series spindles, such as 300zx twin turbo calipers and rotors, or if you really want I have heard a rumor that late model (B15) sentra SER brembo calipers and rotors are BOLT ON for the S series hubs as well.

Yes! Those are the ball joints I used. As far as the height comment, with the coilovers I used it doesn't matter as they are the good kind of adjustable. When you lower or raise it, the body of the shock is threaded into a sleeve that the hub bolts to, so you can keep all your pre-load no matter what height you set it to. I haven't messed around with autocad much, is there a free version you could point me to that I can play with? I am sure I could pick it up pretty easy. And, yes! I just modified the S14 (S13 and s14 stuff is the same, except the s14 rears coilovers are taller, easily fixed) top hat by re-drilling it for 3 bolts and cutting the shape to fit it into the top of the s130 strut tower. The 240sx stuff has a round top mount vs. the 280ZX flat on 2 sides top mount. I will get some pics of that later in the week.

Well, here are some pics of the adapter I made to put a maxima/stanza ball joint on the stock 280ZX control arm. The maxima/stanza ball joint has the proper angle to put 240sx hubs and thus, 240sx coilovers. the only part of the equation I haven't figured out yet is the tie rod end, as I don't think the stock on has enough threads to reach the S13 hubs safely. I am looking into Z32 and S14 stuff. The rears are easy, pretty much bolt in. All you have to do is modify the top mounts to fit in the 280ZX strut tower. I can get pics of that too if anyone wants. Also, I when running the S13/14 front hub, Z32 rotors and calipers become bolt on. There are a few more pics in my photobucket album, and I can get more if anyone needs them. Suspension bits

I will just chime in here and say that I have run a fel-pro on my 1980 280ZX with 11.5:1 compression for years and have never had a problem. I have put close to 40,000 on it since the head swap and its fine.

without work done, without a decent fuel and spark controller and some other things, I would not recommend the MN47 for the L28 block. SImply for the fact that the stock EFI and spark control doesn't have the tunability to keep detonation under control. The MN47, however, would make an excellent bolt on head for the L24. It will give you almost 10:1 compression with flat tops and a felpro head gasket as well as much better ports and combustion chamber design. Plus, you will be able to run unleaded gas without any other modifications, if you have a stock E31 or E88 on your L24. Gollum>>>> that is exactly why I swapped that head on in the first place. When I did do the swap, it was very uncommon and there was not a lot of info out there about it. But, I figured that since blocks and heads are (were) so plentiful and cheap for these cars, if I mess up something, the worst that could happen is it setting me back a couple hundred dollars and a weekend to swap the engine. That was something ridiculous like 8 years ago, and I would still be driving the car if I hadn't started taking it apart a few years back to convert the suspension over to S13 bits. and that project was severely sidelined.... eh, all in due time.

I did actually Dyno my car once, still running the stock electronics. I made 141rwhp at about 4100 to 4200 rpm, iirc. Apparently, I had a bad e1280 ignition module because the car absolutely refused to rev over 4500rpm. A friend of mine (1 fast Z) drove the car after the megasquirt conversion and he said it felt like a really solid, really low 15 sec car. Which, considering it's a 280ZX 2+2 slick top with AC and the stock 1/4 mile time is probably somewhere in the mid 17s, is no small feat for bolting on a head and megasquirt with some other BPUs. The set up consisted of an f54 flat top block, a fel-pro head gasket, a non egr 280ZX intake with injector bumps smoothed down, 60mm 240sx tb, mandrel bent where-the-cat-should-be back 2.5" exhaust and of course megasquirt, controlling spark through a 280ZXT dist with 280ZXT injectors. I have a cam (delta 280* or something close with maximum allowable valve lift on stock springs), a header, and a set of 40mm ITBs and the mn47 head is getting ported to match the intake. I plan on putting all that crap on the car this summer and having it re-dynod before I yank the engine and put in something a little more fun (like a turbo charged mercedes OM606). I hope to break into at least the 170s, maybe even 180s at the wheel. This head would make an excellent choice for a warmed over L24. We (1 fast z and I) measured the combustion chamber and it came out to be right around 39CCs. This is basically a better head than the E31. and it already has the bigger exhaust valves.

OH, myths and heresay! Depending on what sort of engine management you choose to run, the MN47 is an awesome choice for a flat top L28. I had almost all of the ping for pump gas tuned out running megasquirt with a stock cam. As I have told others, get some MILD head work done to the MN47, such as cleaning up the valve bowls and having the valves unshrouded, that will drop compression a bit and make some nice gains at the same time. KEEP the stock valve sizes, as the smaller intake valve combined with the high swirl design of the intake port and big compression gain (almost 2.5 pts!) will produce some nice down low torque numbers and street driving. It will add power UNDER the curve, where it counts on the street! If you run a cam it will lower the dynamic compression a bit and you can probably run pump gas ping free if you have a decent fuel and spark management system. I don't think I would do it with carbs and a point distributor. Another thing is that with that high of compression and that small of a combustion chamber, you won't need as much advance for optimal power as you would with a lower compression head. The flame front has less distance to travel, therefor you need less advance. I think a lot of people forget this fact when they ***** about the fact that you need to run less advance with this head to keep detonation under control. You also run less advance for optimal power. Aaaaaaaaaaand que the degeneration of this thread into an argument about quench....... (I hope not, though)

good to know there are still a few "datsons" out there making decent numbers! Very nice!

yes, the 300ZX chopper wheels have the 360/6 set-up and of the inner 6 slots, 5 are the same size and the 6th 1 for cyl #1 is about 2x as long as the others. this wheel drops right into a 280ZXT distributor.

I have an MN47 running on a flat top block and with crappy gas, it will ping. But, up here in MN, I can find 92 octane all day long and 93 if I really want it, is at a few select stations. I am running megasquirt n spark, so I have been able to tune MOST of the ping out, but some still remains on lower quality gas. This is all done with a stock cam (well, a 260z 256 degree cam anyway) and stock intake/exhaust manifolds. There was mild clean up work done to the valve bowls and also port matching and shaving of the injector bumps at the end of the intake runners. I have a 40mm itb set up in the works with 40mm runners all the way to the head and also a delta regrind that will be going in this summer. That should put an end to the ping, and I would imagine I will probably break or at least get very close to the 200rwhp barrier. As it sits now, the car is a low 15 sec car and the engine is in a STOCK 1980 280ZX 2+2 slick top. So, the car is no lightweight and the engine is probably pushing around 150 to 160rwhp and a boat load of low end torque due to the smaller MN47 intake valves. LOTS of velocity.

I bet that thing makes some neat noises!

the maxima n47 head has a 39cc chamber. flat top pistons have no dish (obviously) and actually have a positive deck clearance of .016" which is actually a 2.3cc DOME, and when you account for the head gasket space, you get an extra 6ccs of chamber volume, then take 459cc, which is the swept volume of each cylinder, add 39 and 6, but subtract 2.3 for the piston dome, to it to get a total of 501.7cc, then divide that by 42.7cc (the 39cc chamber plus the 6cc for the head gasket, minus the 2.3cc for the piston dome.) and voila! 11.75:1 compression ratio!

The Maxima N47 head will put your compression ratio OVER 11.5:1 on an F54 flat top block. ask me how I know! I was running this combo in a 280ZX 2+2 with a 260Z C stamp cam and megasquirt for quite a while. there would be some ping on some days, but it was only under full throttle and it really depended on the brand of gas I filled up with that week. I will probably be pulling the head off of the block in the next few months and see what kind of damage (if any) was actually done to the combustion chamber/piston tops. Plus, the maxima head with its smaller intake valves (higher port velocity) and super high compression makes for some nifty low end torque gains!

I had an E12-80 ignition module go bad on my 1980 280ZX once. It ran fine below 4100, and above it, it would cut out on cylinders, bog down and run like crap until its self imposed redline of around 4500. Also, check the distributor for wobble, as the bushings may have gone out and the rotor my be contacting the inside of the cap at high(ish) rpm.