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well i would buy some parts except i live on the ship and space is limited. plus i cant even have a car here anyways. not for another year or so. its kind of sad though i thought id see lots of older z's and parts for them but i have yet to see anything older than a 90's 300z. the cars here are cheep and a drivers licens and insurance are expencive so the people who can drive have the money to upgrade their cars on a normal bases. the oldest cars i see around are on the millitary base owned by americans. if i could find an old 240 in decent shape well i am here id fix it up, we do have an auto hobby shop on base. plus once i go back to the states the millitary will ship one car for me.

well its been a long time since i have been on the site. went through navy bootcamp and a few other schools and now i am on the USS Kitty Hawk in Yokosuka Japan. Im not alowed to have a car yet, since im still really low ranking. hopefully ill have one before i leave. maybe ill get a 350z. i miss working on my car. its forsale by the way so if anyone needs a parts car and live in northern cal or near san fransisco give me an e-mail (if i dont reply for a bit im probablyat sea but i cant tell ya when we are leaving or coming back). hey anyone on this site from Japan? anyone near yokosuka?

what i ment by wider power band is that even though they dont rev as high the power is more consistant, its more of an arch, with the japanese engines its more like a line. an arch is going to cover more area than a line. i dont know if that explination makes as much sense as it did in my head ill try and think of a better way to say it.

that might be true but if you compair how people treat the engines the domestics as i have seen have been treated far worse by the drivers. parts of our society tend to drive their cars into the ground and these tend to be the same parts that buy the big american trucks. all the farm trucks are prime examples. i have grown up on a farm and almost anyone i have ever met around here that works on a farm buys the american made trucks because they know they can drive them harder for longer. even though we use our vehicles to the max that we can they still hold up well, parts brake and we fix them and drive them untill they just wont drive anymore. their are more things you have to consider as well, the cost to fix the engines when they brake. when you look at performance engines the american engines even the four bangers have a wider power band and when the power is close to the same but you cover more area on a graph you will win the race.

you know i always thought it would be funny for someone to do something with a camery. when i was driving my paretns 92 camery before i got my car i was one of two camerys i have ever seen with dice in the windshield. i never thought the thing was fast but it was reliable and comfy. before i would ever touch a car like that though i would go with a big old peice of american steel. my best friend has a 1972 chevy caprice with a 400 small block. that thing halls ass when its running. wouldnt mind sticking that engine in a z.

hahahaha last time i started a post simaler to this one, someone joked about putting a Turbane in. they really just mentioned it. that would be one wicked ride. how big is that thing anyways. ok heres some more food for thought, http://www.sixstroke.com/pageone.htm I really dont understand it that well but it looks promising enough to make me want to know more. if you want to see something really crazy go to this web site. http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/turbinenuts.shtml i wasnt sure if i should laugh or cry. this one i did laugh at, looks like some honda boys finaly went with a real engine. they also talk about the ford focus with a v-8. http://www.gtplanet.net/forum/t-33520.html

another thing that domestic car makers were dealing with in the 80's is that their factorys were inferior to the japanese factorys. ever since the end of world war two we had inferior factorys. during wwII we bombed them to bits and we felt so bad that we built them brand new top of the line factorys a little bit after the end of the war. our factories had a hard time compeating with these newer factories and in the 80s the playing feilds were just starting to even out again. but by the time the factories were even the japanese had moved so far ahead in tec its all a game of catch up for us now. we will get there someday. yea dont get me wrong about bush well i dont like him or a lot of what he dose, he is our president and i will suport him as such. a lot of people dont like clinton but when you ask them why most people dont have a reason. the only thing i didnt like about clinton was that he didnt know how to control the military. but then again Bush isnt any better at that. I personaly think that if you compair iraq to Kosovo you will see that we were stupid in both but clinton knew he didnt know what he was doing so he went the safer rout and avoided using ground troops as much as posible. Bush on the other hand has no clue and so when someone gives him a plan he takes it. anyways i got way off topic. sorry about that

exactly, but it effects how the companies design their cars. here in america it would be bad for sales of some cars to say new high tech engine is more fule efficent. the selling point on the car is that it guzzles gass. it has a statment. "i can afford to fill this tank all the time". there are exceptions but for the most part it would be bad for sales to do to go to far right now. plus Bush dosnt want us to go efficent. his administration is based around keeping our economy tied closly to oil. im not talking about the iraq war. more about his constent search for oil. alaska is a prime example. plush he changed the government funded research on clean cars from what clinton had. no offense to ither president but clinton got us results when it came to efficentcy. politics plays a role in car development as well as all the other things we have already talked about.

ok this topis comes from two diffrent posts. i had one about small v12's and one about diffrent conversions. lets thing outside the box. what is something diffrent. people on this site talk a lot about v-8s, roatarys, a little on v12's. i have seen some posts on 4bangers and 6bangers. i even read about one guy who wanted to put two motercycle engines in his car, one in the front, one in the back. i had a topic almost a year ago about strange conversions. we talked about rear and mid engine swaping ideas, not only in z cars. it was a way to think "out side the box" no idea is unthinkable. what have you thought about putting in your car. what would you like to see someone put in theirs? even if its just a "it would sound cool" or "it would look funny under the hood". and dont forget how you would link it up to the wheels ither. i saw someone on this site who was building a car from scratch and had no differential. he had built a long connector from the engine in the front of the car to the transaxle in the rear. the way you conect it to the wheel is just as fun to talk about as the engine. anyone remeber what post that was in? i would love to see it again just to read about it. lets see those ideas.

i agree that gas prices have a lot to do with it, but thats not all there is to it. if you look at europe the car to family rartio is less than america (england is close but its not the same) for the most part the car is still a symbol over there. and the richer you are the biger the car and engine are. cars here follow a simaler rule just everything is already big. it just gets bigger. when you are dealing with people who want a symbol of their wealth you want to give them new gysmos things that sound good and look expensive. people want to show off and it shows in how the cars are built.

i dont know much about this ither but what i have been told is that the Urethane is going to be more durable.

thats what i was afraid of. i would love to play around with the idea some more but it just dosnt seam like what i want is available. ill have to play around with some other ideas. so for now im back to the 302 idea. the thing about that is its not compleatly unique. i want something diffrent but not a super car. any other ideas you guys can think of that would be neat?

you know i doubt anyone was really dissing any of the companys. why do we keep trying to stick up for them like someone is blatently dissing them. we all have diffrent views on what we like and what we dont. personaly i like the less complex engines. i think that when we make something more complex than it needs to be its just asking for problems. im not saying that high tec is bad, but sometimes they go overboard on new engines just to make them look good. i would rather have a time tested and proven v-8 than a new "high tec" four. Eventualy these new techs will be proven. when they are i wouldnt be supprised to see some V-8s with them. it might not be the people designing the engines who are holding the designs back but more the companies unwillingness to except change. the market for the Japanese cars requires them to be more willing to change so that their product is diffrent than the american cars. im not saying that any one company is the better for it but they both still sell cars, go figure they are doing something right.

i dont know, seams like a really good engine but it has way tomany electrical parts. they made it more complicated than it really needs to be. the electric throtle control is what did it for me. just my two cents.

hey this is a little off topic but what else are you plaing on doing to cut weight? other than the normal stuff that is.

hey dot I have been watching those posts. they talk about bigger engines though. i think before i went with a v-12 of that size i would go with a v-8 that was close to the same displacment. the reason i say that is the length of the enigne. even a small v-12 would probably be longer than a 5.0 v-8. i just like the idea of a small v12. it would give a really nice sound and would be very diffrent from other cars. if i put in the time to do a conversion i want my car to be very unique. thats not to say that im looking to be super fast of super powerful, just fun.

you know this brings to mind a story. i know this guy who was once working on busting out some concrete with the door closed. someone walked in and asked what he was thinking not wearing a mask and he looked at the guy pointed at his cigaret and said "filter". the other guy closed the door and started to laugh like crazy. god i have some stupid friends. but they are good friends

yea what he said. ^ not only can it cause canser, but it it will kinda cut up the lungs, the left overs from sanding the stuff are sharp..... fiber "glass" avoid splinters they are anoying. if you have never worked with the stuff read a book or do some research before you work with it, and read the instructions that come with them. you know the ones that normaly say things like, "use in a well ventilated area". just be safe.

the only think about using felt or sweater stuff with the epoxy insted of the fiber glass is that it will be more flimsy. the good thing is though if you hit it by accident you shouldnt get those nasty crack lines like you would with thin fiber glass parts. if you do this there are a few helpfull hints. just like with fiberglass work you will want to sqidgy out the extra resin. if you have to much it will not be as strong and will be uneven. i would recomend if you try to do this, sand it after it hardens, find some good paint and paint over it, because the epoxy will not have an even texture unless you did a very good job with the sqidgy. plus some peoples skin is sensitive to the epoxy.

i want some......i think thats all i wanted to say.

hey i liked what moridin2004 said, not all four bangers are the same. you can find some that make nice power. dont get me wrong im a big engine kinda guy but i dont dis the little guys to much. my good friend is obsessed with his ford focus and well i still try to convince him of the folly of his ways i have to admit it has some nice low end power. takes off fast. he hasnt done much to it ither. i still say my car could beat it even with the tranny problems im having but its a nice powerful paper weight. as for them being lighter, well yea they would be lighter most of the time. they are four bangers not six or eight or ten or twelve but if you get a big enough four its going to be heaver than a small eight. i have seen lots of guys on here with 302 fords that weigh less than the l6. funny that.

ok i took a look at very old engines. Cadillac, Packard, Lincoln, Rolls-Royce all made v12s at some point. im trying to find info on them toothe only one i have so far is a cadillac and it was big i think, something like 6 liters. can anyone think of any others?

i wish i had seen the show but what your talking about sounds a lot like epoxy resin. that stuff is fun to work with and very simple. you can use it on almost anything if you mix it right. i made a kayak once with a wood frame some canvas streached over it and then just painted it with the epoxy. worked really well. any other ideas what he is talking about? felt might work really well with the epoxy because it would absorb it, causing the hole thing to harden not just the top layer. thats a great idea, i might have to look into it some more.

ok first of all that walnut dash......wow is all i can say. that inspires me to do bigger better things. not gona try anything like that though. little to much. the yellow dash is nice but not really my style. looks like it was done nice though. the silver dash is very nicely done as well and gives me some hope for my dash idea. i love the photos guys. thanks a bunch for the input.

actually my idea was not to put an f-1 engine in the car. i was only talking about a small displacment v12 and the f-1 cars were the closest thing i could find to what i was looking for. what i was asking was if anyone knew something very close in size like in the 3 liter range, if its out there it would be cool. yea i have seen the ferrari one, but is there anything else out there. im not crazy enough to put that 600ci in it or the f-1 engine. im just brain storming here and finding any info i can on what ever is close. as for the ford V12 question, i call it a ford because thats what i searched for and i found the BRM P153 made in 1970 i think, i dont know if it is actually ford or just something strange in the search. really cool engine though, probably more than i would ever be able to handle.