Z-TARD

I plan on doing the same installation on my 72. Has anyone tried making a molded fiberglass tub to mount the fuel cell in? I would be pretty easy to put some mold release on the fuel cell and cover it with cloth and resin to make a really tight fitting tub. Would be a lot lighter than steel too.

There are a few Audi 5000's in the junkyard that I've been checking out. I've read that some of the GT-40 replicas have been using these transaxles. If I can find a way to mate it to the Jag engine I should be good to go. May have to wait for tax return time before I jump into any more projects though, having limited resources is pooh pooh.

Looks like my Jag V-12 swap has to be "re-thunk". Went back to AZ for new years and had a chance to take some measurements on the Z, I think the engine is just a little to big to fit without getting into serious sheetmetal modifications. I'm seriously considering doing a Toyota Supra I-6 swap now. The junkyard I've come to know as a second home has a fair amount of mid 80's early 90's supras sitting around, a few of them have turbos as well. Seems like it could be a fairly "bolt in" operation, and would have serious HP potential. Now I have the dilema of finding a home for the V-12, I'm thinking scratchbuilt kit car maybe. Either a Jag XJ-13 or TVR Speed 12 semi-replica-mod-thingy. I'll have to start looking for trans-axles now......

Cool website, I love that Jag XJ-13. I'm thinking of scratchbuilding one to put my Jag V-12 engine into, as it looks as though it wont fit into my 240 Z. Major drawback of having the car in AZ and going shopping for powerplants in San Diego. Good luck on the GTO Dale

I'm going with the absolute minimum on this engine, alternator only. I'm going to attempt to replace the original starter with a gear reduction unit. I'm going to modify a Toyota Supra 5 speed tranny to fit up to the engine, I'll just make it fit a new starter while I'm at it. I suppose I could throw it back in the truck and go drive over some scales, I think there are some at the landfill out here. My freinds ford ranger barked like a herniated mule when we hauled it home from the junkyard, dont know if I want to try that again. Should be a good indication of the weight of the engine though: Really friggin heavy. I think I'll just end up weighing each part as I tear down the engine, just add up the weights later.

I'm still at the beginning stages, so no pictures worth posting yet. Once I start fabricating intake and exhaust parts for the motor I'll try to get some pics posted. The engine is going into my '72 240 Z, should make for an interesting conversion. I'll make drawings for all the parts I have to fab, just on the off chance that somone else will want to do a Jag conversion. The cost of the motor was $189.00 from a junkyard, The internals look good enough to run without a rebuild, although I'm going to probably do one anyway since its already on a stand. I think by using modified parts from domestic engines and by fabricating a lot of my own parts I can keep the costs within reasonable limits.

Found a cool website for anyone who has a thing for the Shelby Daytona Coupes and ever wanted to build one in their garage. Check this out, http://members.aol.com/COUPECHUCK/index.htm I hope this works, I had a hard time finding this site.

Wow, 680 lbs was alittle more than I was expecting, I wonder if that figure includes the starter (40 lbs approx) or fuel injection (I'm guessing about 20 lbs heavier than carbs for the stock Jag setup). I'm sure I can find ways to shed some weight from this thing, It will never be as light as a ford or chevy though. The weight will also be further forward in the chassis and slightly higher above C/G due to the OHC. As long as traveling from point "A" to point "B" occurs along a fairly straight line, no problem.

No, havent had a chance to weigh it yet. Where would I be able to find a scale that would handle 500 or 600 lbs? I'm guessing right now that it has to be well over 500 lbs. Trying to lift it by hand causes you to make that "Hernia Warning" noise from somewhere deep in your gut. I realize that building this car for autocross is out of the question, unless I butcher the firewall and set the engine back about a foot or so. I suppose I could mount cupholders on the rear of each cylider head..... I'm really going for more of a "whoa, cool" factor than anything else right now. As long as it hauls ass on the freeway I think I'll be happy.

Found a way to reduce the weight of my Jag V-12 by about 20 pounds or so. Bought a gazillion cans of engine degreaser and carb cleaner, various bristle brushes. After two days of scrubbing, spraying, scrubbing, spraying, scrubbing, cussing, spraying, I have managed to remove about 20 pounds of caked on sludge and grit from the outside of the block. Managed to strip most of the paint off of my engine hoist as well. Finally starting to look like an engine instead of an ashtray now.

Thanks Lone, I took the bell housing from the BW automatic in the Jag, I may be able to section it and weld it to the toyota bellhousing to make it work, or I might be able to fab some kind of adapter plate out of .25" steel. I'll have to modify the toyota flywheel to fit on the Jag crank too, should be interesting. Frankentranny. I'm still positive I can make everything fit, although the V-12 looks much larger now than it did when it was still in the car. This thing should fill just about every inch of usable space in the Z engine bay.

Anyone here have experience with Toyota transmissions? I'm wondering how much HP and torque a stock 5 speed from a mid 80's early 90's Supra will handle. I'm considering using one behind the Jaguar 5.3 V-12 that I'm going to shoehorn into my '72 240 Z. The engine in stock form produces approx 280 HP 295 Ft Lb of torque, I plan on raising that to somewhere over 300 HP if I can. Any help would be appreciated.

Picked up the engine this weekend, dont ever want to do that again. Jaguar definetly did not design these things to come out easily, I had a lot of problems getting the exhaust on the drivers side off. In hindsight, a torch or sawzall would be the best way to remove it. The engine is also deceptively heavy, are these things cast from aluminum or deplete uranium? I opted to leave the stock FI setup at the junkyard, it seems pretty useless for this application, to wide. The plan for now is to fabricate to intake manifolds, one for the front six cylinders and one for the rear six, and run two standard 2 barrel carbs on them. Two carbs flowing about 350-400 CFM each should be plenty for this engine. Volkswagon pistons are available in 90.5 mm, which is only .5 mm larger than the stock Jag pistons. Boring out the cylinders .020 over should make them fit the cylinders fairly well, all I have to worry about then is valve clearance and compression. Dale, have you thought about converting yours to take a smaller gear reduction starter? This might give it enough room to clear the TC bracket. Are you going to use the stock exhaust manifolds or are you going with headers? As soon as I can get my car trailered out here to CA I'll look at designing/fabricating some equal length headers for it, should be fairly challenging, I'll have to unleash my inner McGuyver on it.

Heating the pipe to bend it should not weaken it appreciably provided that you dont get it to hot. If it goes beyond red hot and starts turning yellow, carbon molecules begin escaping out of the steel, you can tell when this happens because the steel will have a boiled look to it when it cools. As far MIG vs TIG for heat input, Tig welding puts a far greater amount of heat into the metal being welded because of slower speed at which it welds, and because of the polarity used. TIG welding has the negative terminal going to the electrode (torch), and the positive going to the metal being welded, this places approx. 70% of the heat generated by the current into the metal being welded. MIG uses the opposite polarity, placing most of the heat into the weld wire, which is why it burns up so fast while welding. Either method can be used for roll bars, although TIG, if done properly will look a lot neater, and will normaly be much stronger because it penetrates more deeply into the material being welded. Just my two cents worth.

Heating the pipe to bend it should not weaken it appreciably provided that you dont get it to hot. If it goes beyond red hot and starts turning yellow, carbon molecules begin escaping out of the steel, you can tell when this happens because the steel will have a boiled look to it when it cools. As far MIG vs TIG for heat input, Tig welding puts a far greater amount of heat into the metal being welded because of slower speed at which it welds, and because of the polarity used. TIG welding has the negative terminal going to the electrode (torch), and the positive going to the metal being welded, this places approx. 70% of the heat generated by the current into the metal being welded. MIG uses the opposite polarity, placing most of the heat into the weld wire, which is why it burns up so fast while welding. Either method can be used for roll bars, although TIG, if done properly will look a lot neater, and will normaly be much stronger because it penetrates more deeply into the material being welded. Just my two cents worth.

I think the junkyards out here are where import sports cars go to when its time to die. I cant even count the number of ZX's RX-7's and early 90's Supras I've found out here. The V-12 was not easy to find though, more of an accident than anything else. If you want to drive down and check this place out, here are the directions once you get into San Diego: Get on the 805 south and get off on Main St. Take a left on Main and go about 2 miles until you see a road named Nirvana Blvd. Take a left on Nirvana and follow it until it branches off in either direction. If you go left there are a few yards that specialize in Hondas and Acuras, if you go right there are 4 yards that have everything from Chevy trucks to Porches in them. (Oddly enough though I could not find a decent 350 Small Block, all they had was 305's, another excuse to use the V-12) I'm probably going to spend all weekend there. Thinking of bringing a tent actually.....

Found the website for the guy with the V-12 corvair, its www.corvaircorsa.com. Pretty interesting stuff. Went to the junkyard today, engine was gone. I spent the rest of the day looking for another V-12, finally found one about an hour before the junkyard closed. I'm planning on pulling it next weekend. The engine without the fuel injection will be $189.00, a manual transmission will be another $89.00. Does anyone know what year Toyota Supra came with 6 speeds? I found a ton of supras at the junkyard, but I cant find any cars with BW T-56's so I'm thinking of going with the Toyota tranny instead. Also found some cool seats out of a fiero that I'm probably going to grab. They look like Recaros sort of. Still brainstorming on carb setups.

Looking through my Haynes manual on jags today, noticed that the oil capacity listed for the V-12 is betwwen 9 and 11 liters depending on the year. Just shooting from the hip, isnt that about 18 or 20 quarts? This seems a bit excessive to my way of thinking. This is probably one of the major contributors to the engines weight problem. I may be able to fabricate some sheetmetal blocks to put in the engine to displace oil, maybe by as much as 10 quarts or so. Does anyone have any figures for the weight of one of these things? I'll look into the toyota pistons, if they are 91 mm they should be perfect. I'll be able to bore out the liners and should still have enough wall thickness to keep them from self destructing. The OD for the liners as listed in the Haynes manual is 98 mm, I think that will leave enough meat after boring them out. Hopefully there wont be much wear on the cylinders at all, I may be able to re-use the original pistons and just put new rings on them, but I'm planning for worst case scenario anyway just to be safe. If the liners are totally trashed for some reason, I've found a few websites that fabricate custom cylinder liners. If it comes to that, I'm going to have liners made that will take standard 4" chevy pistons and just have the block bored out to accept the larger liners. I'm not sure what the final displacement would come out to, near 7 liters I think. I've also seen a website where a guy used chevy connecting rods on a jag V-12 that he had shoehorned into a Chevy Corvair. I suppose with enough machining quite a few domestic parts can be made to fit on this engine. Good thing I know a few good machinists.

Going to pick up the V-12 tommorow hopefully, found one in "Pick a Part" junkyard, and if the prices listed on their price sheet are correct, it will set me back about $150 for just the engine. It has a GM 400 tranny on it now, I think I'll try to grab that too. Eventually I want to put a T-56 on it though. I'm also considering modifications to the fuel injection intake runners to move them to a more vertical position to get them out of the way of the strut towers. I got my JTR manual in the mail a few days ago. The SBC is still in the back of my mind, but the voices insist that I go with the V-12, and I dont want to make the voices angry........Does anyone know of an engine that uses pistons that are around 3.537" or 91mm bore? If I bore out the Jag cylinders this is the size piston that I'll need to move up to. I think I can, I think I can...

I think I've had an epiphany, or maybe just a brain embolism.... I came across a Jaguar XJ12 while I was searching in a junkyard for a decent SBC to rebuild. I pretty much abandoned the idea of using a V-8 as soon as I saw the V-12 in the Jag. Has anyone done this conversion yet? I realize that it wont be nearly as cost effective as using a chevy motor, but I still think its worth a try simply for the "ooooooh...ahhhhhh" factor. The main problem I see right now is that aftermarket pistons are not available in oversize.This is due to the engines aluminum construction, when its time to replace the pistons, you replace the cylinders as well. I just cant seem to find cylinder liners anywhere on the internet though. So I plan on finding pistons from another manufacturer that are slightly larger than the Jag pistons (90mm), and boring out the liners to match them. I'm still researching it at this point, but I think I can make it work......maybe. I also plan on scraping the fuel injection setup because its probably to bulky to fit in the Z engine bay. I'm going to try the extra complicated route and try to mount 12 individual carbs, most likely from an as yet to be determined motorcycle engine. Probably just an embolism......

I think I've had an epiphany, or maybe just a brain embolism.... I came across a Jaguar XJ12 while I was searching in a junkyard for a decent SBC to rebuild. I pretty much abandoned the idea of using a V-8 as soon as I saw the V-12 in the Jag. Has anyone done this conversion yet? I realize that it wont be nearly as cost effective as using a chevy motor, but I still think its worth a try simply for the "ooooooh...ahhhhhh" factor. The main problem I see right now is that aftermarket pistons are not available in oversize.This is due to the engines aluminum construction, when its time to replace the pistons, you replace the cylinders as well. I just cant seem to find cylinder liners anywhere on the internet though. So I plan on finding pistons from another manufacturer that are slightly larger than the Jag pistons (90mm), and boring out the liners to match them. I'm still researching it at this point, but I think I can make it work......maybe. I also plan on scraping the fuel injection setup because its probably to bulky to fit in the Z engine bay. I'm going to try the extra complicated route and try to mount 12 individual carbs, most likely from an as yet to be determined motorcycle engine. Probably just an embolism......

72 240Z, BMW V-12 from a Mclaren F-1 linked to a six speed rear transaxle. 10 point cage with top chopped by 2 or 3 inches to bring it down to more of a Cobra Daytona profile. 13" brembo disks front and rear with 4 piston calipers. Suspension modified from McPhearson strut to double A arm with inboard mounted coilovers. Various carbon fiber body panels to reduce weight and tweek the areodynamics enough to hold the nose down at 200+Mph , and cupholders.....two of them.

A freind of mine suggested that I find a 350 diesel block to use as a starting point for an engine build-up. To the best of his memory, a good deal of the parts between the diesel and standard SBC are interchangable. Although the diesel should have beefier parts to handle the extra compression. (Thicker block casting, forged crank, 4 bolt mains, etc) I havent seen this done in any book or magazine article, so I'm assuming thats its not going to be as easy as it sounds. Does anyone have any experience with SBC Diesels? Still brainstorming.

Thanks for the info. I ordered the JTR manual yesterday. Hopefully the drawings in it will be accurate enough to fabricate mounts from. Would block hugger headers maintain a higher ground clearance than the full length headers? I dont like the idea of losing my exhaust on a speed bump very much. I may be able to make the mounts to set the engine an inch or so higher maybe. I dont plan on racing the car so i think I could live with the higher center of gravity. I'm still just brainstorming at this point though. Perhaps a General Electric turbofan engine from an F-14.........

IS THAT A SUMMITT FUEL CELL PEEKING OUT FROM UNDER YOUR CAR? I HAVE THE 16 GAL CIRCLE TRACK CELL FOR MINE, BUT HAVENT HAD TIME TO INSTALL IT YET.