Tony240ZT

Very nice turbo. A polished out compressor always looks impressive, but on a Z car you can hardly ever see it. There's no doubt you'd be paying into the polishing work that I really don't feel is worth it. Also, looks like no internal waste gate, so if you bolted this up you would need to fab up an external waste gate hook up, buy one, and modify your down pipe and such. You would definately want to have the car intercooled to see the full potential out of the investement. My personal opinion is to figure out how much money you want to invest, and how much power you want to make first. Then intercool your car with the best you can afford, or do it at the same time you replace the turbo. If you're looking for a ton of power opt for an external waste gate setup. I've seen the same turbos on ebay sell for around $130 less without polishing, and that's what I'd go for. Also is the turbo water cooled? A water cooled center section makes for a longer life, and makes the oil last longer. If your turbo is dying and that's why you want to replace it you could buy a rebuild kit from turbocity.com for around $120. I picked up a t04b compressor housing with V trim wheel that bolted right on for $100 over at a truck shop. Traded in my compressor so they could do their core exchange. The t04b is a nice easy upgrade that will add a lot of fun to street driving.

Awesome! Fill us in on engine specs, like size of turbo, any head work? Stock internals?

It is possible to not use the relays at all. Although relays are good Looking at the wiring diagram will show you how the system gets power. I tied into existing relays for my orange car. I have my fuel pump come on with the ignition system, not modulated by the ecu.

Good idea about the generator. Wonder if one could power my 6hp air compressor. Even if it did, I don't think the compressor will fit in the back of the Z.. HAHA.. I'll have to ask the yard about if they have a problem with a generator. I can pick up a running 240z for $250, interior is bad, rubber is bad, but body is good enough. I may just bite on it, if anyone else knows of any cars in the so cal area that may not run or have front end damage let me know about it. Is there anything on an old beat up 240z that is worth anything? Maybe the SU's, and bumpers? Anything else? Would be nice if I could part it out to get some money back. I'm sure my neighbores wouldn't be happy. Thanks.

The volumetric effciency graphical display is pretty neat on the MegaSquirt software. Anyone have a web page that explains how VE applies to fuel ratios and such in plain english? Seems to me it'd be hard to calculate your engine's VE. My Wolf3D system was fairly strait forward to wire up, has a wasted spark setup, and similar sequential fuel injection setup on a 6 cylinder. http://wolfems.com/ cost me $1500 shipped with a modified cam possition sensor pickup. Can be configured with a PC (data logging), and fuel/ignition maps can be monitored and modified in real time with a hand held LCD display. Will drive many different types of injectors, multiple I/O's anolog and digital. PWM for boost control, idle control, etc.

I keep finding parts to bolt on right before I get the car on the road, and have to stop and bolt them on. Just got this SS header, so now I have to look around for a different turbo and oil/water line hookups. Should look nice and flow well though. Also want to make a different intake manifold to get my intercooler hosing all straitened out. Let me know if you need any advice on anything, I've answered a few questions on the board to others, so do search. Maybe you can do the swap cheaply, but I'm not a good example of that.

I have access to a eprom burner, would be interested in looking at the bin/asm code. Too lazy to take out the prom myself

I think Josh is the pro at the z31 efi on L28ET's I can help with the stock `81-`83 280zx turbo electronics. I think Josh's email is jbligh@silcon.com he's on here as Josh240ZT. My orange car needs some repairs before I can get back to my piggy back EFI system for the 280zxT electronics. Also I have a friend's VW Corrado G60 sitting over here that I'm fixing up. The G60 is a super charged car with an intercooler. Doesn't have an air flow meter, just uses air temp and presure. Very nice setup. Car is running something like 11psi of boost, little 4 banger SOHC, and FWD though. I'm making him a test pipe, and cold air intake, also replacing some intake piping with hard pipes.

Yeah, the very early 280z tanks should swap over with no problem. They have baffles in them so that the fuel doesn't move away from the pickup as easily. If you have the tank to swap go for it, there are other options, but that's probably the cheapest and most reliable route.

The harness should layout in a way that sets up the injectors correctly. I think the haynes manual has the actual colors for each, but really it doesn't matter. They all get fired at the same time.

Found a guy importing performance parts from Japan that had a SS header for a 7M-GTE. He thought it would bolt up a T4, but turns out to only have a T3 flange on it. Has an external waste gate hook up. All nice quality tig welds, with very thick flanges, had it blasted to clean it up. Told the guys to use beads and they used something a lot more gritty than glass beads. Was pretty bummed that they took the shine off of it, but I guess I'll get it Jet-Hot coated now. Here is a link to the pictures I just took. I just have a crappy stock 280zxt T3 sitting on it, but definately plan on going with a t3/t4 with upgraded turbine wheel. Looks like the down pipe will have to have a pretty sharp bend down, but I don't think it'll be a problem. I will definately have to relocate the battery though. I already have an Optima battery, so just need a box for it and wires to mount inside. Have a waste gate off of a Porsche 924 that I may use, has a 1.25" SS valve, so should do just fine. Oh, one other update I picked up a Turbo XS type H BOV, but plan on making a different intake manifold (probably 4" log w/big throttle body) before doing intercooler piping.

With no mods, I'm assuming you mean no intercooler, stock injectors and stock fuel presure, stock exhaust system, and so on. I'd say you're safe to about 9psi without any problems. Still good to get an air/fuel ratio gauge to make sure you're not running lean.

The turbo efi setup is definately the way to go for any driving styles. Much easier to keep in tune in any climate, more power in stock form, and cool turbo swooshing sound. Stick with the turbo block, you'll have a nice flowing head on it, along with the low compression need for boost, a high flow oil pump, and flat head pistons with lower ring landers that are able to take on forced induction far better. The efi harness for automatic and manual are the same, so no issues there. The efi/turbo stuff will bolt onto the other block, but you are still better off with a high mileage turbo block. Guys have used junk yard long blocks with high mileage and gotten over 300hp without opening them up, just quality bolt ons and the fuel to boot. I've run a turbo/efi setup on a L24 bottom end for some time now, and my high mileage rings are suffering. I dropped the P90 head on the L24 block, swapped over the oil pump, head bolts (stronger), and other odds and ends. It's a powerful setup (loves to rev), but will not have a long life. It's an option that you can think about, the 2.4L vs 2.8L displacement is probably pretty noticeable, but I'd say I'm making over 200hp to the wheels, which is fun enough right now. Cut corners on things so that you can put money to a nice intercooler, and t3/t4 hybrid turbo. The stock t3 spins up too fast then is a hot air blower when turning up the boost, a t04b or t04e compressor is a great upgrade for street, along with stage III turbine or there abouts. Search for threads on larger throttle bodies, I've helped a few get their hands on a 65mm Mercedes 450SL throttle body that bolts up with a little work.

You have to copy and paste the link into your browser. Thanks for the video.

I need to get a rear quarter pannel cut off of a car in the junk yard (no outlets), what kind of tools are there to make this job do able? Mostly interested in battery powered tools, but if someone has had good luck with any hand tool let me know. Thanks much!

Would be cool to see how the sensors, and inputs get put into the processor, and I'd love to be doing the same thing as you. I'll try to finish up this piggy back thing and then give you a hand, and we can start a little message board on it or something.

I put on the turbo on at the same time as putting on the cooler, and I changed my oil pump so hard to say exactly with all of the changes. Anyways, I'd say my oil presure acts about the same as it did when the engine was a NA with SU's and old pump. Oil cooler gets pretty warm when I drive hard, but not so bad if I'm just cruising, over all I'd say it does it's job well. I've got some pretty big lines going into the thing, and it has some good sized fittings on it. Maybe since I have an aftermarket one it flows more than some OEM ones, but no proof. There's probably only one perfect sized oil cooler for a particular engine, but how to figure that one out and if it really makes too difference is another question that may not matter all that much in the end. These engines last pretty dang long as is, even without oil coolers. Running a center piece in your turbo that allows you to run water may help more than a larger cooler, who knows. The RX7 cooler is by far the cheapest and largest you can get your hands on, that's the only answere I'm really sure about

I have a sandwich plate on my orange Z with the L series, got it from perma cool. Am using a B&M oil cooler. I have one of the Rx7 coolers laying around and was hoping to use it on my silver car, but it may be too larger to fit in with my FMIC. They are super nice! I T'd off of the oil return line from the cooler with a SS braided line half the size of the main engine oil feed for the turbo.

Would love to see pics.. You've been working on it for some time now. I love to read up on your progress, sorry I can't ever be of much help, just never got into the vg30's.. That's going to be one awesome truck.

There's a much more simple solution to this and I can build you a little circuit that will handle it if you are interested for cheap. It won't require a certain amount of rpm or mph to be reached, but in most cases it's not necessary to check those things. If you'd like I can start working on something and I promise I can get something less than $20 made up for ya that will be easy to wire in.

The yellow wire is used only for the gauge only, and is not used by the ecu for fuel mixture. The white wire is plugged into the thermal switch that turns on the fuel injector aux. fan. Just plug your old 240z temp wire into the temp sensor. I had an up close picture of this some where that I used to show someone else but can't find it right now. Pretty easy to tell the difference between the two plugs though because if you plug into the thermal fan switch it won't show any temp on the gauge.

The Z31 ecu uses a clone of a Motorolla MC6802 which is an 8 bit processor. There are PC emulators out there for this processor, but I don't know if anyone out of Jim Wolf Tech, and Nissan them selves know how the code works. There's someone on this list, sorry I'm bad with names, that was able to get the machine code out of the processor and convert it to assembly. I have some experience with Motorolla's HC11 family of 8 bit processors which was built off of the MC6800 family, but I haven't gotten into the details of the MC6800, so I can't tell you if you could simply change some constants set in the chip's EEPROM, or if you'd have to put in a new EPROM with modified values. Anyways, since the technical knowlege on these systems are not as widely spread as the GM ecu's you'd have to do quite a bit of work yourself to change anything. I'd love to have a few of us get together on the side so we don't clutter up the thread and figure these things out.

In the middle of writing some windows software to program the thing right now. Found it hard to adjust fuel map points by typing in each figure. Also working on a peice of software to do real time graphing data logging. Will require a laptop, so if you don't have one it would be worth borrowing from a buddy because it'll make you feel like your in a modern formula one race car I've been adding things as I go, such as a couple temp sensors for comparing ambient temp, temp after compressor, temp after intercooler. I'm hoping to make things like this and an air/fuel ratio gauge like optional plug-in modules. I get so wrapped up in adding things that I don't finish the core object, but I think writing this software to make it easier to adjust the fuel map will help that along greatly. I think I'll take the idea from SDS and have a richness knob that can be used to help tune the car. Will definately be doing more work on the project this week, mostly programming. Will keep you guys posted with screen shots and possibly videos of my car running with the setup. Also, will need for you guys to test the software and make sure it runs on your computers. Here is a pic of a Basic Stamp, also considering BasicX wich is a 32bit multi tasking processor, and a plain old PIC16C782. The PIC processor is cheapest, but has a slight higher learning curve.

The most difficult is figuring out between a yellow wire that's used for temp and power to the ECU, and another yellow wire with white stripe is either A/C stuff or coil trigger wire. These wires that are in the same damn plug can confuse you if you don't keep track of things. Also there is no wire to ground the coil igniter (mounted on the coil's base), it gets ground by being screwed into the chassis, this threw me for a loop. Everything else is pretty strait forward, just plug it in the same way it was plugged into on the ZXT. I didn't use the relay that is on the passenger side, and didn't use the circuit that turns on the fuel pump, so that further simplified wiring. Just wireing the fuel pump to come on with the ignition.

I'm not sure, but I think my small amount of writing is about the closest right now, I've got some pictures I've posted to others on the list. Maybe I'll put it all into one page some day, or if I go crazy, a book. http://www.zhome.com/~aktar/zcar/73/turbofi/ Let us know if you have any questions, I'd even consider helping out of the phone if you needed it.