mobythevan

wheelman, that sounds like a good price for everything. Another thing to watch out for is injector size because most of the TPI units are off 305 engines. tannji, megasquirt shouldn't give you much gain over the stock ECU. But it gives you flexibilty to tune yourself and add any upgrades you want. Like nitrous, turbo, bigger injectors and re-tune fuel and spark more easily than the stock ECU. The plan with this setup is to add 2 280zx stock T3 turbos this winter and run 8-10 psi.

It broke down something like this: 87 TPI -- $300 (with distributor/coil/fuel rails/harness/etc) megasquirt -- $180 TPI air filter -- $30 EFI fuel pump -- $100 Around $600 depending on what the TPI setup will cost you. Seems like I am forgetting something. Ask if there is something obvious missing from that list. We hacked up the harness to re-use it with megasquirt. A couple side notes, we had to machine the four center bolts because 87 TPI manifold center bolts don't fit old style sbc heads. Easy enough to grind/re-drill them. Checkers sells a thermostat neck for TPI. This was missing on the one we bought. Try to get the throttle cable ad water kneck when you buy a setup.

Man does it run good. I am impressed. Starts fast, idles really smooth. Throttle response and acceleration are amazing. This is regular old sbc with an 87 TPI setup on it and mild performance build. MSnS_Extra controlling fuel and spark through original small cap TPI distributor with 8 pin HEI module. Thinking about putting TPI in your z? Go for it and throw away the GM ECU so you can use MSnS_Extra.

I have my brother drive and I do the tuning. He likes to drive crazy and I'm crazy enough to ride along The progress sounds encouraging on the boost control.

average butt dyno is sensitive to 25hp, must be at least a 25hp gain or your butt needs re-calibrated. Just kidding around. When I installed my intercooler the gain was apparent by the butt-o-meter. And measurements did show a pickup of about 30hp. Pick up an old g-tech meter at the least for like $20 and then you have a yard stick to see how upgrades add up. May not be the greatest but katman might ease up on you.

maybe also try forward air (truck freight company). I use to ship arcade games and they only cost around $100 for a 500 pounds game. They only ship terminal to terminal, but saves some dollars.

that is a cold air intake. is that the exhaust dumping in front of the driver front tire, looks like it. why not just dump it up out of the turbo with a foot of pipe. wouldn't have mattered on that setup.

If 4500 is the limit for its stock application, 8 cylinder. Then for 6 cylinder it has more time to charge for each cylinder, so that would make it good for 6000 on a 6 cylinder? Assuming singel coil and module in both cases. I don't know if that is true, but mine runs fine right up to 6K then hits the rev limiter I have set in MSnS.

I don't know any specs on the valves. I haven't looked into it before so I'm not sure how hard any of that info is to find. good luck

cool, I have been waiting for someone to try boost control. Keep us posted.

Holy cr@p, you made it back. I think the last time when you were around I was just getting ready to do my V8 conversion. I never did that and instead built a turbo L28 car. Different car entirely. I sold my V8 conversion parts, even that spicer diff flange that was hard to find. Glad your back. Sorry to hear about the damage to the car body.

Less money, time, fabrication for me. I think the z cars are a special case for turbos because you can easily swap the 81-83 engine in. Now aside from that, if I am going turbo and not swapping the 280zxt engine, then I agree, why stay at a small displacement if you are going to have all the fabrication and costs anyway. As long as I have worked on turbos I have still believed the no replacement for displacement line. Start with the biggest cubes you can fit and then add boost if you want too much power. (which is what I want, but not for the z car)

I hope if you change to another ECU that you don't become a big opponent of MS. I wouldn't imagine that chagning to an 82/83 dizzy would help like you say. The problem must be in another area. Wish I could help more, but I'm stuck in Colorado.

That was a typo, I meant 82-83. It doesn't have to be different. Everyone that is using an 82-83 distributor can set their trigger angle the same (like 50) and then adjust the distributor until timing is correct and then we would all have the same setup.

That is what I was curious to hear, somebody that tried it. Thanks.

from the install guide:

Phasing the distributor and rotor can be a little tricky, but if you are using an (edit 82-83) optical distributor it should be straight forward. Following the directions given with the MSnS code. One thing is to get you trigger angle to match when the tach signal triggers from the distributor. THe other is to make sure your rotor lines up close enough to the post on the cap for all timing (~5-40 degrees). Their recommendation is to get it centered on the post at about 20 degrees.

Here was a pretty good thread that shed some more light on the issue for me. http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=75965 I think I'll just leave it alone and see if it blows out

Are the stock nissan head bolts in 81-83 turbo engines toque to yield type? That would put a halt to trying to raise the torque. I did a quick search but didn't see if they are.

So your line going to your MBC is about 3/16" and the tiny hole is 1/16". So if you charge pipe is 2.5" then the BOV hole should be one third of that, a little over 3/4". Sounds about right for the same proportional flow. The only way to solve the size of BOV hole required is to start really small and work up until the lag between shifts is gone. I'm guessing none of us have run that experiment. back to the topic you can see in this pic where my BOV is located and vented to atmosphere

Good to hear it is running now. What else did you find wrong that was causing the power issues? Did you get the TPS hooked up yet?

on a side note, IIRC my motor manual lists two different torque specs for sbc heads. One from like 1975 specs 65 lbs, one from like 69 specs 90 lbs. Maybe I recall wrong, so did the two different years use different bolt grades? Anyway, I bet the nissan head bolts have a 16% margin (10 lb more torque). So adding 10 lbs torque may stress them a bit more, we'll see if I break one. I'm betting they can support some more clamping pre-load. If I put on new bolts I would put on a new head gasket and the whole thing would be a non issue, but I'm more interested in finding out if someone has tried it and still blown their stock head gasket at XXpsi boost. We know stock head gaskets blow out with stock bolt and stock torque. Anyone tried it? Apparently helps on the GNs.

In the past I have seen that turbo buick guys like to torque their head bolts 10-20lbs over stock ratings when running higher boost on stock head gaskets. What do you guys think about that? I am going to raise my boost some more on my stock 280zxt head gasket. Should I try raising the torque 10lbs over stock spec on the head bolts? Could that cause more harm than good to anything?

I haven't looked yet, but my initial thought was to velcro to the top of the dash if there is a spot that I can see good. Otherwise maybe on the pillar

http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=100303 I drilled my restrictor more like .080", drill bit wobbled and stuff like that I was suprised how much oil flows out of the line during cranking with the restriction.