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I was 17 and had picked up a used set of headers for my beater '64 chevy truck. I parked the truck in my sloped driveway, popped the hood and got to work. I cut the old exhaust off, removed the manifolds, got the passenger side header on then moved on the drivers side header. I'm sitting in the engine bay feeding the header down when the collector bumps the shift linkage out of park....truck starts rolling down the driveway, I try to jump out, cut my head on the hood latch and land on my ass....chased the truck down the driveway and across the street and dove through the window to stab it back in park (the e-brake didn't work and the doorlatch was kinda sticky). Just missed the neighbors house by about 5 feet. .....and thats when I discovered wheel chocks. Next one: I was working for Toyota and one of the guys on my team asks me to pull in a Supra that was sitting outside (2nd Gen). Apparently he'd already looked at and ordered parts.....something with the trans. So I go out there, fire it up, click the shifter back one click (into reverse...I thought), look behind me and step on the throttle, and promptly slam into the back of the car parked in front of me. After diagnosing it, he had left it in neutral, not park. I got yelled at for that one.

Spin the mixure screws all the way in, then back them out 2 full turns. It doesn't seem to matter what engine or what carb, that is always a good starting point. If its a manual choke carb, it can't very well come pre-adjusted out of the box. Make sure that the choke is open when the control is open, and closed when the control is closed. you'll need to open the choke gradually for the first minute or two of running the motor, or you'll have an engine that runs like crap. With the engine stone cold, try this: leave the choke open, pump the throttle 3 times, and with your foot applying about 15% throttle, the engine should light off within 5 revolutions. If it doesn't, but it still cranks strong, your ignition timing is retarded. Kick it up a bit and try it again....without all the pumps. Fuel pressure looks good. The only thing I can think of that may not be right, if everything else is, if the float level in the carb, but edlebrock should have set that correctly. It might also be a good idea, once you get it started, to let it idle for a couple minutes and then shut it off and pull a plug. If its black, you know you have plenty or too much fuel. If its white, you have not enough fuel (or too much air...vacuum leak), if its a tan or brown, you are doing fine....and should go after timing. Also, see if you can get your hands on a vacuum gauge. Manifold vacuum (measured below the throttle plates) should be 20 in/hg or better with a mild cam. Long duration cams will have lower vacuum readings.

Thanks

A fresh motor, if timing and fuel are close, should fire up and run within 5 revolutions. If it doesn't start and run smoothly, then something is wrong. Check for vacuum leaks (like the brake booster hose you may have forgotten) and also check to see where your static ignition timing is set. If the choke is not working, it will generally run like crap cold...but should clear up within about 20 seconds or so on a well tuned motor. Set your timing at about 10 degrees (good starting point). Does pumping the throttle a couple times during cranking help the cold starting situation or not? Are you running a mechanical fuel pump or electric fuel pump? Do you have your vacuum advance hooked up to manifold vacuum or ported vacuum.

How big is the original tank?

I'll try to make it out there Saturday morning.....I can't to any more work to the car until my bender arrives anyway....so I've got my weekends free for a while.

Thanks John, that was the response I was looking for. Now I understand. Are you at the shop on the weekends? I might be free saturday to swing by.

No chip on my shoulders....not at all. I'd just like to hear technical reasons why extending and sleeving a roll cage tube would be wrong or unsafe. "Because the rules say you can't" are not good enough reasons. I am making this post rather than letting this thread die because maybe I am wrong....and if thats the case, and someone can explain why, I will gladly accept understandable constructive critisizm and rethink the way I design structural modifications, not just cages, in my racecars. I was under the impression that this type of modification would make the tube stronger than it was originally, in which case there should be no harm in doing it. If I am making the structure weaker and failure prone, I need to know that and I need to know why. If I'm wrong, please tell me why. PS: Autopower failed to step up and solve the problem in a timely manner, so I am doing this on my own. I've placed an order for a ProTools bender, and will be bending up a proper cage for the car.....pending feedback that I receive here.

If you are getting the plastic line hot enough to melt, chances are the fluid will be boiling too. See if you can re-route the line or put an insulating jacket around it to protect it from the Exhaust heat. Remember, DOT3 brake fluid boils around 300 degrees or so. Clutch won't work if the system is full of bubbles from boiled fluid. Those adapters look great though. I think there would definately be a market for them in the engine/trans swap world. This opens up a lot more hydraulics possibilities.

UPDATE: The engine is coming along nicely (expensively) and I found a good trans. The interior is stripped down to bare metal and I picked up a cage from Autopower. The fitment is horrible with no interior in the car, and I don't like how the main hoop doesn't anchor to the rockers....guess I should've searched before ordering the cage. Autopower is of no help, so I've ordered a ProTools 105 bender and will be bending up a proper cage when the bender comes in. This set me back about a month. DHL has lost a few packages, and a couple companies have charged me for high dollar parts and shipped me chinese junk. My patience is running thin, so its time to put the car away for a while and take a break. I hate doing stuff like this on a deadline (in time for the first race of the season) because everything always goes wrong. More to come....

It depends who's behind the wheel. I've been racing for 5 years, and I'm at the track every other weekend. Me and another driver were having some fun one day at a HPDE and he blamed my faster times on my car. We traded cars and I gained a bigger lead. If the driver is good, who knows what can happen.

Did you read my original post? I said that legallity of the cage is not a concern. I don't race with NASA, I don't race with SCCA, I race in Mexico with Caldera Promotions, and I've discussed the issue with the race tech inspectors, and since it makes a stronger tube than a one piece tube, they will allow it. Safety is my concern, not whether or not it meets the rules of organizations that I don't wish to be involved with. My question was about down which road I should go. I don't care how autopower designed it..I feel its a crappy design that could be easily improved on....drastically. They want both the main hoop and the rear bars to connect about 8 inches apart on the same piece of sheet metal fenderwell. The rear bars are supposed to act as braces and strengthen the main hoop. I doubt much strength can be gained by this rear tube design. What about a side impact? Do you think that the autopower design is better than my modified design? I think that the rocker box is considerably more stout than the inner wheelhouse.......on account of it incorporating more than 1 sheet of material in its design. After I welded in the main hoop as supplied by autopower, I could grab it and flex it about a 1/2 inch forward and backward. This is not a good foundation to build a rollcage that must support a 2500lb vehicle. Hell, the sheetmetal destorted as the bolts were tightened on the original 4 point bar. Just because someone designed something (and I use that term loosly) to work in a certain manner, does not mean that it is correct, nor does it mean that the design is not open to refinement or improvement.....thus the reason none of us are happy with the way that nissan designed our cars, and why we are all making them better. I've been reading posts on this board for a long time, and most of them are very in depth and technical, there is also a lot of excellent ideas and design work here. I guess I expected a more in depth answer than you gave me. I'm sorry if I offended you. Anyway, here's how it worked out: I ended up having autopower build me another main hoop to my specs after making some measurements and realizing that the "legs" of the current main hoop are not perfectly parallel, but about 5 degrees away from each other. Had I installed extensions, they would be to far out to attach to the rockers. Thanks for your insight though.

Just a word about strut tower braces. Most of the "bling" braces are aluminum and use heim joints. Strut bars are not supposed to flex, so Heim joints are not the best idea. if the bar has anything but straight tubing and solid mounts, its not going to do much for you. The best bars are made from tubing, non "adjustable" ridgid welded units. The rest of them are just for show. If yours is one of those, and you are looking for performance out of it, save yourself the trouble.

I saw that thread. That just tells me what I already know...that the cage is of a poor design. I spoke with them this morning and they make a full main hoop for the 2+2 that can be modified to fit in the Z. I should have it by tomorrow, so I'll post some pics of the fitment.

I searched, but this was not covered. I have a buddy that gets me autopower cages pretty cheap, so I didn't think anything about it and ordered one up. I was very happy with the autopower I got for my VW, but not so sure about the Z cage. I picked it up last night and started welding the main hoop in today, then I stopped. I don't like how the main hoop anchors to the wheel wells. I'd much rather it went all the way to the rockers. This would also give me a much better place to attach the rear of the door bars. I have 2 options at this point. option 1. Mount the hoop as it was intended to the fenderwells, then run another tube down to the rocker (where a proper main hoop would be attached) and tie it into the existing main hoop right above the mounting point on the fenderwell. If I did this, I would tie in a couple of diagonals from the lower mounting points that tie into the cross tube right at the middle of the car above the tunnel. option 2: Make the main hoop legs longer by butt welding extra lengths of tube to it after properly prepping/beveling the joint, grind the weld, then hammer on a 6 inch long sleeve and welding the ends of the sleeves (the next size up DOM tubing fits nice and snug), so that the but weld is right in the middle of the 6 inch sleeve. I don't plan on ever dealing with the SCCA, so legality is not an issue. The series that I race in will approve of this design. As far as I'm concerned, this sleeve extention should make the tube stronger than it originally was, because now its essencially twice as thick, but I may be wrong. Either way, I don't feel safe doing 150+ on a road course with curbs and walls without something tying into the rocker. I'm trying to make this work because it would cause problems should I try to return it and get my money back. I think I should go with option 2, because it would be stronger and require about 10 feet less tubing than option #1. Your thoughts please.

I've got all the engine parts and I found a camaro t-5 trans, a R200 diff, and a LSD for it. Today I got working on the car a little. I gutted the interior this morning, and started scraping up the sound deadening tar/goo thats everywhere. I was hoping that Datsun tar was easier to get off than Volkswagen tar, but I was not so fortunate. This stuff is a pain in the ass. I started off with a heat gun and a scraper, then progressed to a mapp gas torch.....I set a section on fire for about 5 minutes, then put it out and scrape it up. Its working better than the heat gun, but still sllloooowww. I just drove down to San Diego to pick my cage up from Autopower, so hopefully tomorrow I can finish cleaning up the interior sheet metal and start welding in the cage. Pics will come as soon as REAL progress is made.

measure the hole?

If you want light weight, you need to build an engine with: Aluminum Heads Aluminum Waterpump single plane aluminum intake (about 1/2 the weight of a dual plane) Aluminum radiator I don't think you'll save much going with a lightweight crank, I bought a forged cromoly unit and its only 8 lbs or so lighter than the stock on. My stock flywheel (for an 11" clutch) weighed in at 38lbs, and I found an SFI approved 18lb flywheel on ebay for $80. I also bought a steel scattershield because I value my legs, which added about 20 lbs to whole thing. The stock aluminum bellhousing only weighs a couple pounds, but clutches and flywheels can come through them pretty easily in the case of a failure, so I didn't skimp there. There are a bunch of other threads on this, use the search. You can replace the headlights with plastic ones and save a bunch of weight, also look into a fiberglass hood. Unlimited fiberglass sells a pin-on for only a couple hundred dollars. If it's going to be a trailered race car only, look into dumping the exhaust early rather than running it all the way to the back of the car, good exhaust tubing is heavy.

I am in the process of building a similar engine...but with about twice the horsepower that you are looking for. I will post some component weights at the end of the week when I get everything back from my machine shop. I have lightweight/aluminum replacement components where they are available.

Wish I had a junkyard around with helpful employees. The local yards here are full of pricks. They ignore you when you try to talk to them.

As grumpy stated earlier, pressure is a direct result of resistance to volumn pumped. There are only 2 reasons why low oil pressure would occur. Either not enough is being pumped, or there is not enough resistance. If not enough is being pumped, you need to check the pickup location, check the pump gear clearance, and check for the appropriate amount of oil in the engine. If there is not enough resistance in the system, you need to check all for all the proper clearances in all the oil fed bearings. If the clearances are good and the pump and pickup tube location are good, the oil pressure gauge is bad. On a side note: Are these problem engines being used with external oil coolers? I switched to an external cooler on my VW race car, with a fresh motor, and noticed about a 20 psi drop in measured oil pressure. Also, where are they measureing oil pressure. If you measure it at the back of block you will get a considerably higher reading than if you measure it at the fitting above the timing cover.

I tried, but the way the car was set on blocks I couldn't get to it. The yard workers set the car down with 2 blocks in front and one under the rear diff.

I went down the junkyard today and the 4th car in the import section was a 300ZX turbo...about a 88 or so. 5 lug. I got the front hubs for $38. Thats about all I thought I could use from it.

Take some tools with you and yank the heads and the oil pan before you hand over the cash. Pull a main bearing cap, and the #1 and #8 rod caps and check the bearings. Feel the top of the cylinder for a ridge and from the underside, feel the bottom of the cylinder for a ridge. Bring a set of calipers with you and measure the bore. If you're quick, this should take less than 2 hours. The one thing that I've learned buying used "good" or "just rebuilt 500 miles ago" engines is that they are mostly junk. Some aren't even rebuildable. If the seller is not willing to let you properly inspect what you are buying, then find another one. I know its a pain in the butt to take apart a couple of motors and waste time, but it beats getting home with an empty wallet and tearing a motor down only to find that all its good for is anchoring your boat...if you have a boat. If you don't have a boat, its worthless.

As some of you know, I'm new to the Z thing, and my project is to rebuild/upgrade a 20 year old 240 V8 conversion in hopes of having a proper race car when I'm done. I found a 300ZX N/A parts car in pretty nice shape (just won't run...dunno why yet) that I can pick up on Saturday morning for next to nothing. Aside from the front hubs, is anything else on this car going to be of any use to me? I haven't seen it yet. I was hoping that I could use the rear CVs, but from what I've read, they are the undesirable 5 bolt units. Should I pick it up or just go to the pick and pull to scrounge what i need?