Daeron

As with so many posts, Mikelly hit the nail right on the head with this one... I am one of the crowd pointed out in bold (at least regarding the wing, gimme a BRE style rear spoiler anyday) but in the last year, I have turned my "complaint decibels" on that subject down from about 190 to about 4. I haven't even browsed thru any of the text links yet, just eyeballed the photo gallery.. as soon as I saw the thing I was thinking about the pre-war Nazi vehicles. Those boys did some SERIOUS work, and it was so mind bogglingly impressive (and ahead of it's time) that it went "nowhere...." ....UNTIL you look at the original Volkswagens, and the Porsches. That's right, Ferdinand was involved in ALOT of those wacky kraut-cars that this civic is emulating.. and going back to a topic touched upon in the "so I blocked off my upper grill" thread started (months ago) by prox, nowadays the porsches are accepted (through track, lab, and road testing) to have just about the ideal shape and size for an aerodynamic, PERFORMANCE oriented vehicle. As for the economy.... Why do you think Mr. Porsche was so enamored with rear engined vehicles??? It takes that HUGE space needed, and puts it in the back, right where "Igor's" hump is. One of those old cars (unidentified, it is from the builders photo gallery): Aerocivic: Porsche 996 GT2: If you cannot see the striking similarities between all three vehicles, in an aerodynamic sense, then you need to re read everything you have absorbed in this sub forum, and probably go get a book or four, too. All I know about aerodynamics has been crystallized out of my accumulated knowledge base (reading voraciously since I was seven) by simply studying the data available here, and listening to the discussion. My older brothers book about Volkswagens and their origins was my aerodynamics foundation fifteen years ago. Come to think on it, I need to ask him to dig that up so I can borrow it.... THIS is home fabrication, and the hybrid spirit, at its utmost. Thanks for posting this; I am glad I caught it. As for THIS: Mike, you understated it. This was this members eighteenth post. I motion that he automatically wins a prize for having the highest "intellectual content & value/post count" ratio, EVER in the history of the internet. And Woj, seriously... WHERE did you find that picture?!?!! I have two abcessed teeth right now, and that shot is the only thing thats made me laugh in three days.....

Carl: Will do, as soon as I get to the shop armed with a good camera. I haven't even had time to read through this thread thoroughly enough to get the info all soaked in. This is good knowledge to have, both for weight alteration purposes, and safety concerns. -shawn

sorry, that was another truck, not the one (i dont THINK) that tagged ZZZero. My apologies for the confusion.

WOW that looks nice!!! What all vehicles might have this sort of piece in them? I am WHOLLY (or should I say Holy?) ignorant of 'Merican cars, and I want one of these!! Its high time I started dealing with my car, wheels are turning that are going to allow that.. and THIS is the first and foremost problem. As I said above, Thankyou!!!!

I vote sticky, this subject has needed a sticky for some time. I am in a decent position to compare 240, 260, 75 280, and 78 280 all side by side by side.. no JDM spec or anything, but when I get a good chance to do so I will come back and re read this thread and endeavour to write a succinct essay covering everything to post here (unless someone else, less wordy than myself, beats me to it.) These questions come up alot, and (apparently) the answers are even more subtle and detailed than I knew.

My dad had an 86 NA that had some nasty rust around the passenger doorframe/striker area that he had to cut out and replace.. and this was (yikes) almost ten years ago now. Pondering that was honestly what pushed me to start this thread.. if THAT 300ZX rusted that bad after 10-12 years... 2007 minus 10 or 12 is 95-97...

Where??? Those stupid oversized pickup trucks are getting WAY out of hand in palm beach county, I know that much... 50+ inch tires, headlights were over 72" above the ground, this guy got a MAJOR ticket or six, and he is STILL driving the truck. About a week after this picture was taken in front of my work, this same truck flew past my buddy down a two lane residential street going like 60. And that little graphic, right at eye level below the doors?? It says "Size Matters"

My guess would be that the doors on your car now may be replacements?? a 75 (280, right? NO chance of it being an earlier year?) and a 76 should have had the same doors, to the best of my knowledge... I have been wrong before, though.

The closest thing I have to an update runs thusly: My beloved family somehow still nags me to get on my car, yet some random guy gets to park his 94 S10 at the shop before I get to bring my Datsun up there.... It seems my brothers can play racecar, one of them gets to leave his mustang there instead of finding a fuel leak, my old man can futz on his 280 while driving his nice 98 323is, and Dave can leave his chevy truck project (several years in the making itself) sitting there, but I can't haul the only S30 anyone in my extended family had on the road for four years in for a spa treatment. This *may* cause a bit of a scene at my parents' this christmas, quite honestly.. I was LIVID when I pulled into the shop Thursday and saw that stupid @#$%ing truck there.

Honestly... It was bordering upon foolish not to have noticed that and consciously set our goals on it sooner. Even an untrained eye can look at the porsche body style and tell that for the last 50 years theyve been on the cutting edge of aerodynamic design. Anyone who is truly after ultimate aerodynamic performance would do well to look at the vehicle, AND ALSO the design of the Subaru XT(6). (all these are earlier cars; the first is a turbo' date=' hence the hood scoop.. The later, post 87.5 cars were smoother, but I couldnt find reasonably sized, decent quality images of the angles i wanted of any of the newer models.) So now, what conclusion could be drawn from this? Maybe we need to start swapping WRX engines and drivelines into our cars, shaving the hood bulge and the door handles, lowering it nearer to the ground, giving the front spoiler a smooth face to pass over yet still retain a proper duct opening to flow air where we want it, combining wheels, tires, and fender flares to make the wheel wells as seamless as possible.... oh, wait....

oh hell, age is nothing but a number in my book.. BUT, that doesnt stop me from being realistic about it. STILL waiting for the right picture to get posted here, though

I don't know why (and please don't take any offense, its the LAST thing I intend) but this reponse had me rolling on the floor..... I suppose we have all heard the 160mph Z car story because thats what the speedo tops out at... but it *does* get a bit old after a while, huh? now, getting back to something less off topic, I was thinking the other day... Could one not assume a given coefficient of drag, a given vehicle weight, presume a zero rolling resistance, flat grade, and zero wind..... and then input the vehicle's gearing and wheel power and torque numbers, and calculate out a top maximum speed that this vehicle, with this gearing. power, and other parameters, could attain???? I say assume zero rolling resistance because this would be the most difficult variable to quantify.. but with all the "gearing calculators" and "engine design utilities" and other BS go-fast calculators on the web, I am surprised that this one hasn't been written yet.... am I failing to include any needed parameters?

BLASPHEMY! Not trying to offend anyone, but in my eyes NISSAN MADE THE Z-car to give us a car that we could pour our blood sweat tears and soul into specifically to BEAT those german pancake cars..... ..but, I must grudgingly admit, they *Have* been the perfect shape for aerodynamics for the past sixty years... so the comment from the tunnel operator isn't much of a surprise. MY REMark was intended to show that personally, I would rather retain the car's character than "perfect" the aero by making the changes mentioned. (as an aside, I am tickled PINK that the new skyline did so damn well in the nurburgring.... ) OTM: My advice on the 944: the crusher I wouldn't call it depressing at all.. In my eyes there are two kinds of race efforts. The "buy your car and take it to the track" mentality, or the "let's see how *this* works!!" mentality. It should be pretty easy to tell which camp I belong to... BUT, whatever camp you belong to, racing means bleeding out massive quantities of money. It's just like buying a boat.. B.O.A.T.== Break Out Another Thousand. /end offtopic discussion; if you wanna reply to me about my opinions about ferdinand's faster fuhrermobiles, please do it in PM..

well, I am NOT the guy whose words you need to set in stone.. I read ALOT, I am very skeptical about what I read, I have learned ALOT about performance engine theory.. but I DO not have a great deal of practical experience. That disclaimer being out there (since no one else is chiming in) I will say that no, your exhaust system should not cause the "inherent loss of torque" that is the typical issue put forward on the twice-pipes system. The confusion comes up because "twice pipes" in its most technical definition means that half the exhaust gets one pipe from engine to tail.. so to be precise, this MSA system is not EXACTLY proper "twice-pipes." Whether you, installing this exhaust, onto your engine, will cause a gain or loss of power or torque, remains to be seen; most likely it will not effect an otherwise stock engine very much in either way. ITS Biggest impact is the sound, which I personally love. hope this helps, shawn

Yanno what.. More than the underbody coating and metal differences, THIS probably hits the nail on the head MUCH MUCH more securely... My brother, after it had 280,000 miles on it and was tired as all get-out, "retired" his 82 280ZX into "truck" status; it hauled his boston whaler around and that was about it. I can NOT picture ANYONE doing that with a Z32... More than asking why, though, I was really just curious to see if anyone had any pics of a cancerous Z32 to make me feel older than dirt. I just had my 27th birthday and I am realizing that the crest of the hill is rapidly fading in my rearview mirror, so I was kinda looking for more stuff that made me feel old

My friend, you just described a porsche....

*envy* *RATHER*SERIOUS*envy* that just looks so COOOOL.......:hail::eek2: and all that jazz.. What kind of price is this going for? I don't have any language pack installed so all I saw was ????????????'s.

its basically just an early Z efi manifold, with a throttle body mounted to it. It has been cleaned up and possibly shaved down a little bit, but is not anything particularly special by any means. You could accomplish much the same thing with the EFI manifold on any Z motor, and a 60MM throttle body. If you are looking for a mild piece to clean up your engine bay, you aren't that concerned with ragged edge power, and you can answer for certain the sensor compatibility questions, then it is a TOTALLY acceptable manifold. It is NOT much of a performance upgrade, though. As has been said, it all depends how high the tag goes.

take a look at it and see, but welding is always your best bet. The torque loss issue with a twice pipes setup is a sticky issue.. Did you get the MSA twice pipes system, that is built to use with headers? The issue with a REAL twice pipe system is that it would take the exhaust pulses from two sets of three cylinders and wholly divorce them from each other, using two completely separate exhaust tracts. The system that MSA sells now starts out as a single pipe where it connects to the header, and then splits into two pipes. Having this "collector" allows the exhaust pulses from all six cylinders to merge, and THAT gives you a "scavenging" effect. Scavenging means this: as each exhaust pulse races out into the exhaust system, it leaves a wave of low pressure behind it, which assists the next wave of exhaust gases and has a suction effect. With only three cylinders on each exhaust "bank" you lose this effect; by having a y-pipe or collector integrated somewhere, there is no loss of scavenging effect. My system (uninstalled as of yet) consists of a somewhat rusty MSA style 3-into-2 header, a brand new Y pipe for the header, and the complete "twice pipes system for cars with headers" from MSA. THAT kit starts out with a second Y-pipe splitting the exhaust into two pipes, and then the two glass packs and tips. AS for assembly, welding is always the best way to go; you MIGHT want to talk to the welder about putting one or two flange fitting in so that in the future, any partial disassembly needed can be accomplished without cutting. If you are pinched for dough, you should be able to simply slip the pipes together and clamp them down, but thats really not the right way to go. HTH, good luck with the install.

actually, it might be easier to simply retrofit the alternator off the RB motor into your 240 as is, if that is a simpler solution to keeping your daily driver on the road before putting it on stands for "the big show..." You can look up info on installing an internally regulated alternator here; the job would be very very similar to the 90 amp maxima alternator upgrade. Honestly, I just read through this thread and wanted to subscribe to it to read anyhow.. when I got to the end I found a tiny spot where my two bits could come in handy. Good luck with this, looks like you're going about it the right way!

Thats a beautiful story. Really, its part of what I love about these cars. I was looking for a smiley that had a little tear in the corner of its eye Gotta recommend NGK plugs over Bosch eight days a week, though..

That was just what I wanted to hear!

Step 1. Step 2. (after that thread, step back and read the other stickies in the L-series forum) Then, as a bonus, I will reach into my "Bag O' Links" and toss a couple other bones out for you in nor particular order... http://www.geocities.com/zgarage2001/z.html http://www.ozdat.com/ozdatonline/enginedesign/ http://www.bandmzcars.com/headinfopage.html There are more where that came from... most of them will be found in one of the first two steps. Read a WHOLE lot, and you will be surprised how much you suddenly know, about how little you know.

you certainly seem to be achieving the goal of building your hybridZ quickly.. now lets hope it is as quick as it has been in the building! bloody ironic, from "V8intheZ"

isn't that the same four lug bolt pattern as we have on the S30/130s?