Daeron
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Posts posted by Daeron
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Really? Ok. My tools and a few cars are not here at my house so sometimes I have to ask silly stuff that most people would just go out in the garage and look at.
no problem. There are links to making home made leak down checkers if you can get some fittings and a gauge.. and I think a regulator of some sort. Unfortunately, I dont seem to have them bookmarked, but I swear I've seen 'em!
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the compression tester has a check valve in it.
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i knew i was gonna get my balls busted for that, heh.
The lawnmower was fun, believe it or not.. the write up was what I did while I sat in my bedroom and cooled off.
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excellent, congratulations on the new baby!
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awww, JUST missed it! I will answer both and say fruit, and mow the lawn yourself.
waffles or french toast?
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My lawnmower sucks.
It is an ancient craftsman bagger model, that has had three or four different engines on the frame over the course of its life. My landlord/roomate has had it forever, and has kept that one alive because he had and used the bag for it (the bag is huge) and we compost all of our yard waste and fish remains. The thing is so godawful looking that I will NOT even post a picture of it here. One front wheel is being held on with tie wire. Bad.
It runs like a top, but its falling apart! So, somewhere Fletcher (my landlord) picked up this really nice Craftsman self-propelled mulching/bagging mower, I think from the dumpster at work?! I don't know.
Its got a 6.75 horsepower Tecumseh engine on it, 22" cut. Just, your standard, MODERN, pretty nice self propelled mower. Nothing special.. but better than "the beast" with the broken recoil (we had to wind the rope back up manually
)We rebuilt the carburetor on it, replaced the spark plug and the air filter, and it ran like a top. Except, it had an oil leak REAL BAD, and was about ten times louder when you stood on the non exhaust side of the engine, than when you stood on the exhaust side. Rod Knock, anyone? So, no go on the new mow.
Fast forward about a year to last week. My dad emailed me, saying that he had his "old" mower that he could give me, a five horse techumseh engine, it just needed a carburetor. He had rebuilt the carb on it completely, it looks beautiful.. it should run great... BUT, the carb will not run. He "got around to" rebuilding the carb on another mower he had (identical to my craftsman, actually) and wanted to know if i wanted this engine.
Since I knew I had a recently rebuilt carburetor, I jumped on it.
My dad also was aware that I had a need for some sort of lawnmower related parts.. we are kinda "buddies" like that, neither of us buys lawnmowers, we find "broken" ones and put them together into working ones. Its a pasttime as much as a money saver.
Anyhow, I became the proud owner of a formerly self propelled, non running murray.
Of course, as soon as I started taking things apart, I discovered that in the last year my nice, "rebuilt" carburetor had gotten all fouled up with junk and nastiness... wonderful. Re Rebuild time!
Eventually got it taken care of, and in the course of this discovered that the bore on the 5 horse murray carb was about 60% of the size of the bore on the craftsman carb.. I am imagining that a large amount of the horsepower increase is from this bore change alone. The craftsman also had a different cylinder head, with the intake port on the bottom, and the craftsman intake manifold, as a result, had a downward slope to it.
Other than that, the two engines were identical. The air filter setup, and the carburetors, were somewhat different though. There was some sort of vacuum line? coming out of the rear of the block, and on the murray it went into the air filter housing; whereas on the craftsman it went directly to a second hose barb on the carb. This barb appeared to lead into a red straw that snuck through the bore, and out into the air filter; without the air filter this carb will NOT run. So, step one (after the carb rebuild, heh) was to remove the engine cover, air filter, oil filler and gas tank assembly from the murray and replace it with the pieces from the craftsman. The craftsman recoil had a busted rope, so I just used the murray recoil. Lo!!
And Behold..
Yah, the 5 horse has stripped exhaust threads, must JB weld that in the near future. But that is the same motor that was on the red frame.. with the carb and trimmings of the cratsman on it. It started fine, but wouldn't keep running after it started. The air filter was sopping wet, and I chalked it up to that, end afternoon 1.
So today I got off from work early, and went out to beat my head against it, and sweat some more. (a lot more, actually..) I began by confirming that it ran good with a dry air filter, and set to removing the engine from the craftsman, examining the drive assembly (this is the first self propelled lawnmower I have had my fingers into) and making sure everything was going to be a direct swap as anticipated. Really, it is amazing how rarely I have seen two lawnmowers whose engines could not theoretically at least be swapped. It takes a serious oddball brand to be different.
There were several minor issues that I wont bore you with details on; suffice it to say that I had to get inventive to retain both the blade brake, and find a way to activate the drive mechanism, because the cables that I had and the levers that I had did not all match up. In the end I had to kinda pinch the handle assembly from the murray, and put it on the craftsman, to get it to work right. I also had to use the original craftsman blade brake cable on the drive, and use the murray brake cable on the blade brake. On top of the "accesory witching", the blades had different methods of staying locked to the output shaft, and the blade for the engine we used was shot (and smaller) so there was a minor bit of ingenuity there as well.. but otherwise it went easy as pie.
And so here we are. Back to where we started, appearance-wise anyhow. There are two covers still uninstalled in these pictures, because they were taken right after mowing the first trial patch. As soon as I had this thing together, on the very first successful start, I pushed it out for a victory lap around the weeds in the back. Runs great.
You can see some fresh gore on her, from her battle out in the yard. Aint life grand?
here is a gratuitous shot of my admired and appreciated assistant:
and the aftermath:
I really want to paint the deck, now. I DEFINITELY plan on removing the Craftsman badging and stencilling DAERON on there somewhere, ad the very least.
I am not bragging about my insane skills, or anything.. Just sharing something I thought might be interesting to some of you people walking a less unusual path than I
To those who understand what I did, and have done the same, I salute you! This kinda tinkering is fun, and beneficial; I take garbage and turn it into a $300 lawnmowerAnd finally... What I am about to say I mean on so many different levels....
THANKS, DAD!!!
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ran em.. loved em.. sold em to mario..
love my 3" single better.. turbos rock
Okay, I finally dug up Mario's thread about his exhaust, complete with videos to hear how it sounds.
http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=113984&highlight=pipes
Summary: mario has a full twin pipe system, meaning that as I said above, his type is "lacking scavenge effect" and, while it is the MSA system he has apparently deleted the two Y-pipes that first joined the header into one pipe and then split the collector into two pipes again. The MSA system, as purchased, is designed to hook up to a single pipe.
He didnt list the diameter of the collector (obviously) but he quoted the size of the two pipes at just under 1.75" each.
Prox, when you ran this system was it with fully divorced pipes, or did you have a collector?
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lots.
77, near mint body, waiting paint, rb26, and other stuff.
76, goregous original condition except for new paint.
73, runs good.little rust. for sale
72, little rust, lots of goodies on this one. for sale.
05 ,anniversary. DD. hey shut up, if it gets hit, who cares. there everywhere. save the s30's for another day.
those are current cars. total is over 100 in 16years.
excellent post
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I have a 2.5" Str8 thru Magnaflow and it's definitely quieter than that Borla. I also added a resonated tip to clean up the sound a little.
It's loud under load but quiet off the gas.
You know what struck me the most about this video?
I REALLY like the way you get in the car and start your engine. every single time, (or as near as possible, for cold starts at the very least) you should crank, and let idle for a few moments, AT LEAST. I like to blip just like you did, let it idle a bit more, blip a couple times, and then pull out into the road.
basically, any OHC engine needs to get oil pressure built up before you make it rev.. cold cranking a car and immediately revving it up is bad, and I think it is easy to see why. I also think that the opposite, letting the engine oil itself well before stressing it with higher RPMs, can only be good for the life of a motor.
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other than the rust in the tailgate sill area, it looks to be in fantastic shape. Take a screwdriver and tap along the qarter panel window area rust pretty hard; anything you "tap" through is rusted badly enough that losing is isnt really a loss, it needs to be replaced anyhow.. but judging from the photos, it looks like it should prove to be pretty solid. Hardly a guess to put any weight on since i am thousands of miles away, but hey, take what you get. Try the screwdriver to know for sure; if you cant tap through it then it IS good and strong, right?
Looks like the neighbors unloaded "that damn rusty old datsun" finally, lucky you! good find! You ought to buy a steering wheel first.. that would be inspiring, and it needs doing anyhow.
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monzter: that was exactly what I had in mind; my uncle has several different racing oil pans for the roadster engine, from nissan comp to original BRE pieces, so I have seen lots to give me ideas.
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what is that mesmerizing engine bay a part of????
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OOPS! I owe mike88SS a public apology for closing his post without first verifying his original intent.
Gettin' a little trigger happy, there, BRAAP???
Watch out.. Tiberius started off the saaaame way.....
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For a sump on the tank to work good it needs to have the fuel return line emptying into it to keep it full on turns. The sump also needs higher sides to keep the fuel from sloshing out and a an inlet that traps it, one that starts on say the right and snakes around to the left.
Thanks for pointing that out, but I sorta knew that already, heh. Not the specifics, (thanks for the tip on the high sidewalls, that gave me a great visual concept) but I am fully aware of the ideas of baffling your sump to keep it full. I just hadn't thought of using an old oilpan as the actual sump, and that makes things wonderfully simple.
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BRAAAP...BRAAAAAAAAAAP.......BRAAAAaaaaaaa........
I don't wanna sound.. funny, er nuthin......
..but it always gives me chills when you do that. Don't tell anyone, I think you and I like the same sounds coming from the exhaust
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looks to be taken on film if i'm not mistaken.
i like that look, suits the z and makes it look even better than it already does!
I see what you mean, and am now intrigued much more by these photographs.. any chance of a link to where we could get higher resolution versions? it IS a very nice little spread.
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efi
night owl or early bird? (hint: I did NOT just wake up, heh)
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I will take your humor to mean that I didn't piss you off
I just love firefox and never miss an opportunity to tout their excellent product, point taken.
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Hope this gives you ideas
Indeed it does, my friend... many thanks..
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hate to nitpick, but Mozilla Firefox is a much much nicer web browser program than IE, AOL, Netscape, or any other I have ever tried.. and it has a built in spell checker, that highlights anything you type in a field like this one if it is misspelled.. makes life easier, and Jon was right about appearance; even though most of us know and respect your intelligence, there are "the others" out there who may use it as a poor excuse not to utilize your services.
I'm just trying to point out the easy button.. I never spell check anything either, but Firefox does it for me, now. I wouldn't be so bold as to make the suggestion to someone here for themselves as a plain civilian, but you are doing this for a buck; it might help you out.
Nice work on the manifold, BTW.. it isnt my thing, but it is CERTAINLY impressive, and as you said it was the customer's dollar. any idea what kind of color scheme the owner is going to go for?
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wisdom seems to dictate that you nickel and dime your suspension and steering up to snuff.
Visit the FAQ sub forum, and read through the hyperlinked table of contents. Check the stickies in all the sub forums that are appropriate to your vehicle, including electrical, fuel delivery etc.. read through all that and sponge up what you can. Make an appointment to read through it all again in a month when you have been reading about these cars for a while.
By the time you read through them all the third time, between the constant reiteration of points deemed worthy of highlighting by the forum as a whole, and your daily reading of issues and questions that come up, you begin to get the idea.
You've had a few rather well informed people give you rather well informed answers to your rather well informed (for a newb) questions, and I see you already taking them to heart and at face value; you should go a long way here.
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Hey, half of my friends all moved to steamboat like, four years ago!! how old are you? Go to the bars much?
If they know you, it would be as "the guys with shawn's old car" because for many years I drove my white 280 as my sole vehicle..
Know anyone who lived out there named Justin? Karen? Cassie? Candy? The first two have since moved back, but the latter two still live there..
Welcome to HyridZ, by the way.. heh...
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Well, I can't get into all the technical aspects since it's way over my head--see above posts for all that.
I had the MSA system on my 74 and then also on my 76 (both 2+2 models)--I got pulled over more than once out in Commiefornia due to the obnoxious noise level--one cop compared it to a Cessna flying at 10 ft off the ground
I ended up having it replaced with a single 2.5" pipe all the way to the back, then put a Supertrapp on it--made a world of difference, and got rid of the droning.
Also made driving it a little nicer--no more defness after an hour
This was on a non-stock engine; L28 stock bottom end, E31 head w/280Z valves, 460 lift/288 dur cam, triple webers, 6->1 header
I must reiterate at this point that yes, I do rather enjoy an emphatic exhaust note.
Take my above comments with that grain of salt
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I'd like to see a back to back comparison before I agree with your statement. I think the scavenging effect you referred to is somewhat overrated. I think most of the CP Z cars back in the day used true dual exhaust. Hard to believe that racers would carry around the extra weight of two complete sets of pipes if there was no benefit to it at all. You don't see many Porsche racers running single outlet exhaust either.
You also need to factor in header design as it is critical to making power. Most cheap header systems are pretty crappy. Katman has referred to this before on many occasions, and I think his general conclusion was that the Nissan Comp header was the cheapest one worth buying from a performance upgrade standpoint. I'm still fairly convinced that my MSA 6-1 header did provide an increase in power, but I have no dyno sheet to back that up, and there is the possibility that my butt dyno misinterpreted louder exhaust for more power.
Tube diameters and muffler restriction are less critical, but also can have a significant effect. I seem to remember the diameter being pretty small on the twice pipes setup. You can figure out the area of a circle using pi x r^2, and if you think your car should be set up with 2.5" single exhaust, that means that you have an area of 4.9 sq in. For duals to have the same area they would need to be roughly 1.75" each. I think a lot of people figure that one 5" pipe flows the same as 2 2.5" pipes, but it is not that way. So that means more weight that you're carrying around, because you have to carry two pipes that are fairly large compared to the single pipe.
I cannot disagree with your post at all, if anything I wrote either misled or failed to mention your statements the shortcoming was unintentional.
As you said, the header is key. Unless the exhaust pulses are extracted from the cylinder head properly, the effect of everything downstream is muted. My point was simply that the loss of scavenge effect typically associated with a "true" twice pipe system is not present on the MSA piece. I have no evidence to back up the need for scavenging; I was relying on Katman's experience using the "true dual exhaust" as "proof" on that subject and nothing more. It would be nice to see a side-by-side dyno comparison.. but how many things can we say that about? My understanding was that the scavenging effect is one of the facets that an engine builder uses to determine the camshaft selection, and that it can be used to allow less overlap. With an unscavenging exhaust system, it is more important to waste a little intake charge to help flush all the exhaust out of the cylinder. However, I am being something of an armchair gearhead in making these statements. (Internet parrot may also be applicable, but it is far from mindless
)As for pipe diameter, if memory serves it is twin 1.75" pipes, possibly slightly larger. The Y-pipe in the photo above is ~2.75-3". The header I have to install is the MSA 3 into 2 into one header, so basically my exhaust will be cheap header, into header y pipe, into twice pipes y pipe (with a total single pipe length of about a foot) then back into the twin ~1.75" pipes, through twin cherry bombs, and out into twin chrome tips.
The clearance issue of the MSA system was one that I was not aware of, since I haven't installed my system yet. It was a christmas gift received just after my car went out of commission, so I have only looked at it and not actually run it yet
)
To those who understand what I did, and have done the same, I salute you! This kinda tinkering is fun, and beneficial; I take garbage and turn it into a 
Fiberglass Interior Door Panels
in Body Kits & Paint
Posted
first off,
on the paris hilton joke.
secondly, I *might* be able to find two panels with good hard backing, but less than Ideal upholstery in my uncles collection O parts. I didnt reply with this earlier, because it is a might.. but I will make an effort in the vague and indeterminable future to see if I can come through on this. You *are* just talking about making a glass knock off of the stiff paperboard underneath the vinyl material, right?
Well, I promise nothing but I will see what I can do.