Phantom

Welcome. Can't really give you any stats on the 350/350 combination as it is so highly dependent on how they are built and what other Nissan components are involved in the drivetrain. Could be no faster than the original I6 to a real screamer. Rear tires 7 suspension should be the first indication. If that all looks pretty much stock then its possibly a 14 second car.

Do a search on this forum for LS1 / T56 Update. It should bring up a series of posts I did while doing my conversion which covered many of the decisions I made along the way. My car is a late model '77 so it is the same body as the '78. Things I can tell you: 1) The Toyota brake upgrade is not sufficient for the type of spirited driving you can do with the LS1. I burned mine up the first time out on a track. Ended up with the Modern Motorsports 240SX/300ZX upgrade on the rear with the larger master cylinder and 12.2" willwood superlites on the front. 2) The motor torque will twist the car. I've never been able to keep my windshield sealed since the engine went in. I have a 4-pt roll bar and front and rear strut tower braces and it still twists. i would suggest welding clips to the roof of the car that can bolt into the roll bar to make the body even more rigid. That may solve the problem. 3) Unless you are going to run slicks or seriously widen your rear fenderwells I would opt for a 3.70 LSD over a 3.90. 225/50-16's cannot handle the power in first and a significant portion of second with the 3.70 so a 3.90 would be even worse. 4) The more you modify things in the car the more you will have to depend on yourself to fix anything that breaks and the more complete your build sheet will have to be to remember who made what and where you can get it. 5) Changing the gauges in the car to electric will really complicate your life. No one makes dual gauges and the Z has two of them. Where do you put the two gauges you no longer have a home for? The clock hole could be one but what about the other? What do you do for turn signal indicators and the e-brake warning light? All these decisions eliminated by keeping the stock gauges. Do a gauge face color change to white, change the transmission over to a mechanical output, have JCI recalibrate the Tach to a V8 input, and keep your life simple. 6) Your '78 is already EFI so keep the same supply and reture fuel lines. Use the pump from JCI as it's designed to work with the stock fuel lines. 7) Have your radiator recored to a 4-row and use it with a stock fan and shroud set-up off an LS-1 equipped F-body. It will plug into the engine harness, control off the GM ECM, and fits the Z radiator beautifully with a little trimming. Makes cooling a no-brainer. 8) While you have the car in pieces do a complete suspension refresh. At the minimum you'll need new springs, urethane bushings throughout, and gas struts. Type of struts & springs depending on the type of driving you intend to do. I'd also refresh your ball joints and replace the boots on your steering rack. For extreme upgrades go to the Arizona Z Car website. They have neat stuff. You can go to my photo album and see some of the stuff that was done to mine during the development work for the JCI kit.

So Paul - How do you keep from breaking the half-shaft universals? I've twisted two of them now and I'm only running about 390HP - and that's through street tires. Think maybe the wheel hop has something to do with it?

Just for grins measure the center-to-center distance on the wheels on the C-5 transaxle you have and compare it to the same measurement on the Z. Then think about how much you'll have to narrow the 'vette system or widen the Z to accomodate it. That should be entertaining for a while.

RWWISNEWSKI - I looked at the concept of a single 3" exhaust and finally abandoned it. The 3" only has 72% of the flow area of a pair of 2 1/2". I determined I'd need a 3 1/2" to not have increased back pressure and I realized that size pipe would give me significant ground clearance problems. LS1's are notoriously responsive to back pressure - they don't like it. I ended up going with dual 2 1/2" to an x pipe just past the transmission and then routed the drivers side the normal Z route with the passenger side going straight back to the differential where I used a frame clearance section (round to oval to round) and then crossed it over to the stock outlet position on the drivers side and into a dynomax muffer that has dual 2 1/2" inlets and a single 3" outlet. You can see bits of it in my photo album.

FWIW - My LS1 set-up has been running the stock '98 Camaro Z28 fans & shroud since it was first done 4 years and nearly 28,000 miles ago. It fits my 4-row 280Z radiator like it was made for it. I have NEVER had overheating problems with it. I even had a relay fail in 100° Texas weather and it still held on one fan with the AC running full bore. That's a nice feature about two fans - there's still cooling if one fails. Lot's of choices out there but sticking with a unit compatible with the OEM harness has made mine basically bulletproof reliable.

There may be a bit of confusion here. Using the Corvette arrangement to improve your balance is not going to help unless you're looking for something like a Porsche 911. My 280Z with an LS1 and a T56 in the stock position is weight biased to the rear. The car mostly stock was 1400lbs front and rear. When I finished, it was 1400 front and 1430 rear. Addtional modifications took it to 1440 front and 1560 rear. The transmission sits closer to the rear wheels than the front plus the V8 sits further back than the I6 so weight moves to the rear naturally during the conversion.

Talk to John at JCI and see if he wants to broaden his line of parts a bit. I know he has a kit for an SBC into the 280ZX so he might be interested in taking the next step.

I'm running a T56 behind my 390HP LS1 so this won't be exact but I'd go with the 3.70's. My 280Z is porked out to 3,000 lbs with 1560 on the tail and I still can't control wheelspin/hop in first with a 3.70 LSD on street tires, even with a gentle launch. Second gear still has a significant amount of wheelspin but it's controllable. Might be OK if I was running slicks but then I'd be breaking u-joints on the half shafts routinely instead of just occaissionally.

Call JCI and get a reference from them. The guy they used to reflash my PCM did a great job. He took a '98 auto PCM and brought it up to 2002 T56 configuration, eliminated the VATS and some other inputs. I've had no trouble with it and the stock motor is putting out 390 HP.

John at JCI is very detail oriented and has been burned a couple times by all the variants in the 1st generation Z bodies. This is the way he'll be more confident of getting you the right parts. If not, you'd be getting what he designed using my '77 280Z which wouldn't be fully compatible with a 240.

Which LS1 do you have? Is it the one with a fuel control based on demand or does it work with a return line? Wet plugs indicate a rich system. Have you had a chance to see or smell your exhaust? Does it look/smell rich? I'm not convinced you have a sensor or ECU problem. Mine was straight-forward being out of a '98 Z28 Camaro it used a return line just like my 280z. Also, are you sure your tank and fuel filter is clean?

The good news I guess is that I'll have time to work on all the projects around the place -both clean-up and improvement. I know my Z's will appreciate me having more time to spend with them and clear up some of the minor things wrong with them. Also, the housing market is fairly solid here as the area is in a growth mode from folks spilling over the mountain from the Seattle side trying to find a reasonable cost of living. Everywhere I look there are major devolopment projects in this area. I 've talked with a couple equipment companies I've worked with in the pst and both have asked me to let them know when I come available so they can use me for consulting with their customers. That's encouraging for the short term. I just need to make my liquid funds last about 5 years and then I'm retiring for sure if, for some reason, I'm not able to turn this into a permanent retirement situation. We'll see.

About 16 months ago I quit my previous employer in Texas where I had been for 23 years. At the time I was one of the most senior people in a growing company. At my exit luncheon the VP commented that I was one of four people who had been responsible for shaping the company and the growth it had experienced. I started with a new firm as a technical manager in a small plant in Washington. The plan was to fill the tech manager role until the plant manager finally rolled out, apply for the plant manager position, do a few more years and retire. So much for plans. Two months to the day after I got here the plant had a RIF and I ended up the plant manager. I had left my secure job, my kids and grandkids in Texas, and a home that was paid for to move 2,000 miles and end up in charge of a plant that was on the verge of being shut down. Oh yeah - I had also taken on a huge mortgage. There are photos of the place in my album. It's worth every penny I spent. In the last year the plant became number 1 in productivity improvement in the entire company, reduced costs by nearly 20%, satisfied all state & federal environmental requirements, reduced safety incidents by over 50%, and got the highest rating by HR for employee relations. That got me an "exceeded expectations" rating by my regional director. The reward was that he flew in two weeks ago and announced that the corporation has decided to close my plant and I'll be unemployed sometime this summer. To be fair, I was offered a plant in southern California or a senior engineering position in Texas. I've turned them both down to stay with my employees until the end to ensure they get all the opportunities to retrain and re-employ elsewhere. Half my plant had been with the company over 15 years. Many know nothing else since graduating from high school. I should get a decent severance package plus I got an inheritance that will let me run a year without working plus my Navy reserve retirement will kick in this summer which will cover my medical insurance and provide some additional income. I'll also be eligible for unemployment the day I'm laid off. Evidently the severance package isn't considered employment income. I'm going to take some time off and then look at doing some consulting work. Either that will work out or I'll find something else in the area as I don't intend to leave here. If all else fails I can really retire and start drawing social security in a couple years. That with my military retirement and the interest off my investments will allow me to be just fine. I've had enough of the roller-coaster ride for now. Ain't it great?

Put the beast back on the scales and it came in at 3,000 lbs even. 1440 on the nose and 1560 on the tail. Extra weight due to sound proofing, 4-pt roll bar, and an extensive stereo system. also noted that driver weight distributes 75% rear wheels & 25% front wheels in my case with the seat all the way back & leaning.

I'ma bit confused by the corner weights. It indicates that the right front and the left rear are the heavy points. I understand the right front with the engine slightly biased right and the battery on that side but why the left rear? My 280 started life at 1400 lbs front and rear for a near perfect wieght distribution. The LS1/T56 conversion added 30 lbs to the car - all on the rear axle. Then I added front and rear strut tower braces, a 4-pt roll bar, sound deadening and a seven speaker Alpine sound system which pushe dthe car up another 160 lbs to 3,000 even with 1,440 front and 1,560 rear. When the car was at 2,830 I was able to get it corner weighed and it weghed in about 200 lbs havy on the pasenger side becasue the engine and transmission are slightly off cent to the right plus the fuel tank is right biased. The goal is offset the weight of the driver. Driver influence is yet another story. Not only is nearly all the driver wieght on the left side it as also 75% on the rear axle. Of my 240 lbs at the time, 180 of it registered on the rear axle.

Also - route the cable from the Cablex to the speedometer very carefully to avoid any binding. Mine's off a little bit and periodically it acts up on me and starts to bounce.

Grenade300, Not sure what size exhaust you're planning on running but mine has dual 2 1/2" running down both sides of the T56 to an X pipe and then back. On the drivers side the pipe runs through the cut our area in the differential support. On the passenger side I used a "frame clearance piece" that goes round to oval to round to clear the mount on that side but not go much lower. Once behind the axles both pipes route over to a single, dual inlet, muffler in the stock position. Don't remember if I have photos of it in my album or not. Hope this helps.

I actually named mine "Zack" when I first got him. always named my cars. Some male & some female. Depends on the personality. I normally refer to him as "the hotrod" or "the 280Z28" or "the red car", very seldom as Zack. Hope he isn't having an identity crisis.

Yeah, the GT3 is a VERY nice car. I'd certainly swap with him if he offered. I guess what I was trying to say was that the guy thought he could just blow me off and proceeded to try in the one area where the old Z wasn't a push over. His mistake. If we'd been on the track it would have been a different story with his handling and braking but he still would have had to work for it.

Oh - he knew. He lives somewhere near me so I'm waiting for a rematch. Most powerful naturally aspirated Porsche 911 and he can't walk away form an old Z. you'd think a guy could do better for over $100k.

I thought only the one version of the Z31 in 1988 had a VLSD and that was an R200? I was unaware that any of the Z32 models had viscous LSD's?

I was on my way to work this morning and pulled up at a stoplight that had two left turn lanes. I pulled into the right one because the left one was occupied by a new Porsche GT3. When the light changed he took off hard and made a quick, hard left onto the highway and went for it. Caught me a bit off-guard so I only used first to start the turn and then was in second by the time I was onto the highway - and about 3-4 car lengths behind. Surprisingly I was able to out-pull him in second, third and fourth so I was only a car length behind when I backed off. We were approaching a bridge that is known for having a speed trap on the other side and we were well into triple digits at this time. It's always a good start on the day when I can run with a car that cost over $100k. I don't think the other driver was too happy though.

Any way to just load it up on this website so folks could peruse as desired?

Yeah - me too. Looks like things are picking up a bit at Cowtown. The new website is coming along and it looks like activities are picking up.