jt1

Those mounts are nice. I think you're a closet engineer/fabricator. Did the body shop get finished with the body? Power steering???????? jt

Pete, that sucks. If it was only water and only running for a short time, I don't think you've hurt the bearings. Hope the bolts do the trick. I wonder why studs are so much worse than bolts to leak? Doesn't seem like there would be much difference. I've had a few bolts seep, but they sealed after running a bit. John

Let's give Okimoto a big attaboy for searching, bringing up an old thread, and adding info to the thread. I didn't notice this was your second post, good job. [search nazi jt]

Try putting washers on the wheel studs till you get the desired clearance. This is a pretty good indicator of how thick a spacer is needed, or how much needs to come off the caliper. I think you can buy cheap generic spacers at some of the custom wheel shops, and I have made my own out of 1/8 aluminum. Is the caliper centered on the rotor? Any possibility the mount isn't quite right in some fashion? Are you getting a full pad wipe on the rotor? John

Any material removed from the bridge of the caliper is gonna weaken it somewhat, leading to more caliper deflection and possibly breakage. You are your own engineer and test pilot here. Having said that, I've seen 1/16th or so removed off superlights with no detectable bad effects. It's a good idea to finish up with a pretty fine grit to leave a smooth surface with no stress risers. Have you considered a thin wheel spacer, say 1/16 or 1/8? If that small amount would give you clearance, it might be a better route, although I'm not a fan of thick wheel spacers at all. John

Frame repair work is best done with a mig welder. The sheetmetal is thin, and a stick welder puts a good bit of heat into the work, so what happens is you burn a big hole in what you're working on. If you want to give it a try, find some metal the same thickness as your car, then practice on the scrap a while. You'll see what I mean. If you were at a shop in La Habra, it might have been Johnc's. He runs a welding shop there. You might PM him. John

Around here, $200 or less for a good block would be considered a bargain, and quickly snapped up by almost any gearhead. You might have to up your price range a little. John

Congratulations David!!!!! Glad everything's going well, and hope it continues. John

Good deal, Mike. Glad you got it sorted out. John

Tirerack has 245 BFG's in stock......... http://www.tirerack.com/tires/Compare1.jsp?width=245%2F&ratio=60&diameter=14&startIndex=0&search=true&pagelen=20&pagenum=1&pagemark=1&RunFlat=All&x=75&y=8 John

I'm surprised the cop who was cuffing the guy didn't let him go, then beat the living daylights out of her. That was plain ignorant, and put 2 peoples lives in danger. I bet the cop cuffing the guy caught some fragments of the bullet when it hit the pavement. What an idiot. John

Sounds like the distributor is in 180 deg off to me........ :biggrin: :biggrin: :biggrin: John

You did the right thing. No matter how long you spend looking for or going to get a straight rust free chassis, it won't be as long as it takes to repair a rust bucket. I went 1052 miles one way (western NC to Dallas) for my last purchase, and am glad of it. Keep looking till you find what you want. John

If it's an aluminum head, it can be welded fairly cheaply with good results, and would be worth getting. If their iron heads, I would get the good one and look for a mate. Welding cast iron is iffy, sometimes you get good results, lots of times you don't. Go ahead and get them both, you might find a bare head and use the valves, etc., on it John

Just relocate the tranny brace forward, that will take care of it. How about some details on the 454 SBC buildup? Stock block or after market? Bore & stroke? What kind of pistons? Rod length? Wrist pin height? Any special stuff on the ring lands, buttons, etc.? Heads, cam? Any pics from during the buildup? John

Well, it depends. The location of the tranny brace has a huge impact on the weight distribution of the car. At least two members I know of are working on computer controlled pneumatically operated tranny braces to vary the weight distribution based on how quickly the car is accelerating. Neither of them will post about it though. Maybe you could develop one to work with the air shocks, that would be a killer setup. Any pics of the air shocks? John

Could you please post a pic of the air shocks for a 240Z? I'm really interested in those but can't find any, not sure what they look like. I think this is your problem. Try moving the mount forward until you get the ride height you desire. Can't have a ***dragging Z car. Thanks for the pics- John

Lots of things can cause a clunk, and sometimes it's just a process of elimination, but since it seems to happen when the load on the R&P is reversed, I'm guessing 1) the diff has too much backlash or 2) the mustache bar mounts have some movement in them. John

I don't think posts should be deleted because someone might find them offensive. That is a slippery slope we need to avoid. Somewhere, there is someone who might find almost any post offensive- and to try to humor them in the interest of being PC is a waste of time. If you're that thin skinned you need to get a life. There's probably no doubt I have offended a few stupid newbies/nonsearchers with my posts, but they just need to follow the rules of the site and we'll get along fine. We may not always agree, but we'll get along. I'm in favor of banning P&R. Most people have their minds firmly made up on these subjects, and are not going to change them. It usually becomes an argument for the sake of arguing, and gets heated and personal, which is a bad thing. I have good friends I don't agree with on P&R, but we know where we stand, don't stir things to see if it will stink, and we remain close friends. We are primarily here to discuss Z's plus the occasional interesting/funny occurance, and that should be the main focus of the site. John

Flip Flops?????? No freaking way. You guys are nuts. It's stilleto high heels or else. jt

Mongo- I agree the whole show is somewhat suspect, one reason I was pretty bummed about it. The dyno guy was of the opinion the numbers we were getting were good, just that we couldn't get them where we wanted. He was extremely sorry we had trouble, and said he wouldn't charge me anything if I would agree to come back for another 5 hr session. ($250) Since I want to go ahead and get the car ready for the track, we agreed on $100. I was happy with that. Mike- It's a 355, 10.3:1 comp, pump gas motor. I've though about EFI a lot, just like I think about the LS motors, but haven't made the leap yet. I figure I'm about 20 yrs behind current technology. John

I took the motor to the dyno yesterday. Despite good intentions, high hopes, etc., it was a disappointing day. I arrived at 1 pm for a 5 hr scheduled test. The shop can't run the dyno past 7pm because of noise & neighbors. I had my motor with the performer rpm air gap and 700 dp, plus a victor jr. and a borrowed 830 annular. We spent about an hr getting the motor setup on the dyno, exhaust hooked up, ignition, water, etc. Set the timing, let it warm up, and started a baseline pull from 2500 to 7000. Things started going wrong immediately. For some reason, the dyno wouldn't load the motor at low rpm. It would kick in, release, jack the throttle around, repeat, and produce data points that looked like a shotgun pattern (improved cylinder at best). They had a huge thunderstorm Wednesday and got a lightning pop that fried a bunch of other stuff in the shop, and it appeared it got the dyno. The operator thought it was the rpm pickup, so we changed that. No help. Then we changed the ring on the driveshaft, still no help. Spent about 30 min on the phone with superflow, messing with the computer, same results. Dammit. By now it's almost 3pm. Still trying, we found if we started the pull at 4K, things went well, but the AF meter wasn't working. New O2 meter, no help, ghetto rigged a voltmeter to the O2 meter to get some idea of AF, but no way to plot or relate to rpm. Proceeded anyway, damn the torpedoes. 1st pull, air gap, 700, jetted 66/71: trq 402 @ 4K, peak 420 @ 5100, holding 400 to 5800, hp peak 461 @ 6200. AF bouncing in the 13's, BSFC mid 3's, so we fatten it to 68/73 2nd pull: trq 418 @ 4K, peak 429 @ 5400, holding 400 to 6200, peak hp 481 @ 6700 AF in the 12's, occasional 13's, BSFC about .37-.38. By now it's after 5pm, I know there's no way to get done everything I wanted. The 700 probably needs a little more jet, but times wasting, so we put the 830 on, jetted 84 square. 3rd pull: trq 420 @ 4k, peak 446@ 5300, holding 400 to 6500, peak hp 495 @ 6600 AF 12-13, BSFC .37-.38. We put 86's in the 830. 4th pull: trq 428 @ 4K, peak 449 @ 5600, holding 400 to 6500, hp peak 499 @ 6700 AF still 12-13, BSFC .38-.39, so we put in 87's. 5th pull: trq 424 @ 4K, peak 448 @ 5100, 400 to 6500, hp peak 502 @ 6400 AF mostly 12's, BSFC .39-.40 It's past 6pm and it looks like that's about all the jet the carb wants. Plugs are beginning to show a little more fuel ring than we'd like. We change timing from 36 to 33, since sometimes pump gas motors don't like as much timing. Bad idea. 6th pull: trq 368 @ 4k, peak 446 @ 5600, 400 to 6400, hp peak 497 @ 6200 The upper #'s aren't bad, but loosing 56 ft-# at 4K isn't what you want for a road race engine. We decide to try 38 deg. 7th pull: Basically a duplicate of #5, maybe 1 or 2 numbers different here and there, but not enough to be significant. 36 looks good. We reset the timing, it's now 6:45, and try another pull from 2500-7000. Same results as before, dyno loads/unloads and fires another shotgun blast graph. We let the motor cool down to 140 deg and shut it down at 7pm. We get the motor unhooked, everything loaded up, I get back to my shop, unload, and get home at 11pm. I'm exhausted and somewhat bummed. General observations: I didn't even get to try the vic jr. It would have probably helped the top end some, but I was curious how much torque it would lose to the air gap. The 830 annular made good torque and hp. Next question is how much throttle response it will loose to the 700. Once the car sets, I pretty much steer with the throttle and sometimes even hang the rear out a little, so the TR is important. Only getting it on the track will tell that. The 830 is good up top, but obviously FAT HOG RICH at lower rpm, so I'm gonna need to work on that with my LM1. Not getting to see the rpm range I wanted was a major downer, because I run the motor from about 3K to 7K at the track. Everytime I don't have to shift is saving an opportunity for me to screw up. I wanted to see the torque #'s at lower rpm, esp. between the two carbs. Supposedly the annulars are best at lower rpm. No good AF #'s was the worst. We basically tuned the carbs like in the pre O2 meter days. At 500 rpm/sec, a 3K - 7K pull only takes 6 seconds, and the flashes of the digital voltmeter went by very quickly. I can't believe I was stupid enough to leave the LM1 laying at the shop. The best thing was the motor performed flawlessly, and made a little better #'s then I anticipated. I'm gonna cut open the oil filter, run the valves and inspect the valve gear closely. I was gonna run the valves on the dyno after the first pull, but since time was short I skipped that. I'm gonna forget the dyno, get the motor in the car and take it to the track in Sept. Sorry for the long read. I'd really like to hear any comments, observations, and suggestions. John

Hmmm... back when I was running a L6, lash pad problems seemed to show up all the way around the cam. Anything in particular that makes it just show up on the downside? John

When you say "backside", are you talking about the downramp from the nose to the base circle? If so, you are almost certainly floating the valves, the rocker is losing contact with the cam over the nose, then slamming into the downramp. More spring will probably help, contact the cam maker and see what they recommend for your cam and rpm. Also lighter valves and retainers will help. John

Tony, I had no intention at all of implying your wife was anything but a fine lady. I was refering to my younger years when my lifestyle was.....uh....a lot different than it is now. Marriage has been good for me, and I hope you and her enjoy a lifetime together. Sorry about that. John