2eighTZ4me

Anything more than .015" and you'll start needing cam tower shims (which are conveniently sold in .015" size) to compensate for timing. There are a few folks that have shaved .080" off the head and shimmed the cam towers. This basically digs in to the head's combustion chamber area and lessens its' volume, thus increasing compression. Do a search and you should find the article/thread that goes into detail on this.

I got mine from Capital City Nissan in Atlanta. Most all of them ship out of Nissan's Tennessee warehouse, so you shouldn't have to wait too long to get them if you're in NC. Course - they screwed up my order and it took them nearly 10 days to get from Tn. to the A.T.L. !!! FYI - Nissan's part #'s for a .200" pad are 99996-M1200, and I'm almost 100% positive that the last 3 digits denote the pad thickness, so a .180" pad would be 99996-M1180. At least that's how my pads were labeled.

Get an 8x1.25mm bolt and thread it in to the hole on the top of the center main cap. Then get a slide hammer, attach it to the bolt (or attach the slide hammer TO the center main cap with the bolt) and slap away. Should pop right out after a few whacks. The same holds true for the rear main cap. They both have 8x1.25mm holes tapped in them for this very reason. And as for engines being "rare" in the Southeast - phooey to that. There is a place in Norcross, Ga. called Z-Car Atlanta that has no less than 15 good engines sitting on their floor in their warehouse, as well as countless others out in cars in the boneyard. I'm quite surprised that when I did a search for Z Car Atlanta on this site, scant little was returned. It is a Z-Car graveyard with an abundance of usable parts.

Absolutely it is. If you've never done one - the chain chock basically locks the motor down by wedging the chain against the tensioner and the guide on both sides into a V pattern. The bottom end is "locked" into position by the chock. If you so much as move the motor a couple degrees, the chock will get shot out of the V as quick as you can say oh sh..!! and, unless you have the handy dandy tool (spare head) that Paul has, you'll never keep enough tension on it with your bare hands to keep the tensioner from ejecting. I'm with TimZ - you've gotta wait anyways on the headwork. I'd offer up a timing cover gasket pair, but shipping to Au. would probably negate the free nature of the gaskets. You could possibly get by with some RTV on the old gasket if you didn't tear it up upon timing cover removal. Then - once in there, you can check the tensioner and guide for wear as well. Just make SURE that when going back together with the chain, that your bottom end is at TDC, and you follow the FSM guide of 42 teeth on the chain from the mark on the crank gear to the 1 o'clock mark on the cam timing gear. I use a dab of yellow paint to mark the 2 link marks. My guess is the shiny links on the chain have probably been covered with oil sludge by now. That is indeed an interesting head. It is not a P90 for sure. Exhaust ports aren't hexagonal at all. It looks to be an N42 or some (JDM?) derivative thereof.

I don't understand the infatuation with a 4 banger. The guy wants cheap power. A SBC is THE way to go if you're on a budget and want something that has been swapped into a Z and documented on numerous occasions. By the time you get done making an SR20 or KA24 powerful enough to keep up with a SBC - you've spend double what you could have had with a V8. To each his own I guess. I just responded based on "inexpensive" and "power". If you want to go exotic, by all means have at. Just realize it is going to be quite pricey by the time it's all said and done with - as I stated before. Especially when you add a turbo to the mix. Here's an idea - get an L28 block - short block. With pistons rods etc. - they show up here every now and then for $150 or so. Tear that down and rebuild during the winter months, get your cammed E31 head, plop it on, and voila - you have a motor ready to drop in in place of Ol' Smokey. There's tons of options available to you, as these cars lend themselves well to all kinds of motor swaps - in the end though, it's what YOU want. I can't speak for a 240SX 5 speed bolting to a SR20, but can vouch for the fact that it will hook up to an L-series motor with some modifications. And if you have an R200 rear end, that'll be plenty enough for almost anything you can throw at it.

DOH!!! Here we go - how's that? Need to get off my duff and do some more documentation! Thanks again to all who helped make this come together.

Welcome aboard Sailor Bob! What color smoke is it belching? Black, blue, or white? Black is running rich, which can be fixed without a rebuild, blue is oil smoke - and in some cases can be fixed without a rebuild (sometimes it does require a re-ring though), and white smoke (steam) is water/antifreeze, which can most likely be attributed to a head gasket gone bad. That can be done without a total rebuild too. How many miles on the car/motor? Do you WANT to keep it stock? That's the impression I got from your post. That would be your cheapest route more than likely. You can also buy a used L-Series motor and drop it in a lot cheaper than a rebuild. Unless, you absolutely have to have power - then start looking at a small block conversion. Turbo starts to get pricey when you start upping the boost levels. And, I've heard once you start raising boost levels (without tweaking fuel/air), it's very difficult to stop due to the addictive nature..at which time, it's usually too late and you've toasted another motor. Bang for the buck is probably a small block Chevy.

that is the most interesting use of a pallet jack that I have ever seen! Looks great - keep up the good work!

After trying to figure out why it won't run worth a crap, I decided to see what jetting the PO had put in the carbs to baseline against. Lo and behold - EMPTY holes! He took the jets out and put them in a divider box prior to shipping me the carbs! Duh - that should have been my first clue. Jets in - fired right up. A few tweaks and it idles well. Still a little stumble coming off idle - I've been reading all the Mikuni posts I can on this site - but when the carbs come on, it's like a 2 stroke - hang on! Still need a good exhaust system and alignment (and tags!), and minor timing tweaks, as well as retorquing the manifold bolts after a heat cycle - but for the most part, it seems to do OK. Will be taking video this weekend for all those interested.

It's definitely NOT a MN47 head. They had round exh. ports with liners, and 42mm x 35mm valves. I tried going with 44's and 38's on my MN47, and it couldn't be done with out some real expensive machine work. The seats would overlap. I suspect P90 as well, but I also didn't get a good close look at the exhaust ports (covered with soot where the header sat). The P90 has somewhat hexagonal shaped exh. ports. An N42/E31/E88 will have true rectangular ports. Again - could be a non-American head as you say that we in the States have not come across before! That is one hell of an asymmetrical cam you have pictured there. As for the stroker theory - since Bryan noted those are indeed custom pistons (not a standard "flat-top") - there is a distinct possibility they are custom made forged pistons that have a "corrected" pin height measurement. On a standard stroker build, at TDC, you have about .6mm of the piston sticking up out of the block. Yours look flush to the block in the pictures (not knowing if the motor is at TDC though...) Only way to know for sure with yours is to get one piston at BDC, and measure the depth from the top deck of the block to the top of the piston. If it's 79mm, you have a standard crank. If it's 83mm, you have the LD28 crank. If it's neither of the two - you have one heck of a custom motor that I'd like to find out more about!

Like I said Jon - I'm out. Ya'll take it from here.

The whole problem is that he's got zero lash because his spring installed height is too tall. He can't even get a rocker under the cam without removing the lash pad completely. That's my point. The retainers are from a different cam setup and the installed spring height is taller than what it's supposed to be. My head was done by a competent machine shop. All valves were new and sized properly. The pad was not sitting on the keepers. I changed retainers across multiple valves, all with the same result Lash pad was on the valve tip - not the keepers. I've run the piss out of my motor and haven't dropped a valve. I know it's right. I guess I'll go slink into my corner - I obviously can't get my point across clearly enough to be understood as being pertinent to this thread.

Did you even bother looking at the pictures? You can clearly see the difference in spring height, AND you can see that the factory retainer is thicker than the Racer Brown retainer - causing more pressure on the spring, and it DID change the installed height. Look at the pics. They're right there side by side.

Perhaps I used the wrong terminology Bryan, but the retainers themselves have different depths to them. Meaning, the Racer Brown retainers vs. a stock retainer, vs. a Schneider retainer -ALL of them put the valves at different heights solely by which retainer was used. Don't believe me? Look about 3/4 of the way down in this thread http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=137647&highlight=cam+wipe+pattern Yes they DO have something to do with installed spring height. You can clearly see the difference in spring height. I just went through this whole ordeal 2 months ago. The wipe patterns were all different as well due to the geometry presented by a taller installed spring vs. a shorter installed spring. Had to use different thickness pads to compensate. I guess what I meant to say is that the retainers he was using was from a different cam setup, thus causing the installed height to be so tall that he can't get the rocker under the cam.

Hold the phone there guys. You're not replacing springs and retainers? Spring height and seat pressure for different cams tends to vary based on individual cam specs. I went through this recently with a couple cams. Started taking measurements and experimenting. The retainers that came with my Schneider cam varied radically from the retainers that came with my Racer Brown cam, as did those from a stock cam setup. There was as much as 1/2" difference between the two extremes. Knowing this, your installed height is going to vary, as is your wipe pattern. I started with .240 pads with the Racer Brown retainers, and ended up down at .180 pads with the stock retainers - just to keep the wipe pattern even on the mating surfaces. If you have sunk valve seats, you could be brewing a recipe for eating up a couple lobes of the cam, or at the very least, setting yourself up for a radical assortment of lash pads to get the wipe pattern correct. My guess is you have the aftermarket springs/retainers that came with cam A, and now you're trying to use cam B, which wasn't designed for those retainers/springs. I dunno - I'd be pulling that head - a head gasket and a few hours labor is far cheaper than eating up a cam kit. At the very least, measure installed spring height on each valve on the head, and (if you have another stock head) compare it to what stock height is. I'll bet they're not even close. This is my observation from experience. Search on "cam wipe pattern" and you'll see my thread complete with a lot of pics depicting a very similar situation, and showing side by side the differences in spring height JUST by changing retainers.

OK - I finally got around to doing my 280, and had the whole thing swapped over in 50min. flat. The reman shafts I had were the ones I used (from earlier posts). They had been flipped. I got the "weld on" MM adapters for the 280. I had to jack up the suspension, and used a hammer to tap them in place (didn't put the full weight of the car on the rear susp. though). The fit was indeed tight. With the rear suspension hanging free, I had a problem with the boots rubbing on the rear sway bar end link. When I dropped the car on the ground, got about 1/4" clearance. I did not remove the end caps. This is an open R200 diff. I have Tokico springs and struts, so the car has been lowered a bit. Drove the dog piss out of it after taking a couple "cautious" laps around the block. No binding, grinding, bumping, nothing. The clunk from the U-joints is gone, and the car seems drive a bit smoother. I have since put about 200 miles on the setup with no issues whatsoever. The 240 is about to see the road, so I'll see how it does in that setup with the AZC rear suspension and the CLSD from a turbo Z31. From just rolling it up and down the driveway, I hear no binding or clunking or anything. So far, so good. Believe me - I was extremely nervous about doing this, as the 280 is my DD.

Yes - the return line is in place and working. The manual states it needs to be a -8 AN line all the way back to the tank, however, that was for an EFI pump. I have a -6 AN going back to the tank, and the pump is a low pressure pump for carbed motors.

OK - finally got the beast started last night. I have an Aeromotive FPR that appears to not be working. (AER-13204) No matter how I adjust the screw, in or out (gone to both extremes) - I get 13psi of pressure. This is killing the carbs - won't barely idle and doesn't rev at all. If I turn off the fuel pump, it continues to stumble for about 5 seconds and then runs like a champ until it dries up the bowls. I've tried with and without the vacuum hose connected, I've tried ported and non-ported vacuum - all to no avail. Adjusting the screw does absolutely nothing. My fuel pressure gauge is right off the outlet of the FPR, so I see exactly what is going to the carbs. (Note in the top of the picture). The unit is brand new. Is there a possibility that it could be bad? I know I've got it hooked up properly according to the instructions. This is a "bypass" type system and not a deadhead system. The pump is an Aeromotive 14psi carbureted pump. AEI-11203. The regulator says "to be able to use your EFI pump with a carburetor". I was told by Summit Racing, that this regulator will work fine with a carbureted pump. I bought this regulator because it goes down to 3psi. I have read on this site that Mikuni's need about 4psi. The carbureted regulator starts at 5psi. Any ideas?

Yeah - I called Paul's yesterday - no mandrel bender. I called my buddy John Williams and he turned me on to Random Technologies in Loganville. Looks like I'll have to buy my own tubing and they can bend as needed. Atlanta Performance is quite a ways from my house, and I'm a little hesitant to take the car up there due to the fact that I just did get it running. I will give them a call though. Thanks for all the advice guys!

Anyone know an exhaust shop in Ga. that can do a mandrel bent system? OR Is the consensus to buy mandrel bent pieces and fab your own, and then take it to the exhaust shop and just have them weld it together? Perhaps fab the bends and have them finish out the system with straight pipe? Definitely want to go mandrel bent, but don't know of any shops in Georgia that may do that kind of thing. Don't care about saving a buck or two, I want the job done right and done right the first time.

Boy - did that ever answer his question. Good one there. Maybe he can run a ground strap to his beefed up rear springs! The Z (earlier S30's) are known for crappy wiring and poor grounding. So much so, that even Courtesy Nissan sells an upgraded wiring kit to solve a lot of the grounding problems on the Z. I am in the exact same boat, however, my car has been hand wired by the PO, (who over-engineered the car anyways) using 14ga. and better wiring throughout the car. My battery is in the trunk, and grounded to the chassis back there. I also have a ground from the starter bolt to the battery tray (chassis) I'm going to run it for a little this way and see if I encounter problems. For safety sake though, I am probably going to get a long cable and ground just as you recommended. It won't take long until an "informed" member on this forum can put us straight on this subject - I would think.

Trust me - there WILL be video.

Finally! About 20 min. worth of wiring work and she should be ready to fire. I believe I have all the bases covered. All fluids, all electrical, fuel, oil, all Aeroquip fittings tightened and sealed with Teflon paste. I can't think of anything else I need. The fuel pump appears to be wired in series with the old TEC II system, and that's through a relay, so I believe we have that worked out now. Won't be long. Here's what we ended with today. God - I can't believe, two years later and nearly $18K in parts, and my baby is about to give life.....and it's old school. It won't keep up with turbos, it ain't nothing fancy, but by gosh - it is all my effort. Nobody else helped with this project, it's all been me -and best of all - it's all been YOU!! I couldn't have gotten to where I am without the great folks on this website. Many thanks to all of you! Website updates to follow shortly.

That is excellent information. Learn something new every day. Thanks much!

What you're saying makes sense, however, you personally won't be doing those tasks - your machinist will. He will probably care less about the standard size of a KA24 rod small end. He will measure the pin diameter, and then measure the 240Z rod small end diameter, and make his bore/bushing size accordingly. That's where you leave it up to the pros. They should know exactly what to do.