DHale_510

> That was it. The rest I did myself. >You might not get all 10/10ths of the potential power out of the head, but you can easily get 8/10ths >It is also necessary to keep in mind that Dennis is talking bhp when he says 350 hp, and most people will put hp in terms of whp around here. Yes. 348 to be exact on the engine dyno. >Maybe not the whole 350 that Dennis got, but I spent about $2500 total and got roughly 88.7% of the power per liter that he did. Let me 'splain what drove me to this place. Kipperman's LSViper toy. He whupped my ITS legal car at 4 hillclimbs to 1. Not good odds... I was set to build a Chebbie toy out of my "spare" ITS car, priced everything out to a 350+ hp level, then decided a Big 6 may do the same, cost less, and be more special. "Stock" even. Like I said, I pretended that I had most of the good stuff already, and did for a 250+ hp combination... I think that I have gotten one of those objectives..... >Just out of curiosity Dennis, how much power do you think Larry Butler's L18 is making? I know it's not making what Pinky makes, but he ported his own head and built his own bottom end too, and it's not slow. Pinkie's 1800 makes 210hp. Larry's likely makes 175hp. It is painful when he beats me. Bowles was running about 150hp in his homebuilt 1600. Top line Rebello 1600s make 175 to 200hp. >I think Cary built his motor too. DIY doesn't necessarily mean crap. Not at all. Never said meant any such implication. Truth is, Pinkie was my first ever probuilt motor. Before that I did all homebuilt stuff. Owned a Bug shop for a while, maybe since I charged for those motors they were kind of probuilt..... Anyway, I totally respect and understand the budget approach. Been there a lot more than you imagine. It's just that a guy's gotta have an unfair advantage over you younguns somehow..... >On the other hand, we had a member zredbaron, who built a stroker and put down 157whp: My impression of his problem is that his 40mm carbs are holding that motor back, maybe his flowmaster muffler too, I started with Weber 42s and similarly ineffective parts. The "upgrade" ended up with the TWM etc. stuff. Interesting thing about mufflers. Some years ago we did a muffler/dyno test at Rebello's with 1600cc ITC motors for our 510s. Tested at least 6 mufflers. Found the most expensive Borla was the best. It's on Pinkie. Second best was the cheap Walker Turbo used by many shops as a standard replacement part. Last was the fancy Flowmaster, last until we put a long tailpipe to it, then it matched the Borla. That one ended up on my 510 wagon with a tailpipe. I suppose those tri5 Chevies all have tailpipes, huh? >His example does prove that you can have a VERY nice head and crankfire ignition and and still not make power if the induction is not optimal. Yes. And the dyno sessions are not nearly as expensive as fooling around changing parts sometimes. >There is no magic bullet, other than sending an engine to Rebello or Sunbelt with a blank check and asking them to make it the most powerful engine on the block. Dennis can do that but most of us can't. Well, that's not exactly what I thought I was doing, but I suppose that' what it all became. In the end though, a new crate LS2 is over $20K with harnessing et. al. I am still way under those numbers. The extra 50 hp would moastly be used to spin the tires, or so I rationalize...... >That doesn't mean that we have to suffer with no hp though. I bet you cannot really hook up more than 300hp in a Z chassis. Maybe 250hp and still call it a street car. The rest of it is simple excess, mostly good for bench racing. Or chasing Kippermann up impossibly steep hills. >You just have to be creative and willing to put some man hours and elbow grease into it. Absolutely. My original idea in posting here was to give an alternate perspective to the normal one seen. That is, a stroker motor can easily snowball far from your estimates, and far from what comes across as "normal" on the free advice column found herein. I suppose it all went far afield from that. Now can I get my stocker to catch that funnycar someday?

There are three more or less equal parts to consider; 1. The short block has been well discussed. Figure $500 to $2500 depending upon what you want to rev to, and of course the resulting power. The $500 short block is maybe a 200hp set up. Maybe. 2. The cylinder head is a big deal. Pretty much any stock head will only flow about 175hp. If it is well assembled. Porting, big valves, and such can double that, but again the price varies. Figure about $500 to $2500 again. Some of us have spent more.... 3. All the other stuff. SU carbs will work up to about 200hp. Maybe. Factory FI maybe 225hp. DCOEs and the like take you to about 250hp. Fancy FI setups go to 350hp. Ignition setups enter into it too. No stock setups really work with a 3 liter setup. Too much advance, too quickly arriving. A 200 hp motor will work OK with stock electronic distributors, but that fancy 350hp beast must have a fully setup crankfire unit. Any motor will benefit from a well tuned ignition, they all require custom tailoring to get there though. Say expensive dyno time.... That familiar $500 to $2500+ budget arithmetic has come back again. I wish I could have kept my 350hp 3.2 under $7500. I "started" with that budget, plus I already had the new crank and an expensively ported head, fancy pan, carbs, etc.. I guess somewhere in there I still managed to double all of my budget allowances. But then isn't that a normal deal in this hobby? Set a budget and double it.... Since you asked......

The captive bolts are used on the transmission to rear mount pad. This looks a bit like the remains of a broken rear mount, but may just be a reinforcing part used there. It would help if you revealed what model are you actually working on. Lots of variations between years of Z cars, plus 25 years of "creative repairs" to deal with.

The only adjustment to a stock 240Z is the front toe.

Specialty Products was the brand on the package. Red with a white indian head logo as I recall. The store I bought them from seemed to feel that they were a very common brand of suspension hardware and most alignment shops would be familiar with them if not most parts houses. They gave me a big catalog of the stuff by the company that is buried somewhere around here... No known website stuff, with a catalog who needs some silly website anyway? Did you actually try to google say, Specialty Products yourself first?

More a problem on a lowered trailing arm suspension than camber is rear toe. The camber error will wear tires, the toe error will cause the car to oversteer like a forklift. The last time I played with a 280ZX I used the rear camber/toe adjusters from Specialty Products. They are pretty good parts and adjust about 1' of camber and 1/2" of toe in their range. They are eccentric mounts for the inner pivots. Specialty Products parts #85720 for the adjusters, plus #85750 for their spiffy installation hole saw and mandrel kit. Then again, the old tried and true slotting that 510s have used forever is possible, but remember that the bushings will bind and they likely will slip unless you tack weld something down after you have made your settings. Also, you will likely ruin a couple of crossmembers learning how to slot and what angle the slot needs to be. I know of no one doing this work on ZXs yet. It is a well travelled path in 510 land though. More than about 2" of camber correction will cause binding on this suspension. Not good. Also, EVERY ride height adjustment will change both the camber and toe with this suspension. Again, the toe change in particular can be a very bad thing.

MY take on the "drifter problem". You guys have not a clue what it takes to run or "sanction" events. You have been lucky and abusive to those who have done a lot of the work for you. That has ended. For many years I have run nearly monthly autocrosses at Marina. Long ago I set up a deal with the local drifters for them to play with us. Get them off the streets of Salinas, locals put us all in the same catagory you know. Their problem was that they did not have the "buying power" nor organization to put together stand alone events. This is a lot more than "sanctioning". They needed help. So I set up my courses with a couple of wide sweepers for them to do there thing on as long as they would generally fit in with the autocrossers in other ways. This included following the airport cleanliness guide lines. I also explained that since I pay $10 each for those cones that if they started whacking too many of them I would make a change in the policy. All went well for many years, but the "leaders" constantly changed. Often they "converted" to autocrossing. Mostly the "hard core" autocrossers were unaware of the "experiment". Works for me. But. The trashing of the site issue continued to get worse and worse. No one would step up and play daddy to the kids, much less clean up after themselves. The last event we had, we had to clean up bottles of piss, they were too lazy to walk to the 3 supplied portacans. I find that my final straw. The world ain't high school and I don't need someone else's teenager to clean up after. Now the drifting club can go back to square one. Organize, capitalize, negotiate with grownups, pay deposits and insurance like everyone else. Clean up after themselves and behave in the streets. [The Altamont problem has a lot to do with the hooliganism conducted in the access roads you fail to mention.] No one owes you Altamont nor any place else. Nor do they owe me the same. You must work hard to get and keep a priveledge site. Those places cost a million dollars to build, they do not want irresponsible hooligans tearing them up. You must impress them much differently than you have. Crying and letter writing demanding some sort of entitlement process simply ain't it. Your groups simply have not done this, at least at Altamont and Marina.

Another idea: Nissan was most friendly when they went to FI on the 280Z. The FI wiring is so stand alone that it can be rather easily added to a 240Z harness. Maybe they were just being cheap, but it is the easiest one I have ever seen to convert. So, if you find a donor 240Z or 260Z [generally always considered an orphan since the carbs just didn't work] and just the FI stuff from a 280Z, you would have a good basis. The 280Z harnessing is pretty different and remounting everything is strange. Even the dash mountings are pretty different. The rolling chassis sounds like a lot of work. I have been fooling around with a similar project for about 10 years. It now is getting a full roll cage and race prep instead of ever returning to the street. There will be no OEM wiring or much else OEM left on the car. I have stripped both a 280Z [it was burned, I didn't get the engine bay harnessing nor FI stuff] and a later 240Z to do just this sort of thing and given up on the idea. I found none of the underdash connectors the same between the '74 and '78 cars.

The aftermarket wiring kits as from "Painless" are great, but I doubt that they would be a good "first timer's project". One of the big problems would be that all supplied connectors are GM and NONE of those are Nissan compatable. This means reusing all the old connectors and that unravels the benefit of all new first class wiring parts in there. Swapping out a full harness is educational enough for a first timer. Even with a full harness you will find at least 25% of the connectors and parts have moved around or changed and you will spend lots of time naking those adaptations. The farther apart the age of the cahssis, the more changes you will find in there. Always respect the color coding, no cheating with the splices. Nissan was pretty good about keeping the color coding similar from year to year by the time they made Z cars. Beware a Roadster though..... It will take several days the first time, but with patience it is not terribly difficult. Kind of like paint preparation.

The "universal" coils we have been discussing are 2 1/2" springs used on most racing cars. They are available in many spring rates and lengths. They usually cost about $50 each. They require special perches and caps but such are somewhat interchangeable and could be sourced for either front or back applications. I know of no such thing as a universal 4" coil, and such a thing will do nothing about changing tire or tower clearance issues if you have either. I think you need to really figure out what you want, how much time and effort you will invest, and what you will spend instead of just spinning in circles here. You have an odd application and it has not been done for you a zillion times like on the 240Z cars.

So now you are doing only the front? The front is the easier part. ZX stuff is the same as most other cars with struts and there are many ways to make the conversion. It is unlikely that you really have a strut/ spring perch to tire clearance issue, but you may well have a spring to strut tower clearance issue if you want to add camber. Remember that as you lower a car you must use stiffer springs. If you take half the travel away you need twice as stiff a spring. The only option is to use shorter struts and the 280ZX struts are already very short, probably the shortest Nissan production strut there has been. This usually takes some careful and expert welding skills, not what you seem to want to do. Unfortunately this added stiffness really needs to be matched in the rear else the car will handle like a dump truck. Unfortunately because the rear is different. The rear assemblies are exactly what the ZX does differently. Even the 300ZX is different from the 280ZX in the back. Some 240SXs used the design, but that's about it. Very little demand has created very little support.

Front strut inserts are made by lots of folks. The Tokico Illumina is the most popular in the 510 world, 5 adjustments and > 150K lifetime if you keep the bumps stops and don't crush them. Bilsteins are more expensive but as durable. Konis are less durable but more adjustable, and more expensive. Most of the under $100 choices are not worth the work to try them, they often fail in 30K miles and never really work as well as the original stuff. The rear shocks already are the struts, they neither come apart nor are "rebuildable". I would try to get the same type as what you get in the front. The previous discussions were all about modifying them for "race" springs and adjusters. You still haven't explained just what you mean by "coil over". If you want to buy interchangeable standardized 2 1/2" diameter springs and play with ride height and travel, then all this "exotic" stuff is relevant. If you are just looking to replace worn out shocks and keep stock springs, or even "aftermarket" stock sized replacements, then life is much easier. There is nothing inherently wrong with the factory setup, it just wears out in 30 or so years and needs to be replaced.

It's a car. It's supposed to cost 2x or more what it will sell for. It's not cheaper to build your own compared to having a factory do it for you. The "idea" is to build it for yourself and wear it out. On the other hand, you gotta plan and budget everything, and a stroker motor is pretty uncommon since it just fails most everyone's budget test. Yeah, Dennis Hale with the pink 510 autocross car be me. I just got censored on the Miata list for not showing enough respect to the drifter kids who peed in bottles for me to clean up last time we were there. Censored or not, that was one step too far.

The L20B has been a popular 510 swap here too. They were the most common L4 series engine but mostly had crappy "smog port" heads, an L18 head was considered an important change. All of our 810s got the L24 6 cylinder, sometimes upgraded to the L28. What we never got was that great FJ20, nor the weak L20 6 cylinder. I have only seen one well done 4 cylinder Z conversion, and it was a frankenstein L23 creation, 200+ hp, reduced weight, mounted back against the firewall.

Do you want to buy cheaper parts or cheaper labor? Most homebuilt strokers do not match the power of a pre built 2.8 which ought to make your pricepoint. Heck, a probuilt 2.4 will make 175hp through stock SUs, while most stockers just make 115hp with the "same" stuff. Maybe you ought to work the power to price deal rather than the displacement to price deal. It takes a lot of fancy and expensive suspension work to put down much more than that 175hp a stocker can make.

Some 610s, some 200SX and 710s. Lots of pickups. No JDM L20B cars.

Your welding looks great. Your "patches" are perfect. Want to do mine? But, are you going V8 or I6 in this project? I doubt that any intake on an I6 will sit below the left side brace. It would be a serious no no to cut the thing back out at this time. I think that the assymetry that you see in the Friselle car is all about engine and especially induction clearance issues.

A $4K starter car will likely cost more than a $20K done car by the time it is equal. Gosh, I wonder how I know that.....

The Friselle car is nearby in Scotts Valley. I got to look at it last week. The A pillar braces are mounted very high, just under the hood. Pretty much seem to just intersect the dash bar at the bend, the strut tower at the very top. The vent areas are very low. The clutch and brake masters fit under this bar on the left.

Didn't you cut a flap, fold up, then rebend back and weld the roof area for the halo bar? Couldn't a similar technique work for you on these odd angle firewall cutouts? Then again, splitting the pieces you have cut out in "half", clearancing for the angled bars, then piecing them back in ought to resolve many of the odd angles. I have had several cage builders that have done lots of hard core off road stuff all tell me not to gusset the cage to the body nearly as much as I wanted to do. A really tight fit and minimal interconnects is much better than all those fancy drilled gusset plates. They feel that lots of sheet metal gusset welding is weak and it all cracks apart. They generally stitch weld sheet metal interconnects rather than continuous weld them for the same reasons. Their stuff sees a lot more vibration and wear than a Porsche roadracer I guess.

My "early" car is #3998 and uses/used the "weird" transmission and differential mounts. I am pretty sure by the time they got the little storage compartments behind the seats these were no longer used. I think those early cars were all '70s, and I have heard they were actually built by Mazda while Nissan tooled up their Roadster line for the Z production, so some parts and things were different from making two whole assembly lines.

I just checked out my parts for a T5 into an early Z shell ongoing project. The T5 appears to be about 2" longer than the old 4 speed, and the driveshaft I have is another 2" longer. This transmission and more to the point driveshaft may have come from a 2 + 2 car, I got it from a friend who dismantled the car. If so, then perhaps a "normal" 2 seat ZXT driveshaft and transmission will fit. Methinks you have the parts and can tell me. My previous T5 adaptation was into a 510 and that required a custom driveshaft about 4" longer than the ZXT one I had. I think I have done something wrong here.......

The front struts on a 280Zx or 510 simply take the "universal coil over" kit. Ground Control is the easiest supplier. The lower perch is replaced with an adjustable sleeve. "Standard" 10" or even 12" 2 1/2" springs are used. A special upper adapter is needed, either one that reuses the original rubber bumper thingie, or a solid aluminum plate and sperical bearing can be adapted. The ZX rear stuff is a factory "coil over" although it is not height adjustable as the term has come to imply. The lower mounting loop is rather oddly large and a rather special base is needed, but otherwise there is nothing special there either. The same adjustable perch as on the above front may be adapted easily. I would expect Ground Control has all the stuff, they just don't advertise nor sell on ebay type deals. The Z cars all have different, more difficult suspension and popular fitments and get a lot of various "expert ebay" options to talk about.

You really have two choices; Engineer the car or drive the car. Since you don't want to spend money engineering it, just drive it. John is right on. You made changes to the car and now need to learn to drive it as a new car. Driving it out of instead of stuffing it into the turns is lots of fun. Betcha that it is both more fun and faster once you adjust to it.

The T5 transmission has an odd and difficult to find outpt spline. Most ZXTs used this transmission. It is worth the cost of a custom driveshaft to most who use it. They are stronger. They also need a bigger shifter hole in the tunnel. Early 240Zs used a different transmission mounting system and will not adapt easily. Later ones may or may not be a simple boltin affair. The differential choices are R180 and R200. Both use the same driveshaft pattern, but have different mounting bars. The very early 240Zs had an even different mounting bar from those. The ZXT differential ought to swap in using it's mounting bar from the later car. The hangars are also different. Likely you will want to update most of the rear suspension to the later, stronger stuff if you have the option. It is not particularly easy to do.