Pop N Wood

I thought you said you didn't want another project car

Disconnecting the battery won't stop a running engine. Not until the disconnected battery cable touches metal and shorts out the electrical system. At which point it will cause a voltage surge possibly frying all kinds of electrical stuff. I know all of this first hand. Let's just say if you ever go hiking in the back country, make absolutely certain your headlights are off when you park. Especially when the trail head is 40 miles from anything. Otherwise you may have to temporarily borrow a battery from another vehicle.

The gasless MIGs will work on body panels if you know what you are doing and take your time. Trouble is, if you are new to welding you will spend the majority of your time wondering whether your crappy welds are because of you or your cheap machine. That and inhaling all the flux core smoke will make you want to give up in short order. I say spend the extra $$ to get a gas kit. Save the flux core for welding outside where wind makes a sheilding gas unusable.

Looks like a steal for that price. I can save you some reading on the headers. There is no one size fits all solution for long tube headers and the JTR position. If you want long tubes, either keep it in the Scarab position like it is now, or switch to the MSA set up. If you go JTR you are looking at shorties or customizing your own long tubes. Like mentioned above, you will essentially be doing a new, from the ground up swap to shift to the JTR position. For example, JTR will mean switching from a mechanical to electric fuel pump. Then there is the driveshaft, exhaust, shift linkage, maybe clutch linkage, radiator fan.... Either way you should consider moving the fuel and brake lines away from the headers. If you get a chance, I would be interested to see what the shift linkage looks like on that 4 speed. The driving factor in the JTR kit was to get the shifter to come out of the stock hole. You should invest $40 and get the JTR manual. All of the info is probably spread about this site in one post or the other, but it will help you immensely in planning what you want to do with this car to read the JTR book.

I can see why he is selling it. Looks like he has put a ton of work into it and it is nowhere near done. Plus he ignored all the important parts. Makes me wonder about the craftsmanship on what was done.

I was going to say. Big blocks are not know for their fuel mileage. I would have guessed 12. Those old cars are heavier than they look. No unibody, heavy frames, thick sheet metal and no plastic. That particular car needs a new top. You might also have trouble getting parts for something that old. Nissan supports the old Z's better than most other manufactures.

You need the bigger MC to flow enough volume to work the front brakes. There was a recent post on this where people with the 4x4 fronts could not get proper front to rear bias. People were complaining of this even with the rear disc upgrades. Try completely removing your bias valve and run the rears straight. I assume you try pumping the brakes, or are the fronts too lock prone even for that? There was another recent thread where a member called zcarnut commented that power boosters are matched to the braking capacities of the car, and that too big of a brake booster will make it hard to modulate the brake feel. Maybe a smaller diameter booster, like off a 160 or 240 would help? I would get some more opinions before I would try the smaller booster because I have never heard of anyone taking that route before. The final option is dual master cylinders and no booster. You probably don't want to go to that extreme for a street car, but it will almost certainly give you enough flexibility to dial in the brakes.

I started out using cut off wheels on the spot welds, then I bought this $11 bit http://www.sjdiscounttools.com/ap1721.html and this $13 spot weld cutter http://www.sjdiscounttools.com/blr13224.html The bit works perfectly to completely remove the spot weld flush to the bottom panel. The cutter leaves a button, but supposedly the button can be used to realign the panel if you are reattaching a repaired panel. It also works as a plug weld cutter to cut perfect holes in new sheet metal. It comes in several different diameters. I find the $11 money well spent when compared to the cut off wheel approach. Massively faster and more accurate.

Ahh. Thanks for the tip. There is a water jacket plug for an engine heater there. I will pull that out and see what type of adapters I can buy to modify. Maybe do the JTR trick and drill and tap a 1/8 NPT. Trouble is John doesn't sell his "vital fuilds" kit unless you buy his mounts. How did the guys who aren't using JCI mounts get their water temp guage to work? make their own adapter? ECM pins won't do me any good since I am carburated. I may end up using a radiator probe, since it doesn't look like the aftermarket has caught up with the LS sized temp switches yet. Bummer too since a temp probe could be inserted in both heads.

Can anyone help me figure out how to make the stock 240 temp guage work with an LS engine? Surely someone must have done it, but the search tool is not being helpful. Also, has anyone found an electric fan controller that works with the LS heads? The M12x1.5 opening is an odd duck at best. Thanks.

Arizona Z car's aluminum bar will get you close. Just need to replace his rubber mounts with some aluminum pieces http://www.arizonazcar.com/diffmount.html

I put a metal cutting blade in a 7 1/4 inch circle saw then clamp a piece of angle iron onto the work as a saw guide. I get straight cuts that way, even in large pieces of flat plate, as long as I don't try and force the cut.

Most modern cars have alternators in the 140 amp range. Stock GM alternators for LS motors are I think 108 amps or 140 amp, depending upon model. My minivan has a 140 amp alternator. Modern electronics suck a lot of juice.

Am I confused or did you guys install breakers/fusible links in line to your starter?

Well, no, unfortunately this is not a fact. In fact, your statement is quite untrue. The fact is we will spend somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 BILLION to 300 BILLION dollars cleaning up after Katrina. That is more than the cost of Iraq and Afganistan combined. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9281409/ You heart is in the right place but you need to do a little research. Disaster relief spending is absolutely out of control in this country. Look up the trend in disaster declarations in the last half century. The fact is there is only so much more we can afford to do. Reality sucks sometimes, but this is simply not the governments problem to solve.

I went with an LS motor because I wanted 400-450 HP and the LS motor seemed the cheapest way to get there with an engine that is still considered streetable. The stock LS heads flow extremely well. To get the same level of flow with the first gen motors generally means aftermarket heads ($$) and a bigger cam. From what people here have told me, getting 450 HP out of a first gen is easy to do, but the motor may not idle like a stocker. That affects gas mileage directly. On the down side, prices on used LS motors have gone through the roof in the last year or two. On the other hands the LT1 motors are practically free and do deliver an excellent daily driver. As for gas mileage, when it comes to out of pocket costs there really isn't a big difference between 15 mpg and 25 mpg. You need to figure out how much of a premium you are willing to pay for an LS motor to get some idea of just how much gas you will need to buy to make up the difference. When the right foot syndrome is considered, I can't see the mileage being a big issue one way or the other. And yes, you can carb an LS motor. Get on Summit Racing or Jegs and look up the intake manifold and spark controller GM makes for the LS motors. You can even get a distributor if that is important to you. I bought a carbed LS2 crate motor directly from a local chevy dealer. It is rated at 446 HP right out of the box. Should be able to get in excess of 500 HP with just a cam and some valve springs. Hood clearance with the carbed motor is an issue, but not an insurmountable one. I was forced to build my own mounts because of my transmission choice. But once I move the hood latch to the right I should be able to mount a standard drop base 14 inch air cleaner. If I could leave the hood latch where it is if I go with a drop base cleaner that is also offset to clear HEI distributors (or a 12inch or less diameter). One word of caution, I think the John's cars LS mounting kit mounts the engine higher and farther forward then where mine ended up. I did add some 3/8 inch spacers to the front cross member (ala JTR) to get a little more hood clearance. I think JTR recommended something over a half inch so there is still clearance to be gained there. Only problem is the crossmember spacers may not be compatible with the JCI mounts. IMO you can't go wrong no matter whichever engine you choose. Whatever you do, go with a standard kit (JTR for first gen or JCI for LS motors) and vastly simplify your swap. Some people think the JCI kit is overpriced for what it gives you. But what they may not be recognizing is the amount of time the kit will save since you know the engine will be positioned right the first time you put in the motor.

All I can say is McMaster Carr. I ordered the helicoil stuff from the earlier link and fixed the engine up right. Ordered the stuff on a Monday evening and it was waiting at my door when I got home from work the next day. McMaster Carr has a table showing the metric-SAE grade conversion listed on their site. About the only thing I did differently from the guy on the LS1tech link is I got longer socket headed cap screws than he did and used a 3/8 inch punch to snap off the helicoil tang. You don't need the special $70 tool McMaster Carr sells for that. I also ordered metric bolts with the optional blue tint to distinguish them from SAE bolts. So word to the wise, the metric and SAE bellhousing bolts are almost indistinquishable from each other with out using a pitch guage, and if you have to use more than just your fingers to start the bolt, back off and see what is wrong.

My wife got me a new wedding ring. Believe me, the fact she still wants to get me one beats any gift any one else has posted so far. 4th ring and counting. I got a tattoo after the third one, but still like to see that shiny piece of metal. This one is stainless steel! You can do that sort of thing with a 4th ring.

This site says around 115-130 pounds for the T56. http://www.standardtransmission.com/BW_T-56.html But kind of have to look at the whole package. The clutch assembly for the t56 is pretty heavy. Might be around 160# for the tranny, clutch, throw out assembly and fluids.

Actually I think it is corrosive. There was a thread recently where someone used a vat of molasses to derust an engine block. Plus with sugar all over your yard could lead to cockroaches

I tried the platinums in my Z and it didn't like them either. NGK's are all that is needed. Anything else does seem like a waste of time for a Z. But i have known other people with different cars that swear by the platinum ones. My minivan takes iridium plugs. Can't wait to see what a set of those cost.

You can’t legally hook it up yourself anyway. Plus the way those thing are generally wired requires you to pull the circuits (i.e. breakers) you want to power out of your main panel and put them into the panel that will be powered by the generator. It is not a harry home owner type job. An electrician will probably charge a few thousand dollars to install one legally. The “4 pole†will be two hot wires, a ground and a neutral. Just use the two hot wires (red and black generally) and the white neutral. Only hook up the 240V outlet from the generator to the house. It will be fused at something like 20 or 30 amps. That is all the power you will have to pump into your house. Ideally the breaker on the generator’s 240V outlet should be smaller than the house breaker going to the dryer. Don’t try hooking the 110V outlets to the house. You only want one connection (the 240V one) between the house and the generator. You can still use the 110V outlets on the generator to run extension cords to single point loads. The guys do have some good points about safety. If you don’t know what you are doing or aren’t really comfortable around electricity then get someone to help you or stick to the extension cords. Also be careful about not turning too many things on. But I still feel as long as you are careful about disconnecting the main breaker before you hook up the generator and disconnecting the generator before shutting the main breaker you should be OK. I know several people who hook up emergency generators through their dryers or hot tub connections. Probably pisses off the professionals but it beats freezing. On another note, I have been reading about all the people in the northwest getting killed from carbon monoxide. Obviously make sure the generator is outside and not in any enclosure. The one guy died because his generator was in the garage. Also make sure you chain that bad boy down. It is amazing how people can steal a running generator and make a get away before the homeowner can make it out his door.

Agreed

That is what came with my crate LS2 motor. At the time I was looking at the motor I asked the same questions and got this reply http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=111077&highlight=ls2 I ended up buying the JTR LS headers and building my crossmember around them. This week I should get the engine in the car, at which point it will be a simple matter to hold the manifolds up next to the engine to see. From the looks of the earlier pics the outlets will point outward too much.

If shopping for the wife could only be that easy.