azguy

I have a 1983 280zx 2+2 turbo I successfully swaped a 94 LT1 4L60E package into. I used the headers JTR sells that clear the steering shaft. Had a local shop cut/balance a GM driveshaft to fit. JTR didn't have the engine/trans mounts for sale when I did my swap. I used the MSA ones. I would strongly recommend NOT using MSA's for the ZX (I had a hell of a time getting the motor mounts in and had to modify the trans mount for proper driveline angles). I currently have the LT1 out and already have JTR's mount kit for when the motor goes back in. Guy on here has a website about his swap. http://datsun-280zx-lt1.com

Here is a call to anyone out there with a 280zx 2+2 turbo with upgraded springs and/or struts. Everywhere I look, all vendors show tokico etc. for a 280zx but then the dreaded "except 2+2". I can't find ANYTHING that specifically says it will work for the 280zx 2+2. I just want to know if anyone on here has used springs/struts for the 280zx on a 2+2 model and if they fit correctly and how they liked the results. Thanks guys!

Buy mounts from JTR! not MSA! I have the MSA mounts.... I should have known better seeing them labeled for 70-83zx...

I removed all the smog equipment from my LT1 - egr, air pump, evap, and put block off plates. If I had known more about emissions like I do now I wouldn't have taken it all off. If you leave everything except the air pump setup - that's just for cold start emissions lowering, you will get/keep better gas mileage at cruising speeds and the ability to run more advance with less detonation. I am looking into putting my egr back on when I do my rebuild. You do not gain anything by taking the egr off. When working properly it only opens at crusing speeds, and closes at WOT.- it doesn't affect power when you call for it with the gas pedal.

JTR has a sweet kit out for the zx now and I think a manual too.... if not yet then soon (he was writing it when I did my conversion). In my opinion, if your going to do it, just go all the way and get a v8. The sweet sweet sound the first time you fire it up, and from thereafter is Sooooo worth it. Oh yeah, the power too... and the "what you got in there" lines you hear day after day after day.

I have my alternator wires (2) both joined and connected to a single switched power source. No codes, no problems so far. Two years and counting...... Maybe I need to rewire my alternator.... now that I look at that diagram guy put up....

I would not recommend using the MSA tranny mount. You have to cut part of the stock ears to fit the MSA mount in anyways and still are limited on how far back you can put the tranny because it hits the ears. I would highly recommend using the kit from JTR. It requires cutting the ears completely off and making a whole new bracket. This allows much more optimal position of the engine and tranny, at least in my case with the LT1. I have alot more room to push the engine back toward the firewall if I wasn't limited by the MSA mount and the need for the stock ears to mount it. I had to beat the passenger side transmission tunnel a little to clear the transmission cooler lines. I plan on pulling my engine/tranny this summer and using JTR's setup.

Yes a return style fuel system like that on a LT1 will cause miss fires if you are low on gas. I get misses from the air in the gas line when I take a highway clover leaf style off ramp fast and I have less than a quarter tank left. Gets my blood flowing thinking something's wrong every time. Piston- check your ground straps from your engine to the body and your battery to the body to engine. Install more straps if necessary. LT1's love ground straps, and like to throw fits without them. Make sure and hook up the opt venting tube up correctly also, one to a ported vacuum source and one to the intake nipple before the throttle. Opti's are notorious for going out. I've had to change mine twice already.

Jags that run sells headers for the zx swap. That's what I'm using.

JTR is a good start. Is this a 300zx? If it is it's a whole new animal to deal with from what i've heard. JTR doesn't sell anything for the 300zx. Start thinking about power steering adaptation to chevy, relocating the battery for less engine bay clutter. Possible ECU locations if running EFI along with upgrading fuel pump if necessary. Check out local drive shaft shops to get a gm drive shaft cut down and balanced and how they want you to measure for the length. What kind of rear end you’re going to use and what flange out of the diff to use to mate up with the gm type u-joints. Radiator is up to you. The list goes on. Oh yeah.... keep everything from the zx when you doing the swap until you are completely done! You never know what you might need. Label, Label, LABEL everything you disconnect and get very familiar with everything in the engine bay at this time and know what it controls (wiring). You'll figure out what you need and what you don't and what to modify if you know how everything works stock.

Just a note on the knock sensors wiring. WIRE THEM BOTH UP AND SPICE INTO ONE WIRE BACK TO PCM. I ordered a Painless wiring harness for my 94 LT1 install. The harness only came with one knock sensor connector. I had a check engine light on for some time before I figured out why. It kept throwing a code for the knock sensor circuit. I ran freescan which showed me that it was only running default advance of the timing and no more because of the fault code. Something like 17 but depending on rpm. I checked Alldata and found that the knock sensor circuit must have a (I believe) 5 ohm resistance in the circuit. 2.5 ohm from each knock sensor. If the pcm senses below 3 ohm or above 5 ohm it sets a knock sensor code and defaults to programmed timing advance. NO BUENO! So wire them both up to the same wire or wire one up and splice in a 2.5 ohm resistor in the circuit. -- I am guessing on the resistance values, I think they are right but you should double check. It's been a while.

A bit interesting that they have before pictures of the same car... same license plate. What are the odds? I wouldn't think someone other than the owner having before pictures would be in the right place to get some after pictures as well.

I would double check my grounds for the pcm, battery, engine to frame. Bad grounds do funny stuff. Other than that it could be a bad icm. As far as I know there is not a way to test a icm. It was a toss of either opti or icm for me 2 times. Both times it was the opti.

If your looking for a cheap LT1 check local city auctions. They always have some old 9c1 caprice cars complete with @100k miles. Yes that is kinda alot of miles and the police kinda beat their cars but they also keep up with maintenance very well. My engine has 160+k miles and is still going very strong. Doesn't burn oil etc. I rebuilt the tranny because I got a good deal from a friend of mine on doing it. Back where I use to live I went to one auction and kicked myself for not buying some caprice cars. Out of 15 or so old cop cars - Caprices and Crown vics there were 8 94-95 caprice 9c1 cars. All of them went for under $1k average $800-900. Keep in mind this is a full car with LT1 and 4L60e and computer.. cars all ran. When I bought mine for my swap I paid $800. I then took everything out of the donor car that I needed to run... misc. parts - throttle so I could use the stock throttle cable and all the little stuff you never think you need till you need it. I then sold the body of the car for $500. So I got pretty much everything I needed for the engine part of the swap for $300!! That's what I'm talkin about! Make sure you get a REAL LT1 with MPFI if you find a cop car. I saw some that had the same big plastic "V8" covers on them but if you looked at the throttle body it was a TBI and not MPFI. Police 9c1 engines are iron heads and block. Not aluminum heads. I've heard from some that the stock vortec iron heads flow better due to being ported slightly better for more HP because the of the larger caprice weight. My stock intake flowed 225 @ .500 lift. Everyone I talk to that ports heads says it is VERY easy to get the heads to flow over 250 with some quick bowl work. In my looking it was cheaper to buy a cop car at auction then buy a firebird or camaro. This is only if your local law enforcement has run Caprices in the past - they are very well used by police nation wide as far as I know - now being replaced by Crown Victorias. Hope you find a smokin good deal somewhere!

ooooo.... that would make a chinese fire drill real fun with those doors... ya ya... go go go.

Looking good! I like that scoop poking it's head out of the hood.

My sidepipes, hood vents, and paint color - Nissan k-11.

Now drifting is going to get even MORE popular with the civic community. Now I can't even park my car in a parking garage without worrying about some kid in a civic drifting into it! What next... The fast and the furious : OFF ROAD? Interesting preview for that movie I saw last night on TV. I've seen tons on tv and lots in the theatre up to this point. This one was new. It had about a 1 sec blurp with Vin Diesel in it! Now that is marketing at work. As far as I knew to this point no one was going to do a cameo at all for this new movie.... especially an actor from the first movie. Gotta give to the marketing department for starting up that last minute gossup going just before release.

I am currently looking for a more specific file to start a base tune. Right now I am running a "frankenstein" type one. I took parts from one with just the hot cam kit and transmission shift stuff from a hypertech programmed car and it works alright so far. From what I know on tuning, a person would want to use the MAF because it measures airflow more precisely than a map (speed density setup) does unless you have forced induction of some type on your engine. I have pretty much figured out the transmission section of Tunercat. I am not sure though what tables to use for power enrichment. Yeah, the ones I will use after the dyno run for A/F ratio adjustments. I am NOT looking for and I think NO ONE should use a dyno tuned file off the internet on their car. Dyno tuned files are files tweaked specifically to whichever car was dynoed and that cars specific intake, heads, exhaust system, climate of that area, etc. Here are some sites that people are sharing tuning files that i've had for a while that could help out anyone with a LT1 or LS1. Very good info on tuning. http://para.noid.org/~lj/PCM%20Tutorial/PCMtutorial.htm Not as good as the first, some good basics. http://members.nuvox.net/~on.roz/cars/z28/tuning.html **TUNING FILES**--AS ALWAYS BE CAREFUL WITH WHAT FILES YOU DOWNLOAD AND TAKE A LOOK AT THEM IN TUNERCAT BEFORE FLASHING YOUR PCM. On the bottom of this page there are alot of stock .bin and .lt1 files along with specific engine setup tunes. http://www.bfranker.badz28.com/LT1Edit/LT1files.htm Here is a forum with some trading of tunercat files .bin .lt1 as well as .cal for LS1 engines. http://www.monodax.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=30

Wondering if anyone has a .bin or .lt1 file setup for a 94 LT1 with a LT4 hotcam kit with iron heads and a 4L60e. I bought tunercat and the definition file a while back. Now that I installed the hotcam kit I figured I should mess with the pcm a bit. I am currently playing around in tunercat and searching the web for a good baseline. I plan on taking advantage of a free dyno run at school next week. I would like to have a decent program installed for a good baseline run. Once I get it on the dyno and find out the HP TQ and a/f, I can further tweak the settings. If anyone can help me out it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

That is just way too cool!

Right on! Good to hear some info on the hotcam. Are you running aluminum lt4 heads, stock aluminum, or cast iron ones? I am currently installing a LT4 hotcam, roller rockers, springs, in my LT1. I have stock cast iron Caprice heads. I just got the valve guides machined down to allow more clearance - with the new .525 lift the retainers were just kissing the top of the oil seals on the guides. I've heard rumors that the cast iron Caprice heads flow slightly better than aluminum ones due to better stock flow to make up for the weight of the Caprice. I don't know for sure, that's just what I've read. I just flowed the intake at school and it put out 225 @ .525 lift. Not too bad and the port was very stable. I was unable to flow the exhaust because we only have a setup for non vortec chevy heads. The stock 350 heads that we are using with larger intake valves on our motors at school flow @196 max intake just for information. I currently lucked out and have two teachers this phase (hotrod phase) and one of them just came from a research and development company who did head porting research for nascar, indy, and boat racing engines. He is VERY informative when it comes to porting. He said that my heads are vortec style and you can EASILY F up the heads if you don't know what your doing when porting them at home. He said he's got many stock LT1 heads into the 250 flow range without much work - @ 2hrs. Stay away from the intake runner all together. You can see a little ridge that runs on the floor of the intake runner and if you mess with that you can really mess the flow up. He told me to hit up the seats VERY carfully just behind the intake valves where there is a flat section and a sharp edge. Also to go ape sh_t on the exhaust side and polish it to a super shin to resist carbon buildup. He made a big point saying that you can easily port a stock head that will flow BETTER than any aftermarket for less money. So if you try to port and polish a little by yourself BE CAREFUL and stay away from the intake runner hump and don't mess around anywhere on the floor where there are turns unless you know exactly what you are doing. The roof is a little more forgiving i've heard.