ryant67

Reckon it would be a step up from what MSA sells, mainly owing to the runners coming straighter off the flange, whereas the MSA header bends sharply off the flange. The MSA header uses smaller runners too, being 1 1/2" vs 1 5/8" for the Trust header. That said, at the $600-ish price point, I'd go with the zstory header, being that it's stainless steel and supports a real S30 fanatic who is active within the community. He has two designs, one that copies the Trust header ($580-ish), and one copies the old Nissan Competition header ($700-ishj).

Bought out a big stockpile of old Z parts from a guy down in Connecticut this past weekend. Some great stuff in there: - v07 crank - ported e88 - rebuilt unported e88 - comp triple intake - nismo sprocket - nismo Mikuni insulators - bunch of Mikuni jets and venturis - 1mm MLS gasket - new L28 rods and p79 pistons - full selection of lash caps - enough Clevite bearings to build 3 engines - set of new stainless steel valves (n42 sizes) - 24 brand new Nissan rockers (!!!) - two complete felpro gasket kits - a dozen or so intake gaskets - a bunch of other stuff. Very happy with the haul and deciding where to go with it all. Building a stroker might happen, since it's pretty much all here, except the rods, but I have some l24 9mm rods lying around from my old engine still. Anyway, the star of the purchase is the ported e88 head, which looks excellent. Enlarged ports, fully ported, unshrounded valves, 44/35 stainless valves, and a very high lift Racer Brown camshaft - measured it as around.630 lift. The other e88 is unported, but with the larger valves too, so I might get then both flow tested to see how the port work stacks up. Pics of the head:

Ryan - good to hear from you! Can't wait to see you out with your Z, I think I've seen a few posts about your build, 5.3 turbo? Should be a beast!! Agree about the tires, and my 60'times are telling, being 2.5s or higher. I didn't make it out to the dyno day, no. Spun a bearing before it. Looking into some dyno time for the spring though, be nice to get a proper state of tune. Cheers Theatriks! No helmets required on the short course, surprised me too. Fun laps though, can't wait to head back next season. The Miata got me by 2-3 feet, although my launch was pretty terrible and I was shifting too early. He's supercharged though, so no shame. Fun race.

Wonder if it is actually using the diesel block, or if it's just using the diesel crank and the journo got confused. The diesel block is taller, and if sleeved can run a large bore. So it's not outside the realm of possibility for that engine to have a displacement up around 3.5L with a custom crank. Huge flow on a ported crossflow head with the right induction and exhaust, it's not unreasonable to get up around 450hp. Les Collins/Peter MacDonald down in Australia built a 3.4L stroker using a non-crossflow P90 head and it punched out 370-ish hp.

In the Spring I hope. Winter storage is looming large at the moment. My biggest concern in dyno'ing the car is with finding a shop with someone familiar with Mikunis. I know a bit, but having a tuner that understands the carbs and can make educated recommendations based upon prior experience would be ideal. I might have to drive do to New England or Virginia to find that though. I will be interesting to compare numbers, since we should both be running the same camshaft, but with different heads, ignitions, carbs, and so on.

Good results, I'd be very happy with similar numbers to yours - well done!!

A pretty good time for how early you are with this new build, and wow, talk about night and day when it comes to part replacement costs! I've no doubt it was a hassle and a large undertaking making the swap, but what a load off it must be knowing that if something goes wrong it won't destroy your bank balance replacing it. If blocks are that cheap, you might as well grab another one and have it sitting ready, just in case. Good stuff, looking forward to seeing what numbers you lay down as things go forward!

Another 'Mix & Match' day at the track, last one of the season. Did a little better on the track this time, using a few pointers I was given. Really need a buddy that knows his #### to ride along with me sometime. I almost ran out of braking room on a few corners on a couple of laps, but thankfully managed to avoid going off. Still figuring out the limits under hard driving. The car will be finding its way into storage pretty soon, or at least whenever the salt trucks come out. I'm toying with a couple of project ideas for over the Winter, but I'm going to have to pick and choose which I go with: 1. Ditch the Mikunis and convert to EFI using those new Jenvey Heritage DCOEs. No more buying brass, and no more dealing with the little idiosyncrasies of carburetors. I worry that my lack of expertise in tuning them is holding the car back, and there doesn't appear to be any dyno shop in the area that knows Mikuni PHHs. 2. Get a head fully worked over by Slover's, with whatever Isky cam suits the work done. I have a head that was ported by Whitehead Performance, a reasonably reputable shop in Toronto, but I have no data on what was done with it and how well it flows. It was work done for the engines previous owner, who had it done about 8 years or so ago, and no paperwork exists anymore. Whitehead reckons that their porting likely increased flow 40% on the exhaust side, and 25% on the intake side. Not sure what that translates to, or if it is indeed the case. Another option would be to find a shop that could flowbench some heads for me. I have a bone stock N42 kicking around, as well as my old E31 from my old stroker engine, which has been ported, as well as the Whitehead N42 I am currently running. Maybe one of them is flowing good enough already? That said, Slover's would weld up the chamber and give me some squish, which is a big benefit. Decisions decisions....

Just what you said, no harsh cleaners or chemicals, and limit sunlight. That's kept my uncracked* dash from cracking during the past 4.5 years of ownership. *there is a tiny little crack developing by the VIN plate, but it hasn't progressed even 1mm in the 4.5 years I've owned the car. Bloody stressful though, knowing it's there and might decide to start growing!

Okay, so if you are moving from DCOEs or Mikunis, then what would you need to complete the swap? Assuming you are running triples already, and have an electric fuel pump, and -6AN+ fuel lines in place, you would need: - 3x Jenvey Heritage ITBs ($325 X 3 = $975) - 6x Injectors ($90 X 6 = $540) - Throttle pot ($125) - High pressure fuel pump ($150) - High pressure fuel filter ($50) Total: $1840 (plus shipping) If you have a 240Z/260Z add: - Swirl pot ($100) - Plumb return line from swirl pot to tank ($100) Total $200 (in addition to above figure) And an ECU setup of some sort. I run an Electromotive XDi, so I would switch to a Tec3 or something, for the sake of convenience. So add $1000 or so for a used one. Total expense for me to do the swap then would be: $2040 for the ITB's and parts $100 for the ECU Total: $3040 I reckon I could fetch $2200 for the Mikunis and all the jetting I have (A LOT). So $840 for the swap. Not inexpensive, but tempting. System would look like: Fuel tank > filter > low pressure pump > swirl pot in engine bay > high pressure fuel filter > high pressure pump > ITB > ITB > ITB > regulator > swirl pot > return line to fuel tank Anything I've missed here?

I was thinking about grabbing the normal dcoe type Jenveys when I move away from my Mikunis, but now this leaves me with another option. Decisions decisions... I wonder if there are any negatives to these versus the normal style ITB's? Injector availability could be one I guess.

Congrats, must feel great to have it up and running, and so far no big issues *knocks on wood*. I bet you'll be smiling from ear to ear once you have it in the car and are out on your first drive! I'd look into buying some better air horns for those 45's by the way - I've read of people getting more HP with no horns, rather than the terribly designed ones that come with the carbs. From all the reading I have done, a full radius mouth seems to be the way to go. Techno Toy Tuning makes some decent ones. If you don't mind sharing, what do you have your XDi set to for timing? Can't wait for your next update!

They also look vaguely like SSR MK2's, if you want another option.

An air field reasonably nearby runs arm drop races 3 times a year, and I went to the autumn event yesterday. Great fun, as it always is, lots of great cars and everyone just enjoying them. I raced a friends NA Miata, which is supercharged. He got me by a couple of feet, hell of a fun race! I'm pretty torn at this point about where to go with my Z. I have a fair bit of money into it, and somehow I am still only running around 15 seconds in the quarter mile. Part of it is my driving ability, no doubt, but the car really ought to be capable of better. I have the Isky cam I bought waiting to go in, which might make a bit difference. I am also considering contacting Slovers or someone to port up a head for me though. The head I am running was ported by Whitehead Performance in Toronto, who specialises in these cars, but I don't have any flow figures to back it up. Everything else is in place though, so presumably the head and camshaft are the final two pieces of the puzzle, carb tuning aside. Anyway, a recap of what I am running for parts: - F54 block w/flat top pistons - Ported N42 head (10:1 compression) - 272 Crane cam, pretty mild and only .450 lift (switching to Isky 270 dur. .540 lift cam over the Winter) - Electromotive XDi ignition set to 18 adv @ 1000rpm, and 36 adv (all in) at 3000rpm - Triple Mikuni 44's on a cleaned up Harada intake manifold. Carbs are jetted 55 pilot, 160 main, 210 air, 34 chokes, and 45 pump jets, - MSA 6-1 header into mandrel bent 3" exhaust like with Magnaflow perf. core muffler - 4.11 LSD - Unknown (suspect 77-79) 5 speed transmission - Tokico Illumina shocks with Tokico springs. - 15x6 Panasports with 205/55r15 Yokohama S.Drives (300 treadwear)

A tiny bit of light might creep through on used throttle plates with an old throttle rod. What's really important is being sure that both sides of the carb are pulling equal air. It sounds silly, but I check this by holding a vacuum cleaner up to the back side of the carb, and measuring the pull with my synchrometer. It works well for me that way. When installing the throttle plates onto the shaft, I lube them up with some heavy oil too. Then once they are both in and close, I'll open and close the plates by turning the shaft a few times sharply and they'll move into place and seal themself. Then it's just a matter of threadlocking the screws and installing them, then degreasing the plates. There is a knack to this sort of work, but practice helps. I've seen some people use molybdenum disulfide on the back of the plates, which is common practice on throttle bodies for getting a perfect seal. I've never personally found it necessary though.

I damaged a few of those screws on the last set of Mikuni 44's I rebuilt. The 44's throttle plate screws are now NLA, so I struggled to source replacements - ended up winning an auction on Yahoo Auctions Japan for 10 used ones that were all in good condition. There are sellers on that auction site that sell reproduction ones too, and on tiny items like those, the shipping isn't so bad. I use a bidding service called Zenmarket for buying from the site, here is a link to an auction for said screw: http://zenmarket.jp/auction.aspx?itemCode=u101899483 As far as screwdrivers though, can't be of any help there I'm afraid. Good idea though, reckon I will try and source some myself.

The local track puts on what they call "Mix & Match" nights every couple of weeks - laps around a small part of the track and drags runs, pay $30 and do as many as you want between 6pm and 9pm. I've just been doing drag runs the last few times, working on getting the carbs jetted somewhat properly, but I finally got myself over to the lapping part of it last night. This was my first time driving the car on the track, and it shows. Great fun though, and I'm glad I had a camera to record it to watch again afterwards - really interesting. The big takeaway for me is to not brake so early into corners, and to learn to apply throttle and drive through them. This was the last night for this season, but I will be back in the Spring for more of these nights, and will be bugging friends to ride shotgun and give me advice. Can't wait!

Cheers guys! Grannyknot, I put the louvered inspection lids on about a week after ZCON. I had a shop do some body and paint work just before ZCON, but I wasn't happy with the standard. After seeing some louvered lids at ZCON, I decided to quickly order some from ebay and get them painted as well while the shop was fixing their work. Quite like them - a subtle touch, and it doesn't hurt having somewhere for all that hot underhood air to escape from either