AkumaNoZeta

Whats an LQ9?

I put this here because its not really a question and I don't want to waste room in the technical sections. I am stuck between two ideas for the way I want to build my 260Z. First is with just the average front airdam and a 400-500 horsepower CA18DET with 16X8s and the other is with a modified 280YZ widebody (sugar scoop headlight graft and bring the airdam in a couple inches so it doesn't stick out so far) powered by a twin turbo LS1 with a mild profile 4/4 cam, 15X12s in rear and 15X10s in the front. Both would have basic aero, shaved emblems and side-marker lights, and custom suspension. After day dreaming about driving a high powered LS1 and seeing the pics of grafted 280YZs made me kinda lean towards there. But I love the little Nissan engines so much that I feel like I'm betraying them.

I don't have any with me, but I'll bring the ones I do in class Monday night and put them up.

Its 1/8 thick steel, and I have the V in there. We dont do any oxy/act welding here. I'm just feeling hopeless in getting it down.

I've spent at least 3 weeks straight doing nothing but trying to TIG weld. One whole week to get the corner and fillet weld down, but I've spent the next two weeks doing nothing but the butt weld and I'm not even close to getting it. The last week was spent with the teacher the whole time to try to get the butt weld, but I cant do it.

Why not get a ZD30DDT(i)? I said that as a joke at first, but it may actually be interesting. I'm having problems trying to find any pictures of one though.

A fun project to do for it would be to make it run on propane, its the equilavant to 110 octane and I could run higher boost, not to mention how clean it burns. It would be a lot of work, but may be worth it.

Ok, I cant seem to find any connecting rods for the CA. I can find pistons easily though. Is this because it already has forged steel rods that are really strong or for its lack of popularity? Can the stock rods handle 20 psi?

I would love to have an RB engine in the car but I want the wieght distribution of a 4 cylinder of V8 and I want to keep it Nissan, just showing some brand loyalty. An LS1 would be great or a 351, but the domestic V8 in a Z is done so much and is expected. Every Z I've seen in real life, except from mine, had a SBC in it and to me just makes that swap less exciting. Plus 30 mpg would be great to have again, not neccessarily to save money on gas but to be able to go longer without refueling. I hate stopping at gas stations.

Got this off of wikipeida: There was never a factory-produced twin-cam CA 2.0L motor, nor a turbo version. However the blocks are the similar, and it is possible to fit the DOHC CA18DE/T twincam head to the SOHC CA20 block. However the DOHC/SOHC manifolds are different and the timing pulley/belts are not compatible. Despite this, CA20DET turbos have been built. The cheaper alternative to a CA20DET is a newer SR20DET, which will cost you a lot less in the long run, considering it is a newer engine. Parts for the SR20 are cheaper and more readily available. This is no easy task, however. The rods of the normally aspirated CA20 series of motors are not up to the task, and many tuners use modified Mitsubishi 4G63 con-rods in this application. With a larger bore than the CA18, custom, flat topped and forged pistons are a must if boost is to be reliable. The CA20 also did not include the crank girdle support which vastly increased the harmonic resistance of the CA18. But the crank girdle from a CA18DET block will fit the CA20 main caps. The CA20 also did not include the under piston oil squirters of the CA18, but like the crank girdle, oil squirters from a CA18DET block can be fitted to the CA20 block. Tomei and JUN of Japan produced 2 litre stoker kits for the CA18. If you search around the internet you are able to find these parts but they will not come without an expensive price tag. There is also a company called Norris Designs that produces a CA20 stroker kit as well as a CA20 engine.

What about one of these kits? http://www.thehoffmangroup.com/autoloc/powerwindowsconfigure.lasso?step=flatglass Are they any good? I'm thinking about going to power windows but not the type that uses the existing system thats in the door because one of the reasons I want one is the fact that I spent days trying to fix the passenger side window to roll up and down but it keeps on binding (think one of the arms must be bent) so I want a system that would just eliminate all that. I also want to have it where the window crank is the switch like you see on a whole bunch of hotrods, it would be power but wouldn't look power so to speak

How light is that truck? When you look at the dyno video its only pulling 350 with no nitrous and 430 with nitrous and it still runs 9s? Or is it an 1/8 mile track?

Still a lot cheaper than a carbon fiber peice right? How much lighter would an aluminum door be compared to a fiberglass one?

I'm not going to keep the strut suspension, I'm going to a Mustang II with coil-over front suspension whenever I get around to replacing the front frame rails so the inner fenders would just be excess weight after that. So if you have the air dam go further out than the tire like on the NASCARs would a belly pan make that approach less effective since you said it was done to create a pressure difference between the hood instead of the top and bottom of the car? I agree with the aerodynamics making my head hurt, especially when talking about those full out race cars like the IMSA prototypes.

How about making some custom shaped dolleys and various sizes of hammers? And I didn't mean door panels, I meant doors. Have the skin shaped from sheat and then more parts of it made of sheet and then very carefully tig it all together and have a door that looks like the original but ways a couple hundred pounds lighter, BTW thats an exageration. And I think a thin sheet of aluminum would be lighter than a fiberglass piece with a layer of carbon fiber on it...not sure though.

I know I spelt Aluminum wrong, it was supposed to be entertaining. So back to my topic. I have heard that aluminum body panels are lighter than fiberglass, but slightly heavier than carbon fiber (but carbon fiber costs out the wazoo). So I was wondering if this was true because I read it off some sight a while back ago and if it was true how hard would it be to make parts removable from the unibody like hoods and fenders out of sheets? Aluminum doors would be cool, but I think aluminum windows would be a tiny bit difficult to see through. I'm curious on the fabrication part of it but mainly on the weight reduction factor. I wouldn't mind attempting to start making aluminum parts out of sheet one day. How would one do the body lines? Like the ones on the bottom of the door and the hood bulge, that would be difficult. The hatch doesn't seem like it would be too difficult because it's so smooth.

Ok, lets say you cut off the inner fenders because of a tube framing or something. If you have your heat exchangers ducted, a underbelly pay the runs to the firewall with cut outs for the tires to rotate all the way around without hitting it and vents in the fenders some small ones on the hood. Would that help or hurt the aero not having the inner fenders there or would it actually help it because it makes it easier for the air to reach the fender vents? I think if you have the front of the tires blocked off effectively by the airdam and fender than it shouldn't hurt it too much to leave it open to the inside of the engine bay would it? I've always thought of these as seperate areas but making them into one area is a lot for my brain to work out and I don't know where to start.

Great vid. I'm almost sold on the CA idea...2.35 bars of boost is like 30-35psi right? Thats a little much for 91 or 93 octane isn't it? One other thing I don't like about the VH is how many litres it is, I want great fuel economy because I want it to be my daily driver and then I can get rid of the Mustang. The 5.0 is great but I want better than 20 mpg and I think the Z is a lot greater looking. I actually want to sell the Mustang for CHEAP to my friend because I know he'll want to build it into a drag car and I would love to do the chassis and suspension work for that. I figure to run on 91 I probably wont be able to go past like 20 psi with a good tune, huh? So that would be looking at that vid about 430-450 horsepower which would be great because city driving done off boost would also be like 30, maybe 35 mpg.

The engine I choose is not determined yet. I'm still learning about all my options. Right now I kinda like the VH45, spent all day looking into that. The only thing I don't like about that is the lack of room in the engine bay and I can see it raising the center of gravity quite a bit with the giant heads that are on it. I'm looking into different engine choices everyday...whenever I get to that part in my build it would probably be picked on my income and the price of the engines. Nissan just makes too many great engines

Besides the front rails being chopped in half when the previous owner replaced the floor pans, the only other negative thing about the body is a the giant rust hole under the battery tray. If the car is driving good after I get the new carb on there then I'll bring up here and bring it into my Street Rod class in July and fix the rust holes, floors, and shave the sidemarkers and emblems off. Make it look nice and clean. For the front frame rails I want to cut off the rest of it and run 2X3 .120 wall rectangular tubing all the way back to the crossmember to the rear subframe. And since I want to do a Mustang II type suspension up front with coilovers the strut towers actually become useless and I can cut out the whole inner fender. Basically it would be like the 60's Camaros and Mustangs with the unibody rear and nothing but rails sticking out in front, except mine would be welded in and not a removable stub...but this is years in the future. First I need fix the sheet metal, graduate, find a job, and hopefully be able to work in a shop that will allow me to work on my own project

Oh yeah, mine doesn't have the washer reservoir either, I still have the motor that went to it but the reservoir got brittle and was shattered before I bought the car. Wipers dont work either. Have a lot of bugs to work out...Fuel lever sender doesn't work (if I take it out and clean it, might it work then?)

I know, but it should be cleaned up pretty good after getting the Holley 4-barrell on there. The previous owner put new speakers in for the radio but I'm not sure if they're completely hooked up or not because the radio wasnt working and you can actually see the wires for them going under the carpet in the trunk. After I get it running I'm gonna have some friends help me get the radio working because I don't know anything about audios and I took the radio out of my Mustang and now I realize how important a radio is for a car you drive everyday, lol. Especially on the 15 hour trip between Arkansas and Pennsylvania.

Ok, I actually looked up gear ratios you can buy for the R200 longnose, theres a 5.143, 4.875, and 3.154 from Kameari (expensive though) and then I looked up the Nismo 6-speed (can that be adapted to the CA? Custom bellhousing?) which was 2.9071, 1.9888, 1.5373, 1.2179, 1.000, and 0.8624. I plugged all this in using the same tire size and redline and think the 6-speed with the 4.875 would be pretty good. Slow in first but after that would seem to be fairly quick.

I was playing with this a little today. http://www.geocities.com/z_design_studio/ I used the CA18DET transmission gear ratios I found which were 3.321, 1.902, 1.308, 1.000, 0.838 with a 9000 RPM redline and 225/40/17 tires and I think a 4.50 rear end would be pretty good according to this graph. Would anybody like to suggest something better?

I was thinking about my car (like I do 99.9% of the time) and remembered I haven't posted photos of it on here, except for when I was asking about the floorboards in another posted but all the pics there were from under the car. Its a 260Z. When I got it, it had both the 240Z and 280Z styled turn signals which I removed the 280Z ones that werent even wired in. And it also had a 280Z front bumper, that I removed, and no rear bumper. The SUs stopped working after I was able to drive it for one day!!!! But I have the Arizona Z manifold and a brand new Holley 390 with all the fixings waiting for me back in Arkansas. When I get to go home in the end of March I'll be able to put all that on and drive it again. BTW, those tires were put on by the previous owner right before he let it sit and they still look brand new, no cracks or anything, perfect tread. Had to replace the stem valves in the wheels though because one leaked and I figured might as well get them all replaced.