Leon

Never had an issue. It all comes from the same place, you know! I buy from Shell and Chevron because it's convenient. We use their gas cards which give us small discounts, their prices tend to be competitive, plus Shell and Chevron are everywhere. Differences in performance between different brands of (top tier) gas is usually in people's imaginations... There's a very good chance that your local Shell gets its fuel from the same place as your local Chevron, 76, Mobil, Arco, Valero, ad nauseum. The only differences are the detergent additives, the effects of which are seen more in the long term and not discernible tank-to-tank. http://www.energy.ca.gov/2008publications/CEC-180-2008-008/CEC-180-2008-008.PDF http://www.toptiergas.com/retailers.html

Thanks Jim, it was awesome finally meeting you yesterday! Your 240 looks gorgeous, you guys really did a fantastic job and the amount of hours and energy you put into it really shows. Your son is a lucky kid. Thanks Alex! I had to break in the engine during the trip, so it was a bit stressful. She runs strong and feels very torquey, at least from the butt-dyno. I have the timing set pretty conservatively right now (10 idle, 27 max) so I'm not at full power yet. I can't wait to finish breaking it in and putting it on the dyno! I wlil say that I LOVE the 10lb flywheel and the stock 225mm clutch is holding up, for now. Unfortunately, looks like one of the valves had its wipe pattern set a little too aggressively, and I wiped a cam lobe. I'll do a full inspection tomorrow and send another core to Isky in the meantime. The wipe patterns were set very aggressively, and unfortunately one of them was just off enough. This is a case of learn by doing! I'll bump up the lash pad size a bit to make sure it doesn't happen again. Here's a shot of the carnage:

Spent many hours over the last few days getting the car ready to go to JCCS... We're now resting in SLO and will be in Long Beach Friday night! I realized that I hadn't taken any photos of the "completed" car yet, so I snapped a quick one at a Shell alongside 101 this afternoon...

Git 'er done!

We have ignition! Made the stupid mistake of setting the distributor exactly right... to the exhaust stroke. Once that was corrected, it started right up! Initial break in went OK besides the coolant temp climbing more than I wanted it to, causing two shut downs. Hopefully things settle down once I hit the open road. Besides that, I've got a few things to cross off the checklist before heading to JCCS (let alone drive it), including registration/insurance, exhaust, bleeding hydraulics, finishing interior, hopefully redoing the fuel system, and a few other things... Overall, it was a good day and a great weekend. Had a ton of fun at the autocross yesterday!

Kudos on the fantastic design and fabrication work!

Genius!

Wheels came in this morning.

Man, you're telling me Jim! I was looking in my engine bay yesterday thinking, "dang, I should've plated this, and this, and this..." At this point, I want to get my own plating kit since this stuff can get expensive. Just didn't have the time to do it myself this time.

Phew! The oil system is finally primed. After lots of cranking, we still didn't have oil at the cam. I removed the oil pressure sender and the gallery was dry. I had to re-prime the oil pump and then more cranking until the hallelujah moment of oil squirting out the cam lobe! Now to finish off the fuel system and finally attempt to fire this weekend. Bought tires today (Bridgestone RE-11A if anyone's curious, good deal on them at Tirerack right now) and got a test-piece from the plating shop: Can't wait to get the rest of the parts back tomorrow!

The answer to your question is probably more complex than you expect. Correctly sizing wheels/tires factors in a car's entire performance window, and you really need tire data to pick the right one. Good luck getting that from the manufacturers, unless you know somebody! You need to plan out maximum acceleration numbers for take-off, braking, changing direction, etc. and try to match up a tire to that without wasting material (e.g. too wide of a tire for your needs will increase unsprung weight and rotational inertia). Tire size also affects gearing, so I'd start by choosing a diameter to work with that matches the gearing you'd like... Ditto JC on the RC comment.

Hey Jim, I got my JCCS pass as well! Driving the Z is the plan. I have the tickets and hotel reservations, so I better be. Can't wait to pick your and Tokyo Drftr's respectful brains! I'll be pulling the valve cover tomorrow to re-lube the cam and spin it over again to see if we get oil out the cam holes. Otherwise, I'm in the process of redoing my fuel system, I think you'll like it. In other news, I also bought a new set of wheels which should be arriving on Friday. Hopefully, the car will be registered, insured, and running by the end of the week. Wishful thinking, I know. I'll keep my fingers crossed as I'm waiting upon the pertinent parts to arrive. I just had to order more fuel system stuff today, but I've left the cobbled fuel system in place in case I want to start the car before changing things up. I also need to do the front brakes on the S2k in preparation for Saturday's autocross day... Yeesh!

It happens!

The classifieds ebb and flow. I wouldn't call them "bland" though as that depends on what you're looking for. The donation is worth every penny if you ask me. $25/year is too much? There are myriad comments I can make about this, but I'll leave it to your imagination.

It's the cam. Changing venturis will only help if they're beginning to choke your engine, i.e. airspeed through venturi is approaching ~0.4 Mach. This can be calculated. The other method would be empirical testing, by iterating choke sizes, as has been mentioned.

Nice, both cars I have are early 260s. Later 5-speed has closer ratios, so it's usually preferred. If we want to get really detailed, it depends on what gear ratios you're shooting for. Yeah, you have just a few years on me. Sounds like you've built some awesome stuff, I'm looking forward to stopping by!

Cool stuff! Is the GTO project a 240Z conversion? I've been to XK's Unlimited a few times, really cool shop. Since I was in SLO for school, I used the on-campus machine shops (The Hangar mostly), so I don't have a great knowledge of machine shops in SLO. That's a hell of a double-major! I'm an ME, so I bet you did have some of the same professors. The car was Fab's, if you ever had him.

AMEN!

Sweeet! Damn Ron, how many projects do you have going? How's the Locost?

The $0 degree wheel, as Nathan alludes to:

Yep, the car belonged to a former college prof of mine. I think all the Z shops are all closed up, although you can sell parts here on this site by becoming a donating member ($20). I'd be interested in what you have. Are you from Odessa? I was born in Moscow.

Alright, I guess I should give an update... I worked my ass off during the last week of August, with the help of some friends and my dad. Long story short, we got as far as filling all the fluids, sealing leaks, and turning over the engine with the plugs out, using the starter. Hooray for no piston-valve contact (at least none that I heard)! We were not able to start the engine so unfortunately the car didn't make it to the wedding. With that said, we had a blast working on the car. A lot of late nights and little sleep, as well as 9pm runs to O'Reilly's all made it memorable. Plus, the wedding was a blast and the honeymoon was fantastically relaxing. Here's where we ended up: The two stupid things that stopped me from starting the car were (1) a dead fuel pump and (2) the lack of a complete exhaust system. It was such a time-crunch that these two things killed any chance I had of the car running before 8/30. We found a suitable fuel pump, using one of my buddy's detective skills, the night before the deadline. That was in and pumping fuel the next morning. I would've liked to at least start and break-in the engine, but when cranking it over there was no sight of oil from the cam lobes, even having primed the oil system. The plan here is to take off the valve cover and apply some more moly lube to the lobes. During the honeymoon, I was able to plan out a new fuel system so I'll be re-plumbing the mess that's in there now. The parts had arrived by the time I got back, this past Wednesday, so they're on hand. At this point, the only thing I'm waiting on is for some hardware to get re-plated (I stopped by a local metal finishing shop yesterday) and the wideband O2 sensor that I ordered. Once it's all together, I'm hoping to break it in and then drive to my exhaust shop to put together a suitable exhaust system.

The reason for the E31's popularity has already been given: Otherwise, there isn't anything all that special about them.

There's a reason why both of my Zs are early 260s...

Sweeet!