Leon

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!

Nope. That number is likely over 30,000 as the E31 stayed atop L24s until mid-71. You have an L24-swapped 260Z, life goes on. One of my 260Zs came with an L24 as well, my guess of why it happens is because it's a cheap swap and people usually don't care about what kind of modifications they do when it comes to the 260Z...

FWIW, SIX of the 12 rockers I sent to Delta were not ground parallel. The rockers were done within the last 2 months.

Thanks Takashi! I'm looking forward to seeing your Z on the road!

Well, Monday turned into a throw-away day as far as car work goes. Just had too much stuff going on. As for today, I suppose I've underestimated what it takes to put a car together! We're close but no fire yet. It's gotta happen Wednesday or Thursday, because otherwise it's not happening until mid-September when we get back from the honeymoon. The guys came by again today and were a huge help. Things definitely get done quicker when there are 3 people working on the car at once, instead of just me. Here's where we're at, it's just a bunch of little things that are slowing me down right now, but I have a list and will try to get through it all tomorrow.

Great job Takashi, good to see the update!

Oh sh*t.

The scene on Saturday morning, lone head and block... Mockup from Sunday morning: The crew getting ready for some perilous maneuvering: And... it's in! Big thanks to all the awesome people who helped out, especially Yoshi and Leo. We had some hairy moments but it was a fantastic conclusion to a long, sleep-deprived weekend. My goal is to have the engine running by the end of Monday, but I have a lot of stuff going on starting at 2pm so we'll see if that happens. Tuesday should be the latest for first crank. Fingers crossed...

This is about as far as I got today, and yes it's 3am here... I did way more gasket and fastener hunting than I would like, but it is what it is as far as getting an engine in pieces and trying to rebuild it. I've got a few things on my checklist for tomorrow morning, or rather later in the morning. Gotta grab some fasteners, a gasket, and plugs/wires/coil when the stores open. Goal is to have this in the car by the end of Sunday. Time to get a little sleep...

I'm finally doing final assembly, typing this during dinner/dessert break. The head is on but I screwed up indicator reading during head install so I couldn't get a good gasket crush number, unfortunately. I'm using a Nissan gasket on a block decked by .004"/0.1mm so I'm not super worried about clearance there. When I did the P/V clearance check, I remeasured piston-to-head clearance and it was about .027" as given by the not superbly accurate silly putty. I am using cast pistons as well so expansion should be same as stock. I can't count how many rockers I've removed today and how many valves I adjusted, over and over and over... You're telling me! I'd still be searching or waiting for lash pads right now if it weren't for them, not to mention that those poorly done rockers would've probably made very bad noises at the very least.

Way too small for a stroker, IMO. Hope you have access to high-octane fuel...

Looking forward to seeing a video of the new-and-improved Z in action!

Just did the clearance check, tore it back down, and then installed the Isky springs and cam for final assembly. I used the Silly Putty again for my valve-to-piston clearance and came up with approximately .080" for exhaust and (with .012" lash at valve) .100" for the intake (.010" lash at valve). Works for me.

Well I had a crazy last few days... Yesterday consisted of 3-4 hours of driving around various motorcycle, fabrication, and engine shops, and even the Nissan dealer trying to figure out my correct lash pad thickness. I had no luck and instead came home, removed a spring and retainer, and used a combination of a stock lash pad and feeler gauges to try and replicate a thicker lash pad. This was more trouble than it was worth and the results were inconclusive at best. I came out of it estimating the correct size to be .180". Today was a change of pace. I decided to give Rebello a call and explained my situation. Dave was nice to talk to and said they could help out, so I packed the head and various bits into the S2000 and set off to Rebello Racing. Luckily it's just over an hour away from my place. I bold the word "luckily" because I'm very lucky that these guys came through for me, in a big way. I came in, quickly ogled the L28 with triple Mikunis and Kameari header, and then proceeded to explain my situation to one of the engine guys, who already had an N42 on his workbench at the time. Soon, we had my P90 head on the workbench with a very well-versed L-series expert looking over it. Long story short, I needed .200" pads on the intake and .240" on the exhaust. However, there was another revelation and it involved the rocker arms. Delta did a great job, over 50% of them were good! All kidding aside, 5 of the 12 rocker arms were ground poorly, i.e. the cam surface was not parallel to the valve surface. Others have noticed this recently as well, in various threads. Had I known of this earlier, I would've never sent them to Delta. So as a note to others, DO NOT send your rockers to get reground at Delta. They will ruin perfectly good rocker arms. I ended up getting 6 prepped rockers from Rebello as well. I bet this saved me a lot of hearache (right, Jim? ). Plus, once we were done, we chowed down on some pizza. I really couldn't have asked for a better experience! Standing over the shoulder of an expert L-series builder while he played with my head (who's going to make the first joke?) was a delight. I'm taking a food break right now. I've got the head installed and the next step is to time the cam. Once that's done I'll check valve-to-piston clearance. If everything is good, I'll break it down and finally work on assembling the engine. Looks like having the engine in the car this weekend may still be a possibility.

Thanks! It's really a bit loud for my taste but you gotta have at least one loud car in your life, right?