Leon

Painted the pulley yesterday and got my shims done today! Also, got a radio coming from Clive to round out my interior. Glad I found a nice original radio instead of the way-too-modern one in there. Anyway, on to the shims. Thanks go out to the toolmakers at work for helping me out! I milled starter holes into the stock Set up in the wire EDM The program Cutting the holes (don't mind the mistake ) And we're done! I didn't take pics when cutting the profile unfortunately. I did make a few videos but I haven't watched them to see if they're interesting enough to upload. Main bearings should come in tomorrow and I should have no more excuses not to have this thing together. I borrowed mikes, snap gauge, and ring compressor from my neighbor. I just need a c-clamp style valve compressor and I should be set, besides the inevitable random seals and gaskets that I may have to get.

Point taken! I suppose a Chevette Diesel is a POS even in showroom condition...

Almost made me crack up at my desk...

Looks like it's a KM1821-ZF which is for a '77-'78. I can tell by the different auto-antenna lever, screen graphics, and the 3 FM presets (vs. 2 on the ZD/ZE). You can check the label on the top or bottom to be sure. Your effort is much appreciated, but I think I'll have to pass on this one. Thanks Rob!

"CFO", that's great! Dude, just buy a POS and call if your DD for insurance's sake and ride a bike to work!

I've gotten trojan notices recently as well...

Great detective work, Dan! I hope your diesel Chevette dreams come true.

That's the wrong one, but the seller does have the correct one. I've been thinking about buying one from him for a long time, but haven't justified dropping $375 on a stock radio. If I don't find a good radio, I may just have to bite the bullet...

Thanks Dave but I'm looking for one in better shape. Clive has one and is going to send me some photos.

Thanks man, looking forward to it!

Good news and bad news... The good news is that I picked up my crank, flywheels, and balancer from the machine shop today. The crank looked great and just needed a polish, the Tilton FW had to be balanced but the Fidanza didn't need it, and the harmonic damper also did not need balancing as I had suspected. This was all done as a double-check really, so it's mostly for peace-of-mind. The bottom end is ready to assemble, besides the main bearings which I ordered today. The bad news is that our EDM hole-popper took a crap as I was booting it up today, so I wasn't able to make the shims... If I can't fix it quickly, I'll have to go the old-fashioned way and mill some starter holes.

Thanks for the lead, but I prefer the Hitachi. I don't have any 8-tracks to play anyway...

I'm looking for a stock '74-'76 Hitachi KM-1520ZD or KM-1520ZE radio in good, working shape. These were OEM on 260Zs and 280Zs up to '76. Thanks!

For my own records: Shim stock measured .0778-.0785" across the entire 12"X12".

Thanks Takashi! I just got back from my vacation on Sunday, wish I could do that more often... How's your Z doing, getting close?

I'm finally ready to put the top-end together. Rockers were done by Delta in WA and the valve-train is from Iskenderian. OK, more like almost ready. I've got the cam tower shims programmed up and ready to go into the EDM. I'll pop some holes into the Al shim stock and hopefully have some nice tower shims in the next day or two. On another note, I registered for JCCS today. Time to start planning the trip (but first finish up wedding and honeymoon plans).

That's a great idea!

Don't waste your money. You have a wideband already which is WAY ahead of what a colortune can do.

No cam or crank yet, but I did take advantage of yesterday's beautiful weather to prep and paint the block right before leaving for vacation (paid the price for it via a hostile fiancee )! Primed: Painted: Also, found a brand new Nissan L28 head-gasket in my stash. I assume it's for an early L28 but I haven't confirmed.

Regrind from the stock cam is the way to go, due to the matching wear surfaces.

Another thing to note from that chart, is that the higher your grip conditions the more sensitive brake bias becomes with regard to maximum deceleration.

Not only that, but optimal brake ratio changes depending on grip. You want more rear bias in rain and less in the dry, due to weight transfer effects. I've attached a chart I have from a braking spreadsheet I did back in my vehicle dynamics class (don't look at the discontinuities at the tips ). The model is a generic "street sedan" weighing 3220lb, with a 55/45 weight distribution and 3ft high CG. It shows three conditions: wet, low grip, and high grip. In the wet, optimal brake force distribution is 60/40. If your brake force dist wanders to the left of the vertex, your rears lock up first (too much rear brake force). The opposite is true when going to the right of the vertex. This applies to all 3 braking conditions. For a "set-it and forget-it" setup, you need a bias that never locks the rears first. This means setting your bias to the highest grip condition. The con is that your braking distances will be further increased when using this bias on a lower grip surface. For example, you set bias to 86/14 for the high-grip condition. Then it rains. You now have 70% of optimal maximum deceleration on that surface with your set-and-forget bias. Again, these are numbers using a made-up car and approximate mu values for grip conditions. It's simply an example that illustrates what's going on. Braking Chart.pdf

Wow, interesting ad to say the least...

Great compilation, Takashi!

Nice Mike! Looks like a great LeMons/Chumpcar entry.