Leon

When I was first looking for a cheap (<$1000) project car circa 2006 it had to have RWD, a manual gearbox, and fastback styling. My first target was the Porsche 944. Thankfully, I struck out on a few of those and expanded my search to A70 Supras and S30 Z-cars. Ended up getting a 240Z and didn't look back. Similarly to Jon, I ended up with a Z because it fit my criteria and was dirt cheap at the time. If I were searching now under similar budgetary and performance constraints, I bet I'd end up with some sort of E36. That said, the Z has been a great platform to learn on and play around with. The added bonus is that it has a timelessness that the 944 and A70 Supra could only dream of.

The 260Z VIN is an "RLS" prefix. "HLS" is 240Z or 280Z.

Paid $1637 for the wheels + tires originally. The tires are very grippy (200tw extreme performance category) and have lots of life left. I can do $1200.

I have a set of almost-new 16X7 ET0 Panasports with 225/50-16 Bridgestone RE11-A rubber. I bought Wats and would be willing to sell these. I'm local, if you want to have a look sometime.

What do the other cylinders read on the flow meter? If the others read 5, then you possibly have a vacuum leak, bent throttle rod, or misaligned butterfly. If the others read 4, then you likely have either a bent throttle rod or misaligned butterfly. Remove your progression hole covers to diagnose a bent throttle rod. Use smoke or spray for vacuum leaks. If everything comes up inconclusive, then a butterfly is misaligned. This assumes proper valve lash and even cylinder compression.

The ball-and-socket kit won't bind or snap TC rods but it will be harsher than rubber.

Ride comfort is a systemic attribute, it's not just springs or bushings or... Spring rates set ride frequency which sets the amount of force, thus acceleration (F=ma), your body will see from road inputs. These accelerations are tuned via dampers and isolators. This is mostly reflected in how "stiff" the car feels when hitting bumps and dips in the road. Then there's the matter of impact harshness from road imperfections. This is more of a noise and resonance issue. This is dealt with via something called compliance. The bushings responsible for controlling the amount of longitudinal compliance were already mentioned in the post you found. This is all assuming you're not running out of travel on your suspension. Fixing harshness is going to involve making sure you have soft compliance bushings and top mounts. If you're running coilovers with a solid top mount (ball joint), that's not helping.

Bummer! There's always next year. Seems they're finally giving some credence to Japanese car makers. I'll be curious in what you come up with.

I haven't had the time to swap in the new bits due to family commitments and race car stuff. I did drive the Z down to Laguna Seca for the Historics yesterday and man is this car terrible to drive! The lack of suspension travel makes for an abysmal experience and the rev-hang in between shifts is really aggravating. I won't drive the car again until I can swap the suspension. The rev-hang needs further investigation but the symptoms point more to a vacuum leak than a linkage issue. I'll do a quick linkage check and then put some smoke through the trumpets to see if we're leaking air anywhere. Reinstalling a speaker so I can finally use the radio, in combination with the above, will go a long way to really refining the car.

The length has nothing to do with it, it's all due to the balance tube and misaligned holes for the throttle rod bearings. Pierce Manifolds is a vendor, they do not make their own manifolds. I'm guessing you're looking at the TWM manifold that they sell. I run one on my Z, it's definitely better in quality than the Cannon but it took some hogging out to make the ports match, FWIW.

I'll be there Sunday with some friends, managed to get a spot in the ZONC car corral at Turn 3. I haven't been to the Historics for about 6 years or so, should be fun!

Sounds like you guys have damping/travel issues.

Great! I appreciate that man, send them over. Would love to have a look.

You don't wanna know! It's some fancy-pants scanner, I can't remember what it is at the moment...

Scan data is complete. He went pretty in-depth with modeling it up. Andrew, I sent you an email. Let me know if you don't get it.

Congrats man, great to see this thing finally running!

Right on, I'll let you know when I get the file! I'm definitely spoiled with the equipment and people I have access to at work. Things would certainly go a lot slower if I didn't have these resources.

I'll do it on my L28 if you would like to pay for a 3" exhaust for my Z.

Right on man, thanks! The scan data is currently being converted into a solid model (it's raw form is STL) so hopefully I'll have something today. Do you have a preferred file format?

Good to know! I don't have any EFI Z-cars but it's cool to see somebody playing with it at this level. I'm in the SF Bay Area as well (Burlingame), I'd love to check out what you're doing sometime.

Yup, put 4 Webers on it! https://www.lainefamily.com/240Z_V8_Conversion.htm

Sure thing! If your setup doesn't have any tractability issues and you're happy with your fuel consumption and AFR curve, then you won't see much value in going with Keith's products. Keith's idle jets are supposed to improve low-speed mixture stability and his tubes should enable you to match the tip-in point of the mains with the idles as well as maintain a steady AFR trace to redline. The testing has begun... We had a short road-tuning session yesterday. The initial jet setup included 50F9 idles and 145/F11/170 mains in a 3.1L stroker with an unported but shaved P90 and Rebello's 278deg/.540" lift cam. Carbs are 45DCOE with 40mm venturis and exhaust is a Pacesetter header into 2.5" piping. The engine is still in the break-in phase so there hasn't been much high-load driving yet, just quick bursts. The mains seemed pretty dialed with this setup but the low-speed circuit had a lot of holes in transition. The idles needed to be upsized. We dropped in Keith's VF e-tubes with the same mains and airs as well as Keith's W55 idles. The idles were set to two open holes on the collar, the engine was warmed up, and idle AFR was set at ~12.5:1. Even on cold-start, the engine was much more responsive to throttle inputs. There was no more bogging and coughing. A test drive around the neighborhood revealed near-perfect tractability with just a minor lean hole at moderate throttle inputs around 2000RPM. We attempted to cure it by removing the collar and exposing all the air holes on the idles but this caused a dramatic leaning effect below 2000RPM. We did a few bursts of WOT and high-load but there is certainly more work to be done on the mains once the motor is fully broken in. Our next course of action will be to run the car on the dyno to dial in the mains as well as possibly upsize the idles to W60 to get rid of the lean spot and completely dial in the tractability. I installed the W60s into my Z for my drive home but had no time to tune them at all. I also suspect I have a vacuum leak somewhere so I'll have to trace that down... More to come

Gotcha, didn't realize they were completely different architectures. I haven't had a chance to play with the old Nissan EFI.

Great stuff, thanks for sharing all this! I'm curious how similar the 280Z ROMs are...