HowlerMonkey

If I had a LD28, I would bolt up the stock 280zx turbo manifolding, swap to a 280zx turbo rear sump pan and pickup, and use the stock 5 to 6 pounds of boost to net what would be a pretty peppy yet very frugal engine in a Z car.

LD28 complete is worth far more than the sum of it's parts.

The turbo distributor could really use a counterweight on the rotor. I use the crank trigger setup when I run a 280zx turbo ecu but now must use the distributor when using the M30 sequential ecu.

Both cars mentioned also had the hole in the hood to allow hot air to escape the engine compartment which keeps underhood temperatures drastically cooler in the case of a hot soak.....though nissan felt the need to go a step further since the repeat Z car customers have always lived with vapor lock going back to the days of asbestos covers over the fuel lines of the 260z. Nissans reasons showed up in the new car literature at the time of manufacture both for the fans and the dual feed injectors negating the need for the fan. I've had the ZX turbo setups (both V6 and L6) on cars that don't have a vented hood and the vapor lock issue is bad enough to prevent starting at times.

Carbon is building up on the valve stems which sticks them open on the -fse and -gse (direct injected) versions of these engines. Since it happens on both of the direct injected V-6, then I assume that it's not a case an injector blowing onto the back of a hot valve since only the IS350 has both port and direct injectors....the is250 has only direct and no port injector. My theory is that the cam timing wizardry they went through to get rid of the egr system has something to do with it since they use reversion to achieve egr. Don't get me wrong....the IS350 screams but it's complexity tells me that it will be quite a chore to extract more hp from one. I did dyno a IS-F that put down 500hp at performance power (owners of the 253mph ford gt) but the factory ecu did what it could to pull power above that. It might have been trying to keep power down for the benefit of transmission longeivity, though. I've only been back with lexus (after 5 years away) for a few months so I am still learning what issues we are having with the newer cars.

You might want to wait a bit on these engines and see how things go since I am replacing cam actuators, valve springs, and valves on many of them at the lexus dealership.

There's a reason nissan put a scoop on the turbo ZX from 1981 to 1985....and it's not there to get air in. It's there to let air out. The hole is there to allow convection to send hot air out the top which draws cool air in from below...the same cool air that is drawn in by the inlet of the cooling fan. Nissan didn't need them on the 1986 and later turbos because they went to dual feed injectors that constantly returned fuel through the injector body which kept them cool. If you have a vg30et or L28et in a car that does not feature a hole in the hood, you will experience vapor lock issues much like I experienced in my Infiniti M30 with a L28et swap. If I went into a store for 10 minutes and came back out, the car would be unbelievably difficult to start and exhibit very rough running until I got it out into moving traffic. After I added the cooling fan, I get no vapor lock issues after a hot soak.

I second the bpr7es plugs but make sure they aren't the ones with the V in the ground electrode. My new theory is that broken piston skirts with no other damage to the pistons is from pre-ignition most likely ignited by the hot spark plug. This pre-ignition damages very differently than detonation in these engines where you see broken ring lands or the piston top burning around toward the rings. Every broken skirt I have seen is on the driver's side while the spark plug is on the passenger side....Hmmmm.

LOL....just noticed the "kaboom".

I've seen skirts slapped off of more than a few engines whether turbo or not. The non-turbo car did it because some kid got the car hand me down from mom and proceeded to run to redline only seconds after starting the high mileage engine....with the engine at about 11 degrees F. One turbo engine I had did this because the thermostat stuck open in the dead of winter while I was on the highway running hard. I saw the temp gauge go down but that's pretty common since the temp sensors are easily stressed when pulling the connector off and will exhibit intermittence. I figured it was the intermittence and kept at running hard and the car changed how it ran as the engine cooled rapidly. When I pulled over on the side of the highway, the side of the block seemed to be about the same temperature as a beer out of the fridge.........guess the L28 cooling system works pretty well in 10 degree weather. I am swapping the longblock today and may have pics of mine later on tonight. I'll run lower boost and bring the timing back until I confirm the path from the ecu to the injectors is no longer weak causing lean condition in a cylinder or two (this is a sequential infiniti M30 ecu).

The inside tripod joint of the axles seems to be stock since you have to cut the metal collars to service them....and you have to change to a different style of boot retention once they are apart. The outside could very well be non-stock and I'll bet the stub axles are improved.

The L24e front sump pan has the windage piece and a single strip of about 45 degrees from vertical right where the pan transitions from sump to the flat portion. I'm swapping short blocks today and will confirm though this information probably does no good in this scenario.

A few weeks ago, someone with a "shopping list" hit my infiniti M30 (L28et) and stole only things specific to this car such as dash switches, rear view mirror and three ecus I had in the car. While stealing ecu #3 (the one running the car) they neglected to unbolt the harness and instead yanked it until the ecu connector broke off. This messed up my harness and, though I was able to get it plugged into another spare ecu, the car had intermittence issues with 2 and 4 and the bad connections caused both cylinders to run lean under boost on the highway. I heard it and let off but came home with low compression and piston slap when the car is cold so I will assume the skirts were slapped off of two pistons. In your case, you might look through the sparkplug holes and see what you can of the piston tops since you will sometimes see where detonation has burned around the piston top toward the rings.

Does B.C. Gerolamy still do nissan or are they only doing harley stuff now?

You will need a rear sump and corresponding oil pickup relocation.

We took the splitter off the twin turbo ford GT and immediately picked up 20mph and eventually went 252.9 in the standing mile. Of course....this car has completely different front end, undertray, and upper body dimensions.

I think Harry Gershenson's burger king IMSA GTU nissan ran something similar but it might have been a jerico.

They make great flanges for a turbo oil drain.

I cut up a 280zx tps and left only the "wings" but all the way through. Then I tack welded the 240sx one onto the wings. Works fine and I use it with a M30ecu which requires a potentiometer type TPS. There's plenty of throttle shaft length and I would assume you could go both directions with the mod.

I forgot to mention in my post on page 1 about extended high rev running causing quick multi-cylinder pinging when stepping into boost that my temperature gauge still read the same temps so it seems in my case that I am getting higher temperatures at the combustion chambers but not the entire engine. Maybe I will hook up the egr and see if it changes things.

Adjustment is done by cycling the E-brake arm.

Got the JM lexus technician job and I couldn't be happier. I dropped off that resume cold about 5 months ago. Then I whine here on this blog and get a phone call to come in for an interview a couple days later. Three straight days of interviews and a piss test later, I am employed. Coincidence? I'll keep developing the L28et Infiniti M30 but it will be hard to not be seduced by the dark side to the point of putting together a toyota/lexus project.

I recently became employed again (JM lexus) and the trip is 70 miles round trip on a damn fast portion of the florida turnpike. To keep up with the faster traffic, I am near 4200rpms for much of the trip. I am running a L28 et with the non-turbo flat top pistons and rods. While traveling at around 4500rpms steady state for a while (very little load), hitting the throttle will bring multi-cylinder pinging instantly. While traveling at around 3800rpms steady state for a while, hitting the throttle will bring no pings all the way to redline. This leads me to believe that my cylinder head starts to run hotter just by virtue of higher rpms even with very little load. The water pump in question is a dealership sourced L28 pump with the cast curved blades rather than the straight stamped blades. In my case, I think cavitation of the pump is to blame and not the head's ability to flow coolant.

With two crow's feet wrenches, you should be able to adjust all valves in less than 10 minutes. 15 if you use standard open end wrenches. Keep a long pry bar handy in case you need more torque and make sure you use wrenches that are not worn.

Most badly winterized boats I ran into actually pushed out the side of the block. I never ran into one that broke internally but that doesn't mean it can't happen.