HowlerMonkey

European Car Center? If so......I worked there before the Z shop.

It can be done but you must wonder why most of the Z31 and Z32 racers are still using L28s in thier SCCA race cars. Recently I've seen some V-6 but only very recently competitive.

I used to be a marine mechanic and spent plenty of time being amazed at how strong the basic volvo 4 cylinder is. Speaking of marine 4 cylinders, mercruiser has a "470" which is a 3.7 liter 4 cylinder made from half of a ford 460.

At lexus and toyota I worked on those land cruiser/LX450 engines and all that I can say is that the car is not equipped with an accelerator pedal but rather a foot controlled volume pedal for engine noise. Step on pedal, engine gets louder but not much else happens.

Turbos are not compatible with non-turbos and you have to be very careful in trying 280z stuff mixed with 280zx since there were at least 3 different fuel pump rela schemes in the 280zx alone while the airflow meter does the duty on the 280z.

I've got 4 ok turbo dished pistons out of an engine I recently bought from the classifieds but they were on a car with a 20G turbo with blocked wastegate which is probably what caused #5 to break a ring land. That said, I might not trust the rod bolts on the assembly if I do mail one. I'll try to remember to bring them in tomorrow.

I had a P99 head that came off of a late production 1983 280zx turbo 5 speed. It seemed identical to the P90a head but I never did study it in detail......just slapped it on a 280zx turbo I had. I eventually gave the engine/tranny setup to Datsun Dynamics in 1998 but now I am curious whether it had any differences or if anybody else here had seen one.

As high as possible. I did this one a little low for my liking but it's only 1/4 inch lower than the stock setup. Higher is better.

I don't..............but now you have a hole up high in which to look with a mirror ( I didn't need one) as well as use brake cleaner to spray about and influence anything on the bottom of the pan to exit the drain hole. On a couple of occasions, I have sprayed a piece of a broken piston skirt over to the drain plug hole that is bigger than the hole.........doh! That was on a N/A engine that had never seen a turbo.

Here's how you solve the oil return problem without taking out the oil pan or removing the engine. I've used this many times over the years on 280zx and when fitting turbos to a few rear drive maximas that have front sump. So.......19 years later, I finally do a quick write up with pics. It doesn't work on all engine configurations but I will see if I can do it on my M30 soon enough. You start with an oil pickup tube.........or two. Then you use a grinder to take off the lip which will allow you to remove the screen and have a sweet surface in which to mate to the side of the oil pan. Notice the fact that the tube will protrude into the pan which keeps as much oil as possible away from where it meets the pan. Now you use the shortest drill you can find and fit a cut off bit for the starter hole that will allow a unibit (stepped drill bit) to gain bite and then drill to the proper diameter. Unibits have come a long way and their being short is a big plus in this case as I was able to use a pretty sizeable drill and still be able to do this on the car. Use a rotary gasket grinder to smooth out the pan where you will be placing the flat side of your new flange as high as possible in the pan so thit it is not submerged when the pan is full and cut a relief if necessary but you want as much real estate in which your sealant will lie. Some obsessive compulsive types could fit a large diameter O' ring since it looks like you could fit one easily. I did not use one this time. Test fit it to the pan and drill however many holes you want to hold it to the pan and then use the fact that you now have two holes in your pan to remove any metal particles by spraying brake cleaner with the wand to get them out of the pan. Maybe some worriers could use a magnet to confirm everything is good before finishing the install. Then use some self tappers in stainless steel to tighten your flange to the pan with sealant. I used the rest of the tubing from this one to weld onto the end of the stock turbo drain tube so it would allow me to use the stock nissan oil return hose (silver). And here is the finished turbo drain tube and all parts used were genuine nissan save for the self tapping screws. Still going 30k miles and 1.5 years later with no leakage. Notice that there are no sharp 90 degree corners like the stock offerings which allow coked oil baked from heat soak in the beariing housing to accumulate and eventually clog it.............all smooth curves. Feel free to post it anywhere but it's name is "HowlerMonkey flange". Here's a song I wrote about it and performed it with only one finger in true talentless nu-metal fashion to warn any who claim this fabrication as their own. http://princemakaha.homestead.com/files/shitflinginmonkeys.wav

You don't need detonation to do that as I have seen normally aspirated L28s do that. Another cause is running the engine hard while stone cold and the resulting piston slap knocks off the skirts as shown above.

Oil filter bypass going to be used? If so......in block or in adapter?

Didn't some camaros come with that engine as well?

Stock ECU mileage numbers are tainted by the fact that any time the engine is running over 3500 rpms, it is no longer listening to the 02 sensor and will richen up a bit because of that. That said, I got 19mpg towing a U-haul trailer 5 feet tall by 8 feet long or so with a 280zx turbo in which the turbo died halfway between washington DC and orlando. Mileage without the trailer wasn't much better since the car was made with a 55mph speed limit in mind and that driving at or over 70 in a 280zx turbo automatic puts you into open loop territory mentioned above. The turbo dying only held me up for a long lunch at burger king where I cut a small blocker from the sliding cover off of a floppy disc (stainless) and slid it between the turbo and the drain tube so exhaust would not flow into the pan through the ruined bearing as well as swapping the pressure gauge sender from the T fitting to straight into the block. I drove that car another 10k miles with the impeller reduced to a small ball of aluminum and the car never suffered the slightest scratch in the cylinder bores. I've done that twice in my lifetime on my own personal cars.

No kidding.........I was just adding an as yet unnammed source since pathfinder does not show up until I added it.

Weren't the 5 speeds offered in the 280z closer ratio than the ones offered in the 280zx? Maybe that's what the previous owner was thinking.

Pathfinder manifolds should work.

It's true.........I had it happen to a mint RX-2 I drove for 4 years in the early 80s. Rest of the car was perfect.

Usually it's leaking battery that causes that but one thing many people ignore is rust from within. Anybody who's eaten drive-thru fries can probably remember brushing the salt from said fries onto the floor. Combine that with wet feet on a passenger and you end up with salt water.........inside the car. Car's aren't designed to combat salt water on the inside so the passenger floor rusts out first on most cars regardless of make.

1979 slicktops with roll up windows have manual racks. Not sure of the ratio.

Never had a true manual rack on the 300zx myself but the slower ratio required to make effort tolerable on a car the weight of a 300zx may diminsh the experience. If are able to fit a rack from an early Z car, it may be a fast enough ratio but you end up with again............too much effort much like in the case of a non-assisted z31 rack.

That 20 years encompasses some improved touring Z31s as well.

Can't wait to see the finished product.

I've been running without assist for 20 years and I can tell you it is hard on steering wheels and that damper that lies in the thru-tube for the firewall on the steering shaft. The effort is hard enough such that you can easily detatch the padding from the skeleton of the steering wheel. I went to a Z32 wheel and back to assist.

I'll post pics once I have the setup in the M30.