ozconnection

OMG.....they're beautiful.........and perfect!!

The LD pump will be a few weeks away. I bought it because, in case I couldn't easily fix some problems with the CSR pump, I could revert back to a standard style pump.....but why any old pump when I could use the LD unit!

It seems that all I needed to do was reconnect my vacuum advance to get my car to idle again nicely when cold. Some very minor tweaking may be needed to the idle mixtures in the colder months, but for now I'll leave it as it is. Drove the car round the block and I couldn't detect any pinging....but todays temperature is only about 23 deg. Celcius. Certainly not hot like it was the other day. It felt good and strong and I'll do a G-tech test as soon as I can. Part throttle response is sharper with the vacuum advance reconnected! Now, I will test the engine temps with the laser gun before I put in the water wetter. This will test the new CSR pump and water as coolant setup. Then the water will be dumped, the radiator refilled with the wetting agent and tested again. This will test the wetting agent. Oh, and I just bought an brand new LD28 water pump....I just had to see what all the fuss is about . I'll keep it as a spare for my coupe if I don't decide to run a CSR pump in that puppy as well.

tuned mod. tipsy; drunk. : Willy was a little tuned so Sally swiped his car keys. I like this one the best! Thanks for the definitions....Now I'm perfectly clear about you and your situation!

Tuned?

Finished the install today with a new water pump gasket. All that's left to do is to drain the flushing water and refill the radiator with distilled water and the water wetter. My initial observations were that block pressure is less than 10psi.... this is TOTALLY NOT what I expected. I will do some more testing soon. I started the car today and the engine would not idle when cold. Hmmmmmm, I may have to adjust the mixture strength and reconnect my vacuum advance to manifold vacuum to get more idle torque. I'm guessing that there must be quite a bit of current draw/drag on the engine from the alternator since I've just lost an 8 bladed fan and a belt driven water pump!!! It idled fine once the engine was warmed up though. I may have to switch the fan over to thermostatic control if I can't solve the idling problem. That's assuming the problem is an electrical one in the first place.

Do you have data logging with your engine setup? Time to review your files and see 'whatsup' Until you isolate the problem, keep using those cheap gaskets....it's what's saving your engine from complete failure. I'm actually pretty surprised that they can hold that sort of power and torque....(maybe not for long, like you found out) .

I know you've just bought those nice little round filters but I would have rather seen you buy a good K&N replacement filter for the orange thing. Your engine looked quite stock? And replacing your air box will give you negligable power increases. You now have the added headache of deciding where all the hoses will go (and what engine functions will/won't work in the process). Do you still have the receipt?......exchange them for the abovementioned filter and be glad you made the right decision.

No worries mate, you're welcome. Post a few pics of your progess...I might be tempted to pinch a few of your ideas. I'm right into thermal management at the moment! Cheers.

What are you doing to break your mounts man? Dropping the clutch at every opportunity and/or burnouts? Keep an eye open at car shows and track days. I've seen some very clever designs at places like this that you may find suitable. I've never actually destroyed engine mounts like you mentioned but I have destroyed one clutch, one gearbox and 14 H190 diff. centres I'm no stranger to mechanical punishment. Just ask my mates who for years had loooong black marks out the front of their places. HEHEHE . Good luck man, tell us what you finally decide on. Cheers.

I thought that Nissan cast the webbing on their efi manifolds to help to keep radiant heat off the injectors.....hell didn't they even use a blower arrangement with the 280's just for that reason? At the manifold/head interface many people port out the intake manifold as much as they can to match the diameter of the head port. This, as you know, is port matching. The idea in removing the step is to streamline the airflow into the head, promoting cylinder filling and ultimately power because, more often than not, the manifold and head ports are bigger than stock. Big ports potentially flow more air than small ones. My understanding of the manifold/head junction is this. Injecting fuel this close to the back of the intake valve gives little time for the fuel to mix with the rushing air going into the engine. The 'step' or size difference causes turbulence and encourages air/fuel homogenisation. The other reason there is a step here is because it acts as an anti-reversion barrier. Strong pulses in both directions occur in a running engine and to help stabilize manifold vacuum and allow the air flow meter to 'meter' correctly, the step was intentionally built in. And finally, you touched on the idea of air speed. A stock engine has to provide good throttle response at low engine speeds. A small runner diameter will keep velocity high and meet the criteria it was originally intended for. Modify the engine and you will inevitably move away from what was originally designed. Just remember this. Match porting for example, will make more top end power. You will loose some low speed torque as a result though. Also, cut out the webbing between the runners of the manifold and you now find yourself having to worry about heat soak. Just a friendly suggestion...consider why the Nissan engineers did what they did. Not all of our decisions to modify something will bring about the results we want or expected.

A 760mm belt will fit and replaces the original one With the CSR pump, what is the block coolant water pressure supposed to be? With the pump switched on and the radiator full of water, I see less than 10psi water pressure under the thermostat! When testing with the old water pump, I saw a maximum of 28-30psi @ 5000rpm' at the same point, under the thermostat, NO other changes. Yes, the black wire is to earth and the blue wire is to power, with sufficiently large fuses (15 amp) and connecting wire (less than 0.5V voltage drop). When bench testing the pump, impeller speed was an estimated 1000rpm. Is this electric pump so efficient that its 'that many' times more efficient than the stock unit @ 5000rpm? Flow is fine, but isn't flow and pressure related? It's quoted @ 38 gallons per minute @ 4psi.........what is it at 30psi? Why can't I see more than 10psi at the moment? Help me please figure this out, Cheers.

Some progress today and not . Well, I have the water wetter and decided to continue on with the cooling system mods. I have installed the CSR electric water pump. The gasket that I used was new but didn't seem to fit correctly and I think I tore it as I was putting the pump in. SO! It leaked after I tried to fill the engine with water to rinse all of the waterways of ethylene glycol! Damn. The other thing that was replaced was the fan belt. I had to find one the correct length and a 760mm one fitted perfectly. Fits just around the harmonic balancer and the alternator pulley. Something I didn't expect was that the timing plate is covered by the new position of the fan belt. Buggar. The 16 inch electric thermo fan fits nicely within the confines of the fan shroud and the shroud keeps a little of the factory look, hides all the aluminium brackets and will maintain the cooling efficiency like the stock setup. However, there was some lifting of the shroud from the radiator because of the new support brackets for the fan. I think I can get it flush, but it'll need some more work. Doesn't really matter, I gotta take it all off to gain access to fixing the water pump gasket. The electrics went very well! Having had to replace the alternator not so long ago, I replaced the externally regulated unit with an internally regulated one. As a result of where the wiring harness connector plugged into the regulator, I had complete access to a heavy guage power wire, connected directly to the alternator, a heavy black earth wire and an ignition activated power wire to trigger the relay to turn on the pump and fan. How bloody convenient....didn't have to cut into or splice the wiring harness at all! I used a generic 5 pole, dual output, 30 amp unit. Both the pump and fan power lines are fitted with a 15 amp inline fuse, the CSR pump guys recommending this size and the fan attached to an ammeter to determine current draw. I saw an immediate draw of 15 amps, settling to 8-9 amps when the fan was working at speed. Plugged it all in and it works!! Full of electrical sounds, electric fuel and water pumps and the fan. Now I can't wait to get the pump gasket and shroud sorted, fill it with distilled water and the wetting agent and fire it up. Then I will test to see what the cooling system pressure is. The CSR pump must be efficient, it doesn't spin at particularly high rpm's. It also has an eight vaned impeller......the stock pumps I've seen only have six. Just a question, can I roll the engine to TDC @ No1 and mark the harmonic balancer at another area and use that to time the engine instead? I have an Innova adjustable timing light with a digital readout of the advance and engine rpm's

Anything can be done if you spend enough money. The exhaust ports were designed with liners. Removed, I'd say it's not worth the money to get them to flow properly. Too much to do. Strip it down, keep the parts and cut it up to look at the water jackets and ports, as suggested in the 'head cooling around 5" sticky. Your call but that's what I'd do. Cheers.

I think you'll be like me and can't put the thing down!! Great tool for this application like you said. They're not that expensive either. Should have bought one ages ago! Maybe some of the coolant down in the block is flowing into that area because of the large passageways in the back of the block/headgasket/head. Since combustion takes place at the top of the engine in the head chamber, the coolant from the lower parts of the block are cooler. Flowing up into the head at that end, the temps might be cooler because of this. Sound feasable?

That's interesting. You're probably right about the cylinder head temperature getting hotter due to engine speed and not just engine load. Your experiences sound similar to mine with my L28 even though our configurations are quite different. I compared water pumps recently and found that the factory units were quite good in design compared to another new aftermarket unit I had. I'm surprised you think that the factory water pump is cavitating at your engine speeds but anything is possible. Most factory water pumps seem to flow their maximum around 5000rpm's (water pump speed). I've looked at a couple of old L series water pumps and it seemed that the aftermarket ones were all suffering from cavitation. There was a lot of pitting and erosion around the paddle part of the impeller whereas the rest of the metal blades looked like new! I've always used coolant so it's not from rust. I just don't think the aftermarket ones are particularly well designed.

Yeah, cheers for that Pete, I've been beating my head around lately thinking about all this. I'm with you in that I'm looking for a (straightforward?) remedy to this 'power limiting' ping gremlin. Thought I was on the right path. Drove the car around to visit the rels and the day was hot, 37 out west. Pinged its nut off! Oh dear! Steady state cruising was fine but squeeze the throttle to accelerate and its all over. Low rpm torque is very strong and that's encouraging. There just doesn't seem to be enough thermal latitude with the hotter thermostat on hot days. BUT, I'm going to try out something else first before I change over the thermostat. I have one of those billet CSR L series water pumps in my garage that I was going to use for the coupe's engine. My logic in replacing the stock pump is to obtain at least 30 psi of block coolant pressure from idle to redline. ATM, at low rpm's there's plenty of heat being generated by the torque increases in my engine but poor block pressure, less than 20 psi and that's potentially allowing steam pockets to form and drive the engine into detonation (especially around number 5). The heat gun results prove that. I've also received the water wetter from a dude in QLD. It says that its best efficiency is with just plain water (distilled) so I'll use that. I'll drain and rinse the cooling system and fill it as per recommendations on the bottle. I'll repeat and record the heat gun tests to see what changes I get. In the back of my mind, I'm still keen to do the Y70 head changeover. But the last thing I want to do is to have to rip it back off because of uncontrollable pinging due to cooling system shortcomings. If I can beat or at least increase detonation resistance with the N42 head, then I'll feel so much better about doing the Y70 swap later on. The Y70 may be a better head by virtue of its tiny chambers being more detonation resistant but doing this work is one way, maybe, that the situation can be 'over engineered' to my advantage. Some headroom without riding on the ragged edge if you know what I mean? I've got a few things to do over the break. See how I get on. If I don't see you, have fun in Japan. There's a signed blank cheque waiting for ya if you see anything for the 230/330 . Cheers.

Not just cold start wear. Best power is made when the oil is between 95 to 115 degrees celcius. Too cold costs power in the form of drag. Too hot and the oil will break down and sludge will form, components will overheat and lubrication will fail. Like Tony said, "too hot and you're screwed" but too cold isn't good either!

L28 block and head. No. (so long as there isn't any radically oversized valves in that N42).

Ordered some Redline water wetter solution today. When I asked for it from my local spare parts dealer, I got nothing but a blank look ...'huh?' So I searched ebay and found someone here in Oz who sells it. Needless to say, I bought some on recommendation from others in the 'head cooling around cylinder 5' sticky. That's a bloody good read with some great information in there, just takes a while to get through it all . Water wetter is supposed to reduce temperatures by 20 degrees F or so, so I'm interested in using it to guage any performance changes to my engine. If only I could keep the grunt and drop that needle down a bit....and cool off number 5 cylinder a bit too, I'll be stoked. I'm still considering the electric pump made by CSR. A constant/steady 30 psi coolant pressure in the block, even with the standard 13/14 psi recovery system radiator cap would be a good thing and a good place to start . Can I run my L28 @ 40 degrees total ignition advance...we'll see.

Pete, do you have that cam at your place?

I thought I should start a new thread. At this point I don't want to be dumping my information onto someone elses thread. I recently received my new laser heat gun. What an awesome little tool! I haven't been able to put it down since I got it. Seems like customs needed to look at it too...the box was resealed by the time I got it delivered. I purchased it from the States because our dollar is doing pretty well on the international money market and buying things from ebay is very often cheaper than buying it locally, even after the postage is included!! So, with the 190 degree F. thermostat in the engine at the moment, here are some temps at idle after a drive around the block to warm everything up properly. The cylinder head was measured net to the spark plug boss, about 1/2 inch to the firewall side of each one. cyl 1 = 156 degrees celcius cyl 2 = 159 cyl 3 = 161 cyl 4 = 156 cyl 5 = 171 cyl 6 = 132 degrees celcius Rocker cover, front = 65 deg C middle = 125 deg C rear = 123 deg C Radiator average across top tank = 111 deg. c Thermostat housing top = 126 deg. C Sump = 96 deg. C Header pipes, covered with thermotech wrap, measured about 8 inches from head flange cyl 1= 238 deg. celcius cyl 2 = 239 cyl 3 = 278 cyl 4 = 259 cyl 5 = 288 cyl 6 = 270 Seems like the air entering the carb is a bit hot.....ranges from 61 degrees C close to the rocker cover to 43 degrees on the far side. (14X3 inch K&N filter on my Holley). Took it out for a G Tech run. Today 0-100 km/h in 9.75 sec. (Previous best 9.93 sec.) 0-400 metres in 17.15 sec. (Previous best was 17.26 sec.) Speed @ end 400 metres 135.7 km/h (Previous best 134 km/h) The timing was bumped up to 18 degrees static, 38 degrees total. Vacuum advance was disconnected. The temperature for today is 23 deg. C Only once I heard the engine rattle with this much advance. Cruising at 50 mph for a few minutes and then slamming the throttle down to the floor brought it on. That was the only time it happened, all other driving styles, the engine is free from ping. I still can't get over the position of the temp guage needle (3/4 hot).....weird to see it there after years of seeing it just below half way. And the smell of it after some hard runs, reminds me of when I used to borrow dads car and give it a hiding on a Friday or saturday night!! My car hasn't smelt like that for years. So I think I've picked up a few kilowatts, and it feels quite responsive, tip in is great and off the line performance is good too. Do I leave it like this? I'm just worried about the reliability factor now everything is so much hotter than with the 160 degree F. thermostat. Cheers!

The pressure readings were taken from under the thermostat, in the thermostat housing. I chose here because it would be the head by which all others feed. Your idea of taking pressures elsewhere is an interesting one. It could be done with a little juggling and the results might be worth it to see how much pressure variance there is from top to bottom,front to back. My gut is telling me though that there may be little pressure difference, there already being enough coolant passageways open to equalise the pressures. The problem exists not so much with pressure variance in this case but with temperature variance from top to bottom and front to back!! I think the biggest problem with the setup of the cooling system on the L engine is that the pump puts all of the coolant after the radiator straight back into the block. By the time the coolant has travelled to the rear of the engine, the coolant is already hot and those poor cylinders down there suffer the worst.(not to mention that percentage of coolant that moves straight back up to the thermostat housing, collecting buggar all heat and simply reducing the volume and rate of flow to the rear cylinders!!) This we already know. If we could only tap into this and send some of the coolant directly to the back of the head like that coolant line that runs under the sparkplugs to the rear of the head, then progress will be made. (From what I can tell, some hot coolant leaves the head @ No 6 and travells BACK to the pump along this 'under sparkplug' coolant line. That's a shame that it runs this way, but it could be reversed with a small inline water pump http://www.daviescraig.com.au/Electric_Water_Pumps-ELECTRIC_BOOSTER_PUMP_12V_SHORT___PART_No__9002-details.aspx to draw from the radiator return line and pump water into the back of the head! The cylinders require little flow as its the head that needs it most. The large surface areas of the cylinders work nicely to shed the heat, but by comparison there is much less surface area in the head, even though the head material has better heat transfer (conduction) properties. Again, we all know this. The head gasket ports need only to be large enough so that steam pockets don't form under the tops of the cylinders. Their size can be as small as 60 thou!(and they probably should be...lots of little buggars just big enough but not too big as to allow coolant short cuts back to the thermostat housing) The big ones at the end are supposed to encourage bulk coolant flow from the block into the head, trying to get the coolant there quickly before too much heat has been collected along the way. If only there were a situation where the cool coolant flowed into the head and dropped down into the block rather than flow into the block and rise into the head, then we'd be streets ahead. I guess that's what that sticky on head cooling is all about. If we can't equalize the temperature variance easily, then pressure will have to do!

If I've come on board and taken this thread in a different direction, I apologise to Mycarispurty. The issue of pinging seems to be very common among those people who are trying non factory head and block combinations. Hell, even my stock N42/N42 combo sees it at anything more than 35 degrees total advance at WOT. According to Braap, this is costing me/us some power at the top end. To help out, I decided to test a theory that I read about in one of my reference books about coolant temperature and pressure. Here are todays results: Cold start 8 psi @ idle Cold engine 20 psi @ 5000rpm (I hate doing this to a cold engine! aarrgghh) Operating temp before thermostat opens 14 psi @ idle Operating temp before thermostat opens 28 psi @ 5000rpm After thermostat opens 18 psi @ idle After thermostat opens 28-30 psi @ 5000rpm. The thing I noticed was that the guage was slow to respond. I used an unused Autometer fuel pressure guage for EFI. 0-100 psi range. The fluids are a little different but I'm sure the guage won't mind . Now, if I wanted to build the block pressure up to say 35 psi, I would need a restrictor. Ideas on how to do this? An electric water pump comes to mind again! Remove the water pump/engine speed dependancy and run a constant (when warmed up) 30 or more psi coolant pressure. Expensive fix with mods to the alternator belts etc but....... Hmmmmmm! http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/CSR-NISSAN-BILLET-ELECTRIC-WATER-PUMP-FITS-L-SERIES-ENG_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQhashZitem587dd5f47dQQitemZ380068295805QQptZMotorsQ5fCarQ5fTruckQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories

I'm pretty sure my guage is working ok, I've never had reason not to trust it. It's a Nissan don't forget Why do you ask?