PhilbertZ

Gollum you didn't ask a question after answering the one above - way to throw the game off balance...

oh, and if it's a vacuum hose, what the best treatment to the spot where that hose plugs in on its other end? Just cap it off? Is there a clean looking way to do that?

wow that was fast! Thanks for the background - I'll look into it. Is the breather filter something most auto stores carry - if not where would I find one?

Hey everyone - I'm going to go 2/2 with n00b questions here on the forum... I've noticed this filter on the valve cover of many Z's here. I have a hose where this filter is in this photo - and I HATE it (ugly, PITA for removeing the valve cover, etc). Can someone tell me what this filter's purpose is? I have a N/A motor so I don't know if this is specific to turbos - I just found this photo online. In case you don't know what I'm referring to, it's the K&N style filter just to the left of the "O" in "Turbo" on the valve cover: Thanks in advance for your wisdom

Thanks guys. Sounds pretty simple really: Make sure car is level on ground with full weight on everything, then loosen/tighten bolts/nuts holding strut bar to top of shock towers, right? Is there an industry wide general Torque spec for tightening the tops of the shock tower connections? I'm guessing it's the same, regardless of if there's a strut bar on top or not...

So...I've been wondering (and please do not flame me): If one has a strut bar across the two front strut towers and wants to remove it temporarily to say, remove the valve cover, what's the best way to do it? Does one jack the front of the car up so there is no weight on the wheels, then loosen the nuts on top of the strut tower to remove the strut bar? Then lower the car back down after putting the nuts back on? Also, for putting ON the strut bar, is the same procedure followed (jack up front, loosen nuts, put bar on, tighten nuts, lower? Or do you need to hand tighten the nuts, then lower the car, then torque them tight (to what setting)? Just so you know, I don't have a strut bar on my Z. I will some day... I have one on my BMW - came with it and haven't had the need to remove it yet. But, I am not learned in suspension and want to get a general understanding of, at the very least, the strut bar (I don't want to mess up either car!). Thanks in advance for not flaming me, and for your help Phil

....While I'm on the topic, anyone recommend a good degreaser product for cleaning up the engine, oil pan, transmission, diff - everything that has "gunk" accumulated over the years?

I wondered the same thing, since my pan is filthy and was hoping to clean it up, put on a new gasket one of these days... Looks like there are some suspension parts that would need to be removed to back the pan out too- am I incorrect - can you just jack up, drain oil, remove bolts, and slide that sucker out? I have a 280ZX NA. While

That's a great resource below - thanks! I made myself a list of parts for when I do it: 220 grit sandpaper SEM Plastic/leather prep http://www.yourautotrim.com/semplpr.html SEM texture coating http://www.yourautotrim.com/semteco.html SEM trim black/blue http://www.yourautotrim.com/semdye.html

Looks great! What did you use to re do your dash? Is there some kind of "Paint-on" stuff we can use, to cover the entire dash, and fill in the huge cracks while we're at it?

Pics!!! My dash is s trashed....I would like to see how the dash caps work out.

That was the very first thing I did when it happened last night Put it over one gap and plugged the other gap with my hand.

thanks guys!! have a great, safe 4th!

So I replaced the rubber boot around my clutch fork tonight, with a replacement part from Black Dragon. The old boot (or what was left of it) was brittle and cracked, and falling to pieces. I tried to gently pull it AWAY from the transmission with needle nose pliers and my fingers, but alas, some chunks (none larger than a dime) fell INTO the area in the transmission where the clutch fork goes. the boot I'm talking about is circled in red below. Is this OK? I have no way to get those pieces out (I'm not savvy enough to drop my transmission or change a clutch in my garage so that's out of the question. I just want peace of mind that it won't cause any harm. The new boot looks great btw Please chime in if you've dealt with this in past? Thanks

Problem solved: Popped the cap off the base of the wiper (where it connects to the post coming out of the cowl). There is a nut there...it was finger loose! Few good turns with a socket wrench and I was back in business! So simple I'm almost embarassed to report back the solution!

do you have power windows/locks you can remove? Radio/speakers?

Sorry, Datsun 40136 - this thread got totally hijacked

Gollum - sounds like Otoy is very similar to PicLens (www.piclens.com). we work with developers to ensure our GPUs work well with their content - but, we can't optimize for every application of course - we only have so many engineers and there are so many software companies Regarding Ray Tracing, there's an interesting recent article from CNET on that: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13512_3-9967175-23.html June 12, 2008 2:00 PM PDT Ray tracing for PCs-- a bad idea whose time has come Posted by Peter Glaskowsky 3 comments Dean Takahashi sent me an e-mail pointing to a piece he wrote on VentureBeat describing statements Wednesday by Intel's Chief Technical Officer Justin Rattner targeted at NVIDIA. CNET's own Brooke Crothers covered the same story and provides additional background here. Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin R. Rattner (Credit: Intel) The technology at issue relates to 3D graphics for PCs. All current PC graphics chips use what's called polygon-order rendering. All of the polygons that make up the objects to be displayed are processed one at a time. The graphics chip figures out where each polygon should appear on the screen and how much of it will be visible or obstructed by other polygons. Ray tracing achieves similar results by working through each pixel on the screen, firing off a "ray" (like a backward ray of light) that bounces off the polygons until it reaches a light source in the scene. Ray tracing produces natural lighting effects but takes a lot more work. (That's the short version, anyway. For more details, you could dig up a copy of my 1997 book Beyond Conventional 3D. Alas, the book is long since out of print.) Ray tracing is easily implemented in software on a general-purpose CPU, and indeed, most of the computer graphics you see in movies and TV commercials are generated this way, using rooms full of PCs or blade-server systems. Naturally, Intel loves ray tracing, and there are people at Intel working to make ray tracing work better on Intel hardware. The occasion for Rattner's remarks Thursday was a meeting for industry analysts at the Computer History Museum. At the meeting, according to Takahashi, Intel showed how a four-chip, 16-core demo system could play "Quake Wars: Enemy Territory" at 16 frames per second. Honestly, that's pretty pathetic, since you can get higher frame rates with a dual-core CPU plus one good graphics chip. Your system price and power consumption will be a tenth that of the Intel demo system. Rattner basically implied that Nvidia must actually agree with Intel that ray tracing is a good idea because Nvidia recently bought ray-tracing firm RayScale and Rattner says Nvidia is trying to hire away Intel's ray-tracing people. Takahashi compared this conflict with the "Phoney War" of 1939-1940 and said the real fighting will begin when Intel introduces Larrabee, a CPU-based graphics chip, at Siggraph in August. But I don't think there's going to be much of a fight there. Intel is trying to defend a crazy idea-- that CPU-based ray tracing is a practical alternative to GPU-based polygon-order rendering. We can guess why they decided to push this alternative--Intel's a CPU company and its people are CPU-centric. But the numbers don't work out: ray tracing takes more work than polygon-order rendering. Going from pixels to polygons requires searching (tracing rays), whereas going from polygons to pixels merely requires a relatively simple set of calculations known as "triangle setup." Ray tracing's advantages for lighting effects are pretty minor; current graphics chips can be programmed to get good results there too, with less work. I imagine Intel noticed that ray tracing could be another way to use the many cores in Larrabee, and figured this could be the basis of some competitive differentiation, but what should have been a minor point in some future marketing campaign has grown into an overblown strategic initiative. On the hardware side, Larrabee isn't even optimized for ray tracing. On the software side, there's no support for ray tracing in Microsoft's Direct3D middleware, and no way any version of Direct3D in the foreseeable future will rely on ray tracing. Larrabee will certainly support ray tracing--every CPU does--and some future version of Direct3D may support ray tracing as an option, but it could be 10 years or more before ray tracing becomes a required feature for any real-world software. And to whatever extent ray tracing can be useful, Nvidia can write efficient ray-tracing code for its GPUs faster than Intel can tape out more capable versions of Larrabee. Nvidia is looking for ways to use ray tracing for lighting and other purposes, but this effort is minor compared to the work it's putting into polygon-order rendering. Rattner is very smart--too smart not to know the situation. I think he's just doing his job, supporting his company's position whether he fully agrees with it or not. digg_url = 'http://digg.com/hardware/Ray_tracing_for_PCs_a_bad_idea_whose_time_has_come'; And once Intel starts selling Larrabee, it's only going to get a day or two to talk about ray tracing before the focus will turn, properly, to Larrabee's performance on the technology that matters: good old polygon-order rendering. And at that point, I don't think Intel's going to have much to say.

god bless you. I have this at home too....will look it up tonight I saw your link on your site too but it was a little blurry for my eyes

Gollum - what software apps are you having issues with on NV hardware (and what hardware is it occurring with)? I probably can't help but it's worth a shot to ask

So, I replaced my front wiper pump this weekend (and all the cracked, awful tubing) using the generic pump from Black Dragon. Both my pumps were shot and no longer worked. While it works great now and sprays my windshield....the drivers side wiper arm no longer moves. When I was installing and testing the new pump, I had propped both wiper arms up (like you do when at a gas station and cleaning your windshield), so I could press the "spray" button on the driver column stalk to test out my jets - and not scratch the crap out of my windshield. The wipers both went back and forth with no issue (suspended in the air since they were pulled back from the winsdhield). But....when I put the wipers back on (ie folded the back to their normal position, resting on the windshield), and tried to use the sprayer, the drivers side one does not move. I also noticed that it now moves pretty loosely by hand and I can "adjust" its position on the window glass. At first assessment, it seems just loose somewhere internally but I've never taken any wipers apart and am a little timid to try. Has anyone experienced this? Is it and easy fix? Thanks in advance! Phil

Hey Gollum Why waste your money on only 8-16 cores when you can get a 240 Core GPU right now? As for the programming software that takes advantage of these cores, it's arleady out there and free: "C for graphics": CUDA http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_what_is.html You guys are going to see some really cool stuff coming this year and next around GPUs and using their parallel processors for consumer applications. How many of you guys transcode movies from DVD to iTunes, for example? Right now, Apple's $20 plug in uses 100% of the CPU to do this...and it takes like 5 hours. A company called "Elemntal" is coming out with a new transcoding plug in (using CUDA) that uses the GPU (if detected....if not, it will just use the slow CPU), which takes about...mmmm...30 minutes. Read more about it here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1213610051114.html There's also stuff coming from Adobe that's similar - performance gains you can't imagine. CPUs are serial processors - GPUs are parallel - all 240 cores (240 on the high end graphics chips, fewer on the cheaper ones - but way more than 16...) can do jobs at the same time - not in serial like CPUs. While you're at it...how many of you guys use Google images or Flickr to find images? Tired of leafking through tons of pags to see what the next 20 or so images are? Then check this out: www.piclens.com (1 MB file). It will transform how you browse the web 0 I'm hooked on it. Oh, and it has built in features for GeForce GPUs that CPUs alone and integrated graphics can't do I'm biased of course, but I am really excited about the technology coming out of NVIDIA these days.

That's cool that you scored a Hybrid SLI motherboard - check this out: http://www.nvidia.com/object/hybrid_sli_desktop.html With Hybrid SLI, you can plug in a "Low end" graphics card, and team it up with the motherboard GPU (Read intergrated graphics, but way they hell better than Intel's on board crap), to make the combined GPU horsepower better - think of it as a turbo Also, if you every have a high end GPU (check the chart on the link above), you can manually (and soon it will be app-detected) switch over from the discreet (high end) GPU to the motherboard (integrated) GPU, depending on what application you're using (game, video, web surfing)....saves a lot of power (and fan noise!). Sounds like you've already bought the system so I won't recommend any parts...just be careful with your hard drive copying - I built a system for my in laws a few years back for christmas with XP....I transferred their old HD over from their old Dell PC with their files....what I didn't think about was that their old PC had Windows ME....and the Sasser XP Virus. BUT...because they didn't have XP, their Dell wasn't affected. The moment I powered up with the old HD contents, the Sasser Virus saw XP and went to work....that was a long day Let us know what you end up doing. CPUs aren't as important as people think they are anymore - they've hit a wall in terms of performance per dollar spent. No need to spend a lot of cash on a quad core or high speed dual core - your money is best spent on a good graphics card - while they are great for gaming as we all know...they are (and will be) great for other consumer applications: PicLens (this is AWESOME): http://piclens.com/ NVIDIA CUDA: http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html

tease.... is that custom?