Tony D

240SX

I should have been specific, there are plenty of pilots spots in the USAF. There are plenty of driving jobs in the world as well. When I said "Pilot" in my context I meant Fighter Jock and not necessarily C141 Driver. Yes, that was what the Birdy told me in the little discussion before declaring my major as I, too, wanted to be a history major. But in no uncertain terms, he discussed Fighter Slots were not going to go to guys with History Degrees. And I wasn't interested in being a Busdriver.

The answer to idle is to use an idle bypass like on the N/A's. The Euroturbos have blanking plates over those AAR Ports, and they use a N/A Idle Speed Screw from the J-Tube to the manifold plenum same as on an N/A. I did that with mine, and it works just like any other idle speed device. The throttle plate is supposed to be closed completely at idle on these engines. If you idled at all, it means something is holding your T/B Plate open, you have a leak or the T/B was not adjusted properly.

I think the thinnest spacers are 0.015". The cam towers can be realigned with a mallet and cam installed to check for binding as discussed in several manuals (not the factory one.) You should be able to get them back on there and working just fine.

New drums in Japan, around 700 each...

As long as your cylinder to cylinder is consistent you will be O.K. On a V8 (bobweighted crank) it would be a different matter. And if you had your counterweights cut down to minimum to match recip weight it would make some difference... but not in this instance. I would not mismatch the nuts. Keep the ARP Hardware.

BTW, there are people on this board who posesses both heads now being discussed (LY & FIA L-6)...

You didn't read the post, the quotation of €35,000 was to produce an LY Crossflow Casting, but the owner doesn't really want to cut up a new-in-box never run LY head to make it happen (after I told him what bare heads sell for in Japan!) Both the LY and FIA heads would be interesting "period correct" pieces!

In a Maxima or a Z? Actually, there is a guy who was posting at Nissan Diesel Forums about a retrofit turbo. I would have never considered doing a non anneroid-corrected fuel pump setup save that this guy did it and got results a lot like the old Rabbits. I forgot to mention the Maxima five speed was a .74OD with the 3.54 and they should get much better economy in a 2400# 240Z than in a 3000#+ Maxima. The old Mechanical Pumps just don't do that great when it comes to trying to go fast and get good fuel economy. The new electronically controlled engines do a lot better in that respect. After Essing worked the BMW M3 we took there, we not only got more power (when we wanted) the fuel economy increased dramatically. The Z's with a 24-25" tall tire will turn 2000rpms at 50mph with the 3.36 rear gear and that latex .74od transmission. Roughly translated that means 500 rpms less than what you get now. Meaning all you need to turn 23-2500 rpms at the same speed is put the .74 OD standard trans in there (if you are turning 3000 now...but I think you have some slip in the tranny or something.) The earlier tranny with the .85 O.D. will be closer to a straight 500 rpm drop from direct drive 4th. If you have a live axle car, swapping the differential is a bit harder... but the easy way to get your rpm point is to swap differentials. There are plenty of 3.36 R180 differentials out there to drop the R's well into the low rpm range you want. Easy swap. That 4speed autobox into a ZX is easeir than into an S30, but not as easy as a diffy swap and playing with the different 5 speed boxes out there.

Would that be the original one, or the current remake? Or the period-correct Manga? Don't forget "Circuit Wolf" or the "eX-Driver" Movie... And you know just how far to fast forward the Harry Hamlin movie "King of the Hill" to hear Dan Haggerty (the lead tuner at "The Small Fast and Expensive German Car Shop" from Santa Monica turn his head to the skies to listen to a distinctive exhaust note and proclaim "Sounds like a Datsun!"

It's a TWM Custom Throttle Body and they have sold them for years before there ever was a 240SX...

"Where I think I differ is that I think the climate of Z owners is changing and might not look the same in 10 years, but at that point who knows what will be what." Tony, why don't you sell your parts? "Because I'm waiting for a time when the only people who own Z-Cars actually care about them AS Z-Cars and not 'cheap cars'..." THAT is the PRIMARY difference between America and the rest of the world when it comes to these parts. If you would see what people spend on Datsuns in Europe, where they are appreciated on a different level than here in the USA you would understand it. In 10 years, maybe. Probably more like 20... Everything I see happening in the Z Car world happened in the Corvair world, except the prices never went up to stratospheric despite being a bona-fide Muscle Car (1966 Corvair Corsa Turbo, over 1HP/CuIn and listed in the American Muscle Car Registry...and yeah, I own one!)

"Even though its a higher reving diesel barely getting 27-28mpg" Something is wrong with your pump or odometer. You should be getting mid 40's with that setup at that speed. An S30 running 80mph will return mid 40's, and with non-aneroid corrected fueling closer to low-mid 50's. The HP requirement for 65mph is around 25hp, and you can't run off that curve. The S130 will have slightly better aero at 75 and 80mph but you are still constrained by the HP rolling requirement. If you overgear it you will be boosting all the time meaning you will want a segmented turbo manifold and a .48AR, not the .68 like on the Gasoline engines. I've got three of those turbine setups for my LD28T, and it was some work finding them. It's like the old VW Rabbits with mechnaical FI, you can pump boost in them get a complete burn and have lower EGTS as well as more power with better fuel economy. But you don't have to really drop the rpms that much. The .67OD will drop you to 2000 rpms at that same speed. Same as if you ran a standard tranny from a late ZX and a 3.36 gearset. My Maxima donor had 275K on it with the late ZX Style Transmission, and the standard 3.54 rear gear, meaning 2500 rpms at that speed. I'd shoot for 2500, but not 2000. With teh .48 A/R turbine you will boost at 1500-1700 to the stock 5 psi. There is a boost aneroid, and a turbo fuel pump available. For my tastes, if I was going to do this again... I'd grab a Navara 2.7 or 3.0 Direct Injection setup where it's got electronic injectors and do an Essing Diesel Tuning chip upgrade and go to the races...

"The ironic part of this is that my job allows me time to study sitting in motels, but I have no interest in doing that..." It interested me...but not my supervisor who never let me take the requisite 3 week sabbatical to do course labwork and matriculate. So you just keep taking the classes remotely. Never getting a degree, just continually learning. At least I did. Now, maybe something happened with USAF ROTC, but a History Major in NO WAY qualified you to be a pilot, unless maybe every single engineering major declined every slot available, maybe. Engineering was the sole route to pilot qualification, and if you didn't have 20/20 uncorrected vision that meant if you wanted something in flightcrew you went as a navigator.

Of course, you make such good headway, get excited and start grabbing fittings... And then when you think you're done...you realize there is ONE left...the one you never see, the one tucked up there so high you forgot all about it. The one you tightened FIRST because it was the biggest beyotch to get to and after that it was all downhill! In this case, 'rectification is not the reverse order of assembly'!!!

I guess this is the outcry for the 'Occupy Nissan' crowd...

Again, the point of having 10,000 is a matter of a factor of 100 more than 100! Getting a head for 20K for '100' heads, means that you need 10,000 to get it to 2,000. Those numbers don't exist. "Every Car" built by Robello wouldn't come close to justifying the money spend on the head. And again, Rebello is popular because of a winning reputation in racing. Here we are talking about a STREET ONLY (and not CA STREET LEGAL) modification. In other words, probably the LARGEST market for the modification would be knocked out due to CA legislation. The reason people aren't getting new things made for the Z in America is the terrribly low cost and pricing point tolerance we have here. Nobody wants to spend any money on them. Financially (regardless of what you 'think') there just isn't the demand. Ask ANYBODY who has ever produced a car part for the Z-Crowd: there is ALWAYS interest...come time for actually putting money down in earnest, suddenly those 100 people who 'had lots of interest if the price was reasonable' now dwindles to 10, 20 at the most. You may don't want to believe it, but that is the way it is. And is the reason it's not in production. That, and the fact that the casting mills that make SBC heads are here in America, and they don't have to do much to make improvements. GM bore the cost of their production runs, and making changes to EXISTING castings is FAR cheaper than starting from scratch. Which is what will have to happen with the L-Engine. And which will incur the costs I mentioned above. It can be done. But the SETUP is $35,000. And a current head. And then you have to decide what modifications you want to do to it to make more power. Enough more power to justify the cost of the modification. And my costs were for the part. Anybody in business will tell you that you will never stay in business only charging cost+10% for your parts. That $35,000 head casting would have to sell for $70K to make it profitable. Even if you could run 10,000 off, that $3500 head (think of how many people will spend $2400 on a proper head buildup with porting and who beg-off figuring 'they will do it themselves' and you begin to see the problem with the idea, grand as it may be!) will cost $7000 to sell retail. And that's BARE. Set it up to mimic an SR20 valve train, run all existing Nissan Stock Parts. Now you got parts someone else paid to develop. But you still have parts to pay for to add to that bare head. Anyway you look at it, you can't do pie in the sky dreams. You have to look at the facts regarding real-world production - to do it, that is how you have to look at things. You can put your $35,000 into it and see if you make it fly. But for a $10,000 investment in that completed part, what will I get over a $2400 properly prepared non-crossflow head? OSG had a 'botique' part marketed to extremely well off individuals which is the ONLY market it could EVER go to with the production numbers. Yes, there ARE manufacturers that make stuff for Ferraris. Porsches too. And you PAY. Why? Because of the EXACT market forces I'm talking about here. There is no magic bullet. You make 1, 10, even 100 of something its going to be costly. You want another example, and someone else to confirm this: Call JCR and get some production and sales figures for their supercharger kit. Or, if someone can reach someone within the old HKS marketing group, total production figures for their Surge Box. In 1985, the box by itself, the CASTING was 100,000 yen. $373 (or $862 6 months later...) The entire turbo kit bolt on to raise HP from 180 to 230 was more on the lines of 325,000 as memory serves... Entire engines were considerably more. So compare the massive sales of the relatively cheap HKS Turbo kit, with the more rarefied OSG Head. Were OSG to price it that cheap, they could have sold like HKS Boxes. Problem is, that market wasn't there for the minimal gain, and the investment for that many heads just wasn't going to ever be realized. Millions of SBC's are out there. Little tooling investment is required to make the castings better than what GM wants. Easy formula to sell 'better heads' which may be allowable in racing (most trick heads for SBC's result from racing bodies allowing them...like NASCAR...etc) Not such an easy formula for the L-Gata. How many Japanese companies do you see making SBC heads for the Japan Market? How many European companies do you see making SBC heads for the Euro-Market? That explains why we don't have but one domestic head caster that made a head for the L-Engine, along with complete blueprints. But nobody can pin down who made it. When it was made. Or where it was cast. Bought in a swap meet in SanDiego almost 20 years ago, the disposition of that particular head (and the construction blueprints and machining tooling that came with it) are lost to antiquity... It was the next best chance to cast a head today... through maybe rapid prototyping. But the work involved? For the market available? HA! Good luck with it!

Just a thought, why the emphasis on 'keeping the revs down' as the Maxima didn't have the higher ratio afforded, and the rear end was comparable to the Z? The LD is good to 5400 rpms from what I recall, meaning an early 5 speed with .85 OD and a 3.9 gearset would be good at redline of 125mph (even though non-turbo it will only do 112.) Lowering them somewhat if the car is driven at higher speeds (80+) for extended periods may be an advantage... What is the plan for 'turbo' as if you lower the rpms too much you end up boosting to keep the speed at the rpms, defeating the purpose of the diesel in the first place. Unless you are planning on a non-corrected fueling setup to try to completely burn the already mapped fuel. That may work to your advantage but it may be better to keep the stock gearing as it sits as loading it up at lower rpms may not have enough fuel in the pump delivery to take advantage of the better burn afforded by the boost it will produce. If that makes any sense?

One day I was at grandmas house reviewing my fathers report cards. I noted he had several "F" marks, accompanied by a percentage scale from A to F. 75% constituted "F" Grade... Hey, dad, that would be a "C" today. My dad, a school Superintendent at the time considered that for a while and then said "You're right!" To this date, all Field Technical Training I put on has a minimum standard to pass: 80% We need people who can DO the work on their own, in the field. Not someone who looks good and smiles, that's what the sales department is for! Speaking of training, I'm off in 2 1/2 hours to give two training schools on gearbox setup, overhaul, and failure analysis. Senior Engineer from our office is coming, and we think alike. We're tired of taking warranty orders from guys who are generating their own issues! Heads may roll. 3 of the 24 are "on the bubble" after the first round of testing late last year. This is "hands on" so we're dropping class size to 12, with at least three instructors meaning very close personal evaluation of skills. How would you like me looking over your shoulder evaluating your work? LOL!

You can get adapters for your 11mm injectors so they properly accommodate the 14mm O-Rings, I believe they were made out of Teflon. Saw them on some injector site somewhere...

I'll agree-that tubing interior looks terrible! Like their drawing tool had burrs on it. The flaring process should swage that mostly smooth. Are you using a flaring tool with rollers on the cone? The cheaper tools produce a "upset flare" like the more common SAE 45 flare. The better air raft tools have rollers on the cone to roll the flare larger which usually smooths out this kind of stuff. But some stuff you just won't fix. Then you're stuck gluing sandpaper on old fittings and laying on your back 20 minutes at a stretch... I'd caution against using 220. Stick with 320 and slow and steady. It will get the job done. You don't want scratches going all the way around, that can cause leaks as well. You end up takin off maybe too much. I found if I left a gap in the paper, the removed material migrated there in the oil, and didn't load the paper up. Once it loads, it just slips over the tubing surface. Couple of turns, back off, squirt some lube, snug and turn a couple more turns, repeat. On thing is also possible: Loctite 545 (I think) they do make a good hydraulic joint sealant. Like Loctite Green. I'm NOT a fan of ANY compound on what should be a 100% metal joint. That metal joint kept tight will never leak. A gasket or compound can always deteriorate and leak. Just keep at it with your "surface conditioner" with maybe some gaps for removed material and see if that speeds it up some for you. Glad to see you got some positive results. Beats buying something you have to keep using over and over. Those metal cones will go forever now!

I'm gonna be charitable here, but "The Ford Pinto Motor" is probably one of the worlds winningest engines out there. They were produced in the millions! It's raced competitively all around the world... I'd like to have "Typical Buyer" defined! Perhaps "Typical American Buyer"... It's there where a Z is a bottom level car that is cheap and doesn't cost any appreciable money to operate compared with the rest of the world. Elsewhere, Z's were VERY expensive cars to purchase and operate. In Japan plates for a 2liter would run $2,000 minimum, and a 2.4 more than twice that! The Z32's were well over €100K as a new car in Europe. Those costs above, by adding a zero to them represent ACTUAL REPLICATION COSTS! Yep, $35,000 to replicate an LY Head Casting. Then you have all the little bits left to make it a complete head. Oh, and the caster needs a head to cut up in sections to build the tooling. So right there you are looking at $100K before you even have a working head, all you have is a new casting to replace the one you just cut up!!! Yeah, someone is looking into that. But how many guys do you know will spend that coin for a HEAD? Not many in the USA, but when you have ¥18,711,000 into your Z (€150,000... what $243,000?) into your Z what's a little thing like a $35,000 new head casting. Those aren't crazy examples. Those are actual numbers from guys I've met and the money they put into their cars. They REALLY love their Z's!!! A "Typical Buyer" is like the "Best" Way To... These parts can be made, but as John C stated, you gotta buy 10,000 at a pop. To make a part that not one single racer can use... Otherwise those numbers are unrealistic pie-in-the-sky dreams. You have to come to grips with the realities of limited-production parts that are intricately complex. You aren't going to get them cheap, you won't get them for a bargain-basement price. And facts of the matter are American enthusiasts won't pay that kind of money for a whole CAR much less a single COMPONENT! Hell, I don't think all my Z's would sell for that much!

You don't want to know what it costs for CC in CA... And as long as you're willing to write what you want on the admissions forms to satisfy their racial quotas that everybody swears doesn't exist you get your classes. FYI I'm now officially 'Latino'...

Yes, since 1985...

If it's 83 Turbo Specific then the pre hydraulics would be all the same, and the hydraulics would be different. My take on that new information.