Tony D

I got lots of parts...

Yeah, I keep forgetting and the assortment kit has two sets in it that will work. One set is 'too long' and you sand the small ends down. The other set is 'too short' as it won't bush the shifter all the way through, but it works for someone who comes to your place trying to sponge something off you for nothing.

Time limited. I had scanned a bunch of my 80's slides in the week I was home before Christmas, but many of those were 'bad scans'... Doing those albums will be more involved as they are physical photographs in many cases glued to heavy paper. I may have to go to a professional print bureau with a large-format scanner (or one of those old newspaper cameras!) I gotta go check how they lay up the litho for papers these days.

"Sand" will cut the metal. Glass Beads will clean without displacement. Both will leave abrasive residue, which will have to be washed/flushed away. Walnut shells will clean off built up junk and preserve the factory die-casting character.

Knife Store, Cabelas, Bass Pro Shops, Sporting Goods Store, Industrial Supply, just about anywhere. You use them for sharpening knives... Millwrights use them to 'stone gasket surfaces'---basic millwright practice. "Stone all gasket surfaces whilst cleaning"--use of the stone shows off high spots, knocks down nicks, and cleans the surface to a nice surface finish that will hold a gasket better than one that is highly polished. Black Hard Arkansas White Soft Arkansas Stone What the HELL is a Millwright?

12V hair dryers-they make duct boosters like that for VW's they will fit under your dashboard and blow independently through your existing defroster ducts if you want them to, check out some of the VW Vendors on the internet. They work passably for what you want, but I'd wire fused directly off the battery and have the car RUNNING at fast idle when using them. Neat thing is you can only run the driver's side if you want! Lighting fire under the window is more likely to crack it, or burn your car down to the ground than anything else. In Europe they have defroster style FRONT windows (instead of the rear glass) because the electrically heated windscreen will clear RIGHT NOW. Instruction Book for VW Duct Booster VW Electric Heaters

Uncharted water? Dark Secret: Check out what Electromotive still sells that's Automotive Related. Turbocharger Tachometer, anybody. Well, why on earth would you ever need one of those? (Even if you are making 1100HP...) Many ways to do it, but rudimentary PID loops to unified valves would do it. No need for two different function valves on the inlet rate of change of TPS in a negative value would work on a derivative action to drop flow overboard as the TB was closing instead of waiting it to close and trying to react to the rapid rise in pressure... Not that I got like 20 hours on pacific flights to ponder the control scenarios...

That's the point: GPS was confused, the weather eye of Kyu-Sha-Jin Tonysan were better than having the address!!!

Can't hot tank aluminum parts or die cast. Caustic will eat it to nothing. Walnut Shells will clean to a light burnish and not leave any abrasive residue. Same with ground dry-ice pellets.

Kerosene / Diesel / Light Oil, and a light Fine Arkansas Stone of 6-8" length should work great for cleaning the surface rust, and show you any true high or low points in the process. Is this a BLOCK we are talking about, or a SHORT BLOCK (with pistons installed?) If you have pistons in there, grease the crowns so whatever lubricant you use doesn't get down inside them, after which cleanup with brake cleaner or other light solvent should be quite easy.

Hell, I just realized as Club Historian for Group Z SoCal (the oldest Z-Car Club in the world.) I've got three HUGE albums of photographs on the subject, from late 1970 to the present. I forgot about those damn old books. Crap. I gotta scan them for the club. Those are way more on-topic than my stuff which is all 1980's based. Group Z at Riverside Raceway, OCIR, OMS, Ascot... Both on track, in the pits, social gatherings, etc... Totally spaced that I had those albums in the shed with the 'convention tables'!

77 Cutlass Supreme? My gawd, one of those is up for sale at Salvation Army Auto Auction this Friday near me... just went down today to check th' pickins!

As Xander stated "McQueen Metal" is not usually found but in original gaskets for exhaust/intake on Nissans. Listen to him! He (cough) works with (cough cough) asbestos (cough) every (cough wheeze) day!

I tend to aimlessly drive through neighborhoods of the run down areas near me with a weather eye for parts of cars... Seriously, I zeroed in on a car restoration place while the guy driving and watching his GPS was confounded on which way to turn due to an irregular address. "Go This Way" How do you know? "I know My People!" As we drove up on the target vehicle, a VERY early Nissan Sunny 1000 I could see the rusty shapes through the hedge "It's here! It's here!" How are you sure? "Turn here, turn here, at this house's driveway, it's HERE!" Turn the corner to find a Nissan Pao looking directly in front, but in the driveway (hidden from the road) was an S30 Rolling Chassis in Primer, and two pristine other cars in front of a double garage (that was deceptively deep we found out!) One was a 71 HS30H, the other a Four Door 71 Skyline Hakosuka, both ready to go for their Japanese Inspection. ALWAYS keep a weather eye for related vehicles in yards, shrubbery, hanging out of barns... Even a discarded rim on trash day can lead to big things. Especially back east where there are hoarders worse than me!

"And if there isn't a line of people waiting to take your job (like there is for 99% of the humanities majors), management has to put up with me doing things like wearing shorts and flip-flops to work in the summer, threatening to quit if they don't give me an overseas job assignment or taking off for 10 days to travel 2/3 of the way across the country to race my car." Muahahahaha! 250 days outside the USA in Asia this past year... Just a hint, two openings currently one entry level engineer bilingual (spanish) and one Senior Engineer position 'based' in Pittsburgh area.

"People will be offended by a couch if they want to." You better couch that statement with clarification, I've been told by many my couch is pretty offensive...

"As you can see in the Syllabus, required book for the class is mine. Thank you for supporting me, and padding my published book sales!" Dr. Gordon Warner, Lt. Col USMC (Ret) University of Maryland College (Asian Division) Go Terps.

Aren't those the HKS units you got from Japan? I have a few clarifiying questions, as the HKS ITB's clearly have "HKS" on the piece between the barrels visible looking down on them installed on the engine. They appear to be 40 and not 45mm is this correct? They appear to be frozen at half-throttle? The idle bypass/equalization screws are an interesting touch. Where is the TPS mount, usually the rearmost body has a mounting provision for the TPS. It can be a small flange, or a larger round recessed mount for a different type of TPS (those are what are on the HKS) SK's usually say 'SK' on them as well. I just don't see a TPS mounting provision, possibly making them from a very early analog system. Of course, the 'Nissan' bodies used in 71 for the Rally Cars also clearly had "Nissan" on them, as well as the 'Hitachi Star'... Not the best photos, and took forever to load on my laptop, but popped right up on my iPhone.

Actually you have just promoted me to send yet ANOTHER e-mail to our IT department to recover those controller manuals Cannonball! Something ELSE that doesn't 'auto migrate'... man, I wish these guys used "Ghost" like the last company. Yes, remember that a wastegate only controls the SPEED of the wheel based on the pressure you are seeing. it's trying to move you (in a hamfisted way) vertically on the compressor plot while your engine flow is moving up and to the right as RPM's rise. Wastegates only give 2D control because it's controlling SPEED which controls FLOW without regard to where the efficiency curve is. Really, if you have the BOV setup as suggested, with the Wastegate set not to a PRESSURE setpoint, but to a peak efficiency island SPEED (or a 2D algorithmic approximation of that area of the map) you then control pressure to the engine solely through overboard bleed of boost. Basically, you turn it into a CVT of sorts. Your turbo is always trying to sit in the most efficient area it can operate and just dumping excess air overboard. There is no downside to the engine for this, though turbo longevity may be an issue due to running at peak RPM's all the time. But this would be marginal IMHO as the 'new' control scenario would totally eliminate OVERSPEED of the turbo as happens with wastegate-only control.

Absolutely unfounded problem if your idle mix is properly tuned. I have a clutch that (WITH flywheel) weighs a TOTAL of 15# (your Findanza and Clutch assembly is closer to 30#!!!) and I don't have that issue. Stalling is a mixture issue, not a rotating mass issue.

Megasquirt came out when? 2000? 2002? I was in on the second (last) B&G Group Buy of kits for self-assembly, and at that time there was a group of guys in Long Beach with VW Vans which installed them in the stock harness and passed Smog (which it wouldn't do with the VW system due to parts issues, etc) These same vans have been passing Smog since (what now, 5 cycles?) Is it Legal? No Does it pass the visual that they do at most any station? Yes. It can be configured to do just about anything the 75-78Z EFI did, save for the fact that the MS has an O2 Sensor so yeah...they 'dumb boxed' the original 8X8 Fuel-Only Matrix ... AND IT PASSED! It's foolish that you can legally put an LS(X) into the car easier than a different ECU and Wiring Harness but that's the way it is. It can pass, but you have to do it yourself, and know what you have to do to get it to pass or you will be in for a miserable time of it. Whatever you decide, good luck.

"I am truly getting frustrated. Finding a clean car is near impossible, or they want alot of money for it." I'm sure you can find a pristine model that someone is willing to give to you for scrap value prices. That's a reasonable request.

They aren't really a wear item once changed! i put stainless steel bushings that I made into a shifter in 1985. Now with well over 147,000 miles on them and having gone through three transmissions for internal failures, there is no detectable wear to the original pin, shifter, or e-clip which has been transferred from tranny to tranny as they bit the dust. On my 74, that car has 103,000 on "Help" Hinge Pins and there is nothing showing for wear. As for 'where it goes' it's a dead spot, it can't migrate it just would grind out into dust and fall into the endcup of the transmission. If you have ever looked at the transmission you will know exactly what I'm saying. Frankly, how gear oil gets in there is a mystery to me, but I imagine it's flung by gearing to the top of the shift rod, and migrates back along the rod eventually ending up in the cup there at the back where the shifter pivot is... I would NOT worry about it prematurely wearing anything. If you had a worn shifter pin (which I hardened, I believe!) then it was from YEARS of banging that shifter against the pin without any bushing in there at all. The plastic ones break out and fall into the cup on a regular basis if you are 'grabbing' gears. I've turned them out of SS, Brass, Aluminum, Delrin, and PTFE. My favorites when I don't make them custom (and haven't in quite a while as these work so well) is to use the Oilite Bronze Hinge Pins from the "HELP" card rack at the local auto parts place. They are a little tight, and basically become a permanent part of the shifter...but I haven't had any trouble or difficulty any different than the oversized bushings I would make (lapping them incrementally to fit as tight as I could and still have smooth shift action.) Frankly, the car shifts better now at 140K+ miles on the bushings than it did new as they have finally "loosened up"--which is why I went to the bronze bushings. Stainless Steel takes to long to work in (to those concerned about wear rate...)

It's ok, our Engineering Fellow was arguing with me over a wreck we had. Catastrophic damage on a 2250HP machine. He simply stated that he couldn't believe that reverse flow through the machine from a fully opened (stuck) check valve could cause that kind of damage. I directed him to a competitors air starter application tech line, who estimated at a minimum the energy produced in such a situation was 1200hp! They revised that thought about reverse flow. I used to swap Corvair T-Wheels all the time putting early turbines on later impellers. The bearing is a forgiving design.... But... There are turbos that start screaming at 10,000 miles, and those that start at 100,000. For an experiment, meh. I'd as soon just buy the Chinese knockoff turbos. They seem to last about as long. The key is to not have an imbalance that excites the rotor to the point either end rubs the casings. Once that happens, it's only a matter of time. There were old tricks revolving around paint marks being put opposite, or spinning the wheels independently with different indexing till it would not consistently stop with the same point on the wheel "down"... I'll be interested to see the results. As I said if the imbalance is within the tolerance of the bearing and it doesn't touch. Justice sure your wastegate works! Overspeed it with an imbalNce and you will have a howling banshee in short order!

I got to have that book in the shed someplace... Who knows where though!