Tony D

Hi everyone. I am new here. Yes. The more I researched about Datsun 240Zs the more I heard about Hybridz.org so I thought I give it a try and see if this community can help me select the right parts for the 240Z project I am hoping to start. I will not drag race with this 240z. It will be a street car but would like some power. Why? I would seriously consider getting the car running properly and handling first. Spend some time at Grattan getting suspension dialed in and learning to drive the car. Really, the last thing a 240Z needs is significantly more power. I will be swapping the original motor for a 82 turbo motor with a F54 block and a P90 head. That will make it a 12 or 13 second 1/4 mile car. And EXTREMELY unbalanced with a stock suspension. Thank you all very much in advance. Here are my questions. What differential would best fit a daily car with some performance with a 82' 280zx turbo motor? please explain why as I am not too fimilar with datsuns. I have just recently fallen in love with them. What is your intended use for the car? I have a 3.70 R200 ATB differential in my 1973 Turbo 240Z. With the transmission I have, that gives me 65 mph around 6,500 rpms at the top of second gear. The top of second gear arrives in well less than 5 seconds. Some like a 3.54, others keep the 3.36. I think the 3.36 is far to deep a gear to have personally as at 50mph with a late ZX five speed in fifth you are all of 2,000 rpms and really lugging the engine below boost threshold. A 3.54 will be better for roll-on to top speed like lazily coming down an on ramp. With the 3.70 going down most standard freeway on-ramps will put me easily into triple digits shifting into 4th gear at 105mph and accelerating through to my opening in the fast lane... Since I will be swapping the motor what others parts I would have to change in order for the car to function perfectly. For example: wiring and etc. As above, read, read, and read some more. Don't buy just the engine. See it run in the car beforehand if possible. NOTHING SUCKS MORE than trying to troubleshoot an issue on a swap going "well, I never heard it run, so is it the engine or my swap?" If you hear it run and know what it does before you pull it for donation into the S30, then you can say "I know it ran fine in the other car, so it HAS to be something I did" and it VASTLY narrows down what you have to look at to solve the issue. What are the most populer and good datsun 240z suspension swaps? As in changing individual things? Or changing entire suspensions? Poly bushings are almost mandatory if they aren't already on the car. Really, you need to specify what your use of the car will be to determine which suspension direction you should go. For my Wife's car, I poly bushed everything when I got it, before she ever got in. A whole $70 at the time. Stock Springs, Stock Struts, Stock Stock Stock...it's a wallowing pig at the autocross, but runs within 5 seconds of the fastest S30 regularly. People can't believe how really WELL the stock Z Suspension is...it's a well designed SYSTEM and you need to look at the whole to determine the parts. Changing one thing will affect everything else. You will find that you end up changing groups of things... I concur with the above where they said get it running right, and drive it THEN determine which direction you want to go. I put Tokiko Adjustables on my 2+2 and set them on '3' for my Wife's sake. Did an AutoX one weekend, and forgot to set them back.... a few months later went out to change them to '5' and realized "Hey, this isn't as bad as everybody made it out to be!" A lot of this is 'butt dyno' subjective stuff. As a fat dude my feeling on stiff shocks and high spring rates will be CONSIDERABLY different than someone who weighs 132# and has a 110# girlfriend riding in the car. For me 275# Springs and the shocks on '5' are 'a nice Sunday Driving setup' when Mrs(ex) Hutt is along for the ride, but for the Emaciated Set...that would be like an Oklahoma Buckboard going over 4X4's at speed! Any brake suggestions? I am planning on changing the drum brakes in the rear...any recommendations? Why? In a word: Don't. Adjust them properly, run good friction material, and most importantly run GOOD BRAKE FLUID, something like Motul RBF650, the issues become the cheap pads going away, or old fluid with lots of water in it boiling and causing poor braking (after the obligatory forgetting to set the rear brakes properly!) My stock brakes can stop the car repeatedly from 100mph in quick succession and put me up on my belts, and even lock the tires... The stock brakes are extremely competent for 95% of the driving out there. If you aren't tracking the car, or running track sessions exceeding 30-45 minutes...save your money. Basically my main concern is picking the best parts I can afford and find for a 240z I plan on getting. THERE IS NO "BEST"! Best for a street use with some performance. THERE IS NO "BEST"! Best differential, best brake system, best suspension. THERE IS NO "BEST"! THERE IS NO "BEST"! THERE IS NO "BEST"! I will admit I dont know much about swapping motors and parts of the cars but I do love these cars. I am learning. Excuse me if I mix things up. Get to reading, and learning, and realize just because you think it needs to be changed, doesn't necessarily mean YOU have the skills requisite to require that change be implemented. Meaning, unless you're driving better than John Morton, consider spending money on improving YOU before you start doing anything other than getting a good running, stock car. As I said above, my car is running most AutoX's with the same driver within 5 seconds as the fastest S30 out there. Is $30,000 worth 5 seconds to you if you aren't going to be tracking the car regularly? If not, spend the money on you and leave the car alone until the skills requisite to need more of whatever is really due.

Nothing wrong with Blunt. It saves everybody's time. If you won't do it, someone else will. The questions that get the best answers are not those that come from someone totally clueless asking like a voice in the dark "What do I do, please help me!" It really gives nobody any inkling of skill level, or cognitive ability of the poster. NOW, on the other hand, when that voice says "I read this, and think this is the way...correct me if I'm wrong and point me in the right direction." THAT kind of post usually elicits a lot of response because the respondents get a feel for the skill level of the individual, how their thinking processes work, how they can relate to already written information.... in some cases it becomes obvious that simply a photograph will give the guy the line to 'haul in his own fish'! And then the one asking for help gets a genuine understanding of the material covered, and a great sense of accomplishment knowing nobody 'held his hand' but he figured it out and just needed some pointers on vague points. Or maybe just needed to get validation that his understanding that he reached ON HIS OWN was correct. I much rather prefer to tell someone "Yep, you got it!" When there is nobody there who can give you that, the world can be a cold, isolated place indeed!

^^^^HAHAHAHA! That is priceless! I was reading through this thinking I was going to post : "You know, a couple of trigger magnets glued into your flywheel or a trigger wheel on the front pulley and you can just skip cobbling this all together..." Just keep this in mind: The RB25 will explode too, if you detonate.

How about this: The raised part is not half the existing diameter. It's less than that. The drawing shows the raised part facing the front of the car, with the flat facing the rear of the car. The smaller drive tang is shown same as the offset cut in the 280Z and Earlier Manuals. They offset it so it was obvious which was the raised (smaller) part and which was the oil pump drive spindle (larger) side. Look at the photo shown, and the spines which if it was a straight diametrical cut would be more covered than it is. John Coffey had it dead on the first time. Additionally, if anybody read the FSM on a turbo car, there is a DOT on the oil pump and the oil pump quill shaft that you align to put the shaft into the oil pump and the assembly in the front cover. If you do that, you will NEVER be 180 out. Never. Ever. UNLESS.... You read the archives and realized a dirty secret about the oil pump drive gear on the distributor drive spindle. And in that discussion, these dynamics were extensively covered.

What a crock of crap! OVERWORK? It's running at 4-psi with absolutely a FRACTION of the load in the motor windings making it run cooler. Less pressure means less side loading on the rollers in the pressure elements. This means LESS WEAR. High flow through the pump also means COOLER RUNNING OVERALL.... The FPR has the ability to open and bypass. It's not a pulsing pump...THAT wears out diaphragms. And if any of those reasons has not been common sense enough, I've been using a stock Datsun EFI pump to run my Triples since 1985, and the pump was 9 years old THEN.... The noise and the wear came from using it a EFI pressures for likely that same period of time! At 4psi, those Bosch Pumps last forever. And stay QUIET!

Gene Berg would always try to get customers to do their own assembly. Spent hours on support trying to get them confident to assemble their engine. He would say "Engine Assembly is very simple, we will do the machine work, we will sell you good parts that fit, and work. THAT is far more important long-term than who assembles it! No machine shop is going to send anybody out to the track or roadside to tear it apart and fix it when there is a problem! Best you put it together yourself, then you KNOW what is inside!"

They like acronyms.... All the services do.... Doesn't alleviate the incompetence level, but it gives them an inside language so they think they are smarter than they really are. I had a bud that went into "MI"....Army, specifically. In High School, we called him "Ferret Face". Not the sharpest pencil on the blotter. He got along famously inside! Oh, excuse me.... "in the service"! We digress...

This has been covered in the archives. Directions have been given, and ignored. And that is why. You can't help people who don't want to listen. Good Luck.

Did you actually add up the cost of the "Options"? I stopped at $12,200 at the CD Site... It seems to me you are looking for "performance on a budget". Please be advised that's an oxymoron. Like "Military Intelligence".... The two words are mutually exclusive.

"I know people have done some crazy combos and gotten interesting results." Cite one that is quantifiable backing up horsepower claims with verifiable timeslips and not just some sketchy dyno number that could be nothing more than filter adjustments to the dyno program to flash high numbers by the dyno op to make a masturbator feel like he's accomplished something more than just wasting time. Consider this: ITS engines have to be more or less stock. Meaning no swapping parts like "good flowing" P90 (low compreession) head etc. The E31 headed L24's can make 209HP stock. STOCK. My suggestion is until you reached that point, perhaps screwing up the mix is probably just a big waste of time.

It's gunk. Run it and use Seafoam or beer or water....whatever... it will blast it out of the chamber. It's an old engine. It has deposits.

Rat/Mice Urine is persistent but nothing a bit of soapy hot water won't remove. Their urine may be persistent, but hot soapy water under pressure takes it right off! Shake it out while still dry (in both directions...) if they were in one end, all the...uh...'contaminants' will be on THAT end tank, put it down and shake it out that way. Then use the flushy hot soapy water from the OTHER END to push it all to that end tank. Rats/Mice don't move their leavings into the tubes, nor do they back up to the tubes and aim to put them in the tubes... they just drop. A flush with a pressure washer from the opposite side will clean out that, and then flushing the other way will get pressure onto any urine directly and take it right off and out the other side. You will probably be done in 30 seconds and have 4:30 of that car wash time left to overdo it... switch over to flushing water or flush it at home with clear water and a garden hose if you want to make sure it's got the whole 5 minutes of soapy hot water. Just don't get stupid and close with the high pressure spray at an angle to any fins, which will likely get folded over by oblique angled high pressure sprays. As a King Hoarder, I am expert in removing mice/rat leavings. Also at how to kill them when they enter into my hoarding zone. Much of that is instinct being half German Descent, I tend to use vehicle emissions and a hose routed to the storage areas for regular 'pest control'....

Self Serve Pressure Wash, soapy cycle and rinse cycle, for $1.25 you're finished. To paraphrase that scene out of "Christine": "I understand some mice, uh... defecated in your intercooler?" "Yeah, well, sh*t washes out!"

If you think it's too much, don't buy it. Am I alone in this confidence? If you want it - buy it. If you think it's too much, don't. What anybody else 'thinks' is really irrelevant.

You're probably going to convert several decent-to-good engines in to many boxes of parts, none of which give you anything more than that completely assembled engine you consider. This really is not worth the effort, there is no 'magic bullet'.... Look at the raise in potential performance of the CR change... something like 0.2% per compression point or something like that.... The N42 flows MARGINALLY WORSE than the P90, offsetting any perceived gains. You are trying to out think engineers that has millions in their budget to get the most power under the curve. Unless you want to spend money, you aren't getting anything earth-shattering. In fact, you likely just end up with a list of parts to keep straight later on because everything is mismatched. I took an engine out of a 1980 280ZX 2+2...225,000 miles on it. Put it in my stock 76 2+2 with stock EFI on it, and then ran around 145 to the rear wheels on the dyno with the stock manifolds and a crush-bent partially collapsed, QUIET exhaust system (quieter than stock, in fact!) I've run consistent 15.50's @ around 90mph all day long at the drag strip, and get 22-27mpg towing a small trailer. I've taken it across the country 2X over 32,000 miles (16,000 miles each trip, when I say 'around' I mean 'AROUND' the USA!) It starts like a stock car, runs quiet like a stock car, and gets me sworn at by guys that have all sorts of go-fast goodies still basically stock and a lot of effort put into it...but not much else. Sell the parts to people with a like mind who think they can change the world with a conglomeration of magic bullets, and take that money to put it into proper tune up of the stock engine you get. You have not mentioned once your induction choice...which, on a stock intake really limits what you will do N/A, period. You have an 83ZX Flat-Top long block....meaning a head that flows maybe 190cfm at 450-500"?, and an intake that maybe flows 190cfm. You cam it to optimise power, and the stock EFI won't like it. The power is not where you think it is. The parts are all the same. It's how you tune them to work as a proper package that makes power.

My suggestion in that case is to keep the 83 Unmolested and just run it and forget about making work for no real benefit.

So these are apart in pieces and not assembles engines? Or were they assembled engines that you took apart. Nothing you do will have any appreciable effect on anything material.

^^^^ Add a stall to the garage, the truck & Mommy-Mover stays parked outside anyway...^^^^

Yap, sure looks like a proper Z-Part. Aleutians, those tricky Eskimoes they play tricks with your eyes....

Is that a Honda O-Ring, or a generic A-XXX O-Ring going in there? Might try to see if there is an A-Series O-Ring that fits that groove acceptably, it will allow you to buy a bag for a couple of bucks and not have to buy two Four-Cylinder Kits and have two sitting around forever...

I forget the stock C Chamber size, it was fairly low given what most modify them to accomplish for N/A. The 47cc chamber is right there for a 500CC swept volume 3.0 turbo. Most of the HOMO guys are running 10:1 on their turbos, and N/A is easily run 12:1 on pump gas. Even from that perspective, an L28 with a bigdome would have better torque characteristics from the high static CR. The nice thing is the flow is achieved at relatively low lift, meaning stability at higher rpms and long valve spring life. Looks to be coming along well.

Looks a little wider than it should be...like for a Corvair. Seems it would block some of the light from the sealed-beams.

If you keep the SOHC Head, the port flow will limit the rpm potential of the larger engines. Just not enough flow available.

About three milimeters shy in bore sizing. 89 or 90.... This is not a head you want to cobble together pistons and scrap parts to assemble. The smaller engines will need a lot of Revs to make use of the breathing potential of the head. A 3.4L would be supported to 7,000+, a 3.3 to 8,000+... see the trend forming? Remember these heads were centered around a 600cc cylinder displacement...

The mystery shield in the 78Z is for the catalytic converter, all the chassis will have the holes to mount it, but it is possible a non-catalyst Z may not have that shield. I have never seen one in CA or Japan that didn't have it, they all had Catalysts then.