Tony D

Non-US Models, or JDM cars had a separate smaller light in a dedicated socket that acted as a parking light. If it's a Jap Import, there should be a switch in the centre console which will allow them to be illuminated according to Japan Street Parking Regulations: illuminated on the side of the vehicle facing traffic. They also alight when the stalk switch is in the first position. Without the divider, it lights the 'whole' lens. You can make one out of aluminum sheet, or stainless. Polish the side that faces your little light and it casts a nice bright light out that direction. The stock divider was dull-chrome finish...which is why it's rusted away to nothing! Curiously this is the same reg they have in CA, and only turning on one side at a time freaks the coppers out! "no, they came that way, see here's the switch...it IS in the California Department of Motor Vehicles Bible: California Vehicle Code!" They check and always go "huh, so it is..."

Nissan Motor Corporation. Z Standard models 69-77 were available in the JDM with plastic mats instead of carpeting. I prefer them, frankly. They also didn't have all the weight associated with all the jute and sound deadening material under the carpets sold in USA. The plastic mats I speak of fit exactly like the carpet kits do: over the tunnel, and rocker-to-rocker, firewall to parcel shelf. A separate mat with a pebble-grained finish covers the parcel area. I figure there must be some available in the Japan Market---somewhere on a shelf. I can't see there being a high demand for them, they simply don't wear out like carpets do! I currently have two cars with them, a 71 Fairlady Z(s) and a 76 Fairlady Z(s) 2/2---yep, they offered them in the 2+2 line as well!

I also might add, that other than some British Car Rags having a fetish for doing 5th gear pulls from idle, that is a terribly abusive way to drive a car with a small engine. Really, loading shouldn't be done below 2500 (so oil pressure is built to a decent level) and to even expect a stock engine to "pull" or "have power" below 3500 is unreasonable. Driven properly the Z is quite a powerful car, but the obsession of people who want a small displacement L6 to pull like a V8 2 or 3X the size is pure fantasyland. You have a 5.7 that pulls from 1500 rpms and dies out by 4400, you would expect that an engine half the size would give similar performance in a power range from 3000-8800. And generally speaking it does in stock form. By recamming for higher horsepower slightly higher in the rpm range, comparatively you don't lose so much 'on the bottom'... I've always tried to keep WOT excursions on even my stock Z to times when I have the engine rpms at 3000 or above. It's why first gear is so short in these cars: get into the powerband quickly then keep it there. Yes, I do find myself in third gear at 55mph...or 65mph and consider upshifting. I didn't buy the car to be a hypermiler. Driving it like this daily on the freeway still nets me 22-24mpg. My highway cruise was 31-3200 rpms. Now with the early box in there it's more like 3500-3600 rpms. Mileage has remained the same, performance feel of the vehicle has improved quite a bit. For my money, obsessing with power below 3000 rpms is something more for a V8 Grocery Getter, not a sports car!

"That's not a fun cruise." It is if you want an engine to run at 7500 just because it sounds good! I was taking a ride back from work in Liverpool one evening, and after going some miles I casually asked the driver with whom I was conversing "Change up, Andy?"---we had been buzzing the Clio somewhere between 5300 and 6000 for the past several miles. "Oh, RIGHT!" (Upshifts to 4th) We continue the rest of the way at 4500-5200 rpms... Clio 1.3's are geared pretty short. It was 'city traffic' you now, never know when you will have to squirt into that opening or get proper engine braking. It's all how you were raised, I suppose.

I go take them out of Volvos in the Junkyard. The Euro Boots seem to be made of better rubber, and the plastic used just doesn't seem to degrade like the first-generation plugs did... I have seen many 68 VW's in the Junkyard and it seems the Euro Plastic Compounding, as well as Rubber for the boots seems to be of a higher standard, they hold up much better. I've been recycling those for years (the boots that is, the connectors break just like ours do...) If you get the O2 sensor lead from the 240 Volvo's they are a super-high-temp (almost milspec-tefzel insulated wiring) with a length of easily 18" in the engine bay...if you tug and rip into the dash on the other side I'm sure you could harvest closer to 24+ inches of that wire. Plus the lead from the O2 sensor itself is a MALE plug---meaning solder a 3w LED on the end of it and you have your own special Noid Light for testing injector pulses from the ECU, or for making any number of testing lights to connect an O-Scope to test actual pulsewidth... Having those press-on connectors allows you to quickly plug into any sensor on the vehicle and get a lead if you put Banana Plugs on the other end of the lead compatible with your DVOM. Also, in combination with the O2 Male-Female combination you can quickly make up a set of 'taps' which allow you to plug in these mini-harnesses between harness connector and sensor to probe voltages without using piercing probes, or if you have a recording meter gives a nice secure connection (with adequate length leads to put inside the drivers compartment) to connect to a datalogger or your DVOM while doing a road test of the vehicle. I can usually find 2 or 3 Volvo 240's in the yards here in SoCal at any given time, and I always carry my Leatherman to 'harvest that which I desire'... Now, about compensation for the $2 entry fee they charge at the gate to merely come in a browse the yard...is anybody here familiar with what 'payment in kind' is supposed to mean? Someone mentioned that to me one time as I was walking out of the yard, but I have no idea what he was talking about...

Lockwashers....don't! Take a look online for a video of a "Junkers Machine" doing fastener testing. This is exactly the environment your flywheel is in in regards to relative movement. The Diesels are worse, and imagine that, they have a single pin to take shear loadings and stop the relative motion of the bolted parts. The best way for a fastener to not come loose is proper preparation of the surface, proper bolting to insure adequate clamping and proper preload of the fastener. There is another website...maybe the Junkers Machine is on it: "Bolt Science"---there is a lot of good information there that will dispel the myths surrounding what you should to to get a bolt tight and keep it that way! One of the facts they provide is the breakdown of what torque really is: quantification of friction under the head of the bolt, friction on the threads, and actual elongation of the fastener (actual tension)...alter either of the frictional coefficients by using the improper lubricant (or using lubricant when it should be torqued dry) and you over-stress the fastener leading to deformation, loosening, or outright breakage/failure! Flywheel bolts are something you want to not have cracking off and letting their bolted component fly off someplace! I believe ARP now offers 12 point headed Flywheel Bolts for our L-Series Engines... I'd use them if they were available. Very nice quality control. I'm actually pushing my company to use ARP to make some of our fasteners for impeller studs as they have the technology to roll threads in Aermet Material. Talking with those guys is always a learning experience.

My point on the EFI over Carbs was if you DO have a 'monster cam' you will find that what is 'undriveable' on Carburettors is ENTIRELY different on EFI. Like I mentioned, the LSR car would not idle below 1700rpms, simply because the engine had to turn that fast to make enough vacuum to siphon fuel through the idle circuit. Off-idle (of 1700rpms) it didn't pop, bog or stutter as long as you didn't put too much of a load on it right out the gate. But it did idle at 1700 warm. That can make life difficult in stop-n-go driving. The exact same cam in the exact same engine was an entirely different beast with EFI. You could feather the clutch (as best you can with a Tilton 3 Disc that weight 15# total rotating mass...) and get the car moving from a stop from that 950 curb idle. We actually had it idling down to the 'cranking' parameter---it would reliably fire evenly and keep evenly turning over at 450rpms! It sounded odd, to be sure. But there was no real reason to idle it that low. We did have it at 750 just like stock but we really werent driving the car on the street so a 950 idle speed worked well. Rough 1700 with the Webers, or smooth 750 to 950 and the ability to load the engine right from the start...that means drivability. EFI changes the paradigm of 'what is a wild unstreetable cam' should be the title of my post. That was what I really was getting at...

I'll give that a shot: they don't get hard and break after 30 years, and a simple pressing of the bail releases the injector plug from the 'catch' on the injector body allowing it to be removed. Additionally they have an updated gasket which keeps the contacts a bit dryer than the original 1965 Bosch Design. They are both "Bosch" design clips. The first is an example of what was the usual offering from the time VW instituted them on the 1968 Type 3 pancake engine. The second was phased in late 70's by most European Manufacturers on the second and third generation Bosch units. It addressed the main shortfall of the original Bosch Design: the clip to hold the injector on was so difficult to remove in the field it usually damaged the connector. Style two was Bosch's answer to that, as well as upgraded boot and sealing against the elements. I think that would be classified by most people as "A Better Plug," no?

Yep, the roads were full of 320HP, 8Krpm L24's in Japan 20 years ago. The reason L28 Strokers 'peter out' by 6500 is the cam selection. I can think of several offhand which don't. In fact, Burton Brown's 3.0L running at Bonneville broke the record while he was granny-shifting at 6000-6500 rpms on that monster. How much horsepower does it take to push a bone stock S30 to 173mph with that big, open maw? If you want 'streetable' and defy logic by stating you MUST have carbs... Monzster's L24 sings to 8,000+ (videos exist here) and is completely streetable. It also used EFI. Our old build ran 45 DCOE Webers, and would NOT idle worth a damn below 1700 rpms. Put EFI on it with ITB's and on a 39F morning at 2500 feet altitude it starts and idles just fine, settling in to a 950 curb idle when warm. And yes, it pulls beyond 8K. Power comes on STRONG at 6K. You wanted 200HP? It's making that well before 6K. The example was to open your eyes that with a slight cam change the entire power band will move down a quite a bit. The CR doesn't give you as much as you would think. Our 2L L20A made 205HP and we were lucky if it had 11:1 CR. Like JC stated, you are in the 'tuned stock N/A range' for an ITS car. No exotic parts needed. If you want 7K+ solely for some aural fixation... again 200 is doeable and cast is fine if you don't go over 7K. Don't forget to put in that 4.44 rear gearset so you will have the opportunity to use the extended RPM range. If you "lower your goals 15%" you are LITERALLY in the "bolt-on, don't touch the longblock" area of power possibilities. As I said, my bone stock L28 car spun the dyno to 147 to the rear wheels. And given the weight and 1/4 times it turns consistently all the calculators say I have 202+ HP.... And all I did was degrease it after pulling it out of a Junker $100 1980 280ZX 2+2 (not your expected junkyard donor for latent, hidden performance goodies...) Again, the key to street driveability is to NOT go with carbs. They don't function well at lower speeds people like to use for street driving. It's a function of the carbs, and nothing more. EFI solves that problem. Tractability is amazing. And it sounds just the same (listen to Monzster's white car running the Auto-X course and tell me it doesn't meet your desires... then again it's more like 300+ HP on an L24 and you want 2/3rd to just over 1/2 that!) Rpms need not enter the equation.

Recall my myriad stories of the small-plenum conversion I did just not putting me back in the seat at 137mph like the large plenum did. Made my decision easy: In my case Bigger=Better. I'd have to dig the numbers on plenum up, but the actual plenum portion was 3/4 the previous models size...I think my small plenum was 192CID (on a 168CID Engine) and the larger one was around 268 CID. Damn, that's really close to John C's setup. I just realized that. I must have read it in a book someplace when making the first plenum (and copying the HKS Plenum Box...) cutting that 2" off the bottom of the box just made the response suck. Seriously.

There was the time I got a ticket leaving the meeting for having 'Illegal Headlights'... Training day... guy says "it's for your own safety sir, nobody is going to see you with green headlights!' Yeah, it was there, on the tip of my tongue: "Well your PARTNER sure as hell did the Linda-Blair as you guys passed me on the street. Seems like YOU saw them damn well enough!" Then there was the time the guy that owns the Korean Restaurant in the same complex came down and read us all the riot act because "We were parking in 'his' spots and keeping his customers away!" Pointing to a new red Z32TT. About that time a couple came out of his restaurant and got in the TT and drove off. He was dumbfounded. Then someone started yelling back at him: WHY YOU HAVE RESTAURANT OPEN 7PM THURSDAY NIGHT---YOU KEEP US FROM CLUBMEMBER JOINING! YOU DISTRACT WITH DELICIOUS FOODS! YOU GO NOW! YOU GO NOW!!! Later I explained the guy was Korean, and not Chinese, so the joke wasn't actually proper. Madeline Cho would have been proud at the verbiage I used to explain it. It was much like her little explanation...

We just dynoed the car, and it went pig rich at 6500 leaving us with a dissapointing 256 RWHP. The engine just starts to pull hard at 6K... All from 2.8L N/A... Only 200? Piece of cake. 7500? Forged internals, you can make 200 to the rear wheels with cast pistons at 6500 easily enough. Hell, my bone stock L28 running the stock EFI makes 147 to the rear wheels... If you want high rpms for some auditory masturbation, more power to ya, but it will run you cubic dollars and it's wasted if you are only planning on making 200HP.

Yeah, it changed afterwards. Now they have to accept medically directed weight waivers. I had one to 250# and the doctor said if I added more weight to come get re-evaluated. They wrote the weight for 235, so I 'complied' but at the commander's discretion (after I tested for E5 and was one of 2 in 400 people in PACAF to test and make the grade) that he chose "at this time to decline to accept the medical recommendation under AFR35-10, which puts you back into phase one of the WMP and therefore (as he redlines my promotion on the big large-carrige computer paper in gree-and-white-stripes) makes you ineligible for promotion.

" Someone with a $1k budget for performance has much lower requirements than someone with a $20K budget." Doubtful, all that means is he's taking it in chunks. Just because someone has a lower budget than someone else doesn't mean they have any different requirement than anybody else. I'm sure the Sultan of Brunei thinks a $20K budget is cutting too many corners as well, and results in a somehow "compromised" vehicle. In many cases, projects take time. In many cases, far more time than you think they will. And in the end, when you look back, your $5, $100 and $500 purchases over the years add up to far more than 'what your budget was starting out'! Usually this is BECAUSE you have exactly the same performance requirements of someone with a stated budget much higher. There are two ads in Classifieds now involving JDM Parts, NIB. One has a part number listed, one doesn't. One is sold, one isn't. Bad posts lead to questions...and in some cases commentary. It comes back to 'unverified claims'---if people stick to selling PARTS and not SELLING parts the commentary would be far less. I don't know, when I go to a car sales location I grill the hell out of the salesman, because all he's spewing most of the time is B.S. I don't want a sales line: I want to know what you have, specifics on sourcing (how old is it, how long has it been in service), technical details (turbo A/R, does it leak oil, does it make noise, etc..) and lacking that CLEAR PHOTOS so I can determine what it is myself. If you restrict an ad to those kind of things, commentary is usually limited. And any questions about 'the power it made with this setup'...those can come in the form of PM's. Links to off site dyno videos and sheets are nice, but unless you're selling the WHOLE ENGINE SETUP AS A PACKAGE, they're just more sales hype---leave them off or to send them to people who inquire. No, Classifieds are not a discussion forum. Commentary should be limited to those interested in BUYING. If you're window shopping just look at the wares and regardless of the claims made by the guy at the door hawking it...smile, keep your mouth shut, and pass on to the next item.

Nah, you don't get that many without a plan. Something went awry, you don't sell them in a 'I want to clear it all out' way like that, and for that amount of cash without having something go wrong.

KTM, that is incorrect and a gross oversimiplification of how the Nissan PCV Valve works! The PCV will indeed close on-boost. At that time, the differential by the inlet filter being drawn on by the turbo evacuates the blowby to prevent crankcase pressurization... In this aspect, it is more to prevent nuisance oil leaks than anything else. A plugged crankcase WILL build pressure, and WILL start pushing oil out every orifice, gasket, and seep point possible. In the old days, the "Road Draft Tube" was where your blowby went. Later, PCV was introduced to contain the vapors, true enough, but there is positive compelling evidence on the effects of positice ventilation and vacuum in the crankcase affecting windage and power levels. It promotes ring sealing to be sure, even top fuel dragsters acknowledge this and run vacuum pumps or vac-u-pan systems to aid for this effect. But the turbo operation (as well as some other modes where the Nissan PCV acts more as a limiting-flow-control valve--it's not just open or closed, it has intermediate functional points where it limits the vacuum pulled on the crankcase to prevent deluging the intake with excessive oils...) simply lets the crankcase vent through the air makeup line on the valve cover to the intake tract's lowest pressure point to insure there is no pressure building up in the crankcase EVER. Pressure in the crankcase (even as little as 4" H2O will cause MASSIVE leakage from front and rear seals. Those seals are designed to keep DIRT OUT not OIL IN! (That is mostly accomplished by the SLINGERS, which are aided in oil return by air passing over the seals in towards the gearbox...) The PCV not only acts as a check valve in Turbo Application, it regulates vacuum applied to the crankcase, and acts as a flow diverter valve depending on manifold vacuum presence. This is why it is critical to have it cleaned and operating freely. We are talking about very low pressure ratios which cause the valve shuttle to restrict or stop flow altogether. Notice at WOT (without a turbo) that the fumes come out the valve cover? Why? Because the PCV is closed at that time. And on snap-throttle closing from WOT---closed again to open in a modulating action to regulate vacuum spikes to the crankcase which could literally draw oil up the pipe like a straw! It's not as simple as people make it out to be. It does work... You want a simple system, get a Corvair with a hole in the sucker tube and see how well it works when it plugs with sludge...

Don't know, I'm busy with what started out as 38 overhauls, two days ago added 15 to that total, and this morning added 7 more so that makes 60... "Economic Slowdown?" Not since I started... The furloughs we took 'in anticipation of decreased revenues' appeared to be all for nothing and resulted in nothing more than me working harder when I was at work, and giving me GUARANTEED TIME OFF. I swear, everybody in the service section went "Now, wait, you mean we HAVE to take THREE WEEKS OFF and they are UNMOVEABLE dates, like NO MATTER WHAT we are going to be OFF WORK---even if we are on a job we will GO HOME on those dates?" We were skeptical, but it was true, we actually got three whole weeks where we KNEW EXACTLY where we would be! Most time off I've had in a year in decades! (Actually, since 89 when I got out of the service and had taken 90 days of cumulative leave which is technically never possible to happen...though I didn't actually take the leave, they ended up paying me because I didn't have enough days left to take off when it was time to go. Foolish things like calling me in off leave to go weigh in at the squadron orderly room, and to get chastised by the squadron commander for being a fatbody and weighing 220 with a bodyfat content of around 7% by immersion nomogram instead of the 170# they insisted was my 'ideal' weight...) I digress...

No, it was in reference to the cam in the head of the engine I was giving as an example. We kept the same cam, but with the displacement change, the power peak happened at a different point in the rpm range. This is a common occurance in the VW World where guys really get to liking a cam in a 1600 or even 1835, and spec it for another engine and it's WAAAAAY overkill for the larger engine. Or opposite---they like the specs in a big motor, and when they build the smaller engine, they're dissapointed that the characteristics of the cam change so much. It's one thing here that people fail to take into account. One thing that works great in an L24 will work differently in a 3.0 and vice-versa. We had fueling problems on the Dyno last week, so new numbers from the 2.8 are not complete. Something like 256HP at the rear wheels but that was only at 6500 rpms (Different Cam from last time in the above examples.) The power comes on above 6K, so it was just starting to build when the map went full rich and started misfiring. Wish I could have been there...

Did I do something wrong? <EDIT> Apparently not, my query is still up. Part Numbers for 'new in box' parts should be a no brainer to clear up any claims. Still waiting on that P/N...my money is flowing this month, c'mon man CAMAAAAAN! I wanna spend spend spend!

They are an ISO straight fitting, there is no taper. The only way NPT fits is you either jam it in there till it seizes, or you retap it. There are straight screws out there that will thread in and plug it satisfactorily. Allen Hex Head setscrews, actually. A centerpunch will stake them in place to prevent backing out once installed.

First and Second photos show the reclining knob on the seat back of an Early Seat Mechanism. They appear to be overstuffed poorly recovered early seats. The later reclining seats will have a lever on the outside edge (facing the door) which lifts to unlock the seat for complete reclining, instead of the 20-30 degrees of the early seatback. More important than 'early or late' mechanism is the question 'what seat bottom do you have'? Many times people put the mechanism's from one year onto another because the later seats used springs in the seatbottom, while the early seats used strap webbing. That will make a difference. I'd say take a feel underneath to see if you can feel springs under the seatbottom, or the presence of the strap webbing to make sure the components haven't been switched sometime down the line. Seatbacks as far as I can tell are all the same, and recover identically. But the bottoms are different animals early/late.

Christ, the photos just loaded. That looks like my yard before I got the containers! Apparently a retirement project gone awry...

He's asking 2X market Value for the vehicles. Complete cars WITH ALL THE GLASS as rollers don't go for more than $750 in the area, and likely those are 'Ecology/PYP Fodder' in the $250-500 Range. Frankly, I don't care where he stores them, they are outside! I have more than he does, and at least mine are INDOORS (at least insofar as a Conex Box Container Goes!) He's dreaming for the price. I'd go in good faith to look at them for half that amount, and likely settle on some point below that, given what I see in the photos. Price range on those vehicles as a lump sum would be anywhere from $5500 to 7500 if they all had the glass. Without it, the cars drop in value considerably, even as parts cars! And frankly, if the DMV were to find this guy without a dismantler's license and proper documentation on the vehicles he would be in for a WORLD of hurt. The ONLY people who would consider this offer would be dismantlers, and they would require documentation be signed on EVERY vehicle consigned. Now, if he's saying he has a signed title and document trail on EVERY vehicle there, then the price may go up from where I peg it. But without documentation and without glass---this guy is smoking the hedgerow! "They're rare! Nissan is buying these for a restoration program you know, I'll just sell to them!"

Silver and Demming Drill Set

Well if 3/8 NPT 'is too big' I know for a FACT that it's not 1/8 NPT---so what does that leave us boys and girls? 1/4 NPT C'Mon! Silver and Demming Step Drill for the next question...