Tony D

Where did you get that from? I know that's not what I said. (Sigh!) Dude, you live outside Omaha...straight water is SUICIDE in your neck of the woods.

Get some Redline Water Wetter and put it in there, then report the resultant temperatures. You should be pleasantly surprised. I've been told it's got a surfectant action, and that mixing Dawn Dishwashing Liquid should have the same 'wetting' effect, but have not been inclined to try that yet! For the price of a bottle, I just mix and fill. It's best with pure water, but it will work with a Glycol Mix as well.

They do make buffered gauges--a sensing line that goes to a diaphragm, and then glycerine fills the line between the firewall and the in-dash gauge... That is pretty accurate. The schrader valve and EFI Tester would be more accurate for sure.

do you have water-wetter in the coolant system?

Throttle plate angle is irrelevant until you watch a keniscope trace of cylinder pressure on a dyno and can see the difference different cylinder flows make. Consistency is important. As BJ is hinting: you change parts to match what you have. You may make these carbs 'this engine only' by doing that....but then again that is the POINT of tuning. You are optimizing the carburettor for THIS engine. The reason those screws and crap are on there is to accomodate production change and tolerance in manufacturing of the carburettor as much as anything else. And to facilitate the mounting of these on as many aftermarket applications as possible. Filing leading edges of throttle plates to tune transition port coming on off-idle is something that works for THIS engine...that modification will not be applicable to the next one. You will need to reinstall new throttle plates and start over on that one. This goes to the old saying I've used for decades: "Anybody that says 'carburettors are easy' has never spent time actually TUNING one!" As has been stated, the directions are sound, you want it covered. The movement of the throttle plate will uncover it. The screws you talk about will move BOTH plates. If they aren't transitioning at the same time---and this is possible due to production tolerances in drilling of the carb body, it doesn't mean necessarily the throttle shaft is bent---then you have to alter the late-transitioning throttle plate via slight filing to have the ports uncover at the same time. BJ is dead on with the 'true the screw' suggestion as well, a nice 5 degree face with slight rise in the center of the screw, polished with an Arkansas Stone and deburring of the lever in the same area will make everything work more consistently and smoothly during initial setup. Me? "SHIFT CONTROL ARROW UP" for more fuel "ARROW DOWN" for less. Screw this filing and screw polishing crap for me any more, I'm getting too old!

" Has anyone ever heard of a gauge leaking or falling apart? How about accuracy of the liquid-filled gauges? Are they permanently damaged with heat or just inaccurate when they get hot?" Lots of questions which are not really related. I work in general industry on Rotating Equipment and have seen liquid filled gauges costing $1000's of dollars fail. Same with the dry ones. The liquid is generally put in there to stabilize the needle movement and keep a sensitive movement from wearing itself out. They usually last longer where vibration and pulsation is an issue, compared to non-dampened, non snubbed dry face gauges. "Accuracy" and "Longevity" are mutually exclusive terms when dealing with gauges. Accuracy is only achieved through regular calibration...read some of the comments from the precison calibration guys in the 'Balancing your L6 Valvetrain' thread to see what I mean. The gauges with glycerin fill generally are oriented to be 'vent up' so that the dampening fluid will not leak out. Generally you install them, run the machine up to pressure and temperature and let the dampening fluid expand and weep out. But the back remains open to atmosphere so the dampening fluid's epansion or contraction will not put a stress on the internal tube or mechanisim. It's not the heat, it's where you calibrate it to be accurate that counts. It can be accurate at 15C or accurate at 55C, but not both. There will be some error and that is what calibration is: the art of compromise. Generally you want it accurate in operation so that would mean calibrate it hot. It doesn't matter how it came, that is just a gauge, it still needs calibration before installation. A check against a good known reference source. 2psi on a 100psi reading gauge is 2% of full scale and is considered generally to be well within acceptable deviation. If you want accuracy and not something that looks good under the hood, then you will be spending a lot more than what you did on your Jeggie Meter! What permanantly damages them is overrange conditions, it expands the tube and can damage the movement permanently after one event if the excursion is severe enough. My FPR gauge is a 6" Diameter Ashcroft Test Gauge with a mirrored face and 270 degree sweep, with a 0-120psi range. You don't want to know how much one of those costs. But when I get my cheapies, I manifold them both together, and note on the face of the cheapie the correction factor to use (-5 or +3 for example, meaning the gauge reads 5psi high, or 3psi low repsectively...and those are good numbers for an example!) Do it cold, do it hot. Then you know. Right now you have a guessing gauge. "Guess it's right." Better to have KNOW gauge, or NO gauge at all! Never want a "Guessing Gauge"!

We put teflon buttons into our PRESSED PINS on the Bonneville Engine because when the pins started moving and scored the cylinder wall 0.080" on all six cylinders we figured the miniscule thought of the possibility of wear in the walls caused by teflon rubbing was more than offset by the fact that the pins are HARDER than the TEFLON... You can always leave more clearance so they don't actually TOUCH the cylinder walls, they only come into play if the pin starts moving. Generally on full-floaters it's the choice BETWEEN either spirolocks/spring ring retainers OR teflon buttons. Everybody who said "I've never seen that happen to pressed in pins before" also said they never heard of teflon buttons put in to act as insurance, either. But after seeing our engine apart, they agreed that it was a viable insurance policy against recurrance. You can make anything, just a matter of having the tools, or the money and a willing machinist. Want PTFE? I got 2" Diameter rods 20 feet long. Like 100 of them. They spin down to pin buttons real easy like if you have an Atlas 6" Lathe!

The only thing 're' on that car was the pigs squeal... That is one of those trucks you revel in taking to Super Chevy Day. Like the 67 RS/SS Camaro with the Nissan Titan V8 in it.

The value of my stock of 240's just went up by 600%!

D'OH! I saw "DCOE" not "DHLA" But the same goes for Dellorto, they sell shafts. But skip to the end for another useful tip. Weber / Dellorto shafts are MUCH different than Mikuinis. The Mikuinis were MUCH easier to tweak and where they had the 'flats' machined is where they liked to 'twist'... Generally guys would use to wrenches on the nuts on either end and tweak them at midthrottle and then let them reseat to see what result was achieved. Mikuinis would stick in the throttle barrel if you backed the idle speed screw out and then had heavy return springs and stiff linkages: they would slam shut and STICK CLOSED. At least one would. The one furthest away from the throttle linkage. Dells and Webers are a different animal as they have nice ball bearings to run the throttle shaft, and it seemed to be of a better quality material not prone to twisting. All the above being said... Check to see if your Dell has an equalizing screw. Some models of DHLA came with little screws that would allow bypassing of air around the throttle plate to allow idle synch when the plates were not 'equal'... it's not right, and the car will idle higher as the other two carbs need to have the same flow. But they did have a mechanisim built in to equalize flows between the barrels of the same carburettor. Some do, some don't. You would have to search for the photos or get a Dell tech manual to see the screws I'm talking about. If they aren't there, the divots for the drilled passages are still in the casting. No, I wouldn't try to retrofit the devices if you don't have them! Good Luck!

I could get 17mpg, or 5...all dependent on my right foot. If you see black smoke, you are at 10.5 or richer on a non-catalyzed L-Engine (pig rich).

"I could see the guy in the Z hanging by his seat belt and ducking his head as the car came down. This image is stuck in my head. His head and shoulders appeared to be well past the doors and rear hatch." You seem preoccupied with 'head'... Depending on your outlook on life, that could be a "Good" Accident.

At the first shop they laughed when Andy and I walked in and told them we wanted our 2+2 driveshaft balanced to 10,000rpms. We walked out and went to IEDLS (Inland Empire Driveline as Hoov mentions) they had no qualms about our balancing request at all, and the aluminium shaft was done for less than the quotation in the O.P. And yes, it has gone that fast, plus some... It DOES make a difference!

Weber sells throttle shafts...IMO that is the easiest route. You can try to untwist it, but I doubt you will have much luck.

displacement displacement displacement You, too, will understand how wrong the myth is with that combination.

Why?

Make sure the diapers don't get snagged on the torn uphoulstery, that makes it easier for me to get out of mine at the end of the day...

Book a first class ticket to Japan, and the world of the L-Engine is at your fingertips then...

Yeah, that's the article, "580 HP at 7500rpms, and 20.6psi" what a laugh! Talk about totally fabricated numbers! The numbers were far higher than that, as was their engine rpm capabilities. I'd not seen that link on the 33 car and the President 4.1L TT setup, though. Will have to read that on the plane tomorrow! Thanks. Oh, and there is a 'link' someone made. There's little 'links' to much about this, it was all on paper at the time, and then...apparently...forgotten!

I like that parachute release lever...I gotta get me one of those!

You think wrong... The drivability and throttle response of a bone stock 280ZXT is like night and day with even a basic MS Tune on the car. It also allows you to 'fuel safe' for the 10psi non-intercooled common boost-up. It's a real toss between proper exhaust and MS though... Problem is the longer you stay with the stock EFI system, the worse it will be when you do the conversion to make real power. If you do the MS straightaway on a mild engine (stock turbo) you not only gain the experience and comfort level of tuning on a rock-solid platform you already KNOW runs right, you get a concrete apples-to-apples comparison for what kind of drivability gains you get doing a conversion. Do it on a bodged-hacked ECU with 12psi and an intercooler with all the goodies that has been inaudibly detonating for the past 10K miles, and when an audible detonation happens and the engine goes 'poof' you blame it on the ECU and Tuning, instead of the silent killer you never heard but which was working at it all along. Standalones are a fact of life these days, as much as changing to an aftermarket carb was in the 70's for American Iron. The longer you put off learning about it, the further behind you will be. Tuning a MS primes you for any other standalone. The concepts are the same, and so is the tuning process. Best to do it on something bone stock, and build from a base (and then get a good idea of what changes happen when you start changing other things---you can then add that downpipe and SEE the fueling change you have to make!) Start with mechanical changes, and you make something that the stock ECU can't compensate for... Think about it-over 3500 on boost, how does your stock ECCS adjust your fuel? Answer: It doesn't. The stock system starts running lean at the top end...you will see the ability to add fuel up there with the MS will make a BIG difference in the way the car performs. Just my thoughts...but the thought that an MS needs intercooler and other crap is just plain wrong. Put that MS on a bone stock car and you will be AMAZED how responsive the car becomes. It's like it's a different car!

I've see a hell of a lot more than 3, and have to concur with John C, the rods are not the problem, it's people re-using old bolts, pulling the bottoms out of the cast-piston pin boss.... The L-Engine can literally throw cast pistons off the ends of a stock crank / stock rod combination. It's just whenever I see people specifying 'forged rods' when referring to Nissan L-Engines it makes me tend to think of the 'parts batch amalgam' Honda guys rattling off a list of things that sound good, and who really haven't done a lot of homework. 100 HP/Liter is doable if you don't have to conform to sanctioned racing event rules. There are L24's out there with that kind of HP. It's a different driving experience than a stroker, though...

at least you didn't run over your own parachute cord...

Guys at Riverside Muffler were running 9.40's at LACR on what they said was 'that little damned datsun differential and spongy back end setup the 240 came with' Had a nice photo on the wall, too...

Oooooh I like that door opening mechanisim! Nice run Gary. I see you parked just in case you had to go afterwards...