Tony D

Geez, I guess I better go put that diesel crank back into that Maxima, since I couldn't remove it in-frame! Why is everybody intent on pulling an engine out the TOP of the car? They are installed at the factory from the BOTTOM, why not take it out that way? I've taken more than one out on a dirt driveway that won't allow even a portable gantry by dropping the K-Member onto some bricks, and then having a couple of guys lift up the front of the body and roll the car back. Works fine, and there it sits for you to do whatever you want. Which brings up why remove the crank 'for measuring'---I thought that was what plasti-gauge was for...

I have always packed the entire connector, since my first underwater adventures offroading in the mid 70's. If you had a problem it was due to poor contact electrically metal-to-metal, and not because dielectric was in there. If you have a loose connection you will have problems, period. Dielectric spread over everything will keep ANY oxygen in the joint from causing ANY corrosion. It also precludes any moisture ingress. Any void left in the back shell of the connector is where the corrosion WILL start. I pack the tower connections on the dissy cap, the boots in on the end of the plug wires...you just have to gauge it that you don't put too much in where it expands and pushes the connector off the plug! I think this is a bit of anecdotal evidence that is misdiagnosing the root cause (poor tension on the connecting items) by blaming an incidental observed common link (the application of the dielectric grease). I can take my lighting connectors apart that I greased up 10 and 15 years ago, and they look as clean as the day they were assembled, with grease still leaking out the backshells and all. No water gets in there, no air gets in there, no green stuff forms there! Of course, they all has proper tension (disassembled and crimped back down with a small needle nose pliers) when gooped up. It's exactly what Cygnus says: if you have good contact, the grease will be displaced at point of contact, and therefore preclude any foreign matter ingress. You can literally submerge the connectors in SALT WATER and you won't get a short from circuit to circuit if you have properly packed the connectors. I would drive my jeep IN the pacific ocean with the headlights on under water all the time in Japan. Of course then I had free access to Dow #4 from Uncle Sugar, and I used it liberally! Were yours?

Holy Victor-Victoria! "The 73/74 E88's have a raised quench area to increase combustion chamber temperatures... good for emissions but bad for HP. This is a subject of some debate. Some say that the increased volume of metal cools combustion chamber temps. Others say that when you compress a gas you increase its temp. Nissan said they increased the combustion temp. to control certain emissions..." Didn't 73 and 74's have EGR to decrease combustion chamber temperatures and thereby reduce NOx? Is this a typo? Did you mean to say 'decrease' combustion temperatures---then you have two emissions devices working together instead of opposite each other. It is a physical law that gas temperatures increase when compressed...

JSM, you're not one of those guys who call his pets 'his children'---I mean, my sheepal proclivities are well known in these parts. I got the Sheep Shivers, Mutton Madness, Wellington's Disease... I'm generally a baaa aaa aaad man!

Gigidy gigidy! Why did I think this was going to be a Village People themed post?

Why am I the only one thinking that the photo of Mr. Lopez and that chunklet of a child deserves to be posted to a paedophile website along with home address and an invitation to come over and experience the 'Fiesta that is his mouth'. Through several anonomyzers, of course. I'm going to hell. I know it. I'm O.K. with it...

I send the link to Frank280ZX while at work, and he calls me back "You know who built that engine---the guy where we went to the machine shop, that's his cousin!" Man, talk about a small world. Discussing the pull we both noticed the ENGINE BLOCK is the only thing that 'leaves the building'---the crank and pistons are still IN THE FRAME. Basically the combustion chamber pressure blew the block and head off the baseplate of the engine, leaving the crank and pistons flopping around in the frame...look closer! It's a riot: flop flop flop! Apparently 11 was too much.

Krazy Dutchies!!!

Seriously, if the 'EFI Bible didn't help at all' then you're missing the obvious. A case of not seeing the forest because of all the trees in the way! Think about what you said: "The fuel pump worked fine after we hit it with a hammer a couple of times." Why on earth would you blame a power relay for a physical blockage jamming up the fuel pump? Sorry if I missed it, but you stated (or not) that the power is being interrupted to the pump, this is why you suspect the relay? Is this it, or just a grasp? What controls the relay (EFI BIBLE) --- the AFM switch contacts in some cases. If the bypass has been dorked with, and there is not sufficient AFM Flapper angle, the contacts may be intermittently opening when a plug misfires (yes, the RPMs can be affected enough to do that!) and that will shut the power off to your pump. Revving the engine to 3-4000 rpms likely cleaned off plugs which were wet-fouling due to incorrect bypass setting of the AFM (EFI BIBLE) and then when you returned the engine to idle all was well again. (see how this stuff works together--incorrect bypass/flapper angle/fuel pump operation/idle speed/misfires due to bypass screw bing set rich...) Perhaps only turning up the idle speed screw on the TB will move the rpms to 850-900 and see if it continues to happen. But at this point, after taking a hammer to the EFI pump to 'get it working again' perhaps, plain and simply, the thing is crudded up or worn out to a point where it's in need of a replacment. But "EFI BIBLE USELESS"? Only because the trees were in the way! Only because the trees were in the way! All my post above is a direct result of drawing lines of reason between circuit functions and component functions as described within the EFI Bible. This stuff isn't rocket science, don't try to make it that hard. And in the same vein, not everything is solved with a hammer---it may have a symptom revealed, but it wasn't FIXED!

Hockey, whassat? Like Soccer on ice? (Ducking)

How in living hell did you get into the basement of my cottage in michigan?!?!?!?!?! No joke, I spend my 'vacations' (four years running now) working on rectifying those photos. I could send you snaps of probably 75% of the stuff on that link from my own basement. My relatives simply would say "It's working, why are you messing with it?" Yeah, perhaps if you guys didn't drink as much beer as you do while thinking this crap up, I'd not worry about sparking my own immolation during my time here every summer! Truthfully, I KNOW the people who did this stuff in my cottage. And they are constantly amazed how I can show up for two weeks a year, simply flip a switch and start enjoying the place. Hell, they lived 80 miles away and NEVER came up for a weekend without SOMTHING going wrong. Then again, they laughed at my powerpoint slides on winterizing and working the water system there as well... "If you're too stupid to make it idiotproof, perhaps you should pay another idiot to do it for you!" I am 'that other idiot'...

I routinely remove all extraneous wires added by "PO's" to "fix" electrical maladies, and wonder of wonders once I've restored factory wiring....I find no problems. Wonder if the same goes for houses?

I have always used an interrupt switch from Ford Products (Tempo-Topaz have them in the left rear corner of the trunk, Ranger Pickups under the mat on the passenger's floorboard). I bolt them to the bulkhead where the wires go through the floor on a 280Z for the stock electric fuel pump. If you get hit hard, or roll over this switch will trip. You simply reset it with a push of the big red button on top. Curiously, it's the same part Pegasus Racing sells for crash/rollover pump interrupt as well! Looks the same at least. But boosting it from the junkyard is cheaper and you can dissect the wiring harness on the trunk mounted location to get at least one meter of heavy gauged wire on all the connections...it's almost enough to go from fusebox tap to fuel pump. Not that I'm cheap or anything!

The only thing this head has in common with a stock E88 is that the casting number says 'E88'... Welded combustion chambers (14.75:1 CR), Tuliped Valves (oversize), ported intake and exhaust tracts. It was formerly on a GT3 Car before we took it over and put it into Land Speed Service. Korea was warmer than I'd expected. So much for my Arctic Parka I brought. Machine was inside as well, not what I was told. There goes 8kg of shipping storage in my bag... I will wear that damned thing on the plane back to LA to recover shipping storage for books this trip! But got to go back to Korea, so no shipping of a G-Nose on this trip No time for shipping it to the hotel, nor a direct flight for only one check-in.

Are you sure they were brass and not discolored stainless steel units? The flange-nuts I use are a yellowish 'brass' color when I remove them, and have the 'teeth' underneath them. I prefer the flange nuts to nut/washer because the teeth are very effective at keeping them in place, and don't contribute to a small part falling off when reomving the parts later during maintenance...which you then have to go look for on the ground someplace.

Yeah, assuming proper thermocouple calibration and instrumentation, 1800 would seem to be a bit high. There is power to be had running on the ragged edge of 'too lean' but it has to be 'worth' the effort. If you are constantly drifting into detonation and beaking things, or burning valves, then is the extra 15-20HP on a 600+ HP car worth it for a non-competition engine? That would be an interesting charting and dyno exercise: Tune to maximum horsepower, REGARDLESS OF EGT. But recording it. Then, using EGT as the basis for further experimentation after the power curve was optimized---go back to retune the engine to a given EGT across the board and see what the power gain/loss was. As you can quickly see without much thinking, tuning to a 'set' EGT accross the board is as ludicrous as tuning to a 'set' AFR----which was the point of the SDS article. EGT is a 'maximum limit' based on components and metallurgy, but nowadays should likely only be used in that fashion and not as an ultimate tuning tool. Curiously I'll chuck this in as well. Our stationary engines ran 1100F. We had Electro-Pneumatic Air Fuel Ratio Control Panels, which the 'lead' mechanic dorked around with to make the engine 'run smoother'---but which resulted in us running 12psi of boost on full load, as compared to the normal 17.5 psig (as a standard inlet manifold temperature of 135F). Within 12 hours of running like this, 12 of the 16 precombusion chambers had been burned out totally---their glowing stinless steel globules deposited on the exhaust valve stellite facings, resulting in 14 of them being burnt (I have two of these valves still in my posession, if you ever stop by the house I can show it to you! ) The net result was that by richening the mixture, the internal combustion temperatures went up to a point where things literally started melting. We decreaseed the mass flow of air into the engine, while the gas volume admitted remained the same (cam actuated gas admission valves through an orifice plate), so in that instance 'richer' meant 'hotter' while lean meant cool. But this was an EXTREME case. Like I said, the engines ran at 22:1 AFR in the main combustion chamber, and the precombustion chamber would run around Stoich and blow fire into the main chamber to keep the superlean (low emissions) main chamber burning. If it went the way physics tells us, the precombustion chamber went SUPER rich. I don't recall now if we got T.I.T. or any EGT alarms 'high'---I don't think we did till cylinders started dropping. The EGT monitor we had (by Altronic) monitored all 16 cylinders for EGT high, EGT low, and EGT Differential of more than 100F between all cylinders scanned. It also monitored T.I.T and TOT, but we didn't have alarms setup on that system. The turbo ended up going on that fiasco as well. It was the final straw in the 'lead' mechanic being transferred to another facility and me just being let alone to hotrod those big muthas as I saw fit (made 2500+KW on an 1875KW rated set! WOO HOO! They wondered how I could take a 6 hour maintenance down, but never seemed to impact gross production numbers...muahahaha!) One of the old operators hated me, he would always watch me operate the engines and gas them to full load quickly and start chortling and huffing "Hey man, take it easy! This ain't no Z-Two Eighty!" Ahh, Fat Jack, I wish him ill...

I did in my VW Kombi... A catalytic propane heater as well, but it would crap out if the temperature was below -40C, the propane wouldn't go gasseous at that temperature, it would stay liquid. Useless Propane! Then I had to use the gas heater and loose 2mpg on the freeway. But the heat was instant, and volouminous!

"Have no idea why the engineers came up with this! " Think about it... Engine operation below 400 rpms with the key in the 'on' position, no electric pump operation. Perhaps you've hit a tree, and broken a fuel line... Do you REALLY want your electric pump dumping the contents of your fuel tank on the ground underneath you while you're unconcious and bleeding?

We got two versions of the E88 that I know of offhand. L24 on the 73 240Z L26 on the 74 260Z I don't believe we got an L28 with an E88, but I know that is what we are running on our Bonneville car (E88 on N42 Block). The late Don L. Potter preferred the E88 over any of the other heads for Turbo applications. He's dead now, and I can't talk to him as to what his logic was, but he was producing winners using that formula.

I put H4 Lights and Capsules into the car about a year or two before driving to the Convention in Canada in 2001. This past December, I started up at the airport after being gone for 7 weeks, and no lights. Changed the fuses, and got lights, they looked good, but had the 'pullout' common to older fuses. Within two weeks I lost my left low beam, then my right low beam. I put stainless steel tape over the top of the lenses and drive with my high beams on... I also complained to the vendor, about his cheap bulbs only lasting 10 years on low beam! I got two new capsules sitting in the back of the car right now as it sits at the Ontario Airport (Sunrise Parking)---you can see the boxes on the back parcel shelf area. Complaining helps sometimes... After 10 years (who knows how long yours have been in there) the filaments may indeed have gone bad. BOTH the low beam filaments went out on mine within a WEEK of each other. Both installed at the same time. Both failed almost at the same time. I would say within HOURS of each other actually. So if you're terminally cheap like me, you know you never drive on high beams, so use those up too! Hell, I may be able to go another 5 years like this before I have to climb under the fender and fuss with those damnable screws again (which I replaced with 3mm Hex Keyed Stainless Steel Button Headed Cap Screws...woo hoo! No rust, antiseized, and ready to come out but I still don't want to climb under there. Maybe I'll get the Boy to do it for me...) Filaments aren't as unlikely as you might think... ALSO REMEMBER THIS: You can't poke your multimeter to a general ground and check voltage---this will give you power everywhere, but still no lights. You HAVE to put your negative on the referenced negative for the headlight (they put power in, and switch the grounds to the filaments). This checks the voltage the bulb actually sees. You can also check the headlight ground circuit this way. Personally, I'm not installing those new capsules in my car till I get the Painless Wiring Harness for the headlights, and run a set of relays for them. I'd suggest you do the same. The combination switch is now $400+ new (if you can get it) and whatever you have will last A LOT LONGER switching the coils on a headlight relay, than the power from a 55 watt incandescent (or halogen) bulb as a direct switch. You will notice your lights are MUCH brighter using auxillary relays as compared to using the chassis wiring. With the relays you can change your 'headlight fuses' from what they are now to something like 2.5A---just enough for the relay coils.

You can buy the header flange alone from MSA, and have it put on your uncoated header and have something like the Japanese have made for 35+ years: something that fits the first time both on the head, and down below.

+1 on that! I haven't seen anything residential that wasn't black and white on the 110 lines. Any other colors are usually low voltage or other control/telecom wiring. Check your wires to make sure you have copper, and not clad aluminum. That house would be in 'the folly years' and if aluminum take precations to make good connections and etc. Aluminum wire in the walls is a BBQ waiting to happen, IMO...

How coincidental, I have just arrived at the following coordinates and will have 2 days free before work commences: 35 16.301N 136 15.970E I was supposed to be here for three+ weeks, but things changed and I will only be here for a week this trip, but will have to come back in Late April (er... after MSA, gomen nasi!) Yes, the key is to see if I can source where Kameari gets their billets, or see if they will sell uncut/unground billets. This is my mission...