Tony D

several on the 'map'... Tawas/Alabaster for a couple weeks a year, driving through Grand Rapids on the way up and back, usually. Other than that, I came to my senses years ago and went with sunny warm weather year round, and abundant employment opportunities. I visit, because I'm employed.

Driving to Phoenix on I-10 across the desert through Palm Springs going 82 will not have me being the fastest rabbit in the pack by a long shot. Cross the border where the speed limit goes to 75, and you can bump the tick a couple of notches and the DPS will maybe flick their lights at you from under the overpass they are parked, but they will wait for the 'truly stupid'... The Palm Springs Incline is used by MANY OEMs during the summer for evaluation of the Hot Weather Performance of their vehicles. Similarly driving to Vegas 85 would make me a moving roadblock... The stretch through Death Valley from Baker, up into the Valley, then in a loop around back to Vegas is also another "hot weather proving ground" for OEMs, and it's within a hours drive from the house as well. Anywhere north on US395 behind the mountians through Trona and into Death Valley will be lightly policed and wide open...AND HOT! You can literally go naked in the middle of the road pissing in the wind and stand a great chance nobody but the spy photogs for the car rags will ever see you or snap your photo (er.....) Please note that in these particular circuits, driving a LEGAL speeds will get the car HOT! There is a reason OEM's come here, it can have thermal layering through the radiator in excess of 180 degrees on a 110F Ambient day, and going across some of the valleys 120F ambient is not unheard of, I have seen Infrared Gun shots in excess of 140 in some places, and don't even want to kneel down to take a thermal layer reading. I hang a thermocouple out the window at speed and try to get it about halfway down the door away from the car in open air for a temperature reading. Once you hit West Texas, the legal POSTED speed limit is 80... I can and have driven from Tawas Michigan to my house, a distance of just a hair under 2500 miles in a total elapsed time of less than 30 hours. Significantly shy of 30 hours DRIVING time. Hell, significantly shy of 30 hours total ELAPSED time! And my WIFE was driving the overnight stint! Started at 4PM Tawas Time after my wife's cousin's high school graduation party in Alabaster Michigan, drove to St Louis, Oklahoma City and stopped for Dinner at the Big Texan in Amarillo. Continued on due to gearbox trouble to Flagstaff AZ---where I awoke in the morning to find my wife doing a high speed draft on AZ DPS. Turned south to Phoenix when ominous sounds from the gearbox were emanating, and made it into the driveway around 7pm the next day, California Time. In that time frame, we stopped to eat at Amarillo for a solid hour there (considered the big texan, but had eaten nibbles in St Louis so wasn't up to it...) and other than that drove at speed on the freeway from tank fillup to tank drain (about 2 hours straight) and then a 20 minute pit stop for driver change or other 'necessary' evacuations. I don't know many endurance racers with Z Cars that run that high an average speed for that long! And that was TOWING AN 800# TRAILER WITH THREE PEOPLE IN THE CAR! Some people say I'm 'extreme' but I don't think so, this is what the OEM designed the vehicle to do...and it does it. Many of the 'improvements' people make to the car....AREN'T! You can do it too! Head out to Brisbane or Adelaide in February... that should be a reasonable accomodation for testing. Bring water... Oh, and the year prior I took a slightly different route through Las Cruces (2545 miles) and start to finish total elapsed time was 36 hours. I drove that one myself, with my kid a co-pilot. We visited Roswell... Anybody up for a mano-a-mano cannonball? I've been out of training for a couple of years now...but I'm sure I can get back into form really quick! LOL

That Time? What does the 1/4 mile calculator make that out to be horsepower-wise? If someone does that calculation, there will be some humble-pie eating people out there!

(THIS IS CONCURRENTLY-POSTED FROM THE SURGE STICKY AS I THOUGHT IT WAS APPROPRIATE TO HAVE IT ON BOTH THREADS) I have run across a guy in our company's design engineering department that has a Z32 Twin Turbo. Indeed, the control technology DOES now exist out there now to control the BOV as a true 'unloading valve' meaning at low flow/high boost situations (higher boost, lower rpm engine demand) the BOV opens and vents exxtra flow to allow the turbos to spool up in a stable portion of their map and not surge on the way up the rpm band. Big Phil seemed to be having an issue like this, and my recommendation was to try and get a boost control valve set up like this, I just didn't know if one was currently available. It is, and they are electronically adjustable to dump excess flow overboard so you can run hellacious flow turbos at lower speeds without low-flow surge, and take advantage of their better high-flow high boost characteristics 'up top' in the RPM range now. It has a total PID loop control apparently, allowing for variable dumping and staged blowoff. I have this guys e-mail, so I will get some details on the control system he set up on his Z32 to prevent low-flow surge on his car. He said the way the car pulls now dumping extra flow overboard is FAR harder than it did when it was surging and trying to develop more horsepower lower in the RPM Range. It allows you to run a much higher boost much sooner in the RPM range without surging. Cool, huh? This technology appeals to someone like me who will run a turbo at Bonneville, as I can now consider a FAR larger turbo flow than I would have otherwise considered, and simply blow excess boost overboard at lower rpms (say below 6000rpms) to keep the turbo flow stable and allow a higher boost level for more power (traction permitting). It is also applicable to Big Phils situation in that he's marginal low-flow at some points of his turbos flow curve---if he could simply vent some flow at that point in the rpm range, he could keep 22psi on the engine, and pull harder than he otherwise could (the other alternative is to run it at a boost level where it doesn't surge) The hardest part of controling turbocompressors is people equate boost to flow. They are separate entities working against each other. If you can dump flow, you can run a higher boost lower in your engine's rpm range and not get the honking surge like BP did. On conventional controls they only relate to boost pressure, but if you use a controller that references rpms and can control an overboard dump for flow, you begin to have total boost/flow control. It also makes wastegate control much easier to handle---and your turbocharger starts operating in a more limited rpm range near peak efficiency, rather than up down and sideways all over it's curve during engine operation. Get it up and spooled, and keep it there, dumping excess flow when necessary to keep the flow stable at whatever boost you choose.

I have run across a guy in our company's design engineering department that has a Z32 Twin Turbo. Indeed, the control technology DOES exist out there now to control the BOV as a true 'unloading valve' meaning at low flow situations (higher boost, lower rpm engine demand) the BOV opens and vents excess flow to allow the turbos to spool up in a stable portion of their map and not surge on the way up the rpm band. Big Phil seemed to be having an issue like this, and my recommendation was to try and get a boost control valve set up like this, I just didn't know if one was currently available. It is, and they are electronically adjustable to dump excess flow overboard so you can run hellacious flow turbos at lower speeds without low-flow surge, and take advantage of their better high-flow high boost characteristics 'up top' in the RPM range now. I have this guys e-mail, so I will get some details on the control system he set up on his Z32 to prevent low-flow surge on his car. He said the way the car pulls now dumping boost is FAR harder than it did when it was surging and trying to develop more horsepower lower in the RPM Range. It allows you to run a much higher boost much sooner in the RPM range without surging. Cool, huh?

Holy Necropost Batman! I was reading the last page here and was thinking 'sounds like the wastegate is hooked up backwards' and as I got to the bottom---apparently it was!

BTW, thanks for that link above. I was unaware anybody here had dealings with him before. I forwarded it to someone I know was considering using him as he's getting desparate for some HP Hookup for better times at the track. Desparation leads to bad decisions. I can only hope I wasn't too late.

Yes, the heat transfer may not be as good (this may necessitate a larger rejection side of hte equation), but this is offset by the nucleate boiling depression. If it stays adhered to pick up the heat and transfer it to the rejection device (radiator) then it will cool better than a 'more efficient' transfer medium which experiences thermal separation caused by runaway nucleate boiling. It is apparent that the L Head has some nucleate boiling tendencies, so trying the alternate fluids may pay off if you can build in excess rejection capability (multi-pass four core radiator perhaps) to reject the heat it does pick up. Does that make sense? While it transfers heat poorly, because it doesn't nucleate boil, it ends up taking more heat out of the head than a better coolant would due to it's boiling tendency. That all being said, Electramotive cooled 1000HP in Endurance Competition with straight water, so it IS possible to do without the exotic fluids!

specificity, my good man, is the groundwork on which all competent engineering analyticals are based... A.K.A. "Vague Questions return Vague Answers" Muahahahahaha!

The McMeekin Brothers S13 is well over 215mph last time I checked. Then again it has an Oldsmobile IRL V8 in it.

This is particular to North American Emissions Regulations. This is a hotter point than the thermostat mounted sensor. It will run 10C hotter depending on loading of the engine. This puts the car in closed loop quicker, meaning less pollution. It comes in handy for people with High Horsepower cars as they can benefit from sensing the hotter point. In practical experience and application, I have seen no real difference in operation using either point. The sensor has the same curve / response as the one in the thermostat. I use it on my wife's turbo car, because it takes me out of cold start loop faster, and enables O2 correction that much quicker. It results in slightly better fuel economy as a result.

I tried a single fan at one time, and the flow simply wasn't near enough in SoCal... I put twin 10" fans on there with a rating of 5000cfm each. By using an electronic fan controller set to engage the fans at 10-15F above where the car stabilized at temperature on a 110F day driving down the road at 35mph in fifth gear (which was near 160F, meaning I set 185F for fan turn-on) I would be able to see distinct temperatures on the car. At 35mph, the car ran around 170F. At 55mph, the car ran just above thermostat setting at 165-170F. At 60mph, the car ran at thermostat setting EXACTLY. Dead nuts 160F. This means around 10,000 CFM is theoretically passing through the 1'X2' radiator opening... Curiously the car ran cooler between 60 and 80mph than it did at speeds slower! I did not see temperatures above that point (180F) until I was continually running 85+mph. This is on a 110F day. Do the C conversions, this is a THREE CORE radiator I was using on a turbocharged 240Z with approx 325HP at the rear wheels. In stop -n- go coming off the freeway, I would see the temperatures rise. My temperature would rise to 180-190F and the fanS would turn on, I could see the temperature drop to the shutoff point (around 170) and then rise again. This is what it will do. It is set at a point not wo exceed 190F in traffic, and with those twin fans IT NEVER DID. Did it run hotter than on the freeway? Yes, by 10 degrees, and BY MY DESIGN. Stop-n-Go is worse on the car than freeway driving, run the temperature a bit hotter to keep the oil clean. It also lets me know if the fans fail BEFORE the temperature gets to a point where damage is done. I can tell exactly where on the gauge my car should run wether it's on the freeway or not. Setting them this way also has insured I NEVER have the fans running on the freeway---this is something you shouldn't need, and don't want to do anyway. It's like clockwork, I pull off the freeway, I watch the temp rise...my fan kicks on just as it goes slightly to the right of center by about a needle-width, and the fans turn off about the same orientation to the left of center. Normal freeway position is slightly to the left of that point. I can watch it cycle back and forth right at the centerline as I hear the fans come on and off. If your fan comes on, and your temperature doesn't start dropping: YOU NEED MORE FAN! It is that simple. Fancy fans, shrouded fans, expensive fans, if this happens your fan is too small. You need to have a MINIMUM of 5000cfm through the radiator (that is 30 mph...) and as you can see from above, the car runs hotter at 35 than it does at 60, so for FULL cooling you need 10 KCFM. I don't care what the manufacturer says, how much horsepower they SAY they can cool with this fan or that... I followed this recommendation which said a single 14" could cool my car ("Recommended for Datsun 240Z, V8's to 350HP"...) and it would runaway in traffic. Could not keep the car cool. Doubled the fans up to twin 10" and CFM capacity of 11,000 CFM to coincide with my calculations of capacity and my overheating in traffic problems went away. Can you get away with a smaller fan? Sure, but it will take longer cycling of the fan, if not constant running while at idle---if you have that, why change from a belt driven one that cools the car just fine as it is??? I DID cool with a single fan at one time. I had a WONDERFUL silend shrouded fan from a refrigeration unit off a Hino Diesel REEFER Container. Draw was like 30A when it was running, and MAN it cooled great. But it was slightly bulky, and it didn't look that great. It's hanging in my shed, and I use it whenever I have to get a car home that I suspect the fan is bad, or doesn't have one... ONE LAST IMPORTANT NOTE: No matter WHAT I tried, if I had the fan coming on at 190F or higher, IT WAS TOO LATE and the fan would not cool it down. That means the 'set temperature switches' simply won't work for me. I got one which was adjustable, and prefer the electronic one to the capillary microswitch type because of failure problems I have had with that particular setup. I have not had luck actuating the fan much later than 180F. Earlier seems to head off something happening inside the engine and keeps it from becoming a problem. (Class, who was paying attention, what could be happening once water temperature reaches 180F+, and you have low cooling water flow and no pressure from the pump turning at higher speeds?)

I fail to see how anything I stated justifies anything unscrupulous. 'Excessive Labor Rates' are in the eye of the beholder. The key phrase about any of this is 'service that you are paying for because you are unwilling or unable to do yourself'... Nobody forces you at gunpoint (in the civilian world) to go anywhere to do anything, or to prevent you from having the car flat-bedded to another facility. You don't like the estimate, nobody says you have to get the work done there. Usually people who are cheap just want to cry to lever a lower price than do comparison shopping---like they deserve to have the service they want performed at the price they dictate, financial realities of the service provider notwithstanding. "Because you are the closest to me, I demand you not only be the best, but the cheapest as well!" Complaining about the raping you get because of the two stated conditions is also bad form. Nothing I said endorsed immoral business practices---if you don't like the state in which you exist quit whining about how terrible it is: change it (by whatever means necessary).

The levers are NOT 'chokes'---that is what inhabits the throttle barrels! The levers are the 'starter system' for the Weber. It's a separate circuit that allows fuel to be siphoned directly from the bottom of the float bowl and mixed with air with the throttle plates closed to get the car initially started and idling. With the levers engaged and the foot off the accelerator, the car should start and idle at about 1500-1700 rpms. Once it's started, the lever is moved back to 'off' and the car can idle to complete it's warmup. It doesn't function like a 'choke plate' at all, in that once the throttle is depressed, there is insufficient vacuum present in the circuit to allow its function, and the carburettor reverts to the other circuitry in it to run the engine. If you can pump the throttles a couple times and drive away, you're so rich it's not funny, and you're loosing power! Calling the lever 'the choke' is another 'freeze plug' moment with me, it's just plain wrong. Same goes for SU's on the 240 except 73 & 74... Proper terminology, standardized, helps everyone understand things. It's why most engineering texts or papers have as their first section 'glossary of terms' so everybody knows what is being discussed before they start reading, not figuring it out as they go along. Cheers!

How much you willing to spend?

You have gotten incorrect information. BTW, the 240Z has a 3.36 differential already.

The general rule of thumb going into business is that you will have to charge 300% over what you pay your people to provide for overhead, decent sustainable profit, and business reinvestment. This is the rule we went for when we started CSSI, and now 8 years later the two guys running it are still following that model and doing quite well. If you think you have a mortgage and responsibilities, remember that the people providing the SERVICE you asked to get have the same responsibilities---along with one FAR more heavy than anything a customer is likely to understand: They have to charge enough to STAY IN BUSINESS because if they fail, every single employee is out the door and up the creek. If you want a guy making $5 an hour working on your car for no benefits in a shack behind his house (with the guy running the service writing roundup charging you $15 an hour to keep up with their overhead) then do so... But remember that quality rarely comes cheap. Most of the independents that are any good at all will charge as much as dealers (if not more so) because they know the market, and they know any customer screwed by the dealer will likely be happy as a pig in poop to have the same rate charged but have the problem FIXED on the first visit. The advantage independents have is that they have lower overhead, so the profit sustains them better. It was the case at CSSI. It's the case at most independents. Don't begrudge a competent man a decent living. An incompetent guy you can rail on about with good justification. But if they are competent and did a workmanlike job, to complain about the price charged when you are unwilling or unable to do it yourself is just bad form.

It says 'this thermostat or the 160'---which sounds as he is discussing two different thermal values. Tropical/72C/160F is the same, Normal/82C/180F is the same, Frigid/90C/190(5)F is the same. Those are the available options. There was nothing below 160 as a factory offering in a roadgoing passenger vehicle. If you are overheating using a 160 thermostat, likely there are other issues that need to be addressed. A 150 is sludge forming territory in about anywhere, including the tropics, there will not be adequate lubricity in the oil even in the hottest part of the head. You will barely make 180 in the hot parts of the thread or throw-off on heavily loaded areas of the bearings. Like I said, I'm a proponent of 160F thermostats, but advocating the use of a 150F is getting to the band-aid stage for another issue, compounded by the fact it will not allow proper oil temperatures. There is a reason Nissan stopped at 160F for passenger vehicles---Oil Temperature lower limits even in the tropics. Unless you're blasting across Saudi Arabia in the middle of summer a 150 is going to cause long-term issues. And even in that case, you will be running a thermostat lower than ambient temperature available for cooling... let's not go into that direction shall we?

The startup bill for my time in Morocco was (Euros) 133,000... We bill at a daily rate, or in four hour blocks thereof. If I come to look at your compressor, you're on the hook for the day no matter what, because you pay for my time to come to you and go back home. I think the daily rate was (Euros) 2300 daily - roughly (E)287 an hour. In the USA, the rate is variable depending on what I'm working on, and is slightly less. And you guys are complaining about a couple of hours in a shop...

The Nissan Thermostat came in 72C, 82C, and 90C versions. There was no '150F' thermostat available, the Tropical Thermostat was a 72C version. That is roughly equivalent to 160F. There was no '62C' thermostat available. That number is really low, and I'm a proponent of 160F thermostats. The oil temperature is what you really need to regulate and the OEM's do that indirectly through water temperature. I just want to make sure this is clarified. The tropical thermostat---the lowest recommended and installed in vehicles from the factory by Nissan is 72C, or 162F. Nothing lower, I have the part numbers to support this, and it's in the fiche as well for anybody else to verify on their own. I have never seen a 150F thermostat for a Nissan Roadgoing Vehicle. Anywhere.

You will note my question on youtube about their answer to trailing arm deflection causing cutting of the tires under load at a true 500rwhp went woefully unanswered then...

imagine the shrouding of an L20A bore of an E88 raceworked head for an L28 GT3 engine... then imagine the harrowing work of 'notching' the block to accept said valves on the L20A block. Look at the specifics, and draw the picture in your mind's eye.... Did you know an L20A with triple 44 mikuinis 'starts to pull nice and gets quiet at 140KPH---it seems that's just where it likes to run, honey' according to my wife.

I spun 146 consistently on my junkyard L28 from a 1980 280ZX 2+2 (bought the whole car for $100...giving you an indication of the 'upkeep status' of the vehcile. It had 186K on it, and now the engine in it's transplanted body has 225K+ on it) The dynojet HP number coincides with my GTech. The number coincides (sorta) with my 1/4 mile time of 15.50 consistently (best of 15.50) with 2695# per SanAntonio Dragway scales wet with driver, and around 89mph in the traps. As an aisde, the engine I REPLACED had a rod knock, but before going out I dynoed it as well. It had Triple Weber 40's, a Header, connected to the same crush-bent exhaust (2.5") and THAT combination spun aroudn 82HP to the rear wheels. I FELT fast as heck, but wasn't. Hence my use of the word 'Butt-Dyno Correction Factor' You would have SWORN the car with webers and header was WAY more powerful and faster, but infact was seriously down on power compared to the stock EFI system, running a K&N filter in the stock box, and the stock exhaust manifold. Quiet, and FAST! I will not argue that the average tuned L28 will spin in the 120 - 130 range to the rear wheels. But there are tuning techniques on a bone-stocker that will net you measurable power at absolutely no cost for extras. For the record, I really didn't see any difference between the CAI or the stock K&N filter setup, or from running the paper filter. Other than the irritating HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS at idle with the CAI wasn't there. I like quiet... If you are at altitude, your power will suck dogs bollocks, it's not a number you can correlate. I think there is a sea-level correction factor, which should boot your 120's in to the mide 130's if not low 140's. There is stock. Then there is stock. Look at an ITS 240 motor making 160HP from stock components. Same stuff you got on any other car, the difference is attention to detail. I really would like to find an 'A' cam for my L28 and put that in there to see what kind of bump I would get. It falls off over 5800 like most L28's do, and with the "A" cam able to run up higher in the rpm range, I'm betting my engine would see a nice bump in performance at the rear wheels. Anybody who has driven it says it's a hoot to drive. It's one of the reasons I tell guys to concentrate on driving and learning how to tune what they have. The STOCK stuff will give surprising results, and what you learn milking the power out of a stocker will translate to ANY OTHER VEHICLE. The stuff I'm doing was no different on a VW, or a Chevy. It's universal. One thing I don't do, which confounds people, is dick around at the track with the car AT ALL. I drive it there, and run it. Guys fiddling all the time are usually hurting more than they're helping. About all I do it up tire pressure, and maybe swap to the open top air cleaner so you can hear the intake growl more on the track. Makes it more 'race car sounding'---like flipping the top on your dad's Impala for the drive to and from school, ya know?

Having a serchable parts database isn't much good when the parts aren't available from Nissan any longer. The system used by the dealers up to around 1990 is available on CD on E-Bay from time to time. JeffP got extremely upset when he found out I had it, because it lets you look across all sorts of cross-platform parts for matches, not just one manual. It also lists the 'supersceded' number as of 199X, which will get you further going into a dealer than you will with the original number from the original book.

1) Make Box. 2) Ship Box to Velasco's Crankshafts, ask for 'the works'. 3) Enclose money and return address. But seriously, if you have a decent electronic drug dealer's scale you can match the weights on all your components within 0.1 gm, which in and of itself will be very helpful. But until you get the entire weight to a known quantity and have access to the big lathes to cut down counterweights and do the balancing really all you can do at home is match component weights, polish the rods, and if you get really spunky polish the counterweights on the crankshaft to remove stress risers and promote oil shedding. For the final balance, you're going to have to find a balance shop and have them do their thing. It's the last step, and what ties it all together. FWIW, the buzzy little engine in my you tube video which Frank 280ZX comments upon in this thread doesn't have anything like that done to it, just a damn good electronic balance on the crank, after the weightmatching of the rods and pistons were done in the shed with the drug dealer's scales. (Hey, it's what everybody in L.A. calls them, including the scale company where we bought them from!)