Tony D

Questions back before guessing: 1) why is a 'head gasket change in your future'? 2) what is the current compression and leakdown per cylinder? 3) why do you assume the head needs resurfacing? Without those being answered, anything is a guess and may not be remotely applicable to your situation. All tools needed to properly diagnose these items are less than $100 at Harbor Freight.

A good Zklyon B treatment should give the interior a nice scent of Almonds as well...

I bought a Hobart CyberTig that was bought new in 1975 when the shop opened. I bought it from the shop owner when he retired and closed his shop. IMO, the older stuff is bulletproof, and if you are concerned about functionality I would lay money it will last you the rest of your life if it's currently running and being used (or recently retired). The newer generations of welders use more electronics and this allows them to be much smaller (my cybertig is 5' tall on the cooling cart, and the bottle stands as tall as I am... but 300Amps at 100% Duty Cycle is more than I will ever need!). But smaller IMO means heat. The old machines were sinks of copper to make the power and can stand a lot of use. Hell, for what I bought mine for, I could probably get scrap copper pricing and recover all my money! FWIW when this guy bought a new portable he got a Miller Bobcat. When he finally lets go of it, I hope to be there and snag it as well because I was there when that one was new, I know how he treats his stuff, and this was his baby! He was really happy with it, and got all the gadgets for it... Any of these name brands (Miller, Hobart, Marquette, ESAB, Etc...) will be a good machine. Big old machines may be old, and they will take up more space, but from what I've seen they last forever and anything in them that is a 'consumable' or 'possible problem' is very robust and usually simple enough to get replacement parts for even today. I had to replace a rheostat on mine because he said it was 'giving him problems' (you had to wiggle the thing at some positions of the rheostat)---no it wasn't available from Hobart for a decent price...but I could read the OEM supplier information off the rheostat and bought one for less than $5. I simply transferred the dials from the old unit to the new one (couple of set screws!) Sure, it's not a new dial and scale...but it retains the 'patina' of the rest of the machine. Very important. Wouldn't want a shiny new dial on my dull old warbeast of a welder! Old Pete was amazed I fixed that issue so cheap and so quick /Old Immigrant German Dude Accent/ "I should have had you by the shop more often, I was fiddling with that damn knob now for 15 years! If it was only $5 to fix it, I would have fixed it, but it was only once and a while...but it wasn't right and it always bugged me. But not $85 worth of bugging me! But yah, $5 worth of bugging me for sure!" LOL I wouldn't worry too much, that's a good unit. Probably more than you will ever use. Jsut make sure the low-amperage settings have decent resolution to do thin work. They usually do, but if it came from a heavy welding shop (say shipyard or heavy pipeline fabrication) sometimes those are special built 'strippers' and won't have fine controls on the lower amperage settings. My cybertig has a setting where the max is something like 5 or 10A, and my footpedal regulates that from zero... I think I could repair soda cans on that setting! If I was good enough. I'm still in the 'burn through dammnit!' stage when it gets that thin!

This goes to the spot boiling tendency. What you get with Evans NPG is the same equivalent decrease in spot boiling tendency as you would get were you to run a 30 or 45psi radiator cap. What you end up with is the thermal reserve of the radiator is reduced 20% due to the decreased heat transfer possibilities of the coolant. Were you to run the same system with water and the higher pressure cap, you would not experience any reserve reduction. The reason you don't see any increase in the coolant temperature is that you have a radiator capable of rejecting the heat at the load point you are monitoring. Run the engine at 100% power on a dyno for an hour, with each coolant...then tell me what your temperatures are. JeffP was running pure Ethelyene Glycol, and did not go 'runaway' with his engine, but found the equilibrium point one day climbing a mountian grade at a constant boost situation. Because of the coolant used, no overboil was experienced, but it got hot. In the same situation, Evans would go about 10% longer due to better heat transfer than EG. The radiator ultimate rejection will determine equilibrium point. It is set at X BTU's an hour. If you can transfer heat FROM the engine TO the radiator at 100%, and your heat input is below that rejection point, you will have stable low temperatures. If you inject MORE heat than it's capable of rejecting, your heat will rise in the system to whatever equilibrium is obtainable. Under boost, effective transfer is the FIRST problem. Evans helps with this in that it won't spot boil and insulate (but water can do the same thing with enough head blanket pressure.) After effective heat transfer from the block to the fluid is obtained, rejection is the next step. That means radiator and flow through the respective circuits... In all their testing, Electramotive never had a DNF due to cooling at power levels between 700 and 1000 HP. They ran (as most racers are required to do) straight water and a high pressure cap, and some astounding flows through the engine due to coolant passage modification. They used a standard L-Series water pump (may have been LD pump...) and nothing supplemental to boost flow externally.

The band aid approach is just that... The AFM will only affect the ratios below 3500 rpms, after that it goes to a preprogrammed fueling curve and you are throwing 50% more fuel (to use KTM's example) starting at that point. The AFM will only alter the delivered flow so much (say 30-35%) from the preprogrammed curve---so if your injectors are 50% oversized the most any tweaking would give you would be 35%, leaving you 20% overfueled. Similarly with O2 correction... it is limited in most cases to 10%, after that the ECU defaults to a programmed 'limp home' curve which is pig rich to begin with... so you tweak your AFM to get the O2 to take you within 10%....then drop the fuel pressure so your fueling is correct....and you end up with the proper fuel curve for the engine without any breathing mods. Seems like a lot of work compared to just leaving it alone. If you DO modify the engine, then the tweaks become even more detailed, or can involve grabbing parts from other vehicles, rewiring, etc etc etc... FWIW Megasquirt is $400 assembled and shipped to your door. With that, a couple of keystrokes and you're set. With an ability to precisely tailor the engine AFR over 144 load points. Not three operating 'ranges' which are vague and not programmable. That's the LONG answer. The SHORT answer to your original question is: "NO"!

"Need"? I don't need no stinkin' "Need"! Like George Carlin said: "I wanna!" I believe that is a sin. It's written someplace: "Though shalt not wanna!" Seriously though, the thought came directly to the Hillborn having screw in EFI Bungs available for the conversion. Thought "oh, man..." Plus having the injectors, barrel valve, and everything means I could theoretically take a step back in time up at ElMirage and run an old-school Methanol Powered car for some 'F' (fuel) records. There's enough pumps and other crap circulating out there from circle track guys it wouldn't be all that much to make a complete system and then just buy some pills to set mixture. (And those guys at the 'other site' would chomp their teeth at the thought of me 'going backward in time' to run MFI!) I think the head will go someplace useful sooner rather than later...

Oh, I guess you found out! LOL (RE: Other Post!)

But didn't you know? He was selling parts again. I just bought his Hillborn setup...

I'll have to talk to you about that plenum adapter setup... Then again, the EFI conversion (injector) part will be easy for me, Hillborn makes a retrofit kit for their setups. And I now got the Hillborn setup! But that still leaves the one like yours that I will have to convert. How are you mounting the injectors, in bungs near the plenum (like you said, before the plates)? I don't want to modify the manifold at all.

Sorry (on behalf of JeffP) for those who wanted that ARE Dry Sump Pan as well...

Sorry for those who wanted that matching head setup for the Hillborn Injection System...

Sorry for those who wanted that Hillborn Injection System...

Evans Specific Heat rating is (as I recall) somewhere around .81 or thereabouts, pure water is 1.0, 50/50 EG is somewhere around .7, pure EG is lower than that. KTM is correct, the higher boiling points mean you can run the engine hotter without possibility of spot-boiling and the resultant insulation characteristics of steam (grape ape racing page for better explanation). Every coolant out there commercially available for home use (lets not get into military exotics...) has worse heat transfer than water. But a significantly higher boiling point. So the tradeoff is you run hotter, but consistently. As opposed to a runaway situation where the engine keeps getting hotter and hotter till you reach system input/rejection equilibrium.

The photos don't do them justice. You should see them in person. It's virtually pornographic...

PS30 00147 is a VIN for a Z432, which should have the DOHC S20 engine. The 'undercover' you describe would be the production piece on racing cars in the JDM which helped aerodynamics. I believe it was FRP, but having never seen one myself close up, I can't say. It is not called out as FRP in the parts booklet, so it could be steel. That would obviously be a very early production vehicle as well. I have a buttload of parts for that car from my time in Japan. Sadly, the proper engine for that car will run you more than total restoration of the chassis to showroom condition. They are unobtanium. ZSpec (poster here) may be in a position to resurrect that chassis, as he was looking for an early car, and this one would be 'factory lightweight' by virtue of the VIN. I say, did it have a spare tire well?

(Sigh) O.K. You need urethane mounts. Good Luck.

For the small stuff, if you have a 5 HP low pressure (125psi) compressor, consider the Harbor Freight Soda Blaster (15# model). The smaller unit I had first, and it used MORE AIR than the larger one did (odd, huh?) In any case, with full on blasting my 5 HP Crapbox Devilbis Oil Free compressor cycles on and off and I was going with the valve full on at 45psi. Plenty of rest period for my old compressor. Really surprised me that it would 'catch up' as with siphon guns it pretty much runs continuously. Anyway, the soda blasting took paint off like nothing. Cleaned rubber, and did not mar the windows in the component I was stripping (pulled a layer of red paint off the inside of an originally mist-blue hatch). I did the small hinges, all sorts of stuff that was laying around and was really impressed. For $129 (not on sale) it worked admirably, and was easy enoguh to clean up afterwards. Remember, it's the BIG one (15#) -- originally I used the 10#, but returned it on pretense in exchange for the larger unit. I'd bought the 10# machine as it was on sale for something like $70 and clearly read it used more air... but I'm shocked at how much less the larger unit uses. For the physical size difference (nil) don't waste your time on the smaller machine, just get the 15# unit. I didn't have any great success removing heavy rust with it (hey, I experimented) for that I'm thinking beads or regular abrasive. But the way it stripped paint at only 35-40# was impressive. Oh, and have a good moisture trap if you are in high humidity area. I can see this clogging with moisture due to the small orifice sizes used...but I did NOT have this issue personally. A list of small crap I did: linkages, hinges, plastic emblems, bumper rubbers, plastic previously painted over, carb body, intake manifold underside and baked on grunge, head of the car with plugs and wires still installed (shhh!) Everything went back to bare, clean metal, and I could not see any metal deformation at all. Nice looking finish. And like I said, even up to 55# I was not seeing any glass etching at all when directing the flow at windshield or hatch rubber to clean it off. Cheers!

No prybar needed. I posted photos somewhere of me removing mine using a needle nosed pliers. Take a propane torch and heat it slightly (hell heat it severely for all that matter....) Once the adapter gets hot (which will be before the crank snout due to it's mass) it will either FALL off, or you can remove it with gloved hand or a needle nosed pliers. Caveat about putting in the bushing duly noted, don't forget!

Split the 4" into two 2.5" using a reverse merge and you don't loose any flow... Opens up silencer possibilities in that size due to packaging... And then you can run them to either side of the car and really screw with people's heads!

PLEASE take your injectors out and have them reverse flushed if this is a turbo application. Even fine particulates can bypass the filter and lodge in the small screens of the injector inlet. This can cause the car to run lean under high load. I have seen one instance where the fuel filter exploded internally, and the FILTER ELEMENT FIBERS clogged the inlets to the injectors. Was not a problem till above 3500rpm when the stock ECU went from one pulse mode to another and they couldn't flow any more. Rusty tanks kill pumps. Keep your fingers crossed. If you have stock injector hold in scheme, a total new set of big and small injector o-rings costs like $4 at Auto Zone, take em out try to get them reverse flush cleaned, stick some new hoses on them (fuel injection hose only) and put them in with new o-rings. It will give you peace of mind you won't have leak issues down the road from those then! Good Luck!

Limit engine movement using a small link from the crossmember to the engine mount on the block...some people use chain, others use a swaybar link and bracket tabs. By using end links of urethane or stock rubber, you can dictate how you dampen the engine movement. Chevrolet tranny mounts are close... But I'd limit engine movement and keep the stock engine mounts. I ran 265's out back, and could launch under 17psi boost with good hook for years and the end links never let the mounts go away. And ran without those for years before copying the idea from someone else! Are these new NISSASN mounts you are breaking?

Did I say something?

Yeah, we have to fabricate a scattershield for the land speed car. The plane of rotation of the clutch is NOT 'well forward of the firewall'... Especially if your foot is in it all the way! They will come into the footwell. Norm's photos are proof enough of that fact. We have a fabricated shield to SCTA specifications, it's 1/4" thick, and if you get some strap steel at least 4" wide and are good with a bending jig and a torch you can make one up pretty nicely. Weld some tabs on it and you're set! Suggestion: Install engine to trans and shield outside car. Once it's in there, it's not coming apart individually! We also have to run the fuel lines inside a thick pipe or their own individual scatter guard if we were running a fuel tank in the back of the vehicle. When I was in the military, I had an old beater Sylvia (180SX) that we painted F15 Grey and decaled up like Milspec. including a red 'Plane of Rotation' warning in the appropriate area. I tried to kill that car and couldn't. Sold it off when inspection came due. Bought a 76 Toyota Celica GT Liftback with an 18RG in it. It didn't take 15 minutes of smokin' brodies at the airstrip to kill that car's engine. Hell, that Sylvia corded two sets of tires in one day and never missed a beat! Oh, yeah: "Drifting is the latest new craze..."

Comments within quotation in bold.

Yeah, the straight ones are deginately preferred for hood clearance purposes... The 45 angled ones are more of a boat-only setup if you want the long stacks... (Sez the Customer who was complained about here for 'making the price on the manifolds go stupid'...)