Tony D

If you want an interesting scale model, get one of a Deltic Engine. The MANN is having issues, their service is sucking. Even Sulzer has issues once and a while--there have been issues with axial deflection and vibrations in the third order at two 120,000 HP machines they installed down in Baja Mexico to power La Paz in an island mode power grid system. The answer to keep them together till the primary gas turbines were back up were to load the hell out of them. By the time the turbines were back on line, the rotor bars in the generators were flaking out! Don't even ask how I know that... And MAG is right, it's a Two-Stroke. Heavy Oil Burner. But again, if you want a neat model, get one of the Deltic Engine. Much more interesting!

"• Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using 'as in' examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss's last name to an attorney and said "Yes that's G as in...(10 second lapse)..ummm...Goonies"." My favorite is spelling things that torture the idiot on the other end of the line: That's "G" like in "Gnomes" "P" like in "Phlebotomist" "X" as in "Xenophobia" etc... Looks like I made the cutoff by 25 days...

1) aluminum chip issue is discussed in the thread. (??? Concern of Aluminum Chips in Coolant... Anybody ever hear of alumaseal???) 2) empirically measured results are in the thread.

I have noticed this on cherry bombs as well. The core for a 2.5" looks considerably smaller...when measured it was something like 1 7/8"!!! Many mufflers are like this, buyer beware!

Twin Turbo S30's in Japan in the 80's were running 125mm pipe... And you thought 3" was difficult to package!

Sulzer, ABB, or Brown Boveri.. Been there, done that. My e-mail ain't 'turbotony' fer nothin'!

Early gears that are nissan OEM are cast steel, and likely 'smoother' than the one in the photo here. the later ones which are sintered can be seen in the machined areas, compared to the earlier cast steel gears. If you've seen sintered metal machined surfaces, compared to to cast you can see it plain as day. If I was at the house, and not in Oz, I could pick and photo what I'm talking about.

internet ate my answer...dammit

Z Tachs can drift, and they are "calibratable"... Autometer gauge in my car is ATROCIOUS below 1500 rpm. Shows 1100 when it's really 850-900. It skims like that then around 1300, it starts getting closer, at 1500 its nearly spot on, and above 1700 it's dead nuts accurate to over 7000 rpms. Usually they go 'dead' in the bottom and top of the range. Using a known good tach, you can verify. There is an aftermarket tach I picked up on clearance when Autobacs closed, that used an inductive pickup to trigger the tach, pretty neat for a 'check tach'...though my Sun Meter has a digital rpm pickup off the tach terminal of the ignition system, and I use that a lot more. Digital is sooo nice! No guess, it's 1475 rpms, man! (think Dennis Hopper voice for that last phrase...)

I am dealing with an Apprenticeship system at this very moment. The principal of the distributorship is a Diesel Fitter by trade. The technician I am working with was an aircraft fitter. Both are Swiss, both were in the compulsory military service in their country, both went through traditional trades apprenticeship during military service, and part of that was university education. Both completed their apprenticeship, and continued to a complete Engineering Degree. One went on to get an executive MBA (which I said I would not hold against him), but made note that he was close to 35 when he started that program, and that he can't understand how anybody can get an MBA without ever leaving university and getting world experience. We have discussed 'engineers' and their role in the world. One of the most startling things they noticed about American Engineers, (and this goes for University graduates in the USA in general) is their lack of experience in real world application of their trade upon graduation. Hand in hand with that is a feeling that when they are on a site they don't wear uniforms, and think they are managers. In most of the world, a Bachelor's in Engineering is your entry level to a hands-on mechanical trades position, which augments your apprenticehip training. Further university training in financial matters is usually what occurs to get you into 'management'... There are only so many design and R&D positions out there, but somehow the graduates think they deserve a LARGE starting salary when they can't do anything! What most people in the USA get coming to service their mechanical items are high school graduates who have hands on experience and not much else. Not a lot of training, but some mechanical aptitude. Many of the mechanical trades mills now turn out people with little mechanical aptitude, and call them 'mechanics' or 'technicians' but who have little underlying knowledge of what they are doing other than simple component replacement. Maybe they don't need that to fix your appliance, or even your car, but... Anyway, in response to their inability to wear a uniform (the comment came up because I actually showed up at their location 'flying the flag' in company logoware) was that by and large macademia tries to force into many students heads that 'higher education' means you never touch anything again, and that you are 'above that dirty work'---that it should be left for lower forms of people. The response was first a look of shock, and then 'that's stupid, that's not the way it is!' The problem comes from macademia lumping trades and labor into a general pool saying that we all can get rich never getting dirty. Sure, that's great, but someone has to do the hands on, and regardless of how you implement engineering controls and make the best SOP's, unskilled workers will only accomplish so much. I experience this where I have to supervise TCN (Third Country Nationals) in the middle eastern countries. Many times they are 'electricians'...they have a screwdriver and a multimeter. But give them a simple electricl schematic diagram and say 'go make this modification' and they stare blankly at the paper. You end up showing them what wires are needed to be moved, what parts that need to be procured, and then where all wires need to be landed. I got into a lot of arguments when I first got out of the military because I was told 'it's not like that here'... I got so frustrated eventually I blew up at a manager and said "you hired morons then! I like to think I was hired for this position because I was qualified for the position, not because my mom was boffing the safety advisor and she wanted me out of the house!" (Which was the case of my immediate 'superior' technican... They jsut had bad people in positions with absolutely no theoretical background, nor education pertinent to the trade, and ended up with bad results. They figured if they couldn't get it to work, then it didn't. I can't count how many things I improved through simple common sense and applying basic engineering principles to things that were in place for 10+ years simply because people didn't want to rock the boat. We went from a 75% online capacity, to over 99.98% while simultaneously going from a $2.2 million annual O&M budget to $475,000! I did that, fighting every step of the way against the 'experts'... Removing the generators from our prime movers was (I was told) an all day affair. I witnessed the process. Held my tongue at the stupidity I saw. Next time we needed to do it, I grabbed the newest operator we had, and got it out of the generator building in 15 minutes using two 4X4 skids and some grease...along with a holeshot from the Hyster Forklift. Management and the work crew came in on Monday expecting to take a day to get the generator out of the building, to see it sitting under a tarp, in the middle of the parking lot with a LARGE sign on it: "2 Men, 1 Forklift, 15 minutes work. NO EXPERIENCED PERSONNEL USED." I refused to tell ANYBODY how it was accomplished. It most of all irked the idiot who had convinced everyone it took a day to do this. It was where I forumlated the phrase "Just because you screwed your sister for 17 years doesn't make it right!" This was indicative of the attitude there, they did it without thinking. This is a DISEASE. Demming mentions it in his 14 points and 7 deadly diseases in 'Out of the Crisis'. The largest tenent of his theory is that the people doing the work know how to do it, JUST ASK THEM! And if they can't answer why they are doing something a specific way FIVE TIMES, then likely they aren't trained enough. That one stuck in my mind: Ask "Why" five times. The Japanese call it '5 Y'...and it's the basis for some maintenance and operational theories. People who get P.O. over 'five why' usually don't know what they are doing, and need to be avoided. Sadly, lethargy and sloth are rampant, and people just do what has always been done, without expending a siiiiiiinctilla of thought towards WHY they do what they do. At another company I wrote to the national service manager decrying a manager who continually had "I ustas"---always saying how HE did a specific job. Usually these involved feats of strength well beyond normal people. (Read B.S.) My stance was if he wanted to tell the field people how to do their job, then maybe he needed to be in the field, and a REAL manager be put into his place...one that would concentrate on getting field people the tools and training they NEEDED to most expeditiously complete their jobs. That company I obfuscated my resume completely to land the job. Dumbed it down and omitted whole sections of education simply so they would not think I was 'overqualified'... I probably was, I was simply being lazy. I didn't want the responsibility and the volatility of management responsibility in a production atmosphere where I was saddled with responsibility but given no authourity to RECTIFY the problems I saw (mainly firing people who were infested with the 'old ways shouldn't be changed' mentality.) When you can come into a place, make the plant record for production two weeks running, two years in a row (when the senior operator and manager were on vacation simultaneously and you were in total charge of all plant operations decisions) then get laid off due to politics... You just look for that job where you cruise the roads (or skies...or world) and are your own master as best you can be. I digress... There are many facets to the problems here, I could go on and on with opinion, anecdotes, and other prattle...

It's not a reserve tank, it's a vapor/liquid separator. You can run without it, but I have it in most cars, I just convert to 3/8" vent lines from 15mm to keep good easily replaceable hoses back there. Some nylon couplers from 15mm to 10mm is all you need, and no more $100+ molded vent hoses needed!

It might aid in the cylinder to cylinder consistency, as a general matter of building any higher specific output engine, it only makes sense. But it's not the solution---it helps make everything in a bad combination of parts work a little longer, but the solution is a mechanical redesign, rather than an aftermarket 'band-aid' to cylinders in the back detonating. Note KTM's later blowup where all the cylinders simultaneously seemed to go 'boom' at one time. The consistency ended up having it all happen consistently....in every cylinder instead of the two running marginally hotter. Goes back to cylinder combustion chamber design. As I said, the FIA and LY heads both have seriously altered coolant flow from the head...really flow equalization than anything else. They have a tendency to catastrophically go 'boom' in all six when something goes bad. But they are running high compression, and running to 9K rpms+! There are some other things that can be done, but I can't get into them now in public due to some agreements in place. You mention MN47...that is a detonation resistant chamber simply due to the size promoting the faster burn. People seem to be running higher compression with that head on an L28, than the same head will accept on the L24 it was designed to be on... When you compare the slight difference in piston diameter, and how it's a problem with one engine and not the other, you start asking questions, right? There are some secrets out there still, one being the highest horsepower L's out there in the USA used NON-USA HEADS as a starting point for their builds. Similarly to the results that an L24 head on an L28 worked. Don Potter preferred L26 E88 Heads, for instance. Nissan Competition supplied some non-us heads for competitors back in the 80's which have even smaller chambers than the MN47! But it's a 'blank slate' then, and you can shape to promote the best chamber possible without welding and decking the head. I digress...

"Someone let me know if I got it right. Basically the way Nissan designed the cooling system in the L-Series motors was a design flaw." This is a serious overstatement of the situation. The decision was made based on intended usage of the engine. The LY head and FIA heads were designed with high specific output usage. This engine head is NOT in a high specific output application. Characterizing it as a 'design flaw' seriously overstated a marketing decision, as well as a basic engineering decision. The design of the head and it's propensity to detonate is more important than a slighly lower flow of coolant through the last coulpe of cylinders. And that was pretty much state of the art for the day. Remember you are working with EMISSIONS DESIGNED compopnenetry as well. This is US market crap. Don't blame Nissan for compliance with governmental mandates. We are talking about an engine which is easily taking 2X stock horsepower without ANY issues whatsoever. I would consider that pretty darned GOOD designing. Especially when you don't really run into an issue till almost 3X the stock horsepower level! AND AGAIN: We are adding cooling to combat hot runing of a BAD COMBUSTION CHAMBER DESIGN CHOSEN. Spend $2400+ for a reshaped combustion chamber and anotehr $800 for custom pistons to give a fast-burn and I think you will be amaze how much HP you can make on current crap pump gas without needing the extra coolant flow. "Along with small casting flaws, etc act to work against the cooling system." Casting flash. This is unavoidable with the casting methods of the day. Everydoby had it, and if people don't properly prepare their components this can have an effect. "Another part of our issues is with people's cooling systems simply not being up to snuff' for years. Anyway it seems like Nissan never addressed the cooling issue in the cars as the normal Z car sold was never figured to be used heavily or used at all as far as racing or heavy load goes." Not using the vehicle as intended is not a Nissan Issue. It's the builder's issue. Most people don't properly engineer their vehicles for the application, then blame the OEM afterwards. This appears to be what is being said here. Is it? Then I would say 'no'. Nissan had a cooling system outside the US A that worked. But our cars were decontented and lacked things like splash pans, spoilers for air, etc... Again, governmental or marketing decisions that were uncontrollable by the engineering department. "Anyway it seems the best possible solution for our cars is to use a higher pressure pump, reverse flow the entire coolant system with slightly better routing?" If you are looking to make 700+ hp, probably, yes. For Less than that, common preparation and attention to the combustion chamber design is likely to play FAR more dividends with combatting detonation. But at a starting cost of $3000+, nobody wants to do that straight out the gate. So you are left band-aiding everything else to make a misapplied component do something it was never intended to do in the first place. Making a silk purse out of a sows ear, as it were. "Although overall the best solution(time/money/ease) for us is to use the suggestion that was repeatedly mentioned throughout this thread. Drill and Tap 1/4" NPT holes above cylinders #4, #5, and #6 then using fittings and lines route them into either the lower Thermostat housing, the upper radiator hose, or even directly into the radiator(however you see fit)." "BEST"? There is no "BEST"! The most practical may be to do that, but really the 'best' solution is to start with a fast-burn head to prevent an issue with 'cooling' under high specific output. If you have a detonation resistant combustion chamber, then the cooling may not even surface as an 'issue'... "As this basically will allow for better overall flow, smoother flow, and in the event of cavitation which is bound to happen a place to allow the steam pockets that form a place to escape quickly rather than sit and manifest and begin to cause damage." More that there is no flow inhibition by stronger currents closer to the front of the engine causing flow stagnation. Higher pressure caps will help with the cavitation and thermal layer boiling. The big thing is you have SIMILAR flows through ALL cylinder heads. Equal flow. Same as CC'ing a head, or porting the intake to flow the same. "Now as Zmanco above is saying about having those tapped could cause less flow to those cylinders, but it seems like having it tapped up in the head really isn't diverting the flow much as the coolant is still making it's way from the bottom to the top. It's just providing more routing for the coolant and to keep it flowing quicker?" It, as said just above, equalizes flow through the cylinders so they all flow similarly in terms of coolant. This is what you want, not good cooling up front, poorer cooling out back. "Oh and with these solutions use the correct antifreeze mix with water wetter, or go a step further and use distilled water with the water wetter as it is another helpful tool in keeping temps down. I can't remember what the other type of coolant people were switching to was called or what was special about it. I'd have to go back and read more towards the beginning." Evans NPG, it's nucleate boiling characterisic is different. It has surfectant properties, and can be run much hotter. In all ANYTHING other that pure water has a POORER heat transfer ability. Water being 1, Evans being .8, 50/50 Glycol being .7, and increasing as the glycol concentration goes down. Remember I said anything above 10% glycol will require refiguring heat transfer rates. "So guys did I get it right? Did my reading comprehension work? I'm definitely planning on doing the 4-6 bypass to my spare P90 head and have it fully rebuilt. I'm probably going to have to end up pulling my existing head as is..." You be the judge by the commentary.

The hand throttle hooked to the throttle pedal. A little 'c' shaped bit of metal was tacked on the side of the pedal to hook the hand throttle ball into (kind of like the hood release lever, but 'not a box')... Actually the enrichment lever on the SU's did kick the throttles open a bit but the hand throttle could be used to overcome that and open them even more. It's a holdover from the development of the 165HP Triple Mikuini PHH Carburettor Option that never made it to our shores. They used a 'starter circuit' as well, but did not have a fast idle cam, so having a hand throttle to hold the carbs open further after starting the engine using the starter lever was necessary till the coughing of lean emission-jetted Mikuinis got some heat into them... (Somewhat like the SU's if you open the throttle on mikuinis while cranking the car and engaging the carb starter system, you kill the vacuum to that circuit and render it useless) Like Paul Harvey says: And now you know...the rest of the story. Litigious nature of the USA got those hand throttles removed Post Haste! Same as our 83ZX's got foot on brake to shift the damn Automatic solenoids well before Audi and the Nannystate Mandate that you have to have a device to make you put your foot on the brake before you can shift the car out of park.... Incidentally, the Camry I have as a rental right now has a manual bypass for the foot on brake function. All I need to do to put the car in a gear is press the button (reached with a fingertip when my hand is on the shifter) and shift away! Think the '09 Camry's got that in the North American Market???????

Europe...strange place. Interesting they are flying the Red White and Blue next to the Eurotrash "Swedish Hot Rod Association" winged sno-cat (or is it a fire engine)... Maybe the chef from the muppets was involved and something got lost in the translation?

Earlier Sprockets are Cast Steel. Later Sprockets are a sintered metal composition, and are lighter. GM did this with some parts in the late 70's while I lived in Michigan, we had a GM Engineer come fuming about the gears from our shop not holding up. Shop foreman took the gear, held it in his hand, then dashed it onto the ground. SHATTERED! Just looked and said "Ain't our gear, we machine from XXX Steel, that's a powdered metal composition gear from somebody else!" GM guy was shocked. Haven't heard that the Nissan Sintered Metal shatters or anything like that, but the old JDM Crowd tended to hoard the very early gears, and preferred them for 'modification' into adjustable units. They seemed to think they lasted longer and were a more durable item. Oh, and that offset-pin gear was a made-in-the-USA item. I can't recall the company that made those, but it's constructed out of an earlier cam gear. Not Dial-In-Cam but a similar name. It may be the same company who made the same style offset bushings for Chevy Cam Timing Sets in the 70's and 80's.

I think you miss the point at what rpm the engine will make the power. The 350 chevy will make 19hp at off-idle conditions, probably before 1100 rpms. The Datsun will take that to close to 2000 rpms. For cruising, the cars will need to be geared to have 19 HP available to propel the car at 65mph. Hence my statement that 2X the RPM of a Chevy going the same speed is to be expected. You have agreed with my earlier statement in your Leg-Press Analogy, you just don't realize it yet. The contention that it takes 2X the power to propel a big american car down the road also plays into the same logic, but it's an incorrect assumption anyway. Most cars only require around 19-30 HP to go 65mph. Weight has VERY LITTLE to do with it in static state conditions. It becomes important in varying conditions such as acceleration and climbing hills, be let's not even go there...

75 Fairlady Z Automatic, 4.11 Gears, stock L24 with triple 40 Mikuini PHH's & Trust/Greddy Exhaust: 28mpg steady at 65mph from Victorville to Phoenix. 74 260Z, Late 5 Speed, 3.7 Gears, Stock L26 with stock exhaust as low as 19mpg from Oglalla NE to Grand Rapids MI in about 10.5 hours (math skills). Same car running through Wisconsin later in the same trip cracked 27mpg when not exceeding 65mph through the entire state. Averaged 24mpg at highway cruise, and 17 in small cities and gravel roads playing WRC. 75 FairladyZ 2/2, 3.9 gears, early 5 Speed, 2.5" Crush Bent Exhaust, towing an 800# trailer at 3200 freeway rpms got consistent 22mpg. Gets roughly the same mileage when cruising at 3500 rpms on the highway with no trailer. Hard to break below 20 in town. Car dynoed at 147rwhp, turned consistent 15.50's in SanAntonio all day long. 73 240Z, 3.7 gears, late 5 speed, Blowthrough 44 Mikuini Triples combined commuter duty at 17mpg. Personal best (?) mileage: 5mpg...on a track, of course. One that winds through Hacienda Heights, it has since been removed I believe...yeah, track...

I stand by it, in either case, with either weight, and with either engine, with either car it will take approximately 19HP to propel a car down the road at 65mph. Where does this occur at on a 350 Chevrolet Engine? Where does this occur at on a 168CID Datsun L6? Acceleration will be the prime canidate for consideration of final gearing, and in any of the mentioned cases, none of the normally supplied ratios changed the top speed of the car one whit....but it DID markedly influence the characteristic of how fast it attained those speeds. "At the 4500 range the engine LOOSES 45HP documented HP to all the driveline and associated frictional losses!" What document can I reference to read up on this claim? As for fuel economy, there are so many misconceptions about that it's not funny. The fuel consumption curves are shown in the Nissan Documentation, and if you follow them in your gearing most people find they overgear their car quite a bit and get worse fuel economy than they would if less gear were run and the engine speed was slightly higher.

Remember the original reason for formation of the organization... To keep Sicilian women pure during the moorish conquests. A 'protection' racket in the purest sense of the word. From there, well, how shall I put it? "They Digressed" LOL

Make sure you remember to drink another beer today!

We reverse flowed a 6.6 Trans Am in High School Shop Class in 1980, so 'at least' is kind of an understatement. Chevrolet realized their coolant flow mistake back in the EARLY 60's when they did more development work on the SBC. It was common knowledge in GM circles back then, and a GMI engineer was who helped us with our Pontiac Reverse Flow Coolant System then...it was 20 years old by THAT point! Monzster has reiterated on several occasions my thoughts on this subject: THERE IS NOTHING NEW, JUST PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T SEARCHED ENOUGH CROSS PLATFORM DEVELOPMENT. Engineering is engineering, and there is VERY little that hasn't been done well in the past. We did not 'just discover it', but the internet is a relatively recent development for personal access, and it's just now getting to the point where people have the time to mention crap they did 27 years ago in High School...

BTW: Standard offerings for the Z(S) model was a 3.7 gearset with the four speed in the early cars. A five speed came with an early box and a 3.9. Deluxe versions Z(L) came with more weight, and accoringly were fitted with 4.11 and 4.38 gearsets. A Z(L)2/2 would have a 4.38 gearset, as would a five speed Z(L) Coupe FairladyZ. The four speed Z(L) would have a 4.11, and a Z(S) would go back to the 3.7. Only in the barcalolunger driving US of A did we get 3.36's and 3.54. In Europe, the 3.36 came in the Turbo Cars...for a 260KPH top speed potential with the 200BHP Non-Catalyst Version... FYI.

S30's were available in the JDM with ANY ratio from 3.7 to 4.38 STOCK (and in some cases with LSD) My buddy has a 1975 Fairlady Z with a STOCK 4.11 and a three speed automatic. With an L24, triple mikunis and keeping a steady 65mph that car will get 28mpg driving from Phoenix to LA. There is no concern for a car turning 4Krpms at 80 mph, or even at any desired cruising speed. The design range for cruise in a Nissan L is anywhere from 3000 to 4000 rpms. Gear / Tire the car appropriately. If you continually cruise at 80 mph, gear for that rpm range. Lower rpms means sluggish top-gear acceleration compared to a gearset with a lower numeric ratio. In ANY of these cases the car will STILL be DRAG limited to 125 mph, so gearing to accelerate to 125 the quickest way possible is the 'performance oriented approach'... There is nothing wrong with the cruise speed you mention. This is not a Chevy V8 we're talking about here, it's an engine HALF the size. Logically, TWICE the cruise rpms would be EXPECTED!

At 173, our car is a 'two finger ride' when in the F/GALT configuration (Raked, G-Nosed with blocked rad inlet, Belly Pan, Moons, but no rear spoiler at all) As for 'criticisim'---'I feel your pain!' LOL I'm always inviting those who think it's that easy to show up and run, the more the merrier. I especially encourage the 160mph+ stock 240 owners to show up, I need to find out the tricks they are using!