Tony D

Oh, I just assumed it was Moroccan Internet Quirks... Coulda fooled me if you kept quiet!

My wife walked into the room and said "What the hell is that?" I replied "My Mistress" And that is how the fight started....

There are two. I sent one to Calgary 280ZT and it was, of course, the 'wrong' one compared to what he had and had already exhaust plumbed the car for! The L20ET manifold I had was exactly the same outwardly as the 81 I took apart. But there is a 'forward' and 'rearward' location of the turbo---there are photos posted somewhere, that is true. And there is the Euro Manifold, which has 1 5/8" runners and a hole for the turbo that doesn't have a big bump restricting flow to the scroll.

That looks good. In a 240, you can use the 1/4" vent line from the driver's side fenderwell for your return---I have skipped the return line on the rail and hosed straight out from the stock FPR to it in some cases. At the back connect that return line to your setup as diagrammed. The 'big' line on the passenger's side of the car is the 5/16" feed line up front from your apparatus. As another possibility, take a look at some of the 77/78 280Z's---they have the HP Pump mounted up on the angled floor that is the 'bottom' of the storage bins in your 240. There isn't as much room there, but you can fit one HP pump using a 280 mount plate and some throughbolts. Since your reservoir will be slightly pressurized, you don't require the HP pump to be right close to it...and that allows you some leeway in what you have to fit on the plate. If you have a big reservoir (good idea), then moving the pump gives you a lot of room for locating it. Good Luck! If you have an R200 Differential, you can use a plate of aluminum that will bolt up to some threaded weldnuts in the chassis upper stringer. Using a different spacer than with an R180 (the moustache bar gets in different positions, and the plate will either be in front of, or behind the moustache bar!) you can put a pretty big plate back there---6"x 9" or so. Probably larger... It depends on where your differential is, really, and how fancy you want to get cutting the plate to fit around obstructions.

Cosmoline is available in spray cans (orange and black) at most good industrial hardware stores. LPS makes a wax-based preservative, that was used on aircraft in the tropics, which also works well. it all depends on what you are planning for storage duration. If it's a week, WD to drive out the water, then like mentioned 10Wt oil of some kind (or even motor oil) Anything more than a couple of days, knuckle under and buy some PROPER preservative oils that are persistent and STICK (this means it WILL be hard to clean off later!) Really, if you have a FRESH, HOT, CLEAN block (like out of the caustic dip and flush), the best thing you can do is PAINT the damn thing ASAP, and grease/oil everything else. I have seen blocks that were PINK because that was what they could get cheap. I have six cans of Cosmoline at home at all times. I have WD by the Gallon in manual sprayers, as well as PB Blaster. When in doubt, I brake-clean the thing, and liberally apply cosmoline. Then I go buy more. You never know what life will throw at you, and if you get sidelined for two years...you DO NOT want to come back to a rusted bore because you cheaped out on preservative! It will take 15 minutes more of cleaning with light solvent to clean off cosmoline that has waxed up and hardened compared to other things (you can grease over the cosmoline after it's waxed up, then bag it as mentioned above!) How long it gonna take to remachine and liner that bore...or surface grind and re-line-bore that journal gallery? A couple of ounces of prevention beats a pound of cure in this instance to be sure!

ABSOLUTELY! I am a BIG proponent of Maaco paint with my own prep for daily drivers, simply because you can sand it off back to the prep work every 5-7 years and put another on-sale "Presidential Urethane" topcoat on the sound underworkings and look perpetually great. BUT... Along the lines of what gearheadstik said, I painted my 62 Microbus Red in 1982 with expensive multi-coated lacquer, and my "Shark Car" Black in 1985 with Rock Poly 10:1 (Japanese Imron if you need a brand equivalent). I had my wife's 66 Corvair Corsa Turbo painted Marina Blue Metallic in 1990 at Maaco for their Presidential Urethane. ALL of these cars sat out in the sun without covering. By 1997, the Corvair had matted, and now is downright flaky...that is, the paint is more akin to 600 crocus cloth than shiny paint. The Bus, amazingly hasn't faded as I thought the red would over time. Though this year the first small checks started appearing in the paint. The Polyurethane black on the Shark Car is like it was new. Actually, better than new, as it was 1994 before I ever got around to wetsanding and compounding out the orange peel from the original painting in '85. If you use a Maaco paint job, understand there is a REASON they give you a 5-YEAR "no fading, lifting, peeling, cracking warranty". If you are O.K. with blocking the car down every 5 years and having it reshot for $300 on sale, understand that will keep the car looking great if you don't garage it. How long it lasts in a garage and covered is unknown to me. But I know if you leave them parked outside the more you spend on the materials (topcoat especially) the longer the paint's durability. Boat Paint (Linear Crosslinked Polyurethane) was given to have a 20 year lifespan under the most harsh conditions. It's one of the few places you can still find original solvent-based paints used...and then outside CA... Don't think a $299 paint job is the same as one that is $2000. The materials likely are quite different. As for buying them the paint...I've always gotten with the manager and asked what system they use and match my materials accordingly. If I'm going to buy the paint, I'm going to squirt it myself.

Until SCTA changed their website recently you could find shots of us at the World Finals, in 2000, 2001. It's a Silver 280Z 2+2, with Red Sides and Blue Accents. Double Limo-Tint on the windows side and back with Moons. Shoot me a PM and I can send you some shots to your email account....Oh, waitaminit! I just remembered these online: Everybody seems to like the last one best... D'jya think the trailer, residing and bought in SoCal has been to the salt a couple of times? LOL

Second one is for the Supra. Blue one is SECOND GENERATION HKS Surge Tank. The one I copied was FIRST GENERATION (circa 1984)... The yen had just taken the surge against the dollar, and what was $500 now was $1000... And I had the time, tools, and inclination to reinvent the wheel! Almost.

"On the Cover of the 2000 Rule Book" (Actuating schrader valve near ear and deflating head...) And Challenger is correct, the #929 Red Cosworth Vega in G/PRO protested us on 'production part' grounds. That's why the 2008 rule book says you have to be an SCTA-BNI member to lodge a protest or request a rule clarification...wasted a year with that nonsense. Now since they upped and bumped the record a couple of MPH, likely we will have to use a real E30 or E31 head instead of the E88 from the L28 we had on there. I mean, hell we were making 205 to the rear wheels with something like 10 or maybe 11:1 compression. You can only pop so much dome on a 2-liter piston into a 2.8 liter combustion chamber! We ran 14.5:1 in the L28, and really we should have been running 14.75 or 15:1 in the smaller engine. Along with a much more radical cam... but cheapskates we are, we jsut cut the block and put the L28 head on the 2 liter 'to see what it would do'---About 141 at El Mirage from initial testing before we got shut down with the protest. That nixed the Salt for that year. Got protested up there and had a record rescinded once before, so we weren't going all that way until the item was solidly resolved. Now that I have my own trailer and tow rig, it makes doing the events easier as we arent dependent on just one guys' work schedule. But I digress... "Always wanting to build a lakes car" and actually doing it are two very different things indeed! Spend some time with the nev-r-dull and polish the tailfeathers some more on that Eagle. I don't know what set that off, but I'm glad it's gone.

Preaching to the choir here about weight and spoiler angle! At El Mirage the little spoiler cut 3mph at only 140. Imagine the usless drag at 200+ Car #220, F/PRO... Stringfellow stretched the cowl some ridiculous amount in front of the A-Pillar, that indeed is the car. There's a car under construction in Whittier CA (Pike's) now with a five foot stretch in front of the cowl, and he's running a G-Nose. I think his queries with the rules committee put the protest on #220 to bed two years ago. Widebody is a bit off the mark with the commentary, Daeron pretty much covered it. I'm with John C in his comment on the remarks...

Glass Bead it and coat it with alodine. I went through extended fabrication on a copy of the HKS Surge Tank back in the 80's. Nice tank. Didn't use the sloped front end, as my entry was in a different place. Cardboard mockup seemed to fit well enough... At idle, after a few launches I noticed a crack in my paint, as well as an annoying 'knock knock knock'... Thought it was the compressor bypass valve popping, nope. Saw paint rubbed off the bottom of the hood. Noticed paint on the frontmost corner of the surge box---you know, the one I didn't put a tapered front end on? Hmmm, the box fit with...damn. Mikuini Manifold off, Cannon Manifold back on. Scratch $369.65, stick it in the shed. MORAL OF THE STORY: Tie your engine down with a reaction strap or bar. The engine will move more than you think under power and braking and the last thing you want is your funnel forced hard against the hood causing deformation or worse yet cracking something off that ends up getting sucked in when the filter pops out. How much clearance is 'adequate'? My VW Bus has a deformed washer hanging by a bit of fishing line to remind me not to rush during engine reassembly...ever!

Wagon in So Cal running asking cheap $, well under 1000. Too bad I'm in Morocco now... There was a 73 240Z for $400 as well...

I saw someone who had that head in a Maxima...caught the casting number out of the corner of my eye passing through the breakers one day... went "Huh?" That's and L20A Casting... Went back, sure enough, someone had put an L20A replacement Japanese engine in a later Maxima WAGON. I wonder how they liked that smaller engine in that larger car...in SoCal? Heh heh heh...

Widened Cowl-Induction style hood out?

Heh heh heh, 'adding 500#'.... heh heh heh... I can see the internet 'lighter is faster crowd' frothing at the mouth over that factual statement.

That microsoft birds eye view was pretty neat, clearer view than Google Earth... Scary too. I thought my stuff was 'hidden' under tree cover, but only from one direction---I didn't realize they could make panoramic views from those Sat-Photos. I need to work on the camo some more. Draping netting from the trees should do it towards the back of the property, the majority of the early cars are in shade when the photos are snapped, but you can still count them. The ones lined up in rows near the house are just too easily counted. Time to make some cover and 'hide stuff from prying eyes'! I'll come back and post a link to a Google Earth Shot if I can get it to work---freakin' internet in Morocco is NOT cooperating with me this evening! DAMMNIT!

You see, that was the argument for the Tow Dolly. Then the justification for the Enclosed Trailer and Dually... You can use 'if it breaks hard' up to your first flatbed. After that it gets increasingly hard to justify an enclosed trailer. But get the enclosed trailer first and then you can start saying 'I can't load scrap metal in the back of the trailer! How will they get to it with the magnet at the yard?' And thence the flatbed is justified. You gotta make long term plans man! Don't make a mistake and buy something that screws you out of something else later on! Muahahahaha!

Ohh, that is a good idea! Get yourself some good hammertone paint to repaint it and have nice fresh metal... Though some of that industrial stuff has bondo where you least expect it! "I assure you sir, the filler application is only to even out a casting irregularity in a non-stress area!"

The flow rating for the Nissan Injectors is at 100% duty cycle. The 370CC RC injectors will result in 40% more fuel being dispensed at full duty cycle, or at any given pulsewidth. If you look at the HP people get from stock injectors in Megasquirt Applications, you can see a close correlation between them maxing out there pulsewidth and injector flow.

Daeron is on the downlow? Whatsay? Huh? ...

The Lament of MacTavish....skip to the punchline: "But you get caught screwing ONE sheep!" But back to pressing issues, none of the Z-Cars had the "NAPS" Intake manifold, those were for Saloons. All the Z's got the non-adorned manifolds, even though they DID have the NAPS technology incorporated into the ECU. For instance, I have a 1978 HS130. This car has NO cold start valve, and uses a stepper-motor idle air controller for idle kick-up and stabilization. Full EGR compliance as well as having an O2 Sensor---something none of the US spec cars (INCLUDING CALIFORNIA) got until 1981! From the years 1976 to 1981 at least, the Japanese Emissions Criterion were still in-line with the original 1967 Clean Air Act guidelines and did not deviate from them---as a result, they had a car produced in the home market that was FAR cleaner emissions-wise than even CA-Specification Vehicles. In the US the EPA backed off the regulations because of pressure from the Big Three who apparently 'were having a hard time of it' getting their cars to comply. I'm not going any further down that road...

I wouldn't move the pintile caps. Strange things happen to the injector spray pattern when you do that---unless they are talking about somie sort of pintile/o-ring combination fitting like an MSD GM style injector or something. Nissan clamped their injector bodies down using that big rubber ring, and a smaller flat o-ring on the pintile. I mounted mine using a standard O-Ring on the nose sealing like Nissans design, with the body clamp and everything. This let me the freedom to free float my fuel rail separately due to the close areea in which I was working. I got it all to fint inside, but there has to be an easier way. When I get the time, I'll work on it some more and eventually get it to where I like it.

Too Bad I'm In Morocco. Then again, I'm in Riverside as well...but any excuse for a road trip.

I would do the same thing to it, that I do with any Machine Tool I buy new from Harbor Freight: take it apart. Nothing beats a good physical cleaning with burshes, solvents, and proper preservatives and grease upon reassembly. If you plan on letting it sit, after polishing the machined surfaces with scotchbrite coate em all with cosmoline or grease and pack it away. There is a good argument for taking individual parts to a real steam cleaner. If you have access to one, the way they clean parts is incomparable and they can save time. Steam clean and mist them with oil while still warm for the ride back home in the pickup bed. The downside to steam cleaning is that it cleans so well it drives the oil out of the pores of the metal, and the heat induced drys the water off initially...but like Grumpy mentioned, then any condensation that forms starts discolorisation and corrosion immdeiately. This is where a spray of WD40 does wonders for the short ride home. It drives the water out, refills the pores with oil-like solvent, and protects it for a short time. Cleaning it physically through disassembly will also let you set up everything and know what needs attention. I'd likely do it even if it wasn't full of silica beads... For the price, why not? Invest something into it, ya bastard! LOL

I've flat-towed Z's cross country numerous times. You can get by with a much smaller vehicle when flat-towing than you need for a flatbed trailer or even a car dolly. Corvairs in the 70's were always being towed by other Covrairs to and from the races. i'm probably not the best guy to talk about 'opportunistic tow vehicle purchases' since I just picked up a 1990 Chevy Dually with air bags and 24 foot enclosed car transport using that reasoning. In my defense, though, I did transport home in one trip 4000# of Railroad Ties for landscaping my back yard, used it on another trip for 1 3/4 yards of gravel, brought home a 12X36 Engine Lathe, and a 20X24 Elevated Mezzanine (using a small trailer for the 12 foot beams that I didn't feel like piling 6 foot over the bed...) This is in addition to the tow bar that I use, and the Demco Tow Dolly I also have, and use with the wife's Frontier.Problem is that it IS the wife's, and it's BOK BOK BOK if I scratch it doing one of my 'errands'. Flat-Towing is even easier than a tow dolly. You just need four good wheels on the ground to make it work, as opposed to two with the dolly. The Tow Bars are available from Harbor Freight now for under $60, and even the Valley Towbar I bought in 1995 to tow my 240 to the national convention in Denver is still below $150 retail. That thing has been across the country towing Z's and ZX's several times, including a jack-knifing rollover in Oklahoma when the truck pulled the Z onto it's side with the towbar after htting black ice on I40 at mile marker 88. There is an argument for having a heavy tow vehicle in some instances. But the towbar made it through with flying colors and has gone on to tow even more cars since the incident unaffected. For the price it's the cheapest way to move the car if you have four good wheels! During the Denver Convention I have witnesses that my 1990 Chevy G30 Van towed my 73 240 Z at 'go to jail speeds' through the mountains and on flat ground---faggedaboutdit!