Tony D

Not a bad price for a unique body kit for an S30. It could turn heads at a Toyota convention if you drove by and ignored them, then sideswiped a guardrail just for fun! LOL

You found the source...it was from there for a cost of $100 a mirror, NIB. I bought them at their booth at the MSA West Coast Nationals...as did several other people. They brought a CASE of them and sold every set they came with. Actually, I probably paid less than that, because I piled on so much stuff, he started throwing on magazines and collector car die cast book sets saying 'discount'... I bought a lot. My wife would be a bit miffed. She found the mirrors, and put them IN HER CAR. When I went looking for them, I was asking her: "Did you see the new Nissan Mirrors I had in the white bag?" Oh, those are in my car. "Why are they there?" I thought you bought them for me and were going to put them on because I hate the mirrors that are on it! "Well, you didn't tell me you hated the mirrors, so NO, they are NOT for YOUR Z, they are for mine. If you want them, next year I'll pick up a couple more sets for yours and a spare set just in case. You DO know these are the Fairlady Fender Mirrors, not standard door mirrors, right?" Ooooh! I like those fender mirrors, can't I have those on my car, you're not going to do anything to that old Fairlady any time soon. I can use the mirrors now!

The Alamo? Is that where Davey Crockett dressed up as a woman and hid under the bed? Before Santa Ana routed them soundly? Or was that another historical figure? Muahahahahhaa!

Yeah, before I got to the photos I was thinking "U20" and when the block photo showed up, it was confirmed. Bores look to be 'oversize 5 specification' which would be the largest you could buy form Nissan. Someone took Chevy Rod Bolts and pressed them into the stock Nissan Rods for durability and ease of refreshing the bottom end (see notes above on being known for beating the bearings to death...hence reusable rod bolts. Before ARP, there was the shanked-down Chevy 396 Bolt...) Les Cannaday at Classic Datsun Motorsports in Vista California should be able to give you some guidance on the engine, and parts. As for the cam, check out the specifications for the 150HP U20 sold outside the USA, with Twin Mikuini 40PHH's...those numbers look familiar... Many roadsters now sport SR20's...talk to Les, he's done several of those conversions for customers.

If anybody commenting on the 'too cheap' pricing of the GT-R had any clue on actualy landed cost of vehicles and actual cost of production you would realize that the profits these vehicles generate would be lusted for by any other business model. If that car has $10-15,000 in costs of materials/production/marketing and distribution into it...I'd be suprised. That would be a 'high end' estimate. Back in the 80's the 'new mustang' was selling for 10-12K on a new model platform that cost $5K first year of production. After tooling amortization, the internal cost for a mustang before the (?)SN95 models (er...the body style they were selling in 94...) were retolled and produced was less than $2500. They were selling for a tad more than $14K at that time as well (annual price increases dontcha know?). There was a reason those LX's were so cheap---none of the specialty manufacturer content was in them, but the price never dipped much below 2X production cost the first year. nobody wondered how they could sell an LX for $10K in the first year of production, but the last year of production of the chassis, the car could be had for $8K? A Hyundai Excel in 1985 on the docks with all landed costs involved was under $2000, and was selling for $6000+. Automotive pricing is not based on cost of production. They get a 20-Group together, have them spend time with the preproduction prototype car well in advance of release, and part of their exit questionarie is 'How much do you think this car should sell for?' Seeing the results of those polls, and the eventual selling price...it's erie how they are so close. No GT-R is 'worth' what they are selling it for...it's ALL exorbitant markup. And the slavering Fan-Boys who dote on anything GT-R will keep it that way for a while. They know what the target market is, and that they will pay through the nose because they think they HAVE to in order to get it. Put the wrong 20 Group out there---say midwestern farmers, and you might get a GT-R pricing in the $20 to 25K range. Put in a Ferrari Club or PCA Member random sampling and you get a totally different result with an extra zero on the end. If the base car was HALF the cost and the upgraded version priced according to the actual cost escalators involved (say $10K increase over Base, if that!)....maybe, MAYBE I'd consider it. Till then it's a lot of poofta poofery, IMO! Those wheels don't cost $6000. If you knew what original 1999-2002 GT-R wheels cost coming out of the factory at Hayes Lemmerz in La Mirada you would shudder at the markup even used-wheel places were making on the take-offs!

I put my original sender into the tank so I didn't have to 'interface' the wiring connector differently. The 260 has a funky pigtail and plug that was different than what was on it. It's no big deal, you just drive the ring around with a small mallet and drift and it pops right out. The O-Ring is recompressible, they reseal nicely. Use the O-Ring that is in the best condition, they are the same far as I know. With it out, you can have a good looks-see inside the tank directly as well...maybe they're crabs living in there or something...you never know till you look!

Assymetric grind has everything to do with valvetrain stability. Port configuration has little to do with it. Have you read the Racer Brown Articles? They are very good, and nothing has changed since they were written in the early 70's regarding cam airflow basics in relation to piston position, bore, etc... For the cost of the cam...what? $180 list price? Is it that much to ask that you actually be a buyer to get the technical support? I'd say read the Racer Brown Articles on DMS' webpage. JeffP was so impressed by them, he actually downloaded and printed them hardcopy so he could re-read them while indisposed, or when he had additional time to devot to resoaking the sage words. It's kind of like the Bible...only practically applied to Camshaft Design! Links to the aforementioned articles abound. They are still good far as I know.

Ditto Pharoq... I had Antibiotic and steroid drops along with the artificial tears. The DR said 'when in doubt, drop' Anitbiotic was a week as I remember (till the bottle ran out) and the Steroids were similar duration. After that it was just the artificial tears. The way he explained it, the tears are lubrication. If you aren't countinually lubricated the chance for scratches or tearing of the flap is more possible. I can't remember specifically what he told me, but it seems the minimum was "Every half hour during waking hours minimum and more if you think you need it---when in doubt, add drops! They are cheap, and you can't hurt anything by using too much. But if you don't use enough you can screw up everything we are going to do here, and you don't want that!" And I ditto his concern: If you think something is going on, DON'T WAIT! Call the guy and get down to it. The 'rubbing of the eyes' is a symptom of dry eyes (as explained to me) --- that was another one: If you feel the urge to rub your eyes: DROPS! I was told outright DO NOT rub your eyes at ALL. That took some doing, concious thought because I was really used to rubbing them all the time. That was kind of when I realized how dry my eyes were. When I added the drops, I found my rubbing urges subsided completely. Now, years later I rub my eyes again, but now I know 'it's time to get something to drink, or just go the heck to bed!'

A gun show in Houston? I don't think so. Seems to me Houston is more the PETA wine and tofu cheese set.... BWAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I like the sniping programs. I set my price and walk away. It notifies me if I won. I have no buyers remorse for bidding up higher than I intended to after being caught up in some 'bidding war'... You can get those mirrors for $100 each brandy new... What did the used set go for?

"Shortly" Ahhh, you have great faith in Post Australia! I have has simple T-Shirts sent first class take months to arrive in metro Melbourne. Things coming to the states from Oz seem to be on a regular schedule. But even airmail down under seems to be on the slow boat every time I send stuff! Brisbane is like...the sticks, eh? It may take longer to get there then Melbourne! LOL Cheers, post photos when all's installed.

I remember when NEW Nissan OEM rockers were only $12 each, and people balked at the exorbitant pricing of $144 for a set of 12!

Yep, that's a BAE Aftermarket Turbo. The tow rig I just bought was from an engineer that remembers doing some 'debelopmental and research work for BAE on Datsuns'. My partner giggled a bit and suggested 'BRE' and I corrected him that 'No, there was a BAE as well, they made turbo kits for all the S30 series: 240, 260, and the EFI 280Z.' Wow, an old Deltagate! Cool. Rajay Turbo as well. Definately old-school! Too bad you seem to have the deriguer 'CWC Cam Billet Death from lack of ZDPP in the oil'... Bummer. Looks like aftermarket spring retainers...Odd. That turbo kit is a neat period piece.

Thing is all the five speed cars came with 3.9's instead of the US Spec 3.36 gears. Driving a non-US spec car is like driving someone's car from here that has already upgraded the differential. The Four Speeds outside the USA came with a 3.7 gearset. Still better than the 3.36. Fairlady Z's with those little Buzzy 2 liters? Anything was available from 3.7 to 4.38 STOCK! Woo Hoo! Proper Gearing for the Engine's Operational Torque Curve!

In either location---sump or the pump outlet to the thermostat, as long as the sensing element is bathed in flowing oil, it should read almost the same temperature. Sometimes the temperature out of the pump is slightly higher at the oil filter due to more heat picked up in the block, but we are talking 3-5 degrees in this case. Nothing the gauge will show, but that a digital thermocouple readout would. That location should be fine. Drive harder. It will take 30 minutes + in cool weather to get up to oil temperature. A strange thought on this, I just bought an oil pan heater, as well as a block heater for the Dually. Not that it gets that cold here....but starting that baby stone cold (30 to 40 degrees) means a LOT of water needs to be heated up. If I heat the oil and the water, I spend less time (if any at all) on the cold-start circuit. With a 7.4 Liter Dually....used mostly for short trips....that can mean a significant increase in mileage. My testing has shown thus far that I go from a solid 8mpg to 10mpg (almost 11) by preheating the water alone. Which is what I get when tooling along warmed up at 65mph unloaded. The oil heater is just bitchen cool to have, we used them on diesels I used to work on, and they make nice gear heaters for assembly work since they are internally self-regulated to not exceed specific temperatures. So if the water heater gives me warmish oil from the get go, I'm keeping the oil heater for some other stuff! LOL

I would strongly disagree with the characterization about the Isky company. Ed was the one that used the existing grinds, and many copied Isky's grinds at that time. It was when Ron Isky got out of the USAF got his engineering degree that the Isky Designs were reworked to asymetrical profiles and incorporated modern and proper design techniques. And that was some time ago. Racer Brown cams from the early 70's also incorporated the asymetric profiles that are required for proper Nissan OHC stability. And Ron is VERY much alive. And he does grinds that are custom. He knows the L Series Valve Train, and if you talked to him...when he has the time...you can learn a LOT. Iskendarian was instrumental in the cam grind that holds the F/PRO record at El Mirage and Bonneville... Someone on 'another site' recently flamed me quite severely for contradicting their statement that a '0.550" lift cam was required' on an engine making 320HP to the rear wheels. Our Bonneville engine does just that, and is well below that lift figure! I agree there is a lot of misinformation out there regarding cams, but if you scrape around in history and find the people out there that have knowledge... They know a lot and are more than willing to let people know what is right and wrong.

Basically what I realized was this: "If it's fuzzy, put in some tear drops, blink twice, and see if it gets better." It was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more than 4-8 times a day. It was more like 2 times an hour while indoors, and more when I was outside in the wind. I wsa not using the 'persistent' type of artificial tears with an oil content, just the saline stuff. The doctor said "when in doubt, drop in tears before freaking out". He specifically told me not to use the persistent oil-based artificial tears. That seemed to work for me. You might try dropping the tears more often, or follow my axiom above and see if that helps.

Even before catalyst recycling was popular, they cut out the cats. The fine is the same to a shop for selling a used one, as it is for knowingly removing a functioning one! Drive down to your local smog check station and ASK them what you need. The techs will tell you. in many cases they can test your car and will tell you what you need as well. There is the possibility that if they are on an idle-2500 static test, and tailpipe only criterion as long as it's clean out the tailpipe you will pass. The EFI when working properly is very clean, and the catalyst is along for the ride...

I could see TWM buying that piece and charging $1500 for it...

What you have is a low resolution temperature sensor. It will only give you a general idea of what is going on with the oil temperature. Low mounting in the sump may give you an idea because it's bathed in the oil more directly. Trying to get a 'flowing' measurement is difficult without disrupting flow through the line. Normally people will monitor sump temperature by a bulb in the sump. And where you are monitoring it, technically that is what you are seeing I suppose. Thing is, your thermostat is a 'bypass through the cooler' setup, to it maintains a constant temperature downstream of the thermostatic valve. In theory you should see a rise in the sump temperature as the constant temp out of the thermostat would be subject to different load issues in the engine and drain back to the sump at different temps at different times. To get the oil at a constant temperature, the thermostat will not direct a constant flow through the cooler, but rather let the oil in it sit for as long as possible and cool down as much as possible, and 'remix' your hot oil from the sump with super cool oil from the cooler return to get a given temperature downstream to the engine. If you have a highly stressed engine then the flow through the cooler would be more. During low stress engine operation likely you will have two hot lines and two cool lines. The hot lines will be 'in and out' of the thermostat in the direction of the oils flow to the bearings as the cooler may not be in play at all and the lines to and from it may have time to cool completely. During extreme stress (high speed driving up a long grade let's say)---then you will likely have THREE hot lines: To the thermostat, to the cooler, and to the engine, with ONE cold line---that FROM the cooler back to the thermostatic body for the Mixing feature. In most cases you will be able to feel this with your hands, but some times you will need an I-R Thermometer to differentiate the temperatures that are happening. The worst case is that all the hoses are identical in temperature, and the oil is something like 240+F. Then that would tell you your engine is highly stressed and producing heat that your cooler can't sufficiently reject. The immediate precursor to this situation is that you will start seeing high oil temps into the thermo body from the engine, to the cooler, and from the cooler it's still relatively cool, but even with the thermo mixing valve all the way open letting that cool oil mix with the hot from the engine...it still isn't making it back to the design thermostatic setpoint. Normally you would see 180-220 oil temperature. Examples of each situation follow: 220 from sump, out of pump, to Thermo Body. To Cooler hose may be anywhere from 220 on down to close to 100F. From Cooler hose will be something like 10 degrees above ambient temperature (say 80F on a 70 degree day). From Thermostat hose to the engine will be in the area of 180. On a stressed run, if you are datalogging, you might see 220 in sump, 220 to cooler, 80 from cooler, and 180 to engine. Overloading the engine and oil cooler's capacity (again if you are datalogging), it may be 235 and rising in sump, 235 to cooler, 190 to the thermostat and 200 to the Engine. Worst case is where you have totally overloaded the whole schebang, and you see 275+ in the sump, 275 to the cooler, 200 from the cooler to the thermostat, and 245 to the engine. There should usually always be a differential across the cooler as long as you are running sufficient oil flow through it, and cooling medium across it. Really the differentials across each part of the system would be the same if it was running at constant load and everything ws in equlibrium, but unless you are in a stationary powerplant you likely won't see it. Unless you have K-Style Thermocouples strapped to the various points to do some checking while you're actually working the engine it may become very difficult to diagnose someting wrong. If you have a LARGE oil cooler, the flow through it may indeed be VERY LOW as you will cool that oil to near ambient, and if you only have say 200 degree oil in the sump it will not take a whole lot of flow mixing 70 degree oil to drop that 200F to 180F in the line to the engine. (Check out the thread on EGT monitoring for some links to K-Thermocouples and multiple readers that can be used for this kind of check.) This can also happen at idle. In both of these cases, you will have 'two hot and two cold' lines. it will LOOK as if the thermostat isn't doing anything, but in reality it only really works when you are really loading up the engine. If you are driving in 60 and low 70 degree weather, you may not see 180F in your oil. A large sump can make it take a while to come up to temp as well. If you are running a 160F thermostat in your water system, it may take a while for the oil to get beyond 180 as well. Oil temperatures usually end up 20-40F higher than your water temperature, and react quicker to loads than the water system. When you have 275F oil temperature, you may well expect to have some water cooling issues unless you have a good cooling system and a high pressure radiator cap! I hope that made some sense to explain how it all works.

When the driver's suit costs $1100, what's another $5? LOL

Critical commentary doesn't mean it necessarily was any more difficult than putting on a used removed piece and having to attend to all those issues. Most cases they are considerably easier to fit than used panels when you consider the warts they may be concealing as used parts. For the effort in harvesting, straightening, and possibly finding rust after a panel is removed...new TABCO parts are money ahead when you look at it. Best thing you will find short of OEM repair panels.

Damn, did I type that? Where did all my rum go? Man, that stuff I took home from the office closet cleanout was potent. Nothing better than taking free alcohol home from work! LOL

Yeah, mine was some ridiculous number as well, and if you weren't 20/20 minimum in both eyes after the surgery you got a free 'redo' till you were. You are back into normal tear production, or are you still using liquid tears like crazy? I know I was using that stuff for months afterwards. And now, years on, I keep it around for long days as I realized a lot of eye fatigue comes from siimply being dehydrated and it's easier to put drops in my eyes than to stop work and 'get properly hydrated' which may take hours...

Of all places, Saginaw Michigan... I am having issues with quick loading of the photos, so I can't look at them closely. But that's a short hop from Pittsburgh. Less than 4 hours drive... I've seen less sell for more. Bad time and the wrong part of the country to try and get $3500 for that car. Lots of missing correct items. $1000, 1500 maybe. I could buy it for that and park it in the garage of the cabin up north... hammmmmm....