Tony D

It indexes the pulley, not much more. If your snout is loose on the pulley, or the bolt insufficiently torqued/clamped that key won't do anything but tear up your crank snout. I'm being pedantic today...

I got delayed coverage on CNN last night of Mike Singletary's after game press conference about sending the guy to the locker room for not being a 'team player'... I think Mike was spot-on, and I think as I watched his eyes in that press conference, I got a glimpse of the same look a couple of NFL Central Division QB's had during a game. For a former Bear...he's all right. And I applaud his decision to put a prima-donna in his place. It's long overdue. I might even start watching NFL Games in general again if they get back to playing a team sport, instead of an individual exhibition of marketing opportunities.

Restoring something designed and built by others doesn't mean what you were given as terminology, or your understanding of same is comprehensive, nor even correct. Restoration is a lot different than design workup/prototyping/R&D and initial build. Engineering-wise, the engine is simply another stage of compression. It is no different than using a rotary lysholm screw into a reciprocating booster for 600psi bleed air storage for testing flow control valves, or using a centrifugal in similar service. The only significant edit I would make to my original post on this subject is that it really should say 'subsequent stage of compression' instead of specifying 'second'...there can be multiple stages. And the engine is the next, subsequent, stage of compression. If the engine is not a 'stage of compression' then let's simply remove that pesky designation of 'static compression ratio' used to describe what the piston is doing to the incoming fuel/air charge the moment before the moment of ignition. What will you call what the piston does on it's way up the bore on the 'compression stroke' (er....looks like we need to change that term then as well...what did they call that stroke in the aero engines you restored? We are talking reciprocating engines here, correct?) Please...this 'aftercooler' argument is moot. The engine is a compression stage. Argue that it's not... I'd like to see that line of logic.

An MSD Six box can pull 20 Amps. A 7 Box or the pro systems can draw even more. That is enough draw on an alternator in a competitive class to kill your chances in heads-up competition. Hence running the alternator cutout switch, or loosening the belt to let is start slipping at the top end of the track to allow running on only the battery and hope it doesn't cause too much of a miss... Sure, run your battery fully charged. But in some instances this isn't enough...hence the 16/12v dual-voltage batteries. The battery is drawn down during the run, requiring a higher initial voltage. And the comments are correct, with a lead-acid battery, it is not possible with a conventional six-cell configuration to generate anything more than 13.8 at the start. When you draw from it, it immediately starts drawing down and affecting things... See above comments about dual-circuit batteries. Then again, real racers run magnetos, right? ******************************************************* As for ice chest intercoolers, yes, for dedicated LSR Turbo Cars that is more common than a FMIC. It helps with traction, and in some cases helps with plumbing as the turbo can blow backwards towards the cabin of the car where the water tank is, instead of going to a severely restricted front end (which is ideally restricted from letting in anything but the minimum necessary airflow anyway). If you take a look at Oz's setup in his 280ZXT, you will see such a setup. No FMIC there! And when our 280ZXT is prepped, we have a legal radiator duct from a Euro-Market Car that channels all air directly to the radiator instead of generally all over under the front of the car...our intercooler will be in the passenger's compartment, and will be of the ice/water style for the above mentioned reasons.

Tsk Tsk Tsk! Nothing a little work with a drill or RotoZip wouldn't solve. Frankly, I like the "Blank" nature of the panels, because as someone with BOTH RHD and LHD vehicles, and knowing the panels are different between the two it would be nice to 'trim to fit as needed' a universal door panel, and not have tobodge together a patch for holes that are there that aren't used on one application or the other. Anybody ever find a set of S30 Door Panels with proper Electric Window Switches stamped in them? These look perfect for that application. As well as the interior of my 73 ZT... Watching this one till I get home. Looks like I have a phone call to make!

How much are you guys who 'want to find them' willing to spend? Forgive me, but talk is cheap. It would have to come as a complete setup, rockers, cam towers, ground cam, perhaps even as a complete head. Are you willing to spend $1500+ for a cam setup alone, with no warranty? And that would be at a break-even point for the setup, not amortizing development costs, etc... How about $3000+ for a complete head? If not.... you are learning why there is limited aftermarket support for these types of components, as well as the parts that are quality, and are available, cost as much as they do!

My car will boil out the carbs from underhood heat---well this is as much a function of heat as the gas formulations available today...when I'm running ERC or VP Racing gas, this doesn't seem to be as much of an issue. Anyway, it takes some cranking to get the bowls refilled to a level where they will fire the car even with the starter system engaged. To alleviate this, especially in situations where my car has been parked at the airport for a couple of months and the battery is nearly dead, I installed a small Facet Solid State fuel pump in line between the hardline and the mechanical pump. When I return, I simply connect the fuel pump to pre-fill the bowls. it has saved me 2X this year on a nearly flat battery allowing me to instantly fire a very slowly cranking engine and get the battery recharging. I don't have it on a switch or anything, I'm usually under the hood to replace the coil wire and rotor that gets pulled and placed somewhere else in the car while it's parked... Not that I'm paranoid or anything. If you hooked up a small toggle switch, you could fire it off and listen for it's pitch to change, signalling the float bowls are full and you are ready to start.

Since 1987... The ubiquitous Trust/Greddy Header Exhausts were so everywhere in the JDM that when the Turbo Cars started into production, there was a pipe made to run from the Stock T3 turbo on a 65mm Diameter Downpipe, to their twin 50mm exhaust system (you know the one I always talk about being the copy of the Z432 System?) I have had that system on my 73 240ZT since 1987, and have no issues with ground clearance at all. So to answer the question, "Yes, Greddy/Trust did it back in the 80's"... Allowed their existing product to have universal application, and flows almost as well as a 75mm pipe, without the packaging issues.

Before I tried, and he didn't return calls. Then listed them on e-bay two times now. One of the 69's up there is not his, and has not been removed from the property as of yet, as said before, buyer beware... If anybody is thinking of buying one of the 69's, get the VIN and contact me, I know the VIN of the one not his...

No doubt diesels are more efficient, but the "most get 80 to 100 MPG" claim is a bit over the top, and misrepresents the facts of the matter. Diesel Mini gets 65+ and if you slow it down even better. And it's a car I fit in comfortably... So it's decent, and possible to get 80mpg, just not at elevated speeds! The old honda Civic VX (?) I think routinely got 65+ on petrol back in the early 90's... And in the late 70's early 80's I was competing in mileage competitions with a VW Ghia that was getting over 52mpg in the contests, and close to high 40's in normal driving... And that was air cooled, 1934 technology! Literally!

The boss and his better half decided they were going to 'monitor our movements' in the companny trucks using the Teletrac system. Bunch of hypocritical B.S. was laid on us about the system. I find out how the system charges the users, and it's by 'starts and stops' of the vehicle. Tracks using Cel Towers and Triangulation. The decision is made by myself and the other lead technician to fight back... Anyway, I set up a flasher relay to make a semi-short in the incoming power line through a load resistor, making the power dip to the transducer. This makes it think it's powered off. When the flasher loaded up, it clicked off, and the power was restored. This worked great, and I installed it using pericing probles from my meter set. Eventually (the third day) I got a solid state flasher and set the thing up so it would be operating bang bang bang bang! End of the first month comes, they get this BIG bill. Everybody's readouts are printed out, and they are like a page long. My partner and I literally have a PILE about 4" thick of computer paper. Reading out 'start stop' It was over 650 events in a day! They send out the technicians. Several times... They go over our vehicles. Several times... They put a larger transducer in Tims Truck (twice) because he randomly was 'dropping out'... (Manual actuation to kill the transducer, then reapply when we know we are in a different cel zone...making us 'dissapear' for 7 miles, or show up in another town through confusion in the system!) This goes on for 3 months of the trial period. Progressively larger bills because I have trimmed the timing down to maximize the start-stop readout. Too fast and yo uskipped events, too slow and you weren't getting as many as possible in the timeframe allotted... Big news was they thought we were screwing them on time, but realized that with the records they were keeping it became apparent we were GIVING them time off the clock that they SHOULD have been paying us for...and they were PAYING a huge fee to the system because of the 'start-stop problem'... Even with all the chicanery we did, we made SURE that the first start and last stop were at least 5 minutes of 'clear operation' from the last 'Operation Backlash Event'... When the technicians came to pull the things out of the trucks (there were two technicians to remove all the systems from all the trucks-6 trucks in all), they just couldn't understand it--"All the problems with this, we've never seen this before!" Then we showed them the little relay boxes we made, and told them everything we had done over the past three months. They were rolling out of their seats laughing so hard it wasn't funny! Never use a wire tie with a serial number on it as a 'failsafe tamper proof seal' on a simple inline dual bayonet fuse holder! Best part was on the final day, and they both kinda looked around and said "Er....you need those boxes any more? They, ahh, they got the system on our trucks too...this would be funny as hell to install and screw with em!" MUAHAHAHAHAHA

Bandung Indonesia, I'm in the Hotel Horison. NO internet connection. No phone jack to do a dial up. HAVE to submit my reports so I can get paid... Pull the bed back from the wall because the telephone line goes underneath there somewhere. Find a jagged hole in the wall with wires sticking out. Hmmmmm.... Look in my Backpack, find an RJ45 coupler, and split it in half using The Leatherman. Take the wires and strip them, cut into the live phone wires (meh, it's supposedly 48vdc, so I'm told...how bad can it burn?) and splice my connector into the line. Connect to the internet via an AT&T dialup locally. I'm amazed that Bandung's 56Kbps line dialup is like 4X faster than what I can get in SoCal. Later in the day, there is a knock on the door...Maintenance. They have to come in and check the phone wiring, the neighboring room can not call out... (so thats what my interruptions and kickoffs were...) What, I say, you mean to tell me THEIR phone wires are in MY room? Just the access to them. (Access, it's a freakin jagged hole in the drywall/lath!) Tell the guy, "Come back in 5 minutes, I have to finish my shower." (I am fully clothed in the doorway...) Feverishly remove all apparatus. Let the guy come in, he 'can't find anything wrong' (ignores, or doesn't car the wires are stripped almost an inch clear!) He leaves, I hook back up to the OTHER two pair of wires I thought was a likely candidate, and I'm back to the Internet. Somewhere I DO have a digital photo of that array! Duplicated telephone 'access' at the Intercontinental in Puerto Ordaz in Venezuela (where I also crashed their corporate server three times hacking into an open LAN port by removing the plexiglass panel using my trusty Leatherman, and hooking directly into their server...)

Running a Monaco with a 440 out back on 80 acres, doing jumps and all, a fire broke out under the hood. I was half-dazed from bouncing off the roof after a couple of whoop-de-doos and said 'Rick, I think the car is on fire!' We get out, pop the hood, and FOOF! Back of the engine starts on fire. Rick says "I'll go get a fire extinguisher!" and starts to run to the house. I make the comment, "But I gotta Pee!" He stops dead in his tracks, about 20 yards from the car, turns around and yells "PI$$ ON IT!" and starts running back to the car, unzipping... I'm like... huh? What? As he jumps on the front bumper screaming 'PI$$ ON IT PI$$ ON IT!' As he starts hosing the fire... I joined in, and wow...it worked. Smelly steam cloud arose and caught us full-on in the face, so we're leaning backwards as far as we can so not to get pee-steam in our eyes. Really made directional control hard. Rick slipped on the bumper and fell backwards, unable to immediately cease his fire retardant effort, he wet himself thoroughly in 'rain' of his own making. I completed the task, actually got the fire out that way. The radiator was low, so we 'finished' in there. And decided that Dukes of Hazard was done for the day. Parked the car up front on the driveway with a 'FOR SALE $400' and it was gone that weekend. Whoever bought that Red Monaco was in for a suprise when they opened that radiator cap... Contrary to what you are thinking, there was no drinking involved in this endeavour. it started innocently enough with the phrase "I got to take down all those damn poplar saplings out there, it's going to take all day!" "Well, why don't you just run the Monaco out back over 'em...they're not that big, that front bumper will snap em all off in a couple of passes. Then just drag em all out with the tractor later and burn the lot of em!" The beginning stages were so fun, we got carried away and started ploughing the field in earnest... Whaddya gonna do? It was an overcast day, and there was nobody else aroudn to play with, and we'd already shot the Cat-in-the-Hat the prior evening.

EVERY intercooler after a turbocharger is a 'true' intercooler! It is NOT an 'aftercooler' as some contend. The function of the intercooler after a turbo is to cool the charge for density into the second stage of compression which happens to be a reciprocating compressor (the engine). Each stage of compression undertaken without intercooling between stages will show progressive degredation of density due to heat buildup. In Franks setup, intercooling becomes critical as he is undergoing three stages of compression, instead of the normal turbochagred two stages. Just that because two stages occur before final compression does not make it any less an intercooler than a turbo application alone. As long as the gas flow is intended for a subsequent compression, the cooler is referred to as an 'intercooler', the aftercooler is something where the last stage of compression is done, and the gas flows out to point of use, storage, reinjection, etc... This does not occur in an automative application...save for exhaust gas. And if you want to get into semantics, depending on what you do with that exhaust gas, the turbocharger could be looked upon as a "Compander"...but lets not get into that now, O.K.?

Sorry, I've picked up a bit of the Pidgin Accent from the locals. They do the alphabet different in Nigeria...sorry! The 'island wife' tolerates me au natural, and the goats and ewes give me a wide berth...

The thermodynamics argument only applies in steady-state full load operation. When you have periods of need, and periods of low power usage, the termal mass can be used. Your FUEL consumption goes up because you are using more HP during non-peak times, but during the short periods on-boost where you would reap the benefits of the refrigerated intercooler, your power then at that moment would be higher due to density increases. This is the same functioning as an alternator and a battery at a drag strip. Guys shut off their ALTERNATOR during the run, and run on their battery. Same can happen with a system like this, run on the accumulator for those short boosted periods. For longer runs like Bonneville, it's practically full load the whole time, so then you have to weigh out the losses against what gains you get from density. In October World Finals running at 50 degrees at altitude, probably not much to be gained. Running at Speed Week in August at 110+? Hmmm, having 50 degree air in the intake would be nice...

I may have been semantically incorrect. Our balancer guy called our for 'bobweights' of our original L28 when we had another crankshaft done up to replace the one with the buggered snout. This may have been because the pistons we had were a different weight than stock. But those gold things on the crankshaft were what was on ours when it was balanced. Maybe he's just being superflous. BRAAP, I PM'd you wit some more particulars, maybe it's 'our application' that calls for this methodology. The same shop uses them on my VW and Corvair Crankshafts, even though much of the literature of the Corvair Guys says the crankshaft is 'inherently balanced'... Hmmmm. When I'm back in country, I will have to enquire with the guy and see what is the deal. I didn't get into it too far, what he did worked and we weren't having any issues, so I never went further into what exactly he was doing. I'll ask him what the deal is with the weights if they are not needed, why is he using them. And was it because our piston/rod is a different weight from stock. This may take a while, it's not high on my priority list, though! Forewarned!

You can put spring doughnuts under the thing to raise the rear of the car, or use the taller isolators. If I was still regularly travelling to Paducah/Mayfield suspension bit shipping might have been possible...but from SoCal? Unlikely! Though I am cutting up a brown 77 280Z and will soon cut up another... They do have the parts you desire (strut tubes)...but they're big, bulky, and heavy. Shipping would be a PITA. Look locally, or find some spring spacers to put on your lower spring perch. You're in NASCAR country...they should be all over the road! LOL

Big Sledgehammer is cheap at Harbor Freight...

Yep, and if you did like me, and put a 78 Suspension under a 73, you play hell getting the back end down low enough to even look level!

There is absolutely no reason you can not have the A/C in your application. I have a 75 with an 81ZXT motor in it, and the A/C is still functional. AND it has a stock AFM. This has been covered (move the AFM to the radiator support, upside down inside the engine bay, or right side up out front hanging from the plastic tube. You use the stock 81 intake rubber boot, which slides into a Z31 Plastic intake duct which needs one fitting closed, and everything lines up. Another boot through the radiator support, and your AFM hangs there fine. You have to remove the stock AFM mount, and if you are lazy you 'hammer clearance' the fender well if you are using the Z31 Intake Tube (or not if you make your own tube from mandrel bend exhaust tubing...) And when I went MS, the only thing I changed on the inlet was taking off the AFM, and replacing it with a 90 Degree elbow from (I think) another piece of Z31 intake ducting. You simply haven't looked at the plethora of photos here, it's all documented quite well. I don't know what searches your performed, but if you searched on 'eliminating AFM' you probably didn't get squat. "Relocating AFM" should turn up just about every conceivable photo you can think of, this is a very simple matter, and has been done many many many times before! I mean, 7 posts in and you mention the impetus is to keep the A/C? That's not a problem at all. Plenty of cars have done it. Sometimes the best attack is the direct one where you tell the people what you want, instead of your preconceived solution, that way you see different approaches to the problem that you may not have considered. Yes, the AFM fits up front with the Intercooler, AND the A/C Condensor....And a big Z31 Diamond-Shaped K&N Filter with intake silencer box attached to keep the turbo whine down and nice and stealthy like...

ABCD, efgh; IJKL, MNOP! QRST....uvwx...Y? Z!

Yes, that is very effective. 10# CO2 Fire Extinguisher does a nice -110 F precool of the intercooler and really combats the thermal mass issue. Same goes for plenum style manifolds as well. Nice and chilly between runs. When you pay by the hour, the more runs you do, the more info you get, right? If your regular cooling system can keep up, that is! It is nice to have at a Dyno for more than one reason. I have a bud who recharges fire extinguishers on an 'exchange' basis. I get the run of the "CO2 Pile" and always call before going to the dyno! Helps when it's 'free'... Though a T-Cylinder and siphon assembly wouldn't be all THAT much to offer this as a service at the Dyno. Why they don't is beyond me.

wikiwikiwikiwikiwikiwiki... LOL I thought I'd mentioned the Industrial Technology Class Experiment here before... Curiously, one of the guys that was in volved in that got hired to work at Ford....though he left well before the SVT was around. I made a vacuum jacketed container and use dry ice and alcohol for some testing with a miniature AMOT temperature mixing valve and a 20% glycol/water mix. Damnedest thing is setting up a proper thermal siphon for the cryogenic side because the Neoprene and Silicone impellers in ALL the cheap 12V pumps get hard and stop pumping trying to circulate it. Add acceleration and it screws your siphon action up and your temperatures go to hell... BAH! Don't listen to me, I'm working without pants and scratching myself out in the shed!

Maybe if you substituted the wheels for a metal plate bolted to the floor with appropriate frame-shop anchors. You know the plate, something say 1/2" thick and bored to accept the bolt pattern. Then do the same up front, so it can't do the evedentiary photo wheelie... Then, rev it up, and dump the clutch and see what happens. My bet is a universal joint fractures before the studs shear. And something in the driveshaft or clutch may slip before the studs shear. And if all else fails, a stubaxle may shear or twist off at the splines before the studs shear. But it would be a fun test to do.... And then you can point, showing it IS possible to shear four M12 Hardened studs using a softer drive axle flange. Then again, if the studs are old, and stressed from 25 years of impact-gun tire changes, have stretched threads and latent cracking at the root of the first thread coming out of the axle flange... (see where I'm going with this on the andcdotal failure commentary that sometimes mentions this?) Nevertheless, still a hoot to do in the back yard on the driveway. Video it, and put it on You Tube! LOL