Tony D

Generally when a cap or seat is galled from a seizure of FOD ingestion, the common practice is to simply clean and grind out the affected areas, heliarc in replacement alloy to be proud, and then line-bore indicating off undammaged bores on either side, or better still off a blueprinted dimension with the head jigged in appropriate machinery. Older cylinders heads have been repaired this way for years. On L-Engines the bores can be turned oversize and bushings manufactured and shrunk/staked into place. Then you simply punch your oil holes in as required. If the boring procedure goes wrong, you simply reweld, and re-index and do it over. It's aluminum...you just add more! LOL In the VW Industry, there are a load of cheap tools that clamp into the main bearing and cam bores for various turning operations powered by an air drill motor! Many of these tools revolve around cutting bearing diameters larger in the center mains for Type IV bearing/jounral use on custom cranks, or double-thrust face bearings being installed on the camshaft bores instead of the 1/2 face that stock employs. Ideally you would do these things on a mill with a nice rigid boring bar, but a couple of bearings with a moveable boring head cutter and an air drill and many people have made/saved/reclaimed a 'thrashed' VW case that the OEM said was a 'use it and throw it away' kind of part. And that the tooling STILL exists to this day when the cost of a whole case assembly is only around $349 is a testament to people who want to keep what they have in operation and not buy a new part. OEM's are notorious for not making fixes available cheaply. The Aftermarket will fill that niche soon enough. And if you have a good machine shop, that kind of repair should be no problem. It's all a matter of how you phrase the question many times. /Threadjack Warning/ "We Digress" LOL

How so? I just bought a complete LD28 engine for $170 plus a $40 core charge (for which a Rusted lump of L26 was returned)... Heck, the Four Speed Autobox that was on the back was another whole $90 (plus $20 Core, for which a Seized Lump of L26 Jatco 3N71 was returned...) (A million thanks to JeffP for sacrificing his 'find' for my daily driver fuel savings!)

More Boost achieves the same horsepower without trick parts and one-off components... Not as snazzy when it comes to benchracing, but from a practical standpoint 'horsepower is horsepower' and from an engineering standpoint I would think the lower the rpms it's achieved at, the better as reversal loads go up as speeds go up... Is there a particular reason you need to turn 7000 rpms (i.e., Bonneville Top Speed Trials, Trap Speed due to gearing, etc) or what? If it's simply horsepower you are after, turning up the boost will achieve the same results far cheaper.

LD28's are good for more than just the crankshaft. Next time you're in there raping a perfectly servicable diesel for it's crank, pause long enough to pick up that tasty oil pump drive they have. No long spindle on it at all... Just enough to drive your oil pump! In your frenzied rush for crankshaft bliss, you overlooked that tantalizing tidbit just waiting there to be massaged... I digress...

'is it possible to have 300whp on a 3.1L N/A carburated z engine without going to robello or another engine builder.' Andy Flagg built and assembled his 0.040" oversized L28 in his garage in Clairmont putting out specific power like you mention. Twice...once on a 2.8, and then a 2.0 L6 that made 205RWHP. No Rebello, no engine builder except Andy...in his 'garage', behind the rental house in Clairmont. As John C said, the trick is in attention to details. I don't know about needing any special rods unless you have some really lightweight piece that you just gotta have. The stock rods adequately prepped are more than adequate for that kind of power level.

Yes, the Zinc (ZDPP I think is the acronym for the specific ingredient) is crucial for older cars with a high sliding load in their valvetrains. OEM's have seemingly seen this as well in some of their 'factory rebuilt' engines. More and more OEM's go with rollers, and Zinc is a 'bad for the environment' kind of thing, so API standards have changed over the years to accomodate the Environmental Issues. For us with stone age stuff, we're stuck. Diesels have high load inherent in their operation, much more so than our engines, and theirs is the last domain of ZDPP Rich Lubricants out there. The 'run it for 3000rpms for 1/2 hour' is an example of a non-hardened lobe run in specification. This is for cams that are not nitrided, induciton hardened, or otherwise adequately treated to give the proper rockwell RC Hardness level on the cam lobe itself. It's a 'work hardening' situation where you run them like this to put heat into the lobe and get a surface hardness. This was common when I was going through apprenticeship training, but as far as I know this is more of a domestic engine (American V8) than import thing to do. This goes to reading the cam grinders breakin recommendations and following them to the letter. If they say 'do it' who am I to argue? Far as I know, Isky hardens their cams after grinding and also puts a coating on them. And talking with Ron directly, he will recommend if you have a good regrindable Nissan Japan Core, to send it in for regrinding rather than using a new cam billet. Paeco in Birmingham AL has welded 'Paecolloy' lobes and journals to their cams, cranks, etc. They offer a lifetime warranty on this hardfacing alloy, and for an engine where there is limited accessibility to spares, it bears considering. I would be interested in knowing if they would weld up a CWC core with this hardfacing alloy, and then have it ground... Hmmmmmmmmm...

There was a guy selling lightened stockers out of Japan. A Friend bought one, then took measurements and did a 'half diagram' with radisuses, dimensions, etc... It's buried on my desk someplace. I don't know if he ever had photos taken of it, but I suspect with his diagram and taking it to any competent machine shop you could replicate it for around $40-50. That was the going rate in L.A. at Griffins Machine in Paramount when I last did a run. Some guys on another board did theirs mail-order through the same place...and with postage it was still cheaper than for the one being sold on e-bay. A photo won't show you much unless it's the front side of the flywheel, that faces the engine. That is where all the work is done. Instead of being 'ring gear thick' or thicker, it's undercut to where the ring gear is on a small teat of metal attached to a flywheel that is cut down to a fraction of it's former thickness. Looks like an HKS, Fidanza, or Kameari flywheel, only slightly thicker near the crankshaft mounting area, and in the frictional area.

Woah, that rear mount is almost ideally situated for the setup. You said there was clearance between the engine and the firewall... Hell, that's almost 'turnkey'! LOL "The concrete truck broke" so no pad this weekend Frank. But I am planning a concrete marathon on the holiday weekend coming up---by next Monday evening, I should have concrete to the fence. Then some digging, and final pad pour to tie it into the roadway and I'll be 'whole' insofar as a driveway. A driveway what can take an empty 40 foot Hi-Cube container parked on it... (hint, hint! No more working in the dirt and getting the forklift stuck in the ditch loading cars!!!) Did you get me 'Nino The Plantation Foreman' foto-message on your celphone?

The rally suspension had stiffer springs to raise the car...that is about as basic as you can get. The original rally cars did not use coil-overs, just a specific strut/spring combination that resulted in raising of the car that much. In the worst case, cutting of the spring perch and raising it an inch or two would give you more height, as well as move the lower spring perch out of the way of the tire inner sidewall...

I only saw the accident as a result of the 'crunch' sound made during impact---I was looking the other way for traffic coming s.b. on normandie when I was pulling out. When I turned, I saw a red light above the intersection, the windshield in the air, the Z 2 feet off the ground doing a 360, and the Tacoma bouncing off into westbound sepulveda traffic, which was stopped for the light. Two other people who were in cars that witnessed it said the Tacoma ran the red light. One person in a Toyota made a statement to someone on the street, then drove off... At least two people stayed around, along with some Group Z people. I had to call his wife (8.5 months pregnant...) and let her know he was O.K. (relatively). If you want to see what happened, there is a post at ZC.C in Car Talk about 'Always wear your seat belts' that contains one photo, and a link to some photos I put up on CarDomain. Once EMT's and Sheriff arrived on scene, I went and grabbed my camera and started snapping photos. The car, as usual, is stored in my back yard now.

Markham, next time you're in L.A., pay a visit to John Coffee at Beta Motorsports. he has the suspension bits laying around the office to do your suspension completely, and do the swap while you are in the area. Not to mention properly tune it. He won't B.S. you into buying a lot of junk you don't need, and can give expert guidance toward whatever your goals will be. I know what I've been happy with on the long-distance driver...but that is beside the point. Talk with John and he won't steer you wrong. PM him, matter of fact, I'm sure you will get an educated reply.

The problem with cold oil is that not only has all the oil settled to the crankcase, all the particulates in the oil have settled and gotten adhered to the pan! Then when you drain the cold oil, it simply leaves that sludge behind, waiting for the next agitation with hot oil to whip it back up into your new, fresh, oil. The ammount of oil you will drain out compared to doing it hot, with all oil contaminants in fresh suspension, is so insignificant as to be inconsequential. But the benefit of draining hot oil with all the contaminants in suspension and ready to come flowing out at a faster rate and lower viscosity is significant. I don't know of one OEM that specifies oil analysis samples to be pulled from an ICE with oil cold. They want it HOT, because that will give them a representative example of particulates, contaminants, etc without any possibility of them falling out of suspension and settling to the pan. I, too, am curious as to the logic espoused. "Get out all the old oil" is a rationale, but sketchy at best. "Get out as much of the contaminants that would affect the new oil" is a far better logic to use...and which will dictate hot oil changes. Always replace the filter when changing oil, as Grumpy stated, it can bypass, and an older filter while holding a bunch of patticulate laden oil in there can also bypass due to pressure drop at a lower pressure than you may think---causing bearing polishing and other issues. On high-speed rotating compressors, we will change filters only 4X annually. Those filters are sent to labs for analysis of particulates in the pleating. The oil will be sampled every 1000 hours (monthly or thereabouts). Then again, they are twisting 74K rpms in some cases...and micronic particles can do lots of damage at that speed. When a filter bypasses on those due to plugging, bad things are precipitated...in short order! There is a lot to be said for John C's comment about new synthetics, or newer oils in general being much more resistant to sludge formation that they have been in the past. The deposits of yesterday were a product of poor ring seal and bad things in the fuel, as well as relatively poor fuel mixture control. It was not uncommon to have to worry about 'fuel dilution' in the days of carbs running in cooler climates and 160 degree thermostats. The good old days weren't...and in many cases today we are much better off dealing with fluids for our vehicles that are much more 'proper' in their forumlation for aparticular application than they ever were before. This goes a long way towards preventing the problems of the past.

Ad, In Japan they would use Diesel Wet Liners and sleeve the block on the 1998 cc L20A six cylinder to be able to accomodate L24 internals. I don't see any reason the architecture on the L24 block would preclude that to give you at least 2.8 capacity with an L28 crank, or even more with the LD crank in there. The L28 crank in the L24 bore simply gives you an L26 with std/std components. Bored gets you closer to L28 capacity, and with the aftermarket sleeves, you may be able to make a stroked capacity 3.0 Liter assembly. When in doubt, sleeve! LOL I will likely take this route on the 260Z since it's numbers-matching. How comes the project from the Pig Barn?

Don't dis the 'blowing welds on the intake' guys, I'll state again this happened to the Zisizit Super-Z at Bonneville!!! Their top speed was hapmered on the return run when the welds on teh manifold failed (blew) and the resultant splitting was bleeding off boost pressure... Maybe someone in the script department at F-n-F actually follows Land Speed Racing. If it came from anywhere, it comes from there!

I would agree with KTM on this point. Elecramotive ran a whole separate manifold, but they still kept the thermostat housing. I know some L-Engines in Boats blocked off the uppoer thermostat housing, but let's not even go down that route---they are turning like 9500 rpms continuous and have 70 degree water supplied directly... no I'm not even going to do it.... No! "I agree with KTM, let's not go overboard, fix the issue that is present and don't overengineer a solution to something that won't exist in your situation."

What we would do when I was stationed in Japan was go to the LOX plant on a Friday, and 'borrow' a bunch of CO2 fire extinguishers that were in for service. They all had to be discharged anyway, so that we brought them back empty on Monday made the guys at the e-shop happy anyway... We would chill the intake manifold and intercooler with copious blasts of CO2. Having thermocouples in the air stream (er...let's not discuss parts soucring now...) to verify you have cooled it down. This made for some consistent runs relatively quickly. A quick blast across the radiator did wonders for helping keep it cool during long pulls as well. When they started marketing NO2 and CO2 based intercooler cooler systems for cars in the past 2-3 years, I just started laughing...we were doing this in 1985! I'm sure some other airmen were doing it before us, I know using CO2 to chill-freeze a beer keg on the boom of an MJ-1A bomblift is as old as the hills... What I found works well is if you can find an old "Swamp Cooler" and them make a custom duct for the front of your car. Put it on a dolly so you can wheel it around...but it's just another huge thing to cart to the dyno. But you can get 10,000 cfm fans that will direct a lot of air into a small area with decent static pressure---far better than what most dyno shops have. And sometimes they want to buy your mostrosity or 'offer to store it for free' after they see it in use! We put a separate radiator into the Bonneville car for dyno pulls. It is a custom 5-pass radiator that Andy had made to cool his 502 Caddy engine... "It works well" LOL

I know Bryan, that's why I mention it... Chris doens't have any vested interest in perpetuating any internet myths, and stands as a recognised expert in crankshaft torsionals... I, for one, would really appreciate his informed opinion about the orders, frequencies, critical speeds, and torsional issues inherent in the LD (or any other Datsun L-6 counterweighted) crank.

Is any modification required to run the hydraulic pivots to 7000? My 83 ZXT seemed to tolerate 6500 without much ado. Is the extra 500 rpms that critical? Is it a hydraulic regrind or a mechanical regrind---as from my understanding the ramps on the two different cams are quite different.

Why would line-boring RB Cam Bores be any different than any other line-boring operation? At worst I would think you would weld into the lower seats to restore proper height, and then line bore till true on original centerline. (Just came first to mind when the comment about 'rendering the head useless' was broached.) What I used was a Military Chemical that all I can remember was 'Jet Engine Oil Gas Path, NOI'---it was a amber liquid that when mixed with water gave a white appearance, and was injected into the front-end of jet eninges while running to clean the blades. When used full strength, it would clean grease and grime off aluminum parts like nothing I've seen...and would not turn them black or corrode them. When you had done your scrubbing, you simply washed it off with water. I posit there is 'simple green' that is not green, that I used at the Natural Gas Company that had similar effect when used full strength. I do know that run of the mill simple green put into either a steam cleaner, or hot-water washer will STRIP aluminum parts CLEAN to bright silver looking without much effort as well. My son was amazed that we cleaned off all the encrusted gunk and grease from his L20B using simple green laid on full strength and simply brushed to loosen the hard baked on stuff, then pressure washed off. Later that day we did an LD28 using the steam cleaner injecting full strength simple green and it did the same job in about 20 minutes of spraying, instead of three hours of scrubbing and working it by hand. I would assume leaving it submerged in a vat to let the chemicals do the work with some slight mechanical agitation would work well. They sell hot-pressure blasting cabinets now that will put the head on a rotisserie in the center, and blast at 750psi with nozzles, a water based solvent that will clean everything off but QUICK! You can do the same with a bucket of HOT water, simple green, and toothbrushes right at home....it just takes persistence and time. For blocks I have used easy-off mild lemon scent (no gloves formula) for years to remove baked on grease. JUST DON'T GET IT NEAR ANY ALUMINUM!

Ya know, with Chris on this thread, it might be a good place to ask about the '7500 RPM Limitation on LD Cranks' comment that floats around the internet all too often... As if some irreprable harm will come to catastrophic end should someone deign to rev their 83mm stroker L-Engine over 7500... Just a passing thought...

180 mph from 37X HP? I'm assuming "lightweight headlights" refers to the G-Nose? Aero advantage comes from said lightweight headlight modification. In 1 mile, or half that distance? Sounds like you should make a run to Maxton and get some trophies with that screamer, they have a 1 mile runup to speed contest... Certification will put all aspersion casters aside... But for me... 180mph with under 400HP in a Stock Bodied S30, in less then a mile? I'm with John C on this one: "Keep Digging that Hole"

I would tend to disagree about the ball-spring regulator being non-modulating. While it's true the thing holds the wastegate closed till the spring-cracking pressure is reached---after that point it functions normally as a 'seethrough' device on-boost, letting the wastegate do it's thing. It doesn't just pop open and stay there, it will pop and let some air in, then close in a rapid cycle bringing it up to full pressure like any other spring-regulated pressure regulator would do. There is an orifice in there that can be tailored to snub this action on rise, as well as drop in manifold pressure. What you will see, is increased turbine speeds on drop-throttle as (depending on where you take the signal---mine is at the plenum) when that plenum goes to vacuum, the spring ball (which actually has a bleeder hole downstream to allow wastegate closure) will close and hte WG will close at the rate that the bleed hole will allow. If you feather the throttle slightly, on a WG with no spring valve in it, it may crack the WG slightly, while the spring valve equipped line hold pressure off the diaphragm allowing for faster re-spool. The spring check-valve functions exactly the same as your FPR: Spring pressure over signal against contolled pressure (plunum). If you have a bleed hole too small on the downstream side, you can have problems at lower boost pressures (even higher ones) of the WG 'sticking open' on drop-throttle and the turbo boost response going to hell. Small bleed hole will give you the 'open or closed' feeling on boost rise, but will conversely be very sluggish to respond on multiple throttle applications like feathering or WOT idle WOT in quick succession (like a burnout or doing driving tricks). BAH! It's time for lunch and I have a meetting I have to go to. But I have been a convert to the Spring-Check Style Controllers due to their nice on-boost speedup of the turbine. After boost is on, they should act transparently if their bleed orifice is sized correctly. Valving the orifice on the spring-style will allow you some trim as to how the wastegate closes on rapid throttle movements mostly, but it's really splitting hairs. Bigger orifice will allow some creep over set pressure on initial rise, but eventually it will settle. Valves on the orifice can be plugged with dirt, making for some 'tuning issues' after time has passed... I have put spring-style valves in all my turbo cars---even if it's only set to stock boost. The torque rise from that closed wastegate makes for much more drivability when you are not downshifting to make threshold rpms. Lazy Bastard that I am, I like this...

It wouldn't hurt. The head I have on there now is an L24E N47, changed some time in the past. I have another E88 of proper vintage for it...but 'vintage' is the key. The car is numbers-matching, and my wife will eventually return to driving it so she wants everything looking stock. I will probably not do the mod to this car, but my 73ZT will get it on the new engine, as well as the 71 "Rally" vehicle. They aren't 'stock' by any stretch of the imagination and I'm not constrained by that requirement on them. Actually, now that I think about it, screw it! The N47 is going to be a throwaway anyway. I think I just might do this just to see how it helps the spark knocking. I got some 1/2" tubing and swagelocks a-lying around the yard. Hell, I need to change the coolant to stuff with water-wetter in it anyway. What the hell. Why not? I'll repost when it's done. I got to do it while it's still hot or we will have to wait a year to see the results! LOL It's my 'daily driver' now so that is in the mix... It has to be 'back up' before any weekend is complete.

Maybe a different way of stating that would be benificial (to rephrase it, quit putting it the wrong way!). Like putting what you JUST posted in the second followup post instead of posting "658HP??? Any actuall documentation of this?" Sure looks like a call of "B.S." to me. Especially the scoffing way the MAF item was phrased in the same post. Frankly, the follow up post looks like a coverup to the original intent. I don't see any reason the SECOND post could not have been posted originally, if the intent was really ONLY to 'learn'. "Age has nothing to do with it, what so ever." ---That may not be true at all, in fact it probably is more true than you are willing to admit. Perhaps with age comes a tempering of word, and subtlety of phrase that few youths posess. Just a thought. The second point is that you are the one with the dyno...so it would be far cheaper for you to do the work and find this out than having more R&D done by Jeff just for your curiosity's sake. If people are curious, they should put THEIR money where their curiosity is... I know when the Wind Tunnel Testing was in the works, I put my money up...

Jeff is being conservative with those numbers and the response. The 'high end numbers' he has dynoed on the Mustang are known to probably three people on the face of the planet, and one of those probably has forgotten them already. The statement about 'proof' was uncalled for in the first place. Mainly because the engine is still undergoing development. It was only an 'interim' number to show the progress. As I recall, there was a goal set of 600 CRANK HP rating at the outset of his project. I can say, from personal observation of the dyno runs that unless there is some magical way that drivelines generate horsepower (negative driveline loss percentages) I can catagorically state the following: "JeffP's original stated Horsepower Goals for his buildup have more than been reached." He's 'just fiddling' now, curious as to what other things he can do with the engine flexibility wise. [/Threadjack Warning]