Tony D

I don't work in absolutes, I won't say 'no matter what internals I use' because a big cam will shoot your vacuum and give Hc out the ying yang... The guy with the Maxima is running the stock L24E ECU, and will be running Methanol Injection to allow for higher boost levels without an intercooler. The engine bay is crowded enough, this kind of stuff can be easily hidden using spraypaint... But the answer is the thing has to pass out the tailpipe and LOOK stock, as well as have the stuff functional like EGR, etc.... You add an intercooler and go to the referee, or not have a Cat on the car, you are wasting your time. Stock means stock, gentlemen. The closer it stays to stock, the better chance you have of not raising flags. You raise a flag, they clook closer, they look closer, you get screwed. it's that simple. Worry about getting it to pass, and THEN modify it after the Turbo is listed on the Door Jamb with the BAR Sticker. As for as Megasquirt, it's a dead-on illegal modification. It gets found, it fails you. That being said, I 'have heard' of several VW Busses running around a certian "Non-Attainment Region" who have successfully been through two SMOG checks now (DYNO SMOG CHECKS!)...they used a stock-looking wiring harness, or hacked their stock harnesses to do their MS conversion...so letter of the law says "No, Megasquirt is Illegal" but in practice if you can pass it by a dullard then...well... Again, the best way to do it is put everything STOCK in there, and get it to pass. Then screw with what you want to do, and worry about a general smog check by a dullard who is content to look, wiggle, and run the machine. You don't want to screw with the referee, sometimes they will know what they are looking at. But Turbo is Turbo...you have a stock J-Pipe on there, chances are good that is as far as it will go. I mean, c'mon man, the guy put an L28ET into a Maxima Wagon! If it can pass THERE....

Yeah, it's one of the reasons JeffP always regrets calling me and discussing anything! "Every time I talk with you it costs me $2000!" LOL If you are considering an electric pump, the plumbing is secondary, really. I believe if you take a look at how the Electramotive People vented their heads, reverse flowing will be a snap, though the bypass circuitry may need to be rethought. And electric pump pumping into the head, and out the stock waterpump location would not be the most difficult to do, especially if you use a nice aluminium plate to replace the water pump and use that as your 'outlet housing' for the thermostat. With the Pontiac we did for a class project, we reverse flowed a 6.6L Trans Am (great to have GM drop off flood vehicles every year!) and ended up using a much smaller radiator---I want to say Toyota Corona or something like that. Granted the external pump design of the Pontiac and SBC is easier to alter than on our Datsuns, the electric pump option makes for an interesting alternative. Really, pushing it in there cold to the head (130F maybe...), and under pressure will really halt any kind of spot-boiling issues in my mind at least. The problem is the coolant already heated when it hits those head pockets, well over 100 degrees in any case, and with the way Aluminum wants to transfer heat...oooh, bad! I have been convinced that when the Bonneville Car goes Turbo, I will figure out the plumbing issue and do it that way. From the way the Pontiac acted during our winter testing, the reverse flow really made for a better, more behaved vehicle. With a high specific output L, I think the reverse flowing of the system would reap many benefits if from nothing else, the decreased water temperature being introduced to the head. I can't think of any high-efficiency water transfer system that does not put counterflow cooling at the head of the list: coolest water at hottest point of heat generation. Heat exchangers, refrigerant systems, etc... the only possible downfall is the formation of steam bubbles and having the pocket go to the head...proper venting and bypass lines should eliminate most of this danger as it does in industrial applications everywhere.

Buy a new shaft, find a suitable hardened dowel pin (JeffP and I used a 3mm Hardened Pin) and then go to it. It was spotfaced, drilled and then reamed undersize to the 3mm dowel, then the dowel (frozen to -40 in a freezer) was pressed in using an arbor press. Of course the hole was deburred, typical machinist practices were followed, ends of the pin were staked just to be sure... If I had not SEEN the thing jump almost 180 degrees while on the dyno during a hiccup, I would NEVER have thought the thing would have done it like it did! We retimed the distributor, then ran it again till we got a slight instability, went back to idle to check time and found the timing had moved 7 degrees! Once they go, they go again easier. Since pinning it, we have not had a problem with it moving. It's probably overkill with a 3mm pin, but meh...I know it won't spin! LOL BTW, I have JeffP's OLD spindle in my car, it DOES NOT line up with the mark on the oil pump, so I had to time it 'by guess and by golly' to get the proper 11:25 drive tang positioning. That is the only reason I say to use a new shaft: you can pin it and then timing the engine is a matter of lining up the 'dot' with the mark on the oil pump and stuffing it up there, as opposed to dicking around trying to figure out how many teeth to offset to get it right.

Easy as pie, run your engine till warm, shut down, drain coolant. (This sounds wierd...) Refill with the best technical grade Isopropyl Alcohol you can get your hands on, I can get 99% from the hardware store. Let it have some residence time to assimilate the water left over, then drain and leave it open to evaporate. Alcohol Flushing is very efficient at removing trace amounts of water in any oil system. I have pumped 100 gallons at a time through large Centrifugal Compressor gearboxes and sumps after an oil cooler had broken some tubes and then contaminated the system with water. Those high quality pinions and thrust collars don't take long in water to corrode to the point of uselessness! I cuirculate with a diaphragm pump. For the Block you can probably get away with a gallon in through the thermostat housing, and drain it into a bucket through the lower hose. Heater Core, if you have one could be done separately. Alcohol works really well for soaking up water from just about anything! Cleans up grease and oil as well---and usually won't kill rubber seals so it shouldn't have any affect on the water pump seals or stuff like that. Good Luck!

Then again...like GM found out in the 50's, but didn't take the $$$ to implement till the recent SBC Generation...who says the coolat needs to enter the block? Kind of stupid, no? Putting the coldest water in the coolest portion of the block---totally opposite of any other heat exchanger! I reverse flowed a 6.6 Pontiac a long time ago, after reading some articles about it, and having it make sense to me: Coolest Water entering the hottest portion of the engine, and then pulling that heat down to the block where it aids in keeping cylinders round from equal heat top to bottom... Really cools down the heads as well. I just cause all sorts of problems making statements like this, huh? LOL

Anything without a CARB E.O. number is illegal to add to your vehicle. Period. Exhaust gets into a grey area as 'replacement parts' are kind of open... Yes, if the car had a catalyst, you need a catalyst...a 3" High-Flow will support more than 600HP and not cut anything appreciably off any sort of power so why not have it on there?

My gawd! I'm on borrowed time with 42K miles of boosted (17psi and up) on my N/A 77 Block/Pistons/Head.... The California Smog Check is so easy to pass legally just put the parts on, go to the referee, and get the sticker so you don't have to bother with taking all the stuff off every time you smog. I know people who were afraid of the process, and then called me on the celphone afterwards gleeful that they couldn't believe how easy it was to do it legally! I had been telling him it was no big deal, but until you see how easy it really is, you can't really fathom it. I mean, the guy has a 10psi Turbo Maxima WAGON... That is about the most unlikely vehicle for the swap, and his is passing both visual and tailpipe. It really is not big deal. Do it right, register it correctly, and if you ever get stopped in a roadside check you have the sticker that basically keeps your car out of impound for an illegal engine swap! Don't by the gloom, doom, and impending catastrophe naysayers...it's all B.S.

If the speed sensor is the same one they use on the 240SX, then it should take a standard speedo pinion. The 240SX speed sensor fits in the late ZX trannies, and if you 'slot the groove' and rotate it 180 degrees it will fit in the early cases as well. If it's a gear to drive the sensor (like the 240SX) then it should be converted pretty straightforward. If it's an MPU that reads something obscure like output shaft gear teeth...then you're poochin' it bigtime! Good Luck, let us know how it works out!

I SECOND THAT SECOND SUGGESTION FROM JOHN C! Schorr Metals in Anaheim, Off the 91 at Kraemer/Glassell, North to Placentia---Southwest corner of Placentia and Kraemer. They sell surplus metal by the pound, as well as new stuff. It's RIGHT around the corner from McFadden-Dale hardware, as well! Perfect proximity for one-stop-shopping. Between those two places you can get in real trouble! They have short end-cuts of Billet Aluminum, nice for lathe projects when you don't want a big peice or to pay for new stuff and pay a cutting charge. I buy a lot of 1/4" Diamond Plate (Aluminum) there for trailer decking, and floorboard stuff. The prices are posted by color code---really easy to figure out. I have been going there for years...like since 1990! And I didn't even know they had a website!!! LOL

Jeff, take a look at the Electromotive Turbo Setup... They did exactly that in the photo, drilled holes in the cylinder head and used -6 or -8 braided hoses to a common header that went to someplace else in the cooling system near either the restriction, or radiator. That engine was pushing 800hp...and I am probably sure they used the higher operating pressure cap as well...

I asked the question one time about the orifice size on the Z32TT engine, as well as the original VG30's with turbos...they had dedicated oil squirters for the piston crowns, and I wanted to investigate this for the L on a...er..."High Specific Output" Turbocharged L-Engine that would be operated at boost for long periods. Like 5 minutes to 10 minutes at WOT at a stretch. I figure at that kind of loading, all the cooling I could get to the piston crowns to remove heat will be helpful. Some of the stuff those rod squirter holes do is lubricate the piston pin as well...the rod isn't gun-drilled for forced lube up there, so the squirter and piston crown drainback is all that lubes a full-floater!

Only in the Aerosol-Covered Mists of "Back East" will you find such an animal... There, the ressurected Corpse of Freddie Mercury has taken up the strange job of modeling with Auto Interior Parts...

WOW! That's some restriction! Thanks for the clarification. BTW, a 'very accurate gauge' for this measurement would be a mercury manometer---this pressure would indicate as roughly 2-3" Hg... and with much resolution. Easily checked during a dyno run. And yes, I went back and checked my DDA books, and theirs IS Inches H20---when I did the conversion from PSI to "Hg I went "oh. maybe I misrecalled...) Two Strokes, what can you do? LOL

A cam when ground is only as good as the guy grinding it, and is really NOT a 'bolt-on' part! You have to degree it, of course, but beyond that, you need to make a few dyno pulls a couple of degrees advanced and retarded to see which setting gives you the best compromise. Our Bonneville engine was PEAKY as hell and had trouble between the gears set 'straight up' we ended up making some dyno pulls advanced and retarded and found that at 2 degrees our torque band widened almost 2000 rpms! We didn't loose one bit of top end power (maybe 2HP as I recall) but we had a torque plateau that now went from 4000 rpms up, instead of starting about 5700 rpms and pulling to 8200! 2 degrees! Does that mean the cam grinder was off on his settings 2 degrees when he ground it? Does that mean the design of the valve opening and closing events was off two degrees when it was designed? Or, more likely, with the setup we had we got the best results at THAT specific point? I tend to think it was a combination of the grinder being inattentive, and us simply correcting an error that seems insignificant. FWIW, at four degrees we lost both torque and power, and going to the other extreme didn't net anything at all, and in fact was a net loss at every station. So what I brought away from it was 'it was close, but we had to make it right'---it was dialed in---what the cam card said was where the events occurred, but dialing it in to the engine regardless of what the cam card says is what netted us the ability to pull the next gear at 140+ mph and keep accelerating! Since this time, I have become acutely aware that sometimes the people they have grinding cams (regardless of source) may not be paying very close attention to what they are doing all the time! If you are concerned about torque, dial it in on a dyno. Tomei makes a nice adjustable gear you don't have to take the gear off to change it, just nudge the cam after loosening the clamping bolts! Good Luck

The new Ingersoll Rand #2135 Titanium 1/2" drive Impact Guns have 1100 ft-lbs instantaneous reverse torque with 700# normal... and nigh on 625# in the forward direction! It's a composite body, meaning it's UNDER 4# in your hand as well. 7 Vane Air motor....5CFM Nutrunning, and 24 CFM busting...gaaaarrrrrgggghh! Under $300 as well (check Harbor Freight) Times are changing gentlemen, and those old tools just won't cut it! Many pros are grabbing those Ti guns because they're CHEAP and they have the power of what you formerly used a 3/4"drive to do! I use one to do the 2 5/8" Casing Nuts on a 4C Centac---used to hang a 3/4" impact to do that, and it was a ball-buster to get to some of them...now with the 2135 I can almost one-hand the operation, and when you got 44 Nuts that size to do...LIGHT comes in handy! LOL

"it was a bit of a surprise to me how much the cam changed the sound of the exhaust." Changing the advance/retard of the cam while dialing it in for maximum power will have the same effect. When we had the Bonneville car dialed in 'straight up' the exhaust valves were opening with pressure still in the chamber, and it sounded like a NHRA Top-Fueler. Some people were actually scared when we fired it up--sounded baaaaada$$! But we got more power as we dialed it in, and the exhaust note (that which you get on straight headers with no exhaust attached...) changed quite a bit!

What is your actual fuel pressure? Short of that, there is no other place to start from the information in the post. Clean connections on all EFI related points, including ECU plugs and pins. Clamping the return line makes fuel pressure go up, meaning lean. Normally everything makes these run rich... "Bogs" is a pretty non-descriptive adjective, do you mean it's popping and backfiring and just not going over 2K? If so, I'd look to dirty electrical connections on injectors and the ECU failing all else.

I just want to clarify one thing: "anytime youve got more than about 1-1.5 psi of back pressure your potentially restricting power potential" Are you meaning PSI or Inches of Water (assuming Normal Aspiration). I know Detroit Diesel gave stack restriction measurments in inches of water, and for their blower-purged 71-Series the maximum restriction in the exhaust was 3.5" H2O---which is why I'm asking. I think the number of 1-1.5 psi is roughly equivalent to 22-30" H2O so there's a big difference there I'm wondering about.

On all our equipment, PST is the ONLY allowable sealant for tapered threads. If I go to a site and see teflon tape on ANY of the joints, I am to note it specifically as to location & condition, inform the customer that he is to remove the affected fittings and redope with PST 597 or equivalent (High Strength PST preferably) and if they refuse, get them to sign a release of liability before proceeding with ANY further work. This has caused much friction in the past. FWIW, I prefer the PST because you don't really need the torque and thread deformation inherent in Teflon/Tapered Thread systems. I find I can make up and remake NPT connections several times without galling, including on stainless steel when using PST as opposed to Tape. The idea of sealing without torquing the hell out of it appeals to me. As always, read the instructions, I find when I clean the fittings and use the primers recomended on some of the fittings...and then give them adequate set time before pressurizing the system it's amazing how little fitting installation torque is required to keep considerable pressures at bay! There are small copper and aluminum washers (Dead soft annealed) from the Cryogenic Industry out there floating around that crush on the face of the A/N 37 Degree Taper that allow for reclamation of a damaged fitting without removing it from the installation, as well as allowing for more thermal expansion without possible leakage---that is the only thing I have ever seen allowed in the 37 Degree Tapered Joint of the A/N Fitting... NAVAIR 1-1A-15, USAF T.O. 1-1A-15.... Oh the hours spent referring to those texts when dealing with just this subject! LOL

John C is correct, it is a tubing designation with equivalency for flexible hoses. A quick trip through NAVAIR 1-1A-8, or USAFTO 1-1A-15 will tell you all you ever wanted to know about this kind of specification. It will make your head spin! Great toilet reading as an Aircraft Apprentice! LOL

That is what I did, my harness was a prefab cable, and then I ran TPS and TACH, and O2 wires as shielded wires separate from the main bundle. Tefzel Milspec Wire as well! LOL

Try simply taking an optical CAS from any of the Nissan Vehicles and driving it by the distributor shaft. In a pinch you can drive it off the cam, but meh! Some of the CAS units on the SR20's are pretty compact. For a four cylinder you only need two paddles for ignition events ...

"325 x 475 - He calls it the Hot Street." I call it 'lack of standard measurement'! LOL What are they measuring the duration at, when it bumps off the base circle till it returns? I would be very curious to see what their specifications stack up like when compared with others who use the '0.050" Lift' standard. It really cuts down the duration, and on an N/A engine .050' lift is where you start getting appreciable flows. Turbo is different, those valves crack at the right boost pressure and you are flowing from seat to seat.

"Shablam! Poor man's L28 torque plate! No?" No... Using a 4" Slab of Aluminum you can punch out a deck plate on a Bridgeport manually in short order. A junk head cut up would not give you the same rigidity as the deck plate. Back to topic, the boring plate discussion was covered previously, lots of discussion. I've seen all sorts of high performance engines built using stone-age implements (can you guys remember a 'block top' boring bar?) so while there is 'state of the art' you have to ask 'am I competing in F1, or driving on the street'? What is unacceptable for top ranks of competition is perfectly acceptable for daily drivers with even more than occasional track use.

"This car is a pre-production model imported from Japan. The first production model was in 1979." This is pure BS. Your car was manufactured in June/July of 1978, and federally qualifies at a 1978 model. Why do I say this? Because mine is HS130-024XX and it was produced the last half of August 1978! Though your car was reworked by someone stateside. Dash cluster, as well as rear cargo area was renovated using stateside parts. The early 280ZX's in Japan had a cover, and the fullsize spare was on the deck, beneath the cover! The interior you have in the back is 'export' specification. Fairlady Z's in the back yard now: "46"-71 Z-S (S30-062XX) "50"-76 Z-S 2/2 (GS31-XXXXXX) (Late 75 Production Time, EFI Car, Small Non-Electric Mirrors) "51"-76 Z-L 2/2 (GS31-XXXXXX) (Early 76 Production Time, EFI Car, Larger Ugly Electric Mirrors, Power Windows and A/C) "53"-78 280Z-L (HS130-0024XX) (53.8.6 Tank Code matching other dates in the assembly nothing later than 53.8.13) Mine is rougher! Does yours smell like Cat Urine? If it does, let me know what to do to get that smell out...