Tony D

PLEASE! Tell me that both you and your friend are using good old ND 30 compressor oil in your units, and DO NOT use Synthetic! PAO or PAG based Synthetic Compressor Oils WILL attack any of the polycarbonate or polyvinylchloride plastics used in piping and separator bowls. Ever wonder why the Polycarbonate Bowls have a metal cage around them? When synthetic oil gets onto the plastic it weakens it without much outward signs at all---and then catastrophically goes BOOM! I personally have been in the area when a bowl has let go. Luckily nobody was around to get hit by the flying shards. I have responded to customers with PVC systems at the request of Hartford Steam Boiler Company for insurance estimations of replacements after large runs (like you said, water...and oil...runs downhill) of piping in horizontal or near horizontal positions have catastrophically and without warning split or blown apart. This is DIRECTLY caused by SYNTHETIC OILS. If you are running PVC or ANY kind of plastic piping DO NOT RUN SYNTHETIC OIL IN YOUR COMPRESSOR!!! Also, make sure you have GOOOOOOD aerosol and condensate removing filters at the compressor. If I have a customer that wants to save money by using plastic pipe, I will insist on copper or stainless steel piping from the compressor to the Wet Receiver, and from there to the Dryer into the Dry Receiver. From that point, most everything is knocked out, and IMO the risk is minimal. For a smaller system I'd run stainless or copper to the last stage of separation, and go plastic from there. I have seen PVC droop from heat, balloon up from discharge heat, split, fracture, explode, and otherwise do some very nasty things dealing with compressed air. If you use it, try to separate out as much of the oil aerosols that you can as near the compressor as you can to minimize risk. BTW, in one case, the pipes were in for 10 years before there was a problem. They had been using Synthetic for a year at that point, due to maintenance costs on the screw compressors they were using being greatly reduced using synthetic oils. For a small recip, stick with standard ND 30 Compressor Oil, if you use Synthetic and plastic, there is a good chance something can happen. Been there, seen that! On to Tank Size: The larger tank you have, the less horsepower you need. In theory if you have a lagre enough tank to handle you peak loads you can get by with one of those 12V tire compressors! Tank capacity is good for two reasons: Residence Time, and Recovery Time. Bigger tanks have more 'residence time' for the air, meaning it can sit there and cool---this means condensate forms in the TANK for the most part, and not in your lines. Residence time means debris in the airstream has time to settle out--by debris it can mean oil residues and oil aerosols as well. Small droplets fall as gravity work on them---smaller tanks have a flow through them and can carry this out into the lines---a good reason for putting a coalescer on right after the outlet valve on the tank. Recovery time is the time it takes to come back up to pressure. Almost universally people who increase the tank size do not readjust their pressure switch accordingly. This is not just homeowners---this goes for people with 6, 500HP Dry Screw Units and several thousand gallons of storage capacity as well! What a larger reservoir does for you is of course increase storage. To take advantage of this, you should decrease the cut in/cut out differential on your compressors. Many times you can't do this with the switch that comes on most of the cheapie home units. I use relay controls and an Allen Bradley 745 Series switch from Grainger. It has both adjustable cut out and differential. Running two 300 gallon tanks, I run a 2 psi Differential on the compressor. Normally this would have the compressor running on and off with only an 80 gallon tank. But it takes 3 minutes for me to bring tank pressure up 2psi---about the same time it took the same compressor to bring it up from 90psi to 120 when on the 80 gallon tank alone. What this does is keep your compressor operating at peak efficiency (full load) and decreases system pressure variations. It's a pain when the tank is at 90psi, and the nail gun is not sinking the 3"r's all the way in! With the compressor differential being set to 2 psi, it keeps pressure constant, and doesn't really result in the compressor running any longer that otherwise. This is why you regulate down to system pressure, and then regulate down again at hose connecct at point of use. You will find your end-point pressure stays much more constant when you set it up this way, but it will take a $75 dollar switch retrofit, and maybe some relays. Grunmpyvette is correct, however you reach the pressure or flow rate is really irrelevant---you can run two or three units into a common receiver. But jsut remember that you store pressure at higher pressure, and regulate down at least twice to point of use. Run your storage tank at whatever the compressor is rated at, your lines to the shop (regulated at the tank) at 100psi, and then the point of use with proper lines to final pressure: 30 to 90psi usually. Also, making a 'ring' configuration will cut piping losses in half as any point in the system can be fed from two pipes---similar to his two into one setup. Scrounge around Portland area, there are several large compressor manufacturers in your area (Rogers Machinery, Burton Compressor, I-R Air Center comes to mind) and see if they have some old tanks they took in on trade they are looking to unload or sell cheaply. Many times you can get a KILLER deal on a 7HP 3-Phase industrial unit that will last you for a lifetime, all your cost is in replacing the motor with a single phase motor. That is probably the largest size most homes can handle with the wiring available---that will be 7 to 14 Amps 220V. If you can scrounge the tanks, you can set up a really nice ssytem with plenty of storage and separation. Just remember to put ball valves at each tank inlet and outlet so you can shut them off individually, and hold pressure in between the times you use it. Makes it nice when you want to fill up a tire or two, or even blow off some stuff and you don't need to start the compressor....just open the valve do your thing and cork it back up for storage. Air Stores Well!

The Keisler TKO that JeffP used had a custom shifter that has a three-link shift rod bolted together with serration in it to lock the rod in whatever position you put it. As I recall it was originally configured to put the knob quite abit reward from where the pivot went into the gearbox...almost 4"! I know he roconfigured it for the ZX as he didn't need that setback, but I would think any aftermarket shifter for the applicable T5 would make the shifter relocation a moot point. With the advantages of the adjustable stops on the shifter to keep from overcentering the shift rod/forks, as well as spring loaded shifting gates, for the money I don't know why wanybody would stick with the stock shifter. In for a pfenning, in for a pound! Jeff's situation was similar to Tim's as well. At 450 verified to the rear wheels, I could watch the stock T5 shift knob move around quite a bit, and the noises the gearbox started making under load were not good! Keep in mind that there was an RX7 at Bonneville running turbos that was using a transmission with a stock mainshaft assembly, at speed...when the torque of the Rotary came full on (about 160-180mph) the countershaft assembly flexed enough that the Fifth and First Gears engaged simultaneously, locking the transmission (as well as the rear wheels). This caused the transmission to literally BLOW OUT under the car, lifting it into the air where it did a series of flat spins... (and this comes from a post event dissection). When you are making serious power, stock will not cut it. This area may cause some severe, instantaneous, catastrophic failures at a VERY innoportune moment. This Mazda had made COUNTLESS passes with this very transmission, and the torque it produced during those juuuuust wasn't quite enough to make that second gear engage. But on that day, with the right air density, that little bit of torque was produced, that thousandth or couple of thousandths of flew happened, and BOOM! Totally different situation than just one pass before! This situation came up when I watched Jeff's stick moving around and heard that stock T5 Screaming. I think the stock internals are marginal at best at that power level. Thing is, Mazda guys were welding Mazda Bellhousings onto Nissan Trannies to hold the power... Be safe and don't press it till you know your tranny can handle it. From my 73, I ran the N/A tranny and purposely limited HP to the rear to below/max 350. I figured I'd go with a T5 when I upgraded. Who knows what I will use now...that N/A was not really dragged but did see AutoX and hard Street Driving for close to 17 years and held up fine, though it started out in my car with only 8400KM on it---it was from a Totaled 84 Skyline L20ET that I got RIGHT when it came into the junkyard, and then sat in my spare room for almost 3 years till it was ready to go into the car! Using one with higher mileage may not hold up as well or as long. I have about 50,000 miles on the car with the trannny in it at that power level.

I'll add this. The N/A BMEP of say an SG8 Superior is something like 48, where the SGT8 (turbocharged) running 21psi of boost is something like 148. It was a big rise. Of course specific fuel consumption went up, to compensate for doubling the horsepower, but you can see the EFFECTIVE PRESSURE of the engine rose by almost 3X compared to the N/A rating of the same engine. There is a calculus formula for finding pressure inside that Keniscope Trace, and that is how BMEP is calculated. Raising that egg above the 'Zero Axis' starts to make some real power!

What you are talking about is altering the BMEP (Brake Mean Effective Pressure) if you attach a Keniscope (osciliscope tracking a piezio transducer) to the combustion chamber (they make spark plugs for this) you can see a characteristic curve that looks somewhat like a 'flexible egg' that someone stuck their finger into on one side. When you are N/A, the curve on the bottom of the 'egg' dips below zero on the x-axis, when you boost, the whole 'egg' moves up along the y-axis accordingly. Boosting makes the egg 'less poked in' and makes for more effective average pressure on the head of the piston, which you said increases torque. The head gaskets, and the head studs will hold enormous pressures in that nice, steady rise to peak cylinder pressure (which is a ocmbination of the burn, burn rate, and piston position). When you detonate, or run lean even, the burn rate is MUCH faster. Lean burning makes the flame front rise pressure much faster, and to make a poor analogy you get a 'water hammer effect' like when you shut of flowing water---the pressure in a lean burning cylinder rises so fast the strains induced on the joints and gaskets tend to start seeping. If you ever quickly turned on a large refinery pipeline, you see that gaskets that held during slow bleed valve pressurization sometimes weep when rapidly pressurized---this is what affects sealing integrity, and once the process starts it weakens the area so it's prone to do it again. Detonation is plainly an explosion (not a burn)---technically the burn rate in an explosion is superfast. Tens of Thousands of feet per second, versus a few thosand feet per second (watch a long length of Detcord light off and you can actually see it go, highspeed phootography reveals a discernable flame front on the cord!). This superfast rise to pressure, as well as the much higher pressures produced (the burn rate determines the rate of pressure rise---for a combustion chambe that may be decreasing in size due to an upstroking piston that can make for exponential rise) simply overwhelms the gasket joint, and it fails catastrophically. SB Fords were known to lift the heads off due to stud stretching. You can do that from a normal burn at enough BMEP (peak pressure specifically)...when that clamping force is affected, then you get blown head gaskets as well. But without the 'detonation signs' of broken piston rings and lands...or burned/holed pistons. I haven't Keniscoped a Datsun L, but spent hundreds of hours on Lean-Burn Staionary Industrial Engines (Specifically the Cooper/Superior SGTA Series). What happens to the curve when you play with temperatures of incoming air, gas admission rates, even spark plug gap (for cylinder to cylinder comparison) is amazing. The key is to get the peak pressure event to happen at the proper portion of the crank position. It's not simply making more pressure, it's making pressure when the crank is ready to make use of it! Spark timing comes into it bigtime, as well as fuel formulation. Slow burning fuels will limit the horsepower you can make (there was the 'high octane makes lower horsepower' argument, and this is why) but because you have such a range of spark timing adjustment you can usually compensate for the slower burn by running more advance. Faster burning fuels will tolerate less advance (lower octane), and the spark timing can be less for the same peak pressure---this is the point where you have to make the tradeoff between slower peak rise to pressure, versus a quicker rise. The less time the heat is in the chamber, the better, so a fast event is marginally better than a slower, prolonged event. I would not say you want to detonate --defined as uncontrolled fast burn. You want the 'fastest burn' that you can reliably control without it going to an uncontrolled state. This is where preignition comes into the game. Preignition is different than detonation...you can melt the ceramic inuslatiors on the plugs, burn the groundstraps off them...all sorts of nasty stuff. You don't hear it, it's like detonation but much more insidious and damaging---you can see it in the keniscope trace as a 'big hump' on the oeak pressure. Instead of the rapid detonation spike you can see, it's maybe 3/4 as high as detonation, but then 'humps at top' and is rounded. Basically all the effects of detonation, without the outward signs of a blown headgasket. Things just melt and break apart silently. This is the realm between controlled burn and outright detonation. Engines can run like that for quite a while damaging things without any outward signs. Leanburn stationary engines are suscptible to this---they run 22:1 AFR's and have precombustion chambers at 14.7:1 with 'flame holes' to keep the lean burn chamber ignitied. This probably illustrates the difference in burn times as you can literally ignite in the precom chamber with Stochiometric, and literally light off and relight several times during the pressur cycle a lean burn cylinder that burns so fast it can burn and go out and relight up to three or four times before the pressure peak target is reached. Man, I'm going all over the place on this, is it making any sense---there is so much to discuss it's not funny!

Oh come on! Nobody will google it and post it... Do I have to do it to redeem my status?

Guilty.....

CHT and CLT is interchangable. They both have the same response curve. I have a CHT as CLT on my Megasquirt. Like you can interchange the 82/83 CAS as a plug in replacement for an 81CAS unit, you can swap in the CHT sensor and plug the CLT sensor pigtail in it and it will work just fine. Only the US Cars used Cylinder Head Temp, everywhere else used the Thermostat-Housing Located Sensor. They both send the same sort of signal, and their response curves are identical, so from the ECU's point of view, either input will work. In the bad old days, you would rig Hobbs Pressure Switches with resistors on them wired into the circuit to progressively move the thermostatic reading to the ECU "colder" maps---ultimately if you look to the FSM you will see that something like X ohms = -50F, and that's about all the enrichment you can get that way. Good enough for some decent boost as long as the pump doesn't deadhead.... Just have to have been around when we did this crap al the time to rememer it---it's nothing new! For sure I'm no electric genius, either! LOL

Ad in Rotterdam has been fitting BMW third members to the vehicles he has been outfitting for competition in Rally Events. I will be in his shop in October with a new digital camera and hopefully can document his conversion for posterity. This is the website for his shop: http://www.va-motorsport.com/index.php?page=3A&Sbm=0

For initial setup, I have used the vapor line on the left frame rail for the return...it's 8mm I believe, same as the stock fuel feed. It may be minutely smaller. I just make a 'Highpoint Loop' with the old vapor line up by the vapor recovery tank, and then vent it out the rear of the vehicle in the area of the right rear tire, like the factory did on some Non-US models (they had a good old 'dump tube' in the filler neck!) My return goes from surge tank, to the 1/4" fitting at the top, right, rearmost highpoint fitting (vent) on the tank. I picked up -6 .035" wall Stainless Steel tubing at the local Swagelock Distributor. Since I have their bitchen' bender, duplicating a factory hardline while it's out of the car is a snap...well, not really a snap---it's really a pain in the butt, but I can (have) do (done) it!

This is why I have mirrors on the top of my sneakers! To check out rusty rocker panels on Z's at shows without getting all grimy...

What I use is ABS or PVC Heavywalled Pipe. I place a slovent-glued cap on one end, with some jigsawed pieces of plywood in the end for impact dampening. Take another, and three-bolt it to the flywheel end, and it centers the crankshaft in the tube, same thing on the other end with a centrally located hole for the crankshaft pulley bolt it locates it on the other end. On the pulley end, I install a 'screw cap' end and of course the plywood for when someone drops it. I set the screw in the cap using a single sheetmetal screw so it doesn't back out in shipment. usually I will prep them with cosmoline, or other grease. With the PVC, I drop a dessiccant bag in there, and cork it up tight. No Oxygen and slightly light volatile solvents on a freshly sprayed crank makes for the perfect storage environment. Ideally both would be stored perpendicular to the floor. For this you can make a nice rack out of plywood (hint, the one you have been cutting 6 and 8" circles out of for your cranks!) and 2X6's that will hold them upright. Same thing for camshafts, some 2" PVC Fittings and one stick of Schedule 40 PVC and you are SET! Same storage routine, but I use dowels in the ends and center the cam in the tube with 'donuts' of high-density pink anti-static foam I get from work (we use it to ship turbine impeller assemblies). When I ship the stuff, I usually enclose a return shipping label, prepaid and then grind on whomever I shipped it to until they ship it back to me. They saw how I made mine, dammit, don't be cheap make your own and gimmie mine BACK! LOL If you have the facility, a wrap of cosmoline impregnated cheesecloth tightly wrapped around it, and then put in the plastic bag foamed into a box like sweetleaf mentions is also a way to do it. I prefer to put one trashbag underneath with foam, lay the part in while it's expaned most of the way, then put more expanding foam in another bag, and lay it on top and close the boxtop with a place for excess foam to burp out. That way you only open a clamshell to get to the part instead of having to carve that foam sh*t up all over... The PVC Pipes have been pretty durable. I think if I surface freighted one like that and the ship went down, when they salvaged it they could still deliver the crankshaft! LOL For longterm storage, always try to put a little bag of dessiccant in anything you seal up tightly---humidity can do bad things to parts in storage when corked up well!

Just got my notification, my HKS Type 2 Surge Tank will be in the transit stage from Japan later on this week! FINALLY after many years of looking I got one to mate with the period correct HKS ITB's that have been sitting in the storage shed now for....er....several years! My project may finally have enough supplies in stock to actually start doing something! WOO HOO!

Yeah, got to chime in with Auxilliary and say once you convert your engine to diesel, you're one of the few REALLY exempt classes of vehicles out there! Theearly cars are not required to bi-annually test, but they are required to comply with emissions. A diesel conversion is only one of two ways I know of to truly make your car 'exempt' from Emissions Compliance in California. The third would be to give your car to the state so they could use it as a municipal vehicle...cop cars, school busses, Water Department Vehicles, they are all 'exempt' from the smog check requirement due to 'undue financial burdens placed on municipalites with fleets of vehicles... What because they own a lot of vehicles they get a pass? I got 20+ cars, where do I get MY 'exemption' for all MY fleet vehicles??? I digress...

Springs are usually internal bypasses to keep the filter element from collapsing under some flow conditions (idiots that rev their engines cold comes immediately to mind) chances are good the 'orange thing' you see is indeed a silicone anti-drainback valve. There should be a manufacturers website you can directly reference for information on wether there is an anti-drainback valve or not. I got into researching some of this when I worked at a filter supply company---there are some air compressor filters with about 2X the filter media capacity (and better micronic filtration rating), and similar bypass valve arrangements, but alas they didn't have the anti-drainback valve---and that is important when the filter contains almost 2.5 QUARTS of oil, mounted to the side of a block. For remotes with the screw on portions pointing up it's not a big deal, but I didn't feel like adding remotes to my car at this time...

Skew the reading the ECU sees manually with a pot or variable resistor in parallell with the sensor. You can put enough bias so it comes out of cold-start virtually any place you want, but you will have to experiment... The best way is to rig it up, and then do the resistance check at the pin-out at the ECU. Basically run it up till your temperature stabilizes, then shut down, disconnect the ECU Connector, put your multimeter on the two pins relating to coolant temperature, and twist the variable resistor till the resistance reads equivalent to 180+ degrees F. That will make it out of cold-start mode at normal operating temperature. Also, for trimming fuel under boost, you can can by adding one in series tweak and put the engine into cold-start mode while under boost to add more fuel... Also, the stock gauge in the dash is very unreliable, verify your temperature with something like a Wal-Mart Meat Thermometer stuck in the radiator while you're warming up.

Yes, the flapper JeffP is mentioning is referred to in the Oil Filter Business as an 'Anti Drainback Valve' and functions exactly as JeffP says: holds the filter full so you have no 'accumulator to fill' before building pressure int he system. The Nissan Filters do have an Anti-Drainback Valve, some premium filters boast of 'silicone anti-drainback valves' which seal more positively and tend to not harden in the heat inherent in the oil system. Not all filters that 'fit' are proper as designed. Many industrial filters do NOT have the drainback valve in them as for remote field servicing they don't want oil held in the filter to drain all over the equipment. An Atlas Copco GA160 Air Compressor has three spin on filters that go threaded side DOWN...if you had an anti-drainback in there, a gallon and a half of oil (hot, searing Air Compressor Oil, 215 degrees F) would be waiting to shower your groin area as you spun them off! But on a Nissan L, you want an Antidrainback valve, for the aformentioned reasons.

Surging and backfiring is usualy the sign of a lean mixture. If your injector connectors are not clean at either end, they can build up enough resistance that the injector pulsewidth starts dropping out or not firing at all and you backfire/surge/buck, etc. Cleaning the electrical connections is beneficial in general, but make sure you use dielectric on the connectors when you reassemble them so Oxygen doesn't quickly recorrode them. Seems the Nissan Connectors were great for 20 years (er...) and then once cleaned, you have to go back repeatedly to keep them that way! The AFM may be in operation under boost, but only at lower rpms and lower flows. So that isn't out---or more aptly the connectors on it aren't out. YOu can run the tests in the FSM for all the sensors and circuits relating to the ECCS in about 45 minutes---it really narrows down where you may have a problem sensor/harness/component, and since you are pulling the plugs at the ECU anyway why not check?

Dragonfly, you read my mind! First thing I thought about when looking at that photo was "Gas Door" Change the gas door to something more in line with the rounder lines of the car now---a motorcycle filler cap in a round or oblong configuration would work...or you could relocate it to the top of the quarter or conceal it in the trunk. Hiding it behind a swing-out tail lamp would be a lot of work....but..... I'd not have sidemarkers on it at all. If it came to it, nothing more than a recessed LED in the "Hirschberg Bulge" below the lighting panel would be as far as I would go.

Yes, making a Leakdown tester is not a big deal, regulator, couple of gauges, calibrated orifice, and a sacrificial plug adapter from an old compression tester... But for the cost of one at Harbor Freight, why bother? I have bought several of the 'test' items from HF recently, and generally toss the gauges and replace them at a much higher cost with Ashcroft Mirrored-Gauge or Liquid Filled Units available through local vendors. I trust an Ashcroft that I can send out to be recalibrated occasionally much more than the HF Chinese Gauges. My leakdown tester was originally for Lycoming Engines, and then cruising through Aircraft Spruce one day found an automotive plug adapter, so dug it out of storage and it's been used more and more often recently. Really upset me seeing a Leakdown Tester at Harbor Freight...knowing how much I paid for my unit even 15-20 years ago....it's STILL cheaper today from them. But I digress...

Woo Hoo! Shake and Bake! Sorry, couldn't help it...

Not really, spend some effort and tell us exactly what it's doing specifically. Cutting out means something totally different to me than surging, and sputtering. Really, what do you call it? Is it like someone turns off the key, then turns it back on rapidly... Or is it like someone turns off the key and leaves it off, turning it back on after a brief pause? Or is it acting like someone is pushing on the gas pedal on and off rapidly(or conversely, like someone holding the throttle pedal steady and pumping the brake pedal on and off)? Or is it popping out the intake? What noises do you hear? Any smells? Vague descriptions lead to guesses that don't help you figure it out at all. Not trying to flame anybody, but it really is what you call it that will determine what the diagnosis or SWAG will be in reply.

Oh, I am diseaased... I want to give those as gifts! I know someone who races a B110, and that A12 setup is just too cool!

How come I think in Ray's application the 300ZX cable will not be 'long enough' nor the 'perfect length'... Why do I think Ray's 'engine swap' will require a throttle cable that will stretch from the firewall to the alternator region....

Define "Major Modification" I didn't find it 'major' in the leat bit, thought the caveat I noted (amperage) will call for quality relays controlling it, as well as a good charging system. There are some Taurus fans that are not configured like the 3.8L V6 unit, and I can't speak to their fittment. Getting the damned thing out of the Ford Chassis was harder than installing it in my Z!

Agreed! Magnetic Particle Inspection is the thing to do when it's apart, and BEFORE you go any further with modifications. Nothing sucks worse than to put a bunch of hours into hand-prepping something only to have it magcheck and find a crack!