Tony D

I'm glad you had access to the documentation, I was playing "looser in the hotel room in Vegas" and couldn't lay hands on them for at least a week! LOL As Alan said, there were private imports of L28ET's but as you saw from the brochures, the L20ET was the "turbo" they had available. The Front Spoiler and Wing is another bone of contention for me, as I will have to PROVE to the sanctioning board that those were actually real factory options (or standard equipment) before they will let my car compete in a "production class" with them installed. That spoiler, and the plastic ducting to the radiator would help immeasurably at high speed (standard on the Eurospec Turbo Cars as well, particularly Germany) like I will be shooting for at Bonneville. Alas, my S130 brochures and etc are sorely lacking. i got S30 stuff while in Japan, not S130 (why would I ever buy one of those? LOL) Anyway, at least now I have a thread to link to when someone else puts up the mythical JDM Engine Importer of L28ET's. This came up at another board, and someone paid $$$ for what was supposed to be a "low mileage JDM engine" and I warned him chances were it was nothing more than a US Model Junkyard Takeout. Poor Bastard... And I'm sure Alan can confirm the recycling that occurs every April/May when Road Taxes are due in Japan. I suspec a LOT of 83 ZXT's in Japan ceased to exist as they were coming due for the last two-year Shaken Inspection, and that big fee was looming in the Spring of 93 & 94. Mass vehicle retirement... The L's from Japan started drying up at that point. Enthusiasts started looking to America and it's market for abundant L-Gata Supplies! Cars over 10 years old simply aren't fiscally smart to keep on the road in Japan unless you are a real enthusiast and have the $$$. Then again, the real racerguys run the redstripe plate, and skip Shaken altogether... LOL I digress, as usual!

Done, Done, Done... Originally it seemed to be running well on the internally regulated alternator. Then I got smart and changed back to the OEM style for a 74. And coming full circle put it back in. Like I said, as long as the alternator field does not flash and start charging it runs fine. Maybe it's heat related with something in the alternator as it seems to go longer when stone cold. But having had several alternators, batteries, wires, filters.... What do you mean "you modded the wiring" Ranty? Did the external regulator plug with the diode in it? As for the 81 causing a problem... The waveform (which I DID scope extensively before attempting the conversion) is identical to that of an 82/83CAS unit. The point being it should work as is. if it works from an identical waveform off and 82/83 CAS, it should work off the 81 CAS. And the chances of FIVE 81CAS units (all but the original one off running, driving vehicles) being bad and causing a problem is very slim. When I do actually get the time to work on it, it seems it just succeeds in pissing me of further. I'm mailing the boxes to Z-Ya for his diagnosis on the construction of the boxes and related items. If it works in his race car, then we know it's not a box issue. I have turned down offers from others closer to use their box simply because I didn't want to hack someone elses box to work in my car. But giving my box for someone to try it in a known good harness / accessory setup.... I'm all up for that! I can always re-program to where I was before after they flash it. hell, if he gets it working on his Club Car, I will probably upgrade software to whatever HE is running as I KNOW that is a correct and working configuration for the set!

:Shakes Head: I am still slated to bring it up at the GroupZ Meeting this Thursday.

Been busy, just checked back. 26" hmmmm. That's some great tucking for that length of tubing! That Burns Program is nice. They are about 45 miles from me, I've referred people to there for years. I'm making a note of that length for future reference. I think our N/A Header for our 2.0L was something like 26" as well. Strange how that works out! LOL

This is not that far out of the realm of possibility. The ground wire in the engine bay harness was toast. I suspect at some time in the past, someone reverse-polarity connected the battery or battery cables. Man, cutting that harness all apart and replacing the ground with a #8 Battery Isolation Cable was a P.I.T.A.!

What Ernie Said! Use the lowest pressure (determined by experimentation) that will accomplish what you want. Another suggestion would be to chemically strip as much as you can, and reserve abrasives for those spots too built up for chemical stripping, or to treat corrosion you find after the stripping. I blasted my engine bay in 1985. To this day, I still have media coming in from the air tubes in the front fender. Once it gets in, it's impossible to get out. Were I to do it again, I'd chem strip the whole schebang, and then blast the corroded areas, or where I was going to be doing welding. I got a nice case of "Silicosis" which Ernie alludes to above, as well. You do NOT want to breathe that dust. The feeling of breathing in to feel a million microscopic dust particles abrading your lung tissue is one you can do without... I know I can... Incidentally, the lower pressure you use, the less dust you produce. Depending one the media you use, some will fractionate and become unusable after one pass through the system. Most medias that are low-dusting will actually break apart and dust like crazy if you run them at too high a pressure. A little pressure goes a long way. And if you can recover the media through a seive and re-use it becasue you didn't blast it into oblivion, you save $$$ in the process... IMO, the suction blasters are far inferior to Pressure-Post Style blasters when doing large projects. I used an ALC Sandy-Jet back in 85, and recently (like 2002) did the entire undercarrige of a Sport Fury Hemi using a Pressure Pot (100# Model from Harbor Freight), and the difference in material removed versus air pressure needed, and air consumed was like night and day! For the cost of the HF Pressure Pot on sale, we saved that in media. I don't think it took me four hours to strip the bottom of that Fury start to finish. The Engine bay, on the other hand took hoppers and hoppers of dusty coral infested beach sand..... NOT RECOMENDED!

Absolutely, the bars are sold at Pep Boys, Kragen, and Auto Zone. I bought mine at Pep Boys. By custom hitch, I guess you never saw my 75 Fairlady---I couldn't find anything to fit, so I fabbed a nice towing apparatus out of 1/4" plate and 2" .125" wall box channel and a Class III receiver I bought from a local towing supply house. I am probably the only guy on the face of the planet with a Class 3 Receiver on the back of an S30. The Q should flat-tow it just fine, I just wouldn't put the car in overdrive at all. Weight ratings are subjective. Get a bigger hitch then you need. If nothing else it's something nice to knock you shin on one morning half awake in stumbling around the garage looking for that first morning beer... Basically, you remove the front bumper, throw it in the back. Then, depending on the model of towbar you have, either bolt it up straight to the exposed bumper struts, or turn the things 45 degrees, and then bolt them up. If you PM me an e-mail I can send you photos of what several vehicles look like with the towbar attached. I think I've got photos of 260, 280, and 280ZX's currently on the computer external drive. It's a pretty sweet way to do the bolt up. If you get spunky, and get a 28-32" piece of 3" C-Channel, you can permanently mount your "U" Clevises from the Towbar to it, and then just drill whatever bolt pattern you want to attach it to a 240, as well as whatever else you may want to hook it to. I have seen people take the factory tiedowns up front completely off the frame, and have the "U" Piece fabbed up, so they can easily hook up the towbar without any fuss of removing the bumper---all depends on the time you have available before you have to tow. Er, using a tow dolly is usually done with the FRONT wheels on the dolly, and the rear end tracking along just fine behind. I have seen people back the car onto the dolly and always wondered why. Unless you do something seriously wrong, towing a tow dolly should do anything to the front end, it adds no stresses other than what normally would be associated with driving the vehicle. If there was damage, chances are good it wasn't from the Tow Dolly. I towed many vehicles with a Tow Dolly, but for the effort the Flat-Towing is just as easy and you don't need someone to help you push the damn thing up on the dolly! As to the issue of what the thing weighs, my 1975 Fairlady Z 2/2 wieghed in at 2695# with me in it (330#), so that should be a close approximation of a US-Specification Coupe. If I recall, that is what the 280 Guys were weighing in at the track that day. Tow rating of the vehicle is dictated by the LCD. That would be the slackjawed moron towing his life's belongings from here to there in an overloaded "Grapes of Wrath" scenario through winding mountians with things bungeed to the sides of the towed vehicle. The Nissan Frontier is rated at 3500 with a Stick, and 5000 with an Automatic. Why? Same engine, and same differential? Because some Goobe decided to tow up the Palm Springs Grade with a 5000# load in FIFTH (overdrive) and smoked his clutch at 51,000 miles and then screamed holy hell with the warranty department and then litigated... Hence now you will get a rating of 3500# on a Stick. And the admonition not to tow in overdrive with the Automatic. Take the rating with a grain of salt. Take it easy when you tow, USE THE PROPER GEAR GOING UP AND DOWN HILLS, and chances are you will easily tow what you need. Presonally with the cost of utility trailers getting below the $1000 mark, it becomes very hard to justify not buying one just for the times putting all the wheels up off the ground would be easier than flat-towing (like recovering wrecks, half-cuts, or big parts...).

Bad Idea! K&N makes a small "keychain" filter that will fit nicely on the 8mm pipe. If you simply plug it, and the rest of your tubes and hoses are properly sealed, you will suck a vacuum in the tank...to the point where the filler neck will collapse and in some extreme cases the tank will somewhat collapse (if you have a really good pump. If you have just an average pump, it will simply stop delivering fuel under cruise conditions, you run lean, start bucking, and wonder "WTF" as you coast to the roadside, unable to get it restarted. Then you hear a gian sucking sound when you open your gas cap, and then it mysteriously restarts without a problem for another 30 or so highway miles, until it does it again... Or so I'm told...I would never just plug it off! Not me! Never never never... Word of warning to the wise. You don't need a carbon cannister per-se, but you do need a way for air to get back into the tank as the fuel is sucked out of it. If your vent hoses are all leaking and broken up like most people's, you will never experience the above. But if you then later seal everything up tight, and go for a long drive you will hear the familiar refrain: "I've driven all over with that line plugged for years and never had this problem before!" Then you suddenly remember you just changed your vent hoses and the realization hits you.... Good Luck!

.63 in the US Market. .82 in the European Market. .43 in the JDM with the L20ET, it was not available as a 2.8 there. All A/R's were Hot-Side. As far as I have determined, all of them used the same cartridge.

z-ya, "You have P-M"! LOL Too bad on the startup, but I know how it goes. At least your former employer didn't decide to sue you out of spite for leaving... Or am I assuming too much? LOL

How do we know if we don't test it? LOL The club angle opens up some possibilities. I will be in town for our next club meeting, I'll pose the Q while there...

I thought that windshield looked non-stock. When you compare the S30 windshield to the S130 windshield, you see Nissan recognized that was a big area that they could get easy payback aerodynamically. Man, that Custom Windshield has to be $$$$$!

Like 280Zone says, will U-Haul even LET you tow their auto-transport behind your Cherokee? Every time I went in there, it was like I needed to have a 3/4 or 1-Ton pickup to tow a vehicle. Like you said, they get a bit litigation crazy on the "safety factor". And their contract now states the plate numbers of the vehicles towing and towed, they will viod their contract and hang your a** out if anyting happens outside the terms of their stated towed and towing vehicles. The question is what kind of quote are you getting from them? Does the 280 you are towing have plates, and a good set of tires? I have personally towed cross country using the Valley Tow-Bar. It's small enough to fit under the cross box tool carrier in my truck, so I have it, and the mickey mouse lights with me wherever I go---in case I run across a good find and have to take it home with me! LOL Even without plates, towing INTO California without plates is not a problem as long as you say you will be plating it as you are delivering it into the state. Leaving is another story, but then a "one trip permit" is cheap in that case, and easily had at any DMV. The towbar only costs around $125 at a Pep Boys, and the fasteners they have fit right in the bumper strut holes of the 260/280/280ZX... That towbar has paid itself back in fees I can't say how many times over. I have lent it out to people two times to tow vehicles back from CA to wherever they were (Kentucky and Maryland, actually) and the thing is small enough to be UPS'ed back to me when they are done. You can UPS it ahead to someplace to pick up a vehicle with it. Consider the costs... $125 for the Towbar, $40 for a set of lights and some safety chains...maybe a set of $99 Pep-Boys Skins for the 280 if you are suspect on the tires making the trip. If U-Haul suggests the cost to be near that total of around $280...you may find it's cheaper to BUY than RENT! And you KNOW you will use that towbar in the future!!! Just another area of consideration. I have actually towed my 240 with my Fairlady Z using this towbar!!! NO WAY would U-Haul condone that, but you know the FMVSS requires a braking capability of 2.5X, so as long as you are flat-towing like or lighter, there should be no problems. My only caveat is that towing an S30 without an engine in it may cause some undue tire wear. We went through a tire (though this is also a bit due to the alignment being off, and we just moved the tie rod to 'stop the squealing tire' )when we towed it from El Paso to Phoenix. Towing them light in the front end may not be advisable. But for a full, together car, I'd not hesitate to flat-tow it. Get a set of cheap skins or used tires (if needed), and tow away! Good Luck!

Just a note on the above diagram, which I had PM'd him before realizing this was posted. Keep the PRESSURE SWITCH on the same tank as the compressor. You do not want hose/piping loss coming into the equation with this small of a unit (or any unit for that matter!) Also, valve your tanks. Put a valve on the outlet of the main tank, and on the inlet of any downstream tank. Use a Female Quick-Coupler on all Discharge Openings, and a Male Quick Coupler on all Inlets. This includes your Regulator Assembly. This will allow you to run your aux tank as far away from the compressor as you have hoses. Putting the aux tank where you are working, and putting the damnable loud compressor as far away as possible is nice... The valves allow you to close them during break times so the only air you might leak out is contained in the hoses. It also allows you to store the air for future useage---that aux tank will work 1000% better than the store-bought 'spare air' tanks you get for filling tires. With 30 gallons of 125psi air, you can actually fill more than one tank at a time. And filling the tank is as easy as hooking up your air hose---no need to hold the chuck on the tank forever as it dribbles air into the thing to charge it! Technically, you should have a pressure relief valve on any vessel...than includes the aux tank. If you leave it in the hot SoCal Sun you would be suprised how much pressure you can build in a tank starting with 125 filled on a 40 degree night..... Anyway, having the quick couplers on everything helps configure the system in many different ways, you can put yor dryer wherever you want or remove it completely if you don't need dry air---and having valves on it keeps ambient humidity from contaminating the desiccant inside while you're not using it. Adding valves and QD's adds versatility. And in a home compressor you will need it for everything, so versatility is a big plus. Harbor Freight sells Air hoses cheap---like $9 a piece. Same for QD's. The QD's will keep you from having to screw and unscrew things every time you make a change. Also, off that aux tank, consider turning it into what my old German Friend used to call a "Luftzow"---"AirPig". I think he called it that because the ones I had him make looked like little pigs, but basically it's a multiple adapter---like a cross or string of "T" fittings that you have many Female QD's on. This allows you to run several air tools on several hoses without swapping. Some of us a re impatient, and just like to pick it up and go with the flow. Having a multiple adapter on the outlet connection of the Aux Tank will make hooking up several lines nice and easy.

A perusing of the 1972 Fairlady Z parts book will open your eyes to those "invisible" changes. All through there the annotations "All Exc PZR" are found. You will find "L20-S20 All" and the occasional "PZR", but the items Alan is referring to that confound most people would be the "L20-S20 All Exc. PZR" annotations. Meaning a "pedestrian" 432 would have the same part as any other Fairlady, but that the PZR, even though technically an S-20 Specification, would have something different again. Which still leads me to the question where my "100 Liter Special Vehicle" came from (S30-110661, "The Car that should never have been.") LOL And yes, as others mentioned I did indeed mean S31. It's a subgroup. While the Export RHD vehicles were RS30's during those final years, the JDM vehicles were S31, to distinguish the EFI Equipped bodyshell from the Non-EFI Equipped Export S30's going everywhere in the RHD world... Only the USA got those HLS30's (EFI Equipped!) in the 280Z...

Actually, probably not. One of them is H2 Powered (as in Hydrogen). And modern EFI controlled and catalyzed vehicles are VERY clean. In some cases down here in SoCal, the exhaust coming out of some vehicles is actually CLEANER than the air it's taking in! This was the impetus behind Ford and Englehardt doing a joint venture to turn the Radiator of the Crown Vic into a CATALYST BED! The low-temperature technology of the Englehardt catalyst laid on the radiator cleaned the air enough that the tailpipe emissions were again compliant. Ford had reached a point where the excess hydrocarbons in the INCOMING AMBIENT AIR were enough of a problem that it was affecting their tailpie numbers!!! I am actually FOR smog testing of ALL vehicles, but NOT under the regulations we have now. It should be a TAILPIPE test ONLY, and the resultant numbers should be a SET TARGET based on YEAR OF MANUFACTURE for the CHASSIS. But this is a digression I am getting into... Unless you are running a very well-controlled EFI system slightly lean at cruise (or Three-Way Catalyzed), chances are all five of Arnold's hummers runnning combined will put out less pollutants per mile driven than your vehicle... New cars ARE VERY CLEAN. But there is no reason common sense legislation can't be passed to make it EASIER for older vehicles to be EASILY retrofitted so long as they PASS AT THE TAILPIPE (REGARDLESS OF ENGINE CONFIGURATION)... Don't worry, 2010 your car will fall under the new 35 year rule for tailpipe only testing.... But will you be ready with the proper documents to take advantage of that law???

Where is your documentation for that statement? They got the L20ET as the tax class break, and that was the Fairlady Z(T). The Fairlady 280Z did not have a Turbo Option as far as I know, nor have I ever seen anything other than "Japanese Engine Brokers" stating there were L28ET's available. Living in Japan from 1984 to 1989 while these cars were still readily available, I never heard of the option being available, either. And this would also carry over to the Cedric, Gloria, Skyline, Leopard, etc... If it was available in the Z, it would have been available in these driveline compatible vehicles as well, and in the JDM I am unaware of that engine option ever being offered. Matter of fact, I can probably dig up some stuff in print from Nissan Japan stating that it wasn't, as well.

There is an old issue of CCC from the UK where a guy took old Weber 40DCOE's and cut them all up, and epoxied injector bungs into them and used them as the ITB's. I think that is a bit counterproductive. On Mikuinis (hell, any of these carbs) you can remove all the internal restrictions with a couple of Screws. Lock those screws in place with the facory Jam Nuts and maybe pull the cover to remove the floats, just for insurance, and run em that way. No need to screw up the things. Install the Injectors using a fuel rail and either screw-in bungs or Weld-In bungs on the Triple Manifold, and you are set! You can run the TPS off the cross bar linkage by adding another lever, and using a device sold by Kinsler Fuel Injecton to mount the TPS on the manifold, and connecting it with the additional lever. (It's a Universal TPS mount, I believe---it was used by Kinsler when they change their Mechanical Fuel Injection Units over to Electric---mounts on the return valve plate, and the linkage is already there, soooo.... Uses a standard GM TPS, and you can specify RH or LH rotation of the device so it's pretty configurable.) Using that Kinsler TPS thing, you could use just about anywhere on the throttle linkage of any Z-Car to mount (hide) your TPS---like on the firewall, on the balance tube of a set of SU's, etc. And the big advantage of this is you don't hack up your carbs, they can always be restored to their former glory and sold... LOL!

Got some time to return to the Megasquirt invalid in the back yard after the Wife suggested "come hell or high water it needs to get moving" I started reading up on all the travails of Mr. Webb's issues and went out to check some stuff on mine. I'd recalled something about Taylor Wires, but couldn't remember what.... Oh yeah, they were crap, and after he changed his the odd resets and stuff went away. Well, I had Taylor wires on the car. I went back through my notes, and anecdotally at least looked like there was a correlation between the troubles and their installation. When I had first run up the engine it was on some old stockers, and somewhere along the line, after it initially was running thought the car needed some color-matched wires.... It is supposed to be for the wife, you know... So the Taylors go installed. And reading the old web posts apparently they are not recomended with the MS unit. I don't know if this is in the Sticky (been a long time since reading it) but the "suggested" wires should be called out for people reading it before initial install. Anyway, went and got some good supression wires (Take your pick, MSD 8.5mm Superconductor Supression Wires with Bosch Resistor Plugs...or Bosch Resistor Wires with Bosch Resistor Plugs, and Autolite Resistor Plugs...Or MSD wires and Autolite Resistor Plugs, or any combination of the several aforementioned components...) You know where this is going, right???? I start the car, run the car and get to the point where the alternator field flashes, and now the engine will shut down and stumble after 13 seconds (instead of the former 45 seconds). By shut down, I mean the LED on the MS closest to the DB9Pin literally shuts off 13 seconds after the field flashes, and takes a pause before coming back on again. Engine won't completely stop, but the Tach immediately drops to Zero, and then jumps back up to wherever it would normally be on a coast-down from say 3500rpms (where the screwdriver wedged in the throttle assembly could keep the car running)... Now, moving the power pickup point of the Radioshack 20A Line Filter from the starter to the front terminal of the dual-terminal battery didn't make much of a difference, nor did adding new 2-Gauge Battery Cables + and - to the mix... Getting frustrated at this point, and looking at my old MS Box that suddenly stopped working just after I resolved the old "XP COM" problem (archives, that was something like three years ago) I see that the good old reset pin was plucked out of the socket. So, thinking "WTF" I unseated the chip, and plucked this reset pin out of the mix. Now, when the car is started, and the field on the alternator flashes, there is no lag of 13 seconds before the problems start. As soon as that baby flashes, the thing starts doing it's thing: tach drops to zero, then starts backfiring, popping, generally running like Sh*t... Keep it so the alternator (Nissan Remanufactured Unit, not crap Autozone junk) doesn't flash, and it seems to run fine, as long as the battery voltage is up. What's next, besides trashing it all and going back to Carburetion? This is Bullsh*t. I'm looking at the V2.2 Board Copyright Date, and can't offhand remember when the group buy was on those boards (the last group buy offered) but whatever it was, 1 year after the stuff was here, at the outside, was when it was put together and this project got underway. Is someone going to say put a different alternator into the car? I got a GM conversion unit from JeffP's cast-offs. Nice externally regulated unit... Is someone going to suggest it's alternator noise, even through the line filter. Or is someone going to suggest using a test instrument that costs more than the car to probe stuff and see what is going on? Last time I probed anything, I couldn't see any significant power issues on feed power. If I'm going to be told to scope it, I need to know what to look for and where to set the dials.... I can see inductive kick from the injectors at different places, but not after coming out of board filtration (as I recall...this has been some time ago). In either case, I'm out another $200+ and the thing STILL isn't working. And the kicker is this is the basic, Magnus MS-n-S code of looooooong ago. I will not upgrade to the new stuff with another entire set of bugs to figure out and mess with till this basic setup is running. Right now, I would KILL to have a Eurospec Pneumatically retarded Distributor to stick on this thing and just run fuel-only. Being this is an 81ZXT engine, I still have the Electronic Distributor Option... But for that, I will end up tearing out the whole MS Harness and redoing it just for principal. I really am glad Webbie got his running. His success and Taylor Wire connection got me going and enthusiastic to try it on one of the few free days I have available... but this crash-and-burn is fully discouraging and makes me want to torch the SOB. And like Frank280ZX says: "And this is the only shiny car you have, Tony, why aren't you running it?" AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

Any of the Harbor Freight 3/8" hoses should be fine for probably 95% of the stuff you will ever use. Some of the larger impact guns and impact tools will need a larger hose for flow, but if you have either a 1/4 or 3/8" I.D. on the hose, you should be fine for up to a 3/4" impact wrench spinning 1500 ft-lbs. Come to think about it, I have an old "Cheap" Quincy sitting in a bucket out back... I'm waiting for the POS Oil-Free Devilbiss to crap out so I can do exactly like John said: Mount it using a new Baldor Motor and use the tank and regulation system... Then again I have two brand new Atlas Copco Heads as well, a 3HP LE3, and a 7HP LE5. Man, I should mount those before the Quincy, they are one step up from the Oil Free Crap Recips they sell all over nowadays. I digress...

I have said that in the past, but everybody wants "new" stuff. OH CRAP! Hey, You're in Corona, RIGHT? GO TO COLE-CO COMPRESSOR off Smith & Commerce Street. Ask for "Red". Tell him Tony Dighera sent you over. I am SURE he will have something laying around the shop that he can work you a deal on. I will be going to his company christmas party tomorrow, I'll ask him if he has something along the lines of what JohnC was suggesting. BIG D'OH! I completely spaced on the fact you were in Corona. Red is a good guy, he should be able to find something for you if you can wait. He formerly worked for the Quincy Distributor, and even though I work for I-R, I would have to say the Quincy QRD series compressors are probably one of the best small reciprocating units ever made. They are about the only ones still constructed with a FORCE FED oil system that incorporates a FILTER!

I second 240zV8's commentary, for the price I'd get the used Cast Iron Campbell Hausfeld. It will last you your lifetime, and will give you much better service than any of the oil free high speed units.

C'mon, Frank, one of those Bonus Checks you get (even after the Dutch Taxation for Social Services) will pay for your S130 Testing Day. It's found money anyway, may as well spend it as such! LOL

Ask Norm about that clutch disc that came through his floor one day! Matter of fact, I have seen 510's with stock 1600's frag a clutch, though in that case the bellhousing held it in. We had to make one for Bonneville. The easiest way to do it is heat and bend some 1/4" plate that has been sheared 4 to 6" wide. Weld some tabs on it so you can 1) either mount it with the engine to tranny bolts (means you have to pull the engine tranny as a set---this is what we have, and it's a PITA) 2) drill and tap some holes on the bellhousing to mount the bent plate to the top of the tranny (you know that flat spot?) and another tab for one of the starter bolts, and then underneath for some of the holes on the bottom of the tranny. I think #2 is the best choice. This is of course for the L-Engine. It works, and has gone through tech inspection. There is no SFI stamp on our shield, but 1/4" plate is what the hydroformed scattershields are normally made from, penetrating 1/4" plate will be very difficult. Driveshaft hoops are also a good idea (and required for our Bonneville car as well) and there are plenty of Universal kits out there for that.

Ohhh, more tasty bits from the "Alan Archives"! Coooool! I have to agree, the "Factory" ZG flares fit very tightly over the body lines, it becomes obvious where they go when held up to the body. Unfortunately like any other FRP part, the generational loss from molds and "improvements" done throught the intervening 30+ years have made for (IMO) some pretty poor fitting parts. I have been on this rant before, and maybe Alan will chime in as well, but IMO, the FRP parts produced in Japan were head and shoulders above anything done here in the USA. I was once offered a US-Knockoff G-Nose, and when I saw it basically wasn't interested. My 450Yen junkyard one-piece Japanese Knockoff was better! (I will note that John Coffee's stuff I DO have on my vehicles-a CF Hood, but his is a step apart from the masses of junk most people use. There may be individuals making high quality parts, but they are few and far between, and almost always are knocking off a knocked off part, and not an OEM Nissan Piece.) And when you start playing around with OEM Nissan Stuff.... The saddest part is that there are so many good Aerospace Composite Manufacturing Facilities in SoCal, someone with some OEM Nissan stuff could make some REAL quality pieces. The problem is the costs involved will be beyond most people who are willing to put this stuff on their car. So many people will settle for an inferior part, selling a real quality part for a reasonable (meaning costs covered + reasonable profit) price becmoes almost impossible. But isn't that always the way? Now I'm thinking about looking at that Service Manual I have and seeing if that ZG Flare was in there, I know the S20 engine overhaul is covered in mine, but I really haven't looked at it in years.