Tony D

I used the stock resistor pack.

I find it absolutely hilarious how people in North America speak as an authoritative source on why the L-Series is this or that, and have the arrogant attitude that "If it didn't happen in 'Murrica (Canada apparently as well...) then no lil yallar fella coulda come up with nuthin' worth speak in' bout!" I mean, talk about boorish and xenophobic. It's actually quite offensive to me, in particular, since I still travel to Japan regularly and have many close friends in the automotive high-performance arena there. I mean people are speaking as to why it's so hard to do this as of it's some mystical number and sooooo few, far between, rare. It's simply a matter of lack of exposure, ignorance of history, and of other arenas of opportunity or endeavour. If it upsets you that your ignorance is exposed when you speak about it, a reasonable proposition would be not to speak of it so as not to be corrected.

Why do I find this unbelievable? Kamloops, maybe... Japan? I doubt it. It's a nice place to visit now, but I loved living there for five years. Ignorance of North Americans notwithstanding.

Anything specific? You got two wires to the battery, and another four or six more in the unitised connector under the steering column...

LSD never, ever, gave me a headache.

Toggle Switches for everything, then why use a fuse box? Vector Aeromotive showed aircraft ceramic resettable circuit breakers do just fine in automotive applications. It's what I used retiring a 280Z for LeMons. If you get non-FAA certified components the price drops considerably. Lay out your plywood boards, stick down your loom pins and components...start building a harness. Been there, done that.

FORREST GUMP RULE!!!! Using the example of a broken oil line on a VW is ludicrous. This isn't a 25 or 30psi turbocharged engine. It's a low BMEP N/A application. Your concerns are, IMO, seriously overblown. Oil is a partial exchange medium...I think the "meltdown" of the engine in question has more to do with lack of lubrication, a vitally necessary element in a rotating engine, than it slack of "cooling" at the time. Using your "seeing complexity added" logic, the guy shouldn't have had am external cooler, stuck with the stocker, and limited himself to around 75-90hp the stock cooler can handle. A situation, I might add, which could be expanded to the 120 HP range with water injection, but the audible warning coming from the engine to "lift foot" should your anti-detonant tank somehow run dry should be more than enough to save the engine. On a VW it's more critical than an L-Series. I will also add this is proposed for an N/A car...heat really isn't that big of an issue. You must have dealt with some really rudimentary systems cobbled together from bits and bobs from some PM Article in the 50's to have these breakage and running out of fluid fears. The EXACT same bugaboo can be said for turbochargers and the waste gate! Added complexity that can fail. Better to run on inlet restriction, and exhaust backpressure to prevent overboost and engine damage! That waste gate could fail closed and blow the engine ... (Forrest Gump don't lift that foot!) I have yet to have SS tubing become brittle and break in elevated temperatures, nor cryogenic temps...neither of which is n play here. That's what I built my last setup on the Corvair. It's been on there since 1979, I've never run out, and it allows decent spark advance and performance with fuels it was never designed to run on...without a hitch, or needlessly redesigning major engine components at a cost factor of something like 50X what the Spearco Kit Cost in 1982 (replaced the original one phase injection to two phase for vacuum AND boost so I could run my turbo again! Never had a problem. Nobody I know has had a problem using it. Including newer generation Snow Methanol that does stuff my old windshield washer pump system could only dream of doing! Either I'm lucky, and everybody I. Know is lucky...or we...as was advised by the old white dude who sold me the system back then: "don't get stupid with it!"

It's the only one I've ever encountered. If Forrest Gump set it up, then yes...maybe he siphoned it all down into the cylinders when the engine shut off... but that usually resulted in a hydrolocked engine on startup. Frankly, if a Type 1 VW runs out of coolant, you're dead. Period. I think you meant anti-detonant. And again, how the hell did he run out? If the guy didn't size the tank to handle a full fill up of fuel, the Forrest Gump Rule is in play. I ran 25psi on my Type 1 Bus, pumping well over 300 HP to the ground.... they have a 10 gallon tank. a standard Spearco Kit with the 1 gallon tank handled that running standard 88 octane pump gas. Every gallon of gas took about 1/10 gallon of water on average. I didn't like it so close, so I put a two gallon reservoir in, added bigger jets, and rarely if ever used more than 1/2 to 3/4 of a tank per tankful of fuel. The most I used from my memory was a little over a gallon in 35 miles. I also used the tank of gas in that period as well. I was getting 3.5-4mpg making drag passes all weekend at Milan Dragway back in 1983 or early summer of 84. I think that was 25-30 passes a day over three days, and some more 'extracurriculars' off the beaten path as well. I did fill up Sunday but if I hadn't it would have been a dry tank sometime Sunday making passes I'm sure. Bigger engines could use more, my buddy with the 400HP turbo Saab installed a Canadian Wiper Fluid Reservoir in his car...something like 2.5 gallons, used the anti-detonant in lieu of intercooling. He NEVER ran out either, in 6 years of running that car, never ever ran out. He traded the car to a big Samoan dude who painted his house as the exchange. Two weeks after trading the car off and giving specific instructions that EVERY time he added fuel, he should top off with either water or windshield 50/50 methanol mix....guy ran it dry and detonated the engine to death. Forrest Gump... Samoan House Painter... I don't see running out when you know your tank capacity, your consumption rate, and etc... Anything that can happen 'by fluke' is as likely to happen with any other modification as it will with Water Injection. I think more engines are detonated due to lean fuel mixes and intercoolers than anything else. Following that, I can argue that adding an intercooler will lead to detonation due to lean mixtures and break things as well. Properly executed, Water Injection is like any other performance modification. You will note the biggest detractors for using water injection are guys who sold intercoolers. Read an old Spearco Catalog from the 70's and they were neutral about it "you don't have to monitor or fill your water injection tank" if you have an intercooler. Frankly, that's about as truthful as it gets... as long as we don't get into copper leaching and non-distilled water contaminants.... As someone once said to me: "You can use what you want, just don't get stupid!"

Flat Top Pistons tend to break their ring lands when DETONATED, not when under boost! I've run Flat Tops since 1985 at 17-21 psi boost with nary a cracked ring or land yet. Don't detonate, they don't break. Instead of throwing boost at it, work the head and use a proper cam for breathing improvement below boost threshold and you won't NEED the lower compression to get the HP. You can make 300HP at 21 psi, you can make 300HP at 8 psi. One will be FAR easier to tune in regards to spark blowing out, fueling, etc...

300HP Datsun 3.0L were all over Japan in the 80's. It was the larger ones that had problems with cylinders not staying round. The saying was, once you make a 3 Liter L-Gata, you wrecked your car, and you gave it to a friend, who wrecked his car, and gave it to a friend, who wrecked his car.... Point being, the L-Engine properly executed will outlast the car it's in even at 100 hp/L. If you read the "Super Samuri" stories of the 70's the longevity and lack of wear in a dominating car was shockingly legendary. Keep the valve train stable, without stupid lifts and ramps, with proper geometry, and the valve guides don't wear. They go a LONG time. What was "unstreetable" with carbs is MORE than well-mannered with port fuel injection. Our 8,000+ power peak Bonneville Engine was surprisingly tractable once we put a heavier flywheel on it and FI. With a single four barrel it wouldn't idle below 2,200 rpms, and with 45 DCOE's 1,700. 45 TWM ITB's idled at 450 rpms if we wanted, and did 750 rock steady all day long. With a 5.38 rear gear, WATCH OUT on the street! (Welcome to 'Streetable Japan-Style'!) No different an rpm range than an A210 if you think about it...before anybody makes any comments!

If you fill up your tank when you fill up your tank, you will NEVER "run out of fluid"! Basing fears from some idiot too stupid to fill his fluids when he fills his gas tank is a bit over-the-top. I've run Spearco Water Injection, triggered on both vacuum AND boost since 1979. I have NEVER run out of water when driving the car following one very simple rule: when I put gas in the car, I check my oil and water tank and top off as needed. Every 4th tankful, or before each track day, I check brake fluid. The horror stories of running out of anti-detonant is based more on the reality of having a Forrest Gump run your Indy Car Team, and not someone with the common sense to check the basics. Sling Blade would not run out of water. Forrest Gump would... It works, the mechanics of its efficacy is up for debate... But I've known people to screw up their base map colossally because they're tuning with five gallons in the fuel tank and it's reaching 140F changing the density. From that experience one could equally condemn aftermarket FI, C16 Racing Fuel, or aftermarket fuel computers in general by the same rationale of "your fluid could/will run out" So will your gas. Moot point. Invalid argument.

In the old days, simple water injection was used. Methanol was used to keep the water from freezing...

DOHC Four-Valve engines are NOT "New Technology"! Not by a LONGSHOT! The reason people in AMERICA don't pursue 700HP L-Builds can be more properly summed up in two adjectives and a conjunction: "Ignorance & Sloth"

Detonation. Detonation. Detonation.

The Convention shut them down...sad when you consider the people attending are generally two different groups of people. You can't "force" people into attendance...but you might "trick" a few...ONCE! The L.A., Vegas, & Phoenix conventions didn't ask MSA to tone it down... In fact, the L.A. Convention was held in JUNE, a mere 6 or 8 weeks after MSA and had HUGE attendance. Insecurity and Selfishness is sad.

Nice head...

That's a terrible retort, no class. And that engine is down on power for displacement. It's making less than my bone stock L28. More torque, but terminal HP is really low. My 2/2 ran consistent 15.50's at San Antonio Dragway (26 passes) weighing 2695# with me (255#) in it -- if I transposed the numbers (2965# as most people insist for a 2/2...) the HP calculation is just ridiculous. 89.95 mph trap speeds. The power is in the head, it's not breathing. In fact, Scott Burkhardt's SU-Powered L28 spun over 200 at last years MSA, and the following year added slightly more with the Triples on it...without forged pistons and the ability to pull beyond 7,000 you will always be down on power. But Scott's engine was cast pistons, and peaked around 6,500 as I recall.

You realize the plugs can go on any injector...it makes no difference...it's batch-fired. Positive and Ground, that makes somewhat of a difference... But you can swap injector plugs from one injector to another without any reservation.

"Why? Because I want to go 9's in an S30 and be period correct. Why would I build an N/A engine to turbocharge it? That's rather silly. And it would certainly not cost $10K." Define "Period Correct"---what 'Period'? 70's, 80's, 90's? Each ranges from impossible to possible. "It won't cost"---HAHAHAHAHA I love that. Keep your receipts. There are plenty of 9-second S30's in Japan, you are just looking in the wrong places to get the impression that it is not common. In fact, quite to opposite is true for at least the past 20, if not 30 years!

I've never had a problem. Especially passing, since the Fairlady gearing if FAR better for performance driving like passing...I find it actually easier to pass cleanly. I would never consider it a "massive headache"... Then again, I'm some sort of old-school Cro-Magnon... The girls in the drive through seemed to love it as well, wether I took the Left Side of In-n-Out, or drove backwards through Jack-In-The-Box, always got compliments. I guess I'm some sort of Übermench in regards to my driving skills, if I can handle it with such aplomb. (Same as all of my buds...I shall call them "Super-friends" from now until forever!

I didn't do anything, but JeffP fixed the dry rotted fuel hose and got the flat tire aired up so we can use it!

Fruit Rollups need air...big air. I make big air. Ask anybody!

Early standards, not lates. I so have my blanking plate, though! But I'm a hoarder...

Randy has it correct. I often said that overseas "what do you care WHERE you are? UPS Delivers EVERYWHERE stateside!" And it's true today as ever. Frankly, if it wasn't for DHL and UPS I couldn't get half the stuff I get shipped to the office. Lots from China, Japan, etc... The internet has changed things.

Stamps? PFFT! FT takes e-mail... My experience is a lot of the S30S models came in before the EFI era. They seemed priced more 'military friendly' and then got free shipping sooo.... The "71" I have (S30-06225) was an Arizona Import in 1976 (!!!) by a DOD Schoolteacher. The GS31 I have is shockingly an "S" (out of Idaho) with the plastic mats and roll up windows. The Coupes Americans bought didn't seem to fancy the electric windows etc on the "L"... Though the second GS31 I have does have all the bells and whistles. It was very strange, most GI's that shipped "S" models stateside, soon afterward the first thing they wanted was a carpet kit! The got home, and the "Plush Barcalounger Disease" regained it's foothold!