jeromio

Any plans to either sell those motor mounts or make drawings available? (I'm still wavering between the 5.0 and the 7M-GTE. The former is looking good mostly due to the build up of excellent info on the swap. The latter has more power per dollar potential though....)

Okay, just to be a nanny and make sure there's no confusion: the Passenger side is "Normal" threaded (righty-tighty) and the driver's side is "Reverse" threaded (turn right to loosen). I learned this the hard way. Put a big breaker bar on the driver's side and ruined the nut before finally checking the threads (Doh!).

I once had a pad fall off of my first car, a 78 Celica. Not sure how it happened. Possibly it broke? Anyway, I didn't know what happened at the time - all I knew was that I no longer had any brakes. I pumped them, but apparently not enough to take up the slack of the missing pad. Ended up passing a bunch of cars, flirting with oncoming traffic on a double lined 2 lane before pulling into the ditch. Highly scary. The ebrake on that car was dicey too. It worked, just not very well. To sum up, all of my pedal pressure went to the "easiest" path - in this case, the unloaded piston in that caliper with the missing pad. Same thing with a broken or ruptured line.

Looks nice. The hood clears that huge intake plenum, eh? That thing makes it seem like the engine is sitting up much higher than it probably is. How much clearance do you have between the oil pan and the XMember?

The part that would be the most useful would be a complete stub axle flange. One just like the ZXt flange, except with the 27 splines instead of 25. I suppose the machining of splines would add too much to the overall cost?? I remain skeptical of the advantages of the 280 stubs over the 240 stubs. Are those 2 extra spines really worth all this hassle? I got the stock ZXt flanges with my CV axles and they slipped right on. The only headache was the seal, but that wasn't too bad.

I have the CVs in my 240 without an adaptor. 240Z stubs are the same dia. and spline count as the 280ZXt.

Excellent! Now I just gotta go hit the salvage yard. You have saved me a great deal of time and effort. Thank you...

The only requirement for 17X8 is conversion to coilovers. You'll need rims with a 20mm offset. I have 235/45/17s on all 4 corners. I doun't think 255s would fit without rolling the fenderlips and going with less offset.

Whoa! That's some key info there, that is. My e-brake is constantly requiring re-adjustment. I've had these (82turbo rear) calipers for what, 5 months now? Must've adjusted them (by taking them off and turning the cylinder) about 4 times now. E-Brake will work great for a week or so and then phhbllt. I got mine from a salvage yard. They were in pretty good shape. When I took them apart to replace the seals (and clean and paint them - also soaked the separate bits in parts cleaner for 4-5 days), It sure seemed like the cylinders of both were pretty much one piece. SO, either mine are different (unlikely), or appearances can be deceiving and the 2 tapered parts are basically fused together on both. That's not good. But the actual brake operation seems okay. If I jack the car up, spin the wheel and have someone press the pedal, it stops. Whereas when the ebrake quits, it can't even do that much. One problem seems to be that the amount of travel in the 240 ebrake cable doesn't seem to be enough for the ZX calipers. When I adjust mine, I have to make it so the caliper's lever is engaged about 1/3 of the way by the slack cable. So, just to be clear, you're saying that there are actually 2 cylinders: one that threads onto the e-brake "screw", and another one that seats onto that one. how did you free them up? I also had the hardest damn time getting the dust shields in properly. The rebuild kit had some rings - like key rings - a piece of wire bent around in a circle with the ends overlapping about a centimeter. Couldn't figure out what they were for? Rebuilt rear 280ZX calipers are some kind of crazy expensive. I was quoted $100 each, _not_ including core charge! [ July 10, 2001: Message edited by: jeromio ]

There is that lead alloy that you can use - supposed to have a low melting point. Problem with that is, I have looong sections of tubing that I'm bending. Plus, even if I could afford that much of this metal, I fear that my 12ton bender would not be up for it.

Nooo, slightly larger , then cut a section out to make it the same size. Or perhaps the same exact size (if you're really lucky). Wait!!! I just remembered that I used trans cross member poly bushings in my DeGroot diffmount! I found some galvanized fence-post tubing that had the exact same ID as the bushing OD. Found it at Lowe's.

I stupidly removed my mustache bushing sleeves. I replaced them with some exhaust tubing that was slightly larger. I sliced a section out and hammered it in there. Turned out pretty well. The bushings in both of these apps, mustache and trans member, are not rotating or anything, so you pretty much just need to make the bushing tight in there.

What about the Mk3? Those things are plentiful in the yards. Wrong ratios?

Ain't none. The cartridge will bottom out, which is apparently not too good for it. So don't go playing Dukes of Hazzard with your Z....

Oh - I guess I forgot to put the specs on that page. It's there now. They are Konig Monsoons from Discount Tire. They are 17X8 with a 20mm offset, dual pattern 4 on 4.5 and 4 on 4.25. Tires are 235/45 Dunlop SP5000. No spacer or adapter required, but I do have coilovers at all 4 corners. They wouldn't fit otherwise...

Well, I had a very frustrating Sunday. I have many hundreds of dollars worth of DOM tubing and my cheapo 12ton "bender". Well, I tried twice to bend the bare tubing with consistent results - big ol' kinks. Actually, the second time, I tried moving the rollers in much farther - this resulted in a bent bottom on the bender followed by a dramatically popped weld. I hammered and welded it back in place, moved the rollers back and got my kinked piece of expensive tubing.... SO, then I tried filling one of the 12 foot lengths with sand. I capped off the ends with welded on washers and 3/4 nuts. I figured that threading in 6 inch bolts (longest I could find) would compress the sand and eliminate any air pockets. Well, apparently this was not enough. I managed one good bend, but it took forever - had to constantly move the piece and vary the roller positions. It looked pretty good though. But, on the second bend, the one that would've actually resulted in a rollbar, I got a kink. Very discouraging. I'm going to call around to muffler shops tomorrow and see if I can get one to bend this stuff for me.

Many of these free photo hosting/web site hosting places block you from including files hosted on their server on pages hosted on another server (does that makes sense?) IOWs, when there's a GET request on a file, if it's not coming directly from a client (304 vs. 200 I think), then they trap the request and spit out a different file - in this case an ad. The main reason they have to do this is to avoid their service being abused by porn sites. The more clever sites will put a bandwidth throttle on the account which will usually defeat the porn sites. I just tested the Yahoo briefcase and it seems to work. I created a little page which included an image file that I uploaded to the yahoo server and it came out fine (http://jeromio.com/test200.html). Works with their photo album too. You have to right click the image (using IE anyway, I assume netscape too), select Properties and then copy the entire URL for the image and paste it into the img src= tag in quotes.

I have bought _new_ starters before that were screwy. I've also had a couple that were working fine, then sat for a few months and decided to just not. Never had one not want to disengage though. Maybe there's no spring in there at all? I can't think of a way that any kind of a wiring problem could cause this though - although I certainly wouldn't be the one to consult on wiring. This is where buying parts locally pays off - if it's broken, or you even suspect it's broken, you just drive back to the store and get a replacement.

This could be an interesting topic - I don't recall seeing it before (at least in any technical detail). I could see the "pulse" factor (the gush of the other cylinders exhaust flow creating a kind of suction that ends up pulling the exhaust from the rest along) playing heavily in this - you have 8 pulses versus just 4. And the friction would certainly be a factor along with some other nuances of flow in tighter spaces and such. But dual 2.5's against a single 3 - that's 40% more cross sectional area. Hard to believe that they could even be equivalent - much less the single 3 being superior....?

Scottie's solution is certainly innovative - if you already have a stock rubber mount. My question is, performance-wise, how does this differ from a solid mount? I suppose you could put some bends in that steel piece to allow for some movement. This would reduce the amount of total stress on the rubber while still allowing for some flex - even out the vibrations and such. Would make the rubber last longer. But the way that rubber mount is designed - it's just severely flawed. It's simply some rubber bonded to 2 pieces of steel. Not only is the rubber going to deteriorate, but certainly that "glue" effect can't hold up very long. What I'm saying - if you're starting from a blank slate, seems like you may as well just get the solid mount in the first place. If you've driven it with the diff slapping against the body, the little bit of harshness of the solid mount is just not going to seem like anything comparitively.

Replacement rubber mount is over $50. Total waste of money in my opinion. It's doomed to fail again. I'd either go solid, or fab a DeGroot mount - I've done the latter. Very happy with the results. http://www.usq.edu.au/users/degroot/240z/pages/diffmount.htm http://240z.jeromio.com/diffmount.html

Well, this didn't generate as much dicussion as I had hoped.... An opposing pair are clearly dependent upon each other since the caliper doesn't float, but their combined forces are not merely equal to the force of half the pair as a result. Another way to look it is that though the single piston is squeezing both sides, this does not "increase" it's clamping force as compared to the opposing pistons. Rather, since the single piston must "travel" twice as far to perform it's clamping, it would theoretically require more fluid to be pumped to it to provide the equivalent clamping force of a similar dual piston setup. IOWs, I'm suggestin (tentatively) that if X is piston diameter, a 4X single piston might be inferior to a 1X 4 Piston caliper. But at the least, it seems that the multi piston unit is equivalent when considering total piston area. Obviously none of my conjecture is based on any kind of research or engineering knowledge.

The other points replacement option is the Crane Fireball. I have this in both my Z (L28) and my wife's International truck. It's fairly cheap (around $100), and was very easy to install. It uses an optical pickup - I believe the pertonix is magnetic. They have a fancy one that varies duration and such, but it's more $$$ and I haven't tried it.

The most important thing is to get the diff "centered" so that the halfshafts don't have to angle forward or backwards to get from the hubs to the diff. From the factory, the R180 was set up so that it was pushed too far foward by an inch or so. The R200 flips around (rings forward) and has a little bend in it that pushes the diff slightly forward again to achieve center. I have no idea what the measurements on the R230 are. But if the distance from the rear mounting surface to the output shaft centerlines is the same as the R200, then you should be okay. Might want to put a piece of metal between the diff and the R180 bar to shim the diff to center if the measurements are exact, R230 to R200.

Excellent photo. That paint looks liquid. It'd cost a 3 or 4 times again what I've got into my car to get it looking like that. The upside is I'm freed of the anxiety of keeping it looking nice....