ZR8ED

I am still running with no E brake hooked up, and I appreciate the offer! The kit came with adapters to attach the stock e brake cable to the 240sx calipers, so I'm not too sure how it will work out. I will be at a Z meet this weekend. (ZFEST. Ontario Z car car show with 100+ Z's) and I will investigate this much closer and take some pics. For anyone that wants to come to ZFEST, check out Ontariozcar.com for Details. Thanks! Scott

Gratuitous A$$ shot request? Ok you asked for it! Scott.

Poindexter. I too liked that idea, back in the early day of VHS and then DVD and even movie theatres! Then they started to put advertising in them too! Now some of the dvd's I can't jump to the main menu, I have to FF through each ad or video preview each time I want to watch a movie that I paid for, so I don't have to endure comercials on tv to watch that same movie. Comercials are coming to Satellite radio. Just wait. But back to the thread. I use a marine antenna, and it is a little black box that is about 3 inches long by 3/4" by 3/4". I have it stuck in the top left of my windshield inside the car. Works good enough for me.

Yup. get the econo box, strip it down all you can. Gas is only going up. Getting slightly better gas mileage now only "kinda sorta" evens you out to where you were last year. Gas is still going up, so get something cheap that gets the very best mileage. Then try and improve that as much as possible. I am paying 1.36/litre, and I've done lots of little things to improve my gas mileage, but it is not going to reduce my gas bill any further when gas goes over $2/litre for me. And it will go higher! My Z is now a weekend warrior, and I no longer worry about the cost of gas for that car, so I can bring on the horsepower! Goodluck!

Nissan stated that the VG30ET was approx 395 lbs (no tranny) and this was a dressed motor (complete) The first 100lbs is somewhat easy, after that, it is becomes more intense. Easy items like seats, interior panels, carpet, sound insulation, stereo's, are easier to remove/substitue with lighter equipment. large reductions of weight from changing the stock seats is very effective. There is lots of emmisions equipment that "could" be removed (not endorsing that) Lots of bits and pieces under the hood, engine controllers etc. Light weight gelcel battery can save an easy 20lbs. Body items like wheel well inner liners, power window equipment, replace glass with lexan, lightweight body panels, etc. After that it is more complex, and some knowledge will be required regarding structural integrety, and some comfort/driveability trade offs, re-engineering of existing parts to lightweight materials etc. Gutting the insides of the doors, hood and hatch, remove metal bracing (may have to re-engineer structural bracing) That is just off the top of my head, and somethings I have done, but I am not a mechanic or engineer, so take these ideas with caution. Good luck and keep us posted! It is possible to get that weight down, but not easily/likely to hit 2500 lbs

I have flywheel for an 87 300zxt. My motor is now an 89jdm. I kept the 87 flywheel because I had it shaved and balanced. I use a bully clutch on mine. I like it alot! Canadian too! http://www.bullyclutch.com/ Scott.

Jeeper42 Thanks! Simmons wheels start somewhere in the 500's, so depending on size/style/customization etc, they can get steep. fabulous wheels though. I never got to weigh them without the rubber, so I am unsure of their weight. I bought the heavier street version, as the race stuff was not recommended for any street use. I took their advice, and have had no issues with them. S.

Well I'm on my second slave cyl in 20 years, and I have had performance clutches since the early 90's, and I don't always drive nice

Hmm Looks like an average Canadian Z after a few winters! hehe I've seen worse that were still driven on the roads!! What about the VG project? Or is this this a change of project? Good luck.

Good to hear. I have a new laptop with Vista and I have been afraid to load megatune on it. I'll have to give it a try. PS no issues so far with my Vista machine. I use it for editing video (adobe premier elements), editing music (sony sound forge), normal computer stuff (email, surfing the web, movies, music, pictures) I do have MS Office 2007. Don't like it so far. Ok now that that is answered, everybody back to tuning!

BillZ260. As far as I can remember, the Sunoco 94 has always said on the pump that it has 10% ethanol. Hence the "clean burn hi-performance" fuel that they advertise. The next highest octane is 91, though I recall Pioneer fuel sold a 93 octane for a while (at least while they were in my area) Back in the day, I questioned the ethanol, and thought that it just made it "better" but hey I was young, and knew 10X more about webers than I did about gasoline.

My front belly pan goes all the way to the crossmember, and has the minimum cut out for the wheels to turn and move. I found even with the belly pan, that my hood would flutter slightly, and it would flutter way up at the front, at the rad support. I then boxed in the front of the car. ( I have pics in other aero threads where we talk specifically about the front rad opening) After this, the flutter when completely away. I do not have any overheating issues, and I have been using this belly pan for almost 10 years. The front end mods were made last year following the results of the aero testing data.

I run Sunoco 94 octane in my Z, and have done so for the last 15 years at least. It is a 10% ethanol blend. I have never noticed any problems that I could attribute to the type/blend of gas that I use. I have run SU's, Weber's, turbo with a Modified EFI system, and now turbo with Megasquirt EFI.

225's with sticky sticky rubber would be a bare minimum. If you don't have rims already, then you might want to look at other options. I can spin my 315's in 1st, 2nd and slightly in 3rd. I'm not talking about clutch dumps here. Hard roll ons to WOT. A nice 245/45/16 would be my personal recomendation, with minor adjustments to the bodywork/ or use with coilovers for no body mods. Anything wide in 17's starts to get pricey, and will require more substantial body/suspension mods. It all depends on how you want to drive the car, and what are your long term goals. Hope to see it out on the roads this summer!

Well I have built my front belly pan, and rear diffusers from aluminum, and have seen no deformation of the materials from air/wind pressures. Mine are approx equivilant to 22 guage (aluminum is in mils and I don't recall the actual number) Out at the front of the car in the direct path of air, 16-18 gauge thickness would be more than enough. The only deformation you could get would be the bending of the metal that it is attached to, so proper supporting of the add on metal would be neccessary. If you want it body coloured, I would use steel, if you like the "bolt on race look", I would go with aluminum. With the right bracing/curves etc, you could probably build it from 20-22 gauge metal. Use bristolboard to build your templates to get the design and fit just right. More rigid than paper, more flexible than cardboard. I look forward to hearing about trials..even if they are seat of the pants. Ie I know for sure that at 155mph my front belly pan helps, and that the rear diffuser didn't cause any noticeable negative or positive results. (At least it didn't cause the car to fly away like some feared..) Goodluck!

I have not heard of the volvo caliper swap in more than 10 years. I do recall that depending on which caliper (the one for the stock 240 discs) are only a minor upgrade from the stock nissan calipers. It is an old school budget swap. For the price and effort, and more recent techology, there are much better swaps now with better documentation. I am not saying they are not good brakes, it is just a swap more common 20 years ago. Good luck.

a super quick photo edit. I did not have any other good pics of a 2+2 so I borrowed this one I found on this site. Its a great side shot that gives a good view. If the owner wants me to take it down I will. I was just trying to give a couple of ideas.

An update. I got the driveshaft back in, cleaned up my tools and took the beast out for a test run. No more creaking driveshaft noises. Lots of smooth power going to the ground. It worked! Life is back to being good.

try usacomp.com Rims in different configurations, and they will do our lug pattern. Don't forget about the KIND of tire that you can fit. No point in spending all kinds of money to end up having wide "s" rated tires on nice rims. I gave up on 15's and 16's due to the lack of performace tire availability in the wider widths. It seemed as if the wider tires were older technology rubber and/or designed for s10 pickup truck show vehicles. (meaning H rated performace at best.) I almost bought from usacomp.com, but I settled on Simmons. See my sig. My rears are 315/35/17 with 4.5" of backspace (they really stick out from a stock fender lip, but fill my flares nicely enough.) I would not want to go with anything larger than a 17 diameter wheel though, as they start to look out of place on an old school type of car...that and you end up with rubber bands for tires. (No good for my street driven z)

X64V. Not old..just young when I got it in the summer of 89. (not quite like in the song "In the summer of 69") cause there were no z's here yet. Ok Ok back to the story. Yea eight years ago I had it built. I didn't really expect to have to touch it before my halfshafts which were done at the same time! They are holding up ok. No cv's for me. I have good axle geometry, so I have had very little trouble with my halfshafts since I ditched the welded diff. I think the driveshaft ujoint bit the bullet because the grease nipple fell out and it dried up. Anyways. I took the shaft to the shop yesturday, and the guy told me he was going to leave early on fri and not be back till tues, so he did the shaft for me while I waited! 40$ and I was done and gone in a 1/2 hour! yippie. I can now get under the car this weekend and get it all back together...as long as my "while I'm at it" doesn't get too carried away. hehe BTW he had a nice set of honda seats that look like they will fit nicely 180.00 black/grey with red. Hmmm One thing at a time here.. Scott

I hear ya Big Phil. These cars are great, but great hp sure takes its toll on stuff. I finally completed my long awaited rear disc swap, I got out for a test drive to set up the brakes, everything looks good works pretty good too! I took it out again to give the brakes a harder workout, and suddenly I have a new driveline type noise. I took it to a tranny shop, and I discover my driveshaft ujoint is toast. The grease nipple fell out, and is now no good. I just had it custom built 8 years ago! No hoist at home, and last night I jacked up the car, crawled under it and thank the Lord that my custom driveshaft is much easier to remove that the stocko one. I did not have to remove any other parts to get to it. I also remembered the little trick of rotating the driveshaft back and forth while using my box end wrench to get more rotation of the nut. I have a set of box wrenches that have the gear rachet on them, and decided to try them out. It didn't fit in there all that well, but it made it even quicker to remove the driveshaft nuts. I didn't have to remove the wrench each time. I just rotated the driveshaft back and forth, until the nuts came off! I took less than 1/2 hour to do the whole thing. I've got the driveshaft in the trunk, and will drop it off at the driveline shop on my way home. I hope I will be only out of action for a few days....until.. I noticed that my ebrake cable is very accessible with no driveshaft, so I will swap the rear E brake cables left/right as per the direction for the 240sx rear caliper swap! While I'm at it is happening all over again..I just might do some cleanup work under there too! AHHHHHhhhhh! Cheer Up Phil. This happens to Hybridz'rs all too often. Get it back running, and life will be back to being good. Good Luck! Scott

As the title says. I have an 84 300zxt borg warner t5 in the z right now, and I'm wondering if the rear seal and bearing are the same as the ones for the Mustang T5 trannies? i heard that the short throw shifter kit fits just fine. I couldn't find much on the later 300zxt t5. I found info on the t5 that came in some 280zx's. Thanks, Scott

Ok I'm going to make a few posts to this thread to wrap up this thread for future readers. 1 The 240sx rear disk brake kit arrived from Modern Motorsports. It came as described, and was very complete (no calipers) 2 The 20" hardline required should really be about 24", but I bought a pre assembled 30" piece and made a loop to get it to the proper spot, and make it look nice and neat under the car. I got the longer part instead because I was not able to make my own custom length hard line. 3 sourcing the 240sx calipers here in the Toronto GTA was not as easy, but I eventually got a rebuilt set. Took a few days to source them, so order them ahead of time to save some trouble. 4 make sure when you get your calipers you check to see if you have the e brake cable bracket. I'm not sure that it is supposed to be included, but mine did not come with the bracket. This slowed my swap considerably, and at this point I am still looking for just the brackets. I went ahead and left the e brake cables tied out of the way. Anyone have some? I may fab my own if i have to. 5 I found my MC to be bad, so I got the "while I'm at it" bug and did the upgrade to the 280zx MC. It went in with no trouble. Just don't touch the rod that comes out of the booster. The stock 280 fluid resivoirs fit the zx MC just fine. Don't forget to measure the depth of the MC where the rod fits in to make sure that it is the same distance as the old one. This makes it way easier to troubleshoot problems ( the rod coming out of the booster is adjustable.) If it is not the same length, you can run into peddle travel problems. 6 The swap was very straight forward except for two little items. It was easily solved by looking at some completed pics of other swaps. 6A the caliper bracket faces the front of the car (in front of the strut) 6B the caliper bleeder nipple faces up. (there is a left and right caliper, and mine did not appear to be clearly marked) 7 The caliper piston has a little pin sticking out of it, and it needs to be turned and aligned with a slot on the back of the brake pad. I made a simple tool to turn the piston to align the pin. (a tool is avail) I cleaned up all of my parts "while I was at it" and painted what I could to make the swap a bit cleaner. Bleeding was not as easy as I thought when doing it by yourself. I got a helper, and it made it much quicker. There are bleeder kits avail, though I started by using a hose on the nipple and placing it in can of brake fluid (to stop air getting back into the system) and opening the nipple and pumping until the fluid has no air in it. It makes for a slow process by yourself. Also don't forget to start at the drivers side rear wheel first. It is the furthest away from the MC. I have the swap completed (minus the e brake) I have checked for leaks, taken it for a quick drive to bead in the rear rotors/pads, and then checked again for leaks. So far so good. Last night I went out for a seat of the pants test spin and laid the throttle down to see how the brakes would feel under harder braking. The peddle travel is shorter than before, and it is a bit harder to press, and feels hard as it is being pressed. No more increasing hardness as the pedal travels further. (if that makes sense) they used to feel soft for the first bit of movement, then would firm up. Now it feels firm even with a slight touch. I'll have to get used to it. I have my brake bias set to 50/50, and I was able to make the fronts lock first, so I will have to make some adjustments, but I will need some help with that to help me spot which wheels lock first.

Another way, somewhat mentioned is improving the efficency of your engine. VE (volumetric efficency) A more modern driveline likely has a better ve than our stock motors, but since many of us are rebuilding them, we can do a lot to improve our ve. My last L6 motor was built with this premise, to make a decent amount of hp without going crazy $ on exotic parts. We lightened what we could. ie crank, flywheel, pullies, and helped improve the flow of fluids ie oil/water passages by matching waterpump ports, removing rough casting marks where possible (not polishing). Crank and rods were highly polished, cyl head was generously ported (overkill for street engine) polished etc etc. plus a hole bunch of other rebuilding techniques that I know little to nothing about. What I ended up with was one heck of a fast 8000RPM redline motor that could run on high octance pump gas. Got into the low 20 mpg's with 4.11 gears and triple weber carbs and fat tires weighing in at 2680lbs (lowest it ever weighed on a scale) So what I am getting at is we have some good options to improve the ve of our stock engines, can improve our aero, and still have a good time on a track! I can certianly attest to the improvements from a programable FI system. My megasquirt runs awsome, and my cruising a/f ratio is low 15's on the highway. Nice and safe, and I am now happily cruising in the very high 20's, yet I can drop the hammer, and fry my 315's! More tuning may get me into the 30's, but my z is not a daily driver, and I won't care much until it costs me more than $100.00 to fill it. It is reasonable enough for me right now.

spacers/adapters.. are a BIG difference. To clear my wheels (older wheels than in my sig pic), I ran a 1/4" SPACER to clear my brakes, and I used 1.5" wheel adapters for my rear wheels, and I was pushing 300+ ft/lbs of torque at that time, and I street drove and did some track time no issues. They did make me nervous the first few times on the track. Also note that I did this to fillup my flares, NOT to correct a fwd offset rim, so I was doing what we all talk about not doing. I ran like that for a year or two, then spent big $ on the proper rims to fill my rear flares. No fears now. I still have 4.5" back space, but a whole lot of dish as well! I have "heard" of full track z's running adapters with no issues, but have not personally witnessed and verified it. Scott.