Slowpoke

Phew! Good luck with the tuning!

I would open the rad cap and check for bubbles or exhaust gas contamination. You could have a small head gasket leak. The system could also not be bleed down sufficiently. Stock engine, good thermostat, and a clean stock rad should cool well in 70 deg. temps. For a band-aid you could run water wetter and distilled water for coolant, assuming its not near freezing temps near you. I would also flush the coolant system, heater core and engine to be safe. I warped a cylinder head in the past to a clogged rad.

Uhhh, that could be bad lighting...but your oil looks pretty milky. If it is, might also have something to do with your knocking sound. You should do a solid mechanical once over before you try to tune. You'll be chasing your tail trying to fix mechanical problems in the tune.

LoL! I'm only laughing because i am guilty of building wheels for tire sizes that don't exist. The Maxxis is probably your best bet. What wheels would they be going on? https://www.maxxis.com/catalog/tire-513-102-victra-vr-1 https://classic.michelin.com/en/Competition-Classic-Tyre-range/TB-15 https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/285-40vr15-pirelli-cinturato-p7.html Good luck!

Good to hear. Good luck!

I have used a rb cx-racing swap kit in my build. Don't expect their parts to fit perfectly. You should expect to modify or replace parts from a kit to make it work. Some parts work out perfect and others are trash and probably included it the kits to make them "complete". All that said, I do like their kit's they get you 75% of the way there for and even lesser fraction of the price of other kits. I can't say much for tech customer service as i never bothered to call about issues with the products. If they suck, fix it and if its trash, bin it. I have used their customer service to help with shipping or discounts and they have been more than helpful. I would take some measurements, then take to parts to your welder have have them modified for a closer fit and supported for strength if needed. I like cx-racing, you just have to have realistic expectations of what your getting for your money. Don't expect a "bolt-on" solution with them.

I have the Marugen wing i have yet to install. The difference in the fiberglass work and mounting hardware is miles above Arita, and so is the price lol!

Yeah, it's far from perfect. Its the Arita Speed five piece kit. I was unable to find one locally and ended up ordering one from Japan. The Shipping cost more than the parts! I cleaned it up, painted and installed it myself. The buckets are uneven, the lip makes a gap in the middle, and it has various other small issues. I enjoy it for now and when it bothers me enough I will go back and fix it. Really just about everything on the car is a "bit off" lol. A lot of it could be improved upon. 99% of the work on this car has been done by me in my garage as a first time experience. Not sure if I am applying the term correctly, but i like to think of the project as "kaizen", the concept of continuous improvement. Luckily, i always have the opportunity to learn from my mistakes improve techniques and try again.

So, I was randomly looking back through my old posts and stumble back on my intro for HBZ. 5 years ago I got hooked on Datsuns. I stopped posting to focus on reading and learning more. Because of the overwhelming amount of information available about these cars I didn’t find it necessary to ask many questions. I stopped updating my introduction after i bought the 76 280z. The 280z has come along way since then! In the past 5 years it’s seen a lot of redoing. Iv’e changed wheels, flares, engines, ECUs, a few times. Although not the most efficient way to modify a car, it is allowing me to learn, improve and keeps me interested in the process. My only underlying goal with modifying it is to keep pushing toward the car having a “special” feeling to it. I can’t define a “special” feeling exactly but it’s a feeling i would like to have when i look at the car in the garage, sit in it, show it off, and while driving. A few years ago I swapped the l28 for a l28et. My first engine swap. It went pretty well and the experience was a huge confidence booster. It made the car feel way better on the highway and the exhaust note was awesome! The next year i decided to hop up the power a little and add Injectors, FP, larger turbo, IC, 3in exhaust and MegaSquirt. I had some help tuning and was able to learn a bunch about wiring and street tuning. The power gain was pretty substantial. Although I did not get a change to dyno it, my guess is it made around 300hp with a lot of torque. I really felt like this was the sweet spot for the car. Enough power to feel “fast” compared to a modern car, but not too crazy. A few months later I decided to start liking the Gnose. The Gnose really transformed the look of the car. I took the car to Gridlife Midwest and it won Best JNC classic! A proud moment for me as it was my first car show and i honestly didn’t build it with the intent of entering or winning any. Last winter the Z got some greatly needed upgraded wheels, and a RB25 fell into my lap. I wanted to keep the white blue contrast going and had some Wantanabe RS8s custom built for the Z. The wheel size and width are totally for athletic purposes and I’m fine with that. I had been wanting to do a RB swap since before i did the l28et swap, they where just too pricey at the time. That winter I stumble across a cheap local RB25 for sale locally, and decided to take the plunge. I refreshed all of the accessories on the RB and installed an upgraded turbo, turbo manifold, ECU Masters EMU Black, custom wiring harness, 1000cc injectors, even larger FP, fuel rail, and open dump external waist gate. I also took the opportunity to clean up and paint the engine bay. People would always ask me to see the turbo swap and with how messy the bay was before i was kinda embarrassed to. I learned so much during the first swap the RB swap came out so much cleaner and came together much more easily than i would have thought. This time I did all of the initial tuning myself and took it to the dyno to get it fine tuned under boost. Made 400hp on 93. The RB25 make the car feel much more modern and refined when not in boost. On boost its pretty intense! It kinda feels like having a loaded gun on you. I was missing with the idea of tuning it on e85 but i think I am good with the power it has for now. I’m also still using the u-joints in the rear, so I am planning to upgrade the whole rear end soon. Also happened to win a showcase award at Clean Culture MI! In all, I've been humbled by how much other people enjoy the car. I've met interesting people, made good friends from people just starting conversations about it. HBZ has been a constant resource for me throughout this project. Thank you all for the quality info and keeping the forum alive!

Chickenman has been helping me tune my l28et running on megasquirt, and i felt compelled to write a review of his services. I have had MS3 running on my car for over a year now. I purchased a pre-built ECU and pre-made wiring harness from a forum member that is no longer able to provide support for his product. I don’t mind mechanical projects but I’m still pretty green when it comes to electrical systems, so i figured i would leave this part of the project to professionals. I got the car to run decently with some local help, but parts of the install and initial setup were incorrect and i had a few preexisting electrical issues. This winter i upgraded the turbo, injectors and needed to retune MS. I was interested in knowing more about how the MS system worked and to feel more comfortable working with it, so i reached out on HBZ for some help. Chickenman PM’d me and offered his remote running services at a VERY reasonable price. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, but i figured if i learned anything from the experience it would be worth it. It was very worth it. Chickenman set me up with some pre-tune instructions and setup, the we setup a few hours for him to remotely control my laptop hooked up to the ECU for tuning. The tune i had previously done ran well but was masking all sorts of mechanical and electrical issues. Chickenman, did not let me keep these issues on my car and patiently instructed me on diagnosing and fixing them! I would have never expected so much patience and interest in seeing the project done right. By the end of the first running session we had a decent idle, a drive able VE table, working autotune and a list of miscellaneous small issues to fix. Chickenman provided email support through the next few weeks helping me diagnose and fix most of the remaining issues. I sent him updated auto tunes, data logs, driving notes and he made edits to my tune. My car runs smother and faster than before, I also learned a lot about automotive electrical systems and MS. I feel much more confident and organized about my project and can’t recommend Chickenman’s services enough. While his services are all remote, i believe my car is running better in less time than it would have if i had taken it to someone local. I live in Detroit, and finding someone to tune an old foreign car on a lesser know ECU is hard and expensive. I could now take the car in its current state to dyno tune timing and would save a lot of money and time. Chickenman is professional, knowledgeable, patient, helpful and is excellent at communicating and teaching. If you are thinking about setting up MS and haven’t done it before, hire him. He will save you time, headache and you will probably learn something useful. I highly recommend his services 10/10! Thanks Chickenman

@Chickenman, oops....lol I heard annealing PLA gives it quite a bit of strength and heat resistance, supposedly better than ABS.

Nice TPS mounting plate! I was thinking of printing one. You mind Sharing the STL? Also, when your ready to tune get a hold of Chinkenman. This gentleman knows his stuff and his support and patience are bar none!

I'm running an old set of 255/50/r16 BFG's and thinking about making a switch to the r888. Let me know how it goes for you!

PM sent

Thanks Softopz for verifying. Ive' been off site for a while and since then installed 440cc high impedance injectors. I gather i did not have any sort of resistor pack since i did have PWM turned on before. Since the injector install, I turned off PWM and updated the REQ Fuel by using the calculator to 7.0. It started and ran a little rough but i held off running it long because i needed to address an exhaust leak near the o2 sensor. Softopsz, please PM me with a consulting rate. I would like you to verify some of my setting and ask you for a few tips and tricks.