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I looked at many glasspacks because I really like the sound of that one video linked to above. I was going to copy the setup as best as I could based on the owner's descripton, but I couldn't find any glasspacks that I thought would be suitable/durable. I have run them before (a four pack) on a true system, and I liked the sound of it until the fiberglass burned out of them. And they were at the back of the car... Most are not stainless (one from Magnaflow was but it had a 2.5" core - so wasn't 3" all the way through) and I came across your post, John, about the Dynomax during my research. I wasn't sure if that one was stainless, but even so, they use fiberglass in theirs... So, I'm going to try putting the Magnaflow 14867 (5" Dia.) in the tunnel just after the SPD merge collector that John helped me with. At the back, I'm going to try the Magnaflow 12619 (6" Dia.). Both are 100% stainless with no fiberglass to burn out and have 3" cores with straight through perforations. Got a couple of of 3" stainless mandrel J bends, some stainless straight pipe, stainless rod hangers, and stainless band clamps etc. also. The header and the SPD merge collector are both mild steel and are going to be sent off for ceramic coating after I complete the the fitment of the whole system to the car. I'll snap pictures of the construction and put up a video when it is complete. Have no idea what it is going to sound like... just have to wait and see. G

Well, I checked out Kakimoto... I'd love to hear it. I just bought a whole bunch of stuff from Amazon - about $570 worth... I ended up picking Magnaflow over Borla. Just haven't historically cared for Borla sound much on the cars I've heard it on and am convinced it would be louder than the "equivalent" Magnaflow unit. So, a bunch of stainless steel is on the way... It's going to be quite the project, starting with mods to the 1.75" primary Nissan Comp header. One of the collectors hits the floor (driver side). Been thinking and thinking about how best to resolve. I've finally decided. I'm going to weld a plate onto the collector end (shutting it) and fill primaries 4, 5, and 6 with sand - packed really tight. Close off the primaries with another plate (can bolt that one on)... and then take the header to an exhaust shop and have them heat the primaries just before the collector to red hot, so it can be bent a bit away from the floor. I did this with my roll bar when I made it as it needed a bit of tweaking after being bent by the shop I used. The sand packed tight keeps the tubes from kinking or distorting. Yeah... what a pain! Garrett

I've spent a rediculous amount of time researching choices of mufflers for a new 3" exhaust I will be making. I've listened to tons of videos, but it seems there are practically no 3" systems on normally aspirated L-28s out there, or next to no video's of them anyway. Basically, I don't want to spend a bunch of money and time building a custom system that ends up sounding "ok". I have heard some great sounding z cars and some not so great sounding ones. I'd sure like this one to fall into the first category. I've found a couple on YouTube that I like: Since the car is mainly a track toy at this point, I can take it being loud, but not so loud that I can't drive it without my ears bleeding when I am keeping my foot out of the throttle. I've already got some hearing loss, most certainly from a Datsun 510 that I had a 2.5 inch system on it years ago... I used to drive 1.5 hours each way every weekend to see my girlfriend. Anyway, I plan to drive this car to and from the track and on the road every now and then. Has anyone here run just a single Borla XR-1 like this: Borla 40944 on a three inch system? Can it be driven without ears bleeding? With both of the video's above, the owners are running a combo of mufflers/reasonators. Since the 2.5" system in video #2 is "too loud" for the owner (he added a dynomax bullet), then I'm thinking my 3" with the 40944 will more likely be too loud for me (unless at the track). His motor, by the way, is quite similar to mine. Video 1 has a three inch pipe, and an interesting configuration - a Magnaflow muffler "near the diff" and a two foot glass pack mounted at an angle after that. Definitely like that the "rasp" is not present with this setup. I wonder if that is the configuration though or maybe 3" pipes reduce that in general. Here is what I am thinking about right now: Tunnel Options: Borla 5" round Magnaflow 4" round Section of pipe that can be substituted in with band clamps. Rear Muffler: Borla Oval 40944 Anyone have a 3" system on a NA Z? If so, can you post a video so I can hear it?

I just went to my car and replicated what you did. I grabbed the first u-joint down from the steering wheel with my left hand and with my right hand, rotated the steering wheel one direction, then the other, and measured the free-play movement. I put a piece of tape on the steering wheel rim and used the edge as reference. It's exactly 1/8th of an inch of free-play allowed by those splines on my car. The steering wheel is a 13.8 inch diameter MoMo, so if yours is bigger or smaller diameter, take that into consideration. I can easily feel when the joint in my left hand starts to move, so that measurement is accurate - it should be a good reference for you. And my shaft easily has over 200k miles on it. It feels darn tight to me. I've got perhaps tad more than a quarter of an inch of play before the wheels visibly move. With the worn spot in the rack and the worn u-joints, it was easily over a half inch of play, and was very noticeable. Garrett

Ooops. I didn't read your full post before responding. 30k miles... and you seem to have eliminated U-joints as the problem. Interestingly, you mention that the problem is when the steering wheel is dead center. You should try rotating the wheel like one revolution in either direction off of dead center and checking to see if the same amount of looseness is there. If it is looser at dead center, then there is likely to be some wear in the rack itself. The rack does have some adjustment available to account for wear. Check the Factory Workshop Manual for info. My car had a shimmy for a number of years that I couldn't track down and with the steering jumping back and forth at dead center, I ended up accelerating wear there... It ended up creating a spot at dead center that was "too loose" - both before and after I figured out the problem. The problem? "New-ish", after-market lower ball joints. They were obviously cheapies, but I overlooked them for a long time because they had been replaced "recently". I ended up buying new OEM ones, and another rack, unfortunately. Again, with 30k, these issues seem kind of unlikely... If the wear is where you say it is, I don't know how to fix it. I will say that now that my car has a good rack, urethane rack bushings, new u-joints in the shafts, and a new urethane coupler, I have next to no play at all. I can see my wheels move with the slightest movement of the steering wheel.

I chased down play in my steering... I just couldn't stand it. In my case, the u-joints were the problem. I'm betting yours have never been replaced and are certainly part of the problem. In fact, I doubt it is at the splines because that is not an area where things are typically moving/sliding, unless the pinch bolt was loose for an extended period of time. The u-joints on the other hand are wear items. Here is a post I did about replacing them: Replacing stock steering U-joints Garrett

Not sure why the Tomei and evidently the old HKS (there is a thread that shows they are identical) are this way unless everyone in Japan was building off the N42 block as the foundation? I haven't compared with an N42 block, but I bet that one has no issues with these gaskets. Either way, what is to keep someone from clamping some scrap eighth inch plate on both sides of the gasket and simply drilling those two locations? The new holes will be perfect. I'll do that to mine soon and put it in the for sale section. Garrett

I bought a Tomei 1mm for my build, but didn't end up using it. I think they are still available... Here is the gasket at the Tomei site: TomeiUSA link Interestingly, Motorsport Auto is showing a "temporary replacement" for the 1 mm gasket that is 1.2mm... Motorsport Auto HG Here is recent thread where a guy bought a Kameari and a Tomei and they turned out to be identical. Tomei = Kameari I don't need the 1 mm Tomei I bought. I'll sell it for $285 plus shipping. You can pm me if you are interested. Garrett

I was able to get a Nismo recently (.6mm) for a normally aspirated motor recently. Also, Tomei are still available.

Thanks. When I started this project about two years ago, I was living in VA. I took a couple of attempts to find someone good - both recommendations came from folks on HybridZ. The guy that built it is out of Martinsville, VA - so not in this area. He's done lots of work on NASCAR engines and picked up this project on the side because work had dropped off at his employer. I hear there is a place around here though. Near Kinetic SunBelt from what I understand. Can't find them on Google though...

Well, the first exhaust I put on the car was an old Nissan Comp set up and the Clifford Research header. The pipes were dual 1 and 3/4" with 4 glasspacks - 2 small and 2 larger. I absolutely loved the sound especially above 4000 RPM. When the glasspacks had burned up many years lateer, it got too loud, and I was getting pulled by cops too much. Since, I had taken the glasspacks off and put a straight pipe on at a track event once, and noticed how much more power I had, when I redid the exhaust, I went with two 2" pipes. That is about the equivalent of a single 2.75" pipe flow-wise. I put a lot of time and effort into it. It has two stainless Magnaflow 4" round resonators in the driveshaft tunnel and two aluminized Magnaflow 5" X 7" oval mufflers (flipped and staggered) in the back. I put some nice stainless tips on the end. Here are some pics: I didn't like the sound as much, but it wasn't bad. Here is a dyno run... A part of me thinks that pipes that are too big in diameter for a given engine hurts sound quality, and that with the new motor, my existing pipes will sound better. I think what I'll do is go ahead and buy what I need and fab as necessary to hook up to the existing pipes... then dyno it and see how it sounds. If I am thrilled with the sound, I'll probably keep it a while, but if not, I'll move to the three inch and try to get a good merge collector or whatever the terminology is in there too.

Hi Leon, I see from previous posts, John has mentioned "SPD, Burns, and others"... You might want to look at this: SPD PDF Is your car race only or on the street? I have a nice dual 2" system on the car right now... What is the reason you are thinking about going to 3" from your dual 2's?

John, I'm struggling a bit with the thought of extending 3 cylinders about 6 inches more than the other three... I mean, if equal length primaries are important, it can't be good to run one half of the header an extra 6 inches or so than the other and then merge... What is the best way to deal with this? It's probably really tight in that area of the tunnel, so running some kind of S pipe off of the one collector and a laser straight one off of the other and then trying to merge where they become equal distance is not looking possible... plus the distance to the merge is then lengthened considerably... Thoughts?

So, I have my engine back from the builder, and now am working on getting it back in the car. I bought this Nissan Motorsport header off of ebay for it. It has the 1.75" primaries. I'm looking at the outlets and wondering what the best way to go from there is. They are 2.5" OD. I've been searching the forums and reading about merge collectors... I guess my question is how do you incorporate merge collector(s) with this header? The outlets are offset from each other so that the exit for one is quite a bit further back than the exit for the other. Do I run some 2.5" pipe off of the one to get to the same location as the other, and then "y" down to a single pipe? I was running a Clifford Research header and two completely separate 2" pipes - and those pipes are still in the car. I've read many of the posts comparing one exhaust vs. two... I guess, going with an all new exhaust is an option, but I like the existing 2" pipes quite a bit. If I want to stay with two, 2" pipes for now, should I just skip the merge collector? Having owned one of these chrome plated headers for my 510 years ago, I know the chrome isn't going to last. In fact, there are a couple of tiny rust spots on the back of this one already. I'm going to ship it off to Jet Hot, where they will strip the chrome and ceramic coat it. In preparation for that, I bolted it on the motor today to check fit. I'm glad I did, as I needed to grind on the flange reinforcement bar that goes under the primary inlets so it would clear the block where the vent is. I also need to determine what kind of hook up I am going to use from the collector to the next piece. And I need to weld in some oxygen sensor bungs before shipping the header off to be coated... Garrett

So, the rods in this motor are Toyota 3SGTE (89 and later Celica All-trac, 91-97 MR2 Turbo) with 3/8" ARP 2000 Bolts. Haven't mentioned this fact yet: The rod bearings are those of a Toyota Camry 2VZ-FE 2.5 V6... they are narrower than the 4 cyl rod big ends. They are centered as in this pic (not my motor): Less friction supposedly frees up power - I wonder if it is more than 1 hp! Both mains and rods are Clevite 77 with Calico coatings. Orig Post containing the pic above: http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/100748-rod-bearing-question/page__p__944414__fromsearch__1#entry944414

I thought it was 8 quarts, but you already have more in it than that!

I considered them, but I recall my machinist being surprised by how low the torque setting was on them... and he didn't feel the ARP would provide any improvement. So, we reused the stock main bolts. He said that when he final torqued them, there was no stretch. No stretch translates to no need to replace for the most part... unless you want to get crazy and think about how much wear they had from being installed and removed several times during mock-up/pre-assembly. Evidently, he can easily detect stretch when torquing typical "stretch" bolts to spec. If I recall correctly, they are only like 40 lb-ft. or is it ft-lb?

I picked up the engine yesterday. Here are some assembly pics:

I looked back through emails going back and forth with him... The aluminum slug we started with -- the dish was .148 deep. If memory serves correctly, JE pretty much ignored that dimension and we decided to cut the dishes further ourselves after we had them in hand from JE. Then, we had to cut the intake another .065 (probably at the angle the of the valve) and another .038 on the exhaust. So, that is going to be ballpark. But, obviously, you'll want to measure your engine to account for your unique situation.

Comp oil pan from Design Products has come in. Also, the pistons were modified in yet another round as the PTV wasn't sufficient on mock-up. The note from Bryan was: "After cutting the valve pockets deeper; the pocket edges were radiused with 100 and 120 grit cartridge rolls. I then re-polished the whole dish area with the 120 grit rolls. After this the pistons were masked with duct tape except for the tops and then the tops glass beaded at very low pressure. Then the tops were soda blasted." Looking sweet, I must say It's crunch time now... I go to pick up the motor on Sunday. Looking forward to it.

The diff is in GA now. 30115 is the zip. Let me know if you still have interest. Garrett

Not together yet. Hopefully not too much longer.

I'll check with my engine builder. As recent as a week ago, final assembly hadn't been started, so I may still be able to use it. Garrett

Well, this engine build thread has been going on a long time, so it is fitting that we take a short ""vacation" to France before getting back to work. Thanks for the info.

Looks like there are a couple available: Page 14: http://www.nissanusa.com/nismo-web/Nismo-Motorsports-Catalog-2010.pdf 11044-E4620 ALL 1 NISMO composite head gasket for L-Series. 85mm bore, 1.2mm compressed thickness. 11044-E4621 ALL 1 Head gasket for use with O-ring type head sealing above. L-Series 6-cylinder. 11044-E4623 ALL 1 NISMO head gasket for L-Series 91mm bore, 0.6mm compressed thickness I've got the E4623 version. G