Kevin.pk

Thanks and welcome to Texas. I hear ya on the A/C. This time around I'm definitely planning for A/C at some point sooner than later after it's back together. Texas and no A/C is not a fun time. I find myself looking on craigslist every once in a while looking for a second car to drive while this one is torn apart. It's a disease. lol

Boring update. Started cleaning up wiring. Basically just removing unnecessary wires that went to components that have long since been removed and covering the remainder in expandable sleeving. There is still a little more work that needs to be done with the chassis wiring... and then I can get to work on the engine wiring. A large majority of the wiring will end up being wrapped in non-adhesive vinyl tape like it was from the factory. and this is the back side of the bulkhead connector from the previous update. and most of the wiring I've removed from the car over the years....

I checked a couple other diagrams and it varies only slightly. 77-78 were green and 70-76 were all red/black.

The 280z used a green wire for the reverse lights, in case your other source is thinking that way. I would go newzeds route.... Check continuity or at the very least you could look at the wire color going to the reverse light bulb, it should correspond directly with the wiring for the switch.

http://sridout.com/datsun/72circuit_COLORFINAL.pdf According to the above wiring diagram the reverse switch wiring is RB-red/black and R-red

The reason for such little info on it, is because it can be variable from build to build. The AFM bracket can definitely go. Throttle bracket can be removed too if you decide to use a cable coming straight out of the firewall. I'm in the middle of smoothing out the entire engine bay in my car before a LS1 build. I've changed my fusible links to large maxi fuses and moved them inside the car. I've also moving any and all relays inside the car as well. I've removed all the brackets in the engine bay. It really all depends on if you can reuse a bracket for a different purpose or not. I was using the coolant overflow bracket as a mount for my fan relay, but I removed that and am moving the relay somewhere else. You can achieve a fairly clean look without removing most of brackets too.

Is air coming out of the front vents? floor vents? or defroster vents? Heat should only come out of the floor or defroster vents. If air is coming out of the front vents when the air flow is set to heat/defrost then there is likely an issue with the vacuum lines under the dash. In the picture you posted, I believe those lines went to the charcoal canister for emissions purposes. It's been a while since I have messed with the stock setup but that bracket that the plugged rubber hose is lying on, is where the charcoal canister used to be mounted. and i just realized how old this thread is.... oh well. lol

Perhaps a mod could copy this into the first post and we won't get anymore of these redundant "EMAIL ME" posts.. I copied the file with pics and put them here for easy access. The following is a documentation of my installation of a 2002 Camaro SS LS1 and T56 transmission in a 1973 Datsun 240Z using the mounts, driveshaft and hardware provided by John’s Cars Inc (www.brokenkitty.com). I did not install A/C in this car as of this time. I used a stand alone engine wire harness from EZ2wire to cut down on the headaches of trying to recycle the original Camaro harness. Use this information at your own risk and use common sense!!! I am not responsible for any damage to your vehicle due to any information you take from this article. If you don’t like what I did, then don’t flame me over it. I am, however, open to constructive criticism and advice. This was my first engine swap and it was a learning experience. First off, when ordering the kit, if you have a 240Z and are installing a T56 then you will need to specify to John’s Cars that you need the transmission mount that bolts through the floor. If you have a 280Z then you will need to ask for the one that bolts to the frame rails. The 260Z was a mixed up year, you may or may not have deep enough frame rails for the 280Z crossmember. The easy way to tell is to reach under your car and feel how far the frame rail hangs down. The 240Z’s frame rail hangs about ¼†to ½†down on the passenger’s side. The 280Z’s frame hangs down about 1†to 1 ½†on the passengers side. Below is a picture of the 280Z with a T56. See how the frame hangs down. Here is a pic of the 280 transmission crossmember. You also need to specify if the input flange to your differential is square or rectangular(measure this, if it is rectangular, one side will only be wider by about ¼â€) and whether it uses 8mm or 10mm bolts to connect to the driveshaft. Once you get your engine and tranny, clean it up! If you’re gonna do it, then do it right. Remove the GM exhaust manifolds, then remove the power steering pump; you won’t need it. Then remove the GM A/C bracket. I also took the opportunity to flush the tranny. Don’t bother filling it now, all the fluid will come out the tail shaft housing as soon as you tilt the engine. Don’t ask how I know this, let’s just say I learn fast. The passenger’s side of your engine should look like this. Remove any material left by the exhaust gaskets with a scotch pad (haven’t done that yet in the pic above. Next you need to get a hacksaw and cut off the section of that square sticking out where the GM A/C bracket was sitting so it is flush with the 2 bolt holes it sits between. John’s engine mount will be using the front 2 engine mount bolt holes in the block and all of the GM A/C bracket mounting holes to mount the passengers side engine mount. Here is a pic of the metal square after I cut it off. Blow the dust and any water out of the bolt holes in the block or head before putting bolts in. If there is water in those holes when you torque down the bolts the pressure will crack the block (aluminum is soft). Remove the EGR system (if equipped), AIR injection system and I removed the EEVAP system. Then plug the holes leading into the intake manifold using rubber tube block offs found at many auto stores like Auto Zone. Then go ahead and bolt on the passenger’s side engine mount using 3 of the original GM engine mount bolts for the forward most holes in the mounting plate and 2 of the 10mm bolts from John’s kit. Use 5 new washers from the kit (one on each bolt). Leave it loose for now so the mount can slide. Here is the passenger’s side with engine mount (one bolt had not yet been installed in this pic). Make sure you install the 2 spacers provided between the new mount and the engine block. Look at the pic below. Next you will install the water temp sender adaptor from John so that you can attach the Datsun water temperature sender to the block and read the engine temp on you Datsun gauge. To do this, remove the freeze plug located right behind the GM alternator with a 17mm hex wrench. Here is a pic of the freeze plug you need to take out. Then install the JCI water temp sender adaptor in its place. It should look like this. This can be done by hand without removing the line from the car, simply unbolt the clips holding the tube to the frame rail and carefully bend the tube so it us on top of the frame rail. I did not re-attach it to the car with the clips yet in case more moving is required. I want it as far away from the exhaust as possible. Make sure you salvage the oil pressure sender and water temp sender from the Datsun block. The oil pressure sender is the chunky thing screwed into the passenger’s side of the block about an inch forward of the oil filter with a yellow/black wire leading to it. And the water temp sender is located at the front of the head just below the tube that leads to the top of the radiator with a single yellow wire attaching to it. I also removed the tachometer out and sent it in to have JCI rework it to read the LS1 engine. The tach is held in place by two wing nuts on the backside. I was able to remove it without taking out the dash, however, this involved flipping myself upside down and doing a contortionist act to reach the wing nuts along with a lot of choice words. Make sure you label all your wires even I you think you’ll remember. I used key tags and a sharpie as shown below. I had to use a dremel tool to trim the Datsun water temp sensor down a little to fit in the adaptor. Originally the sensor had a wedge shaped section below the threads which kept the sensor from sliding in the JCI adaptor. Here is a pic of the sensor after I trimmed it down. I then installed it in the LS1 Block. I also Installed the JCI oil pressure adaptor just above the LS1 oil filter and screwed in the Datsun oil sensor. At this time I am still waiting for my custom wire harness to arrive as well as many other parts so I took to time to use about half a gallon of “Herculiner†truck bed liner and redid my engine compartment. First I had to use a cold chisel and chisel out the battery tray since there was some surface rust there from battery acid dripping. I will deal with the battery tray later and simply bolt it back into it’s original location. I also took a few minutes to sand down and repaint the brake booster. I know it is almost impossible to find those rubber insulators that keep tubes and wires running through your firewall from shredding by rubbing on the metal. I used some ¼ inch split wire loom they sell at the local auto store and ran some silicone along the inside of the loom. I then put it along the edges of the holes where holes and wires or hoses would be running. Here are some before and after pics. I had some down time while waiting for more parts to come in. So I replaced the heater hoses. I ran a large amount of 5/8 inch heater hose into the engine compartment so I have enough slack to neatly run them along the fender. One of the heater hose outputs on the LS1 is 5/8†and the other is 3/4â€, so you will need to use a hose adaptor to convert one of the hoses to 3/4â€so it will plug into the LS1 I got one at Pep Boy’s in the self help section. I also took the time to put bedliner on all the JCI mounts. There is nothing uglier to me than rust! I took the time to wrap my manifolds with thermo-tec header wrap. Here is a pic of the JCI parts after I put bedliner on them. I also put bedliner on the battery tray and bolted it back into position. To run the serpentine belt system with no A/C, you need to remove the smooth idler pulley that sits between the alternator and the water pump. The pulley will be replaced with Goodyear pulley PN: 49003. The only problem I ran into was when the pulley was mounted, it would scrub the mounting bracket. The pulley needs to have a washer put behind it to bring it out enough so it doesn’t scrub the bracket (about 1/16â€). All the washers that fit in the confines of the pulley don’t have a hole large enough to slide on the pulley mount. So I had to take a 3/8†washer and drill it out to 11/16â€. After I put the washer behind the pulley, it bolted up nicely and spun freely. Here are pics of the washer before and after I drilled it out. The belt you need to use with this setup is NAPA part number 060547. It is a 55 ¼†6 rib belt. Here is a pic of how to run the belt. I removed the throttle pedal and drilled out the nipple the original throttle rod connected to and shaved the square edges off so the throttle cable could swivel. The throttle cable you will be using is a Lokar throttle cable PN TC-1000LS148. It is a 48†cable so you have plenty of slack. Here are the pics of the throttle pedal connector before and after modification. Then I trimmed of a bit of the throttle cable threads that pass through the firewall so the throttle pedal rod doesn’t hit it. Here is a pic of the cable after I trimmed off some to the threads (about an inch). You will also need to bend the top of the throttle pedal connector (where the cable will be connecting to it) about 1/4†up/back and another 1/4†to the right when looking from the driver’s seat so the connection matches up to the hole in the firewall. I removed the entire Datsun throttle assembly from the firewall to include the small tower the throttle rod pivots on with a chisel. Seen below. Then I installed the cable to the firewall with some large washers because the original hole is about 1/2†in diameter; too large for the throttle cable to bolt to without falling out. Here is a pic of the cable attached to the firewall. The baffle I used to connect the throttle body to the MAF sensor is the one used on the ’93 – ’94 LT1 Camaro/Firebird (the ’95 – 97 LT1 has a vent hose connection for the vented optispark you would need to plug.). The baffle has an oval connection, but it is made of rubber and flexes to be a perfect fit for the round LS1 throttle body. Here is a pic. I also took the time to install some FAST fuel rails. The rails have a -8 AN connection on either rail and a -6 AN connection on the front for the fuel regulator. They really look nice and will work well with my custom fuel system. Here is the radiator I will be using. It is sold by www.jagsthatrun.com and specifically meant to be used for Datsun V8 conversions and will install with no modification or even drilling. You will need to source your own radiator cap. The cap from a 92 Chevy Astro van 4.3L engine will fit perfectly (sold at Checker’s) I also had to plug some heater return holes in the radiator. I went to Checkers and got some brass plugs (you got to look back behind the counter, they will not be on display). The plugs need to fine thread; the usual NPT plugs will not fit. Here is a pic of the plug (use Teflon tape on the plug to seal it). I took a reciprocating saw (SAWZALL) and cut out the spare tire well to make room for the fuel cell. I then installed the sheet metal pictured below to fill in the hole and installed my 16 gallon summit racing fuel cell. The sheet metal was cut by my local heating and air conditioning company. I hung the fuel pump from a piece of sheet metal bent at a 90 deg angle right in front of the fuel cell (one side of the 90 deg sheet metal bolted through the floor metal in the hatch area and other side, where I mounted the pump, just hung strait down). The fuel pump is an Aeromotive unit with -8AN input and output capable of supporting 700 HP. After all this I towed the Z to the shop and ripped out the old engine, this only took about 45 minutes since I already had the engine drained and completely disconnected. Now comes the hard part. After removing the old engine mounts, I had to drop the crossmember far enough to wedge in the bracing plates. This took some time, sweat and the use of my new favorite tool: a 3 lb sledge. There are 2 bolts in either wheel well keeping the crossmember in place. ONLY DO ONE SIDE AT A TIME. Put a jack under the crossmember to keep it in place and lower it in a controlled manner. After installing the crossmember braces I moved on to the mount that the steering rod goes through. One side of this mount connects where the control arm meets the chassis on the driver’s side and the other end of mount slides INSIDE the old engine mount tower on the crossmember with the supplied spacer above the new brace, yet still inside the crossmember tower. Look closely at the pics below. Make sure you disconnect and slide the steering shaft through the brace before you install it. The bolt should pass through this series of braces and mounts as follows (described from top to bottom). 1. The brace that sits between the cross member and the body (Top). 2. The Z crossmember tower where the old engine mount used to sit. 3. The large spacer. 4. The long brace the steering shaft passes through (Bottom). In the below pic you can see the test fit of this mount. In this pic I still had not installed the crossmember brace as described above, but it allows you to see how the mount slides into the Z crossmember tower. Here is a pic of the assembly with the brace and the mount installed. The other end of the mount that the steering shaft passes through is bolted to the control arm mount. You need to take off the control arm bolt, large washer, rubber bushing and use a chisel to GENTLY remove the other washer that sandwiches the control arm bushing. Here is the washer you need to chisel off. And after it is chiseled off. This has to be done before you install the other end of the brace as you will see. As you slide the brace into the crossmember tower as described above, the other end of the brace will slide over the control arm end where you removed the control arm washers and bushing. Here is the mount butted up where the control arm bushing was. Now, re-install the control arm washers and bushing over the JCI mount Then you drill the new holes in the control arm mount and bolt this end up. Once again, my new favorite tool is a 3 lb sledge. Had to do some hammering to get the mount to slide in. Here is the pic of the mount’s trial fit. I had to remove the mount to put the steering arm through the ears. In this pic I also still had not re-installed the control arm washers and bushing. Hell, I hadn’t even installed the brace that sits between the crossmember and the body yet. You can also see in this pic how little clearance the brake line has. I notched the brace a little with an angle grinder for clearance. In the mean time I had to split the LS1 engine and tranny to install the new clutch line. Use Russell part # 640281 sold by either Jegs or Summit Racing to replace the female side of the GM quick disconnect in the bellhousing. Part looks like this. You will need to take a punch and drive out the rollpin holding the female side of the GM quick disconnect inside the bell housing. I’m pointing to the rollpin inside the bellhousing with a punch. See the pics. Attach the adaptor pictured above in my hand to a -3AN braided stainless brake line made by Russell sold by Summit Racing. I used about a 32†line with one end being a 90 deg end and it was the perfect length. The strait end connects to the adaptor the 90 deg attaches to my 7/8†Tilton clutch master cylinder (covered later). Connect the adaptor to the new hose good and tight before you install is. You cannot get to is once the bellhousing in re-attached to the LS1! Here is the adaptor attached to the 32†hose. Now you will install the adaptor with the hose running through the hole in the side of the bellhousing. Put it in place and re-install the old rollpin. It will look like this. Now, re-attach the bellhousing. I used a Tilton 7/8†clutch master cylinder. It installed in the original master cylinder hole and even bolts up the same. No mods to the firewall needed. However, I did have to take the part from the Datsun master cylinder that connects the pushrod to the clutch pedal and drill it out to slide over the threaded part of the Tilton pushrod (the threads on the connector are metric and the Tilton pushrod is SAE so it won’t just screw on like it did for the Datsun unit). I then held it in place using a nut on either side. To get one of the nuts on I had to bend the bend the mouth of the pedal connection piece open (it’s shaped kind of like a squared off “Uâ€, so just spread the “U†apart with two sets of pliers. I can’t remember for sure, but I don’t THINK that I had to shorten the pushrod at all, but if you need to then just use a dremel tool with a cutting blade and hack off what you need to. One person told me after I did my install that he just swapped the Datsun pushrod into the Tilton cylinder (wish I would have thought of that, DUH). The rubber dust boot on the Tilton cylinder would not go through the hole in my firewall when in place (just barely to big in diameter), so I slid the boot down onto the pushrod, slid the pushrod through the hole with the boot (that way the boot would just fold up and slide through the hole) and bolted the cylinder in place. Then from the inside of the cabin, I slid the boot back up the pushrod and over the butt of the master cylinder where it belongs. This is not easy to do because you will be at a very awkward position trying to reach the back of that master cylinder. Some good old fashioned spit will help you slide the boot in place easier. I have received reports that the Tilton unit will not fit with the 280Z windshield washer tank in place. I don’t know about the 240Z (when I bought my car, the windshield washer tank had been removed and I haven’t got around to installing one). I do know that the 240Z washer tank is smaller than the 280Z unit I would try installing a 240Z unit into a 280Z, it MAY fit. If not, then I would consider it a small price to pay or try finding an alternate location to mount the tank. The 90 deg fitting on the 32†hose will attach to the new master cylinder and give you a nice clean appearance when it is all said and done. Here is a pic of the Master cylinder with the hose attached. Now you will need to grind off the old tranny mounting ears in the tranny tunnel. I used an air chisel, but you can use an angle grinder also. You will need to make a good size dent on the passenger’s side in the very front of the tranny tunnel for the reverse light switch to clear. You will also need to make a dent in the tranny tunnel on the driver’s side about one inch below the shifter hole to clear the reverse lockout solenoid. No pics, sorry. Also I had to remove the old skipshift solenoid, grind it down to be nothing but a large plug for the hole and fill what was left of the solenoid with high temp silicone. Do that or you can make a large dent in the tranny tunnel for the useless solenoid. I also found out that I had to grind off some of the plastic air tube on the back of the alternator to clear the engine mounts. Grind off about 2†of the air tube that sits farthest from the engine. You will need to make it flush with the rest of the back of the alternator. Time to drop in the engine for a test fit. Make sure your radiator is removed. I had to really angle the engine and tranny in there. While you are test fitting the whole thing, make sure to look and see where you will need to make more clearance with the 3 lb sledge. Once your clearances are good and the engine is set in the mounts you will need to bolt the engine in place and tighten up all the mounts. Install the tranny mount after you get the engine mounts bolted in, this is because you will need to raise and lower the engine and tranny to get all the engine mounts to line up. This sounds simple, but believe me, it tool hours of painstaking “up and down†to get it all bolted in. Now, you will install your tranny mount through the floorboards. This is pretty self explanatory. Install your exhaust headers and torque them down. I discovered the O2 sensor on the driver’s side was hitting my oil sender, so I went to Ace hardware and got a 45 deg 1/8†NPT brass fitting to angle the oil sender up to clear the O2 sensor. Now I installed the driveshaft. I had to get some longer bolts, the stock ones were a little too short. Get these from NAPA, they have a complete bolt section with bolts that are made from allow and get the strongest rating you can find. I used 10.8 rated bolts. If you don’t know about bolt ratings, LEARN! There are different ratings of bolts. If you were to use regular old bolts from Home Depot they would sheer off like a warm crayon in this type of use. Here’s a look from the bottom of the car. For the radiator I then installed the radiator I ordered form www.jagsthatrun.com along with a 16†Black Magic cooling fan rated at 3000 cfm. Believe me, this engine needs to stay cool, the Auto Zone fans just won’t cut it here. I had to use a different radiator hose on the top than was supplied with the JCI kit due to the different dimensions of the radiator. I just went to Autozone and looked around the hose section till I found one that was correct. I took the JCI hose with me to do this. The JCI hose would have been perfect, but it needed to be about 4†longer to reach far enough left to reach the radiator opening on top. The other hose from JCI will work fine, you just need to cut off about 6†form the end that attaches to the radiator. A word about cooling: I made great efforts to make sure the engine stayed cool. The aerodynamics of the Z are not the best for keeping the engine bay cool for some reason. So I used a 160 degree thermostat, a $300 cooling fan that could suck a midget through the front grill (3000 cfm being pulled by one fan is a LOT of air), I heat wrapped the exhaust headers to help keep heat out of the engine bay and used high heat paint to seal the wraps (recommended by thermo-tec), used a high heat wrap on the wires running close to the exhaust headers and the radiator I used is one core that extends from the front of the radiator to the back (a very wide core that displaces heat very well (seen below). Here is a pic taken from the jagsthatrun.com conversion manual. I ran my fuel lines using -8AN braided stainless steel lines to supply and a -6AN line as my return line. I put Jegs fuel filters in line before the pump and just before the fuel rails. Once the engine and tranny were filled with oil and coolant, the fuel lines were hooked up and all the wires were hooked up, which only took a few minutes thanks to my stand alone engine harness, the engine cranked right up!!!!!!!! YAHOO. I mounted up my Aeromotive fuel regulator with my Autometer pressure gauge sender installed on the passenger’s side of the engine bay. I used an Autometer fuel pressure gauge. Once the engine was running, I adjusted my fuel pressure to 60 psi. If you are using the stock fuel tank and lines combined with the JCI fuel pump, John at JCI recommends that you use a GM filter GF822 because it has a built in regulator/return line. This filter is mounted in the engine bay. I would use a filter before the pump as well, to protect the pump. FYI - This filter uses the GM “push to connect†connectors. I have no personal experience with that setup. Once the engine starts, you need to be looking for leaks, I found a few in my install, 2 in the heater lines, one on the fuel lines, a slight oil leak coming from my sender and a bad one coming form the Datsun coolant temp sender. Most of them were simple fixes, just tightening up the connections. I also used some wire loom to cover the exposed wires seen in many of my pics and even rerouted some of them to clean up the engine bay. It turns out that when I ground down the Datsun coolant temp sensor, it caused the sensor to leak and I had to replace it with an Autometer unit. I was going to do this anyway. I plan to replace all my gauges with Autometer units. I used a series of brass adaptors from Ace to get the 1/8†NPT Autometer unit to adapt to the hole. I then ran a thin piece of 1†wide metal from my engine compartment to the filter to hold it steady so it wasn’t bouncing around my engine compartment. I ran a bolt with some large washers through the rubber end of the filter. I secured it to the filter with a locknut, locktight and some silicone in the threads. I don’t want that bolt to come off inside the filter and get sucked in the engine! I also took the time to wrap my wires that were running close to the headers in thermo-tec heat tape. I also took to time to remove my interior and chisel up all the sound deadner with a putty knife and a hammer (I found some surface rust under my sound deadner). I then proceeded to put bedliner all over the interior. This involved ripping out the carpet, vinyl and seats. At least I don’t have to worry about rust on my floorboards. Being that I did the whole fuel cell thing, I now have room for duel exhausts. Soooo, I cut out a second exhaust exit in the rear of the car. I carefully cut both sides a little so the exits match; the original exit had a rolled lip for a smooth appearance. I cut the rolled lip off to match the other side. Here are the exhaust exits I cut. The exhaust system consists of duel 2.5†mandrel bent, stainless pipes with a Magnaflow stainless X-pipe and Borla mufflers. I had the entire exhaust system TIG welded and man it looks good, not to mention it sounds really mean. I love the sound of Borla mufflers! The exhaust tips were tricky to pull off. Since the mufflers are in the rear of the car and very close to the rear, tips longer than 5†would have cone out too far and looked out of place. To top it off, I had to attach the tips directly to the mufflers. Why is that so hard? Because first of all, exhaust tips that are less than 8†are hard to come by unless you want a tip with a resonator like what lots of people put on their ricer cars (no thanks; not for a V8). 2.5†exhaust means that the pipe is 2.5†outer diameter (O.D.) and muffler has a 2.5†inner diameter (I.D.) so the pipe will slide inside the muffler slightly and is welded there. Likewise, exhaust tips you buy are 2.5†I.D., so when trying to attach them to the muffler exit directly (also 2.5†I.D. also) I discovered that the tip will not slide over the muffler exit (like trying to put two female electric connectors together). I ended up taking some up the spare 2.5†O.D. exhaust pipe and cutting it to the length I wanted and even cut them at an angle so I would have angled tips. Then I polished the metal with a wire wheel to create a satin but shinny appearance. My TIG welder guy then tacked them in place, so if I want to change the tips later, I just cut the tack welds and remove the tips.

Congrats on the baby! You're definitely need to get it going before the kid comes along.lol I got the Bulkhead connector in and got started on some of the wiring (headlights/turn signals/horns). There are still a few more wires that need to go through... starter and maybe wiper wires, but I may try running the wiper motor wires though the cowl somehow. I also eliminated a couple connectors in the interior in order to simplify some of the wiring. This picture also shows how little I have messed with the front of the car since it's last update.

I don't know that I would say I'm enjoying doing this fuel system install lol.... I will say that, I'll be glad to be done with it. I keep justifying all of the additional modifications and set backs as "it needed to be done".... and then I keep thinking that it will never be "done." How much longer until you're on the road? shooting for a spring time drive? Let me know if you ever need a extra hand.

Gas tank straps pretty much done. I need to to make some triangle/gussets to go along the side, bend them slightly more on the end, and then finish welding them. Cut out a piece of sheet metal to fill in the upper part. I don't have a piece of sheet metal big enough to cover the entire area. The next piece will cover the remaining area though. Picture of the straps from underneath. They will be painted black, so the holes will be less noticeable. Next I need to tackle the Gas filler location. I need to pick up some 1.25" tubing to snake the filler behind the license plate. Still mulling around some ideas on this.

The gas tank frame structure is pretty much complete. I need to work on the strap mounting at the differential side of the tank, but the rear most point is finished up. I took some of the square tubing, cut it in half, and welded the halves to each other (side by side) as the contact points between the tank and metal frame. This is the strap mounting point at the rear of the car. The strap is going to get some reinforcing at the end. The hook is just an eye bolt that got trimmed a little bit. I need to get some more material for the other strap and hopefully it will be ready for sheet metal across the top after tomorrow.

I ripped out the rest of the original fuel cell frame and got the gas tank about where I think the final placement will be. Crossbar where the straps are attached is just tacked in place for now until I commit to this placement. I already made up the fuel return and feed lines to the filter/regulator. I'm using factory style fittings and nylon hose. The regulator is attached to a unused stock bracket. This picture shows where the new fuel line will be ran. The line I was previously using is still there but will be getting replaced. A 90 degree AN fitting should line up directly with the hole through the frame piece.

Wicked sounding! cant't wait to see some track vids.

A backing plate would absolutely have helped and is what I plan to do this time if I don't just end up making a new transmission mount design. I think most people haven't had this issue, and mine is likely a result of me beating the area down some to make the mating area vaguely flat and stretching the metal.

Not much progress in the last month.... A little more work on the engine bay, but nothing worth taking pics of. Hopefully the next pics will show it in primer. I have picked up a couple parts for the fuel system. F-body gas tank very roughly mocked up in the rear. I let someone borrow my ratcheting straps, so a couple wires will suffice for the time being. I think as long as I don't plan to go for a dual exhaust setup, I can squeeze the battery back behind the right rear tire where it roughly was before. C5 corvette Fuel filter/regulator WIX #33737. I've got fittings on the way and fuel line and then I'll start routing all the lines...etc.. This will need to be reinforced. This is where my JTR Transmission crossmember started to tear the floor pan. new holes need to be drilled just aft of this for the new engine/trans positioning anyways.

johnc and RTz have already said everything more perfectly than I could. Kevin

That looks and sounds absolutely awesome. You're making me re-think my entire fuel tank and exhaust setup when I finish my swap.... lol

Viper filler area isn't saying much without a mention of which generation viper but.... Obviously not a stock bodied Z...... Dan Juday has something akin to that. or on Mike Kelly's track Z....

I originally had the intent of doing the flip down plate, but things changed, ended up popping the hatch to fill my gas, but I'm revisiting the idea now that I'm going to swap in a LS1 camaro gas tank. Here's a pic of the flip down plate I had very roughly mocked up several years ago. Flip down plate mechanism was off an old monte carlo.

I was thinking the same thing.... he posted pics of his setup in the following thread..... http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/103099-v8-horse-power-quarter-mile-et-times/ His mounts look like they put the engine in almost the exact same spot as JTR mounts. Their not a particularly complex design, and for the price, the JTR engine mounts aren't bad at all.

I'd consult the person you purchased them from (or perhaps Techno toy tuning). The previous person obviously made his own modifications with making them bolt-on instead of welded in. Even if there is a bushing/sleeve missing, you have integra shocks if I remember correctly, which have an even smaller diameter than stock style S30 shocks....

I can't help much with the kits involved and can't provide much more info about the size of the tunnel other than the later years were definitely wider for exhaust(catalytic converter) routing. An alternative may be to buy some diamond patterned vinyl by the yard and cut it to fit. http://www.fabricempire.com/quilted-foam-backing-black-fabric.aspx I know it's not what you asked for but thought it might by a viable alternative.

The car in question for any one interested..... http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1972-DATSUN-240Z-R33-GTS-T-RB25DET-ENG-INTERCOOLER-VERY-FAST-SHARP-1-OFF-/180747166744?pt=US_Cars_Trucks&hash=item2a155ee418#ht_77489wt_1165 Absolutely not a boost controller. It is an Equalizer. The boost controller is mounted in the center console in front of the shifter..... and the boost controller...

I'm guessing these... http://www.nlmotoring.com/XXR-531-wheels-15-inch-Platinum-p/53158460.htm