texasz

The two that come to mind are MSA (probably the one you are talking about) and VB. I have ordered from both and have had very good products, prompt service and shipping; although MSA prices are sometimes a bit high. Not sure what problems people have had with the company you are talking about but if you talk to enough people you will find that every company has a number of unhappy customers. Just my 2 cents.

That's a bummer. Obviously a bug in the code that should be reported back to the vendor of the new software being used here. As a side note I noticed that it does not read your text the same as in the forums. In the forums if you leave a blank line using the enter key this is the way it is displayed, however in the new classified section you MUST use HTML tags to accomplish this. Can this be fixed?

I just got this error: When trying to place this ad: I do not know why but wanted to share this with whom ever works on this so it can be fixed before the Buy/Sell/Trade forum is deleted.

Seriously! Nobody knows this guy or any way to get a hold of him? I need these parts out of my garage.

Does anyone here know kurt8394 from pittsburgh pa? He's a member on this board and agreed to buy some parts from me, asked me to pack them up and get a shipping price. I've done all this weeks ago and been trying to reach him since with the total and have received no replies to PM nor email. The last PM has not even been picked up yet. If you know this person can you please tell him to get back to me! Or if you have another method of contact for him that would be great. Even if he no longer wants the parts (which would be REALLY rude considering my time, 2+ hours to pack, and expense already) I'd like to hear back from him at least telling me that.

If you decide on a P79 I have one off a running engine that I'll sell ya. Just PM me if you want it.

As far as the F54 block goes, you would have dished pistons only if it was a turbo, it it was a non-turbo then you will have flat-top pistons. I do not know about the other blocks off hand.

I know that there are a few of you on here that live in and around Austin and I would like to know who you trust with your engine rebuild and machine shop needs? I am working on rebuilding an engine and will have to send some of the work out and want someout good.

The F54 came in the '81-'83 280's and came with three setup. The first was as described above, the F54 block with flat-top pistons and a P79 head (this was the non-turbo model). The second two were almost identical and were the turbo models. They were both an F54 block with dished pistons but one had a P90 head which was mechanical and the other had a P90a head which was hydrolic (this is the undesirable one). The F54 is said to be the strongest block and thus also the most desirable one for racing or build-ups. For a daily driver I would think that either would be just fine. More info: the flat-top pistons are the ones you want if you are not going turbo as they will give you the best performance, if you are going to go with a turbo then the dished pistons are the ones you want.

Thanx angryAJmonotone, that was the one I was talking about! Where in TX are you located?

I also have an engine calculator that I want to attach but I just can not figure out how to attach a file, maybe this board does not allow that. Any how, if you want it I will gladly email it to you. I got it from a member on another Z car forum and do not know personally about how accurate it is but the members of the other forum say that it is pretty accurate.

For the easiest cheapest best compression you can get with the F54 block and flat-top pistons you need to locate an N42 head. This is a bolt on improvement! There is no milling, shaving or other work to be done and you will come out with about a 10:1 compression ratio. On the other hand you could get a P90 (NOT a P90a) and do some additional work such as milling to get you to about the same place as the N42. Here is the site that jmortensen was talking about: http://www.geocities.com/zgarage2001/z.html You will also want to check this out: http://www.geocities.com/row4navy/

Correct, correct and correct...the F54 block was used from '80-'83 in both turbo and non-turbo Z cars. The turbo had dished pistons and a P90 or P90a head whereas the non-turbo had flat-top pistons and a P79 head. Both the turbo and non-turbos were FI but can be converted to NA.

Not so, the N42 head had brass/bronze (depends upon who you listen to) seats. As for the others I understand that some had soft steel seats instead of the hardened steel seats. If you have the brass seats replace them with hardened steel ones, if you have the softer steal ones check the condition and go from there. If you're wanting power with minimal effort you can go with a non-turbo F54 block which will have flat top pistons (these came in '80-'83 280Z's), a rebuilt N42 head with hardened steel seats and carbs. The block/head combo is said to provide a 10:1 CR; and this is without any other mods. From here you can do things like headers and exhaust work, or other mods to get more gains. Another popular head alternative is to put a P90 on the above setup but to get the same type of results it has to be shaved down and depending upon how far it is taken you may then have to shim the cam towers (this becomes a bit more expensive and more work). It's really all up to you depending upon what you want from your Z and how much money and time you have/want to spend. The possibilities are nearly endless! I've seen 5.0 Cobra engines in a 240Z, even an LT1 and the accompanying 6-speed tranny in one (and that one MOVES!!).

Not knowing what head you have to put on the L28 that part is hard to comment on. It is possible that you would have a combination that would give you a lower CR. Another thing to keep in mind is that unless the 240Z head has been rebuild it may likely not have hardened steel seats threrfore you would have to run a lead additive (these were originally designed to run on regular gas not unleaded) or replace them, costing you money there. Just putting the L28 with the EFI and all in the 240Z is some work but it has been done many times over by people through the years so that is a good option. If you do not want to hassle with the EFI wiring and all you could always convert the L28 to carbs when you put it in the 240Z and then that problem is solved (this is what I'm doing). You already seem to know the pros and cons of carbs vs. EFI so I won't go there.

Jim, thank you for echoing and helping to furhter explain my thoughts from my post. Drax, I got the idea that I may be banned for my post due to the statements and tone in the sticky post in this forum talking about banning members, and Jim further explains my feelings in his post. Bob, thank you for taking the time to go through and address my concerns, I know that this was a time consuming process. I do feel a little better about the changes and statements made but there are still some that should be phrased differently as Jim has pointed out. 280Zen, I too found it easy to locate info on the Datsun L6 forum and not have to weed through all the posts that pertain to other 6cyls. J Taylor, I have to agree that's a great looking car. I've been admiring it for several weeks now since I first saw it. I even showed my wife who doesn't really care about my little toy and she liked it too and asked when mine would look like that. Sad answer to that is that it will probably never look that good. As a side note, I totally agree with the "speak English" and "use spell check" in your posts. However, there is no spell check option here. Is this a limitation of the software being used or is there an option to add it in? Doing a copy/paste to something that does have a spell checker and then copy/paste back again is a pain and frankly why it is not done all the time. If I'm missing something and there is a spell checker here please let me know because I don't see one.

I just have a few comments...probably will get me banned from the way things sound. 1) We were all new to working on cars at one time or another, if a new person asks a question we should do our part to help them learn. I do agree that the person should do a search first but that does not mean that we can not point them in the right direction and remind them to search before asking. I also agree that people should pay attention and post thier questions to the proper forum and not cross post it in several of them. 2) No more Datsun L6 forum?! This sucks. I plan on keeping my Z with a Datsun L6 engine but not the original nor anything that came off an assembly line anywhere either. Thus I am doing a swap, and customizing it to boot! Just because I'm not spending over $10k on an RB or several a vew grand on a V8 does not mean that I am not creating a hybrid Z. 3) I understand having to rein in some of the "issues" or "problems" that you feel you are having but from a user's point of view I'm not sure what those are. No matter what you do you can not force someone to do a search before posting a question; all we can do is strongly suggest that they do so. If they do not they should not be banned, but rather just by human nature people will stop answering because the people with the knowledge will get tired of it (an unfortunate situation but true none the less). 4) As for the alternative sites mentioned, frankly zcar.com is for shit. Many of the poeple there are rude, condisending, and unhelpful (I am not the only person who feels this way). And zdriver.com just does not have the amount of traffic or knowledge that this site does, if you frequent it enough you will see that there may be one new post to the forum you are interested per day...if you're lucky; so that one is really not an option either. One that was not mentioned was 240z.org which is great, very helpful people and tons of information. However, they are mostly Z purists which is not a bad thing just that the members at hybridz sometimes have answers that they do not and vise versa. This is why I frequent both sites. It is very sad to see that it appears as though you are trying to turn people away from this site when we should really be encouraging them to visit us here and learn more about Z cars. Then they can in turn pass that info on to the next group of Z owners and so on. Where did each of you gain all of the knowledge you have about cars, Z's, engines, etc? Surely you were not born with it! Please be considerate of those who have the willingness and desire to learn and help them in their quest for knowledge and building thier Z the way they want it. Seeing as how my vocal and contravercial oppinion may get me banned I would like to say that I have enjoyed being a member here and hope to remain one. But if not then that's too bad that everything I said here gone unheard.

OH MY GOD DON'T EVER USE THAT STUFF!!!! I did this on a Honda Accord I had about 10 years ago being sure to follow the directions to the letter and it plugged up the cooling system alright, to the point that the engine overheated and fused the #1 piston to the block!

Check out http://www.zhome.com for more info on production info. Here's a good page from their site that has VIN and year/productions series info: http://zhome.com/History/DesignChanges.htm

The E31 head was only avaliable on cars made in 1970, some of these may have been sold as a '71 such as my car but were still made in '70. Starting Jan 1, 1971 they moved to the E88 head. This info is taken from the Z-Garage website.

How hard is this conversion? The car is a '73 240Z with an auto tranny and I want to put in an early manual 5-speed. I know that the tranny swap is not too bad but how about the clutch pedel and linkages for it??? I must get this answered quickly so any help would be great!!