Muskrat

Thanks for the info guys, after careful consideration I think I'm going to let a friend pick this one up, he needs it more than I do at this point (NO passenger framerail). RPMS - I didn't realize until the other day just how thin the roof material really is on these cars. A good thump with a balled fist put a noticable dent in a totaled Z roof. 1975yellowBSPZ - You're welcome to one of my used non-turbo ZX headbolts if you dont want to buy a whole new set from Courtesy.

I don't know about the rest of that, but the 'crinkle' stuff you're looking for is very likely VHT Wrinkle coat. Spray on multiple layers while wet, and as it dries it shrinks up and crinkles. Comes in black and red.

I've gotten to the point in my Z buildup where I'm ready to start strengthening the chassis to handle the torque of the V8. Unfortunately, my car is rusted to the point that it needs both new floorpans and pan rails. In addition, the car is tweaked in several areas, I would assume from collisions over the long years of its life. I have decided after long hours of staring at it that I should save myself some grief and get a bare chassis from somewhere, and do my structural mods from there. Well, I found exactly what I needed, in the form of a '73 240z bare chassis, just three hours from my house. Fully sound insulated, underbody completely stripped and resealed, no chassis rust, front frame rails are beautiful. Just one problem... it has a SUNROOF. (sorry sunroof owners) Since the chassis on my current 240z is going to be trashed anyway, how difficult would it be to use part of the roof to 'fill in' the sunroof section as if it were never there in the first place? I'm sure someone here has been crazy enough to try this, any input would be wonderful. Thanks.

You'll have to let me know if it clears your setup, I'm still a good month or so away from ordering my strut brace.

I actually had emailed PDK yesterday regarding this very question, but specifically for an LT1 swap. I personally can't see any reason why it wouldn't fit with a V8 unless you have absurdly tall valve covers or breather filters that might interfere with the cross brace. If anyone on this board has a good picture of a Z engine bay with the shock towers and thier position relative to the motor easily visible, please send it to PDK so they can have a look at it.

If you meant rearend ratio, you have a non-LSD R200 with a 3.545 gear, some on all turbo 280zx's. Just in case you wanted them, here are the ratios for your transmission: 1st 3.5 2nd 2.144 3rd 1.375 4th 1 5th .78

I am 'Lil Dirtbeard of the Son's Of Santa MC. Maybe they'll stop carding me at the movies now.

Yup, actually got it working before class the next morning. Turns out that the coil was on its last leg, it got replaced with a spare Fireball coil that a friend had laying around. The car actually still has the ballast resistor wired in. If anyone knows exactly where it is, that thing will be gone before I leave the house. All the vacuum hoses, including the ones on the distributor, have been replaced, the ones that were on there were actually already cracked. My SU pistons have plenty of free travel, especially after a shot of carb cleaner. Thanks for the suggestions.

Hope you brought canned air!

Do you want the fastest time I've seen one run, or the times that I see most average drivers run?

Thats just plain evil.

I have an L24 with an E88 head and early SUs, and a slightly larger cam. Distributor was changed before I got the car over to a 280zx style electronic distributor, and is now using a Fireball ignition coil. It has always had a noticable vacuum leak from the throttle shafts on the carbs, causing a slight bog off-idle while accelerating. I'm also using later model NGK plugs for an 83 ZX, my local O'rielleys doesn't stock the early Z plugs anymore. On the way to class today, the car ran fine. After my classes, I started it up, no hiccups whatsoever. Then about 5 seconds later, the car abruptly died, no theatrics or backfiring, it just shut off. Turned the key, it started right up again, ran for a few seconds, then died, spun back up, and then died again. When I tried to start it after that, I could hear the engine firing with the starter engaged, but it wouldn't even maintain 300rpm and would die after I let go of the key. After a little while I was able to get it started, and it idled fine with the choke engaged, and I didn't think anything of it at the time. Well, about two stoplights down, the car died again, and refused to start for a good 5 minutes. When I was finally able to get it to hold an idle, I got under the hood and set the idle to about 2000rpm, and was able to limp the car home. During the drive I noticed a considerable reduction in power. I've been driving it for 11 months, and this is the first problem to date that I've had with it. Any thoughts would be appreciated, as this is my daily driver and I really need to find out why the car died like that. EDIT: If I can figure out how to splice it into my current wiring, I have a 300zx coil sitting around that I could use if it turns out to just be the old fireball coil.

I can't see any reason why the SBC setup you have in your garage wouldn't be enough.

Looks pretty sweet! It's great that people are taking thier time to make more options available to us.

These would be for a standard SBC setup, right?

http://240z.org/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcontent&id=11 Have fun, welcome to the site, and don't forget to search first.

I personally have found that I can find every single thing in the MSA catalog cheaper elsewhere, or even at a junkyard. This site has several excellent reviews of aftermarket fuel and spark systems that shouldn't take much searching to find. If you're not afraid of a wrench and a soldering iron, you can get your ECU and boost controller for much cheaper than at MSA. Just do a search for Grainger DIY boost controller, and a search for Megasquirt, then grab something to munch on, you'll be reading for a while. EDIT- Now that I think about it, MSA does have the largest listing for aero parts for the Z car that I've seen, but thats about all they've got going for them.

Thier metal prep products are excellent. The 'metal ready' will actually dissolve any rust that you have prior to coating, and when used on unrusted metal, will dry a nice silver/grey zinc color. I used thier 2 step cleaning process and some chassis coat and some fabric (retired boy scout tent) and made my cancered out driver floorpan safe enough to drive on again. Very solid stuff. On a side note, the chassis coat take *forever* to dry when its below around 40degrees F.

Nope, no T-5. You have a Nissan 5-speed unique to the 1980 car. The gears are spaced much more evenly than the earlier 77-79 5-speeds, but slightly different than the later 81-83 non-turbo 5-speeds. Only the turbo cars from 81-83 got the T-5. The gears are: 1st 3.062 2nd 1.858 3rd 1.308 4th 1 5th 0.773 In case you're wondering and you have a 2-seater, you have an R180 rearend with a 3.545:1 gear. Search is buggy, so I'd rather give more information than less. Sorry, can't really help you with the short shifter on this one.

While the older style SBC parts and blocks are more readily available, they are not interchangible with the LT1 components. Mainly, because the LT1 uses a reverse flow cooling setup. Instead of coolant flowing through the block to the heads, it flows coolant to the heads first, reducing temperatures and allowing more compression to be run on pump gas. In addition, the LT1 uses a front mounted distributor, which is not readily adaptable to the older style L-98 parts. Now, I believe that your LT1 block has 2 bolt main caps, which are quite sufficient below about 400hp. If you are interested in converting to the splayed 4-bolt mains, Grumpyvette has made some excellent posts with specific parts and procedures, it'll just take some digging to find them. In the end, it would be much cheaper to buy AFR heads for the LT1 than to convert your 4-bolt block to use the LT1 components.

I think I could have happily gone to class without that last one.

Hehe, those little wireless cards are great. If you're having signal trouble, and want an upgrade, you might want to look into a Linksys or Netgear wireless G access point. The wireless G setup has a higher throughput and is quite a bit better at getting a signal through walls and brick. If you have a wireless B card in your laptop now, the wireless G access point (wireless hub...switch? these things defy definition) is reverse compatable, the signal strength will be there, but you will be limited by the older laptop card's speed. Just a thought, my dad didn't want to pony up the extra cash for the more expensive wireless G setup (about $20 difference, between 2 cards and the AP) until we tried the B setup and couldnt get signal in his room. So we took it back, paid the marginally higher price, and haven't looked back. Had to check your profile to avoid making a fool of myself by telling this stuff to someone with many years more experience than I do (maybe I still am ). Maybe its scottie, but if I remember correctly, one of the moderators on here is a network engineer. Either way, broadband in the garage , in the bathroom , and outside on the hammock 8) .

I didnt see any larger fuses than that, they were origionally intended as audio fuses. You may need to track down a fusible link of some kind if you want to be extra safe with the new alternator. As long as you have everything else on the car on fuses or links I think you should be okay with just a straight charge wire, as long as you dont fully discharge the battery and then try to jump start the car with that high amp alternator you should be fairly safe from melting anything. You may want a second opinion on that one though, with the amount of sleep I got I could just be blowing smoke out my a.... tailpipe. On an actual wire sizing note, the chart that I've got suggests at least an 8 guage wire for the 90amp, and a 4 gauge wire for the 125amp.

yup, thats the beauty of an internally regulated one wire alternator. You lose the function of your idiot light, and it will not start supplying sufficient amps to charge the battery until a specific turn on point, though. Some tradeoffs for an easy install. Stock, you should have a fusible link somewhere on your charge wire, so you may want to consider making your new cable 8 gauge or better, with an inline maxi-fuse of some kind, just to be safe. I got my fuse holder ($10), 8 gauge wire ($1/ft), and gold plated connectors ($5) all at Radioshack. They have the large inline style fuses for the fuse holder in 20, 30, and 60 amp ratings, I believe. They should be around $4 for a pair. Hope it works out for you. I'll be installing my 125amp three wire from a 95 maxima sometime in the near future, so we'll see how well each setup performs.

I'm 19. Thats cold man, real cold. Good Job!