JMortensen

It sounds like you're on to bigger and better things, so for that congratulations. If however this is motivated by some ignorant people questioning your integrity I think you should stick around. There are enough people here who know that you're the real deal and look to your posts for the right way to do things that the few idiots shouldn't drive you away.

For lowering springs to be loose is normal. To have 3 or 4 inches of play sounds suspicious to me. Did you get these second hand? Might be that somebody cut them to lower the car further. What I would try to do is make sure that you have some suspension travel left. Jack the car up, put a zip tie around the shaft of the shock, set the car down and roll it around, but do not push down on it or bounce the suspension. Then jack it back up and see where the zip tie is. If it is way up at the top of the shaft then you don't have much travel left at all. If you really did have 3-4 inches of play between the spring and the perches, then I expect that you will find that your travel is lacking. If that happens the solution is to get another pair of springs that hasn't been cut, or section the struts (in front) to increase the available travel with the car lowered, or both.

I'm considering a carbed LS swap for two reasons. One, because it will make more peak power than EFI (see the links grumpy posted) and two, because when it comes to electronics I can read at about the 2nd grade level... I may change my mind, but the carb manifolds are proving to make more power than the EFI manifolds, and I think as people start pushing the redlines higher the carb manifolds will show increasing gains over the EFI manifolds. At least that is what I'm getting out of the articles I've read. People are also making more power with a carb manifold and TBI than they are with the stock port injection manifold, according to the articles. Forced induction lends itself to fuel injection, so I think that is why the WRC cars have FI. I would note that F1 cars spray the fuel into the airhorns in a continuous stream, and not into the ports in pulses. Almost like a carb but more accurate quantities of fuel, and not at all like a port injection setup. FI comes on your new car for two reasons: mileage and emissions. On my racecar those are not relevant. EDIT--OK three reasons. EFI can adapt to different altitudes better and so they have better driveability. Again, not relevant. If I go to a track at a higher elevation, I'll just bring some different jets with me...

I bet you if you asked 1000 engine builders what engine they would want to start with to produce a reliable 600 hp not one of them would choose an L. I think that is right at the root of why this site exists, really. The L is not the best engine to start with, and I don't think you'll find too many (any?) who argue that it is the pinnacle of internal combustion engine design. I'm not trying to tell you not to do it. If trying to build a hipo L diesel gets you out of bed in the morning, fine. I'm just saying that like the gas L series, I suspect that making big power with the diesel L is going to be like squeezing blood from a stone. If you want to prove to me that I'm wrong, that's great. I'll follow the buildup and I'll be happy to be wrong if you post having just dynoed your diesel at 300 hp and 600 lb/ft of torque.

Here's my take on this question, and this may or may not be the case, but it's how it has been presented to me. The newer diesels (car and truck) are built better. They might have DOHC in some cases, the ports flow better, I remember the Duramax had all sorts of hipo stuff like piston squirters to keep the pistons cool, a girder bottom end, I mean it's basically a hipo V8 that runs diesel instead of gas. The mid 80's diesels weren't built that way. They were built for low output and 300K mile durability. Anecdote time--I went racing with a buddy who was just starting to trailer his car. He did not have a tow vehicle, so he borrowed his dad's tow rig which was a '76 F150. This truck wouldn't pull his car more than 35 mph up any hill. It had the worst emissions designed heads imaginable, and although it got a steady 9 mpg, it probably put out no more than 150 bhp. I mean seriously I think we could have hooked his trailer up to my little Toyota truck with a 22RE and it would have done a hell of a lot better. Later engines were just made to produce more power. A 1978 Vette with an L48 put out a whopping 175 bhp with a 4 barrel carb. But these are gas anecdotes... I can also remember going fishing with my uncle. He had an 84 (approximately) K5 Blazer with the NA 6.2 liter diesel. Same story basically, we were pulling a 1000 lb boat at about 25 mph up every grade between the house and the lake. I mean incredibly slow. I also had a couple of friends with diesel rabbits. They'd put out a max of about 55hp and would do 65 mph with a tail wind downhill. The diesels of this era were made to sip fuel, not to make power. There was a sea change in diesel design and I don't really know when it happened. I think it was the Cummins in the Dodge, but suddenly diesels didn't necessarily suck anymore, and from that point on they've been made increasingly powerful. But pulling one of those old ones out of the junkyard and trying to make power with it is like pulling the engine out of the 78 Vette with the knowledge that you can't change the heads or the induction and trying to make power with it. Yes, it's a 350 Chevy. That doesn't mean that it doesn't suck.

It's really tough to see the shape of the ports in these pics. Like I said before, I think it'll be an expensive investigation to find out whether or not it's worthwhile. I would still venture a guess that it is not a good option from a performance standpoint.

Those intake ports look pretty good. What do the exhaust ports look like?

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought Owen did those himself with basically the same method you linked to, and did the rest of the fiberglass work to blend it in. He's pretty good with FG...

I think Owen did exactly this, but he did it with more of a JGTC flair and put several vents one in front of the other.

The heads are completely different. The diesel head is cast iron. Like I said, you may want to look at one before you write the idea off, but the mid 80's diesel heads that I've seen up close had nothing at all to do with performance. The short side radius was literally a right angle, the ports were high and so there was not much area to smooth it out, they were just about as crappy as you could possibly get for airflow. Made my 22RE head which I always thought was a real crappy design look like an AFR head or something.

At the time the LD28s were in vogue, automotive diesels were not really built for power. I have a friend who built up a mid 80s Toyota turbo diesel for his truck, and most of the work he did revolved around porting the head, because the stock casting was so INCREDIBLY poopy. I mean really bad. They just weren't built for performance. He spent a lot of money and did all the headwork himself and was hoping for 150 hp. Now I haven't seen the LD28 ports or any of that, but I think looking to do anything other than get good mileaage out of an LD28 is going to be an exercise in frustration. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's a fairly expensive thing to try and find out. I did try to search google and find hp output. Stock auto LD28 was 80 hp I found, and in agricultural trim they put out 92 hp. If you could get one to turn out 150 hp with a turbo I think you'd be doing pretty damn well, and you'd be back to bone stock 240Z levels of power. I do not think the way to make more power with a diesel is to increase the rpm range, and that would not be the way I'd approach it. Find some tall gears and some tall tires, then work on making the head flow well and turning up the boost/intercooling/etc. If you decide to get into this I think you'll be into a lot of books on diesel fuel pumps, because that seems to be the other key to making power. I just think with diesels winning Le Mans and all kinds of endurance racing and F350's doing 12 second 1/4 mile times it's giving people the impression that every diesel is a highly capable piece of equipment, but just like gas engines there are good ones and bad ones to try and coax a lot of power from. I'm doubtful that the LD is a good choice for ultimate power output.

Sorry for being dense, but I'm not familiar with the term "auto locker". Do you mean a Lock-Right or No Slip like this: http://www.rockcrawler.com/techreports/powertrax_tj/index.htm I always called those "lunchbox lockers". That basically functions like a Detroit locker, but isn't as strong. I wonder how that would hold up to the V8 guys who drag race on slicks... ARB would be a great idea for drag racers, I didn't realize they made them for R180s and R200s. Drive to the track open, hit the button, do your runs, then hit it again and unlock for driving home on the street. Maybe I'll add that to my diff FAQ. I'm sure a lot of guys would want it if they knew it was an option.

I was hoping you'd jump on this thread Tony! Thanks. You wrote quite the novel there, so let me just restate in the simplest terms to make sure I understand completely. 1. I can go with just one regulator since I don't mind going back and adjusting the regulator between jobs. Pretty much everything I use takes 90 lbs, except for the spray guns I have yet to buy, and I won't be painting very much at all. 2. I could (but don't have to) install a manifold off the tank so that I could have a "dry" line without and a "wet" line with lubricant. The double reservoir is the lubricant adding type, and that would be the type to buy for the wet line. 3. The single reservoir unit is the type I'd want for painting because it does not add lube to the lines. I'm thinking I could use this and then just periodically lube my tools. I've been using a crappy oilless compressor for the last 7 or 8 years and just lubing the tools, so I really don't see this as too much of a hassle. As to the copper line thing, the original owner of the house built this garage to paint cars. He's got flourescent lights in the walls and has the shop plumbed with copper lines already. The problem is he appears to have moved his compressor around a couple times, and there are several lines that stick out of the wall in various locations that don't have any caps on them and it's hard to tell which lines go with which system, or if it is all one big system that just has several loose ends that need to be tied up. Basically there's a whole bunch of plumbing in the garage and unfortunately a lot of it is behind the drywall. I was thinking of possibly doing the plumbing all over again and leaving it exposed. I dont mind the look of the copper pipe and then at least I'd know what I have and where it goes to. I did work at a business in CA where they plumbed the walls with PVC pipe. The instructions that came with my compressor even say that this is a bad idea, but they had it like that for years and never had a problem, and one guy did the whole shop in one day, just using that purple plumber's glue like you use on sprinkler systems... any thoughts on that?

Although Dave hasn't said as much, I think their setup is Tein. This first page has a link to this page which has more detail in how it gets installed: http://www.arizonazcar.com/coilover.html

I just got this compressor home today: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=93274 I honestly don't know jack about regulators, but this compressor did not come with one. So, in keeping with my HF gift cards deal, I can choose from the following: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=1118 http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=45009 http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=92261 This one looks like it goes directly on an HVLP gun: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=90590 The first one looks the most familiar to me because my welder regulator has a similar knob on it (which isn't saying much), but honestly I can't tell the difference between it and the other two and I'm a bit confused about what exactly they do. I would imagine that there is a screen filter in the bottom of the canister on any of these that separates the water from the air as it passes through. Some of them say they "lubricate" tools. Does one add lube to the regulator and then distribute it through the system? Sending lube through the air lines seems like a good way to screw up a paint job. I bought my new compressor with the intention of painting my Z, so I want to make sure that I do what I need to do to get a good paint job out of it. Is the fact that the first one can go up to 160 lbs and the others only to 125 of any consequence? Seems like most air tools are rated for 90, and an HVLP gun should be rated for like 40, so why would you need 160, let alone 125. Is there a difference between the one canister style and the two canister style? Is it necessary to use the regulator on an HVLP gun if you have a regulator at the compressor? Why couldn't you just turn the main regulator to 40 lbs? I think this may be more for a shop type setting where one guy needs 40 lbs and another needs 90 and so on, but for the garage I think the main regulator would be sufficient. Still want to know that I have that right... Of the choices above, does anyone have a preference? Are they all junk? Is there something better I should buy instead?

http://www.arizonazcar.com/coil.html

What kind of locker are you talking about just out of curiosity? Probably won't be too much interest here in a R160 locker (that would be better suited to the 510 crowd), but an R200 locker would be great for a lot of our drag racing members.

If you're installing a harness bar you're either racing or looking for attention from the police. Assuming you're racing, I can tell you that there aren't too many sanctioning bodies that will allow less than DOM these days. DOM or chromoly are what SCCA specifies. Pop is technically correct that a larger tube larger diameter ERW pipe would work, just not a very good choice in my opinion.

Rubber in the rear would be better than poly in my opinion because of the fact that bushing deflection here doesn't change handling characteristics unless you're in reverse. The poly on the back side does nothing but inhibit the movement of the TC rod. I suppose if you're into doing Rockfords the compliance on the back side bushing might become an issue, but I see no reason to run poly in the rear.

No. Well, the sheet metal maybe. DOM tubing is not terribly expensive, but you'll have to find a supplier. Check your yellow pages for steel suppliers. If you can't find one there are online stores that will ship you a piece, and you don't have to buy a 20' stick either. http://www.onlinemetals.com is one that I've used because they happen to be just around the corner, but they'll send stuff to you in vegas.

So theres 8744 members at this time. I think it's safe to say that probably 8000 of them, if not more, are S30 guys. Is there really a point to everyone jumping in to make their S30 ownership known on this thread? Not trying to be a stick in the mud...

I think you're taking it a little hard. Just take the rivets out. There are plenty of wheels that have small holes around the perimeter, and I don't think it's the rivets that make the look of the wheel, it's the spokes and their shape.

Its the one from http://www.speedwaymotors.com. I think it's the "Type III"

Ditto. Especially after Auxilary was looking for clutches recently.

I don't really believe that bumpsteer spacer are that beneficial in this situation. They might help, but what would help a lot more is insanely stiff springs. The problem with the poly is that it doesn't allow the suspension to move freely. When you use a softer spring, it really doesn't matter where your control arm is pointing and what the alignment of the bushing is, because you're still going to use a large portion of the available travel in everyday driving just due to bumps in the road, speed bumps, etc. Really really stiff springs would prevent the suspension from using as much of the travel and therefore would protect the TC rod more than the bumpsteer spacer. Since it is only the bushing in front that takes the braking load, I still think that using a stock rubber bushing in back (especially an old worn bushing) with the poly in the front is probably the best way to use the poly. Better yet is to get rid of the poly altogether and use something else entirely like a G machine setup with rubber on back, or one of the rod end solutions with an adjustable rod. As to the warranty Tokico thing, I once had to have one replaced years ago and they didn't give me any hassle about not running a boot.