JMortensen

Ah, I see. I bet you'd notice another nice improvement going to the ZX 5 speed.

You don't mind the huge gap in the 2-3 shift Brian? I'd stick with the ZX 5 speed just for the closer ratios and particularly the taller 2nd gear, but maybe that's a road racing perspective talking...

I did some TaeKwonDo about... oh geez... 15 years ago (has it been that long?). It was fun, my best friend and another good friend went to the Junior Olympics and placed 3rd and 4th. They could kick my ass in a minute flat though. I ended up hurting my back and had to stop, but I've considered starting back up again. I think I'd like to do something less high kick oriented. I was always a strong puncher, never flexible enough to really make an axe kick work. Love watching MMA, I think I like watching the Pride fights more than UFC, but either one gets my heart going. Too bad it always seems to come on at 3:00 AM...

I'm going to have to agree with z-ya on this one. I'm not telling you not to do it either, but generally the purpose of an engine swap is to IMPROVE the car. If it doesn't IMPROVE the car, then why bother? I fail to see what great benefit the L6 is going to give you. I imagine it's going to be extremely nose heavy and won't make any more power than a V8 engine swap would, and seems like it's going to require a bunch of screwing around with it to get it in there. If you just want to do it because you can, then go for it, but don't be surprised when people ask why...

Read this: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=115294 then donate to the wind tunnel testing and send bjhines a deflector and you'll get a correct answer to your questions. I think that this is a different idea that serves the same purpose as the vortex generators on the new EVO.

You might not be getting any response because your title is so vague. Maybe "Need help choosing 5.0 swap parts" would be better. I'll change the title for you this time, next time you post make sure the title reflects the subject of the post. If you're still looking for opinions, I think your Z will haul ass with those parts in it!

Can you lower the engine?

Agreed. What I did was to build taller mounts that hook to the strut towers so that the bar could be straight. Looks like you might have hood clearance issues, but a straight bar would be preferrable to a curved one. Picture is at a weird angle because the car is on a rotisserie, but you should get the idea:

Yep. If it is a 5/8" turnbuckle you can order a swaged steel or an aluminum replacement turnbuckle in just about any length you want from http://www.colemanracing.com.

I just remembered something else. I know that semi-trailing arm suspension is effected differently, but in that type of suspension stepping on the brakes compresses the rear suspension. My impression there is that using the brakes causes torque at the hub, and that makes the arm want to stick straight out from the chassis. So for most cars with semi-trailing arm this makes the rear squat. I don't think that this effect translates to our strut type suspension though.

That's kinda what I thought at the time, but this guy who was telling me was pretty sure of himself. I remember who it was too. It was a co-worker of mine, and he was relocating the calipers on his Ducati 888. Not that it makes his story any more likely to be true...

I could well believe that mismatching within a set of cam towers would be an issue. I think we're in agreement on that point. I haven't seen the cam wear as an issue, and in fact when I last had new valves installed in my head the machinist asked what the advertised lift and duration were and checked them for me. He said he was surprised because usually the quoted numbers aren't accurate at all, and mine was dead on. So no adverse cam wear and no frequent adjustments on my particular motor after years of racing and hard use.

My car with a full interior, extra sound deadening, an Autopower roll bar and R200 diff had the following corner weights with my ~180 lb ass in the seat: LF: 640 RF: 620 LR: 650 RR: 640 That is 49.4% F and 50.6% R, with a cross weight difference of 10 lbs. and total weight of 2550 lbs. Take my weight out and you get a car weight of 2370. That was with a 1/2 tank of gas. As far as head mods I have an E31 with 280 valves, unshrouded the valves polished the chambers and the block is notched to match the head, larger intake seats installed, ported head, port matched Cannon intake, 44 Mikunis, ITG filter. Cam is a regrind .490/280. The chambers were cc'd, then the head milled, which is why I don't know the exact compression ratio. The bottom end is basically stock L28 with flat top pistons. ZX distributor with no vacuum advance, MSA POS 6-1 header into 2.5" mandrel exhaust. That's basically it.

I think you're wrong about everything you've said there. I'm not saying that these aren't commonly held beliefs, I just think they're wrong. Hopefully we'll get BRAAP or some other expert to chime in and help us out. Do you have some proof of cams "wearing much faster" with old rockers or "lots of friction and heat build up on the cam"? I've done the verboten things in question, and I haven't seen either of those effects. It sounds to me like you're passing on the same incorrect info that everyone else believes to be true.

I remember something from my motorcycle days about a decade back that has to do with this. In particular, it had to do with the swingarm suspension at the back of a motorcycle. It seems to me that the deal was that if the caliper was mounted at the back of the rotor that applying the brakes would compress the rear suspension more than a caliper mounted at the front of the rotor on top of the swingarm. This is all really fuzzy memory talking here. In car terms I think the idea would be that a caliper mounted in front of the rotor would not tend to compress the suspension, whereas one mounted in back would. Seriously vague memory on this subject, but maybe that will get the ball rolling on that part of it anyway...

That's going to push you into a Mod class. If you really want to compete, build the L. If you want to build what you want, regardless of the rules, then build your SR. Personally I think you'd have a hard time overcoming the displacement disadvantage by going to a smaller engine. A tweaked 12:1 compression L28 should make 250-270 whp I would think. My L28 at 11:1 makes 240ish, and I built it in my garage.

I agree with you about the cam, but the thing about the cam towers is not true. The cam towers are swappable without any trouble at all. I swapped mine from a P79 to my E31 25K or 30K miles ago. Never heard that one before. I know lots of guys are using the "C" cam, and lots of turbo guys run the NA cam, I can't imagine that they've all had the cam ground or polished or whatever "resurfaced" means in order to run it. I've swapped my cam out twice, still using the original rockers, never resurfaced them. I think the "MUST have new/resurfaced rockers" thing comes from the Schneider cams which are apparently softer than other cams (search, lots of info on that issue). My own experience, and that of most of the guys I used to race with is that you don't need to do anything other than set the lash pads up correctly. So long as you're using a quality cam or a regrind, the rockers will hold up fine in my experience. As to the recommended lash pad thickness, that one gets a little tricky when you start changing things around in the head. I never really understood how a company could recommend a lash pad thickness with any degree of accuracy. Do a valve job, lash pad thickness changes. Replace valves, thickness changes. Replace seats, thickness changes. It would seem that most of our 30 something cars should probably have had some work done that makes the recommendation questionable. Here's a thread you can read on lash pads: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=112184 Main thing to remember for running stock FI is that the stock FI sucks. Keep that in mind, because it can't handle a very big cam at all. .460/280 seems to be about as big as you can go, and that's pretty small when you really consider what is possible. I know http://www.deltacams.com has a regular regrind that they do for stock FI engines, and it runs $65 per cam I think. They'll also resurface your rockers for $3 each if you want to do that. My opinion is that Delta or some other cam grinder is the way to go.

As Pop says, search seam or stitch. I'm sure a lot of my threads will come up. Where to do it? Everywhere. I did everything below the windsheild and the B pillar. The whole chassis basically. The time consuming part is cleaning out the seam sealer junk from the car. Real PITA. Plus getting at the seams underneath isn't fun. I eventually ended up making a rotisserie. If I were to do it again, the rotisserie is the FIRST thing I would do. You can EASILY tell which welds that were made from underneath while I was on my back vs the ones I made standing up and flipping the car upside down. I found lots of problems and fixed a lot of rust just in the process of completing this job. I feel it was well worth my time for what I intend to do with the car. As to it's effect, katman has lots of racing experience and wasn't too hot on the idea, but just about every racer I know has their car stitched, and I haven't heard too many people say that it wasn't worthwhile. Johnc said at one point that just by doing that the spring rates could be upped another I think it was 50 in/lbs. If you're not aware the Z chassis is so flexy that when you start running rates over about 300 the chassis itself starts to act like a spring. The Z really needs some pretty major reinforcing if you intend to race it. If you don't plan on really high spring rates or actually racing your car, it's probably a waste of time.

Yes.

I'd strongly suggest you step up to something larger. You can have a cam reground for about $65, and then you can get something big enough that it will actually make a difference. Search Delta cams and search 260 cam and you should find specs and details on regrinds.

Are you ABSOLUTELY SURE of this info? It seems to contradict our previous findings. As far as we know now the Z31 carrier has a big spacer and not as many clutches and steeper (not as aggressive) ramps. The Power Brute apparently is the same as the Nismo carrier, and it has the more aggressive ramps, more clutches and uses the same spline count as the Z31. The VLSD that came in the 88 SS apparently came with larger stub shafts and a higher spline count than the regular CLSD side gears. The S15 HLSD also uses a larger shaft. I think to this point those are the only two we've identified that use a larger stub shaft.

Let's keep this on topic...

If you plug in a postal code you can view the page. $300 and it does require a power source. Claims to reduce rust by 80%. Here's a link to the manufacturer directly: http://www.counteractrust.com/

Get a Haynes manual, take the cover off again, and put it together correctly with the right torque on the cam and crank and you shouldn't have any trouble. Sounds like the tensioner got you. Once that thing falls out you have to pull the cover to get it back in.

This is not correct. The 77-79 trans are wide ratio. The 80 trans is the first year of the close ratio and has a .773 OD which actually makes it the closest ratio of all of them. The 81-83 has a .745 OD, making it slightly wider ratio than the 80. Ratios and other helpful stuff here: http://www.geocities.com/z_design_studio/