JMortensen

One more thumbs up for the Millermatic 135. Bitchin welder. I think it is different than the Hobart 135 because the Miller has the infinite adjustability that John mentioned. My friend's Hobart has 5 settings for wire speed. Got mine with a helmet and gloves from the ebay seller "weldfabulous". The name is a little goofy, but they hooked me up big time. When I got it I blew the gas regulator immediately and had to buy another (better) one, and I also bought a tank, an extra spool of wire, a wire brush, etc. Ended up spending just over $900 for everything IIRC, but it is truly a nice welder, and I'm a lot more comfortable with the welds I've made with this machine than the few other welders I've tried.

I think VARA's CP3 and CP3M are the classes to go for. These are vintage classes. My understanding is that CP3 is based on the C Production class that the 240 dominated for a decade. CP3M is for classes that are too highly modified to fit in the CP3 class, like 240's with 280 engines, illegal brake and suspension modifications, etc. I don't know if the 280 is eligible for any of these, but the 240 is. If I ever find myself willing to risk the door to door carnage, CP3M will be my first choice.

The flat top SU's were OK when they were new, but they can't be tuned easily, so most people run them until they start functioning poorly, then take them off and either put on the earlier round top SU's (good) or the dual Webers (less bad than the flat tops) or the four barrel manifold (search for this one, I'm tired of that argument). All you have to do to understand why they are less than ideal is look at the manifold. The air/fuel mix has to go through this question mark shaped manifold adapter thingy to get into the stock manifold. The fuel is heavier than the air, so it tries to separate and pool at the bottom of the curve. The solution was to put a bunch of bumps in the bottom of the curve to keep the fuel mixed with the air, but now you have a bunch of turbulence in the manifold which hurts its ability to flow. The advantage of a sidedraft carb is that the incoming air/fuel doesn't have to change direction (drastically) to get to the head, so I believe that they will flow more than a downdraft carburetor. A downdraft carb works well on a V engine, where the flow is mostly down. A sidedraft carburetor works well on an inline engine, where the flow is mostly sideways. Sputtering around corners is usually a sign of incorrect float level.

Don't post any pictures. I don't need another project...

Well that's enough to scare me away from these, although I think the idea has a lot of merit. I still might go for the drilled. Too much crap to buy still... must get car together...

Pretty much any circle track place will have the splined bars. I did a quick search and found this: http://www.stockcarproducts.com/susp21.htm and they note that there is a $25 surcharge for custom lengths. I looked into this a bit too, the problem I had was that I could not find arms bent out to fit like our bars are. They were all straight. I guess if you made your own ends they would work, you're a bit more experienced in the fabrication dept...

The only manufacturer I've found who is currently making adjustable bars is Saner Performance. I emailed them three times, they totally ignored me, so I moved on. My plan now is to take the bars I have, cut the ends off and weld new ends with holes onto them. I've had a couple friends do this in the past with good results, and Terry did something similar with his rear bar ends to use his short little end links.

http://www.wilwood.com/Products/002-Rotors/006-ULD/index.asp Drilled rotors are 8 lbs. The scalloped rotors are 5.9. Scalloped are $83 each, drilled are $47 each, regular are $32 each. The less weight the better, the question is how low can you go.

I could get my brakes hotter in 5 minutes of racing than in 2 hours of stop and go. Never seen anyone pull off the freeway with boiling brake fluid. Back to the subject though. Has nobody actually USED these? Zhadman makes a good point, since the pad ends up at the outside of the scallops there would be a pretty significant part of the pad that would not be in contact with the rotor at any given time. Kinda like a drilled rotor in that respect. Is that going to affect the balance of the braking system?

Yeah I'm definitely not looking at these for any increase in performance or cooling or anything like that. I know they'll run hotter since they have 66% of the mass of the full sized rotors. I'm just a cheap *** and saving 8 lbs on rotors for $100 is cheaper than buying wheels that are 8 lbs lighter.

http://www.wilwood.com/Products/002-Rotors/007-ULS/index.asp Anyone tried these things? I still haven't purchased my rear rotors and it looks like I can drop 4.1 lbs PER rotor with these, at a cost of about $100 more for the pair than standard Ultralight rotors. I don't think I'd do it in the front, but I think I could probably afford the loss of mass in the rear. Kinda worried that they might be more prone to cracking or warpage. Any thoughts?

Most common reasons for ping: TOO MUCH ADVANCE or TOO LITTLE OCTANE. If it's pinging that means that it is advancing too much when you accelerate past 3K, when the advance is probably just coming all in. It definitely isn't pinging because there is no advance. Quite the opposite. So what I think you've been doing is retarding the crap out of it to keep it from pinging. That's not good. Retarded timing puts a lot of heat into the exhaust, can warp exhaust valves, etc. If you can't get to a dyno, then set timing at idle to 10º or as close as you can get. Then tweak it up until you're comfortable that you won't be getting any ping, and hopefully you won't be losing too much power. I wonder what your engine would do with some 100 octane fuel. You'd probably be able to run an appropriate amount of total advance (~35º) and get a lot more power out of it. If you decide to go ZX dizzy, I'll swap you mine which already has the vacuum advance disabled, plus a bit of cash if you want. I really think you should be able to get what you've got working though. I think you just had the advance and ping thing screwed up. More advance or too low octane = ping.

I don't know what that's going to do for you other than keep the car from rolling by binding the coils. Plus I'd be scared to weld them on the car for fear of splatter damaging the Illuminas. Autox is usually a monthly thing. Just go and have fun with the body roll, then add your new parts and go back again. That way you'll really feel the difference with your new parts.

Here I was thinking Alex's Jeg's order came in...

You remember inside the bell housing how there was that collar that sits around the input shaft? And you remember how the fork and throwout bearing sat on that collar? Well think of that area when the transmission is installed. The input shaft is stuck into the pilot bushing. The clutch is on the splines on the input shaft. The end of the pp sits over the clutch and the fingers of the pp are over the collar part. There isn't enough room to have the wrong throwout bearing collar on there. You've only got a couple inches between the back of the bellhousing and the pp when it's all together. So if your throwout bearing sleeve is too long, then there isn't enough room to bolt it all together. When you do, the throwout bearing is already contacting the pp, which means the clutch is always depressed a little bit. Ruins throwout bearings really fast, and the clutch will slip really bad too. As far as checking goes these pieces don't move that easy. I went through this same thing about 10 years ago when I first put my Z together. My friend and I had just installed the transmission and had gone through the same 240 to 280 conversion crap. He tells me to check for free play and I grabbed with 2 fingers. Nope, no free play. He thinks he put the wrong sleeve in and we're both bummed. He came over to double check it and grabbed the end of the fork with his hand and was able to move it back and forth 1/4" or so. Then I got a verbal whoopin'... Don't worry, without some sort of leverage you won't be able to compress the pp springs, so jerk it back and forth hard and see if there is some free play in there.

http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=84860 Welcome. That link should keep you busy for a while. You might want to check the other stickies in the Turbo forum, then as you see things and don't know what they are or just want to know more about them just search for them. Nice looking Z. My first Z was orange.

The longer the sleeve is the further towards the pp the throwout bearing sits. So if you have a long sleeve then you need a short pressure plate (like the 240 setup) and if you have a shorter sleeve you can use a taller pp (280). If you don't have free play in the throwout fork it means that the bearing is contacting the pp when the two are bolted together, basically depressing the clutch just a little bit all the time. This is not good. This free play measurement is not something you'll be able to tell without pushing pretty hard on the fork. Two fingers trying to jiggle it back and forth won't do it. If you're using a 280 pp then you need a 280 sleeve. As long as the pp and sleeve match you should be good to go.

I've had some really tight pilot bushings before. I bet that is your problem. Sometimes even when you use a clutch alignment tool the clutch disc can still be a little bit off, and that causes problems. I would say if you got the transmission on and you were able to inch the car forward, don't worry about it. If you do still want to worry about it, check for free play at the throwout fork. If you have the wrong throwout bearing sleeve on the transmission then there would be NO freeplay at the fork. So you got the comp trans fixed, eh? Did you use a Porsche synchro? I was talking to somebody else about that and they confirmed the Porsche thing and said that Don Potter has used Porsche synchros on the Comp boxes.

MSA mounts in front of the diff. Nissan Comp now sells ST bars and I don't think they make any bars anymore, the ST 240 bar mounts behind the diff. The ST 260/280 bar mounts in front of the diff. Not sure on Addco.

I just looked at your link again and it looks like your distributor is spinning backwards, because of the way it is located on the engine. You can tell because the cap is marked for the wires, but the markings are wrong, and you have written the correct firing order with a marker. I think this means that 35º on the pulley should be 35º BTDC. So either get the timing light or start messing with it from about 8º on the degree wheel and see what happens. Are you timing it based on that mark you made on the distributor housing? Are you sure that the mark you made is in the right place?

The mechanical advance would be inside the distributor, underneath the plate with the slots. Real easy way to check for mechanical advance: with the distributor installed and the belt on, grab the rotor and twist. If it moves at all, then you're moving the advance mechanism. It's sprung so it might be hard to twist. Here's a picture of the centrifugal advance mechanism that's been pulled out of a ZX dizzy: When you pull the cap off and look at the distributor you can't see any of this mechanism since it's under the breaker plate. There is normally no adjustment to set your timing curve on a distributor. Usually it requires changing springs or soldering up the slots inside the distributor. You probably don't have to mess with the curve anyway. I would imagine that anyone who would go through the hassle to set that distributor up already has the curve set. I don't understand what you're doing with the timing at all. I've never had a pulley that was marked all the way around, but I would imagine that if 0º is set at 0, then 35º advance should be 330º, unless the pulley is marked backwards. I think this might be your problem. 35º BEFORE top dead center is what you want, I think you've been going to 35º AFTER TDC. Regardless, I would bet you dollars to donuts that you have mechanical advance on that dizzy, so I wouldn't set it to 330º either, because then it won't want to idle and it will ping like crazy. My suggestion would be to set everything back to 0º and buy a timing light that does have the advance feature. Probably not the most accurate, but here's one for $30: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=40963 If you don't want to do that, I would guess that you could set the timing at idle to something like 357º on your wheel (should be 8º BTDC) and then advance just a little bit at a time until you like what how it feels and it doesn't ping. If I'm right on the timing thing then it should fire up a lot easier. BTW the battery doesn't matter. You could have 1,000,000 CCA, and the starter will only take what it needs from those 1,000,000. You really don't need chokes on Webers. Just give it a good pump on the gas pedal and then turn the key, and it should fire just fine.

Yep. That's my impression too. A ZX distributor with the vacuum advance mechanism disabled has a good timing curve with 17º advance all in at 2500 from the factory. Can't beat the price too, as they usually go for $30-$50 with the module IME. I still think your distributor setup has some serious advantages, and you should make the effort to figure it out. On a couple threads you've said that it has no advance mechanism. I'm not sure I believe that. I would bet it has centrifugal advance, and that's what you want. It should be as easy as getting a timing light with the advance funtion, setting it to 35º, revving the engine to 3000 rpm and lining the timing light up to the 0º mark. That should be it. I don't honestly understand why this is causing so many problems for you.

I think the book was written in the days of bias ply tires, plus the last 25 or 30 years of tire technology isn't taken into consideration. It's a good book and has some useful info but it is dated. BTW there are some wicked fast Pintos out there, and I'm not kidding.

I believe OER is the same thing as SK. I think they've been around a while too. If I'm right they run some Weber and some Mikuni jets, and they were designed to be an improvement on the Webers or Mikunis. I think Dan (255whp) Baldwin runs them. $1700 seems a bit steep, but I haven't priced them lately.