JMortensen

I think that should bump you a little higher than 95, because the Xylene is 118 octane and Tolulene is 114 octane. FWIW Tolulene seems to work better for me than Xylene, but like I said AVgas or racing gas worked the best in my engine. I wouldn't worry about soot on the pistons. If you have big oily crusty buildup then worry, but powdery black soot will blow right out of there when you get it running right. You're running the car on 20% solvent, so I wouldn't bother adding anything to the tank to clean it up. You can retard the timing a bit to help with the pinging, that's one option. You'll lose some power with that one. Another is to try another different octane booster. You could get some race gas and mix it, or try the AV gas. I did have a problem once where I added a gallon of octane booster to 5 gallons already in the tank and the two just didn't seem to mix up. I was at the track and it just kept pinging. I took the car down a side road and jerked the wheel back and forth a lot to slosh the fuel in the tank. Even that didn't seem to help. Then I said screw it and added 5 gallons of 100 octane unleaded and it finally stopped pinging. On other occasions that exact same mix of booster and 92 worked fine. You really have to mix in the booster well IME. I suppose if you wanted to see if that was the problem you could drain the tank into a couple of gas tanks and shake them up really good and dump them back in... Have you put an O2 sensor on there to see what your mixture is like?

Sounds like Boge struts. They are a European company that makes very good quality struts for Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, etc. Good struts, I don't think their Z stuff is all that aggressive, more of just a very good quality street replacement IIRC. It sounds like yours are dead, so you'll be getting something else anyway.

This is a new one to me. The ID of the ring gear changed on the R180s??? By 5mm??? Seems like a waste of tooling to make a 2.5mm change on the length of the tooth. I was just shimming my R200 LSD, and my ring gear was not tight on the pilot part of the carrier at all. Mat73GNZ, another member here, had the same situation when he got into his R200. I'm thinking you could just carefully bolt it up with a gap between the ring gear and carrier and probably be just fine. Just measure the ring gear runout with a dial indicator to make sure you got it on straight. The R200 ring gears apparently aren't a press fit onto the carrier anyway, and I've never heard of anyone shearing ring gear bolts as a result, which you would think would be the danger of not using one. Aside from that Nissan trucks from the mid 80's pretty commonly have R180's with 4.11 gears up front, so maybe you could get one and get the right ID on the ring gear that way and not have to mess with machining anything or worrying about it. You might be able to have a spacer made, but I would think that it would be cheaper to get a truck differential than pay a machinist. Don't know for sure that the trucks have the 110mm gear that you need though... Or buy a gearset from Nissan with the proper ID...

I had these in for years in the back and they were a PITA to move! Really a PITA. I've heard of people using the sandpaper trick like Terry suggests, and I removed/inspected/regreased mine like John suggests. Never had a problem with them moving on my car though, and they never cracked despite years of torture with slicks. They were definitely noisy though, you could really hear them in the back over slight road imperfections. One trick that I don't think is stated in the installation instructions is to file down the end of the control arm so that the arm is just slightly shorter than the bushing. If you just slide the bushing onto the arm in the back, the end of the arm usually pokes out about .005 or .010. So if you just bolt it in, then theoretically the A arm can slide fore to aft that far. By using a large flat file you can take a little off the end of the arm so that the bushing is LONGER than the arm by the same .005 or .010. Then when you tighten the big 24mm bolt on the end the bushing will be compressed instead of just sitting there loose. Now that I think about it this might be part of the reason why these have a reputation for cracking like Mike experienced. Maybe his A-arms were beating the bushings on the washers as he accelerated, then braked, then accelerated.... Jon

Did you cut out the shells? The stock bushing is 3 parts. The outer shell which is a thin steel cylinder, the rubber, and the inner shell which the spindle pin goes through. If you cut out the rubber and didn't remove the shells, you are never going to get the new bushings in... Take a hacksaw and cut through the shell (cut straight towards the control arm so that any groove you cut isn't in a sensitive area). Once you cut through the shell you can just pop it out with a hammer and punch.

Here's a quick way to distinguish: The Z has strut suspension front and rear. The ZX has front strut and rear semi-trailing arm. Also the front is designed very much like the 510. I do not think the ZX was heavier than the 280Z, in fact I've heard that it is slightly lighter. In my mind the ZX will always be a big fat 510, or if you prefer, a sporty version of the early 80's Maxima sedan.

Pressure plates are balanced individually so that they don't upset the balance of the rest of the engine.

Do you have any idea what his car weighed? I've heard claims of 350 hp out of the old school GTU 2.4 engines, if you figure a car weight of 2000 lbs, then that means he's getting about 330 hp to the wheels. Of course he still had to shift... and maybe the car was lighter too. The whole thing is not unbelievable, but it would help to have seen it in person...

You learn something new every day. Thanks again Steve.

Hmmm... I don't have a FSM. Guess I'll have to look under a Max or an auto ZX one day... Thanks for trying Steve.

Despite the cost of a new gearset, it is SO MUCH EASIER to put ring gear bolt spacers on and not have to mess with setting up the differential again. Usually, not always but usually, you don't even have to reset the backlash when you swap the LSD carrier into an open diff. Change gears and now your buying all new bearings, setting pinion depth and preload, backlash, and carrier bearing preload. Not worth the hassle to get out of having spacers IMO.

So all the HALFSHAFTS are the same. The flanges that slide into the diff are different, but they all bolt up to the halfshafts just fine. That's what I thought, but every once in a while you find out what you thought was wrong...

260's are a yoke type? Whaa??? I thought every Datsun halfshaft from 240Z to 280ZX was the same, until you get into the CV shafts, which are yoke on one end and flange on the other. Have I just never seen a 260 shaft???

On my PC it works with Netscape but not with IE FWIW.

I'm with Rufus. My wife turned me off of pretty much all of those shows. We were watching Monster Garage and Jessie was bitching about the project and my wife turns to me and says: "I can't believe you're watching this little bitch whine about how he isn't getting his way! AGAIN!!!" Ever since then I turn one of these things on and all I can see is a bunch of whiny babies bitching and moaning about every little thing. Like the American Chopper guy... doesn't matter that the whiny baby is 6'5" and 280 lbs, he's still a whiny baby. The only one I watch anymore is Overhaulin, and that's because I like seeing the owner so happy at the end. But I agree with Rufus about the hosts and their stupid ass remarks in general. Can't forget to mention the forerunner of all these shows, Junkyard Wars. Way back when the British lady was hosting that was a hell of a show. Haven't seen it lately...

The bolts thread into the ring gear, so you'd have to drill out the holes then tap new threads. I suppose that is possible, but I always just assumed that it would be expensive and hard to do. Probably cheaper at that point to buy a new ring and pinion from Nissan with 12mm holes

Oh, sorry. The sig link is kind of a joke, so that people look at it and it is the search screen. Since my answer was so short it kinda looks like I'm telling you to look at the link, but really it is just my signature. Dry sump motors don't blow the dipstick out though, so the answer to your original question is no.

No it can't.

Usually it just shuts the spark off completely. Not aware of what happens on the tach. Maybe it jumps around, maybe it just goes straight to 0. I think ZR8ED was having this problem recently. Maybe he can chime in...

6AL has a rev limiter, and it runs ~$180. Check the usual Summit, Jegs, etc. Datsunlover is working on Canadian dollars or something.... Why don't you just shift earlier? If you have a stock cam you can't be making power anywhere near 8K like your other post says. With a stock cam most people are pushing to get the thing past 6K. Your other post says you revved it to 8K??? Either your tach is dead or you haven't figured out that shifting at extremely high rpms isn't the fastest way unless you have a REALLY built motor or both.

MORE OCTANE. I thought it was weird that you could run 92 with 11.5:1 compression. I'm running ~11:1 and I need about 95 octane to keep from pinging. Search the web for "octane booster home brew" which is basically going to be a mix of Tolulene or Xylene which you can get from the paint store and ATF and mineral spirits. Or just get some 100 octane AV gas from the local airport and mix 50/50 with 92. Or just buy some race gas and mix that with the 92. I've done all three, my car really likes the AV gas for some reason. I've been thinking about your pointer. I think when you took the discs out you f'ed up the alignment of the degree wheel and the distributor shaft. This is my suggestion of how to fix (assuming you can't put it back the way it was and figure out how it was meant to be used in the first place): 1. Find TDC #1. Use a pen or a welding rod--not a pencil or anything else that might break off in the chamber for whatever reason--you slip or something dumb like that. I once managed to use a dial indicator thru the spark plug hole but it was a machinist's dial indicator with a very long plunger, and a regular one won't work. Use a dial indicator if possible, much more accurate. Make sure you get to the middle of the dead area, there should be a few degrees where your pen doesn't move. 2. Aim the center of the rotor right at the #1 terminal on the cap (as close as you can). 3. Spin the degree wheel until it registers 0* straight up. 4. Figure out a mark on the clamp that you can use to aim the distributor. If there isn't a good one, use a chisel to make one. I still think there should be one on there that isn't 5* wide. 5. Time to ~35*BTDC at 3000 rpm. I don't know if this would be 35* or 325* on your degree wheel. I would think that it would be 35*. 6. Check timing at idle just for kicks, should be somewhere in the 15-20 degree range. This won't be dead on accurate, but it should be fairly close. You might want to get some other opinions too. I'm sure Drax240z, John Coffey or some of the other L6 guys around here might have some useful suggestions for you. Oh, and get a timing light. $20 from Harbor Freight, if you want the one with digital advance your talking ~$35.

There is no rev limiter. Your tach is probably bad, I seriously doubt you could get to 8K with the stock valve springs.

You have to splice into the distributor wires to run the MSD. Your problem certainly sounds like the module though. I've bought several ZX distributors with the module for $50. Despite the rash of bad modules here lately, they really are pretty bulletproof. A new module from Nissan is like $150 IIRC.

ECM maybe? I think its on the fenderwell on the 76, then they went to the one right on the distributor on the ZX. Typical symptoms are, you drive it, the module heats up and stops functioning. Let it sit for a while, car fires back up just fine, drive again for a while then it shuts off again.