JMortensen

If you had interference between the valves and pistons I think you would have found it when you were assembling the engine most likely. You did turn the engine over with a ratchet at some point during the assembly right? Maybe when you were adjusting the valves during the assembly? I think something isn't going right with the way you're adjusting them. I'm not trying to insult your intelligence, but I've seen one common mistake probably 5 or 6 times over the years, and here it is. The shadetree mechanic will adjust all the valves without ever turning the engine or without making sure the valve was all the way closed before adjusting the gap. You did make sure that the valve you were adjusting was CLOSED before adjusting it, right? If you adjusted some of them with the lobe not straight up, then you would have a hell of a racket because you might have some HUGE gaps between the rocker and cam. I always pull the plugs and use a little starter switch I got from Harbor Freight. I turn the engine until the cam lobe points pretty much straight up.

How did you set them exactly. I mean give us a pretty good run down of what you did.

This whole campaign finance "reform" is going to blow up in a whole bunch of offshore campaigning next time. I can hear it now: "GW passed legislation that encourages the OUTSOURCING of our campaigning!!!" And you know Akmed will be calling right at dinner time. Those are really stupid laws. I think the only candidate who had that one right back in 2000 was... Alan Keyes... scary thought. With regards to the UK thing I don't think any country would particularly appreciate that. It's obvious that there is a pretty serious gap in the politics of Europe and America. It's too bad you guys can't get your heads on straight... Well at least you are in the UK and not France. As far as the content of the ad I think it's just like any other opinion. The source is VERY important. From the little blip I saw on the news it didn't look particularly virulent or mean spirited but I haven't read it personally, so I guess I only know what they told me. The thing that bugs me MORE than the fact that this ad comes from a foreign country is the fact that it comes from a "news" paper. Here in Commie Town...uhh... Seattle, we have political telemarketing from the newspapers. Got one yesterday. "The Seattle Post Intelligencer would like to remind you that we support Prop 69-The Free Smack for Transsexual Addicts who Need a Fix Initiative and we encourage everyone to vote YES on 69 on Nov 2." Absolutely sickening. The only upside to that is they aren't trying to HIDE the bias, but that is small consolation.

I don't think so. I think .002 is pretty safe. Especially if it takes you a long time to get through them all. The longer it takes you to finish the looser they'll be. Not passing judgement or anything, just saying. I was taught to hold both the 14 and 17 in my left hand, and the feeler gauge in my right, and kinda tighten and then lock it down all in one motion with the left while constantly feeling the resistance with the right. I also use a piece of chalk or sometimes a dot of white out to mark which ones I've done, and do it as quickly as I can so the engine doesn't cool down too much. I'm still not that good at it to be honest, probably because I don't drive my Z enough. I know a guy who can do all 12 valves in an L6 in about 10 minutes, start to finish. He always pointed and laughed at me because it took me at least twice as long, probably more like 3 or 4 times as long now. I'm out of practice Of course he races a 510, worked in a Z shop for a couple YEARS, then became a Nissan tech... IIRC he used to say that if the temp gauge went under 160 you were going too slow (Autometer). If you're really slow you might want to wait until they're totally cold and do them .002 tighter than the hot spec. That's the way they do 911 valve adjusts and it seems to work for Gunter. If they're still noisy you can always pull the valve cover and check the hot gap, and tighten your cold gap as necessary.

I feel like the only one sick and tired of retro. Can't we come up with a new idea anymore? If I see one more rehashed TV show, movie, car, song, etc I think I'm gonna puke.

The valve needs to sit on the seat firmly to transfer heat out of the valve and into the head. If you adjust the valves too tight you'll burn a valve. That being said, the cam card that came with my cam said .008/.010 hot, so there is a little variance out there. A lot depends on the guy behind the feeler gauge too... easiest thing to do is to get the stepped feeler gauge so you know you're going tight enough. The right one fits, but the thicker part doesn't. http://shop.store.yahoo.com/bradystools/fegablty0to01.html

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=33742&item=7927943900&rd=1 Well looky there!!! There it is!

That thing totally reminds me of an R5 Renault Turbo. I love it. What's the 240Z part though? I don't see ANY Z influence or parts...

I'd say rears because the stock rears probably do next to nothing compared to the upgraded fronts. Plus I hate pounding the crap out of the drums to get them to break free from the hub. You won't feel much of a difference most likely, but that's where I'd put my money.

Why is it that the music makes it so much funnier...

Triples just don't transition very well from cruise to WOT IME. I've had two "expert" tuners tell me that I couldn't possibly get mine tuned any better than I had it, and I managed to get it better yet. Still there is a bit of a hole at ~2000 rpms or so. I just can't get rid of it. I know what it is, it is the air slowing down in the runners when you snap the throttle open. But that's not what these things are made for. They are made for 3000 and up, maybe 3500 and up... I could probably put smaller chokes in and lose some top end and make it better, but who wants to do that?!? Every Mikuni powered car that I've been in has had that problem though... Supposedly the Webers should be better than the Mikunis on that hesitation, but aside from that one hiccup if I rev it up and dump the clutch it doesn't hesitate. Just roasts the tires until I let off... I agree with you though, some ported SU's would be the perfect street setup IMO. Triples definitely aren't the ideal street setup, although I did drive mine in traffic for a couple years with no big problems, just took some getting used to.

Also the search at the top right of every screen doesn't work. The one in my sig does.

Search for SR (you don't need the 20DET part) and make sure you choose the "other engines" forum. Unfortunately I can't link to a good search. For whatever reason it doesn't work that way. This has been discussed A LOT lately. Do some digging and you'll find all kinds of info. BTW--I've never heard it called an SR20DTE, always a SR20DET.

Click the link on my signature. It will answer all of your questions...

I think this is your problem. The distributor is driven off of a shaft which goes diagonally down through the timing cover and connects to the oil pump and is driven off of the front of the crank. If you didn't keep the shaft in the same position when you removed it and reinstalled it, then you'd be pretty lucky if you just stuck it in there and it was right. Really lucky. To fix you should put the engine to TDC#1 (pull the valve cover and make sure the valves are closed and it really is TDC#1) EDIT--looks like you can just look in the oil cap-- and pull the distributor cap. The rotor should point to where the #1 spark plug wire is (roughly). If it doesn't, then you'll have to remove the oil pump and reposition the shaft. It runs on a gear on the front of the crank, so you'll have to pull it down to disengage from that gear, then twist it a little bit, then plug it back in. This is much easier if you have a buddy to stand next to the front of the engine and twist the rotor while you are twisting the shaft. If not, you pretty much have to guess, then attach the oil pump, then get out from under the car, plug in the dizzy, see if it is pointing in the right direction. Then if it isn't you have to get back underneath, pull the oil pump move the shaft again, put the pump back on, get back out, put the dizzy back on and check, etc... With a friend it shouldn't take more than about 10 minutes. Also, you may have to remove the front sway bar from the frame to access the oil pump bolts.

The main benefit to moving the battery IMO is to put it somewhere lower in the chassis. I think it's actually in a pretty good spot from the factory (offsets some of the driver's weight) so I haven't bothered moving mine yet. I think the Z's long nose contributes to the impression that it is nose heavy, but really it isn't at all. Most people who I've seen #'s for come up 49/51, 50/50, or 51/49. Mine is 49.5/50.5 if you wanna get particular... 74_5.0L_Z is obviously an exception...

Man, I woulda had to screw with the 18 year old. Tell him the citizens of the UK are called Ukers, and that they refer to the homeland as Mother Uk. You keep bringing this up Aux, you oughta read "Lies My Teacher Told Me" and "The Language Police".

I think I'm paying about $120/year for full coverage for "classic car" insurance through State Farm. I also had the car appraised and have an agreed value with them for $15K. This coverage does have a mileage limit of something like 3K/year but it doesn't sound like that is a problem for you either.

My personal opinion is that you need a big cam for triples. Compression helps when you're running a big cam. Put those two together and that's pretty much what you need, although I did run my low compression/big cam/44s setup for a long time. It just didn't have much bottom end.

BAR doesn't license techs. But I think they regulate automotive business licensing and require insurance, which the backyard mechanic isn't going to have. I know they regulate the smog checks. I'm kinda talking out of my ass here because I haven't tried to open a shop or anything, but I know there are lots of laws in CA at least (where I worked as a wrench) where they were really picky about disposal of waste oil and coolant and such. Then there was OSHA trying to protect us workers from... everything in the shop.

Well, like I said, maybe I just haven't seen it. I really think the AFM is a big restriction. I think the intake manifold is not so good too. It isn't easy to port the plenum. The runners are kinda long to port from the inside. I think it's more than I could do. John Coffey is making over 280 whp and he isn't running triples, but he is running Motec injection and a custom manifold. I'm not trying to say that FI is inferior at all. Far from it. I think triple throttle bodies would have an advantage over carbs. I'm just saying that I think triples (at least the 44 and bigger) have an advantage over the stock injection. You are ABSOLUTELY RIGHT that you cannot put a set of triples on and get 300hp, and I did not mean to say that at all. In fact I know I've talked about that being a pet peeve of mine. Like you go to a car show and there is a bone stock 240 motor with triple 40's and the guy is claiming 300 hp. Can't tell you how many times I've seen that, and it's never true. What I can tell you is what I've told you before, that when I switched from SU's to triples my wife was actually SCARED of the car. It had to be at least 40 hp gain. At LEAST. My head was ported, I had a decent sized cam, EI, header and 2.5 mandrel exhaust, and it just didn't do much at all with the SU's. I was convinced for a long time that triples just weren't worth it, and I had fought to not switch to them for years (had a roommate who kept hounding me, and he was right). I had heard all the Norm stories, and they convinced me. And I was wrong. Big time. Switched to triples and it was night and day. But again, my experience is judging SU's against triples, not stock FI against triples. I'm not set on this one. Show me the guy who makes big power out of the stock FI setup and I'll be open minded. I just haven't seen that guy yet.

You've got 2 sets of gears in the diff. The spider gears in the middle. In a normal diff, you spin one tire one way and the other side should move in the opposite direction. The movement you describe is totally normal. The other set is the ring and pinion. The driveshaft connects to the pinion at the front of the diff, and it turns the larger ring gear, which spins the axles forwards or reverse. I think this is what is screwed up in yours, because you should be able to turn both side shafts the same direction and the yoke in the front should spin. It sounded like you said that when you tried to spin them both in the same direction they just wouldn't. Take the rear cover off and you should be able to see what took a crap on you. Sounds like you lost some teeth on the ring or the pinion most likely.

Geez, and I'm sitting here drooling over $85 propane heaters for my ~300 sq foot garage.

Ricer to me doesn't mean japanese car or Honda or any of that. It means a jackass who doesn't know WTF they're talking about walking around with a chip on their shoulder bragging about their shopping cart handle looking wing on the back and the huge amount of downforce it provides, or trying to convince me that 18" wheels and 20 series tires makes a Honda handle better. There was this 17 year old jackass I used to work with who had a STOCK Honda Civic DX with those lame $300 Nology wires and a cone filter and a fart pipe and a HUGE chip on his shoulder. One time he seriously RODE MY ASS and swerved back and forth behind me as we drove down the 25 mph street in the industrial complex. I swear I almost got in a fist fight with him over that. I told him that racing where there are 50 driveways and no visibility and people walking everywhere is a bad idea and FINALLY got him to agree to come to an autox, then he gets fired about a week before hand. That's OK, he probably wouldn't have gone anyhow. Of all the ricers I've ever tried to get out to an autox (probably at least 25 or 30 by now) only 1 has gone. And me and a couple of buddies took real good care of him, gave him rides, showed him the line, etc. He went home all happy and told all of his ricer friends how cool it was. He kept coming to races, his buddies were too chicken dodo to show up. Eventually stupidity overtook him and he bought one of those anime looking attack Honda body kits to turn his Honda into a "show car" and quickly found out that the guys winning the shows had $100,000 Hondas. I don't know what happened after that, but at least I respected him for going and racing and being willing to learn. His car actually handled OK too. Sorry for the rant but the most of the little bastards piss me off. I don't have any problem with the guy who builds a Honda because he wants a Honda. I have a problem with these "I'll race you in bumper to bumper traffic on a surface street" punks who don't know WTF they are talking about and walk around with something to prove.

The problem is finding enough people that want one. They are not legal under any class that the Z is open to except exhibition classes and classes that would allow motor swaps. So you're basically going to get people who want a really fast street car and people who want something "different". And when you're dealing with those people, then you have to answer the following question: why pay (just guessing) $7000 for a DOHC head when you can just drop in a V8 and have less weight and more hp. For that same $7K a LOT more power. Or for that kind of $$$ you can drop in a Supra DOHC 6 or an RB... It just doesn't make sense.