RebekahsZ

Take your car to the track and find your best time. Go get 600 pounds of play sand bags (save the receipt) and put it in your car. Run again. Return the sandbags. There's your answer. With an L6, 600 pounds is gonna kick your ask.

Chill-Josey! I've got about 20 pounds of v-bands on this thing. I have a v-band at the muffler and two just forward of the flex sections. I also have two more at the header. There will be a v-band on both sides of the Doug's Headers electric cutouts. The cutouts are marked with a waranty warning against welding on them, but I just took them apart to remove the motor before the welding happens. So much for any warranty. There is a hangar above the diff and a double hanger at the y-pipe to make sure it doesn't slap the tranny crossmember. I'm working on a hangar from each headpipe to the little tabs on the side of the transmission near the bellhousing. I "finish"-ed the driver side tonight; the passenger side needs more tweeking. I think I need one more little pie-cut to get the v-band to the headpipe to get at the right angle. I am disappointed by how much "drip thru" penetration the welds have. I'm gonna try to clean those up as I go when it comes to the cutouts since that is what I'll be using at the track. Honestly, the full exhaust is jus to be legal. Muffler is a 3" Borla XR-1 straight thru oval. Guys, I'm only gonna coat the mild steel header. I'm just coating for corrosion control. I'm not splitting hairs on this thing thinking that my inefficient exhaust system is gonna make me the next national whatever champion. If my right foot gets too hot, I may do the white lightning next winter just on the driver side headpipe. I haven't had carpets in this car for 15 years and as bad as this car leaks-I'm not putting anything on the floors that will hold water and rust the floors out. Thanks for the props JMortensen and johnc, but if you could see all the weld glooped up on the inside of each junction, you'd probably beat me up pretty bad. I'm cleaning up what I can, but I can only reach 10% of it.

I'm listening and learning. Don't sweat it.

Emailed supplier. They said the v-band clamps are rated to 75 inch-lbs. but they are confident that folks torque them more than that. They say you can crush the flange before the clamp breaks but I doubt that.

Adjust based on measurements from ground to bottom of rocker panels. My car has had all four fenders replaced so who is to say it is straight. Also, your top seat configuration could be goofed up. But, it really doesn't matter. Adjust away! That's the beauty of coilovers and they don't have to all be the same.

Oh, I've got SO much money tied up in this already! What would it cost to ship a 10-ft section and have the whole thing coated? I'll grant you, the stainless gets HOT. And you gotta let it sit a bit coming off the tig welder.

The 240z is gonna win, if all else is equal. But nothing else is ever equal for those tests. Build your car light as possible and as powerful as possible, then tell us your results.

Exhaust is done from the y-pipe back. I have head tubes made, but the welding of the main system shortened everything up, so I've got to build about 1/4" of length back into the system somewhere, and perfect some angles. Hoping to get that completed tomorrow night and back to the welder on Friday. That should get my "full" exhaust finished. The tubing for my electric exhaust cutout system is scheduled to arrive Tuesday, then I'll start into that. Pics attached. It has taken a lot of repeated trial fitting, but it has paid off. The system fits tightly in areas of limited clearance to allow the exhaust to remain as tight against the bottom of the car as possible. The y-pipe is just about as low as my oilpan, but no lower. The system hangs about 1" below the floorpans. Removal and installation are a snap!

If you are doing a drag car, look on the forum for the dude doing the 4.3 V6 swap. He somehow put his pedals and master cylinders INSIDE the firewall and ran his headers as dump tubes into his fender wells. That is badass and would solve a lot of the fitment issues with routing exhaust around the tranny. I'm doing my exhaust and it it hard enough to get around the T56.

Be careful slipping that clutch under power. Search for my clutch woes and you will see that slipping has consequences. I now just dump the clutch from a reasonable rpm. Slipping the clutch gets things really hot. If rather replace an axle than a clutch.

Will do. V-bands rock! I just dropped my whole exhaust in a total of 10 minutes and that includes finding the wrenches and loading it into my truck.

Thank you!!

O2 sensors/headers done. Also put a relief dent in the second primary on the driver side-its the only primary that conflicts with my spark plug wires. Have half of the tubes tack welded. Domzs-what are you cutting your sections with? My gaps are much wider than I want. I'm gonna have a fair amount of "drop thru." Doing the best I can, but I can't seem to cut straight worth a darn, and when I grind to fix my bad cutting, I seem to only make alignment worse. Fortunately I have a great welder once the mock up is done. I'm being psycho about the fit to the floorpan/crossmembers. The JCI tranny mount is the limiting factor that is forcing me to let the exhaust hang about an inch below the frame rails. I'm using high-temp silicone grommets to mount the system. These are super sano brackets/grommets. The muffler mounting bolts from Datsun are 8mm, but the grommets I'm using are made for 3/8" bolts. A sleeve made of 3/8" fuel line are perfect for taking slop out of the grommet allowing the use of stock-sized bolts.

Headers are finished, complete with O2 sensors. I wound up putting them directly into the collectors due to the space limitations dictated by my (planned) electric exhaust cutouts. If you look up inside the collectors, the primaries actually join the collectors higher than it appears when looking externally, so hopefully the sensors will "see" the temperature and mixture (or whatever the heck an O2 sensor does) well enough. From drawings in my GTO service manual, it looks like the original location for the first O2 sensor is 4-6" away from the end of the exhaust manifolds. Sending them to Nitro Plate after the rest of the system is mocked up. I've been advised to go with a real ceramic coat rather than an aluminum/ceramic coating, but I must confess: I'm seduced by the shiney finish. Spend the whole day with the retired welder at his shop. Boy, piecing together an exhaust system is much harder than it looks. We spot welded and test fit, cut welds, test fit again, spot welded, etc all day. The spot welds "pull up" unpredictably and a cut that is right the first time, never seems to be right the second time. We started at the muffler, clamped up that v-band nice and tight and got as far forward as the y-pipe connected and mounted. Took the y-pipe back down to adjust the lay of the 2-legs. It is all just in tack-welds and many of the gaps are wider than I would like, but my pro welder is pretty good at jumping some pretty big gaps without globbing things up. I just don't know how much warpage there will be. Turns out the retired welder isn't 70 as I thought-he's 80. He's been keeping up well, but I make a lot of mistakes to be covered up/fixed. Left car in his shop to return tomorrow morning hoping to get the headers attached to the y-pipe.

I'm a torque wrench kind of guy and it has served me well. Anybody know how tight to torque V-bands?

Arizona Z Car sells them.

For new check Nissan Motorsports. I still haven't found anyone with a 3.36 R200. I gave up looking. You going to Bonneville? Get some tall tires.

Thurs (north Alabama DW), fri (lawrenceburg DW), sat (Moulton DW), sun (pickwick DW)(after church of course). And I'm just harassing you about the jerky. DW=Dragway.

I think you just blew a u-joint-they do that. IMHO: There's too many small parts and fasteners in the Wolf Creek kit ($900). Get some Z-31 turbo 4-bolt axles and have the axles shortened and rebuilt by the driveshaft shop. Use JMortensen's measurements from his first group buy for the axle length if you have a 240z with R200. Get companion flanges from Chequered Flag Racing. That "upgrade" will cost you about a$1000 total. Next investment should be for Chequired Flag Racing 39-spline stubs (about $1200 total). Keep launch rpm down around 2500 rpm-below your torque peak.

All you need is slicks and more axles in your spares box. After the autocross trip to you in April or May, you need to plan a drag race weekend with me here in Alabama once school lets out and I'll let you try some sticky tires. My goal is to race 4 different dragstrips in 4 consecutive nights. Start collecting axles now. Thanks for posting the dyno graph-explains why my 60' drops from 1.5 yo 1.6 when I turn the 2-step up from 2500 to 3500. BTW-what type of engineering are you studying? I was just thinking of what an asset you would be to a company like Factory Five Racing. And, where's my darn beef jerky-you good for nothing no-account?

I used a Hurst system so I could put a Hurst sticker on my window. I think all the systems are the same. I did see a neat kit on eBay the other day that incorporated a line lock for the brakes and a line lock for the clutch. It was an attempt to put clutch release on a button. I could see me reaching for the button instead of the clutch pedal in the heat of the moment on my 1-2 and 2-3 shifts! I think I put some pictures on the forum when I did mine, but ill take some for you this afternoon.

As you wish, Sunny, as you wish....

Ok, toting mocked up tubes back and forth to welder is a big fail. Working on a plan to trailer car an hour away on Saturday to have a retired welder do the system with me so we can mock it up and weld it on the car. Got lucky today and one of my patients came into the office wearing his pipe fitter's cap and I sucked up to him. Luckily I did a great job on his eye surgery last year. There's a good chance all the tigging will get done this weekend.

Yeah, drop the whole setup. The fit is really tight. Be prepared to hammer and pry a lot to get it lined up. Second install is easier. Now that I have the RT mount in place, I now leave it up there and just unscrew the two bolts in the diff to remove the diff. But the first time I recommend bolting the mount to the diff and jacking, hammering and prying the diff into place. Lining up the four bolts that connect the mount to the tunnel is the hard part. Dead low hammer and courage are what you need.

Look at pictures of his car and study how high his car was. Yours is pretty low and he did almost no street driving once he did the turbo. Be prepared to raise your car if trying to get a big pipe under the diff. I'm having a terrible time trying to really tuck up a 3" system under this car. Mocks up nice and tight then tubing warp from welding screws up the fit. I'm cutting all the spot welds off tomorrow and trying again!