blueovalz

'85 I believe.

I'm using 00 welding cable for the long run up to the starter solenoid. Then I used 6 awg for the ground being it was only a few inches long going to the battery box frame which was a metal encloser welded to the chassis.

I'm in awe. My '72 was gutted, and I mean GUTTED. I took every single bracket, brace, screw, and tab that was not needed off the car, with an entire fiberglass body (that was not much lighter than the steel it replaced), race wheels and tires (these were LIGHT), light racing seats, no dash, no carpet, the fiberglass doors did save 75lbs, and it still weighed 2100.

Sad! As intelligent as we are as a species, it still amazes me how we still have the capacity treat each other, and animals so poorly. SPCA will find a more humane enviroment for that dog. Good luck.

I do like Dan does too. Always loose at full droop, but once the car is dropped down onto the springs, they settle into the perches on top fine. Once in a while you'll hear them seat the first time you turn the wheel up front. With a light car and even moderate springs, the springs will not compress very much (mine with 200lb springs only compress 1.875"). Obviously the suspension geometry will move much more than this, so even with the adjustable perches you will still have this problem. The only thing that I can think of that would fix this is a dual rate spring that is long. This way it will keep the spring seated at full droop at a lower rate, but once the car reaches its static ride height, the heavier rate then dominates the charateristics of the handling. I would try to find one that has the largest spread between the rates (or as is commonly done, stack two springs of different rates on top of each other with again, the coil over set-up you were trying to avoid) to allow for more length on the spring.

Just goes to show that 35 year old technology still works well. These old Shelby "blow through" carb systems are still seen from time to time on Ebay for less than a $1000.

I ran a 302 for many years, and recently went back to a 289. Formerly, I used the old Ford "LeMans" camshaft which had a great broad torque curve (never did find a cam I liked better until only very recently with my solid roller), which made it a great road cam. What I looked for, and ultimately have been very satisfied with was matching torque with the chassis limitations. With the properly set up SBF (289 or 302, of which I like the 289 better), you can stretch the torque out into a wide range that will allow a "proper" acceleration without excessive tire spin all the way up to 7500 RPM. Only a lightweight car can allow this, and the Z fits nicely into this window of light weight, and strong drivetrain. Brute force is great, but I enjoy the finesse of the smaller stroke motors.

Well.....where's the new pic "as is"?

Very nice.

I guess it's when you come back to your place after a night of dancing at Bobbie Sox and she says "Oh my G".........oops, wrong response.

Just joking. I assume you are quoting these numbers at the rear wheels. It sounds low, so until someone more knowledgable chimes in here, I'd say the easiest thing to "miss" that would have a large impact on these numbers is ignition timing. Other than that, you may want to make sure that the lash is correct.

Heck, that's pretty good HP for a Focus !!

This may help. My oil relocation kit O-ring (it was from Trans-adapt) was so compressed that it no longer provided a good seal (spin on adapter would bottom out on the block without crushing the shrunken O-ring). I found that the oil filter O-ring taken out of the groove of an oil filter worked very well, and tightened the whole system up nicely. I can't remember the oil filter number but it was one for a 240SX or a Pathfinder filter. I happened to be the exact same diameter and almost perfect width and thickness.

I quess that quote did not work out as planned. Sorry.

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I know that either is too dang wide to fool with in my Z. I think with exhaust headers, it is nearly 10" wider than my 289 is.

But to add to this, the 4.6 has a RL/Stroke ratio around 2.1 (or maybe more). I can see where this would be great for a rev'r motor, but it seems to beg for some stroke. I don't know, but I'll bet the external dimensions for the 5.4 will be the same as the 4.6, and the weight will probably be comparable too.

That seems to ring a bell to me too (about 10% bigger). With the 15/16" master cylinder, the bore is an increase of about 14% over the stock Z master cylinder, and my 280ZX front caliper piston size vs the Z front caliper piston size was about an 11% increase.

A 1" bore will provide about 30% greater piston area than the OEM bore (7/8"). It will definitely firm up the pedal feel, but you will need a pretty strong leg to go along with that. I'd like to see or hear the results of going to that large a bore. Has anyone actually measured the piston area (combined) of the 4 piston Toyota brake calipers vs the piston area of the 2 piston Datsun brake calipers.

Jim, have you looked at the 300ZX rotor/280ZX caliper front brake option? This is again a JY cheapie that uses the vented rotor and larger caliper (floater). I seems to be a fairly popular swap too.

Here is a sorry, but discernable picture of what the tail light panel will look like on blueovalz if/when it's completed.

What happens when you try to start it, or did you set it up after all this happened?

Well, in my case the air (or steam pocket or whatever it is called) was not allowing the water to flow throughout the cooling system. Looking into an filler that I installed between the radiator and the block, it was obvious no flow was taking place by watching the fluid in the filler neck. At first I thought I had accidentally installed a reverse flow water pump on the engine and it was not pushing the fluid through the block. But after I opened the other cap which was higher in elevation, the hot air escaped, the engine actually did make a burping sound, and that was it. I closed the cap that burped the motor (many newer engines actually have a small threaded plug at a high point in the cooling system that is removed just for this purpose if you ever flush your system), started the engine up, and immediately I could see the fluid flowing quite rapidly through the tube from the radiator back to the block, and it's never overheated since.

Ditto DavyZ. My Z overheated every time I cranked it up (so much so the engine had to be shut down). Once I "burped" it, or got the air pocket out, it runs steady at 180.

I don't have any numbers in front of me, but 350hp on a stroke of less than 3" is going to require some RPM, which is why I love this motor. The good thing about a lumpy cam in a small lightweight car (like our Zs) is that drivability is usually not a problem, even with an aluminum flywheel. I'm not an expert here, but will give some suggestions which I found works well on the 289. An old Torker intake (not the TorkerII) is a real good intake, and will provide a broad range (considering it is a single plane intake) all the way up to 7k. The F4B is also an excellent dual plane intake too. I would stick with a carb in the 650 range, but I very successfully us an old 780vs (3310) that works very well. I'm running a cam that has 250 degrees duration at .050 with net lift of .544" on 112 separation. It is a mild (by solid roller standards) solid roller cam. With this cam, 10.3 compression ratio, Victor Jr, 780cfm, 1.75" medium length tube headers, and Motorsport J302 heads (BTW, there are some on EBay for sale). I've been told by my cam grinder that he did not feel he was overstating this combo at being around 377hp.