zbuild

Wooo Hoooo!!! Australia into round 2 this morning cheers - Simon

Gidday Pete, sorry to hear about the pain. . . . Im thinking of pulling out my block in a couple of weekends, can I rely on you for a hand? you'll be better by then wont you? Seriously though, hope everything goes well, us Ozzies are thinking of you! Cheers - Simon

The boys are probably right with the bent stub axle, but if that pans out, I had a similar problem with one of my rears and it turned out to be an out-of-round tyre. Replaced it, and problem fixed. It would be easy to spot, just put the wheel on a balancer and you should be able to see the problem. cheers - Simon

Thanks Dave and Davy, I'm definately going to get the alignment played with, and have to play with my front strut towers, so will soften off the front inserts. Im running about 2 degrees negative on the back at the moment so I'll get that reduced and drop the rear tyre pressure a bit. At the moment my boost is set with a pneumatic valve that adds pressure to the top of the diaphragm. . .I hope to have time to add another valve and switch it with a gas solenoid so that I can run 17psi (its been dyno'd up to that) I normally run 15psi. These cold evenings will help a bit too Id guess. Thanks very much for you help - Much appreciate it and will tell you how I go. cheers - Simon

Hi all, Our club is thinking of going to a strip near us and I was thinking of having a go. Its running on street tyres and presently the alignment is setup more for track work than street or dragging. I wont be changing the tyres, but might get time to get it in to be aligned differently. What I need is some tips on setting up the car and what to do on the night. My car is turbo'd and running an LSD any tips would be appreciated - thanks Zbuild

230rwkw (308hp), 15psi, L28, Motec computer, highway cruising with wife in car 28-30mpg - wife out of car - scarey

When I had mine done, they balanced crank, rods, pistons in one session, then they dowelled the flywheel and balanced it separately then they bolted on the pressure plate and balanced the flywheel/pressureplate assembly together. Because of the dowelling the pressure plate can only go on one way. cheers - Simon

BPR6EIX Iridiums - I run between 15 and 17psi and really like these. They are a bit more pricey here in OZ but I see you guys in the states can get them for around $6.87us each. . . I saw them at http://www.clubplug.net/index.html here they are more like $20aus ($14us) cheers - Simon

Where is the popping noise coming from? is it down around the headers that you have just installed? Did you use a new gasket when you installed them? The popping noise could be exhaust gas leaking past the headers and if its leaking you may also be sucking air in past the gasket into your inlet manifold. If you are sucking air in, you engine will be running way lean, hence the problem. First you need to figure out where that noise is coming from and fix that up. Once that's fixed, if it still wont run, look elsewhere. In this process, did you remove the cap from the distributor or the leads from the cap. . . .if so. . .you may have them on in the wrong order. good luck - Simon

When I built mine I heard near the outlet of the turbo

It is a very common head straightening process. One of the reasons they do it is that if you machine it in its present state (bent) you combustion chamber volumes will vary quite considerably from the edges to the middle. It would be the reverse of cc'ing your head is that de-cc cheers - Simon

Gidday 280zforce if Ive done it right there are 2 pics, the working bits of the breather are a bit hard to see, but at the bottom front corner of the tank are 2 pipes, one goes to the return valve (the second pic) and the other goes to the breather from the block. inside the top half of the tank is a cage holding stainless steel wool to separate out the oil vapour which then runs back down to the sump. cheers - Simon

I run both my block breather and my tappet cover breather to a catch can and at the bottom of the catch can Ive got a drain with a one-way valve back into the sump. At the top of the catch can is a series of filtered holes that let the can breath to the atmosphere. I did this because I heard that if you use a PVC valve it can draw oil vapour back into your engine which can cause detonation in a highly boosted engine. I run 15psi & 17psi with a TO4. cheers - Simon

Gidday again Dennis, what sort of money did it cost to have your diff sorted? mine is seriously lashy and I think my 'limited' slip isn't as limited as it used to be Cheers simon

PS Dennis, talk to Stewart Wilkins about gear boxes too, I know he can fit the likes of skyline boxes behind the L Series engines. I run a Sylvia Turbo box behind mine. . they have wider gears and mine has taken a fair caning without too much complaint cheers again

Just thought Id throw in my 2 bobs worth. . mine is an L28 turbo'd, intercooled running a motec etc. . . a cheaper alternative to a throttle body might be the XF Falcon (Oz) 65mm throttle body, fairly easy to get and cheapish . . . a good man to talk to for a clutch is Jim Berry at Race Clutch in Brisbane, he set up my clutch. . .(Ferrari pressure plate and skyline clutch) I have never felt it slip and have put out 270Kw to the rear on the dyno (361 rwhp). Reliability wise, I run 15psi for 230Kw (308 rwhp) and have had mine together for 4 years now and a lot of the time that its on the road its seeing 15psi I use series 5 normally aspirated Mazda RX7 injectors in mine and the most I have seen has been 85% duty cycle, and that was when we went to 22psi (mistakenly) on the dyno. One thing Ive heard about the LD28 is that you need to have them balanced well and run a good harmonic balancer on them (Stewart Wilkins in Sydney can supply good harmonic balancers) but I guess any serious engine should have both of these things anyway Hope something above is of use Cheers - Zbuild

If you mount your intercooler behind your grill, paint it black and make up a bit of tin to cover over the top it would be less noticable, but some sort of intercooling is going to be really handy to get you up into the big HP. When running into the big HP, a top quality computer is a necessity. I run a Motec and they are up there among the best. . .they do cost, but you get your money's worth. I changed from a cheap one to the motec and picked up 70Kw (93.8hp) at the rear wheels! Dont forget to spend some money on a good quality harmonic balancer. a good one of these will reduce the chances of a broken crank. Mine isn't a sleeper like yours is going to be.. . .its more of the show variety, but it would be good to have one that looked fairly average (read crappy) on the outside and after you'd blown some poor unsuspecting vette driver into the weeds you could lift the bonnet and watch his face being illuminated by the glowing engine and engine bay : ) Cheers - Zbuild

If it wont go over 3k on the highway it could be 2 things, fuel or timing, but you said it also wouldn't go over 3k at a standstill, on the side of the road. . this would point directly at your timing, as the fuel needs at standstill would be far less than on the highway. Id be looking at your distributor. . . . Cheers - Zbuild

Hi there Garret76T! I had a very similar thing happen to me when I was getting my Z going 4 years ago. I had a piece of s#*t computer (an Injec) running on my Z and Id be driving along, sometimes full song, sometimes much less, and it would backfire and then die. Sometimes simply by turning the key to full off and then back on it would come back to life . . other times I would have to replace one of my ignition modules, and other times all the settings we had put in the computer would be gone! I went thru 7 ignition modules, replaced my alternator (looking for spikes) checked all my earths, sent my computer away to have it upgraded (wasted money) and eventually trashed the computer and put in a Motec computer. Not only did the problem go away but I picked up 70Kw (93hp) at the rear wheels! Unfortunately I never did find out if the problem was "just" the computer or something else as well, but I have always thought it was just the computer. I think the old Injec computer used to loose top dead centre and this is why Id get the backfire and also why sometimes when I turned it off and back on it would pick up and go like nothing had happened. . . . how do you pick up top dead centre? thru the distributor or have you got sensors and a chopper wheel on your harmonic balancer? If the wiring in this area is a bid dodgy you computer might be losing top dead? just a thought. Cheers - Zbuild

PHEEEEWWWW! for a moment there I thought I was going to have to pull my L as in Left hand drive 28 out of my Z and try and find an R as in right hand drive 28 to put back in. . . I live in Australia (right-hand-drive) R28iie_mt Right-hand drive; 2.8 litres; injected; intercooled; electronic (Motec) & Turbo'd

Yes. . you can use a sandwich plate like the one above between your block and your oil filter.. hoses run from this sandwich block to your oil cooler. These blocks are just used as a take-off point for oil, you can then do what you want with the oil. Hope this clears up the misunderstanding - cheers zbuild

The one in my pic above is the same. . . you dont necessarily need he mount that fits to the block, there's a threaded tube in the middle that either screws into the mount, or if you dont have the mount, directly to the block. I run (external to this setup) an oil thermostat, but You can get. . and I am going to get one shortly, the same sandwiched block with an inbuilt thermostat. One of my oil hoses blew off my external thermostat and drained my 7 litre sump in seconds, luckily I shut my engine down before any damage occurred, but Ive learned my lesson. . .no more barbed fittings and hose clamps, Im going to get screw in fittings on stainless lines. cheers zbuild

Here ya go, I took a better pic when I got home. .. http://www.240z.id.au/images/car/other/filtermount.jpg Mine has an oil takeoff adaptor mounted on top. . .the brass fittings take the oil to an oil thermostat and then on to an RX7 oil cooler. Cheers - Zbuild

Im running injection on mine, but I drilled and tapped out the drain plug hole in the bottom of the tank and fitted a 90 degree half inch brass fitting and take the fuel from there to a low pressure (10 micron) filter, then to the Bosch injection pump then to the high pressure filter then to the engine the lines from the bottom of the tank to the low pressure filter and then to the inlet of the injection pump are all half inch from the outlet of the injection pump they are smaller. . . cheers - Zbuild

I have heard that any oil into your inlet manifold/engine if running a turbo on your engine is a bad thing. ..can lead to pre-ignition. . .especially if you are running higher boost (10+ psi.) When I set mine up I routed my breather hoses (both tappet cover and block) to a catch can that collects the wayward oil vapour and re-routes it back to the sump. I would be concerned if my inlet hoses were getting a fine film of oil over them. . . I'd be looking at the turbo seals. Just a thought Cheers - Zbuild