FricFrac

Fronts are useless - the left speaker is in the middle of the dash, hard to get at and only 4" IIRC. You're way better off to make a pod and mount 5 1/4" or 6 1/2" in the door panels.

I got my first Z car after what seemed and eternity about 16 years ago. It was my pride and joy and I spent a lot of time primping and preening it. I was scared to get too deep into the mechanics of it all since it was my DD but I re-did the interior, etc. When I met my future wife I was pretty taken with her and she was one of the only people to ever drive my '81 280ZX. Once people saw her driving it they knew it must be pretty serious We got married almost 14 years ago and she has been incredibly supportive. I was going to school when my car was stolen and she fought with the insurance company to makes sure I was covered completely. My car was fatally stolen a second time about eight years ago. I've been talking about getting a Z car ever since but knew the smart thing to do was get by and get established and hold off on replacing my car. Well this last May after a months of drooling over the new 370Z I decided to pull the trigger and my wife was behind me 110%. I told her the dealer wasn't going to budge on the price and she said after waiting 20 years for a new Z car who cares about saving $1000 on a new car - just get it already! When the once-in-a-lifetime deal on the 240Z came up four months later she was 110% behind me - I even called her up to talk me out of it and she talked me into instead (and boy am I glad - I'd be kicking myself forever if I had passed that deal up). She only rolled her eyes when I bought the '83 280ZX about two months ago - you know another once-in-a-lifetime deals again.... ;P I'm feeling a little more adventurous now that my Z's are my daily drivers so me and the boys are diving in and learning how they work. I've spent a lot of hours in the garage and she just rolls her eyes from time to time. She keeps telling me how lucky I am - how many wives would put up with three Z cars... and she's right.... I guess I'd better go finish putting in the ice maker in her fridge now

MSA? Are you talking about body kits or about a filler to shave the rear end?

The MSA aluminumized 2 1/2" madrel bent system comes with a DynaMax muffler. I don't have mine installed yet but my old '81 280ZX had a custom bent 2 1/2" exhaust with a DynaMax turbo muffler and it sounded great - looking forward to getting this one installed.

Has anyone used these end links? http://www.thezstore.com/page/TZS/PROD/PSDC12/23-4115

z-cars.com doesn't go anywhere - do you have another link?

I just put 6 1/2" MB Quart in the rear - didn't even need to drill new holes - fits perfectly. Awesome speakers for the price! http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_8908_MB+Quart+DKG+116.html

It's just the front air damn that is new - the side skirts and rear are from their euro kit or something. I've been looking for better pictures of the air dam too but to no avail. I really like it though and I think that's the one I'll be getting for my S130

This looks like the Kaminari "basket handle" or "California areo-wing" as they use to be called. I've been looking for one but from what I've heard Kaminari lost the mold and its not available :/

AWESOME! Oh and wicked colour by the way - it's called Prussian Blue here in Canada.

What size rubber are you running?

Definately similar to the Megajolt..... the search continues Thanks for the input guys.

Thanks - good to know. There is lots kicking around so it figures it wouldn't work

Just curious if you can use welding mat for header wrap?

Nice - now you need a 240Z Are you over on the370Z.com?

Thanks guys - that makes me feel better as it made more sense that it would be the exhaust to me as well. I'll find out for sure when I finish off my manifold and install it and the header on the car.

I searched on the topic but didn't find an answer so I'm cautiously asking - I have an '83 280ZX with an L28E. Apparently the injectors were replaced "recently" but there is a fairly loud ticking sound coming from the engine bay. It goes away after the engine has warmed up which makes me think its the exhaust gasket (there is also a broken exhaust stud closest to the firewall). I've been told that is probably the injectors but it seemed odd to me that it would go away once the car had warmed up. Is it normal for stock injectors to be noticeably louder when cold?

If you are going to go the SU route I've only heard rave reviews about the Z Therapy stuff so you might want to check it out (http://www.ztherapy.com/). I personally haven't used them but when I keep hearing nothing but good things its worth mentioning. I am far from an expert (closer to moron status actually) on the L6 but is a pretty robust engine - I'd think you were running rich rather than valve problems. Getting a set of SU's might be a good idea and keep the Webbers to go back to once you've got a working car as a baseline...

Might want to add this one to the list too - and it`s a Nissan color to boot! Its called `40th Quartz`and it only on the 40th Aniversary edition of the 370Z. Not a big silver fan but this color is pretty cool.

WOW - Awesome! Love the Datsun on the calipers as well

Thanks - I only had three hits when I was searching on powder coating and didn't see your thread there. I was sure I had seen powder coated intakes before but I just wanted to be sure before I went ahead...

No worries. I think the intent of the forum is to help preserve these cars and to support those who want to modify them. I think that a modified Z creates more interest from people outside the community and hopefully will help to preserve these cars by expanding the community. We get a ton of dumb questions here and I understand the frustration but we also should be fostering those who are truely interested in modifying the Z cars. My goal is to learn about how all this works. I'm no mechanic but I am an avid learner and a passionate Z car fanatic. I've got an '09 370Z that is probably close to 300WHP weighing in at 3200 lbs so it would be a lot of modding to get my 280ZX to perform close to that not to mention 26 years of technology improvments. I don't need a screamer. That being said I bought the 280ZX because I want a car I can play around with. My 240Z is a bit of a time capsule in its mods and I would feel bad doing any real mods to it. The plan for the 280ZX is first to change the suspension - it feels like I'm driving on marshmallows. I have a set of Tokico springs/struts on their way. I also have to fix the leak in the exhaust gasket so I've already got a case of "while that's off". I have an extra F54/P90 so I took the manifold off that and I've bead blasted it, cleaned up the flashing, etc. I have a ceramic coated header from MSA (not sure what coating they use) and a 2.5" exhaust. I've replaced the stock air cleaner with a K&N cone. I'm using the stock EFI so doing a cam is not adviseable. I would like to play around with a MS2 setup (I'm an Electronics Eng so that's up my ally) but I have an L28ET which I bought to do a swap probably next year. Once I do the swap then I'll look at adding a MS2 after the conversion is done and up and running. I'm not planing on any other serious mods for the L28E - I'll save that for the L28ET. As for longer warm ups, etc not too worried about that. The manifold is a "spare" so if this ends up being a complete failure I'll just swap the original back in.

I hear what you're saying about the webbing/blower. As far as I know this was to keep the fuel from boiling out of the injectors/vapor lock in the fuel rail. Yes the webbing will give you a larger surface area to disapate the heat when the car is stopped but it also gives you more mass to cool. My concern is that the heat trapped between the two will cause more heat soak than the benefits of the larger surface area for cooling when the engine is stopped. Its all purely conjecture and I suspect the effects either way are not really worth worrying about since we don't seem to have any real data either way. I think a non-radiating heat barrier like the header blanket/stainless mesh would be benificial but again I'm just guessing based on what little I know. I guess with the sensitivity to knocking I'm looking for little ways to keep the charge temp down for my future turbo build. I do agree with you 100% that the Nissan engineers are no slouches when it comes to designing the car. They do also have to come to a middle road based on comfort, efficiency, etc. It the tweeks that give us the performance and we give up comfort, efficency, etc without too much fuss. I guess I'm still don't get it though - is it worth porting for the flow or is the turbulence/anti-reversion more important? Thanks for the response!

I've spent literally hours and hours searching... its funny how people will take the time to post totaly useless info like "use the search you idiot" which is just a much of a waste of space in the forum as asking how to do a turbo swap, etc. If you type in "manifold porting" you get 20 pages of threads. There are literally years and years of info chaotically posted here on the forum and finding anything can sometimes be a major challenge. The wording and search engine make finding stuff on here half art / half science. I've spent well over a hundred hours researching on this forum on various topic and I always post questions as a last resort because of the typical response. There are a lot very intelligent people and I apperciate their knowledge and willingness to share it. I understand that there are countless dumb questions posted and it becomes tiring. HybridZ is a goldmine of info - there is just a lot of slag to go through to get some of that info. I stated that I searched for this info (three times actually) and was unable to find it so how is telling me to search for it in any way helpful? There has to be some sort of balance here where we aren't slagging people who are eager to learn and have put in an effort into finding the info. You obviously are aware that this info is here. I stated I couldn't find it. It seems reasonable to me if you are in any way interested in helping out a simple link to the info would be appropriate. Or am I missing something here?

I have a few questions regarding some modifications I'm doing to my intake plenum. I've got an P79 intake that I've removed the webbing from between the runners. I've found very little info as to weather removing the webbing on this particular plenum is a good idea or not. My thinking is that if I'm running ceramic coated headers and the stock heat shield removing the webbing will help prevent hot air from getting trapped between the heat shield and webbed runners. I'm hoping in turn this will help reduce the intake temperature. My first question is would it be a good idea to use a header blanket material on the top/bottom of the heat shield to further reduce heat radiating into the intake plenum or am I just asking to have the heat shield begin rusting? Alternatively what about a heat shield made of stainless mesh and a piece of header blanket sandwiched in between? Secondly is wrapping a ceramic coated header a bad idea? The limited info I could find on that would seem to indicate its a bad idea as the ceramic coating would likely get too hot and begin to fail but the info is vauge.... I am also porting the intake for a 60mm TB (I basically got it for free and I know the gains are minimal but I'll be doing the same for my turbo build and appreciate the exercise). My question is (after reading for hours on manifolds, etc) is it a good idea to port match the runner to the head? I can get down into the runner about three inches but beyond that around the bends there is little I can do. That being said the runner will cone out as it approaches the port of the runner. Will this cause a problem from it being narrow to wide in that the air velocity will be reduced going into the head or is this negligible. There seems to be a significant difference in the size of the head ports compared to the size of the runner ports. Is this normal? The stock setup would have a significant lip which would cause a fair amount of swirling going over the sharp lip of the intake runner. Is this benificial for air/fuel mixture or detrimental because the flow is restricted or negligible again? At the very least I'll be taking the flashing off the inside of the runners. Oh and lastly is it OK to powder coat the intake plenum? I'm assuming the heat from the head transfered to the intake isn't enough to cause problems with the powder coating....