TimZ

My N42 head has an internally oiled cam. It probably depends on what year it was manufactured.

Correct - I just ordered the other five.

Its just the one motor That's pretty much as far towards the center that I can rotate in order to stay out of the crank throws, so about all I can do is angle the spray out a bit. Currently it's aimed almost identically to your second pic. I'm considering aiming it such that it sprays just past the pin at TDC, so that I can get oil to the other side of the piston as well, i.e., it would spray the near side at BDC and the far side at TDC. After looking at it in this light I think that the current orientation (rotation-wise) is probably better than pointing more toward the center, where the rod would be in the way of getting oil to the far side. Does that make sense?

Long weekend - had a bit more progress... Looks like this is going to clear on all 6 cylinders - I checked both the crank throws and the piston. Also the location shown intersects the main oil galley nicely and leaves plenty of material for tapping threads, even after sinking the flat a bit deeper to allow the nozzle to hug the block a more closely. I think I'm going to want to tweak the aim of the nozzle a bit to get better distribution of oil across the piston - anybody have any pics of how these are aimed in OEM installations?

Looks like you will have to tap threads at least 10mm deep. Sorry I didn't get a pic next to a ruler, but the article that you linked to did have one.

I decided to go to the local BMW dealer and bought one of the part number 11 11 1 739 907 squirters to evaluate. It was $17 - a bit more than what was shown in the article, but still not that bad. There isn't much room in there if you want to find a spot that's near the main oil galley and out of the crank/rod throws, so I wanted the smallest one possible. I rigged up a test jig out of some aluminum block that I had laying around - the banjo bolt's thread is 8mm s 1.0 thread pitch, so it's not hard to find a suitable tap. The banjo bolt does have a check valve embedded in it, and I wanted to test it to find it's cracking pressure. After making sure I had the thread sealed properly, I found that the valve starts to open at around 25-30psi, and is full open at ~35psi. I think that this should be plenty to prevent starvation at low rpm. Also, the main galley looks to run the length of the block and is just to the passenger side (in the US anyway) of the cylinder bores, so I don't think you'll have to angle drill to intercept it - I think you were looking at the galley that feeds the oil filter input.

This is a common misconception. E85 has 72% of the energy of gas per unit volume. This is why you generally get lower fuel mileage. However the stoichometric mixture for E85 is more like 9.7:1 vs ~14.7 for gas. This means for a correct mixture on E85 you burn ~50% more fuel. If you do the math, this suggests that you should see ~8% more power on E85. Moreover, the max power rich mix for E85 is around 7:1 vs 12 for gas, which suggests even more power potential. Also, E85 is stable at much leaner mixtures (compared to stoich) than gas, and it tends to yield better mid-range torque, so you can mitigate some of the mileage issues on cruise. Properly tuned, E85 usually gets 20-25% lower mileage than gas.

Here ya go... http://iskycams.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=409&cPath=18

Yes, there are a few of us on this forum that have done the conversion here are a couple of links that should help: http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/97907-e85-conversion/page__p__919283__hl__e85__fromsearch__1#entry919283 I ended up needing more fuel delivery capability from the tank so here are some updates that I did to it: http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/103460-another-take-on-modifying-the-stock-tank/page__p__967910__hl__e85__fromsearch__1#entry967910 If you search on E85 you should find some additional posts. Good luck!

If I'm reading the OP's original question correctly, it's worth pointing out that lightening the crank by gun drilling it will have virtually no effect on its rotational inertia.

Yes, apparently I'm dumb. Nobody in this thread has said anything bad about ceramic coatings. I'm already using ceramic coatings on my forged pistons, combustion chambers, valves, exhaust ports, manifolds, turbine housing and downipe. I _think_ I understand how they work and why I wanted them (that was sarcasm). All that said, I've been interested in the oil squirter idea for some time but had not pursued it, due the the concerns listed above. It's not about thermal efficiency or power gains, its about gaining durability by moving heat out of the piston and stabilizing its temperature, forged or not. Is it belts-and-suspenders? Yep. It's still an interesting concept and I'd appreciate it if you would stop trying to squelch any discussion on the topic. The original question was about feasibility and that's why many of us are interested in this thread. We are all aware of ceramics . Really. We are. Seriously.

I'm not that worried about oil flow once the engine is above a few thousand revs - at that point there should be plenty of pump capacity. I'm more worried about what happens when the engine is at low rpm and the pump output is low. At this point the oil required for the squirters would be a more significant portion of the total capacity. Does anybody know whether the squirters have some sort of check ball arrangement that restricts their flow below some preset pressure, or are they just literally a tube tapped into the oil gallery that flows all the time?

Yep - for those of you that didn't check out the link the TheSwede provided, here's a pic, linked from that article: I'm pretty sure that this was what the original post was asking about. I looked into this briefly several years ago and was discouraged by the fact that it didn't appear that anybody else had done it on this engine, and I was worried about diverting oil from the mains, as others have mentioned. Now you've got me thinking about looking into it again . I already use ceramic coatings, but if this could be done successfully it could be a great help for overall durability.

As I recall, the stock n/a pump has an internal pressure relief valve that is set to ~55psi, which could be a problem depending on the base fuel pressure you want to run and the intended boost pressure. For instance if you want to run a 3 bar base pressure (43.5 psi), then the max boost you could safely run would be 55 minus 43.5, or 11.5 psi.

I'm admittedly not an SR20 expert, but is there something special about the oil return in the block? In general the return just needs to be above the oil level in the pan, so if the Greddy pan meets this criteria it should work. Am I missing something?

Not trying to be a ****, but what do you think? Does that look normal to you? The two parts are the lash pad and one of the two valve stem locks for that valve - the other one is still in the spring retainer where it belongs, precariously holding the retainer on the valve and keeping the spring in place. This generally only happens if the retainer loses tension on the end of the valve for some reason. If I had to guess, I'd say that the valve got stuck open for some reason (valve bent, problem with the guide, valve seat fell out, or similar) which allowed the rocker to come off. Next, from the apparent witness marks on the retainer, I'd guess that the rocker came to rest on the retainer itself and the next time or two when the cam lobe came around it pushed the retainer down and popped the lash pad out and dislodged one of the locks. Sorry to say, but unless you find a smoking gun that says otherwise you're going to have to pull the head to see why this happened and remedy it. If you just put it back together it will almost certainly happen again, probably with worse consequences.

Interesting article... http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120320/OEM/120329999/1198

I had the same problem -- my drag radials weren't taking kindly to the camber that my non-adjustable LCAs were giving, so I went to something adjustable. I used the MM adjustable LCAs. I had to shorten the adjusters in order to decrease the camber, but I was able to take about an inch out from each side. I am using coilovers with shorter springs to put the lower perch above the tire, so I've got things tucked in pretty much as far as they can possibly go. I'm also using Z32tt CV shafts and was able to achieve full suspension travel without binding them. This allowed mounting MT ET street radials in 305/35-18 on a 10.5" rim, with what used to be called the MSA "Street" flares. If you are planning on going that far inboard, I'd highly recommend pulling the springs and running the suspension through its full travel - I ended up having to clearance the inner fenderwell in order for it to clear at full bump.

FWIW, It's not "strapped" to anything - it uses an aluminum bracket that bolts to two threaded mounting holes on the top of the valve cover, which makes for easy removal and replacement.

I agree this is an impressive engine - I had one in a Taurus SHO and loved it! I'm worried that the bellhousing would be the least of your issues in using it in a swap though - have you seen this motor being used on other projects? If so, I'd be interested to see what they did. Adapting the returnless fuel system and direct injection hardware would be a pretty technical chore, let alone configuring a CAN bus to supply all the info that the ECU needs... Not saying don't do it, but be aware of what you're getting into.

This is probably more than you wanted to spend, but FWIW, BHJ has them on clearance: http://www.bhjproducts.com/bhj_content/clearance/

I wish I had seen this thread when it was fresh. I was going to recommend wiring the LEDs in series as much as possible as opposed to everything in parallel with a crapload of resistors. Series is much more efficient for power/current consumption and should be simpler to construct, too. You are limited as to how many you can put in series by the individual voltage drop of the LEDs you use, so you'll probably end up doing a few series strings in parallel. I found this really cool wizard that takes your requirements of supply voltage, number of LEDs, LED voltage drop and current and outputs an actual schematic diagram, complete with series string size and resistor sizing - very cool: http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz Probably too late to help Mull, but in case anybody else is looking at doing the same...

First of all, that's a really good looking Z - nice job! I'll leave the spring rate/sway bar recommendations to the guys who are racing regularly, but I do have a couple of other pieces of advice... Most importantly, before you go all out making this into a racer, you should decide where you really want to end up with this car: A: still enjoyable on the street, but respectable at an autocross B: Competitive in EM, all else be damned (last I checked it was kind of hard for a streetable car with, say, an interior, to be competetive in EM) You didn't really say in your post which direction you were leaning towards, but just looking at the car in the pic and reading between the lines, it sounds like maybe you would still like to drive the car on the street. If that's the case, then I'd caution against going too extreme with spring/bar rates - I started down that path some time ago, and found that I was really not enjoying driving the car around any more. I've since backed off and find the car much more enjoyable overall (I guess maybe I'm just getting old). Also, what's the condition of your local roads? If they are pretty smooth, the you can most likely live with some higher rates. If not, then the lower rates will make the car more controllable in the real world. I'm sure others will mention this, but if you do plan on going a lot stiffer then you will want to stiffen the unibody accordingly. Of course you'll also want to pay attention to what's legal in your class, etc. Finally, when you mentioned that you've noticed the rear end breaking loose at higher speeds, was this on trailing/constant throttle, or was it power-induced? These aren't necessarily caused by the same things.

For a zx turbo engine making 300-400hp, the stock 280Z tank should be fine. My application requires significantly more than that - my fuel pump flows 230 gallons/hr, so it needs to be able to draw that amount from the tank without causing a vacuum in the feed line and cavitating.

Sure - the quick and dirty way to get the fuel consumption rate at any given point in a datalog would be to divide the injector duty cycle by 100%, then multiply by your injector's flow rate and then by the number of injectors. If you want to know how much fuel that equates to over a period of time you would multiply that number by the time interval in question (the more accurate method would be to go sample by sample and add up the results). This functionality is built into the latest release of the toolkit, btw...