Gollum

umm... yea, you'd be lucky to fit any rim this wide without any flare. My shots prove the offset is about as pefect as it gets though. No spaces needed to keep from rubbing, and as long as you only used about 2 inches of suspention travel I guess you could get away without using a flare...

How big are your flares? Don't forget that my car is at stock height, making it look like it fits better than it does. They stuck out at least a good visible inch from the fender lip. Me and chris were thinking the smaller/normal ZG flares would be perfect for fitment.

i'm not sure you want to waste your time "upgrading" to a junkyard turbo, even if it's a T3/T4. A brand new name brand ball bearing T3 can out flow and out spool most OEM turbos from the 70's-90's. You're much better of just using the stock T3 and then upgrading to a much better, and newer unit once you run out of usable air with the stock at around 15psi.

The gearing doesn't matter, you just need to know what it is in order for the RPM to be accurate. Think about it, rear diff affects gearing ratio. Tire size affects gearing ratio, why would the transmission need to be in a 1:1 ratio? It just makes the calculation easier, that's about it.

Yea, that's not a bad price at all. If it were an 04' aluminium block mod motor I'd buy that in a heart beat. No clue what I'd do with it. One thing makes me curious though.... You said it was a DOHC motor... According to wiki (which could very well be wrong, it was the SOHC that came in the E series from 97to now. I wonder if you're mistaken or if the motor had been swapped. If so.... from what?

Well they're not mine obviously, but still loads of fun. http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=123576&page=21 Check chris's post with pics, thats the same 280Z in my sig.

Nice. Yesterday was an eventful day. Get up, go play guitar for an hour for a bunch of people. Have lunch out with the family. Hang curtains for the girl friend, head to parents to see my sister I don't spend enough time with, then top the day off with fitting a set of prototype rims on my car... Couldn't be better. I'm heading to walmart and then safeway after work to raid their easter clearence stuff. Satisfy the sweet tooth.

Meh, I like the new amp, but I'm not sure I like it's price. It sounds more like the old EVH tone than the 5150 amps did, but the origonal first line 5150 were such amazing amps in their own right. The second series were good, but lost some of their edge. The new 6505 sounds increadible, but it's still not the same. It's like it's got more muscle than any of the others, but less balls. The fender amps sound like a EVH amp should. It sounds like a marshall at 11, but a bit better. Pretty damn good preamp design if you ask me. Still not as mean sounding as the origonal 5150 though, which is an amp I love. Though.... sadly I couldn't own any of these amps unless I was going to have 3+ 100 watt heads in my arsinal. I'm not EVH, I don't want his tone, I'm not looking for his tone. My hands are my hands, and I refuse to go on the wild goose chase that many players seem to enjoy. I want to carve my own tone into history, not someone elses. Just my thought on that. But that being said, I love EVH tone and think it's a worthwhile pursuit for many. A man to be respected for sure. Love your work btw. I think you're being more anal about the perfect than most ever are. That's a good thing, just learn how to love it and the process as well, otherwise you might never be happy with it.

Just to clarify, air and fuel restrictions won't CREATE high torque numbers, they're simply restriction HP numbers, because they're not making a serious affect until you reach high RPM, where HP numbers are created. You'll never make 400hp at 2,000 rpm unless you've got MASSIVE unheard of cubic inches. (funny car anyone?) but you CAN make 400 torque at 2,000rpm relatively easy. Big phils numbers showing higher torque than HP shows that he's hitting some form of limitation in the higher RPM register. With big V8 engines that make more torque than HP it's the same reason usually, the difference is that many times in their cases they don't want to rev to 6500 rpm to get their power. They want off the line power, which means sacrificing top end numbers. I seriously doubt an air filter would make that big of a difference, but who knows. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. I'd suspect it having to do with the head setup, and possibly the manifolds as well. To Phil - You changed your cam right? Might want to double check timing and such. You have a larger throttle body as well, dumb question but how well is the intake manifold matched? I'd suggest finding other dynos of people with the same cam and see what their HP levels were compared to their torque numbers, without porting like your head. If there's no air restrictions, then start looking at the fuel system. How's your air/fuel ratio on the dyno? If you weren't going lean then you should be fine, but I honestly have ZERO experience with meth, so someone like garrett would be a better judge of your results. If both show no serious restrictions, you might have to get used to the fact that without porting the head you'll have to live with needing more boost than you're currently running to reach your 400whp mark.

I thought the exhaust change went with the years? Passanger side 79-81 Driver side 82-83. Maybe 81' was passanger side, I'm not sure.

Agreed, which is why I first mentioned a flat piece as a cover. But my exhaust would never clear, not by a long shot. Though it is pretty cheaply done by the looks of it, so maybe a good custom job would get it tucked up there nice.

Well your termonology concerns me. "Manual instead of a turbo" Ok, there's manual turbo shafts, and manual NA shafts, just so we're straight. Now that I've said that, if you go with the T5 you'll NEED a turbo shaft, and it has to be manual because the auto shaft won't be the right length. I've got the 2+2 manual turbo driveshaft, and it's proved no use to me. Obviously I'm willing to part with it, so you're in luck. To those in the future, I'd highly recommend swapping JUST THE MOTOR, and then doing the T5 swap once you have everything needed and you're 100% sure it'll all fit. Otherwise you'll be up a creek wondering what part you need to make it all work. That's the lesson I learned the hard way.

Yea, it'll be the one I'm bringing to the meet.

Chris fitted the fronts on my car with stock suspension. The news: No clearence problems ANYWHERE Full lock to lock I had no tire scrub anywhere. Not the frame rails, not the TC rod. Not with full droop, not under load. Chris got lots of pics but had to run, he had a family easter dinner to get to. Plenty of room on the spring pearch area as well. But it's not necessarly wasted space either. Fitment looked so good that if I was willing to buy a set of VG's to gain the outside clearence I'd be happy to buy a set, but unfortunately money is too tight right now for me to do that. I thought the "deepness" of them looked fine to me. To me there's a too deep, to the point that you can't see the rim all that well, and these had a nice lip to them, while still displaying a good rim. Looked good in person to me. Looked good on the car too. Chris got quite a few pics, and said he'd be posting them later, tonight I believe.

Such a show off john BTW, I was really let down when I turned on the good ol' Gran Turismo 4 and took my 240Z to see if I could beat your time at sears point. It was too easy, showing how poorly inaccurate the game must be. Unless you think that without class rulse you could gain another 5+ seconds with a NA L series still.

Hahaha, true enough. I mean a real production supercar. And I understand the GTR does quality, but we all agree the GTR does not look and act the part. That's kinda it's nitche. It's a car that GOES like the fastest porsches, but is extremely roomy, comphy, well mannered, and easier to drive. Plus it'll fit two really really small people in back... I mean supercar like you know... Mclaren, saleen S7, konignisehsegeghee, noble, etc. If nissan added a good deal of height adjustment to thier current platform of the GTR, gave it more power, lighter body they could be well on their way to having what I'm talking about. (btw, the height adjustment comment was regarding the fact that most supercars sit ungoldy low to the ground and need automated height adjustment to be usable on the street) Oh yea, I wanted to post this, just because it scares me:

Frame rails and floors deifinately need work. But the battery tray looks pretty bad, and judging from the rest of the car I'm betting he'll find rust in the rocker panels, hatch area, cowl area, and little pockets in other areas as well. Just seeing how bad those frame rails have progressed tells me that there's more where it came from, and it's had plenty of time to develop. Watch out guys, she's got anorexia.

Don't forget chris - the ring has several higher speed areas that will kill the GTR's lead on comparable cars. It's like how an evo can be faster than a lamborghini murcielago... as long as there's enough turns... I'm not sure nissan needs much of a nismo edition, and if they do I don't think it should be very insane. This is the time for nissan to possible open the flood gates and design a real super car... and show those 300k+ supercars how it's done. But in reality that's just the 10 year old school boy in me. I'd never hope to even afford a car like that, I just really like seeing engineers raise the bar. EDIT: After reading other boards, I'm laughing, but almost angry at the ignorance some people have. Many people are blaming the difference on nissan underrating the power, while people on the same board sit there and talk about how the straight line speed comparison seems right on for the claimed power to weight. I think they're probably underrated a little, but it's probably for consistancy concerns. I've never seen a force induced 300+ factory HP engine that puts out consistant results from car to car. Just break in differences can make a 5hp margin. There's no way nissan is gonna rate the car at 500hp and have people dyno at 425 asking for money because the car doesn't "reach claimed HP". Ford had this problem with the first 4.6L cobra, and has underrated their cobras since (though the first 93 was underrated as well but for different reasons). I really want to see what tuners can do with the car though. I'm just hoping that everytime we see a well moded GTR shop car we don't see them degrading the suspension with some off the shelf stuff they're trying to sell.

/raises hand Pick me! pick me! I know! The S130 has 8 driveshafts. 4 for 2 seater, 4 for 2+2. 2 of each are manual and the other 2 are auto. Of each pair there's one for turbo, one for NA. So if your 83' is a 2 seater, then you'll need the shaft from a 2+2 manual non turbo. AS FAR AS I KNOW (I could be completely wrong here) the rear end of all the shafts are the same, regardless if it's a R180 or R200. You should be able to check pretty easily. Pull both shafts and compare the diff end.

HOHC? Does H stand for Half? Just out of curiousity, how much could you have gotten the motor for? In all seriousness, the motor will fit, and the all aluminium swap does look interesting to me.

Progress is looking good! Which alternator are you running? I believe the one out of the 280ZX NA was 60 amps, and the turbo was 70 amps. The NA 280ZX motors are everywhere around here if you need a replacement. I could have one on it's way in less than a week if you wanted.

Yea, it looks like a ton of work. And I myself have ZERO experience welding and wouldn't be up to making all those needed patch panels. If you know how, then I guess you know roughly how much work you're looking at. It just all depends, do you want to spend 3 years and 1k+ repairing the chassis, or spend 6 months and $3k finding a perfectly solid 99% rust free car? Hey, if you choose to keep it that's one more Z restored that not everyone could, and that's one more Z out there for the rest of us.

$275?!?!?! I was quoted $350 minimum to have an OEM REPLACEMENT shaft made for my 280ZX. Simply too hard finding a turbo driveshaft. Not that it really matters, since I'm considering pulling the motor.

Wouldn't a simple aluminum panel (can't weigh more than 5 pounds right?) work as a cover for the tunnel? Just need to figure out what on earth to do about the exhaust... The other alternative would be to shape a piece like this: that extends from the back of the tranny to the diff. Doesn't seem like it should add that much weight, and you're adding static weight, not rotating weight.

Around here I never know how many pedestrians I pass in the night. At least once a week I pass a pedestrian who's black, wearing all black, walking down a 4 lane street that has poor lighting. Most of the time I don't see them until it'd be way to late to actually stop if anything happened. As far as cyclists go, I'm usually not too worried about them, as most of the cyclists here stick to the many areas with broad shoulders and bike lanes. This commercial was done in england it seems, where they don't have a ton of room for cyclists, yet they have quite a few people, especially in the london area, that get around via bicyicle. But often people aren't looking out for bikers either. As far as bikers go, I'm always looking out for them as much as I can. Every time I see some comming up between cars in high traffic times I edge over to give them some room, especially if I'm in a vehicle like a truck. At least 90% of the time I seek a biker long before they're close enough to matter, but the times the surprise me and come out of no where it kinda scares me. I'm paranoid about tracking traffic I guess.