Gollum

Hahaha, i was worried about something like that when the lady told me that the windshield was replaced. Most of those budget glass guys don't do a very good job...

I was actually really close to buying that car. The fact that it's a slick top really appealed to me, but 81's are auto and I'm not really up for a manual conversion with my current amount of time I have to work on cars. It's a good deal though, no doubt. Hope it serves you well!

Ya, I'm with frank on this. But I'll still give my input. The stock fan has a clutch, and takes VERY VERY Little HP from the engine. You'll feel a responce difference, but actual measured HP in the main power band would be insignifcant. Though since you're running just fine until you switch the AC on, I'd recommend pulling off the AC fan and wiring in a better, higher flowing fan. You should be able to use the same wiring, just check the voltage that fan is getting when on. If it's direct battery current than almost all of the aftermarket fans will work, and you won't need to spring for a model with a thermostate/control switch. Just make sure it's setup to push, and wire it in. The extra flow actually make driving with AC on in traffic better than with the AC off, though that's a crapshoot. Nothing to bet on.

I missed it, though by the sound of it I didn't miss much... I'm a fan of mustangs, but too much product placement just gets annoying. Even transformers, though very well done, was a bit much in some ways. I agree with some here that the origonal was pretty cheesy, and most fans were probably car guys that watched it for the car. In this respect the new one might have hope. We'll have to see how the show settles after a few episodes. The origonal wasn't really "my era" so the cheesyness might not have been as bad when you were watching then new.

Happy birthday larry!

Well, i'm 90% sure I'll be heading to socal this weekend to pick up a 240Z. I was thinking about driving it back, but the owners says it's running a bit rich and the carbs could use a tune. This also isn't his daily driver, so who knows what problems might arise. Cresco has dolly rentals for $42 a day, and $84 won't be that far off from what I'd be paying just in gas for the car to drive back, so it's pretty cheap insurance on getting it back ok. But I started thinking... Maybe someone on HZ would kinda enough to loan/rent a dolly or trailer to me. Wouldn't hurt to ask. My location is richmond, ca. I'd be willing to go pretty much anywhere in the bay area to pick up the dolly/trailer within reason. San Jose is stretching it, but I guess I'd be willing.

Is the ECU from the same year? I know the turbo engines changed ECU tunes every year, and there were other minor changes. Maybe you put an ECU in that uses some different spec sensors? The AFM itself shouldn't be a problem, but it does have an air temp sensor inside of it that can cause some issues if you're not getting signal from it. Overall the AFM is a very mechanical unit that's pretty straight forward. Might be worthwhile to pull it out and take the cover off and check to see if the contact points are overly worn. Does it perform as variable as the idle? Or does it seem to always feel the same under accel no matter what?

Sorry, I havn't been following the blue ray movement much in the last 6 months, but when they first hit the market they were NOT compatible with DVDs or CDs. I found this strange since the PC blue ray drives were compatible with DVDs and CDs. Well I'm glad to be corrected. It'll be nice to be able to replace a unit in the future, instead of adding another.

I don't mean to be a jerk or anything, I'm just kinda anal about this; but shelby has never made a "cobra" mustang until the new 2007 model. The origonal GT500 cars were not "cobras" and the only "cobra" was the Shelby AC Cobra, which is not a mustang. SVT started the mustang cobra in 93' and used the name cobra for their mustangs throught their entire history. The new GT500 IS BUILT by SVT and has thier name all over it, hence why it's called a "shelby cobra". All shelby did was put his name on it. Again, I don't mean to be an a$$ or anything, I just wasn't sure what to expect before clicking the vid, and wanted to clear it up. It's a 2000 Cobra R, which stock produces a conservative 385HP with a 5.4 liter iron block from the F150, and new 4 valve heads that would later be used in the Ford GT supercar. That's pretty funny, because in the origonal "Gone in 60 seconds" they weren't able to obtain permits from the city, so they just did all the stunts without permits and raced out of places before cops showed up. To my knowledge none of them were arrested after the film's debut.

Yea, amazingly wikipedia has been updated already. HD-DVD is dead. It's sad that the new blue ray players won't play CD's or DVDs, but were VCR or Betamax compatible with movie reels? Where Laser disks or DVDs compatible with VCRs or Betamaxs? Yes it's sad we'll all have to change over sooner or later, but it's a very good format that will hopefully enjoy a long life that will last until virtually everything ever watched is streamed.

I'd bet money that you CAN tune the F20C. BTW, piggyback systems work in a variety of ways, and might just be acting as a programmable EPROM, which means you're pretty much just tuning the OEM ECU to your own specs. Almost all ECU's are tunable, it's just a matter of what it takes. If it requires burning new chips for every tune, then that's what you do.

First off, the K24 has more displacement, and secondly, many honda guys say the K series is the best 4 cylinder honda has ever made. It's head flows extremely well. If you're gonna get 250hp to the wheels in a F20C you're going to need to port the head, get new cams, retune the ECU, supporting intake, exhaust and fuel mods as well. You'll end up spending at least what you spent on the motor, probably more. Now you're looking at having probably 7k+ into the motor, and you could have just gotten a VQ35 which weighs about the same, sits farther back, but will put nearly 250hp down stock. And I still think that it'd be hard to get it to 250HP on pump gas. You can't tune right to the edge with pump gas because you have to factor in the inconsistancy of pump gas out there, so you're leaving performance on the table for safety. Now, if you're running race gas all the time, sure you can run 12:1 or higher compression all day long and make an extra 20% power. I bet even on a completely stock F20C just tuning the ecu for 110 octane would get you 10% extra power. But that's just speculation, something not seen in a very good light here on HZ so i'll just knock it off now. EDIT: Oh yea, and the guy thinking about doing this is in napa isn't he? So he has to deal with 91 octane, not 93 like much of the country.

Does it fluctuate constantly? How fast? What conditions? Is the engine cold or warm? Or both? Difference between cold and hot? Could be tons of different things, the good news is that the stock ECU sucks at controlling idle, and I question if it's even able to. This means it's got to be a sensor, or inconsistant fuel or air. I had a 280ZX that had an AFM with no air temp sensor, so when it was cold out it had a hard time starting and would idle terribly, but once the engine was warm it was better, and in warmish weather it'd start just fine (anything above 50 degrees basically). Something these cars are pretty well known for is their bad electrical connections. When they're clean they work great, but often they get dirty and corroded. I'd clean them all up and the start checking for mechanical issues like the throttle return spring and such.

Yea let's compare apples to apples here. The F20C is NA, and if you wanted to rebuild it with lower compression pistons I'm sure it could compare to the SR in regards to HP with boost, it's just gonna cost a lot more money since it's setup for NA. And overmind has a good point, 250RWHP is a FAR stretch for an F20C, and would likely never be seen on pump gas in most areas. The highest HP L series motors that are streetable and semi-reliable are only in the 250-300hp range, beyond that the motors just aren't reliable for most people. It's just simply that hard to make NA HP. It's directly limited to displacement, there's only so far "high tech" can take you.

Well the VG30E fits into the S30 and S130 just fine. I've seen a VG30E swap in person and it's a VERY small and neat package. Something to keep in mind though: VG is a 60 degree design, it's narrow VG30E is pretty narrow due to it's SOHC design that's pretty low profile Essex is 90 degrees, making it naturally wider, but this also makes it lower, both differences might not make a huge difference though. any V motor in the 3-4 liter range would have to be ungodly huge to not fit in a S30 or S130. It's the turbos and/or exhaust that have a hard time fitting.

Yes, the crossmembers are different, not totally, just that the recirc ball type crossmembers don't have the moutning tab points for the rack and pinion rack. But everything will swap over just fine. When I did the conversion I changed the entire suspention, steering, xmember all as one unit because I had it all. Made it pretty easy.

Ok, thanks for confusing me tony (first reading), now I've got to read that again... ...Ok I get it now. Thanks for the tech talk. Much rather think and get my brain juices flowing than just being spoon fed. At any rate though I'm really interested to see the power curve of the motor.

So what are your goals for the motor? Not just power but application. I like that you're sticking with a smaller turbo and not going all out (from the looks of it). You could very well see one of the best NET AVE hp levels out there. Who knows. I definately want to follow this project, keep it up!

I'm happy now. My day just started with some very good news. The L31DETT is back on the road. All I hope for now at this point is that we get a nice graph to go with the next dyno, whenever that might be. Glad to hear it's back in buisness! As far as casting/reproducing this head, I agree with tony. If there were truly money in it OS Giken would have done something about it, most likely, even if that was just selling their forms to someone. Though it might be worthwhile for bryan to leave the door open for anyone who wants to spend 10K to have him do this again with KA heads. This would probably be a lot more feasible than doing molds, and he wouldn't have to worry about making profit in volume, just charge as much as he has to every time. Then IF, big if, there's too many people to handle he can look into getting casting forms made. But I doubt that'd be the case.

I'd say the essex is possibly better than the VG30E depending on what you're looking for, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than the VG30DE or VQ series. The supercoupe motor could be had for just as cheap, if not less, than a VG30ET, makes more stock power, takes tons of HP on stock internals, and has quite a decent aftermarket support. Sounds like a pretty sweet option if you ask me. Good overall balance of size, weight, price, performance.

I still find it ironic that nissan puts all this work into making the 280ZX more aerodynamic, improving the front end air immensely, yet there's still gonna be people who miss the S30 look. Oh well. I understand where they're coming from.

Sweet project. Where you at in the bay area? It'd be sweet to check out the progress now and then once you get started. As far a the T-5 goes, yea they're not the strongest tranny, but like many trannys they've proven that as long as you're not doing huge 4k drops at the strip with slicks it can take quite a lot of torque before going boom. Plus then there's also the aftermarket gearsets which help a ton. I think the T56 should be fine though. There's some pretty insane vipers out there running stock transmissions, though I honestly don't know how different thier T56 is compared to the other cars it came in. As to the 5.0 speculation. I believe da-man. 700hp would be under 600 to the wheels, which has been done on the 5.0 motor before. I've even seen 400hp dynos on stock short blocks. People assume that as soon as you reach 500+hp on the 5.0 that you have a time bomb, yet there are plenty of people on both sides of the fence with motors that did and didn't blow up. A guy I used to hang out with had a mustang with a 351W bored/stroked to 427, supercharged. The only time I got to see him dyno he maxed out his injectors at 800hp at 3500RPM. I never heard official numbers but last I heard he was well over the 1000hp mark.... on a 427 small block that most guys say shouldn't be done due to block strength. Though I defend unbelievable numbers, I'll also so it doesn't mean it's easy or that anyone can/should do it. Just that there's always the oddball cases of someone who DID.

I've been doing a lot of power curve comparisons lately, and I think if you wanna go with the F20C go for it. Just know what you're getting into (which it seems you do). It's not gonna drive like a muscle car, it's gonna drive like a RWD honda. When you punch the gas under 3500 it's going to sound like it's dying on you, and you're going to be pouting money into this swap to have a car with the power/weight ratio near the 03 mustang cobra, with no room for improvement. If a car that fast makes you happy, I'm 100% behind you and want to see this swap done! Just make sure you use the honda tranny, and get the biggest gears you can find. I'd consider 4.11 minimum imo.

Hmm... 99+ blocks have a factory girdle. That might explain why nearly ALL the 400+hp V6 mustang dynos I've seen are the later 99+ models. Though I have seen some insane supercoupe dynos, and even vids of them in the 11's, and at their weight that's a pretty insane motor. Remember that these motors aren't thought to be based off of any ford V8, but rather the buick V6. It has more similarities with that motor than any ford motor. So odds are it's pretty stout, especially with the girdle.

That might be true, but aren't you also supposed to have two right arms? That's so you can hold the steering wheel like a "pimp" and shift at the same time. Anyone remember what I'm talking about... I laughed my butt off in the theater on that one.