Gollum

I think the new GTO is one of my favorite GM cars ever built. But I hate that it's called a GTO. I mean, A: it's not even american and B: it just don't look like what you expect a new GTO to look like. The way I feel about it, is that if they'd marketed it as a NEW muscle car all together and really capitalized on the sleeper aspect it could have been a huge success. When they were going out of production the local GM dealer had one with about 200 miles stickered at 25k. I was shocked and started looking at it, as it was just sitting at the front of the lot in the driveway. Within 15 minutes and about 10 words being spoken the nosey salesman offered a 19k price.... And I'm just a kid looking at a car... They couldn't GIVE those cars away, and they're stunning vehicles. Congrats thumper. You've cashed in on the biggest mistake the market has ever made.

No pics, but I got the engine in today.... Yea, I'm glad it's over. Moving a hoist on dirt sucks.

Ok, I have a non-wc of course because I have the stock L28ET tranny. This link here says to use 75W gear oil http://www.moderndriveline.com/Technical_Bits/t5_history.htm Autozone didn't have any and the guy remarked "that's some really heavy oil"... So instead I bought some mobile one synthetic 75W/90 hoping it would work. It seems that I might have to return it because some guys here don't seem to recommend using synthetic in a diff and it might not work for the tranny either. Would my current gear oil be better than ATF?

Ok, winter is long over, and I'm back at it hardcore. I hope to be done this friday to pick up the girl from the airport in it. She might actually be more excited than me. Evidence of the death in the family. Muwahaha Some parts I plan to keep/need. Donor Engine bay: Recipient Engine bay: The family jewls The last few days work... sorting out vacuum lines to finally get all the heating and aircon installed... Ok, gonna replace the oil pan gasket while the engine is out and drop it in on monday. Wish me luck.

Ok, I tried to make it as simple as possible to show what I've done and hopefully it will bring a bit more light to those in the future, especially if the colored lines have faded. Though I'm still curious why the two lines I mentioned were unplugged on my car before AND the car in the junkyard, as though nissan did it from the factory. Makes me wonder...

All 3 ZX's I've owned have had that trim piece in place just fine. Strange. In 79'&80' only the manual 4 seaters and the GL models got the R200. 81'-83' the automatics (non turbo) still got spade and had R180. too true But MAN, I LOVE the black interior and that's in great shape RayG1988. I think you've got the best BASE to work on for the 280ZX cars. Rack and pinion manual steering, manual windows, slick top. Gosh, gotta be at least a good 100 pounds than the last cars to roll off the lot in 83.

I think he was talking more about the modification arena, custom downpipe, fuel rail, intercooler, and many many other things might just "pop up" as things you want to modify. Really take your time and think about what motor you wanna put in there. When we say "anything will fit" we really mean it. One motor I never would have thought could fit was the ford 4.6 DOHC mod motor. I'll make a small list of common enough swaps to look into... small block chevy LS1/2/3/4/6/7 small block ford big block chevy VG30E - VG30ET (turbo) RB25, RB26 (all varieties) 2JZ SR20DET L28ET That's a good start that you should be able to find LOTS of information about through searching this site. It's actually really annoying when I don't find what I'm looking for on this site, only to be redirected back here by search on google... This place is THAT vast. As far as the L28ET goes, well I'm right about to finish a L28ET swap into my 81' 280ZX so I can give you a little bit of insight I hope. These aren't motors for the feint of heart. Pretty much any EFI work will be very DIY and not the simplest to tune. Replacement motors as a whole aren't TOO expensive which is nice, but as you probably know turbo parts in general aren't cheap. The common saying around here is: Fast Cheap Reliable You can pick any two. So, how much HP do you want? How much can you spend realistically on JUST motor modifications?(you can spend 5k on suspension, rims, and tires pretty easily) How temperamental of a car can you deal with? In my eyes the BEST swap to do if you've got the cash for it is a LS series swap. It's not the cheapest swap, but it's VERY powerful stock and shouldn't be much of any investment after the engine is in. It's also very reliable being such a new motor design. Some guys spend a lot more on other swaps, but compared to the el cheapo swap L28ET most motor options are really expensive. But the L series motors are gonna take more work to get to respectable power numbers, so it's all about what you want. I used to work on hondas a lot, so don't take offense to this, but this is a whole different beast. A turbo inline 6 is gonna produce tons of torque and a broad power range. You might find that 200 wheel hp is plenty for a casual car you're not looking to get much out of. The 400+hp possible out of a LS series motor might be a bit much Anyways, I'll shut up now and let you do some looking around. Feel free to IM me or PM me and we can chat about the L series some more. There's lots of information out there about it.

Another thing to note, is that afr sensors that go up your exhaust pipe won't read completely true if you've got a CAT installed. That's why a 'Test Pipe' is called such, they're designed to tune on. Now that THAT is cleared up, I can't believe he didn't at least hook a wideband up to it. He runs a dyno AND tunes, it's his freakin job to do it. When I eventually tune my car on a SMOG machine (very low load, but will do the job) it WILL be done with a wideband, courtesy of the strict CA smog machines. That shows the low quality of this tune you got man. Those AFR ratios shouldn't be jumping around like that either imo. Looks like the ECU is still guessing quite a bit. I wouldn't be bringing my car back to that guy myself. Just my 02. cents.

I'm 90% sure I've figured it out. After sorting through the pics and looking over the diagram in the repair manual I was pretty sure about the placement on pretty much everything. Should I bother posting detailed pictures of my effort to make this thread worth something or let it fall into the abyss?

Nissan made it real simple for us. 240Z = 2.4 liter = L24 260Z = 2.6 liter = L26 280Z = 2.8 liter = L28 Later year 280Z cars that were fuel injected were a L28E, E standing for EFI. Nissan still uses the same way of coding their engines today. And just a word of warning, I'm nowhere near, nor profess to be, any type of Z historian. There are others on this site that know truck loads more than me. I've only been into Z's since aboue 6 months before my registration date on this site

Hey, I'm trying to wrap up my L28ET conversion in my 280ZX in the next week or so (getting excited) and started looking at the A/C & Heat control unit... and crap. Two hoses weren't even hooked up, and several others I'd disconnected and forgotten where it went, and it started to scare me thinking I might not be able to have to get it to work at all and might have to come back to it, which I don't want to do. Take the dash off isn't something you dream about doing every weekend. So I went to the local pickn'pull and got lucky to find an earlier 79' with the same control unit, so I ripped the dash off and took pics galore. Now, when I first got the dash off there were two hoses unplugged! So I highlighted those red, and highlighted in green in this pic I took is where a vacuum line is on my turbo car's unit and I need to know where it goes. I've got the nissan manual in PDF and they have a vacuum diagram but it doesn't help when you don't know what the names are of more than half of what's mentioned on the diagram. So any help Would be appreciated. So I plugged that upper one in there because it seemed like a logical place to put it and I wanted to see how it looked, but it was disconnected when I took the dash off. Are these supposed to be disconnected? Is there a reason the previous owner of my donor car (a HZ member) might have blocked them off with golf tees? (i'm not even sure if they're the same ones, except I'm kinda certain that the short unplugged one is one of the same ones unplugged on my car, but I'd have to check to be sure. I'm gonna try to draw out a diagram from all the pics I've got and take a crack at it tomorrow in hopes of getting it all sorted out. Thanks in advance.

I've met that guy, martin, at a videogameslive concert. Very nice and humble guy.

I can't stop thinking about the slant mounted intercooler on SR240z's SR setup. Wouldn't it make sense to duct the system so that air would HAVE to go through the radiator, then build a duct into the engine bay making the 90 degree bend upwards and then having air extraction slots on the hood above the IC? It seems to me (granted i'm stupid sometimes) that as long as you're airflow is sealed between the radiator and IC they don't need to be right up against each other. If it's not a sealed system after the radiator then I can totally see wanting the IC right up against it.

1500 isn't a great deal. It's not bad, but it's not a deal. You can find them easily enough for 500 or less in junkyard condition (ie, no proof it runs) and many times they're fine. Very sturdy motors that should be fine and fixable if anything is wrong. Wish more people were doing this swap though.

It's hard to tell in many of the pictures of the evo, but they're still angled teh direction you did prox. They're just not very extreme, maybe mitsu thinks this is all they needed? EDITED: Didn't realize the picture was so huge, sorry if that bugged you mods.

For which years though. The 2+2 cars I recall seeing have the vertical line plastic type found on the 2 seaters in.... 83? I forget. Not really documentation on this kinda stuff, just gotta figure it out.

I don't mean to hijack, but I think I can stay on topic while getting some answers of my own (maybe even help out a bit). Why exactly do you NEED a rising rate FPR? Why not just get an adjustable FPR? In theory the stock ECU is designed to enrich with boost and should keep good fuel curves even up to 15+psi right? I thought the main thing we had to worry about was running out of fuel with the added air from 10+psi that the stock system can't handle. The reason I don't like the idea of a RRFPR is that it's going to make high boost overly rich and it just seems to make more sense to get closer to ideal 12.5-11.0 under boost. I know that without being able to control ignition and such we need to be very careful if you plan on keeping the stock ECU, but I'm just curious how far we can take the stock EFI if the mods are done intelligently. I know that ktm will probably need to be going for aftermarket efi if he's planning on 350+RWHP, but I'm just looking for more insight as to why a rising rate FPR is so NEEDED in your opinion (not that I disagree at all, please don't take it like that, I'm just looking to learn something here)

Interesting B-Pillar covers. That's one clean 2+2. I personally don't mind the large pics It's a sunroof model too, don't see many of those. Is it a 79'?

I'm sure it's a typo and he meant the F20C. I've made that mistake too.

I'm still kinda confused, and I'm sure i need to look over the data again and again to fully grasp some things, but didn't we discover the the cowl will let IN air? Then why did popping the hood help? Is it because there's more air trying to get out than in? If this is the case then opening it too much will relieve too much pressure and air will just go IN and then DOWN causing more air under the car, and more lift. And if we add more venting without sealing off the air coming into the bay then we decrease air pressure in front of the radiator, and thus lesson it's cooling ability. But if we close up the front end, and limit the air getting in to JUST the radiator we don't need as much hood venting yes? And if we increase the air openings in the hood this could create a slight vacuum pulling air through the radiator right? How can be balance this or even guess where the balance is? Cars like the Ford GT have HUGE openings in the hood, but I think the reason why that works is that the hood is shaped in such a way that air can still come over the hood and if anything push down where the opening is, while the air coming out creates pressure pushing the air up, helping the windshield (at least this is what I've heard ford claim). One thing that worries me is that if we vent air too far forward in the engine bay we could loose some air cooling abilities on the engine. How much do you guys think this even matters? Possibly not at all? Keep the oil and coolant cool and it should be fine right?

Hmm..... that REALLY makes me wonder about the 93' cobra rims... My brother never fixed his before the car was stolen but the rear set were on the wrong side. How a shop would do that I have no clue, but it was funny who did and didn't notice (mustang fans that wouldn't notice and soccer moms that would...) It's a really interesting idea though. And certainly something worth researching. You know, I live in the most ghetto of ghetto, and I might... just might think about it. I'd have to have a cool racey paint job like that though. A primer'ed car that looked like that might be too ghetto, even for me.

Well yea, they're just gonna say that. What I said was in regards as to why the rules are in place. The tech's just inforce you're right. They don't really judge anything. They just go by the book (whatever they know of it). In CA it's really tough because by state law ANY mod "could" be illegal, and to really find out you have to talk to your local ref. Some refs might consider an intercooler illegal, but mine doesn't, and he does most of the swap legalizations in the bay area and foreign conversions that come in from oakland port.

Are you laughing at me? Because you just agreed with me... I don't get it That's because a modified intake WILL allow more air in, which is why we do it right? That makes it illegal to CA. Fuel rails can be legal if you use stock injectors because the same amount of fuel gets it. You can't legally raise boost because you're letting in more air. You can't legal modify your air/fuel tables or reprogram your ECU because you can change the air/fuel quantities and ratio. You can't modify the exhaust manifold/header because you'll adjust the air leaving the engine, and in turn effect air going into the engine. Of course, all of these mods CAN be legal if they're CARB approved. EDIT: Oh yea, johnC put it best. Don't listen to me, see the ref. Even if I WAS a ref I'd still say go see your local ref for advice because in the end they ARE the law that you should abide by.

I lost the file when I formatted. PM, I'll help you out.

or a camera system, then once you identify them you can return the favor. Not that I approve of that kinda action...