Gollum

The REAL key to making a great head cast would be to take an already great head and make a cast with it and modify it to fit the L series blocks. That way existing parts could be used. Maybe such a method could keep the price down a bit.

I like the AMC idea, but I also agree that any thing that looks as slow as a diesel volvo steel box that wants to race must be pulling something insane. I'd recomend the AMC AMX. It starts fairly light (for it's era) but only ever came with a V8. But with a compelling valve cover you might fool even the "die hard" muscle car fan. The truth about it is that it'll be extremelly hard to find anyone on the street who really knows anything about these cars. Most muscle car guys (like myself) dismiss the car because it never came with anything more than 350HP back in the day. But with a factory curb weight of 3100 pounds, it was far lighter than any of the top HP cars of the 69' peak of perfection. I REALLY like the truck idea. Might have issues getting people to race you, but I'd try to "rice" it out as much as I could. Try to really look like a wannabe. An old BMW might be the way to go. Most BMWs were very overbuilt and can be trimmed down alot, but also came with inline 6's. Some careful study of the BMW valve cover and you could replicate the BMW pretty easily methinks. (not sure what chassis/years this motor came in, but here's at least one pic) http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/m20.jpg The key is finding a car that most people don't know much about, but won't discard as a pathetic car. I'm gonna think about your options some more...

I've never heard of anyone welding a block together, and TVR doesn't have the greatest track record for building "quality products." But that also doesn't mean it can't be done well.

braap, do you have an duaghters I could marry? And how much (if any) would that bring labor costs down for me for you to build me a head? I bow at your experience.

Well, england does have some of the FREAKIN' BEST roads in the world. Only downside is the gas prices. I just realised, i've made two previous posts on this thread and didn't mention how sick the car is looking on3go. Really is a beuty.

if you need somewhere to host images, image shack http://imageshack.us/ hosts for free. Then you can just copy/paste the second link (thumnail #1) right into a post, and it'll be a nice little thumbnail that people can click on to get the full size picture (comes up in a second window, so you can close it when you're done and don't have to go backwards to get back to hybridz) Thinking about a SC already? I thought you where gonna try to be happy with the stock power. Well, in the words of tim the tool man taylor MORE POWER! Hope the project & the ride can take a couple of years off ya (in the good direction, not the bad direction).

if you hang around some of the serious drag racers for a while you might find something. Alot of the guys that still race swamp rats have custom cast blocks. I once found a guy who had custom 427 ford cammer blocks cast that where extensivley modified. I'll look for the link and edit my post if I find anything.

note for californias: pretty much NO temperary garage will meet CA paint booth standards, and painting in such an enviorment and being caught would be a HUGE fine, maybe even more than the value of the car to begin with. So it's not something to gamble in CA. Primer is a totally different story. Usually legal to spray as long as it's not on public property.

I was just stating sound theory on3go. I expected your setup would be vitually lag free, as it takes quit alot of turbo at ANY rate to create sufficiant lag to care about. It IS nice to know though that you are thinking about such things as well. Hmm, thinking about the heat issue though. Insulation (generally) keeps opposing tempatures away from eachother. Wrapping headers is a good idea, but would the same idea apply to turbo system piping? We obviouly don't want the turbo outlet staying warm, so don't wrap that, but what about the pipe from the intercooler to the intake manifold? Maybe the difference would be negligible, or maybe even couter productive?

I'm getting gyped... I'm getting 20MPG on a completelly stock 81' ZX...

That's a good theory 240hoke, it does seem that's the reason for doing that, wich should decress detonation and alow for more boost, BUT... (love that word) if the overall piping length is significantly longer than setup the system show in thehelix112's post then you could decrease turbo responce time, leading to longer revs, coutner productive. Now, the distances might be close enough that it doesn't really matter, and if you're not running a HUGE turbo I don't think it would matter much anyways. I just thought I'd show some other things to keep in mind when thinking about how to setup your intercooler.

good luck alternative. Keep us posted if you can. I'd like to learn as much as I can from this swap, as to it's uniqueness. My best friend's dad owns a european auto shop, so a BMW might (key word might) show up as a swap idea for a future project.

Well, if just ONE person finds this in searching for a fix and fixes thier own problem as well, i'll be eternally gratefully. Gotta love the search feature, just too bad it didn't help me.

...dang... Just imagine how cheep they're going to get. We're only really seeing the first wave of wrecked S2ks. In the comming years they should get even cheeper, wich is why I was condering the swap... but the gas milage is really starting to tick me off. I can almost get a 5.0 motor to get 20 MPG... Well, maybe 17 in town... But 20 for a 4 banger is horrible, 140 HP per liter or not. But man, 4500, up in oregon even, where I know there aren't as many being sold.

Dnaught, not to offend you, but you don't know anything about cali cops. Many cops here even memorise engine codes to know what motors are hondas and such, beucase there are so many people doing B16 & B18 swaps into everything that's FWD. Rudy, back on topic with the F20C. Here's my theory. Every stock honda engine has had BAD drop in HP & tourque right before Vtech, becuase they design the low RPM lobe to have lots of low end tourque, and the do the same with the Vtech lobe as well, wich results in a noticable gap between lobes. I think with the F20C they were trying to get rid of this by keeping the Vtech lobe the same (the important one) and making the low RPM lobe very high tourque, to make it a smoother reving engine. The only problem is that as stated earlier, this could kill gas milage. But that doesn't seem to bother caranddriver, as the S2k has been on the best 10 every year since it's debut (i think, I know it's at least 01 02 03 04). Oh, and another think. I saw 3 S2ks on my way to SFO the other day. Insane.

Yea, so my car didn't always like to start right up. Sometimes would take 3 or 4 trys to get it running. And until it was warm the engine didn't like load at ALL. I'd rev it up to a strong 2-2.5k RPM and feather the clutch and it would bog down and try to die, so I'd be left feathering the clutch. So i finally thought "well, lets just start unplugging sensors and see if the symptom resides with unplugging anything". First thing I tried, because I didn't have much faith in it to begin with, i don't really know why, Was this one. And while the engine was cold I unplugged it and the idle went up to a warm up idle, around 1800 rpm or so. Then I plugged it back up and it when to a normal idle, but revving the engine seemed fine. Got in the car and it took off just fine. So opened up the hood again and unplugged it and the car was going to die so I plugged it back in real quick. I don't fully understand what the sensor does, but I cleaned the contact off and my car has been running just peachy since. Yay for $0 dollor fixes.

That's pretty insane in it's own right. I'd love to see that motor running 1 fast Z.

i just put a felpro on my grandfather's mercury sable... now you guys got me worried. Well, hopefully it'll be started for the first time since the gasket blow today. We'll find out soon enough if that gasket is any good. I'd assume it'll be fine, it's NA and bone stock.

LOL, i know how that goes. A buddy of mine put a B20 in a del sol, and drove like a mad man for a month. Then one day he says "man, i have yet to get pulled over, and with how i've been driving, it seems that i'll never get pulled over" Next week he got pulled over commuting to work. Car got impounded... Ouch. It was just plain unlucky too, he was only doing 75.

My message to greddy " > I was wondering if the bolt on turbo kit for the KA24DE (240SX) was CARB certified, and if so, what it's CARB number is. Also, informaiton on where the number is stamped would be nice, california cops don't care if it's CARB legal if the numbers aren't visible on the product. Part number for the kit is 11520633 > > Thank you, > Gollum " The message I recieved (and quite quickly. I'm impressed.) "Thanks for your interest in Greddy performance products. We are still in the process of getting that kit CARB certified. Please stay in touch with your nearest authorized Greddy dealer for information regarding this matter. Thanks for the email."

I don't think I can do much legally to the KA24DE. Man, MORE research to do, thanx guys (catch the sarcasim?). Well, honestly... I blame CA for most of my problems. In most other states my car would either not need to be smogged or would quickly be approaching that beautiful year of exemption. Now that i'm looking at it, the KA42DE doesn't seem that bad. At 155HP and 160lbs I could do a budget swap and leave it as it is for a while. 22/28 MPG, not bad either for 2.4 liters. I could get a whole donor car for pretty cheep too. Hmm, ya got me thinking man.

Yea, that's what 240 guys have told me, to just stay away from it, they're totally different motors. I understand the tourque/gas milage thing now that you mention it. My friends B16A gets 35 MPG and has a decent 150 Fwhp and revs like a maniac. And his tourque is FLAT accross the RPM. When I saw his dyno I was like "dude, they didn't measure tourque?!" the tourque was blending in with a line on the graph, it was that flat. Now the real issue to me is that the WHOLE point of Vtec is to have tourque down low and still have a rough cam in the higher RPM. So what did honda screw up? The F20C is great at Vtec, so what's wrong with the non vtec lobes? Hmm, I'm gonna do some research on cams for this car. RAGE ALERT: WHY does nissan hate ME!?!?!?!? Seriously, why didn't they ever release the SR20DET in the 240SX cars and why did we NEVER see a skyline in the US! Now that the V6 is in the new skylines they're in the US but that doesn't get ME anywhere! Bah. Some of the best motors ever made, and you can't legaly put one in a US car. This sucks.

Well, i don't mind being proven wrong when it's information I want to hear. If it's really that cheep then I guess you would want to get one from nissan.