Gollum

What he said ^ There's people here to feel like it's best just to heli coil the entire manifold surface of the head. Kind of overkill, but so is 90% of what you'll find around here... Welcome to hybridZ

My suggestion? You have two options: 1. Take another $300 and to go anther shop that is actually recommended by a Zclub local to you. Have the head fixed RIGHT, and if they're a good shop they'll tell you if it's already fubar because of the milling before being straightened. 2. Take another $300 and go buy a decent $100 head out there. Buy $200 worth of basic tools needed to do your own head. And now that you can actually check PROPERLY, by YOURSELF weather or not the head is twisted, if you get a bad head you can just sell it and find another. And once you DO find a head in good shape you can just do all your own cleanup and basic port work YOURSELF. I like option number 2 because though it's the long road it makes you more valuable as a car hobbyist overall. Go to a hot rod show and ask around to find out how many guys actually do their own head work, and you'll find the numbers aren't that many, and that's with simple OHV engines! I find that 9 times out of 10 when I'm looking at a car that really impresses me the owner starts saying things like "we started with xxx, and then we xxxx" and I ask "who's we?" and I get an answer similar to, "I had a buddy with a shop helping me"... aka... they PAID for someone else who either HAS the skills, or HAS the time. The best solution to not be a bad consumer, is to actually be a producer, as that's the best education as to how it works. This is a simple principle. If you don't want to be a victim of McDonalds and their fatty food, go work for a restaurant and receive your own education as to how running a restaurant actually works, and then you'll have a new understanding of how McDonalds works and why. If you don't want to be a victim of big banks that take your money through fees and penalties, go become an investor/money manager and get an understanding of how the game is played. It's easy to become a victim when you simply don't know any better. I've found myself paying double what I should have for something, and looking back the only fault is my own. I can't blame the other party, because I personally can't blame someone else for my lack of understanding. That'd be like blaming my teacher for a poor grade. It doesn't work that way. If I put in the time and effort, there should be a worthwhile product at the end of the day. So I say build your own damn head and just be done with it. (and I say that in the most "I love you man" across the internet as possible)

Some great shots in there. Too bad he was flaking about getting the high res copies to you. Was this a paid photo-op? If so that's highly unprofessional, but if it was kind of a favor deal or something I guess I could have some grace there. Cars look wonderful btw.

You need to watch more Home Improvement: http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_101074-Austin-Healey-3000-BJ8-1967.html?PHPSESSID=472aeef2b1257bd400260ad158de9dd0 ~ Steved033 - It's good to see a new Z owner that seems to know a thing or two about the car hobby. Welcome aboard, but be careful, these cars are JUST like rabbits. If you get it too close to another you'll have 10 before you know it.

Ya.. could be a million things still..... Sometimes you just never know... Hell... my 280ZX burns oil and 40k miles later I'm still not convinced it's worn rings, as opposed to a stuck ring, because it has only 240k on it now. It probably is some bad rings, but I NEVER assume such, until I get in there myself to measure and see. I have to ask though, it sat for 3-4 years. Did you replace the oil? Turn over by hand to check for binding?

So true. One of my biggest frustrations is when I sit down and take 30 minutes, or much more sometimes, to write a post trying to help someone out, and then few hours later they respond with something that makes me think they didn't even read it... This to me shows exactly what your nephew said. If people aren't willing to INVEST, with HARD WORD, to SPEND THE TIME to LEAN SOMETHING then even spoon feeding them simply doesn't work. There's no magic bullet and to let people think there is a magic bullet is just cruelty.

I know I'm in CA and there seems to be a lot of datsuns in general, but I see L28 motors on a regular basis for $100-200. I bought my last L28ET as a complete longblock (oil pan to valve cover complete + manifolds & fuel rail, no turbo, no ECU, no AFM) for a whopping $200....

To play devil's advocate here to Tony's point of view (which I actually agree with, just saying this for the sake of saying it because apparently this has somehow sparked enough interest to keep me from bed even though I'm waking up in 5 hours...).. ... even though this might parallel the "maximum boost" style setup, EVERYONE pushing the limits will be running very absurd pressure levels. The guys making 1000+hp from 2 liter 4G63 motors certainly aren't pushing 8psi. Thus, one can deduce that there's nothing inherently "wrong" with trying to figure out how to cope with high boost levels and the evils that come with. I think Tony's point, and the one that I agree with is that for what MOST of our power goals are around here, a little lesson from the NA crowd will go a LONG way and prevent MANY problems. Remember, you're killing your motors due to detonation, I'd guarantee it. Detonation is a product of HEAT first and foremost, NOT timing, NOT compression, NOT AFR. Even though each of those play a FACTOR in heat, HEAT is the ultimate enemy. Lower the pressure, lower the heat. PERIOD. If you plan to shoot for a 1,000hp L motor, then by all means, learn to cope with high boost and the heat that ensues. But I darn guarantee you that you'll want some programmable EFI somewhere along the way. And in either setup, high boost levels, or low boost with high head flow, you're going to need a not-stock fuel and timing curve...

Okay, so I've read through this thread on like 3 different occasions and finally it's bugging me just too much not to ask... ... are you SURE that's a 10:1 compression ratio engine? On a P90 that's a WHOLE lot of shaving, or even welding. OR it's dome pistons, which would require a custom P90 chamber shaped dome. OR.... It's a stroker... No matter which way we're talking about that's a solid 1.5+ of compression bump. That's a wee bit more than just simple shaving get you, and if you shaved a P90 that much I'd be worried about other details.

Is there an echo in here? Get a standalone... Echo... Echo.... Echo... Yea, here's my notes on the list: 78 280 w/83ZXT motor, P90a hydraulic head, stock bore, stock cast piston Will make 400hp with ease. Hydraulic lifters should be in worker order though. They're fine if they are, but a bad lifer is no fun. T3/T4 50trim E wheel, .63 Stage III clipped, oil & water, bullet nosed, ported WG hole This is what everything should be built around. It's one of your systems most central pieces. It's like the head in a NA build... Everything should match THIS component. SVO 370cc injectors More than enough, and since you're running stock EFI this is just a nasty solution. Really should be running STOCK injectors with just a GOOD RRFPR that can adjust the RATIO of how much pressure it's adding per PSI... and that's only IF you're trying to get the stock EFI to live which most people should give up on unless they're proving a point. 60mm 240sx TB - Ported Intake to match Totally unneeded, only reason I see to do it is because it makes for a clean conversion to a REAL TPS(ensor) needed for MS GReddy BOV & Boost controller I'm not a fan on electronic boost controllers, especially for lower HP turbo motors like this. And the BOV should be recirculating type. Otherwise you're just asking for problems. And if you're smart you should be running it as short of piping as possible and running it into the turbo inlet at about a 45 degree angle. This will help keep the turbo spooled and your air metered correctly. You want to sound like rice? You'll blow up like rice. Stock 83ZXT ECM Main issue... RED FLAG Stock AFM Biggest flow restriction! This almost makes me laugh at the 60mm TB Stock narrow band O2 Not a problem really as long as there's a wideband when you're actually trying to tune the sucker. And post CAT widebands are almost pointless when trying to get into the nitty gritty details of a tune. MSD Fuel Pressure Regulator w/boost reference Worthless if you haven't checked ratio controls with a wideband. Might as well be trying to shoot a zombie attacking your kin in Alaska while standing in New York with a rocket launcher. Custom Fuel Rail Not even needed, and almost pointless. If you haven't you should consider a twin inlet design like stock. Helps reduce flow pulsing from the injectors opening and closing. Unless you double the diameter of stock you're most likely causing WORSE flow to the injectors when comparing how evenly they're supplied. MSD 6a Meh, shouldn't be hurting '82 NA 5sp Tranny How's it holding up? Some break at 250hp, others at 500hp... go figure Walbro GLS-392 Fuel Pump I don't trust walbro's, but I'm paranoid. 3.90 LSD w/CV's Who converted the 3.9? How much it cost you? (I'm wishing to do the same) Large NPR intercooler Good, but how well was it installed? Does it seal nicely to the radiator? It should. Do you not have any more than a .25" gap between any pipes or are you letting silicone couplers bridge the gaps? Get the transitions tight. 3" full mandrel exhaust/custom downpipe Good, shouldn't cause you problems till you're well beyond the ability of the stock head/block combo ACT HD Clutch/PP 240mm Irrelevant but thank you for quality of details. Hope that helps you out in your endeavors.

Yea, I'd be looking for air in the front or something else gone wrong up there. Verify front system first. It COULD be the prop valve, but I just don't hear many stories of those going bad unless being left in the elements.

Any of the manual racks will be RP, but the power RP units didn't start until the major revamp in '82. In '82 is where they also switched over to blade fuses, made headlight washers optional, etc. '81 was a weird in between because they changed the seats and some other things that carried over, but '81 shares a lot more in common with the earlier '79 car than it does the last '83 that rolled off the lot. Sorry, no pictures of the process, but I still have all of the carnage in my garage so I'll snap some pics before it goes in the dumpster. It's hard to take time to clean up and take pictures during the process when you're all greasy.

So I just completed this swap on my '81 280ZX a bit ago and finally got the little gremlins sorted out. I'm going to cover brief (my idea of brief, which isn't always as such compared to others) details on how to go about the swap and such to help the next person along. First though, why? Recirculating ball steering, powered or not, has been around a LONG time. One of the better benefits of this style steering system is that your steering shaft angles don't have to be as angled in the engine bay, keeping the steering system out of the way for putting an engine in. It's other big benefit is that the main unit can be used on a huge variety of cars with just changing cheap linkage lengths. You can see why OEM's used them so extensively in the past... It also has a side benefit in some ways in that it's slightly more disconnected, helping the driver to not feel bumps in the road as much. A nice feature for a benz. Rack and pinion on the other hand is a naturally very connected system and engineers have to find ways to keep it disconnected in some ways. It's a bit more complicated to engineer, but yields a very direct feeling steering in a compact package. But a main drawback is that without using complicated linkages your steering shaft needs to go more towards the center of the engine bay, as the input for the unit is further down the engine bay, and needs space away from the main "frame rail" of the front end assembly as compared to the recirculating ball that can be bolted directly to the side of the engine bay. My main reason was that #1. I had one handy from a chassis I cut up years ago. #2 was that the recirculating ball setup is HEAVY and not only that but more than 8" higher off the ground. Bad juju. Now that I've had them both in my hands as complete systems I can say for certain that the rack and pinion saves you 20+ pounds, plus puts it much closer to the ground. (for the remainder of this post I will refer to recirculating ball as RB and rack and pinion as RP) What You Need The RB cars have a different cross member which needs to be swapped from a car with a RP setup. Otherwise there's no tabs to bolt the actual rack to. And since the lower control arms are such a PITA to remove from the cross member, you might as well take them too. Power Steering Lines - They're different and thus you want the lines from the pump to the rear housing (where the shaft enters the rack) The rack itself (duh?) The tie rods (should come with the rack in most cases) The two hydraulic lines that are part of the rack assembly. Optional The actually steering shaft is slightly shorter in the RB cars versus the RP cars. Why nissan did this I can't fathom, but I was shocked when all was done and my shaft wouldn't quite reach.... grrrr. I made do by making an adapter that I'll explain, which is easy, but if you can get the whole shaft from the steering wheel down for the same price, do it! The process 1. Jack the car up. Support it on at least two stands up front, or all 4 corners if your on flat ground. I wasn't, so two up front worked just fine. Make sure to support the car behind the engine and not using the cross member in any way. You'll want some space around the cross member and also the oil pan. 2. Next you'll need to support the engine, if even lift it slightly. I used just a foot length of 1x4 wood across two scissor jacks. The wood makes sure to cushion the pan, and having two jacks keeps the engine from rolling and allows me to balance it a bit. 3. Unbolt the topside of the engine mounts. I also put in their place LONG bolts, longer than 6" I think, so that I didn't have to worry about getting the holes to line up again later, because that's a PAIN. 4. While you're on the top side of the engine bay unbolt the steering shaft coupler and I also removed the brake reservoir heat shield to make it easier to get back there. 5. Now you can get under the car. Remove wheels (should have been obvious) unbolt the outside of the control arms, unbolt the sway bar end links, unbolt the bottom side of the engine mounts, unbolt the idler arm (that's the steering link bolted to the passenger side of the engine bay), unbolt the actual steering box. 6. This can be done at any point between removing wheels and such, but you need to remove the tie rods. This can be a serious PITA. If you want to make it go quickly a tie rod separator works wonders, but even that can sometimes not be enough. Rip the rubber off and take a propane torch to it for a solid minute or more, then give it a good whack with a small sledge. Should come right off. This step took me an hour but then I gave up and used heat... took 10 minutes or less at that point. 7. Remove power steering lines. There's one that's threaded. I used a 24mm I think but it was too tight (or was it 22mm...) so it might have been SAE. Either way, I made it work. Even an adjustable crescent should do fine. The other one is just a simple hose clamp. Expect leakage, have a pan handy. 8. Now that everything is unbolted, and the engine is supported, you can start lowering the cross member. There's just the 4 main bolts, so get a jack under there to catch it, and unbolt away. I used a shorter breaker bar, didn't have to bust out my 3 footer, so they're shouldn't be BAD. If the cross member doesn't seem to be dropping when you get it unbolted and lower the jack it's caught on something. Give it some jiggle and figure it out. It'll drop. 9. Now that you've gotten everything out get everything prepped and make sure you've got it all, and it's ready. Check all the hydraulic lines. Mine leaked, and wouldn't have if I'd just checked them ahead of time. And trust me, it's MUCH easier to get to them when the rack is OUT of the car, than in. I semi-dropped the cross member twice in order to get the leaks sorted out. 10. So assuming you now have a rack and cross member assembly ready to go, put it on your jack and start raising it up. Make sure to keep the lower joint of the steering shaft up where it needs to go as you bring the cross member up. As you get it threaded over the studs get the nuts on there to hold it but leave it loose. Even though the cross member was the last thing I loosened, it was the last thing I tightened. I wanted to make sure everything had it's fair room of play and sat nicely before cinching it down. 11. So assemble all that you disassembled but with the new parts and voila! Now do your own alignment or go have an alignment done. I'm not going over much of the details here because it should be pretty darn obvious since you just removed half of this stuff. The Steering Shaft Coupler As I said before, this was a serious annoyance. The lower shaft was a good 3/4" or more short so I had to figure out a solution. I took the nuts left over from the old recirculating ball box from the bolts that went through the frame rails and found some longer bolts with the same thread pattern as the old bolts. I then used the nuts as a spacer so that when I tightened the nut down I wasn't putting undo stress on the system pulling it together, and that it was a nice solid connection. Once I did all this I then notice I could hardly use my turn signals because I'd literally PULLED the whole steering shaft towards the engine bay a good 1/4" still. So I unbolted it again added 3 washers on each bolt to add some thickness to the makeshift spacer. Why not to do this: You'll see there's a round cup that goes around this coupler connection. That's there to prevent anything from getting lodged in there and locking your steering up. Last thing you want is for some debris to get up in there and render your steering wheel useless. You'll find plenty of vehicles that don't have ANY such device at all, so I'm not so paranoid that I was worried about doing what I did, but it certainly does defeat the purpose the OEM engineers put that cup there for.... So like I said, if you can get the upper steering shaft for free, you might as well. It'll add a good 30 minutes to the ordeal, but it will be worth it I think. That's it! You'll now be rewarded for MUCH better feeling steering, a lower center of gravity, and a few pounds less of fat. The total process probably took me 12 hours if you include the time tackling the leaks. If I were to do the whole thing over again in one shot, I could handle it in about 5 hours or less. That said, I recommend to take an entire Saturday, because you just never know what complications you'll run into. Or if you're the real "while I'm at it" you'll find yourself scrubbing things clean while you're in there. Always over-estimate your time and keep your calendar happy. All in all, I'm very happy with the results and have decided if I ever owned another 280ZX with a RB setup, that I'm definitely converting it. And now I can say I own probably one of the VERY few pre-'82 slick tops with a power rack and pinion steering system!

I'm very glad to hear they fixed it and got it squared away. As long as the wipe patterns look good I wouldn't get TOO paranoid about rocker order.

Yea, go 3" all the way. The sad part is that you really should replace the stock downpipe while you're doing all this, to save from having to re-do anything at the stock j-pipe connection should you leave the downpipe stock. The stock downpipe is two 90 degree bends and you can easily fit two 3" 45 degree bends that will flow a LOT better and help turbo spool time SIGNIFICANTLY. Turbos hate back pressure. I say run as free flowing exhaust as you can stand and be happy you have a turbo that's already quieting your exhaust to begin with. And even though your engine "could" live with a 2.5" just fine, that's just silly on a turbo motor. Like I said, turbos are ALWAYS more efficient with less back pressure and typical exhaust scavenging dynamics are lost and nearly irrelevant. Just go 3" and be done with it. Also, I did my own engine swap with very little datsun experience and a limited tool set (think one of those 140 piece sets along with a hoist, jack stands, and jacks). Though exhaust is one of the things I'm not big on doing myself, you'd be amazed what you can get done yourself with just the FSM and patience. So let this be an encouragement to you that yes you CAN do it when it comes time for the next big project.

This seems like quite the screw up by the machine shop. If they were going to reuse ANY valves after head shaving and valve seat grinding they NEED to see if the geometry is at least "in the window" of operation. I'd take it back to the shop and find out what they have to say. If they have a position of "it's not our problem" then raise hell. Even if they don't fix it, at least they'll hopefully have learned to be more careful on the next customer's head.

O.o A large part of be thinks that's impossible. I've seen guys run down into the 11's with R180 rear diffs, and that's usually with a SBC or L28ET. The key to not blowing non-LSD diffs is to stay away from one-legging the car. The other issue people run into with broken stub shafts and half shafts stems from either lowering the car, or the loads under squat. The drive angles created there are not easy on parts. Either way, a mere L26 NA shouldn't have a hope in hell to destroy a R180 unless there was abuse in the story. Solve your real issue first, otherwise even an open R200 might not solve your issues theres.... Regarding pulling the engine, I personally recommend to go ahead and pull everything from the radiator forward unless you have an overhead crane instead of a cherry picker. I'd keep the tranny on, no biggie, and keep the driveshaft on as long as possible to prevent spilling trans fluid everywhere, or if you don't care about the driveshaft, go ahead and just cut it so now you have a transmission plug. Take your time and don't make any huge lifts all at once. It's going to come out nice and easy, so if it ever seems stuck, go back down and figure out where it's getting caught.

FG is easier to widebody... It's lighter too (as long as it was made right and not 1/2" thick.

Picture enlargement seems to be working now for me. There was one point, I think last Friday that I could enlarge some in one thread, but not some others. Today though I checked a thread I knew I couldn't enlarge pics in before and it worked fine.

Well from the images it looks to be fairly compact It's heads LOOK narrower than ford modular heads, and people put those engines in. With only a 3" stroke the deck should be fairly low as well. This all bodes well for fitment. If height is an issue, just get a cowl hood, no biggie. The oil pan looks funky but it's fairly rear-biased, which also bodes well for the swap. The engine is mostly-uncluttered at the back, but there looks to be some fuel lines back there that might need rerouting IF the pan necessitates putting the engine as far back as possible. All that said.... I personally wouldn't touch it. There's many other ways to get 500, or even 550hp. Most are cheaper, some are just as interesting to me. Most are much much much less complicated. With the BMW you'll most likely need a modified ECU due to the security system, and wiring will be fun fun fun! Personally, I like the sound of V10 engines, but I really don't like their inherent imbalance/vibration. Most V10 designs either have balance shafts, or deal with other limitations to get around the vibrations. And not to continue being the pessimist, but I doubt it'll actually weigh in close to 500 lbs. Even though it's all aluminum, it's still a DOHC 5 liter V10. The all aluminum 4.6 liter ford motors weight over 500 lbs, and there's no reason for this V10 to be lighter, but every reason to be heavier.To me that sounds like a longblock shipping weight, not a fully dressed weight ready to pour fluid in and run. Maybe I'm wrong, I hope so. BUT!!!! If you want to do it just to do it, don't let me stop you. Overall this is an interesting idea, and much cooler in my book than going mainstream with a turbo L motor, or pushrod V8. Dare to be different!

http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/63732-led-gauge-and-interior-lighting-comparisons/ http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/48724-gauge-light-led-experiment-wpics/ took 3 minutes on google man...

Wow tony, do you know something about compressors or something? It's almost as though you do this stuff for a living.... 28-2900 sounds a lot closer to what it should be for boost threshold for your setup, but I'd say you should be able to get it even lower than that with simple tweaking. Lower the backpressure with a 3" downpipe with 45 degree bends instead of the stock 90 and run 3" all the way back while you're at it. And make sure it's done with mandrel bends, not crush bent as a 3" crush bent is more like 2.5" mandrel bent. Run a straight through muffler. It's going to be loud. Deal with it, it's a damn turbo car, be proud of it. Then run as close to rich best torque as you can get, even a bit extra if you can down low off idle for WOT. Fight detonation with as much heat management as you do spark management. Detonation is directly related to heat in your air charge, be it from chamber temp, ambient temp, or compressor outlet temp. Get temps under control and detonation follows suit. This will allow more aggressive timing, and faster spool times. If you have your exhaust manifold out, port it. Port it. Port it. There's lots of excess meat in there that can be smoothed out and not just help overall flow, but direction of flow into the turbine. If you want to get fancy, add water/meth injection for WOT use. Not only will it massively bring down charge temps, but it will add volume, and thus mass, to your exhaust charge, exerting more force on the turbine wheel equating to faster spool. I've noticed switching to E85 can have as much as a 10-15% reduction in boost threshold for a given setup. Water/Meth can have similar results. Quick story... I took a ride in one of my best friends STI soon after converting to E85. We went for a spirited run and were taking a u-turn to head back. The light we were at was 2 lanes each direction and we'd been stopped at the light. He puts it in 1st, pulls away from the light casually getting up to about 2,500rpm at MOST, drops to 2nd, mashes the throttle, and snaps the clutch all in one quick smooth motion. The car almost INSTANTLY slid ALL FOUR WHEELS and we went sideways a full lane plus! Yes... a 2.5 liter made enough power with a stock STI turbo to move a 3500 pound load sideways, overcoming the traction of 4 wheels with limited slip, all while coming off of NO LOAD!!!! Turbo lag my arse. And that turbo isn't even ball bearing. It's single scroll. The only reason it can do as mentioned above is that it is pretty much DONE at 500hp, a mere 200hp per liter. The other benefactor is that it was E85. There's also a third, often overlooked, factor in this scenario... everything was STOCK, and therefor WELL MATCHED as a SYSTEM. Stock intercooler, stock exhaust manifold. He was running larger exhaust turbo-back too. I've often felt that a well prepped L28 with a T3 should be able to reach 1psi in 1st gear by 1750rpm. It just takes the right setup. And I also understand that a setup that does that probably won't reach over 350whp very easily. But who cares? When I finally get my S30 back on the road my goal in the first year is just 250whp with a 2300lb curb weight with a full tank. That's more than enough for my stock brake calipers and rotors and tiny 215 treads. Eventually I DO want to build a 500whp monster, but I also want to do it with a setup that nobody else I know has done. We'll see if I ever have the money for it though, and if I still want to once I do have the money.

He's very right. First time I saw this thread my first reaction was "15x10 doesn't fit" then I played around in my head and realized you didn't specify tire size, but rather rim size and figured out that there was a chance you cared more about rim width than tire width. There's nothing "wrong" with the stance crowd, hellaflush crowd, or what ever crowd you'd not like to be associated with, but for the most part that's just not us on this site. Most people here would ask questions like "How did you fit a 255 tread tire in the front of your S130?" Because that's who we are. The people that care about style or looks above performance are few and far between here. Thus, since we're so performance oriented, when someone asks if a rim fits we care more about teaching you to fish, not just giving you one. We want to make sure you understand how to measure clearances since rim clearance is JUST the beginning of wheel fitment. And by the way, a 9.5" rim is plenty to fill in the front with more tire than the well can handle. 9" works perfectly imo.

One of the best cams to use in a turbo setup is the early "a" cam, though I don't have first hand experience, just plenty of the gurus here saying so. My point isn't to go find that cam, but rather that using an OEM cam isn't going to kill you or matter all that much. The factory ECU won't run "as well" as it would on the factory cam, but who cares? Right now you just want the thing running, I get that. A NA cam isn't going to make such a huge difference you'll be in danger of breaking something. Just be careful before doing any WOT pulls. Get a wideband on it, even if you have to borrow one, to find out what it's doing under part throttle and low load, and slowly work up the throttle and load once you know it's safe. People have gotten 300+ hp out of the factory ECU, and I'd love to get more just to prove it can be done. Is it "optimum"? Hell no. But if you went back to the 80's nothing was optimum by today's standards.