Gollum

Yea, unique is a hard thing to come by around here... Let's name just few engines off the top of my head that HAVE been done. SBC SBF SBM BBC BBF BBM 1UZFE VH45DE VG30DE VQ35DE Jag V12 Viper V10 SR20DE(T) RB20,25,26DE(tt) 1JZ,2JZGTE 7MGTE F20C Ford Lima Pinto Buick V6 BMW I6 Should I keep going? Some of these I only know of one or two off the top of my head, but that means there's probably a couple more out there that I don't know of. To be fair, I DO see more LSX swaps in person than L28ET, but maybe that's the area I'm in. It's getting to the point to where I'd personally say that they're being done about equally, but just a few years ago that was definitely not the case. It's taken the LSx donors come down in cost to make it a reality while the donors for the L28ET has been cheap for a while now. To be truly unique you have to think outside the box, not just go with a box you've never heard of.

Must have been because it's parts weren't as "all things equal" as a 1UZFE when it comes to metallurgy... I have to ask though, any clue as to the bend con rods? That takes some serious work!

Used STI??? Epic smog passability too. I've driven them stock, and modified and they're worlds of fun. They kinda suck in the MPG battle though. Overall I like the S2k, I'm just thinking outside the box for ya. The main thing I don't like about the S2k is that I've usually felt they were overpriced for what they are, but they've been steadily dropping finally. They don't get great MPG for the power level and displacement of a Honda motor, and there's just nowhere to go with the engine without getting radical. If I was gonna buy a honda there's many other options I'd go with. If I wanted a RWD roadster I'd just get a Miata and be done with it. BUT, as the prices drop... they ARE tempting. And all that critical stuff said, they're great cars and I don't bash anyone too bad for buying one. I'd gladly drive one every day. I'd also keep an eye out for cars others have built too. You don't always have to buy a "stock" car. A well done completely project car that's already been proven through a decent amount of road time can be a wonderful buy too. All the fun with none of the work. But again, legality of some of the cars you see is definitely a question worth asking.

I've not owned a V8 S30, but I have driven a few and hopefully my input will suffice for the time being. It really comes down to goals in my mind. You have to define your goals and also application. Where are you going to drive it? Street, track? Racing Class? If you're just taking it to HPDE type events where rules aren't a huge deal then you then just have to deal with what you want out of it. 250hp, 300hp, 400hp, 500hp? What size tire would you like to run? You can fit a 245 easily enough under the stock rear flares, and I can't remember the size, but look up clifton, he fit HUGE tires under the stock well without tubing the rear. I want to say it was like 265 or even 275. Maybe my memory is failing me. If you're willing to add flares, there's the 17x9.5 group buy rota's which will tuck a 285 under the rear easily enough, just need a good 2" of flare or so. My personal preference for a mainly street car is for the L28ET. I like the dynamics of a turbo motor. People complain about lag of turbo cars, but it's never been an issue for me. As long as you're in the right gear (which you would need to be in a NA car anyways) then lag is never a race breaker. But when you pull your foot out of it the engine calms down and becomes very manageable. In that sense I actually love turbo lag. You can get way better MPG from a turbo versus a supercharger because there's less parasitic loss combined with a larger window to drive in without boost interaction. And the stock T3 still spools crazy fast. I can be lugging around at 25mph in a school zone in 4th gear (3.55 rear diff) and when I exit the school zone just a quick second of throttle stab and i'm in boost and going 45mph... And I think i'm under 2rpm in that scenario. A V8 Z car is a whole different beast. They're fun fun fun fun fun fun fun. No doubt. They're a handful, but they really grow on you. I've driven sub 12 second muscle cars and they weren't anything like a V8 Z. A Z car has a totally different driving feel, and as such I don't mind it being so tail happy with the loud pedal. A V8 is the logical option if you want big HP and want to keep costs down. I really want to build a 500+hp L28ET, but I also know it's going to cost me as much as buying a brand new Ford Coyote V8, and I'll be doing 90% of the work myself. You can buy a used LSX for much less, add a cam and be done. You can buy a SBC crate motor and be done with a much simpler setup (takes what, 3 wires to get one running in carb application?). I didn't think a whole lot of the L motors when I first got into them, but they've really grown on me. I grew up around hondas and mustangs and have had my hands deep working on all types of engines and despite all the things I really don't like about the L motors they're horribly addictive. Oh, and if you're wanting more than 300hp, your transmission options for the L motor get much more complicated than V8 choices. There's options, they're just not super easy and available. All that said, I think 300hp is a really sweet spot for the S30 chassis. It's going to act like a monster with how light it is, and you can still fit enough tire under there to make it work well enough. I know you're quite torque conscious, but in the end all torque represents is HP curve. HP is what moves a car, and "high torque" is just synonymous with "broad power curve". I love torque, I'll always prefer one option over the other if the HP are the same but torque is higher on one motor. That said I also understand it's about curve length too and all that jazz. Point to all this being, is that the L28ET is going to have nearly the same, if not more, torque for a given HP range than a V8, it's just not going to come on so instantly when you hit the pedal. At 300hp, you'll have around 350lbs. It's going to be able to light the tires for sure. But again, going back to the fact that it's not all as bad as you think, check out darius's car. Supercharged LT1 with GOBS of power. You'll see in this first video he can romp on it to make the car step out, but he controls it wonderfully. In the second video you'll see him racing a R1 bike, and he's not leaving tire smoke at all, very controlled. And that setup is probably MUCH harder to control than just a stock LS2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3DlpSE1jsE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DqfNAGFCVU&feature=related Darius also didn't do nearly as much as could have been done to keep it a controllable setup. He could have had much more tire. He could have added a wing. He had hardly any aero work for that matter. I don't think he went crazy on suspension, etc.

I happen to know of someone (who might be on this very board) who owns a E36 M3 with a LSX who gets high 20's mpg (27-28 iirc) and has somewhere around $10k in the car.... That's 5k under your budget. So how's 4 seats, comfy ride, great handling and driving feel, 6 liters, decent mpg, and under budget sound? That's my choice right there. It's not as light as a S2k, but it's still definitely a drivers car and "feels" right, which matters more to me than raw data. Plus, in raw data it'll put most cars in it's weight class to shame in cornering prowess. There's a reason the BMW 3 series regularly makes top choice in class in all the car mags. Putting a LSX in it just makes it that much better.

I'm not sure how many of us here have actually worked on Ferrari engines, but someone I grew up around owned a Ferrari-specific shop for years in the bay area and was well respected in that field. They're NOT cheap to buy parts for. Simple rebuild kits cost more than what most of us have in our entire engines, and in some cases cars! I'd sooner build a flat plane crank domestic V8 that I know I can find cheap cores for than buy a used Ferrari engine that needed work. Oh, and the very nature of Ferrari is against you. Concrete repair information isn't easy to find, and it all stems from the fact that Ferrari doesn't like to give out information needlessly. You won't find FSM's for them and if you do find ANYTHING it probably won't be nearly as in-depth as you want. Most info will be community based, and few Ferrari owners actually work on their own, so even that information pool is shallow.

I really don't see the problem with that. Unless a perfectly good GTR was scrapped. If it'd been wrecked then that's ok, same goes if they bought the drivetrain from nissan directly, which is what I assume they did. You have to admit, even if it wasn't done with pure performance in mind, it looks to be a very well done, clean job. This doesn't look like some glam rock hack job done on a cable television show which seems to be all too common these days. It seems to be a high profile project done for publicity by a well equipped shop (both in tools and talent). Would I pay to do all that work? No. Would I do all that work myself? No. Does that make it any less cool? Not really to me. Putting a busa motor in a smart car is grade-A cool to me, and this project seems has some of the same fragrance about it, just slightly different overall package. Some people don't like the juke, but even less of us like the smart car. But doing something totally over the top like this is just plain full of win. The main thing I don't like about the GTR is that it's just plain physically large. Problem solved BTW, I never assumed you though differently than all I've said John, I'm just using your comment as a launching pad for what I think about it. All in good fun I hope.

Kind of on the back of what Mack had to share, I'd make this a really black and white answer (which is very abnormal for me) and say just run the highest compression combo you can with what you have. Then just cam appropriately. If you're not looking for the absolute most power everywhere (which you seem not to be) and just want to throw something together then it shouldn't be that hard. From what I can tell, the E31 head, on a L28 rotating assembly with flat top pistons should be over 10:1 compression. Match that with a loppy cam (which is half the run anyways right?) and voila, you have a fun street motor that'll sound mean and go quite a bit better than stock. The key then to getting 150whp or 250whp will be a completely different topic which doesn't seem to be on topic in this thread. That's why my answer is kinda black and white. You want a fun street motor? Compression and cam. Looks like the only part you need to buy other than rebuild necessities would be a cam. Simple call to isky solves that... Then if you want you can mess around with cleaning up the cambers, port matching, carb tuning tuning and tuning, etc. My bet is that as long as something wasn't done catastrophically wrong then you'll be very happy right out of the box.

So add some boost! I'd seen this thread before and thought it was well covered, but since you brought it back up... I'll second the whole "good management" issue. Don't rely on stock EFI, even for a second. And if it's not the turbo dizzy then go with a trigger wheel too. You'll want good control of timing since you need to retard timing under boost, and overall timing curve will need to be tuned to THAT block, head, and cam combo. There's NO factory tune I'd trust for that setup, and I wouldn't BEGIN to think about getting a factory tune to work for sake of cost.

Some much need Datsun data this thread lacks, and not for the lack of knowledgeable people in this thread. My bet is that they just don't want to spoon-feed, which I don't mind at all. The 3.9 that LS powered S30 you saw at the track was probable an open ended diff. Major problem when you're pushing 400+lbs through how much tire that guy had. If the suspension wasn't sorted, then that's a HUGE deal in a V8 powered S30 Z car (S30 = '69-'78 USDM Z car typically). Putting a V8 in can shift the weight balance a TON. There's a million things that could be done to help that car corner better and put it's power down. Sounds like he probably also could have fixed the issue with a simple wing. Those three things (diff, wing, suspension/chassis tuning) could have really transformed that car. As I'm sure we all know, it takes more than just power to go fast on a road course/auto x and you can't blow your budget wad on your engine alone. There's plenty of people putting down crazy track times in the S30 with a V8. It's not impossible at all, and it only takes the same work it takes to setup any car, just different specifics. Regarding running 12's in a stock L28ET powered S30, totally doable. Really all the guy needed was a manual boost controller ($5-30) and a rising rate fuel pressure regulator ($100-200). Done. Done. And Done. At 2400 pounds 250 wheel HP should get you into mid 12's easy. That'll only take about 12-15psi from what I've seen in several occasions. Add an intercooler for safety, especially if you're not running race fuel or if it's a warmer climate. As long as you're running it pig rich up top with the RRFPR then detonation shouldn't be too big of a deal with race gas. I wouldn't run more than 10psi on the street with less than premium without an intercooler. Why don't more people do it? Big thing is that it's not what these cars are known for. In most racing circles the 240Z is seen by MOST people as a V8 swap recipient. Even I got into these cars 10 years ago because of a V8 swapped one I saw in person. Today I own a L28ET powered S30, but I'd been just as happy with a V8 in mine. The next reason it's not as common is lack of information. People like an easy to fallow guide, and that's plain for the V8 swaps. The L28ET swap is usually done by people that already know what they're doing and what they want, because it's less popular, so the documentation just isn't done as often. The lack of information also extends into performance value. Most of us that have taken the time know that we can get 300hp at the flick of a finger with these motors, yet we get people on this forum constantly asking "how can I get 300hp out of a L28ET?".... Seems like many people on this forum are asking themselves (not publically on this forum of course) "how do I get 600hp out of my motor?" We have people here who've made that and more to the wheels, yet few people know because you have to be looking for this information to find it. It's not just out for all motor heads to find out. Then there's cost. Some can get a longblock for $300-500. Others search locally for months without finding a longblock for less than $1,000, and at that price I'd just go with a V8. The prices are highly volatile due to location of the country, who has it and what they know about it, and what fanboys in the area have done to the local market. I sold my last motor for $500, which was cheap in my area but I was selling it to a friend. Now, onto weight. The S130 ('79-'83 280ZX) weight fluctuated a lot, as Tony pointed out. My '81 Slick top (BIG weight deal) comes in at 2700 with full interior, bumpers, AC, etc. When I weighed my '75 280Z it came in at 2460. It had no bumpers, no carpet, no stereo, no intercooler, no AC, semi-rust lightened. I have no doubt that trim for trim the S130 isn't heavier than the S30. The main issue comparing is that most S130's came WAY more trimmed than most S30's. The T-Tops add quite a bit and the entire top is heavily reinforced to boot (big square crush channel running the length of the roof and an extra later of metal in the side pillars). Many more of them had power windows. They had bumpers more similar to the later 280Z bumpers. Find a slick top S130 and remove the bumpers and other stuff that most S30's don't have and you'll have a 2400-2600 pound vehicle depending on how you're spec'ing it out, weather to compare a minimal bumper and feature 240Z, or a full featured late 280Z. Getting to the point of the fact you know someone running 15's in a S130, well I think a bit of that could be driver, or an issue with the setup. Auto or manual? Good clutch? Shifts? Even at a mid-range S130 weight of 2850 and what I've seen those motors produce stock it should be knocking on the door of 14's easily enough with a clean run. Either it's a fairly heavy model with a bone stock engine, or it's lost a few horses from various issues, which is completely possible. Find out what the car with driver really weights. Unless the car is 3200 pounds with the drive then there's something either wrong with the driver, or the car. If it's just weight (which is entirely possible) and the engine is running well, then this owner could be in 13's with minimal mods. There's no excuse not to do some of these mods unless the owner just doesn't care (which if he's going to the track I'd imagine he cares.) 1. Boost controller (keep it under 10psi without other mods) 2. Add intercooler (can run up to 12psi now but will be dangerously lean up top) 3. RRFPR (if it's an adjustable ratio then tune it on a dyno and you can now run it up to 15psi in most cases) You've now got everything you need to run at least 275whp. Reaching the 300hp mark is doable with just these engine parts, but will take careful attention to details. You'll need more pump most likely, and to make sure you're running quality gas and that your fuel pressure tune is stable and accurate. But it's doable. To make the 300hp easier to hit, you'll want to add larger injectors and a tuneable ECU. Ditch the dizzy for something crank triggered and you're even better off. A better turbo would also be a good idea as the stock T3 will be WAY out of efficiency and will be working against you. 300hp is probably actually more than it's rated to support. A T3/T4 hybrid will work well, and you'll see quite a few people that switch to the Holset turbos. Both of which won't break the bank if it's not a special ball bearing variant. All this is a lot more attention to details and harder to find concrete info on than building a 300hp SBC, SBF, LSX, or anything else over 4 liters really. I think that's why we're not seeing the L28ET catch on faster. But it HAS made leaps and bounds just in the 7 years I've been on this website. Hopefully that answers some questions and gives some insights that might not have been readily represented earlier.

Quite the bomb Mike. I won't pretend to say I understand or can even imagine. If you were a good friend of mine, I guess the question I'd ask is, "What does this change about who you are?" Identity is a big deal to me, and people generally don't realize that what they think about themselves makes a huge difference in how they tackle like and how genuinely satisfied they are with where they're at. So to me, knowing who your parents are and knowing what they bring to who you are is very important. All that said, I think as much as this all sucks to be dealing with now, you might end up finding some good in it at the end. You seem like a very solid self motivated man mike, and it seems you're the rare solid rock in your family. By however means, you've done a good job at figuring out who you want to be and have worked hard at becoming it. Unlike many you're not sitting around waiting for someone else to help you get to where you want to go. Usually when I see people like you, who seem to have their head on much straighter than those in the rest of their family, it's because they've done a great job of pulling the best out of those they grew up around and kept a teachable mentality. The man that raised you sounds like a great man, and it sounds like you've taken a lot of good out of him and put him into your life. If you find out your birth father (if it IS a different man) was a lazy bum then it will just help you appreciate the man that raised you. If he IS a decent guy, then I'm positive you'll find a way to take some positive influence from him and be able to draw on that in your own life. And as far as I'm concerned, this is one of the few forums a guy can be safe bringing something like this up without getting hammered too hard and get real heart felt opinion that don't cut down. I know we're not all perfect around here, but I think our cutout of the internet is far and away better than most. Thanks for being real Mike.

That might very well not be a great grounding spot. There's a good reason you generally ground the battery directly to the starter bolt, with a secondary connection to the chassis. A starter can draw in excess of 250amps all by it's lonesome self. That's some serious draw. So when you connect the battery ground to one point midway through the chassis, and the starter at another spot, event several feet away, you're asking a LOT of current to flow through your chassis. Remember, grounds are just as important for completing a circuit as the positives. You can also just use some jumper cables temporarily to see if there's any difference.

You can manage to get away with a slightly different turbo, but changing to even a slightly different cam will throw your tune off by a good margin. You've obviously put a decent amount of work into this car, I'd suggest just going megasquirt at this point. Considering that you should have a wideband ANYWAYS, MS will only add an extra $500 or so to your budget. Probably the best $500 you could ever spend. In all honesty one of the main reasons my car isn't on the road right now is because fighting stock EFI issues has me weary, so I'm waiting for the funds to do it right. In the meantime I'm doing what I can to rewire my chassis from scratch. There ARE people who've made amazing power with the stock EFI. There's also quite of a few of those people that switched to megasquirt eventually and marked notable improvements in just about EVERY aspect. The engine will operate smoother, crisper throttle response, more power through the range, better economy, etc. It's really hard to justify using the OEM ECU unless you're running a close to OEM setup and that's all you expect to get out of it.

But Tony, what people don't know just makes them smarter! Watch out now... Stir the water too much and people's myth complexes might start to crack.

And how's the battery grounded to the chassis? Same bolt? If not I highly recommend it. The chassis in these 30+ year old cars aren't the greatest grounds as I'm battling this fact myself. Run a good sized cable directly from the battery to the starter for the negative and ground it where convenient to the chassis. Then run a separate ground buss from the battery for everything else. Overall I'm curious to see this car now. Not even using a passenger seat? 100% win in my book. I don't have a dash yet I didn't consider ditching the passenger seat.

What ARE you using for ground? I'm up in vacaville and extremely busy. If you can't find someone to help you send me a PM and I'll see if I can work something out.

Cygnusx1 ~ You know the cranks are rare when people are just stealing the whole car!!! Does anyone here agree that we could severely use a "My Setup" thread in this forum section? Too many people come on with these huge shopping lists wanting to spend way more money than needed to reach their goals. If we just had organized data people could see what to really expect from certain setups.

I already know all of these things, is that not apparent? More parts doesn't equal failure rate! What I CAN agree with, which you might be mis-communicating well is that more parts WILL equal a higher total WEAR rate. A good example of this is that when you need to lap the valves you'll most likely have twice as many to lap. This doesn't equal failure, it equals wear which is completely different. When the rings or bearings are falling out of spec you'll have twice as many to replace if there's twice as many total. This doesn't make the engine twice as likely to break down on you. The modern LS motors are extremely high tech, and I think they're the best pushrod V8 every made. That said I've seen plenty of them fail, some of which for very stupid reasons. The point of why I'm arguing with you, is that what actually breaks in an engine, leading to total engine failure, is RARELY related to an engine having more or less parts. What we're really arguing about more than anything else is valve design and count. Are they directly or indirectly actuated? Are there 2, 3, or 4 per cylinder. How many times has anyone here actually seen an engine fail due to a valve, valve spring, rocker, camshaft, etc? The ONLY times I've seen engines fail BECAUSE of anything valve related is when a PUSHROD engines decides to throw a pushrod through the valve cover. I've NEVER seen a OHC engine lose contact between cam and valve due to a bad rocker or such. I love pushrod motors, I'm not trying to knock them at all. I'm simply stating that the "all other factors being equal" are a way bigger factor than the number of parts. Also, though I don't have the data I'm willing to bet the LSx series motors undergo similar testing to the ford coyote motors. I have no doubt that a LSx could reach 500+k miles as well. I think the required maintenance will be very different than the coyote, but it's still THAT engine's requirements to keep correct tolerances.

See that's what I'm saying though, you're just not seeing the whole picture because you're looking at it with a telescope, not a microscope. If "all things were equal" then the wear factor and stress would be the same. If you have twice as many parts under equal strain/load then the load on each part would be half. If you have twice as many parts and all is equal, then the wear on each part would be half as well, meaning tolerance would go out half as fast on each part, except the whole would be the same still, in order to make all things equal. Just because a 1UZFE has twice as many cylinders as a 4AGE doesn't mean it's going to break parts in half the time. Does it mean it has more parts to fail? Yes. But you also have to remember that the output per liter usually isn't as high in big displacement motors and thus they're subject to less stress as a standalone engine, thus tend to be able to reach very high durability/low failure rates. Motorcycle engines are lucky to go 1/5th most car engines ever will, and that's being generous. You can't argue an engine put under more weight/load strain will make it break sooner because that's exactly opposite in motorcycles. Motorcycles wear fast because they're reaching extreme operating conditions requiring exacting tolerances to run properly and subjecting parts to fairly high stress/load. An example of this would be the piston rings which are asked to reach very high mean piston speeds, all while operating in a large temperature range. To go further into this muddy topic, just look into some of the testing processes companies use for new engines. The #1 casting prototype block for the new Ford Coyote 5.0 V8 reached well over a million miles without failure. That motor wasn't babied either. They're subjected to absurd loads that not just wouldn't happen in real life, but down right couldn't. Going full load at full RPM for hours on end, changing physical temps from hotter than any desert to colder than the arctic. They'll literally pour ice water into the cooling system to make sure the block and heads can withstand the radical temperature changes. I'd not hesitate to state that if properly maintained, that permitting there weren't electrical deterioration factors, or other time based deterioration factors like road vibration causing connections to crack and such, these new Coyote V8's would last a 750k miles between rebuilds, maybe more. So many times common failures are due to things outside of what goes on inside of an engine. So often an engine can receive a bad rep because of their turbo's tendency to burn oil and owners that don't know how to check oil levels... You simply can't argue to me that more parts = less reliability. You also can't argue to me that old tech = less reliability. I've lived in both camps and I've seen what breaks motors on every side of the pool. More than 9 times out of 10, nay, I'd say 99 times out of 100 an engine failure can be traced back to how the vehicle was maintained, NOT how it was ENGINEERED!!! P.S. Chevy advertised the Bel Air Taxi Cabs to go 500k between engine overhauls... I've never met anyone who go that out of a typical SBC. The beauty of automotive engineering is in the contrast.

Number of parts doesn't change failure rate. VE doesn't change failure rate. I've seen complicated hondas go 300k with nothing but routine maintenance. I've also seen pushrod V8s go well past 300k, which many people don't see as possible. I think aspects like tolerance, combined tolerance, part wear, part friction, and subjected load are far more important factors to reliability than how many valves an engine has.

So for those that might not be aware, I love having social car gatherings and throw a meet every year for Z cars. We always seem to talk and talk about doing more events and being more connected but it rarely seems to happen. I even started a good group once that didn't seem to go anywhere. Well I'm partnering with Wild About Cars, who co-sponsored my last BBQ event, to start a Datsun club where we can all find out about the latest events in our area and also take advantage of some other aspects of community which might not be so easily done on an internet forum. This is not a place to replace HybridZ, I repeat, this isn't a forum or trying to replace a forum. It's geared towards events and technical assistance. We're trying to have FSMs and other tech resources for members to have access to for convenience, and hopefully we'll also have a help section in which people can ask for advice. First and foremost though, we're hoping to build community and get events rolling. That's whats important and other things will hopefully flow naturally from that. The best part is that Wild About Cars, or WAC is offering this for free to all of us. As the club grows we can also appoint admins over various areas and allow people to start their own events. I'm personally looking forward to the possibility to this leading to regular track days as well as regular meet 'n greets. Who's this for? I'm expecting all sorts of Datsun lovers (and nissan too if the badge happens to say that instead) to join and take part. I personally will never limit who can or can't show up to my meets, but for club purposes I think just the Datsun heading should fit for most of us. This isn't about exclusivity, it's about inclusiveness. We're all car people and we all will be welcome. I personally will be driving my Z cars to events, and hopefully someday be driving other datsuns to the events. I also know that we'll have a few members that aren't even nissan/datsun owners that will be showing up from time to time. That's okay too as long as they play nice. So feel free to join in and have a ball. There isn't a ton of stuff up so far, but that will be changing swiftly as I get the calender populated and such. In the mean time feel free to upload some pics of your ride/project and let us know what you're all about. West Coast Datsuns

I'm all about getting local events together and have been putting on a yearly BBQ for NorCal people in general, not just bay area. Usually my meets are more in the northern east bay area. I'd love to see more regular Datsun groups do well.

Irony of irony is that my S30 doesn't look a whole lot better, but would never get the attention of that car for the simple fact that I don't have obscenely stretched tire on wide rims with absurd camber and no ground clearance. I think Yuta still has a dash, I win.

Actually running cylinder pressure readings on dyno's would be wonderful. Unfortunately that's more rare than scientifically done testing on dynos... I can appreciate HowlerMonkey's opinion as he has experience, but he also didn't specify very much information to go with his statement and of all the other times this has come up I still haven't heart hard data. I'm not saying he's wrong, I'm just saying we don't have the full picture of the scenario in which he gained his data regarding detonation and pistons falling apart. We don't know: HP Achieved Ignition Timing Ignition Map Data Ignition Logs to show signal scatter Wideband Data to couple to ignition logs Engine prep info before assembly Turbo used Intercooler setup used ECU used etc etc etc It doesn't take very much research to find out that, again, IDEAL, timing (meaning if detonation doesn't happen, where the best power starts) has very little to do with VE at all. It has much more to do with chamber shape, mixture quality, mixture ratios, chamber temps, etc. Just because an engine has poor VE and only makes 60hp per liter, doesn't mean it's going to need 40 degrees of advance, or will detonate easily. Chevy's fast burn economy heads for their SBC engines can see similar total ignition timings (even with detonation free race gas) similar to very efficient honda engines that are making nearly double the HP/Liter. By very nature, a higher compression L motor will have a LOWER max power timing because it has a smaller chamber. If you add quench (which flat tops on a P90 will) you'll have an even lower still max power timing setting. So again, you can't just use the same timing curve for both setups and go + or - on the dizzy and expect great results. Just because some people haven't had as many detonation issues with high compression L motors doesn't mean they were making less power at all. It just means that most likely their timing setup was better matched to the fuel and engine combo they had. There's WAY too many factors that will effect timing to make any blanket statements about timing in my opinion. I've seen enough well seasoned racers with cars down as low as the 7's who tune their engines by reading plugs that will tell you that "don't look for max timing, look for max power timing" to know that the assumptions made by most car guys is a bit narrow minded. If you wanna play with HP, you gotta learn the dynamics if you expect your engine to hold together. In my experience, if you're having detonation issues, I'd say you need to get out an IR temp sensor and figure out where your AFR's are during detonation events. Make sure you don't have hot spot issues, and make sure you're running plenty of fuel where you're detonating. Also take your injectors out and have them flow benched, you might have a weak injector causing issues. That's all as likely more likely to me than battling compression factors.