Gollum

Hey itzgoten, you and your buddy with that blue S30 didn't happen to be at Infineon Raceway a year ago in June where you? I was attending the Sonoma Classic races and got pics of two really nice S30's that sure look AWFULLY similar.... If that was you I'm quite disappointed I didn't get a more detailed look at this WONDERFUL build of yours.

For the record though, you should note that very few LS motors ever have issues with reliability regarding the head, or anything else relating to the fact it's a pushrod design. And the LS motor CAN reach 300k like most other modern engines. The LS is not a SBC in the slightest, even when it comes to durability.

Why are people so eager to ditch the semi-trailing arm? There's been so many successful race cars in history using semi-trailing arms I often wonder if people just get caught up in what's "best" and just assume everything else just sucks. I understand that given the option we'd all have better suspension options in our cars, but the reality is that it simply costs too much and is too complicated for most of us to tackle. So I say learn to live with what you have, and learn to make it better.

And my headlights work a lot better too! Who would have thunk?

The thing is tony, it wasn't really a cut. It'd rev to 7k just fine. It'd rev to 7k in gear just fine too! It just didn't like it much. The power dropped off CONSIDERABLY over 4k. And I know peak power is only arond 5000,5500 anyways, as I've owned 5 of these dang cars now, but this one had been the most gutless up top. Now that I've fixed some of these electrical gremlins it's the STRONGEST up top NA L28E I've owned!

I agree with many here that doing a SBC, though very cool, isn't the wisest thing for you to do right now. The shop the car is at seems questionable, and they don't seem interested in working on your car. Get it home, whatever it takes, even if it's a $300 tow bill. Then find a used motor and throw it in. It'll cost you less than $300 in tools MAX and then you'll have your start to having what you need to work on a car. Sure it'll be a used motor, but if you hunt around long enough you should find one in good enough shape. For example my '81 burns oil, and I'm fairly certain it's the rings. Smokes pretty bad on decel. I got the car with 205k on the odometer and now it's got over 240k in less than 3 years. I have to put in a quart of oil about every 1500 miles or so, but I decel with the clutch in and watch my oil levels. It's amazing how long bad rings can last when you're taking care of the car. Oh, and this car was FREE. Not because I knew the owner or anything, he just needed it gone. FREE This is why most of us own datsuns, they're CHEAP, easy to work on, and FUN! So get on the cheap bandwagon and go hunting on craigslist. You'll be a better man to your car by knowing how to work on it. Find a cheap motor and see how it goes. If the new cheap motor burns just as much oil then you now have a spare motor to rebuild if you wish. Have a machine shop do all the hard work and assemble yourself.

I always find it ironic that someone can talk about doing custom suspension work and the be asking about motor mount kits in the same thread... People have tried to make S30 drift cars in the past. It can be done, but it's certainly not easy and the attempts I remember didn't listen to the advice given freely from those wiser around here. My advice would be to throw out all the things you thought you knew and listen to those around here that seem to know what they're talking about, because many of them have more race car experience in their toe nail than I have in my entire being.

When I had my cars on the same scale back to back, I was shell shocked as to how true Tony's statement here is. Mostly stripped '75 280Z with NO bumpers front or back, no interior, no spare tire, etc was less than 100 pounds lighter than my '81 with power steering, power windows, power mirrors, etc. The clincher is that my '81 is a slick top, and the '75 has a turbo, so that adds some weight, while the slick top '81 is fairly light compared to the common t-top cars. For years I've wanted to find a clean black on black '79 base model to through a SR into along with a subie R160. That'd just about be my dream S130 once suspension was well sorted. I'd keep the tires fairly conservative, don't let escalation get the best of me and keep it light. Could end up with a 2300 pound street car that's got some good pep to it.

You never DID specify what trans you switched to. T5 or Datsun 5 speed? If it's the T5 try a different fluid first, that's a cheap fix. Also make sure you've got enough in there to begin with. The good news about having the T5 is that just about any transmission shop can rebuild it and parts are readily available, unlike datsun tranny parts which can be a little more of a hassle.

+1,000,000,000,000 to the power of 9,999,999,999,999 Even short nose R200 prices are ridiculous by many standards. Cheaper than longnose R200 isn't saying much. Jon points out hard points to argue, and there's no real reason not to other than to "keep it nissan" which to me is like insisting on marrying a cousin, which will just lead to bad genes. Cross-company relations is a good and healthy thing.

So in my current '81 I knew I needed to replace the battery terminal clamps and was just lazily putting it off. Sometimes I'd have to fiddle with them quite a bit to get the car started, but I guess I'm just lazy about some things. So I finally buckled down and spent $5 on new clamps, and $7 on a terminal and clamp cleaner. A previous owner had replaced one of the clamps at one point, and when unraveling the mess of electrical tape I found that the old job hadn't ever been connected correctly and was just shoved together... Problem? There was enough length left to cut it back down bellow the old splice and attach the wire correctly to the new clamp. It all buttoned up nicely and when I went to start the car not only did the car start up great, but I noticed my clock worked... The clock hadn't worked at all since I've owned the car... So I started going through everything and noticed the blower motor for the heater worked great, unlike before it wouldn't stay on full blast... And other little things here and there seemed to be better as well. Upon taking the car for a drive I noticed that the engine was more responsive, and was much more willing to rev through it's upper range. Before it kinda ran out of gusto over 4,500 that I just attributed to old rings with low compression. The engine DOES have over 250k now. What's more, is I was normally getting around 350 miles on a tank in mixed driving if I let the tank get dangerously dry. I could reach maybe 400 tops if I was on a road trip. This tank will easily see 380 by my guess and that's mostly around town driving, with plenty of spirited fun with the new power up top... I'm betting by the looks of it I could reach 450 per tank highway like my first ZX I owned. So, it all just goes to show you how much good clean electricity means to your car and all of it's systems. It always amazes me how sometimes fixing the littlest things can yield such huge rewards.

Mind sharing a view details for the record? I'd like to reference this post in the future when this topic comes up. 1. What boost levels were you running? 2. What EFI system is the engine on? 3. Intercooler yes/no, size? 4. What fuel where you running? 5. What was your timing configuration and settings? 6. Any difference between max timing?

Didn't we just cover this topic??? Seems like we need to have a Smog Specific section or something. To the OP - Consider vortex generators? Might look dumb to some, but I bet they'd help at least partially for ANYONE having fume smell issues in the cabin. Combined with the logical longer tail pipe you should be able to get those gases under control. Now, if you're smelling the car in the drive through that's a whole different issue, and is partially part of life.

Yea, that's basically the advice I just gave you... But what I said regarding power and economy are still true. With a fully programmable unit like megasquirt you'll end up getting more power per PSI of boost and better economy off of boost. Either way, you'll want to tune your RRFPR on a dyno once you've gotten it into the ballpark. Last thing you want is to have it running a bit lean under boost and think it's fine, but then have a severe detonation meltdown first time you go racing on a hot day. And I personally believe that an aftermarket pump isn't necessarily a "requirement" for your goals. People have made 300 to the wheels on the stock pump.

For 250 wheel HP, you can certainly get away with the stock EFI setup, but just as long as you know that you'll be leaving some power on the table, and also leaving some economy on the table as well. I'd leave the turbo stock unless it's needing to be rebuilt, then you might as well find a T3/T4. The stock T3 will make all the way up to 300 wheel hp when forced with a decently sized intercooler and plenty of fuel. My recommendation though, is to leave the injector stock so that you can still get good economy, warm up, and low end driveability. Use a rising rate fuel pressure regulator, and don't buy one that's a fixed 1:1 ratio. Buy one that can be adjusted via adjustment washers, because you'll most likely want something more like 3:1. Running just 10psi can get you to your goal if everything is running right. It'll just be a matter of getting it on a dyno with a O2 sensor so you can tune the RRFPR for full boost conditions. Don't **** around with adjusting the air flow meter, or adding resistors to the coolant temp sensor. Those are good ways to just get everything out of whack and turn your EFI system into a crude digital carburettor. Both of those can be used as tools to fine tune, but for such modest power goals, I see no reason to go screwing something up. And also, if I recall correctly, the ECU for the L28ET has maps that go to 10psi stock and won't hit a brick wall, so to speak, with injector duty cycle, when going beyond 7psi. The main reason you'll be wanting to dyno tune with some adjustability is because prolonged duration of 10psi might require more fuel to keep the engine from detonating, and with modified exhaust on the stock T3 you might be hitting 10psi much sooner than the ECU would expect, which could cause some tuning issues. Overall it's a well designing map for it's day and can take some abuse. You just want to make sure it doesn't blow up. Also, just plain don't use the knock sensor. Pretty much all of us with the stock ECU just leave it unplugged.

I can see a lot of potential upsides, but the cost and time investment for fabrication is nothing to scoff at. I think the point that people are bringing up is that the rear suspension in a S30 is rarely a handling hindrance. You can fit a 245 in the rear just fine, and converting to disc brakes isn't difficult. And even with stock drum brakes people have put out some amazing lap times around the world in these cars... The biggest problem facing the rear area is the diff and stub axles holding huge torque numbers from a big V8. Obviously the R200 will hold the power, so that's not a issue to upgrade to, but LSD options are expensive. But frankly so is a corvette suspension setup. So for most of us, it just doesn't make a ton of sense.

Who ever said I did a brake stand? And comparing the S13 and S30, and both most likely modified from stock regarding suspension, in how well they hold a circle is like comparing cheese and moldy chicken in how they stick to the ceiling. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying that we really don't know what's in it, and to MY EYES (which could certainly be wrong) if he does have LSD it's not terribly great. But then again his whole rear suspension setup looks questionable from where I'm sitting.(says the guy who needs all new bushings still...)

Funny, I've laid down twin strips of rubber with my open R200....

Hmmm, I guess he's tapped out now....

Actually didn't look like he had a LSD to me, but that's just my opinion. Would be interesting to get some specs of the car from the builder.

Now that's just bass ackwards. Tire grip is one of the main limitations a car will ever have. It affects acceleration, braking, and cornering in huge ways. I will always shoot to use as wide of a tire my car will fit, and to buy the stickiest tire my wallet will afford. The only reason I'd give in to a smaller width would be because of cost, not because "tire technology has come so far" or similar arguments. I can see where people get that idea of thinking, but it just doesn't make sense for someone like me, and I'm sure many others.

Just bought two dell desktops for a client $500 and I got i5 dual core (not sandybridge, probably why it was on sale ) 6gb ddr3 750GB cd/dvd rom cd/dvd rw win 7 pro built in wifi (puke) Not even referb'ed, just $100 for being a going out model. I have to say that for the price I'm very impressed. It handles windows 7 flawlessly and didn't come with too much dell bloatware. With the money saved we bought some nice 23" Samsung monitors. Makes for quite an amazing desktop for the price. The irony is that the machine it was replacing at one location was only a 3 year old machine. It's a AMD dual core, with 2GB of DDR2, 320GB with vista. I'm going to wipe it and install windows 7 on it, and to most people it will perform almost identically to the brand new $500 machine. I think my charges are worth every penny for my clients. I have clients that have had me format their computers a good 3+ times, but you know what? It's still cheaper and more effective than buying new computers every few years and having to handle transferring your data yourself. The really sad thing, is that despite all the high end computers I've built, my machine at home is ancient. It's a AMD 3400 939 san diego core, with a whopping 1GB DDR333 low latency ram, a 4x80gb raid 0, running a X850XT PE (does anyone still remember that card?). But you know what? It still runs photoshop and solidworks fine and gets the job done. It still surfs the web faster than any new machine thanks to a knowledgeable owner that keeps his machine clean and lean.

You're so predictable sometimes. Something tells me though that these tires people are using on bonneville aren't exactly "over the counter" in the sense that most of us think of as "widely available. And are any of those tires DOT approved? I think it's quite obvious that ZR8ED is just pointing out the fact that the common performance tires have been slowly moving upward in rim size and now it's gotten nearly impossible to have OPTIONS with smaller rims, such as 14's and 15's unless you're sticking with fairly narrow tires. I have to admit, it's fairly frustrating feeling like we've been totally forgotten about by the tire manufactures, but I have to understand that it's just simple business. Modern cars with wide tires have used larger and larger rims. The market for wide tires in a 15" rim package is a diminishing market.

Really? This seems almost temporary ban worthy on this site. Very few production pushrod engines will reach much above 90% volumetric efficiency, and will most likely not hit 100hp liter (NA of course). But that being said their compact design means you can fit more cubes. Before I make my next statements, know that I love OHC V8 engines and I'm not a huge fan of GM in general. Compare the LS1 to the Ford Mod motor. Ford had to really pull out all the stops to get a full 5 liters out of their new Coyote V8, and it makes a bit over 400hp, how much exactly I don't think anyone is full certain, but it's in the low 400s most likely. The new Coyote is the lightest and most powerful NA DOHC V8 ford has ever produced in a production car. It's still quite large though, fairly high weight CG, and is around 500# like most of the other Mod motors. I think I remember reading in somewhere that Ford claims that it only gained like 30-40 pounds over the SOHC Mod motor, which is an impressive feat. Overall, this V8 is probably one of the most advanced V8's any joe shmo can go get their hands on and will be littering the streets everywhere. But then there's the LS1, or even lets say the LS2 (still older than the new coyote). The LS2 makes 400hp stock but is a massive 6 liter design. Amazingly though, longblock to longblock the LS2 is considerably more compact that the Ford Mod motors, and even weighs less! This is the real secret of pushrod designs. GM even has variable valve timing now. The main limitation with pushrod engines has always been, and will always be, high RPM valve train stability. It doesn't mean they can't be made to rev, as NASCAR shows otherwise (and note that I'm not a huge nascar fan either). It just has to be designed right to begin with. I have a feeling that most pushrod designs aren't high-rev designs because it's simply not needed. Why go for the wear inducing revs when you've got the displacement/package advantage working for you? Oh, and because of the increase displacement and the lower VE of the LS2 versus the coyote, the LS2 has more power under the curve and a fatter HP peak that shows up sooner in the RPM range. This is high evidence by the fact a simple playing with intake, exhaust, and cam combos can give you an extra 100hp on the LS2, but forces the numbers upwards in the RPM range, sacrificing some low end. The LS2 has lots to offer, and its hard to beat. So what's wrong with producing that?

An upside to the Civic VX to the CRX HF is that it makes way more power when needed. It's got an interesting vtec arrangement. The lower rpm range is almost identical to the cam profile in the CRX HF, while the upper range RPM profile is a clone from the standard non-vtec D series. This means if you keep it out of vtec you get great mpg and piss-poor power. But if you rev the sucker up it'll still perform like a base model hatch. Not bad really. But 2k doesn't buy you much when it comes to luxury and you certainly won't be buying anything relatively new that's worth owning. So if it were me I'd go for something that at least as some interesting merits. Since it sounds like you're not looking for 50+ mpg and would be happy with just "decent" gas mileage, there's tons of options you could look at. Why not a 4 cylinder fox mustang? They're almost free, and you can throw a turbo on it with ease and make decent power and still get good mpg. Sounds like a 2k project to me. 280ZX turbos seem to go for around 2k quite often all around the country, and they're usually in better shape than the S30's we're all buying... There's also the S12 200SX. These cars seem to be less valuable than Z cars even, regularly going for 1500 and under for perfectly running cars. Just not too many out there to be had, but interesting cars for sure. Mark 2 supra/celicas are neat. I'm not big on them, but I'd rock it. Mark 3 supras are a little more interesting in different ways, but a bit heavier and i'm not as big of a fan. They make me miss the celica connection keeping the chassis simple and to the point. Just about any Japanese truck, or subaru brat. All good options really. Plus then you have a truck to throw things in. 510 2 door, 4 door, or wagon. Take your pick. All awesome in their own right. Whatever you choose, mileage isn't just about the vehicle. It's about how it's setup and how it's driven. Sure a B16 powered honda will get 35mpg even when flogging the crap out of it. But the same car when setup right, with longer gears, hard tires, and driven nicely will yield mid 40's on the highway when kept under 70mph. So really it's just as much about the owner as it is the car. How the want the car to feel is everything. You can drive a medium displacement vehicle relatively fast everywhere and still get it's rated MPG, or you can drive a little tin can like a bat out of hell and get close to the same mpg. Well, that's my list. And I think people can see were my influences tend to land. I still love me some RWD.