Gollum

Actually that's a very good point I hadn't thought about John. And looking at the ratios they offer for the T5, they're a bit tighter than the nissan ratios anyways. And I know those things sure can take a beating.

And I think that in this case Jon, you're probably right. I think the common ZX 5 speed paired with one of the common 3.545 or higher rear diffs would be fine for almost any of the high strung street L engines out there. It's not until you get into competitive racing or have one of those 400+HP monster L engines that the stock tranny options just don't really cut it. And looking at Dan's dyno you can see he probably has nearly 200 ft/lbs anywhere once he puts his foot into it. That bottom curve of the dyno is recording before WOT I think. But looking at the HP curve of that motor, at a race track you wouldn't want to be under 4500 after shifts as there's a decent difference in torque there. Using the stock later ZX 5 speed IF you take that engine to the 7200 redline you land 2nd at 4450, which is about perfect, 2nd to 3rd lands at 5k, 3rd to 4th at 5500. Overall pretty good match. But I'd like to see a clean pull to 8k and see what the curve does. I bet it levels off a bit, and though he might only gain 15-30hp a shift from 8k lands 2nd at 4900 which is a possible 40hp disparity. That's enough to make a considerable difference. Now, the later gears would be more like a 20-30hp difference, but that's more of a HP difference than he might gain peak. This is why "area under the curve" is such a touchy topic as it can be so conditional to how the car will be used. If Dan's car had an ever so slightly milder cam he might loose as much as 10 peak hp, but really smooth the torque down low. Worth it? Totally depends. And the worst part is that in the end only the owner's opinion matters, because the customer is always right. People are allowed to want whatever they want. That's why they're free to have their own opinion in the matter. But overall, I'm with Jon. Build an engine/head capable of higher RPM and go for the aggressive cam. It sounds wicked, still will have plenty of torque for a tiny Z car, and really put you in your seat up top. Just don't expect to do much passing on the freeway in 5th unless you've got super short gears, or enjoy down shifting like all the rest of us gear heads love anyways.

Bah, the age old "hp vs torque" debate. I know Jon M probably knows all what I'm going to share, so nobody take this as me pitting him against the wall in a corner, just me sharing what I can while the topic's come up. HP, is impossible to DIRECTLY measure, but is in actuality directly CALCULATED. What I mean is that HP is just an EQUATION, not a force. HP is how much work can get done. RPM is how fast work load moves. Torque is the base multiple factor. Here's an analogy to put into your mind before I really get going here. Think of two huge wood stacks that need to get moved. There's two guys that are going to move their stacks. They both have identical wood stacks that need to go identical distances. One guy can move 10 pieces at a time and takes 60 seconds to move those 10 pieces from one place to the next. The second guy can only take 8 at a time, but only takes 45 seconds to move those 8. This means that the first guy can move 10 a minute, or 600 an hour. The second guy can move 10.4 a minute, or 624 an hour. In this analogy, the load that can be taken is like the torque abilities of an engine. This is what we use as the foundation of what work can be accomplished. With a measurement here of 0, no work would ever get done. It doesn't matter how fast a guy can run from one pile of wood to the next if he doesn't carry any wood with him. How fast they move that wood is like the RPM of an engine. The first guy taking 10 would move a lot more if he could just squeeze his time down a few seconds, or increase his RPM. Notice that this measurement is 100% time based. So in this analogy you can see that we can't physically see or measure how much work will get done, we have to CALCULATE it in order to figure out the outcome. This is what makes HP such an elusive object and so impossible to define with our senses. Our nerves/feelings will never be able to tell us what HP is. We can only feel force and perceive how fast something might be happening. So onto the real meat of the matter. The cold HARD fact is that if we only ever used engines at ONE RPM all the time (meaning a 100% continually variable transmission) the only thing that would matter would be PEAK HP, how much torque and RPM we can extract for one small moment of the RPM RANGE. But the reality is that no engine really gets to see these circumstances except maybe in industrial application like generators. But in cars it's just not a reality. In our actual reality we find that there is no "magic engine" that's perfect for all application. We have huge torque monster diesels for 18 wheelers, and we have little 3 cylinder metros that get 50mpg. But when it comes to racing.... It's all about AVERAGE USABLE HORSEPOWER (at least that's what I call it). Some people might also think of this as "area under the curve" which is much more vague I think. Average usable HP is the average of horsepower that you get when you cut to top of the HP curve on the dynograph like a knife scrapping the top of the mound of butter. What's the average you get when you take a given range of RPM. A motor that is very "peaky" as they can be called, is one that usually climbs HP until redline and is very linear. It's usually called "peaky" because you need to be at the top of the RPM range for the motor to be worth anything to you. As a general rule of thumb, high RPM motors tend to be more peaky simply for the sake that it's harder to get a cylinder head and valvetrain to breathe extremely well at the bottom and middle of the RPM range. There's many more factors, but this is a big one. Then we have "torquey" motors. What I find most comical about motors described as torque monsters is that many times they actually have very little torque for their displacement, and have very miserable horsepower for their size as well. But they're known as "powerful" because of how they "feel" and sometimes it can be a tough call. But now we'll get into my favorite motor comparison which I think many will find enlightening and hits the core of why this was brought up to begin with. Okay, two motors will be discussed here. The Ford pushrod 5.0, which was rated at 225hp, and the Honda F20C rated at 240HP. Going back to our wood stacker's analogy, the Honda motor here would be better, because it's getting more work done. It might have less torque, but it has RPM that makes up for it, meaning it has more peak HP. But in the real world it gets much more complicated than that. In reality those engines have to be behind transmissions, which transfer power to the ground. And a key in this to remember is that gears in transmissions are always RATIOS, so a gear change will never have a RPM difference, but a RATIO difference. This is why at redline going from one gear to the next might move your engine down 3,000 or more RPM, but yet you can make that same gear change at only 2,000 to begin with and it only drops a little bit. It's a ratio. Keep that in mind here. So make this a drag race with two identical cars and transmissions. Both cars take off. The 5.0 gets off the line better thanks to it's much higher torque threshold meaning it has a lot more HP down in the lower RPM range where the cars launched at. But this lead doesn't last forever, the 5.0 has to shift much sooner from 1st to 2nd while the honda keeps climbing, not even into it's power band yet really. Now the Honda is really coming alive as it nears redline, but then it has it shift into 2nd, and the 5.0 just walks past it since it's already back near it's peak HP, while the honda is way bellow. This story continues but the 5.0 will increase it's lead consistently as the race goes on. Now, why does the 5.0 win when it has less HP? Is it because it has more torque? No actually. Not at all. It's because it has a FLATTER HP curve that shows up at LOWER RPM. Let me explain this too, if both motors had JUST AS FLAT of HP curves, but one had double the peak RPM, meaning it's flat HP curve shows up twice as "late" into the powerband, it'd still be slower behind the same transmission. And here's a big key. That higher RPM motor will drop FARTHER down it's HP curve with every gear change, because it has more RPM to give up to the RATIO of the gear change. This mean it has more RPM to climb back up to it's HP curve again. Now, going back to our two cars with different engines. If we do this race again, but give the Honda a transmission with 6 gears that are very close to each other, and give the 5.0 a wide 4 speed, everything changes. As they come off the line they might actually be neck and neck this time, but as both cars shift around the same time, the honda will start to walk away, as it's very near it's MAX HP still, while the 5.0 dropped well bellow. So we start to see that the transmission you're going to use in the real world has JUST AS MUCH to do with everything as things like CAM selection, displacement choice, etc. You can choose to build a HIGH RPM MAX HP L series motor that might make 400hp, but if the transmission you're using drops you from 10k to 6.5k between shifts, you might very well be SLOWER than a L series with 300hp at 8k that will only drop to 6k at the same shift, because he'll have more HP at 6k than the higher RPM motor at 6.5k most likely. Why do you think the F20C in real life comes with a close ratio 6 speed? Look at the gear ratios in motorcycle engines. 6 or more gears and they're all ridiculously close. Shifting at lower RPM in those combos show almost now RPM drop, but then again those motors are barely moving at 3k. Those gear ratios would be a complete waste on a broad HP motor like the 5.0 But that's not all!!! Because let's not forget that you can take that 5.0 motor and completely build it for MAX HP and get it to 550 crank HP which takes loads of RPM and high end heads with detailed port work and such. This motor would no longer have a "flat" HP curve. The reason it had a "flat" hp curve to begin with was largely due to the fact it was making so little HP for it's displacement. This motor can easily make 200hp by 4k, so to peak it off at 225 with a redline of 6.5k gives you one fat HP curve. The new 550hp curve will probably only have 400hp at 5k. It's not like this motor will now magically make 500hp at 4k and then redline at 6.5k still. It's a completely different HP curve. What it comes down to is how much power you're extracting out of the limitations of the heads in your application. At your head's MAX flow condition, you've probably maximized the conditions for peak HP which means you're trying to get it to flow BEST in higher RPM so you have torque AND RPM on your side, but by doing this you've given up flow potential at lower RPM. This is true for ANY cylinder head. There's no magic bullet for this, except maybe removal of the valve entirely like through rotational valves that were banned from F1 not long ago. So I've said all this, just to get to the point of saying, choose wisely. Know what you want. A high strung L series might be a lot of fun, but it won't be much fun on the street without the right gears to go with it, which can be as expensive of an endeavor as the engine build itself. I believe this is why so many people just do a V8 conversion. It makes lots of torque with very little effort, and makes for a great street car with almost no work. And in the long run you're able to run a wider transmission with longer gears making the car easy to enjoy. Hope that helps some of the "torque" versus "HP" debate some people have had through the years. Personally, I like both, and prefer certain motor types for certain application.

Well the stock wastegate should be getting up to 7-8 psi, so you're down an entire 2 psi somehow. Either the wastegate has been modified or it's sticking open. The manifold you have is desirable to run mostly because it looks cleaner and deletes the EGR (exhaust gas recirculation). I've seen guys make plenty of power on them, so I'd just keep it. Seems like a lot of this engine's setup might be decent, but could also have been done by someone who knew just enough to get himself in trouble. First thing I'd do (if I were you) would be to download a 81-83 280ZX FSM and read up on the stuff pertaining to the turbo engine and do your best to understand how the factory system worked. Read all the stickies you can on this site, and with the knowledge gained go over your car with a fine toothed comb (figuratively) and find out what's working and what isn't. Make sure the things that were done were done RIGHT, otherwise you'll be hunting those problems either until they've forced you to find them or until you get so pissed off you either sell the engine or the car. I've noticed that many times the "problems" a car comes with are due to improper mechanical know-how from previous owners getting in the way.

Get a junkyard flat top block and use that while building a forged piston bottom end. Forged pistons are GOOD, I'm just saying many people end up with too agressive of a tune because the pistons will take it in the moment but then fail over time. Cast pistons break suddenly and overall hold heat very differently. This makes them better to tune with imo because they'll tell you when the piston is getting too hot or you're right at the detonation threshold.

SDS is perfectly fine. Garrett on here has put over 400 to the wheels with SDS. Higher compression doesn't actually change the curve much at all, but it will cause the engine to detonate a bit easier, but the flat tops with a P90 will have more quench. So in the long run this will mean you can run a DIFFERENT timing curve, which means you need programmable spark control. But regarding fuel control, you want to make sure to have GOOD injectors that are decently flow matched, and you want a GOOD EFI system with precise control. Even megasquirt is fine, despite it's very "budget" appeal. Stepping up to the 300ZX is hardly much of an "upgrade" imo unless you're going to add a programmable eprom, which after all that you might as well have MS. Detonation issues generally (not always) show the MOST in HIGH LOAD situations at LOWER rpm. F1 engines could run on pump gas just fine without detonation, because they're literally outrunning it. The combustion process is happening faster at higher RPM, making detonation less likely to show up. So if you run insanely high compression ratio, you're more likely going to have to back the timing out more in the 2k-6k range. If you've got a honda B engine redlining at 10k, you most likely will be running plenty of timing still at redline with 13:1 comp than 11:1. You also want to pull timing with boost, which will help you keeping from blowing up your engine. Timing also needs to get pulled in relation to intake air temperature too. Timing is by far the most complicated part of tuning as it needs to be completely tailored to THAT engine, not just "this engine" with "this head" with "these parts". You need to tune to THAT engine and find out what IT wants with it's timing. Distributors are prone to wandering over time, they can be irregular from unit to unit, etc. They're fine if you understand them and know how to "tune" them in the ways they can be, but they're much like carbs. Older car guys prefer them for their "simplicity" but the modern alternatives can be much better in some ways and almost essential in high performance applications that you still want to be livable on the street. They might still have carbs on top fuel dragsters, but those engines would never be livable on the street. You can make a 1500hp big block chevy that IS drivable on the street, thanks to modern fuel and timing control. If you're gonna throw old parts on a car, be ready to deal with rebuilding them. If you want to go fast with old parts, be prepared to know how to engineer them.

Are you sure those injectors are black? They might be brown, covered with a bit of dirt. Scratch one a bit with a flat head screw driver and then check the color with a flashlight on it. The turbo injectors are brown, which is probably what you have. The other common colors where green and white, both much smaller NA injectors. You might have a genuine turbo block that had flat tops put in. Or it could be someone took the NA block from 81-83 and put all the turbo bits on it for the same reason very many people on here do, more compression, more power, etc. Either way, unless you've got low compression during a compression test, or abnormal leakage with a leakdown test, I see a rebuild as a waste of time and money. But if you really want to, go ahead. As we say on hybridz, "there is no best". Therefor there is no "best" way for you to go about this, so take my advice as just that. Advice.

If you're going to run less than 300 whp on a stock EFI and dizzy then keep the flat tops. If you're going to run more than that, then switch to dish. But if you're going run a REAL, modern EFI system and use a more controllable spark trigger then just keep the flat tops. You'll still be well under 9:1, and though there's so much talk about this very issue, it's really not that big of a deal. We also need more info though, as it's already been said. 1.What color are the injectors? 2.What block code is on the block, does it say F54? 3.Pics of the intake please, I can tell you if it's a turbo one or not. 4.Valve cover hack the big, block style lettering that says turbo? Don't be so concerned with having a "L28ET". Any number of L engine combinations can make great turbo cars. So unless you're wanting something that's 100% "accurate" for concourse show reasons then just be concerned about how well what you have will work together. And in all honesty, flat tops with a P90 is a great combo that's been well proven. Keep a nissan head gasket, or felpro if you desire to risk it (I have), and pour your money into EFI and spark control and of course a wideband with laptop to tune it with. You can spend over $500 easily on even a "basic" rebuild. You can do it all yourself, but even the machine work alone will be a couple hundred bucks. You can spend much, much more to have the bottom built by a quality shop that does it all well. But all that being said, you can take a junkyard bottom end and throw a good head on it with your intake and exhaust parts and put over 400hp through it all day long if your tune is good. So forget rebuilding it and just put money into other stuff. I personally wouldn't even worry about building a bottom end until I was 110% sure of my tune and pushing the 600hp crank mark. At those levels the smallest tuning problem will show, where forged pistons will mask it. Get your tune RIGHT, not just mask your tuning issues with a strong bottom end.

Mike, best wishes for you and yours for the new year. Let it be a fresh start, not a continuation for unfortunate events.

Amen! I also wonder how much detonation issues people have stemmed from fuel or cooling issues, even if they're inherent to the design of the parts people were running. We all should know about the cooling issues of the L head, which can be numbed with more pressure, or extensive drilling and rerouting as seen in the sticky. But then we have fuel issues too. Many people are running carbs which aren't exactly known for wonderful atomization. Plus you're also having to balance them, otherwise you could have lean chambers which are more detonation prone while the others might be chocking rich. I'd love to see studies of the quality we've come to expect from people like Ron and Paul (like regarding the trigger wheel testing) in regards to fuel and timing control in high compression L engines and when ping is detected and under what circumstances. There's enough conflicting stories by trusted people that it makes me think there's more going on than we realize.

I was proof watching it last night before subjecting the wife to it (who loves the brit version). I'm gonna make her watch some this weekend, we'll see how it goes...

I'm not sure what turbo I'll eventually be going with, but I'll be sticking with the stock T3 for a while. Wouldn't mind seeing where this thing really does run out of breathe since the reports are so wildly all over the place. I guess $130 for one done locally isn't that bad either. I would just build it myself, but I don't have access to a welder, nor do I have any experience welding, yet. I know several people that do weld, just that most of them do it for a living for companies and don't have welders at home. I'll call around some local shops and see what people say. Thanks guys.

Yea, the fact it isn't stainless kinda makes it seem cheap, but then again for the price... I wonder how well it would hold up to jet hot coating or wrapping.

I'm not usually one to hunt around MSA's site, but I've been working on spreadsheets for my projects to try my best to organize and prioritize the funds coming in to make sure things get done, and done in the right order. So I've been doing a lot of shopping around, and I saw that MSA is now selling downpipes, and only for a single Benjamin. Considering that I want/need a wideband, I wanted to have a downpipe made anyways, but this looks almost too good to be true, which with MSA's reputation might be the case. So has anyone tried it? Is it worth the cash, or will I just be spending another hundred bucks just to make it usable? It looks like it can't be much worse to work with than the stock downpipe. Here's a link for those that haven't seen it, or know how to navigate to what I'm talking about: http://www.thezstore.com/page/TZS/PROD/PTC15/15-6037

I wouldn't put that in a Z. It'd throw off the perfect weight balance.

if you stop think bout it iz amazin how many peoples do that thing here

If you just build it yourself like everyone is saying, with a machine shop prepping the block and a specialist porting the head, I can see you reaching over 250whp and coming in under budget. But the key, as it's been stated, is being frugal. The crank and rods are out there, in the junkyards, waiting to be saved. The only big ticket item for the bottom end would be pistons, and you'll want them to be fairly lightweight. Something that hasn't been touched on, and the only real reason I'm posting, is that you mentioned going EFI. I'd advise against this for a budget build. The stock EFI intakes don't breathe well top of the RPM range, and a custom manifold or itb's combined with the price of injectors, ECU, ect just makes for a whole elephant of a problem to overcome with the budget. That can easily be a $1,000 decision. Just stick with carbs, even though there's plenty of reasons to hate them. They work, they're simple, easy to find, and affordable.

Fuuny so many have mentioned the UK show disliking american stuff. I find it kind of the opposite. If you read between the lines, they find it very easy to make fun of us, so they do, but the really do like a lot of our cars. Sure they have their gripes, but they do about every vehicle on the show. I bet the Italians think that top gear hates their cars too!

Bought my 75' from a kid that thought it "needed too much work to get running", and I drove it to work for the next 6 months straight. Had a nasty exhaust leak that turned out to be a head gasket. Pulled the head and swapped on a new one, just to find I did a real bang up job with the timing cover and now I've got a water leak. So it's still down, waiting for $10 worth of gaskets and a full spare day of my time.

i think the reason there isn't a full write up is because it's actually just that easy. The only tough part could be the wiring, and there IS a thread dedicated to JUST that. Step 1: Remove old engine/trans. Step 2: Install new engine/trans. Step 3: Wire up engine harness. Step 4: Convert ignition control as shown in other thread Step 5: Wire power for fuel pump with cutoff relay Step 6: Fire her up! Step 7: Have exhaust made at local muffler shop (I'd recommend getting a custom downpipe made too, simply because the stock downpipe is a pita to work around and sits too close to the TC rod) Done. It uses the same engine mounts, bolts to the same transmissions, it IS the same engine! I'd hardly call it an "engine swap". More of just a "turbo conversion". But that's not a bad thing! Good luck with the swap. Just take it nice and slow and you'll be fine. Don't get discouraged at the first thing you can't figure out. Simply looking at all the pictures around here you'll find the answers to most of your questions.

Yea, getting the front air dam from MSA and just removing the bumper will save a ton of weight, and it's all on the very front if the car! The rear bumper isn't quite as heavy, but still worth removing and then welding in some sheet metal to fill the gap. The Beta Motorsports hoods are a good product at a very reasonable price. You can get their fiberglass hood for under $400. That's not bad really. Most of the weight in the hatch is the glass, not the metal. Just bumpers and hood should drop you about 150#, maybe a touch more even. That's enough to take some serious bite off the car and add quite a bit all around. Also consider a lightweight flywheel with an upgraded clutch. Might not make the car "fast" but it'll be much more responsive and fun to drive. These cars suffer from dullness, not lack of power or too much weight. Even stock I've out cornered a lot of cars simply because I know the cars so well. They have enough power to get me on the freeway doing a good 80mph even on the shortest of on ramps around here. I guess this would be the order I'd tackle things if I where you: 1) Removed Bumpers 2) Rebuilt Brake calipers + SS brake lines + (new clutch cylinder & slave cylinder - if car is well worn) 3) Make sure the engine is running it's best, new plugs, wires, cap, rotor, etc 4) Wider rims + Tires (group buy Rotas!) 5) Aftermarket springs + decent struts 6) Flywheel & Clutch 7) New bushings ALL THE WAY AROUND 8) Fiberglass Hood And I'd say do these all separated by at least a few weeks, so you can really appreciate the difference each one has made.

There's a thread on here you can search for, (just search KA24) of a member with a KA24DET powered S30 that had an entire vehicle budget of $3k iirc. I think he had less than $2k in his entire motor and he was pushing like 350hp to the wheels I think. I know that's lots of wishy washy guesses, but just go find the thread for more info. Point being, he spent less than many on here do on rims and tires and had a motor/tranny combo that would tear it up! The really nice thing about the KA, is that it makes enough power stock in NA form to just worry about swapping it in to begin with, and then converting it to turbo down the road. (made more NET HP than any of the factory L series in Z cars) This allows you to spread out the costs a bit. Figure $1k for getting the motor/tranny purchased and put in (if you do it yourself) and another $1k or so converting it to turbo and tuning it. These motors can often be purchased well under $500 because of all the 240SX owners putting in SR motors.

Oh trust me, I'm probably more capable than most , even compared to people here, for "out smarting" the laws. This is mostly because I know the laws so well, which most people here in CA don't. Pulling a single injector would actually make you fail here in CA, our tests are that stringent. Adding "more fuel up top" causes more fuel to flow through every injector. Pulling one injector will cause that cylinder to just stop working, making it run on 5 cylinders. Our cars DID come with CATs here in CA, and not only are they required, but they have to be the right TYPE now, CA specific CATS. We can no longer legally buy aftermarket CATS, and have to find special OEM CATS which are more expensive. We also can't vary the timing more than 3 degrees from stock spec. We also have an EVAP test which pumps nitrogen into your gas tank to look for vapor leakage. If your system leaks a certain percentage of nitrogen, then you fail. If you change ANYTHING in the air/fuel delivery and they find it, you fail. This means even an unapproved air filter box. This means even a fuel rail, which won't actually change the air/fuel mixture. This means even if you hooked up a vacuum gauge to the intake manifold, they have the right to fail you. A few years ago it wasn't so bad, because little things the smog stations would let slide, because they knew it wasn't a big deal. But the state has gotten worse and worse about removing people's smog licenses for petty little things. They now TRACK cars that have failed in the past, and go to the stations that seem to be passing cars that failed previously, then conduct sting operations putting cars through that they know have "X" issues to see if they fail it or not. If they don't catch what's wrong, then they can have their license removed for life. The issue here is that it's made other smog stations scared, and they're all on their toes now, failing just about everything that seems suspicious. We might have a similar "test" to you guys up north, but our smog laws fill gigantic books with thousands of pages dedicated to it all. Even the state smog referees can't possibly know all the little laws, despite they being the exact people in charge of enforcing the laws nobody else can. Even they resort to looking things up constantly to verify the laws. The more I learn about our laws here, the more I'm convinced there's no place in the country as strict. BTW, I'd love to see one of your smog result papers to see what the requirements are in british columbia for a S130, because I know here in CA, even a brand new S130 right off the lot probably wouldn't pass the test without a CAT.

If this is your first engine swap, do the L28ET. But as much as I like the L series, you need to really love it in order to stick with it. They're NOT the easiest motor to work with, though if you DO get to know them inside and out they'll treat you right. But that being said, if 250whp is your goal, just about ANY motor will get you there with a turbo (which is what you want). Some other options you might want to consider: NISSAN: VG30ET - fits nicely, but custom manifolds are a must, or reworking the steering(ewww) KA24DET - Would make this power on very low levels of boost, and there's LOTS of part support for it now days. Almost as much displacement and better heads out of the box. VQ35DE - Makes your HP goal stock, without turbo. You could turbo down the road when it's not powerful enough anymore. One of the best factory 6 speeds out there. CA18ET - Kinda counter productive, but a neat little engine if you want something small displacement RB25DET - is overkill for your goals, but it's a neat motor that's a much better long term choice than the L series. SR20DET - Awesome little 4 banger. My personal 4 cylinder choice if the KA24DET isn't to your liking. Ford: Turbo Pinto OHC - This is the turbo 4 that came in mustangs, turbocoupes, and the amazing merkur XR4Ti. Wonderfully simple engine with plenty of potential Any V8 - As long as it's pushrod will fit nicely. Mazda: Miata Engine? - Would be the first I've seen and it makes a decent little turbo motor up to about 300 wheel hp. Toyota: 7MGTE - Wildly underrated by the import crowd. With the right prep the stock engine WILL take 500hp and much more when built. 1JZGTE - Makes plenty of power, and much cheaper from importers than the 2JZ. 2JZGTE - Overkill for your desires. Costs too much imo. Any of their V6 motors Honda: F20C anyone? Makes 240 out of the box, amazing 6 speed. Just add a turbo pushing a mere 5 psi and I bet you'll hit your power goals. GM: LS1 - Good choice LS2 - Good choice LS3 - Good choice, maybe a bit expensive for what the others cost LM7 - Good choice L31 - Good choice LQ4 - Good choice LQ9 - Good choice etc etc etc Dodge: Take your pick, if it's RWD it's probably capable of your goals. My point in all this is that you have the opportunity to be a little creative, and you just named three of the most common nissan engines that are kind of "buzz words" right now. They're the "cool" things to use by many of the young kiddos in the car hobby (I AM a kiddo btw so don't take offence). So either do the L series swap, since you already have parts of it, or serious think about your options. Because there sure are a lot of them.

Somehow I knew a post like this was coming, despite my cautions. Oh well.