Gollum

Holy Hell Batman!!1!!1!! I love you guys. First, lets piss off all the purists on one side of the fence, then we'll turn around and crap on the purists on the other side!!! The funniest part is that from where I'm sitting it all kinda looks like it was an accident. As far as I can tell you didn't choose the SR, you just happened to have it (which I fully support). And now you just happened to get a LS1, so voila! I love it, I love it, I love it.

So the engine was idling really poorly, and I thought it was my bad throttle position switch wiring. Well I got that figured out, but it was still barely idling. Turns out it was a bad Head Temp Sensor. Boooo Now that I finally got her up to temp she decided to show off a few small coolant leaks. I don't have time today, but I'll have to get under there and find out where they are. One is definitely from the lower radiator hose, no biggie, it's the other that concerns me. It might be from the front cover, which would mean tearing the front end apart again. Please God don't let that be the case. No videos yet, I know. Sorry.

Test the cylinder head temp sensor (just left and up from the knock sensor) Could be a lot of things if you still have a 100% factory intake manifold with everything on it. Why do you think so many of us delete all that crap? My L28ET warms up just fine in the "brisk" 30 degree mornings on the coldest days here in the bay area. If the head temp sensor checks out ok, then I'd start checking everything in the cold start system.

So she runs again!!! Yay! I'd been getting so impatient to get this thing on the road again that I never pulled the exhaust manifold off to replace the gasket, and as semi-expected it leaks a little. Mostly on #6 on the bottom right edge. Not terrible. It now makes a lowly ruff instead of the nasty HISS HISS the head gasket leak made. This is much more manageable than before, and like I said, somewhat expected. I also have a nissan OEM gasket sitting in my garage that only saw an initial startup on my previous head, I might try to reuse that and see if it seals. I need to get a stud kit before I do any of this though. I'm not pulling this manifold off just to deal with those freakin' bolts. No video feed yet. Will get some later next week.

Did a little more today. Now I just need to put the radiator in, fill 'er up, and connect all the wires. Expect some video footage next week.

Been WAY too long since I've posted. Sorry guys. I'm now engaged and insanely busy. Plus it was cold and wet (compared to what it normally is around here at least) and I just hadn't been rushing much to get this thing on the road. Now that the weather has been teasing us with a few weeks of beautiful weather it's time to get crackin again. New cylinder head is ON!!! Yay. Take the advice of me AND the famous big-phil. Do not, DO NOT treat your wedge/brace/tool/whatever you want to call it, for your timing chain tensioner as though it's casual. This is NOT a casual part of a head swap, and if that damn tensioner pops out your are NOT in for a world of fun. You are in for a world of aggravating, cussing, pissing, and moaning of a time. I would have had this car on the road probably MONTHS ago if it hadn't of been for that damn tensioner. So I'm now running a P90 with solid lifters and the automatic cam from 81' . This cam has more duration on the exhaust (opens degrees earlier for more overlap, and closes 6 degrees later). This cam also has .5 CM more valve lift on the exhaust over the 82' camshafts, and .9 CM over the 83' cams. The intake has .4 CM more valve lift than the 83' cam. I'm sure not leaking exhaust out the side of the head gasket will make the biggest power difference though. What's left to put on? Intake Manifold Intake Piping Radiator Add Coolant Tighten Alternator Wire up EFI Done!!!

I wasn't actually even comparing spec sheets from each, but rather what people are actually getting, accounting for the difference in gallon quantities. But I'm not going to derail one of the best threads on the forum, so I'll just leave it at that.

I've never heard of any factory car that didn't have more to squeeze out. They factor in a safety net. They also tune the economy side to be "clean", not so much of a "gas sipper". A good comparison is how the smart car with the same HP in the UK gets 20% more mpg. Lets also not forget that just the deletion of a CAT would probably require modifying the stock tune to not throw codes.

I'd heard of the long screwdriver trick before, and it actually worked quite well. My only issue is that to isolate the tick noise and be certain on some of them, I had to pull the plug off to hear the noise disappear. So all my injectors were opening at least. That proved that I had good electrical connection, so either it's clogged somewhere in the rail or the injector, or it's not the injectors. I thought about the off/on nature of the way the car was stumbling, and couldn't imagine it being a clog/debris in the system so my next thought was the fuel pressure regulator. Luckily I had a spare lying around attached to my spare fuel rail, so I pulled it off and low and behold it's now running better than it ever has since I got it. It now skirts 2nd no issue, which it only did before on heavily damp pavement. Still has uneven exhaust pulses at idle, but it idles smooth. The pulsing is either badly worn valvetrain wanting a valve adjustment (quite likely) or the fact I have two cylinders bellow minimum compression spec (also can't be helping). Now we'll see if I can get 400 miles to the tank!

Suspicions Confirmed!!! So the manifold side of the turbo studs are M10 with a 1.50 thread pitch, while the outside of the studs are M10 with a 1.25 thread pitch. You can easily replace these with an exhaust stud with that's a M10 with 1.50 on both sides, it'll just be a tad longer. Now hopefully this thread will be able to help someone else down the road.

So I've got arc at the plug wires, and I tested the injector plugs with a probe and they seem fine. So either I've got contact issues between the injector and injector plug, or I've got bad injectors... Based upon the stumbling nature of how it's been driving, I think it's badly sticking injectors. I have spares, but man that's a headache I didn't want to deal with. I'll update this once I've done the work of replacing the rear injectors.

Hmm, so I got home tonight, after having cleaned the plugs off right before posting earlier, and starting tinkering. So #5 and #6 aren't combusting. I pulled the injector plugs on them and the idle didn't change a bit. It was dark, and late, and for some reason this caused me to not think about pulling the plug wires to see if they'd arc. I'm pretty sure they would. So it must be some issue with my injectors, or injector wiring. Damn. The worst? I have to drive to oakland first thing tomorrow morning, on 4 at best cylinders dragging at least 2 behind.

So my L28E in the daily never runs superb, but it was free and I don't feel like messing with it often. The other day it started running bad, as though it was only running on 4 or 5 cylinders, and this was pronounced when cold. Once hot it was better, but not a ton. This morning while it was cold I fiddled with the AFM and noticed it didn't like how rich it was running. Leaned it out, and the idle went from almost dying to a good 1100. Then once it's hot it's running slightly lean (probably my fault, I've been purposely running it lean in the colder weather, and now it's warm again). Idle when hot goes up about 100-150rpm when I enrich it a bit. So today I noticed that this tank of gas is flying by, which I figured as hinted by the terrible gassy smell... Usually I'm at around 300 miles at 1/8, this tank I'm at 210! So I pulled my spark plugs since I know I have a slight oil leak, thinking I had some fouled plugs that were oil saturated. Nope, here's what I found. (I took a pic but it's on a phone, hopefully I can post it later) #1-3 were completely white on the tip insulation part and white on the upper portion of the arm. #4-6 were black, but they didn't look oil fouled. They just looked carbon fouled. So 1-3 look too lean/hot and 4-6 look cold. Can anyone guess if I'm having a fuel or ignition problem? My injector wiring is normally kinda iffy, and the engine was running on 5 cylinders when I got it, and cleaning up the contacts fixed that. You can also fiddle with some of my injector wiring and cause injectors to cut out without disconnecting them (scary, I know). Could spotty injectors be my issue here? If so, why does leaning out my cold mixture help? Unrelated maybe? Or maybe worn cap/rotor not helping an old engine with bad oil pressure and compression? Just seems weird for it to be all of the sudden like this. Last tank I got 350 miles out of, I'll be lucky to see 250 out of this one.

Now you've gotten me curious though. So, you're REALLY have ONLY modified the EFI and Turbo? You running 400 estimated crank, or wheel HP? Got a dyno sheet? I'd like to see the curve you're running. I'm not trying to say you're lying, I want to believe you. I just want to hear the setup you used to get there since so many take different approaches. Personally, I wouldn't push the 400hp mark without an intercooler unless I was using water or meth injection. I also know that just the right cam combined with a well designed intake will make worlds of difference on these engines, which is a worthwhile investment. Oh, and since the OP hasn't posted in this thread, he didn't go with a turbo ford swap. Nor did he go with a L28ET. I offered him one of my spare L28ET engines and he didn't take it. I won't share his secret on what he did go with though.

Your post says no but your ad says yes. In all seriousness though, this event dare I say, grieves me. I hope this is all just to put more focus into other projects. I know how it can get with project after project piled on. Sometimes things just get left alone and you have to realize the reality of the situation.

That's what it looks like to me too. 1.25 on the turbo side of the stud, and 1.5 on the manifold side of the stud. I'll have a definitive answer soon. Thanks for the input guys.

So, does nobody really have an answer for this? We've got quite the handful of high powered turbo L series around here, and a multitude of lightly modded turbo L cars. Well, I'm gonna bet on my guess of M10 x 1.5 thread. I'll go pick up a pair tomorrow and report back when I get the time to test them out.

Yea, it's been a while. I'm talking about the output of the exhaust manifold, the studs that the turbo bolts up to.

So I need some new studs on my turbo manifold and I took the nut with me to verify the size and thread pitch, which was M10 x 1.25. Bought four studs and went on my merry way, just to find out that they don't fit in the manifold... Grrr. The only thing I can think of is that the OEM studs are different pitch on the manifold side than the turbo side. I'm assuming they're a M10 x 1.50 Does anyone know for certain to save me another trip to the parts store? I'd just pull a stud from my other head/manifold sitting in the garage but I think it'd take explosives and 5' long vice grips. Oh, and if you hadn't guessed, this is on a L28ET. Stock manifold, stock turbo.

Holy Crap, you just made me angry about that all over again. Man I miss that game.

That just shows how foolish I've been. My post per day has gone down a lot in recent years.

noob I must admit though, I got a good chuckle reading your epic display of Z-poetic-ness.

I don't think the mustang and Z have the same input shaft... though the casing bellhousing back is a standard T5 on the 280ZX turbo. So, if you HAD a T5 from the nissan you could rebuild it with any T5's case and gears as long as you keep the input shaft.

Werd And what IS with all this rain lately? Holy crap! Oh... umm topic. I saw a sweet E30 today that belongs to a friend of a friend. I tried swaying him to the dark side of the force.

If you were to buy a 93+ LS1 Camaro donor car you'll have EVERYTHING required to satisfy those pesky CA smog laws, and smog refs. You can PM me if you're interested in finding out the niddy griddy details of how the CA laws work.