Gollum

I think a remote pump sounds more logical than dealing with a shorter water pump snout that still would need to run off the same belt system. Changing the depth of the water pump pulley means changing the crank pulley as well, which results in rethinking the alternator pulley along with it. That's a decent headache at this point imo.

Yea, I'd run two small fans. If you can't get them to fit in back, then mount them in the front as pushers.

I'm not completely sure those LS1 weights are accurate. To me that looks like a weight with ALL off the stuff you probably won't use bolted to the engine (power steering, AC, etc). That also might be with flywheel and clutch. The reason I say that is because from what I've read the bare weight of an all aluminum LS engine is closer to 400-420 pounds, which isn't far off from the stock L series engine which is much taller and longer. I think the SR is a perfectly good motor option, just like BRAAP I want to make sure you're doing it for the right FACTS regarding the other engine options. The T56 tranny also doesn't cost $2500 if you're comparing to a used SR tranny. I found a LS2 + T56 for rustrocket's project (you can find it in the project section of this site) for well under $2,000. That's darn close to the cost of a SR20DET. But if you're REALLY concerned about weight, then I've got a few more options you should consider. VG30ET. Insanely light iron block motor. Weight is as low as a V8, but even farther back than a 4 cylinder. The engine without turbo weighs almost the same as an all aluminum 4 cylinder. The big upside is that it's a tiny little package that will probably have a CG about half as high as other inline engines. You can look at some dynos of well known setups here: http://www.redz31.net/turbofaq/dyno.graphs.html You'll see that all the guys around the 400hp mark are running stock bottom ends, and stock heads in most cases. You can EASILY reach your 400 wheel hp mark with nothing more than a better turbo, intercooler, fuel, and EPROM tuning. Oh, and you'll have 3.0 liters, giving you a lot more around town torque, and a beefier HP range. That's one reason I love displacement. Not for the added torque, but for the larger HP curve you generally get, as you can make a V8 rev to 7k still, but it starts it's torque curve so much earlier than a smaller displacement engine. Also, I would just like to mention that building a 3.1 stroker generally isn't all that cheap. And my last comment, is that weather or not these cars handle well VERY VERY rarely has anything to do with the engine, but the work put into the suspension and chassis setup. You can't expect even the lightest engine to MAKE your car handle well. Hope that was a helpful post for you.

I meant moral right, not legal right. You're putting someone down for a poor choice they made. He caused no accident himself. To me you might as well be ridiculing him for his engine choice. Edit: I'm done in this thread btw. I have no reason to risk banning myself from this wonderful site for trying to help promote a friendly atmosphere this site is known for.

As far as I know he traded parts in order to get his car on the road. I mention illegal citizens because they're a huge percentage of the people driving without licenses, and without insurance. And he might have been making reckless decisions, but that doesn't mean he was driving recklessly. He wasn't weaving traffic at 100 miles an hour. He wasn't drifting on public streets. He wasn't egging houses. He was minding his own business following the traffic laws. Again, I'm NOT saying what he was doing isn't stupid. I'm saying that a lot of you are playing judge from the other side of the computer. By the state of california law he's looking at paying fines for driving without insurance, but by the same state's laws he's entitled to a FAIR trial to find out who WAS at fault so THAT person can pay the damages the vehicles and persons involved, REGARDLESS of whether or not they have insurance. If lamberson is found NOT at fault at the OTHER person's insurance ends up paying HIM for HIS knee injury and car damagers I'd expect some of you people to at least be somewhat happy for him. What he was doing was wrong, that gives us no right to ridicule him.

I do have sympathy for victims Dan, I hope you understand that. I was just hoping to point out that in many cases it's the person driving without insurance who cause the accident, and from what we can tell that's not the case here (obviously hard to judge sitting here at the computer). I guess my point is that if it WAS his fault, he WILL be held accountable. Unfortunately people die on the roads of america every day from insured and uninsured motorists. I have no patience for reckless drivers of any sort for that very reason.

Some of you guys are being a little too harsh in my opinion. In states that don't require drivers to have insurance the rates are on average lower than in states that do require it. Lamberson wasn't an illegal citizen driving without a license and without insurance causing accidents. He's not out there trying to screw anyone over. He's not out there being reckless. He only recently had gotten his car running again and obviously wanted to enjoy driving it a little before he had the money to put it back on his insurance. Sure he did something we wouldn't call smart. But he also was only doing something that is considered legal in a good portion of the rest of the country. We're not talking about smoking weed, something you need to leave the country for to do 100% legally. We're talking about a decision that puts himself at jeopardy if anything were to happen, and something did. He's trying to make things right again, give him some space to breathe.

I posted some of this info in the "exotic sounding V8 thread" and nobody seems to be interested, so I'll share some of my findings here in case you're interested paul. The Honda VFR crankshafts are a 180 degree design. These engines are 781cc and produce around 105HP. They have a 72mm bore with a 48mm stroke. They're a DOHC head designed with directly actuated valves. The engines run a 11.6:1 compression ratio. Max power is rated at 10,500. I'm unsure of true redline. They use a block integrated transmission (6 speed). Their firing pattern (I haven't found how they're numbered for sure yet) is 1,3,2,4. In a 180 degree crank format this 90 degree V4 engine can't create a left right left right firing patter, so it's just a matter of knowing which side is odds, which is even. The spacing between fires is 180-270-180-90. Cylinder #1 would be at 0, and after that last 90 degree spacing would be cylinder #1 again. So obviously, if you were to take two of these engines, and place the two cylinders that fire 90 degrees apart at the 270 degree spacing of the opposite engine you'd get an even 90 degree firing pattern, and a perfect L-R-L-R-L-R-L-R firing sequence. From what I can tell the firing pattern would be 1,6,3,8,5,2,7,4. This is different than the pattern I listed in the other thread, that's because I didn't have the firing order in my hands before, and have thus revised my pattern. The rear engine would be 360 degrees when the front engine would be at 0. Pretty simple. The hard part is figuring out the transmission. Not mating one to the engine, that actually doesn't seem that far out. It's the removing/disabling the stock transmission. The transmission carries vital oil lines that would need to be sorted out, and disengaging the transmission without disengaging the oil drive gear might prove challenging. Seems like a much smaller headache and wallet ache to deal with than the custom Chevy/Ford/You name it V8 crankshaft. Guys with superchargers are getting over 150 wheel HP with these engines, and most don't dare turbocharge due to the scary proposition of having turbo lag in a corner. I bet that turbocharging and using a secondary alcohol fuel system for knock suppression, like methanol, could produce some VERY impressive power numbers with two combined engines. It probably won't reach the 500hp ability of the LS engine paul is looking at building (or more hp even?) but it's a SUPER light engine combo and would provide some serious street car potential. The beauty I see in this option over the american V8 engines is that it's already set up to rev to the moon and sustain it. These engines can be had for very cheap (02-07 engines go for $500-900 on ebay) and once engineered the swap could be replicated with ease, and for little cost.

It can't possibly be as stained as mine....

Well, considering that the iron block DOHC 4.6 engines have been known to breach the 900whp threshold on stock internals I'd say there's a good change that a boosted V10 could see some insane numbers at 6.8 liters. Just because we haven't seen it done doesn't mean it can't. The modular engines are extremely... modular? What tends to be the main differences from one to the next is how well the heads flow depending on the valve number and the application it was designed for. The Cobra heads flow well, and many people think it's mostly the cam application combined with the right intake and exhaust combo to match it. The iron blocks are obviously stronger than the aluminum blocks, but that puts the V10 in your favor if you're going boosted. All that said, the guys making those 900+ numbers on cobra engines didn't do it on the cheap. Fuel, EFI, Throttle Body, Sensors, Supercharger, etc all require attention in modification. I doubt the V10 would be any different.

http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=148608& not a z, but a good example of a tube chassis conversion http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=134849& http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=146110& http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=147404& There's more, I'm just not finding them right now. Look up stony's car, and blueovalz.

That cobra is OLD news now, and isn't likely to see product, at least looking anything like that concept. They DID put one of their V10 engines into a Mustang Cobra Mule car before the new GT500 came out, but they decided to just stick with the 5.4 V8 for now. The mule car wasn't to really weigh the idea as much as to just show that it could be done. The mule car was the older 99-04 body style btw. Their V10 has heads that SHOULD flow really well, but the stroke of those engines would have insanely high piston speed if you wanted to rev it up to 7k, somewhat limiting the extreme HP potential of the engine. The main reasons I could see it being done though is for massive torque thanks to huge displacement, combined with a OHC design. Some people just don't like pushrods, though if you want displacement they're the way to go IMO. Another REALLY GOOD REASON to do this swap is the sound. The Ford V10 with the right exhaust sounds downright exotic to me, like in a Mercedes black kinda way. The problem you'll find in most videos on youtube of the V10 is that they're on trucks running huge pipes over large lengths. Shorten up the length and keep the diameters realistic and they sound gorgeous. The main reason NOT to do it is size. The 4.6 DOHC is a TIGHT fit into a Z car. Too tight for comfort for most people I think. The 5.4 liter blocks gain acceptable rod/stroke ratios by increasing the deck height by quite a bit, making the overall engine much larger. To do this swap and keep the clearances good enough that you can actually work on the engine, I think you'd have to tube chassis the front end of the car, and I can count the people I've seen do that on here on my two hands. I'm sure there's more, but you get my point, they're the minority of the extremists that frequent this site. I have to say I find them intriguing engines to say the least, and would love to see someone do the swap RIGHT.

The R200 mount would be functional for you, and fairly easy to make. That's my vote. The shifter isn't necessarily needed and you might not end up liking a super short throw like that on a daily driver. If you were going to do something that intense I might not recommend it on the L series tranny anyways, since their syncros aren't the strongest.

so I'd been thinking two V6 engines to make a V12 sound on a budget, but in order to mirror the crank you'd need one engine to be turned around 180 degrees, which isn't doable on a realistic budget. Might as well go with a BMW or Merc V12 at that point. It could be done with two motors stacked in front of each other but the firing pattern won't be like a V12, and If I'm right I don't think you'll end up with a balanced L to R exhaust pulses. But wait, there's more! How about two Honda VFR800 engines stacked in front of each other? I've already figured out what the firing pattern would be too. It's not identical to what a ferrari flat plane crank V8 would be, but it's still a balanced L-R design. With how tiny these engines are you'd have plenty of room for custom equal length headers in our Z cars. On ebay they seem to sell for a good bit under the 1k range, so 2k for two wouldn't be too bad! The main downfall is that with the displacement you're limited on power without force induction, but that'd be the most badarse sounding 200hp EVER. For those curious, to get the even firing pattern you'd just rotate the rear engine 360 degrees. If you number the new V8 with odd on the left, 1 and 2 in the front then you get this pattern - 1-6-3-4-5-2-7-8. Perfect fires every 90 degrees. With custom cams I don't see why you couldn't mimic a ferrari pattern which might lead to less engine against engine vibration.

My point about the S13 though is that these rims only have 4.5" of backspacing, where as you guys can use upwards of 6" iirc, or something much higher than us from what I've seen. I'd be willing to be there's a lot more 240SX guys out there that'd be down for a group buy than Z guys. You should just organize your own group buy with the CORRECT offset utilizing as much inwards tire as you can to keep your geometry as close to stock as possible (aka correct).

You know, maybe we've been over thinking this from the beginning. I know we're all stuck on an exotic sounding V8 engine, but a lot of the "exotic" sound that we're all familiar with come from V12 and V10 engines, with a lot more fires per rev giving them amazing sound capabilities. Anyone see a ferrari crank lately? It's just a V6 crank from front to back, then the second half is just a mirror image of it. So the middle of the engine is rotating together, and the far outsides are rotating together. ...wouldn't be hard to fit TWO of some V6 engines into a Z... And would be a lot cheaper than a custom crank. And would be a lot of displacement. And would be doable by the every day fabricator.

Now I feel like an idiot.... 10 minutes later I finally find them via google. I'd already been looking for like an hour. Here's the specs copied from a post on nicoclub

Hey, you gave me rep and it didn't change. And I DO TO have reputation added in the past. I've got 5 little messages saying so, though it looks like two of them are neutral, and aren't green or red. Some of them are some OLD POSTS!!! Holy crap.

Yes, that WAS what the thread was about. But I figured hijacking it for the sake of adding more detail to this otherwise rarely useful thread might add some meaning to our forum lives. Oh, and I've been around HOW LONG and nobody's given me any rep?! How rude you jerks! Wait... that's not going to help...

Ok, so I can't seem to find good dimensions anywhere of the SOHC VG engine, and would like them so I could keep working on one of my crackpot pipedream ideas that'll probably never happen. If nobody happens to have them I guess I'll just wait until I find another one in the junkyard or something, then measure that one. I specifically would really like the LENGTH of the motor, from the farthest back part of the engine or head (which ever sticks out more) to the furthest most forward part of block/heads. What am I dreaming up? Don't ask. But there are a few on here that might have a clue.

I haven't seen any serious updates to this thread in a while. Braap, you slackin'? Too bust with putting that V8 in a bimmer? You're such a lost cause. The more I talk about this subject to fellow car enthusiasts, the more I really want to see it happen. I have a feeling that with the right poster child a flat plane crank from a company like SCAT would actually sell enough for it to be viable for them to make it. It might not be the right time in the market right now, but that's all the more reason to get the details worked out now, so that if anyone really IS going to do it, then maybe by chance it'll be running and well sorted by the time the market turns around. Then a company like scat would be able see the interest for such a product and make a run of it. I know most of us would be doing this for the "cool" factor, but it's also not without performance merit. For people wanting to run a 9,000+ small block push rod V8, this might be one of the most streetable options realistically. If you're going to spend all that money on a rotating mass to rev that high you might as well invest in the lightest crankshaft possible that's a reasonable price. Shoot, even some quick searching on summit shows that a mopar sprint car billet crank is $5k!!! Considering some of the decent quotes that's been shown on these boards, I'd rather spend 2-3k on a rough crank from someone like scat, and then have it knife edged, lightened, balanced, etc from a competent machine shop for another couple thousand. If there's enough market for that $5k crank on summit, then there's GOT to be a decent market for a drop in flat plane crank. There just needs to be enough documentation that the average joe isn't scared to approach it.

You know, this thread still completely fails to explain the bars under your post count, which is how I found this thread while SEARCHING for my answer. There was a thread talking about it, but there was no explanation, and it was from quite a while ago now. I'm kinda sad that I've been a member here so long, even before those little bars were added, yet I still have no clue what they relate to. They're rather funny sometimes though.

Oh come on guys, there's no reason to get heated about any of this (I know it's not there yet, I'm just saying I don't want it to go there). We can ALL agree that this is an INTERESTING project to say the least, and if well documented might even be ATTAINABLE to some degree for others that have access to a machine shop, and willing to take the time to fabricate the parts needed. The KA swap, though extremely impressive, I think scares a lot of people and in reality isn't practical for anyone other than someone who works at a machine shop and has extensive experience and knowledge of cyinder heads, oiling and cooling systems. I for one, will be more than happy to subscribe to this thread and wait with bated breath. Not that I'd truly consider doing it, but I find it so amazing to tell my car buddies "hey, guess what some guy with way too much time did to a Z!" I just love showing off now nuts some Z car guys can get and support any addiction this heavy to the car hobby.

The fact the other guy is obviously lying is a good sign. If that can be proved in any way in an official government document then that bodes well in your case. If his insurance company really wants to go after you though, they still have the fact you were driving uninsured, which is blatantly illegal in CA. Hopefully you get some insurance soon though. In fact, since you don't even NEED a car in order to have insurance, I'd suggest you get insurance NOW. It would look good for a judge to see that you've "turned a new leaf" and are wanting to be responsible, which you should be. If you get enough $$$ for the parts maybe you can get yourself into another Z still. There's always $500 specials floating around here and there. Shoot, look at my 75'. At $1,100 I think it's the best purchase I've ever made in my life.

I think it looks geat, just paint the side to get rid of the black. And shave the rear, or make a custom piece to eliminate it to look smoother like the front.