Gollum

Brake clearance on these rims is really good. Unless your caliper protrudes WAY out from the mounting surface you should be OK. The RB design has a thick piece of casting that helps it attain it's offset, while it was made sure that the RBR would not have that piece, to save weight. So if you're really that worried about it I'd go with the RB. I still don't understand why we have so many S13 people interested in these rims. You guys can run MUCH more postive offset than we can, giving you MANY more rim options.

Hey everyone, is the group buy still going?!?! I'm just kidding. A friend of mine with a SBC seen in this youtube vid - just picked up a set of rims from Kim this morning. He got the group buy price! He went with staggered widths and still has no idea what tire size he's going to run, and still has no flares. It'll be a little while before there's pics. So he got the rims for $700 I believe, plus Kim said that since he came and picked them up he'd give him some extras and threw in some hats, stickers, and even lug nuts! Wow. I think amazingly enough if I were to be buying these rims NEXT year I might STILL be able to get the discount by the looks of things. When this group buy started the market wasn't so bad and we all figured the prices would shoot up once the group buy was over, but I think the marginal movement of the market right now is helping them keep the prices down. Get them while they're hot!

That would probably require tube chassis conversion of the front end I'd bet. That also means you might as well design some custom suspension setup using some more common and available parts, along with a custom steering setup. Not impossible, and such has been done before, several times actually. It's just a dang do da lot of work. There's been lots of discussion about AWD Z cars on these boards. Still not enough done with enough documentation and information to really figure out how beneficial it is, and at what point to things become more of a show piece instead of a race piece. If it were me (which it's not) I'd convert to the Z32 trans. It fits well enough in the S30 chassis and has proven extremely reliably with even the insane numbers some of the twin turbo guys are pushing out, and in heavier cars at that.

Funny this is the newest thread I could find with the information I was looking for. To me is seems the 81 system would be more stable, but also seems more expensive to produce and more likely to die from extremely long service time since it's more exposed to the elements. I'm actually thinking of converting to the 81 CAS if I find out I can use the EFI system I want to with it, which is unlikely, but hopeful. But hey, if I have it on hand, why not switch? I'm not thrilled about the fact the sensor uses the AC bracket. If I use this CAS setup i'll be fabbing up a more petite bracket.

For those who've seen my car, you know what I'm talking about. I think I finally found an end all be all cure to my problems. Tada! This morning's work: Best of all I think I got a good enough deal to come out even when I sell what I don't use.

Been a little while, too long actually. I wired up a relay for my headlights, so they work again. I've been driving the car just about everywhere now for a couple of weeks and it feels so good to be driving her again. I scored all new front suspension + steering rack for FREE from a friend. Sway bar, struts, springs (suspension techniques), hubs, brakes, etc. I pulled it all in an afternoon and it's still sitting in my trunk. I need to get some new grease boots before I put it all in. And I've also been doing something else... Something like that can only mean something like this. It's from an 81' and I picked up the whole engine minus turbo, wiring harness, and ecu for $250. Not bad in my opinion. The guy wanted too much money for the "new" OEM turbo he had on it, and still wanted too much for the turbo that had been pulled out before. ($500 and $75 respectively). So I told him he could just keep it and find a buyer. Should fix my exhaust leak....

I mean no disrespect or anything to the posters, but I was asking for an opinion on running that wheel height, not a calculator to show me what the wheel height is and what it will do to my speedo (which I don't even have). Thanks for the links though.

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for. My car will be a street driven toy car. Sure I'm running a turbo, but I'll never be shooting for TimZ type numbers. When I eventually Go V8 I'll be doing wider wheels + bigger brakes anyways. So I guess I'll be going with the 225/50/15 then. Again, thanks a ton!

So I'm going to be buying tires in the near future (finally), and I've got 15" rims, and I know they're at least a good 8" wide, if not 8.5". I haven't had a tire off to be 100% certain. My measurements from lip to lip through the spokes look right about 9". So I figured I could go a little wider than the 205 on there, and figured 225 would be safe enough as far as clearance goes. But the right wheel height is hard to find for that combo on a 15" rim. 225/50/15 seems easy enough to go with, but that gives me a wheel height of 23.9". Is that too small? I know there's a bit of discussion on the boards that you don't want to go to big, and I did some basic searching and couldn't come up with much. It seems most of the stock wheel heights were around 24.5 or around there. I'm not going to throw anything too far off by running an inch or so shorter wheel than most around here am I?

I think once I finish cody's wiring I'm going to get that same relay kit you got and start on mine, 100% from scratch like cody's car.

Yea, watch out on just throwing yourself into the 5.4 swap, they're entirely different blocks, and the 5.4 has a taller deck height to accommodate the longer stroke.

I don't know about the 10, but the evo 8 and 9 had interesting flaps. They weren't so much for creating low pressure for the tires (the absurdly low front end for a production car did that), but more created high speed air flow for the brakes. It's probably not as effective as actual brake duct work, but I haven't seen any production cars with full brake ducts in that kind of price range. What I'm kinda getting at is that a well designed piece could do both, and if it were attached to the hub in some way you can get it as low to the ground as you want as it should never scrape unless your tire goes flat.

Except the modular engines are finally becoming an affordable platform, while big block build costs still soar. I've found the thread with pics several times now, let me see if I can find it again. IIRC he used the DOHC 4.6 from a Lincoln, meaning it was 100% aluminum, and fairly light, just really big. TADA!!! http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=112543 I honestly found it easily by searching "aluminum boat anchor" since there was some jokes in there regarding the weight of the engine. I'm a fan of the mod engine. There's some guys out there that have proved you don't need a ton of money to make decent power, just a little bit of ingenuity and the time dedicated to wrenching on your own car. Those DOHC Lincoln heads have a lot of potential too.

I understand that a 347 stroker can still rev, but what rev limits are we talking? With that same effort put into building a quality 347 you could build a 302 bottom end and valvtrain to rev well beyond 7k, making gobs of power for the displacement. The reality though is that cubic inches are always cheaper to build than revs.

I say go with the L28ET!!! Duh, I'm helping you put it in. I think the L24 might be less problematic, but I think we can sort out any engine issues before you leave. That engine was running FINE before and shouldn't pose any real trouble. If we work hard enough we might even be able to try the Z31 ecu swap, I have the link wandering around somewhere for the how-to. I never felt like doing it myself because it didn't seem worth the headache. If I was going to do a ecu swap I wanted something at least as decent as MS.

wow, surprised nobody's mentioned one of the key differences, rod length!!! The 351 has a nice rod/stroke ratio that will allow you to SCREAM up the RPM band if the engine is built for it. The 302 at 347 has a nasty rod/stroke ratio that isn't ideal for high RPM at all, causing more cylinder/ring wear than you'd want in a street car. There's lots of talk out there about how with stroking engines becoming so popular these days that sometimes bigger isn't always better. Just because you CAN get a stock 351W block to 440 cubic inches doesn't mean it's a good idea. With stroke alone the recommended CI for the 351 block is around 380-390. Same goes for the 302, 347 is pushing it, but it's much safer and wiser for extreme builds to run the 3.25" stroke which gives you 331ci. I've also seen very little info confirming the weight difference between the 351 and 302 blocks. Judging by how little the bock weight itself really contributes to the total weight of an engine I have a feeling the difference is less than many people think. I can only speculate unfortunately, but I think the difference is less than 75 pounds, maybe less than 50 pounds, and that difference is negligible in the grand scheme of things. There's been talk about aftermarket blocks here, but we also have talked about the fact that those dart blocks are EXPENSIVE, and for that added HP potential you pay the penalty in weight. There's a reason they're so much stronger. Design has a part of that role, but beef does too. Unless you're going to be doing some competitive racing (which means you probably won't have a ford V8 in a Z...) then for the cost you're better of just building the bigger engine. The 351W can take a lot more power than the 302 block, and is capable of more CI. For the cost of some of those fancy aftermarket blocks, it even makes building a 460 seem economical. Those blocks will hold gobs of power, you just need to figure out how to build it on a budget. There's crankshafts out there with bearing diameters to allow use of chevy big block rods and pistons, which brings some costs down.

There's also a sticky that has tons more info on california smog laws. http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=100533

Yea, I had it set in manual for that reason. I should have made it a 6 or 7 shot panorama, to help with the blending. Thanks for the tips. I'm using CS4 and it's panoramic function couldn't align my pictures for some reason. It might be user error though. Last photoshop version I was heavily into was 7.0...

Well I don't know about yall, but I had a good weekend and then some. Here's two panoramas that I took hand held with my dinky point and shoot. NO photo editing on this first one other than cutting edges off to get them to mesh well. The second has about 10 minutes worth of clone stamping to dissolve the edges (boy was it bad). Edges are still noticeable, but I'm happy since I'm relatively new to panoramas. No editing what so ever to any of the other pics. I'm trying to get in the habbit of not touching up my photos to force myself to take better pictures. Also helps than I'm getting lazy about editing since I'm taking so many more pictures lately.

Well it's still leaking. I tried adding gasket material to the section that's leaking, didn't work. I just finished assembling it after buying the nissan OEM gasket (which is MUCH nicer I must say, though three times the price), and I torqued it to the factory specs (which seem absurdly low to me), and assembled it all with high tack gasket sealant (aka copper spray). Still leaks. I guess I'll be looking for a machine shop with a decent quote.

45mpg back then is pretty darn impressive considering most prius owners I talk to only get around 40-45.... I bet a full restored S30 with zero rust and a well done diesel swap could get better mpg than a prius, be a ton more fun, and cheaper too! Sounds like my kinda swap if you ask me. I'd love to see some more people doing modern diesel swaps.

S130's won't be affected by that bill. Cars more than 25 years of age won't qualify, and anything with less than 18 combined EPA MPG won't qualify either. So that's two ways even the 280ZX Turbo won't qualify (it's combined EPA was around 19-21MPG iirc) Plus by law the wreckers will be required by law to destroy the drivetrain. Pretty much no matter what this bill won't help us junkyard dogs.

For what many junkyards want for a turbo, I'd just get a used T3 off ebay. I almost picked up a T3/T4 off a merkur but then realized it'd take me enough time for the $80 price tag to not be worth it, and that they'd probably try to find a way to charge me for the downpipe, wastegate, etc.

Thanks for all the input guys. I'm pretty sure I'll be doing this swap down the road now. Surprisingly though it looks like I have a line on a V8 for my other car, so it'll get it's swap done first, then the 280ZX after that if I haven't bought a different daily yet. If I don't go KA the only other engine I've really considered is the VG30E. Basically I'm wanting to stay nissan so I can keep the stock driveshaft and have it shorted if need be. Just makes the swap go a bit smoother I think.

That's a good bit of into to know, and I bet that's one of the main reason it had a hard time passing smog. In my experience the farther into the test you get in each gear the better the output gets as the cylinder temp rises a bit and the O2 settles.