Gollum

I've tried low torque (20 lbs) and high torque (40 lbs) and I've always gone in the service manual suggestion, from center outwards. I've tried two different intake manifolds, so I don't think that's the problem, plus it's leaking on the cylinders that don't share. And the leak shows immediately, so the engine isn't even warm before I get a chance to recheck torque. I should have an update to see if my jerry rig works sometime tomorrow or thursday. If it's no good I'm going to have it checked my a machine shop and drop the money for a nissan gasket.

I've been using the run of the mill fail-pro gaskets. I haven't checked my manifold for straigtness because it seems so perfect, and I've talked to the guy who did the swap, who has no reason to lie, who says that he never had a leak with it, and this was less than 4 years ago, possibly less than 3. I'm going to try to cut just the center section out of an old gasket and see if that'll hold. If not I guess I'm going to start checking how straight all my surgfaces really are and if they're good then I'll be buying a nissan OEM replacement.

How far forward will that put the engine though? The transmission is about the same length as the Z transmission yea? They're nearly identical I thought, or at least extremely similar. I was hoping to put the engine as far back as I could get it, but I guess that WILL depend on driveshaft costs. I was also thinking that mounting it as far back as I can get it I'll avoid any crossmember clearance issues I could run into. Thanks for your input, I highly respect it since you're in the middle of the swap.

So I've been kicking around the idea of dropping a craigslist special KA engine into my daily driver 280ZX eventually, and pretty much just driving it 99% stock. Why? Because my current engine has almost 220k on the OD now, and should really get a rebuild before 275,000 which I could hit in a couple years easily with how much I drive. I can get probably slightly better MPG than I would with the L engine, and the KA is a thousand times easier to work on, with more available parts, and lots of go fast parts being sold for next to nothing. But here's my question for you people in this 4 cylinder corner of the swap world. How cheap do you think it can be done? I'm a master penny pincher here. I'll probably fab the mount cross members myself. You can practically get the engine for free around here due to all the SR swaps. I'm hoping I might even find a KA24DE for under $500 with tranny. I think it should be a totally doable swap for less than $600 for a SOHC, and $800 for a DOHC. Anyone disagree? Why so? What exact problems do you see coming up? The big challenge will be finding a shop willing to fab a driveshaft for a price I like. Last time I needed a driveshaft most shops wanted $300 minimum so I just walked away. I might have to drive out to the sticks to find a cheap shop.

So I've had my 75' with a L28ET for well over a year now, and it's had a nasty exhaust leak since the day I bought it. About 6 months ago I replaced the gasket and swapped to a different intake (turbo)... to no avail When recalling the whole thing I realized that the manifold was a PITA to get on because getting the downpipe to fit on nicely while mating to the head was more than a challenge. So I figured my exhaust pipe must be pulling on the turbo enough to not be allowing a good seal... Still leaks. I didn't let the gasket burn in yet, and I tried stacking gaskets. Still same as always. I've confirmed that the leak is at the bottom of the center 3 and 4 cylinders. Am I just having issues getting my gasket lined up right with the manifold? I was thinking before that maybe just letting everything hang on the studs and then bolting it up was letting it hang too low, so last time I taped up the gasket to the valve cover with a bit of tension and put a jack under the turbo to help get the manifold higher up on the ports... And like I said, still not sealing. The leak is DEFINITELY coming from the bottom between 3 and 4. ANY AND ANY Help would be GREATLY appreciated. Hopefully some of you guys with lots of turbo L series engines can help me figure this one out.

As far as I know I thought all the EFI L series had O2 sensors... But at any rate, in CA it's illegal to put in an engine from an older car into a newer car. It's also illegal to put an engine in your car that meets certain lower emission standards (like putting a carb'ed engine into a car that was originally EFI, or not having a PCV valve in a car that originally did). It's also illegal to swap in an engine that's from a heavier class, so you can't put a work truck or a 15 passanger van engine into a passanger car. But I seriously doubt that any smog tech could tell a difference between any EFI L series variant. I bet you could even get a L28ET to get tested as a L28E if you worked hard enough. There's no reason to look under that intake for a turbo for a smog tech...

Oh yea, here's some more pictures. Here's the pics of the wiring harness I took apart to supply this project. Warning!!! When you park a project overtop a storm grate you're bound to go swimming for some bolts!!! This is the car owner, my friend, Cody. I need to get another shot like this once the engines 100% back together.

I feel like a kid who's just walked into dad's cigar room filled with guests, old men smoking and talking about things foreign to me. In short, I feel out of place around these parts of the boards. So user Drummingpariah sold his red 240Z to a friend of mine. The motor was toast, but Drummingpariah had already bought a retired 350 out of an ambulance, go figure, so that came with the car. I knew that if I didn't help my buddy out with this project it'd never run, and I told him ahead of time I'd help him out. He bought it just before the first rain this last winter, so probably around October. I knew if I didn't get the new engine in soon it'd sit out in a truck all wet winter, not good. So I helped get the engine in within a few weeks of him getting it. Then it sat. Then it sat some more. Then the sun started to come out again. Then the car became evil: (I find that much more evil than the "splotchy red" it was before) I think it went evil because it got angry about drummingpariah stealing the rims for his new Z... So we started at it again. Only took about 3 days of working on it here and there, and many runs to part stores to oogle shiny things and then walking out with little things here and there. I'm not sure how much my friend has spent on parts, but I don't think it's too bad, probably about $250-300 or so (a lot of that was for the battery and tail lights). So I showed up today and reset the distributor (was off 360 crank degrees, or 180 rotor degrees), and the thing fired right up! Yahoo! I'll be working on it some more tonight, hopefully get it idling a bit smoother (I think I know what it is) and then we're going to start working on wiring up the car from scratch. It won't have AC/Heat, or much else. It's just going to be an engine with some gauges and switches (with relays on all of it). So here's what you all want, a video:

If you look closely you'll notice the bumper is stock, and the lower valance piece is stock too, there's just been a splitter looking piece added on. Who makes it I don't know, but I highly suspect it's a custom one off piece, considering the nature of the rest of the body work. Why spend all that time doing something that's so uncommon or unheard of just to slap on someone's splitter?

I'm not running any kind of BOV either, and I don't seem to have any surge issues from what I can tell. I wonder if my massive exhaust leak might be part of the reason.. I'm also running stock EFI and boost to 6psi with a little bit of creep in 4th sometimes up to 8psi. I've also talked to guys that said that at 10psi on these engines a BOV is more important than an intercooler.

Been a while, but I must say I'm most likely not going to do this intake idea. I found some intake "dynos" if you will, comparing various intake lengths. Shorter intakes did yield better flow at higher rpm, while long lengths did have a low RPM boost, but what was surprising was overall performance. If you're tuning for 1st order harmonics then you're going to get a huge sharp boost for where you're tuning it to, but that's exactly what it is, sharp. The rest of the range suffers from the length, even the RPMS bellow the boost. The reality is that for good all around street performance it looks like you need to tune for 3rd or 4th harmonics. I hope to still make an intake, if not only for the engineering aspect. If/when I do I'll make sure to document it well.

I'd never sell a car to anyone like that, even if it was a geo metro.

your car has made disgustingly good progress as time has passed, so I just want to encourage you as one who's been following along now for a long time. KEEP IT UP.

As one who's owed both, I can really appreciate the auto to manual Air system conversion. Overall that's one extremely well kept Z, props out to ya. Pretty much all the Z cars I've owned have all been well used and abused so I just end up stripping them all down to what's still worth having, but yours seems to be quite the opposite.

Wow, this thread is almost as old as I am on this board. Takes some serious searching into the deep to find one that old! Can someone award him some brownie points?

So today I worked on stripping an old wiring harness of one of my cars that I had lying around. I'm going to use it as a resource bin to wire up a friend's Z car (SBC 350). It's going to be rather simple, so paired with some relays + sockets we should be good to go. Hopefully I'll even have a start up video to share. And this is what a harness from a 81' 280ZX looks like disassembled. (and I mean HARNESS, not just engine harness. I don't think this is all of it as I don't have the wires that plug into the other end of the junction box and go to the dash, as I couldn't seem to figure out where it ran off to. So let's say it's 70% of all the wiring in a 280ZX. And that's about all I got done today, among enjoying a friday doing almost nothing after a short stint of decent pay work.

Well I got the brake lights fixed, morning of the meet I was so anxious about. Woohoo! Headlights are still down... I'm quite angered by the complexity of the stock system and in the frustration of it all I just started hacking away. I started pulling out all the unused wires I've now completely confirmed I don't need. Hack Hack Hack. Some of the remains: I'm still far from done removing all the needless crap, but it's a start. I've decide that instead of getting the stock headlight wiring to work I'm just going to wire up a system with a relay from scratch. Should be better off this way anyways. I also got a little bored and decided to "fix" the crappy sound problem in my ZX... Now it just looks crappy. But that's a lot better than sounds crappy. Didn't cost me a cent!

You're either very sarcastic, or a very big idiot. But that's ok, because I hate V6 engines because they don't make power, you have to have a V8 to make any REAL power.... All joking aside there's plenty of power available from this powertrain and if you'd actually read the thread you'd see that the reasoning for choosing this combo makes perfect sense.

Car looks terrible, maybe you should just give up. In all seriousness I think your car is just a testament to the builder, and all I see is top notch quality. It's just a reflection of your skills, and it looks GOOD.

Sounds amazing, and the swap looks very well done. I bet it pulls like a beast all the way up too!

The later updated 280ZX had a rack and pinion power steering unit (82'-83') I believe that was the ONLY power steering options for those years, as I can verify myself that the mounting brackets for the rack aren't compatible with the earlier year's (79'-81') crossmember. When I did my turbo conversion in an 81' the donor was an 83' and I wanted the power rack setup, so I just swapped the entire front end. I just unbolted it off both cars and literally just wheeled it over to the other car and had someone help me hold it in place so I could bolt it up. Long post just to say there WAS a power rack and pinion. So it's an option for those that might want to keep the factory PS pump on the KA.

Sweet, I had a feeling that's where it was. Yea, my harness is a mess... You guys are the best.

I have a couple 280ZX cars around to measure if needed. I also have a 280Z but the engine is still in it so frame measurements might be difficult, but those should be easier to come by around here. There are VERY few parts that differ from the 2+2, or at least less than you might expect. Pretty much the only pieces that differ greatly are the ones that span the extra space they added. Corner windows, seats, driveshaft, brake lines, etc. For the most part they're otherwise the same and very interchangeable. I'd say there were many more changes from the early models to late models than there were from 2 seater to 2+2.

Thanks for the help guys. I'll find the wire and see what's what and get it wired correctly.

So I've been rewiring my car because a previous owner started hacking it up real bad, so I've just been removing all that I don't need or want. I'm basically hacking it all back to what's absolutely necessary. Somewhere in the midst of it all I guess I unplugged/removed something in the brake system I shouldn't have, because I've lost my brake lights (tail lights turn on when headlights are turned on). What's really strange is that I don't see a reason for this. I've jumped the wires at the brake switch to see if maybe the switch was bad, but I'm still getting nothing. The wires at the switch are BY, and I believe they go to the upper blue plug at the mass of connectors on the passenger side (only two BY cables traveling together, there's only one other BY wire). I pulled the connection box off to see what color they are on the other side, they're still BY. I then noticed two lovely paired BY wires going into the fuse box. I haven't pulled the fuse box yet but I went to the back of the car and there's a single BY wire that goes to each tail light... Am I having a power supple issue and not a switch issue? What's absolutely needed for the brake light circuit to close? I'd previously removed the warning lamp along with the hazard switch and pretty much anything in the center console, so that's not the issue because my brake lights worked fine after that.