Gollum

The irony is that what I believe to be the best turbo L series nissan made never came with a turbo.... My preference for a turbo build is the 81-83 NA engine. P79 head with flat top pistons giving a good and healthy compression ratio. The P series heads have good quench and the P79 flows almost identical flow numbers to the P90. You can find those engines everywhere too, hence why it's my preference.

Obviously JohnC is much more "the authority" on this topic than I am, but I can say that in my hands on experience I can't see a 280Z from the showroom ever being anything close to 2900 pounds. So I can easily see JohnC statement being 100% accurate. But really, those bumpers ARE heavy though. The bumpers and the doors are the largest chunk of weight difference between the 240Z and the 280Z. The bumpers on the S130 were pretty freakin' heavy as well. And the S130 2+2 doors in full trim with glass are monsters.

I've read somewhere that there were some Ferrari V8 engines that had balance shafts, but I never read anything that made my thing it was the majority of their V8's. I'm going to be getting together in the near future with my retired Ferrari mechanic friend. I'll ask him which, if any, V8 engines had balance shafts. I think with the engine Paul is planning on, a balance shaft shouldn't be needed. The rod length will be decent, stroke will be pretty small, revs will be relatively low, and the power output isn't all that high for the displacement.

Variable valve timing wouldn't do anything for sound really. The reason why a VVT engine sounds "meaner" is because it's hitting a more agressive cam. The same engine without VVT with a cam as agressive as the high RPM lobe on the VVT engine would sound identical at high RPM. The reason for a VTEC engine to have that sound change just shows how mild the lower cam profile is. That's just a short explanation. Hopefully you get what I'm saying.

Yes, I've thought about this swap (i've researched a great number of swaps though, so that's not saying much). It's a great engine. The engines as a whole are known for head gasket issues, but ARP head studs clears that up just fine. There's guys out there running 13's, 12's, and even 11's on street driven T-birds. Stock bottom ends are good for 400+ hp. Just add a higher PSI pully, and upgrade the fuel system and megasquirt and you're good to go. I think you can also use the Ford ECU tweeker on it. (not positive though) That's a good route if megasquirt seems a bit too scary.

I haven't seen any posts of it being done, but I know he was pretty close to done last august iirc. So it should be on the road by now. I have a hard time believing he broke the rear end though. He must have had wheel hop issues. There's guys on stock SBC engines making 400+ torque that the stock R180 holds up to. It's just about not having too much meat in the back and keeping the tires in contact with the ground.

I think it's exciting the way a trip to the doctor is. You go because there's a problem, and you're not sure if he's going to give you bad news or good news.

I'm sure Braap will answer your question as well tfreer85, but I'll give my input. The metal isn't what is costly in this build. Just the machine time. Paul IS a machinist. This is like 1 Fast Z's project. It would have cost 10k+ to have someone do it, but his initial dyno state CAR had less than 3k in it if I recall correctly. It's just lots of time. I see no reason not to just buy a piece of billet steel and lathe it to shape. Braap, in responce to the journals. That's what I thought you'd say, and I think you're right. The stock journal sizes should suffice unless you want to rev past 10k. But at that point there would be a ton needed to get any engine reliable. Since we've seen so many high rev dual plane crank SBC and SBF engines, I think as long as the harmonics are under control your build should hold together ok. It's awesome you got some hands on information regarding the harmonics though. That rod ratio info is quite valuable. Thanks for the pics of the 4 cylinder blocks, I'd forgotten how wimpy some of those "amazing" 4 cylinders bottoms are. And for a bit of encouragement, I think if you can manage 400 reliable NA HP out of this build, a VH45DE, 1UZFE, or 3UZFE would be completely irrelevant. I know those are neat engines and all, but the pushrod options are just so much cheaper/cost effective. I mean, the highest NA HP 1UZ I've seen was around 410 wheel HP at 9300RPM... Reducing the displacement due to shorter stroke with a flat plane crank and it looks like it would be capable of LESS HP due to the smaller displacement and relatively poor heads. I know the VH has better heads, so it would be interesting to find out what most poeple who build them up NA get out of them.

Holy crap I haven't been on here enough lately. And look, I'm posting at midnight so it's not like I've got oodles of spare time. I'm not avoiding you guys, I promise. Ok, this post will be directed to braap. Braap - I know you're extremely knowledgeable in this subject, so don't take this as me assuming you don't know about what I'll bring up. I just want to flesh out some of the stuff that hasn't been talked much about. First off, bearing specs. From what I've read you might want to narrow the main bearings as much as the block can handle. Obviously having a block with as much webbing as possible and the most beefy main caps you can get will help increase your bottom end strength. Why? It reduces quite a bit of lower end friction that will let the engine rev more freely, but more importantly it will increase the area between journals, increasing crankshaft strength considerably. Downside? Bearings wear out faster and you'll definitely need to be a lot more careful about the oiling system. But if you're not shooting for the moon in power and don't mind rebuilding the engine semi often it's not a problem right? And speaking about mains, what are you doing for caps???? 4 cylinder caps tend to be 4 or 6 bolt caps that are extremely beefy. (for those that don't know this is because the 2nd order harmonic that 4 cylinder engines create is up and down with the piston). Most V8 engines aren't designed to take that up and down beating of the 2nd order harmonic, how do you plan to keep the crank bolted in? I think if it were me I'd probably stick under 2.5 inch stroke, but you know a heck of a lot more than me, so I'll just sit back and marvel. If 351freak's research holds true, I can see myself buying a crank in the long term future. Adding 2-3k to an engine build might be worth it.... I really want a 1UZ that revs to 9k, but a SBF that reved to 8 and sounded like a flate plane crank would be worth it. And with how expensive the 1UZ would end up being, the SBF even with a 3k crank wouldn't be much more expensive in the long run. cams alone for the 1UZ get expensive. Plus the manual conversion etc. I know you like the VH idea, and the 1UZ is almost it's twin from another mother. But I think both of these go completely backwards from the HybridZ mindset of cheapness. But if that floats your boat then I'll be the first to make a 1000+ mile drive to drool over it. The pushrod options save you money and are much simpler. The main downside is that they don't have 6 bolt mains and might be more susceptible to cracking. The SBF and SBC win almost everywhere else. Another topic I wanted to touch was the compression ratio. So you're going with a slightly larger stroke, what does that bring compression to with the 58cc chamber? Consider using dome pistons? I'd think that even though it's a SBC you'd want something like 10+:1 right? I mean, even 9.5 is reasonable safe if you're going to be running megasquirt with timing control. And knowing you.... I think 300hp should be almost a baseline expectation. I think 300 wheel hp should be easy as well. I think the reasonable limit on a tight budget will be around 450 crank HP. Beyond that you'll start needing some much more agressive cam for the RPM and you're starting to get well beyond 100hp per liter and reliability becomes and issue. With 3.3 liters, reving to 8k, at 9.5:1 compression I can't imagine making less than 330hp.

Spiked Metal, didn't know you where into that kinda thing... Ethanol or Methanol?

But even that 90's civic wouldn't pass today's safety standards. Seems like they're requiring cars to become stiffer and stiffer with ever compliant crumple zones. We need more econo-boxes to feature more aluminum and carbon fiber if we want to see 60+mpg out of a realistic practical car again. Cars like the smart are a joke imo. I'm talking about a regular old vehicle that blends in with everything else just fine that still gets amazing gas mileage. So now we just need the prices of carbon fiber to come down a bit...

Exactly my point really. I get can a 1UZ for under $500 USD, but the transmission and conversion would more than triple the total cost of parts. Where as I can get a 5.0 Ford or 350 SBC used with transmission for well under $1,000 USD. If I could get a 1UZ for the same price, I'd have a hard time turning it down, despite it's disadvantage for cheap performance upgrades.

If only some reliable, affordable, manual transmissions bolted up... Swap looks great though! The insane price of these engines sure is tempting.

That FSAE engine gives me new meaning to the phrase "I'd tap that"... Absolutely gorgeous engine.

Finally got around to fixing that typo, thanks tannji. That second video is mine btw, and that's the older model. I still haven't had any time to make a new model since starting school. And by the looks of things the first chance I'll get will be christmas break, though I've got a shiny new laptop I got for free that will allow me to work on projects like this when I only have a few moments to spare. I still think in the long run it'll be cheaper to make a custom crank than buy a ferrari engine. Maintenance on a ferrari engine is insane, and all the parts are dreadfully expensive. With a SBC or SBF once you make your bottom end modifications, get your custom cams, and get your crankshaft obviously, you're set. As long as you don't destroy the bottom end you've got an engine that can be rebuilt over and over again, decently reliable, and you can get parts for it everywhere for next to nothing. That's the main downside I see to the VH45DE, there's just too many other things you'd end up wanting to do regarding the head and such, and 4 custom camshafts cost 4 times as much. The cheap pushrod route I think is a road worth taking.

Tony D, you're disgusting, in a good way. In owning all those S130 designs did you ever think about building one for a project? I'm still pretty certain with how cheap they are to get a hold of, if the smog year was pushed farther up these S130 cars would make amazing budget racers. Maybe not for drag so much, for autox and road racing for sure. Main issue is just getting the soft springs out, and replacing all the rubber.

Bleach, I have to ask. How much?

Yea, I'd watch the bashing of any brand around here. You can get flamed for bashing Honda, and the Honda fans around here are in a small minority, there's a lot of Ford fans and buffs around so don't be so quick to make broad general terms like that. All companies have had great ideas and contributions to the automotive world. Those that fail to see it are just missing out on some of the great things out there to be discovered.

To those curious, there was no damage to the ignition, so I'm assuming they just picked the lock. Thanks for the effort on getting a thread started six shooter.

Might be totally irrelevant to some, but 2010 they start smog testing diesel vehicles in CA. I'm assuming this is due to companies wanting to sell diesels in more common vehicles in the USA, so CA needs to start regulating them.

Hey guys, the car has been found! Luckily the car seems to be ok, and it seems they didn't drive it much more than around the block or so. The car was found less than a mile from my house, in the same neighborhood. Car seems ok other than a dead battery (alternator is going out, ran out of juice before running out of gas), and most of the stuff inside was gone. Luckily user Nodus's picknpull parts were still there. My jack and jack stands were there still too.

Fortunately I don't think there's too many secrets about it. I think in reality it won't be THAT much different than designing a regular crank, which is still a huge undertaking in itself. The thing about dual plane cranks is that they're everywhere and easy to copy and get safely close. Single plane cranks aren't common, especially in the displacement we're talking about potentially seeing, and very uncommon in pushrod engines which have been a hot topic in this thread. So finding a design to copy isn't exactly easy. I'm still wondering if it might make sense to use removable counterweights (as I've seen on a F1 design), as this allows you to remove as much weight as possible from the rod journal area, and also use a heavier material for the counterweight, making it smaller (close to the center, which is GOOD ) I've also been wanting to find some good documentation on high RPM pushrod builds, as I want to know what they do in the area of the crank. Anyone out there listening??? Anyone find anything??? Questions I'd have: 1. Did they change the diameter of either journal, if so why? 2. What percentage counterweight did they use, and what did they do to make sure it wouldn't create destructive harmonics? 3. What RPM do they expect the crank to be able to reach, despite other engine limitations? I don't know about you guys, but if I'm going to be going through to work of designing, or even being part of a huge group buy for flat plane cranks, I'm going to want it to be able to live at 15,000, not just a mere 10,000. I'm going to want something that basically removes all RPM limitations due to the crank. Then we could run a valve train, piston, and cam setup as our limiting factor.

Thanks for the support guys. I'm down for contributing to a security sticky. I've installed a few systems and I've found some pretty creative ideas around here too. Just need to get all the information consolidated down to a single usable thread. The only reason the car didn't have any form of security on it is that I'd JUST gotten the thing on the road, and had a wopping $105 into the entire cost of the vehicle (gift to me). So I wasn't going to double my costs on anything fancy, and I just hadn't gotten around to installing some basic idiot switches. As far as the insurance goes, I'm still talking with them about what they're going to cover. When I first insured it they told me I couldn't get comprehensive on it, even though I asked for as much coverage as I could get. So now they're telling me if I had comprehensive that the loss of the car would have been covered. After explaining to them THEY told me I couldn't get comprehensive even though I asked for it, they said that they'd look back through their records and if that is indeed the case, and they COULD have given me comprehensive, then they'll cover the vehicle. Still no word about what was in it, but I can go through the home owners insurance if need be. I have to wait for the home owner to get back form a cruise though.

Plate#: 2REX551 Two hours had gone by with no police, so I called them again and it turns out they were on their way and there was a bad accident they had to be diverted to. Hope everyone is ok, unless it was the thieves...

And boy do I know. I think in my family's history we've had about 4-5 cars stolen. Now I can add myself to the list. The 280ZX was gone this morning when I got up to leave for school. I'm still waiting for the cops to show up.... almost an hour later.