Gollum

majik, I agree completely. I've said many times on these boards that almost every engine has a home in Z, depending on the owner. It's all about what you want in the car. Back to the crossflow topic.... Ok, wow, a honda engine can make 200hp, with about 2 liters. That's why I said a worked Z head can make 300hp NA with reasonable reliability. Sure the honda head can be ported and work to make even more power, but in keeping with the comparable valve and port sizes it wouldn't be making much more power per cubic inch than the nissan L6 can make. The main reason modern cars are all crossflow is WAY MORE about the logistics of the layout of an engine. It just doesn't make sense to have the intake and exhaust on the same side, it takes up too much room for how compact they make everything now days. This is why companies like jeep kept their non crossflow heads for so long, they had large vehicles with plenty of room and they had a system in place that worked, so why change. When it came time to design new engines the went crossflow, and designed new chassis around that layout which made for a more compact package. You're thinking logical, but not practical. Sure a non crossflow head has less room for ports, but in practice the ports don't need to be so large. They only need to be about .6 the diameter of the valve (iirc), and there's plenty room for both in the space of the head. In fact, both valves fit inside the space of the chamber just find, in theory you could fit a port the diameter of each in a non cross flow head, but that would kill velocity. What matters more than anything else is how much room you have to port right at the end of the runner, and at that point it doesn't matter if the head is crossflow or not. Things like valve guide design have a larger impact on performance than weather or not a head is crossflow. There's lots of discussions on the topic on this board, and trust me, most of those around that actually port heads and reach high HP can talk on and on about what the real limitations are in head porting. The fact that the head isn't crossflow rarely ever leaves their lips, and it's usually just when others have brought it up.

You're correct. Slicktop is the term we use around here for a non-t-top model. I've never seen a factory stock turbo slicktop. Rare indeed imo. Unfortunately that doesn't mean it's worth much more, if any more at all. But if I was looking for a S130 to race it'd have to be a slicktop. Now that I've owned both, I really do prefer the slicktop, even more than I thought I ever would.

High compression means more power off of boost, and boost comes on sooner once you put your foot down. You can still make the same max power in most cases as long as we're not comparing a 10.5:1 compression engine to a 12:1. Get that high and detonation becomes a problem on most engines. But in a case like the L series engine, the turbo version is almost as identical as possible to the NA engine. The NA engine can take just as much turbo boost HP as the turbo engine. Same crank, rods, piston material (turbo is dish, NA is flat top), cylinder head (almost idential), etc. I know you're probably talking about how a SR is built for boost and the KA isn't. But I'm just showing how in the L series the NA engine is better for building a boost engine. And I could build a 300HP L series for less than you could do a SR swap, or get a KA swap done and turbo it. I'm not saying either the KA or SR are bad. But if you're on a tight budget like most people in the real world, the L series kills most engine options unless you want HUGE power numbers, then a V8 is more practical. The L series head sucks because it's not crossflow??? Go read up young padawan. The L series head isn't that great due to completely different factors, like valve angle, port geometry, etc. The valves are closed for nearly a whole stroke in almost every engine. The air doesn't care weather it leaves one side or the other. If you remade any of the L series heads to be crossflow and didn't change a single thing, you wouldn't gain a single HP. The fact the intake and exhaust are on the same side only hurts power when it comes to the fact the exhaust manifold tends to heat up the intake charge, but there's ways to minimize that to a negligent degree. There's guys that have made over 300HP NA on 3 liter L series engines that were reliable enough to be street driven for extended miles. In low life expectancy these engines have been known to make over 350HP NA. Those are some decent figures for such an "old tech" design. I agree the cylinder head isn't the greatest out there, and a better design would be nice. But let's get our facts straight as to WHY.

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.