Gollum

I guess I should subscribe to my old car's thread, especially since I gently suggested that you weren't allowed to scrap it. ...Seeing all the rust hidden away, if it were a T-Top I'd be HELPING you scrap it...

Yeah, better to find that issue now before the combo is in the engine bay. Also: No issue with the longer transmission bolts. There's miles of room. Hardcore circuit racers have put the engine more than 3" further back without firewall modifications. Also: I usually keep engine leveler cranks pointing towards the front engine engine, since it can end up interfering with the firewall as you get the engine deep into the bay, but conversely if the angle ends up being really high, then the crank can end up conflicting with the hoist. Pick your poison. Another tip on that though that if the crank is facing forward your can use an electric drill to drive it and save some sweat.

Yeah, I need to remove my seats to be sure, but when I put them back in not that long ago I don't remember noticing any major rust. I'll likely just end up doing some patching. As far as a welder, thanks for the offer. Someone else also offered me long-term borrowing of a flux core so we'll see how that works out. I also have a neighbor willing to let me bring the car over to do some welding, but that would mean needing to have a set of patches fitting and ready. If I have a welder handy, I'm going to also go about plugging the corner light holes, maybe cleaning up the rear bumper area, etc. So having a few winter months to peck away at the problem might be ideal.

It really is hard to imagine it being MORE work to just replace the whole pan from the right edge of the faux rail to the rocker and from the firewall to the seat rail. There's definitely some decent pitting in other unmarked areas but they seem solid enough that I'd be happy with a rust converter and some paint. But after patching those four sections I'll have already done a fair bit of metal shaping and welding.

Well, in his defense, expanding urethane foam can be pretty "solid" stuff! I'm not all that upset, and it's not like I ever felt this was a completely rust free car... It's just a "well I guess this is the state of things". The front chassis ears where the hood hinges mount are all rusted out, my fenders have rust in the rocker area. and there's other mild signs of rust elsewhere. My interest in digging into the problem is low, largely because I don't have welding equipment (yet), and no interest in fixing for the sake of "pretty". That said, if I'm going to work on a part of the car, I might as well do what I can while I'm in there.

So my battery still needed some work to be mounted a bit more "properly" compared to how I had it last time I was daily driving this car. My "long term" goal was to square out the passenger foot well and make a little enclosure for it with panel mount terminals. This would make it racing body legal, but also putting the weight as low as possible, while being between the wheels. I'm not a huge fan of putting the battery up high in the back, as I don't NEED more weight in the back per se, since I can always tune the front/back grip with the same measures it'd take to balance the car if I put all the weight in the back. Anyway, I'm rambling. So I still had a ton of dynamat on the floorpans from a PO (I think it was hybridz member FlatBlack or it had to have been before him even maybe). I didn't want to look at even a temporary riveted or bolted in solution for a tray in the eventual battery space to be with the crap in the way. Well, so I got to removing the dynamat... and just.... yeah. Nice hole up in the top right of the image, and I have to wonder if dynamat was intended to just hide rust that someone didn't want to repair. I haven't had the car stored outside, I've never seen/had standing water in the floor... Yet... Healthy rust, growing like mold in a forgotten fridge. And to add some insult to the mix, I confirmed a suspicion that my floors weren't exactly flat. And after some more grinding (flap disk) , more sound deadening removal, and more grinding (flat disk), and the some pounding, I have a more flat floor, and a heavy desire to go buy a wire wheel for the angle grinder. All my existing wire wheels are for drills or die grinders. Which, I guess I could use the die grinder with a wire wheel, I'd just be running the compressor pretty hard for a few hours to get this really cleaned up. So, I'm really tempted to wire wheel the rest of the rust away, cut and weld the minimal spots, spray on some weld-through primer, and build a temporary battery mount where I want it to end up. That "temporary" solution is likely kicking the can down a year or two at the rate I've been going this last year, but I think I'm okay with that. I'm not building this to sell, or for someone else. And I'm not going to be competing in it anytime soon. I'm going to be driving it, putting miles on it, to work, to play, etc. I'm mostly just interested in "safe" and "don't lose objects to the road through the floor" status.

Try finding him on Facebook. He's in several of the Datsun parts groups. He's definitely still around and still making fuel rails.

I'm not sure why I thought it was a good idea, but I went ahead and made my own hood pins. I doubt I "saved" money even if my time was free, since I'm likely going to go buy a kit of clips to replace my temporary clip solution. The pins themselves turned out okay, and the hood fitment is passable. My lower pin placement ended up spot on which is great since they'll take the brunt of the lifting load, but the rear's I didn't take my time with enough and I ended up putting my holes in about 1/4" or more too high (towards the windshield. This caused a lot more work than necessary getting it to fit decently, and larger holes than preferable, but I'm not sure I really care as long as it stays on tight. Also spent time yesterday mounting my own tires on my wheels. Not exactly fun, but with decent manual tools it's not too painful (even the harbor freight stand isn't the worst thing in the world). Reason I ended up doing this myself is because though my tires I had already looked fantastic, had been out of the sun in a garage their whole life, and never under extreme temperatures, they were more than 6 years old (close to 10 years actually) and thus no shop in the area wanted to touch them. I don't plan on doing any competitive racing on them, or any serious street shenanigans, but they'll likely be fine for daily driving for a year or two, which is all as long as I need them to last. I ordered speed bleeders because I still felt my brakes were a bit mushy and wanted to be able to bleed them myself with confidence. Boy do these things work great! I can't say enough about them. Lucky me with the S13 rear brakes I use the same bleeder on all four corners which is handy, and once installed I was able to bleed my brakes myself in about 5 minutes. Granted, the car was already on stands with all four wheels off, but you get the picture.

Car's running pretty good, despite tuning without a wideband for the tine being. I'm still regularly tidying little things up, and it's coming along. I've got the wheels in my car so I can drop them at the tire shop later today with my "new" (been sitting in the garage forever) tires to be mounted. That's a huge milestone to making the thing driveable. I also need to attach the hood, and I ditched the front brackets a long time ago, so hood pins it is. You might say it's because I'm cheap, but I think it's also due to just wanting to get something done and not bother with buying something, I'm making my own hood pins. I think the bolts are old LCA bolts. They're plenty strong enough in any case, and I've got all four mounted on the chassis side. Now I just need to cut them down enough so I can rest the hood in place and get some marks to drill. Once tires and hood are on, I'm going to do a quick alignment, put the air dam on, and she's pretty close to road worthy!

S30 is front steer, S130 is rear steer, so the rack moves opposite direction for a given input rotation. S30 has TC rods facing back, S130 has them facing forward. And while we might split hairs over what "structural part" means, it's true that most parts don't interchange. That said, when parting out S130's there's a pretty good pile of parts that are reusable on other cars.

Ahh, well if it's MORE money to get a difference housing then that's fine. I was thinking they'd be doing machining on the stock housing, the labor of which would far outweigh a new chunk of as-delivered aluminum out front. And they're right, the front compressor WHEEL is really where the meat and potatoes is, and why the stock T3 starts hitting a brick wall long before 300whp arrives.

Yeah, that might sound like a good chunk of money for "only" a custom t3/t4 hybrid, but in the grand scheme that's money well spent and not a bad way to go. I'd also let Gpop know that you only care about keeping the turbine housing. If it's cheaper to use a whole T4 compressor side, then that's fine. That's assuming you're going to be running an intercooler and not the stock J-pipe. No sense in keeping the stock compressor housing unless it's a zero cost difference. That combo should make it to 300hp just fine though. I wouldn't expect to be able to push it worlds beyond that, but if you get hungry for more power then you can always sell it at a a mild loss once you're ready for a whole new turbo+dp setup.

I got all excited and was about to PM you saying "Hey I can stop by to see what stuff you have lying around you don't want to move!" but then realized you're not even in CA anymore! Man, I'm out of touch these days. Great progress btw. Car is looking great.

I saw a patched together 240Z with a SBC at a "track" and for running old bald tires the thing was scary fast. I'd never taken notice of a datsun before, had no idea about the brand, the history, or what a "z" car was. (I was 13 at the time and had mostly worked on my neighbor's 10 second del sol when he needed a hand, and helped keep vehicles like the family GM pickup running giving my brother a helping hand and such). So I did what any good kid would do, I started researching. I quickly found out it was likely a 240Z I saw, and soon after found hybridz. I was memorized. Not by the cars, per say, but rather by the variety of builds/swaps. Dot's V12 just blew my mind. I wanted one, badly. This was a blank canvas of a car, relatively cheap, and can easily get away without paying ricer tax (even at this time I already had plenty of 1st and 2nd hand stories of cops treating imports differently than muscle cars). So I started saving pennies and watching the ads. By the time I was 15 and about to get my permit I'd realized that a clean pre smog S30 was slightly out of reach for me. CA still had a "rolling smog" law and so I figured I'd get one of the much cheaper S130's and while waiting for it to be pre-smog I'd focus on suspension, weight reduction, brakes, etc. It was a good plan. Right about my 16th birthday I bought a mint 1980 280ZX from it's original owner for $2200. It felt like way too much money to spend on a car, but this thing was perfect... except the ebrake which would stick... ...so after that car popped out of gear parked on a hill, and was killed by a tree (hence my nick here) I found a 1981 non-running for $500. The guy even towed it to me for that price. I swapped enough parts to get it running again, swapped a bunch of interior parts and watch the local yard come pick up my first car. In hindsight I wish I'd kept a lot more of that car... but I didn't have space. By this time, CA laws had changed and my future with S130's was screwed. No easy swaps for me. BAR swap laws were becoming well defined but stories of success in my circle of friends were still non-existent. I started shifting my gaze towards the turbo L option since it was relatively easy to legalize and/or finding a 280ZX turbo and use that car as a project base. After my '81 decided to punt it's head gasket I hunted for a turbo engine and found one here, on hybridz, from @rayaapp2. I think I paid him about $1500 for a '83 turbo 2+2 which had enough back fees I wasn't terribly interested in driving it as-is (note: big mistake). It was also a 2+2, which means no legal HOV lane usage with just me and a buddy (though folding the seats down I doubt a cop would have ever pulled me over and hassled me about it, but I also didn't like the corner glass window shape difference either). So I proceeded to swap engines over the course of a winter, outside, in the mud.... Easily one of the dumber things I've done. But I got it done. Getting the hoist in place was a valiant effort, and once the engine was in I started swapping the electrical, from car to car in it's entirety. I didn't want to splice the harness differences, since going to the blade fuses and other 82+ differences seemed worth the swap in my mind. After swapping it all, every system checked out, except the engine. Trying to start it would immediately result in a blown fusible link. I must have gone through a dozen fusable links trying to track down the culprit. By this time I was needed a car to start a new job, so my days of borrowing were coming to an end. I scrapped some money together and bought a friend's CRX with the promise to sell it back once I didn't need it. I didn't have much time to figure out the problem with the car, and I wasn't exactly motivated. I did eventually figure out that it was a misplaced ground near the distributor causing 12V to ground out. With the new victory came an immediate obstacle. I swapped the transmission with the engine, because my assumptions at the time were that the nissan 5 speeds just wouldn't be up to the task (another mistake). I brought the extra long 2+2 driveshaft to a few different local driveline shops and they all said the same thing: "I can't rebuild this because of the joint types, I'd have to make a new one", and the lowest quote was $900. Feeling a huge boulder of defeat, because I just couldn't justify spending that much more than I already had into the swap. Around this time the CRX transmission went out, the friend bought it back as agreed, and I was in need of a car again. Then the heavens parted, and angels cried out, and craigslist threw me a bone. I found a '75 already turbo swapped! And for a mere $1200 asking price. I called the guy, and picked it up the next morning after a quick test drive. I had to work that day, so I picked it up at around 6am and drove it to work the same day. I was ecstatic. And the rest, they say, is history. The tldr; summary: The S30 is a classically handsome car. Maybe not the most gorgeous, but not bad by and standard. It's a wonderful base that generally just works and is outrageously well balanced and tunable and there's plenty of examples of low powered S30's tearing it up on the track. Their potential is very much limited only by the builder. As I've gotten older, and maybe a bit wiser, I've started to realize that this potential aspect is true of most cars. Any engine can fit in any car, and you're only limited by your determination and skills. If you don't believe it, go watch project binky, then go buy some fabrication tools and make stuff. Even if it's bad, make stuff. The S30 does strike an unusual balance though, and for years was a poor man's Ferrari (GTO anyone?). Unfortunately, it feels like those days are gone. The S30's have skyrocketed in price, and the "good deal" I found on a $1200 S30 would today be "giving it away". Like @Leon if I was repeating my history today I likely would never have gotten into Z cars. But being in CA I wouldn't have ended up with an E36 like Leon, I'd likely have gone with the only OTHER lightweight presmog cars often on craigslist, British roadsters.

I stopped crying about turbo prices when I spent $2,200 to get a GOOD price on a genuine OEM turbo for my '05 Outback XT. It was far more important to me for it to be same turbo as OEM than making power and needing to tune it. I quickly realized I'm at the point in my life that I can just wait a few months and buy nice things instead of being so cheap all the time. ...that said I don't know that I even have more than 4k in my entire 280Z....

Shoot, I bet even the efr6758 would spool faster than the stock T3. Only downside is that you need to convert from the T3 outlet to either T25 or T4 or vband. The twin scroll (true twin scroll, not just divided, meaning has two separate AR's) T4 housing with a proper manifold would still likely spool faster than stock and that's an honest 500hp setup... Turbos have come a long way.

Sleeperz, I also plan on running very short wheels. I don't expect 1st to be useful other than getting off the line smoothly around town. I also plan to run a lightweight clutch/flyhweel combo, and again, first will be for tame street driving. With my planned setup, I don't think it'd be beyond reasonable to launch from 2nd at the drag strip, but that's not the venue I'm building the car for... As it is, with LESS power on the stock turbo with 3.54 gears, first was still went by extremely fast and useless in most scenarios.

Something to keep in mind, is that turbos HAVE gotten better over the years, and something designed and built in the 70's like these old T3's is at a huge disadvantage compared to something modern. My point is that with a goal in the high 200's low 300's range, the only way you'll be upset with spool is to buy a cheap $200 ebay turbo which will likely be a chinese copy of a 40 year old design. Spend a little more and get something modern, and you won't regret it. I'd also advise you to get something water cooled if you can stomach the additional install requirements, as it dramatically improves bearing life. When you shut down your engine, you end up with stagnant oil in the center section and it just heat soaks since the turbo is running much hotter than the oils (even at idle after driving). Water cooled turbos take advantage of "thermal siphoning" where as long as the hot water has a free place to go, as it heat soaks at engine shut off, the hot water will want to escape pulling cooling water into the turbo. Obviously turbos without water cooling are also designed around that, but most of the newer designs you want for better aerodynamic properties will also require water cooling to be set up properly. Also, while going to a small AR might spool the turbo sooner, and sound like a great idea, they can definitely be a bit top end limiting. Now, with the stock turbo head and camshaft, that's not much of a big deal since it's out of breath by 5500 anyway. But if you want to ever do any head work and/or swap the cam out and rev it up to 7k (and actually make good power up there( then you'll find a smaller AR turbine housing to be quite limiting. To put another dimension on the table, people love to talk about how increasing load allows a turbo to spool up faster, so turbos tend to like long (small number) gearing. Personally, I find this to actually be a counter-productive way to think about it, and leads you to build a turbocharged car that drives more like a diesel, and focusing on the wrong part of the power band. A turbo is a GAS based device that is extremely dependent on pressure ratios. Yes, thermodynamics play a role, and loading an engine will create heat and create spool. Drive a turbo charged car on the freeway and go up and incline and you'll see this. Most responsive setups are very hard to stay OUT of boost going up a hill at the same throttle position as you were going a stead speed an flat ground. But, if instead of relying on load to see boost "sooner in the RPM band" and going with short (high number) gearing, you're likely to find you spool "sooner" based on time. You get the revs of the engine up sooner, it's swallowing more air over time, pushing more air over time into the turbo, creating spool sooner. If going with longer gearing was better for turbos, why not UPSHIFT to go faster? It doesn't make sense. And in that vein, if you're going with a laggier turbo, you can make up SOME of the difference by going up in gearing. I plan on running 3.9 in my 280Z, and I'm at 3.545 now. And going back to the earlier point, if you're making great power up to 7k you're more than offsetting the difference....

Another one people haven't mentioned, though its not done yet:

@auxilary Is the expert on this topic. Not only has he done it, but he's the most forthcoming about the challenges. I loved to give him a hard time whenever I met him about it ever being on the road, and put up with the poking and prodding quite well. That said, from my recollection of conversations, he insisted that it was a very easy install, especially if you ditch the oil injection and convert to using premix. The factory turbo manifold puts the turbo in such a spot that fitment is extremely difficult, and he mentioned that any of the common top mounts would make mounting much easier. And aside from the ones mentioned, I think there's a few others floating around. It's amazing how many swaps are undocumented on the internet simply because the owner doesn't care about spending the time to post stuff on the internet.

Note that the voodoo doesn't have traditional flat plane pin arrangements, and as such isn't significantly lighter than the cross plane crank for the 5.0. The reason Ford made the single plane for the GT350 was 100% about exhaust packaging, and alternating the firing order made it possible to fit exhaust that worked up to redline without modification to the chassis.

Realistically you should be fine. If you need to upgrade after completing the build and seeing top end roll off and you suspect throttle then convert to the KA throttle. Larger and easy to adapt. But I'm betting the stock TB won't be the limiting factor without serious headwork. That said, it's relatively easy to calculate engine displacement * 100% * RPM...

Both of the first two pics you posted are the same all aluminum intake as what the 350z had. They just also have the plastic vanity cover that makes an engine not look like a "mess" to non-car folk. If you keep an L engine then EFI doesn't mean the engine bay can't be clean. To the contrary I'd say it's easier to maintain a clean look with EFI, but you certainly need to ditch a lot of the OEM design to it. I have ZERO focus on aesthetics with my car and it looks world's cleaner than that 280zx engine bay you posted.

It all adds up, and I said less than 700. The real diff might be closer to 600. You have to consider that a lot changed over the years between the 240z and 280z. Added wiring alone is likely a 10-20lb weight gain. The moral of the attached story isn't so much that the later year cars are heavier, but rather should be that the weight if your car will be far more dependant on how you build it and what kind of creature comforts you want. I've driven a 71 240z that weighed over 2400lbs because the guy who restored it was running piles of sound deadener everywhere, AC and every feature original to the car. He was still running 240z suspension and the r180 diff, so add those and you'd be in 280z without bumpers territory.

If I'm honest, I think you should go with the VQ. A VQ35DE out of a 350z would be just fine and fit most of your priorities well. There's also the VQ25DET but they can be a bit hard to find. With how far back you can get the VQ to sit (especially with a forward facing intake) clearing the steering isn't an issue. There's also prefabbed cradles on the market ready to weld in. It's a well established swap at this point, so little custom fabrication if that's your jam.