Gollum

To add to daeron's post: (which was a great story that should teach people something important) Alcohol is what ethanol is, which is what is now being added into our gas at the pump. It burns cleaner, but requires a much lower fuel ratio and on average is about 34% less efficiant. Some starts have passed and are passing bills to add up to 10% ethanol to our fuel by certain time dates. So yes, alcohol is safe and WILL reduce emissions if you're trying to cheat past testing. Just remember what Daeron mentioned, don't leave it in your lines. Pure alcohol is very corrosive to metals and will eat out your fuel lines.

Just to reitterate further on what chris said: You'll almost never beat the power weight ratio of a OHV V8 engine. They have a TON more cubic inches per physical cubic inch of motor size than OHC engines. Example time The LS motors fit into the Z better than the ford mod motors. Camaro LS1 = 5.7 liters 305hp 335 torque Ford mustang SOHC = 4.6 liters 260hp 302 torque Corvette LS7 = 7.0 liters 505hp 470 torque Ford Racing Cammer DOHC = 5.0 liters 400+hp 365+ torque (power numbers variable on headers, motor comes withouth them) So you should start to see that on average OHC engines are much more effienct per liter... but look at the difference in displacement here, and the mod motors are larger, and often heavier than the LS engines. Just some food for thought. If you want a light, small motor that still produces power then OHV sure starts to look good.

Ok, order got all scrambled, but these are all the pics in his fast and furious meet album. I'm assuming they're the same pics he uploaded and tried to link. http://s22.photobucket.com/albums/b346/Gollumandsmeagol/Fast%20And%20The%20Furious%20Filming/

I'm off work in 45 min, I'll try to get that done before I leave.

Again, his pics are NOT private (unless he's my friend and I didn't realize it, but I doubt it). Click on the myspace link in his signature. Go to pics Go to Fast And Furious album.

If it was a PDF I'd pay $5-10 for it. If it were in a printed form that was obviously done on someone's printer on standard paper I'd pay $10-15 for it. If it were on full color paper with spiral binding and tabs for each section designed for easy in-shop navigation I'd pay $20-30 for it easily. And yes, I'm interested in it. The SBF swaps are the main V8 swap I think I'll ever do. And spending a litte bit of money on a well written and organized book would be worth it. I'd be much appreciative if the EFI 5.0 was covered as well.

If you just go to his myspace in his signature you can find the pics. This is funny thouhg, because I was on your myspace a few days ago without realizing it was YOU from hybridZ. My brother spotted a clean orange Z on a video on our cousins myspace so he told me to go check it out. Checked it out and found the myspace that when to the car and hey, there you are! Just made the connection as I was checking out the FnF pics. My cousin's myspace - http://www.myspace.com/allablur hmm, his comments aren't comming up. Anyways, it was in a vid posted in a comment from this guy http://www.myspace.com/lbrtcustoms Know either of them? Small world still.

Custom trans adapter setup $1k+ Custom motor mounts built to your spec with engine and car in hand $250+ Custom headers $1k+ Custom trans mount $150+ So that's at least $2400+ in parts, and there's always other stuff you forget, or didn't know you need. Most people double any guess. So that's now $4800. And I wasn't even considering labor to install these parts. I'd be very impressed if anyone was able to do a northstar swap for less than 5k on their own, with no paid for labor. I'd be impressed if anyone could convince a shop to do this swap for less than 10k. By contrast there's plenty of guys that have done LS1 swaps for half of those figures. You can then halve those figures AGAIN when you look at the budget SBC swaps... I've seen some insanely cheap swaps done. If you want to look at a small DOHC V8 you're better of looking at the 1UZ or VH45. Those are at least RWD to begin with. Still under 5 liters, so they're not massive.

I think that for most people you're right wheelman. For us car guys, finding a deal on a $1000 car that'll actually not fall apart is much more likely than when it's something that just some kid wants. I only paid $1100 for my 75' Z, and the motor, transmission, rear end, tires, basically all moving parts have been EXTREMELY reliable thus far and have kept me safe on my commute. Just search craiglist for cars under $1000, it's amazing some of the deals you can find.

I'm chuckling all over again remembering the episode of when they came to america. I wont' ruin it for others, too dang funny. Probably not the clip you're talking about, but MAN was that funny.

Well, if you're getting say, 20mpg (few on this site go much above 30, and few bellow 10... so that's a good average right?) and then buy an old FWD japanese car that's going to get 40+ mpg, and you only spent $500-$1000 on it, it actually won't take that long for the car to pay for itself. It also greatly depends on how much you drive, and how much you'll be paying for insurance. If you currently only own one car then your insurance might very well go DOWN, not up, because most companies offer a multicar premium discount. With it being such an old car the increase might be less than the discount difference. I had this happen when I got my new 80' 280ZX. Insurance went down about $1 a month. With gas prices the way they are right now I'm spending about $60 a week on gas, that's $3120 a year and if I see a 100% increase in gas milage that $1000 encono box would have paid for itself under a year. So in some ways yes, it DOES make sense to be buying a commuter vehicle if you're daily driving the Z. Sell the Z though? Hell no.

Well shoot, even if you weren't paid enough to get you and your car treated like crap, at least you can walk away having had a small taste of the movie biz and will get a chance to see your pride and joy up on the screen. (as long as they don't edit it out) I saw the first one in theaters... Enjoyed it but overall thought it was total crap and was more of a comedy than anything else. Skipped the second, saw it on HBO Saw the third because a friend was watching it at his house. I might actually go to the theater for this one, just because of you guys. I'll go with some car buddies and be able to say "hey, I know those guys. They're on my Z board." And that's just plain cool. There's pros and cons to the popularity of the Z growing, but I honestly don't think they'll change in price too much. These movies are becomming less and less popular and I can't forsee anything getting kids all that interested in these cars unless it was a main character's car.

There's no such thing as N/A Turbo injectors. What color are the injectors? Brown? White? Green? N/A = Naturally Aspirated Turbo = Force Inductino ie NOT naturally aspirated The Turbo injectors are brown NA is Green and White depending on year. If you put in NA injectors the AFM would need to be recalibrated (spring loosened) or else you won't be getting enogh fuel. The NA injectors are only about 60-70% of the flow of the turbo injectors, that's a HUGE difference. You can run NA injectors on a turbo motor, but I wouldn't run the engine past 4k on a regular basis. You'll be running pretty lean on the top end.

The Motoring J Style show is a classic japanese car show in vallejo, ca. This will be their second show, and should be 300+ cars. I'll be doing my best to take as many pics as possible. So you should be seeing pics soon after (show is on the 24th) They have the show set up in a way where there can be subgroups within the show, for instance some guys from the sacramento area are all going to be together in one area as they had someone organize it all and was actually sub selling tickets for their group. So I'm hoping that by next year we could have a hybridZ section at the show. I'll talk to some people who have groups this year and see what all it takes, how many people they need, and how much it costs to get it all put together. As far as the car goes, I did a litte bit of work today. I think body wise I'm just gonna try to fix my front air dam and leave most of the car be for the show.

Ok, so the big Motoring J Style show is comming up. I should have confirmation about my registration in the next day or so and I've been contimplating what all I want to have done before the big day (may 24th). My hood is rusty, and the scoop is broken, and didn't fit right anyways. I could just get to the show and pull my hood off... Or I could sand it down and blind people! Any opinions would be appreciated. I know some guys have expressed a strange draw to my rusty hood... Some even voiced it at the last vacaville meet, I answered with motions to stomp on the hood... But if enough guys think it's got mojo maybe I'll leave it. My MSA dash is cracked where the inner corner light loop connects to the bottom, so it hangs low. I tried JB welding it but it didn't hold, as soon as I scraped it lightly the first time it'd come undone. Should I try a plastic epoxy or something else... or just leave it? Driver side window is all scratched... I'll probably just leave my window down. Might remove the only remaining tint, the corner windows. I've also considered pulling my nice 6 spoke rims off my 81' 280ZX just for the show. Thought they might look better than the current rims, but I'd never seen the rims my car has before I bought it, so maybe I should just leave them. Any other tips or suggestions of things to do before the show would be appreciated. For the most part I plan on just leaving the car all day and walking around with my camera. Don't really need the car to look perfect, just presentable.

All very good points cygnusx, and I agree with them. Though I fear even if every commuter in the world owner a EV we still wouldn't see the price of oil change that much. Heavy transportation will still rely on diesel, batteries aren't nearly up to the task of a trucker. And Air travel. Those things burn lots of fuel and our only solution there is ethanol, which won't be much cheaper, if at all, so why would the airlines switch? But if someone had been selling EV vehicles 10 years ago and I could buy one used to cheap, I'd buy it... but I drive a good 60 miles a day just for commute, so it would need to have at least that much range.

i've been trying to stay down sub 70 lately on the drive to work. Driving with the "flow" around 80-85 around here KILLS my gas milage and it feels like I'm using at least 1/3 less gas keeping the speeds down. I really do want a cheap yamaha though, saw a 81' 850 special in the paper that was tearing me apart. Perfect condition for $1100. If the gas prices get too high I might just find a cheap econobucket to buy as a secondary. Maybe a CRX HF.

Last time I drove up to washington I hit a pretty good size bird in an explorer. Feathers everywhere. No damage to the vehicle. So ummm... "nice kill"?

I'll be praying for her and her family. Makes me grow cold thinking about all my friends who are currently over in the middle east.

Cygnusx1 - When I was looking up the expansion of gasses (due to heat) I found that it would be extremely hard to see over a 50% increase of volume out than in, but I didn't factor in fuel particles. But the richest you'd run is what... 10:1? Even that's pretty rich, and you'd be adding 10% of volume at best.

I never imagined of gaining HP from pulling the piston up in my oringonal idea... Just optimizing flow. A good set of headers can have a very good increase in power. Tuned headers can have an even bigger increase in power at specific RPMS. My idea was just "how close can we get to the best header design with your average exhaust system, or can we even beat it?" The idea is to NEVER have back pressure, at ALL rpm, allowing the ideal scavenging at all RPM.

Ouch. Well I'm not sure I would have much use for a vehicle that can't easily go 100 miles in a day. (yes i really drive that much) And we have hills, which would limit range even more.

Ok, maybe I'm just especially green today, but is anyone else itching to buy a old yota truck with a dead motor? Could fit quite a few batteries, decently light, and I could STILL leave room for guitar gear... If I could get 150+ range it'd be worth considering. That might be a LOT of batteries though.

I'll save a bit of time. I kinda feel bad for aux always having to answer tons of rotary questions. First off, realize that they need to be rebuilt semi-often, usually around 60k. Reason being is that the apex seals are under constant friction and hard load and just plain wear down. Next, the stock twin turbo exhaust manifolds don't clear, by quit a bit. The RX7 and RX8 engine bays are very wide compared to the S30 (actually... most cars have a much wider bay) and as such you NEED to go with an aftermarket exhaust manifold setup. While you're at it you might as well convert to single turbo imo. You also have to decide if you want to use the factory oil adding function. Rotary motors are fuel lubricated, so they NEED oil in the fuel. That's just the nature of how they work (much like a 2 stroke). So either you need to adapt the stock system, or remove it and add oil to every tank in precise amounts (that's what aux plans on doing). Personally, I think if there was a NA 3 rotor that costed less than 2k for a complete motor + sensors + ECU that had more than 250hp, then I'd strongly consider it for a swap. But the 3 rotors are turbo motors and extremely expensive. And I'm overal not sure I'd be willing to deal with the headache of a rotary swap.

I believe all the turbo ECUs are the same, but it does need to be a Turbo ECU, not just any 280ZX ECU. The turbo ECU has totally different plugs even. Notice that yourr wires going to the ECU have three plugs, well the normal NA ECU has a single large plug.