Gollum

The flat 4 to inline 4 comparison doesn't work, because ALL of those engines have flat plane cranks, so it's not too great of a comparison. I don't think the lopy sound a V8 makes can be cleaned up with just exhaust. The lopyness is inherent to the firing order. Lemme think of an analogy that might make sense, and hopefully will be accurate. We'll use a drum beat. Imagine the basic boom chuck that uses the kick drum and the snare. It's just goes: Boom : Chuck : Boom : Chuck : Boom : Chuck : Boom : Chuck : We'll call that a flat plan crank V8. Now imagine this beat in your head: Boom : Boom : Chuck : Boom : Boom : Chuck And in a pause after the chuck and you have "we will we will ROCK YOU!" Lets call that last one Domestic V8. Now what you have to realise is that it doesn't matter if you change the tempo, the drums, the drum heads, the sticks, even the drummer... the idea of the beats won't change and will still go along to the songs they were written for. Not all engine noise is created by the exhaust and those pistons are pounding away in the motor to a certain rhythm. It's going to be VERY hard to replicate a different engine running a different rhythm without changing the inherent rhythm of the engine in question. Where's braap at? Does this make sense? I think I'm pretty accurate on this analogy.

Am I the only one who's going to ask about the smoke in the second picture?

You know, I was hungry before opening this, and now I'm physically in pain and I don't know why. Thanks. Love the miura, and for some reason I've been seeing a LOT lately... like 3 in the last 2 months. Strange eh? They might have all been fakes for all I know, but the looked proportionally correct. Man, this should be worth at least a week long sticky or something. All sorts of yummyness.

Not too bad of a power band too! Still pretty gutless bellow 5k though. But I guess if you can rev to 8k reliably then you can cruise down the freeway at 4k, and not be far away from having power on tap.

The B16 seems to be one of the best swaps imo, simple because A) it's cheap has enough HP for most guys (puts the car well into the 14's) C) is lots of fun I've driven TOO MANY hondas for my liking, but I'd say of all of them I've driven I love the B16 the most. Sure it doesn't have as much torque and overal power as most of the motors out there, but it revs and feels unlike any other honda motor. With a good high ratio trans w/LSD it can transform the CRX into something else entirely, and it'll still get 35+mpg even driving like a bat out of hell. It's all about prefference and what the goals are though. If 160-200hp in a 2100 pound car is enough I'd go B16 all the way. Oh, and in my experience a L28ET has just as much, if not MORE budget HP availble than any honda motor. Sure there's guys in big company sponsored drag cars pushing insane HP numbers, but I'm talking about motors you actually see on the street. How many honda guys are putting over 400hp to the wheels and can claim they actually built the motor themselves? For such an old engine the L series ain't THAT bad guys.

Yea, wind in the bay area last week was NUTS!!!! Especially on saturday. Some areas were getting gusts over 50mph. But yea, it's been beautiful here in norcal lately and spring is definately well under way. We also had a very mild winter though. Normally there's several weeks of morning frost, and this year was just a couple days here and there. For what it's worth I've been driving the 280Z to work since I bought it almost 2 months ago now, with no heater. Just wearing a jacket to keep warm. Hands get a little numb by the time I get to work thuogh.

Jeez, just when I thought I was DONE for a while... I'll probably be picking it up next weekend. It's FREEEEEEEEEEE Zip, nothing, nada. It's a 1980 280ZX 2 seater. Brown interior and was origonally brown exterior. It was painting a strange eggplant color that has some metalic paint in it. It's been sitting over a year but is in amazingly good condition. No rust bubbling ANYWHERE, some mild rust in the battery tray that looks to be mostly surface. Owner says that 2 cylinders aren't running well and it seems to be bad compression since it has spark and fuel. He was gonna fix it up but has too many projects. He had SEVERAL amazing cars lying around that he was pointing out and telling me stories of who GAVE it to him. So he's got his handsful and knows he's never going to get to this 280ZX. He says it still drove fine with it's problems so I'll most likely actually be able to DRIVE a FREE car back to my house. Amazing eh? Oh yea, it's a slick top, woohoo! I'm still kinda unsure what I want to do with it, but I don't have money for a project, and I'm not gonna bother making a post smog car a street/track car. So I think I'm just gonna fix it up, and then decide if I want to keep it for a while or just sell it. Should be able to rake in an easy 1k in it's condition as I think it'll be visually appealing in most aspects. Overal I was impressed at how extremely origonal everything was, and how well done the paintjob was done. Well kept car, and aparently the previous owner before the current owner had like 5 of them and she has a garage of 40+ cars because she just buys new cars all the time. She bought this car new and commuted between oakland and SF every day and now the car has 205k on the OD. Basically wasn't driven much for the last 6+ years since the engine started having this issue (running rough I think, I have yet to hear it) but it's been well taken care of. I'll have pics in the near future...

Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to SUPER DAN! Happy birthday to you

Good luck fitting a S30 hood or buckets onto a S130, as they're completely different designes. On both cars the buckets bolt to the fenders and the fenders are completely different. Will all the time and effort trying to adapt everything you can just fabricate your own front end design for the car.

I don't know if any of them can be switched or changed, but I highly doubt they're all in english. Even a Japaneses betty would be cool.

EFI well tuned will ALWAYS be all around more efficient than a carb. A well tuned carb can almost always make close to the same peak power as EFI, but it can't be fine tuned like EFI can. The great thing about EFI is that you can tune to get MAX power at ALL RPM, not just one, and still get good efficiency/gas mileage when you keep your foot out of it. Without EFI getting over 100HP per liter naturally aspirated like in the honda S2000 would be impossible, as every tank of bad gas you bought would probably destroy your engine. Carbs simply can't compensate for the variables like EFI. That being said, there's plenty of guys here running carbs that are well tuned that get near the 30mpg mark, I just wonder how much power they're leaving on the table.

I find it amazing how picky some of the non-profit organizations can be. Maybe it's just a thing here in CA though, with so many junky cars around, but I've witness first hand 3 cars (within my family) be refused to be taken, all 3 in running shape. They tend to not like to take cars that are too old, or too rare. Probably because it costs them too much money to be moving a car that the can't sell.

I don't think the gold fish have enough lip for my taste. Is there gonna be a different version made?

Reminds me of a supressed memory I'd done so good to keep hidden in the back of my mind. ... So i'm up past the santa rosa area, kinda near windsor and I'm at a wal mart picking up some munchies for my upcomming vacation (hence being up that way) and I see these two hispanic guys both wearing black jeans and white wife beater tank tops. They looked like they just got done with a long day of construction work or something and I noticed the guys belt buckle. It was a huge (had to have been at least 6" by 6") beltbuckle that just said "JDM" in big white letters. I almost puked right there in wal mart. This on the other hand, is mildly cool. I'm not a belt buckle type of guy, but I wouldn't mind sporting that.

She sits on the passenger side of the car just behind the rear shock tower. Little black box. I still kinda want to find out what other languages she knows... Getting her to speak french would be sweet, and probably one of the only ways I'd keep her plugged in.

Turkish~ Big phil runs royal purple in his 300+ HP L28ET I believe. Not sure if that's enough of an endorsement for you or not.

I'd say it's a combination of tension and lack of overal surface area. Remember that's it's not just about how much of the belt contacts the pully, but the pull diameter as well. A larger diameter pully has more contact space, thus more grip. That's why Kenne Bell deisgns their superchargers to use LARGER pullys at any given PSI than most manufactures, as this allows them to achieve THE SAME frition/grip using less ribs on the pully, or GREATER friction/grip on the same ribbed pully. When I first scanned the initial post olderthanme, I didn't notice WATER PUMP and was like thought that was the crank pully you were talking about at first. Boy would THAT have been an awesome score. Then I looked at the picture again and realized that wasn't the case. If someone were going to run a supercharger like this, I don't see how it would be any different than just running it on the V belt though, other than the fact it'd be easier to find a supercharger that's compatible. Shouldn't cost THAT much money to get it welded and balanced to a crank pully though would it? Definately a cool find out OTM. Gonna store that nugget in the back of the head for sure.

I just realised the motor is NA at the moment... Makes more sense now... I was thinking you were running not just a turbo longblock, but entire turbo motor on the 77' EFI. Well the 4 barrel conversion is certainly easier than megasquirt I'd imagine. Though a lot of guys here swear by side draft carbs, like mukini or webbers. Though it might seem harder to setup carbs that need to be synced they offer pretty good performance in the long run. There's a pretty long milage thread if you just search for gas milage you should find it. Very few guys with a L series engine get under 20mpg or over 30mpg. I also know a lot of it has to do with what speed you're cruising at. Don't expect great gas milage at 70+ or anything over 3k RPM.

I was thinking from a weight stand point. I totally understand and agree with your reasoning to keeping it 100% electric only most of the time, for those that want to either keep the weight down or travel farther distances a generator would give you a great range with possibly better effiency than a similarly powered petrol engine.

Yea, dangerous things can happen when you take a car/part based on someone's word. If I actually listened to the seller I bought my car from I'd have a freshly rebuild, 250hp, 280Z with a T5 tranny... But he honestly believed what he'd been told, and I knew it was all wrong. I can't imagine selling something on ebay displaying full confidence in what I was TOLD. Granted, that might not be the case here, just a scenario. Overall good job Ron on taking care of it in a civil manner and killing the fire that could have spead quite a bit. Maybe next time he'll take better pictures, as that's a HUGE DEAL when you're buying something online. You never know, if he'd had better pictures he might have been able to sell it for more money to a camaro owner.

80W-90 is at least in range. 10W-30 engine oil isn't even close... Not wise to use that on a tranny.

Hmm... if these numbers add up, does this mean we could do around 70 miles to the gallon without ever plugging it in? Ok, for some reason a part of me doesn't want to believe it'd really be that efficiant, because if so we could reduce the battery weight significantly and just run it mostly off a generator and still get insane milage, and the distance able to be traveled would compare or BEAT the average car. You'd only need a 5 gallon tank to give you a significant range, and reducing the battery size would help offset the weight of the generator and gas tank.

VW definately seems to have their problems, but I'd dare say that if most of the american cars built in the 80's and 90's had engines that lasted 300k they'd see just as many other random problems with window motors, fuel pumps, wiring, etc. In fact my dad bought an explorer back in 03' and had nothing but problems (all replaced by factory). I think he went through 3 window motors on the rear left window... a window rarely ever used. All companies have their issues, but VW MOTORS seem to be pretty reliable. It's everything else that might be hit or miss depending on what year/model you buy. If I was looking for something with your requirements I'm not sure what I'd get. Maybe a newer volvo diesel wagon? Those things can TOW. Would make a good tow vehicle for bringing a car to the track. Can lay down some seats and put a tool box in it and STILL bring the wife and kid to the track with you... Ugly as sin. But safe and economical.

The S130 is at least twice as easy to work on. Or the Z31 is twice as hard to work on if you want to think of it that way. The Z31 has better EFI that is esily upgradable to nistune with a Z32 MAF for lots of airflow. Though we all know the L28ET as plenty of stock potential. They both can handle well, and can fit pretty wide tires under their stock wheel well. The Z31 is heavier, but has a few more ponies on the 280ZXT. You'll probably want a manual, so you only have two years to choose from for the 280ZX, so there's a lot more Z31 turbos out there to choose from. I'd say the 88-89 turbo would definately be the best Z31 to own. It's got a much better ECU and the sweet LSD we all want. 0-60 I'd say they're about the same. I've driven a few Z31 turbo cars and they all felt.... meh. Like you're accelarting nice and fast, but you sure can feel the weight. It's not very hard to get the tires to start to squeel in a turn. In my 2-3 years of driving a 280ZX every day I only spun the car TWICE, and I went hard on it all the time. The front suspension is pretty good, as it was very hard to understeer unless you purposefully went into a corner WAY too fast, and even then if you turned it too much the back stepped out instead of understeering. If you get a 280ZXT I'd highly recommend some wider rims, possibly wider in back than front. Defiantely go for a good suspension upgrade like modernmotorsports coil over package. The rear is probably the weakest link in the 280ZX. The Z31 tends to understeer more to me, thought that might be because I'm not used to driving them. I've never spent more than an hour in any of the Z31 cars I've driven, and there havn't been that many. Overall I'd say their equal cars in many ways. They both have their pros and cons. I personally would take the 280ZXT any day of the week. Mostly because I like the looks better and I'm so much more comfortable working on the L series than the VG. I already know how to take the car apart in a day and put it back together again. I'd have to learn a whole new car buying a Z31, though I DID consider buying one and WAS looking for one last year. If I found a 88-89 turbo for around 1k I'd buy it. EDIT: One more thing I should note... ...for daily driving only, and left stock the Z31 might very well be a better option. Much less wind noise at freeway speeds, and less problematic AC/Heat system.

Garrett is putting well over 400hp to the wheels (430 or so iirc) and he's getting 30mpg on a good tank. The real key is standalone. If you're getting BAD gas milage there's a good change the ECU isn't going into closed loop (using the O2 sensor) and even when it IS in closed loop the air/fuel ratio will have a tendency to wander quite a bit as the ECU has a hard time keeping the ratio at 14:1. 30mpg seems to be the reasonable limit for most guys though, regardless if they have 200 or 400hp. The main difference obviously is how much gas is consumed when they're ON the throttle. Why did you keep the 78' EFI? Didn't want to deal with converting over the 83' wiring? To me that's a huge step right there. The 83' ECU isn't very good, but I can't imagine a 78' NA ECU trying to manage a turbo motor. I'd recommend either looking into a standalone, or upgrading to a Z31 MAF based ECU. The Z31 swap can be done for cheap, but you really want to make sure you know what you're getting into before hand. There's a sticky about that swap on this board somewhere. Probably close to the other stand alone sections. Options for standalone are plentiful, and they all have their pros and cons, but many people here go with megasquirt because it's cost is far lower than other standalone systems. It has a lot of the same advanced features as the high end stuff too, and it's well documented here.