getZ

back to the original question. crane Hi-6R has boost retard function. I have one in a car that is still being restored so it has never seen any real road time, but I've heard complaints by some guys that they don't hold up well here in the desert heat. I know a guy who is a real fan of Jacobs stuff who uses it in supercharged jeep out in the desert for sand dunes. I'm curious why you are losing MSDs. I haven't had any problems with a 6AL like you have. Do you see a lot of heat, vibration or moisture?

I had a set I ran laquer thinner though a while back and that seemed to have dried them up. I landed up putting them in a ultrasound bath of laquer thinner and that freed them up again. I used a ultrasound cleaner I borrowed from work, but I think you can get them from eastwood. This for a car that sits for long periods of time so I cycled a little wd-40 into the injector and put it all back together again.

I would have to see a set of schematics on that engine to know for sure, but on the 280z engine there is one more component in between the coil and the ecu called an ignitor. Basicly it is a transistor used to apply voltage to the coil since the ecu does not put out enough power to drive the coil. I had to use a digital o-scope to actualy see the ecu driver signal. A handheld multimer has to slow of a respose to pick up the trigger signal.

Double check the position of the shifter before you start drilling. It's a personal preference sort of thing, but I like my right elbow to be at my side when banging gears. It tends to keep the car straighter. I used the factory console so it was kind of a compromise in positioning versus console location. Mine is also sunk down in the tranmission tunnel so the shifter only sticks up about eight inches. If you elect to do it this way you have to fabricate a mount to lower it down. On my car I also made a little box out of aluminum flashing to seal the bottom of the shifter from the elements. The flashing is really thin so it's like working with cardboard. Also check the "park" position of the stick. I actualy had to change shifters because another model of shifter put the handle against the front center console.

there was an article I read a while back in one of my magazines and one of the guys from TPI (tuned port specialities) prefered a higher pressure for better fuel atomization.

the o-rings didn't turn to mush, they swelled to almost double in size. At first I thought it was going to be a problem, but after a day they shrank back down to normal. Something about that shaking seemed to let them soak up the solvent. As far as hurting the injectors I think they will be fine. I will find out soon enough when I hook it up to a pressurized solvent and fire them.

This may sound obvious, but I didn't think it would be a problem. I've got a Edelbrock pro-flo in another car and the car sat for a couple of years and the gas turned a nasty hard red varnish. Well... injectors and the rest of the fuel system don't like it much. Half the injectors were not working at all so I dunk all the injectors in a laquer thinner bath and turn the ultra sound on for about an hour. All but one of the injectors cleaned up great, but next time remove all the o-rings. They swelled up, almost doubling in size redering them useless. Doh! Nothing major, but annoying to have to go out and get another set of o-rings

bacardi 151 hurts bad enough, it burns my lips. I don't think I would like pure alchohol much. Although I don't think it has to be 100% to burn well enough. I'm not sure how strong shine can be, there has to be at least an extra step to bring it to the point where it can burn well enough to put in a car. I know E85 is 85 percent alchohol, but I think the other 15 percent is gasoline.

True, the volume of hydrogen needed is much bigger then gasoline, but there is some interesting development on hydrogen storage because of this problem. Something called nano pockets or using some other compound that is made up of hydrogen and can easily extracted are some of the things in the works, but it is not something that will probably not come out of a home shop. I am all for running alchohol as a replacement for gas and that I can brew myself. Design a solar still and it has the potential to become a cheap renewable fuel source. Attach a valve to the bottom of the tank and you can drink it after a bad day (providing you make ethanol shine) of course you should water it down some first.

I run dual 2 1/2's up until the muffler where it is dual 2 1/2 in, single 3 1/2 out. Up front I have a pair of dynatech cats to an H - pipe (I couldn't get an x pipe two fit with two moroso spiral flows). So it goes header to cat to spiral flows to spin tech muffler. This car is still not quiet enough to hear the radio well without cranking it up quite a bit, even with sound matting added to the floor boards. I will probably land up redoing the exhaust and go with packed mufflers instead of resonant chambered mufflers. The problem is getting them to fit underneath inside the transmission tunnel. I may even opt to modify the floor underneath the seat going back to gain more exhaust room.

"I'm just curious as to how much perfomance can be had from burning pure H and O2." Enough to leave the earth. That's what that old Saturn V upper stages were powered by, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

Great topic! I was reading a book over the holidays on hydrogen energy entitled "Hyrdogen, Hot Stuff Cool Science" that I got from Edmund scientific on line. One of the limitations (using a fuel cell as engine) is just the sheer volume required to get enough energy. Hydrogen is riduculously light but even in a liquid state contains less chemical energy than gasoline by volume. However, by weight it has much more chemical energy (a gallon of liquid hydrogen weighs something like two pounds) Unless you can design an engine that is much more efficient than standard gasoline engine (somewhere I believe around 20%) you already have some big hurdles to overcome not to mention getting liquid hydrogen isn't that easy and neither is converting hydrogen to liquid. Yet I still hope the technology can be developed at least to an infancy to spur on competition by privateers. I'm always a little suspicious of oil companies developing this stuff. What incentive do they have to decentralize the energy business?

You shouldn't need to sump a tank that was designed for fuel injection. It should have enough traps and/or baffles to prevent fuel starvation.

700r4 has a big rpm drop in the 1-2 shift, but it's a 4 speed auto. I prefer a beefed up 200r4 because of the tighter gear spread. Turbo 350's can be had for dirt cheap now that 4 speed autos are so common if price is a concern.

my starter only engages about 3/8 of an inch but it is enough to turn the flexplate fine. I would double check your gear engagement. I used a screwdriver to pull it out and shimmed the starter accordingly to get the correct depth of gear engagement. It's about a paper clip width of of clearance with with starter gear tooth into the flexplate (actual spec may be a little different for your starter), but a paper clip is handy.

Most of the original hookups on the car are reused. The starter with the fusible link can be hooked directly to the gm starter. I opted to pull out the link and wire it directly, but you should put it on a fuse. The common tie in point between mating the engine to the existing electronics is really the alternator. If you use a gm one wire alternator you can yank out the stock z regulator stuff and clean the engine bay up a bit. There is a web site with an article on how to install a gm one wire alternator, but my computer crashed recently and I don't remember what it was called.

I landed up using a similar cable system but modified the pedal end a little to accept the ball into the linkage. I also had to do a little bending, but it was only about a couple hours of work to get it all working nicely.

what's the spike at around 3200? A stab at the throttle usualy makes the accelator pump move and the reading go rich not lean. Also what are the two different colors representing? I assume you are tuning for power and not economy or emissions. 14:1 is chemicaly ideal, but rich is where you'll find more power at 13:1. Some people even favor a bit richer at 12:1 for carbs. I believe there is a graph from the edelbrock website that tells you how to jet, unfortunately it is for a carter or edelbrock. It doesn't look you are running that bad aside from the spike. Of course fuel injection will give you greater adjustability, but it is an expensive upgrade. That of course is just my opinion. I put an edelbrock pro-flo and it doesn't really make any more power (at least not that I notice), but I do enjoy cold startups.

I looked into building up a 4.3 a while back for my blazer and what finally discouraged me from building that engine up was a selection of parts. I couldn't find a decent head to get the power I wanted. Porting the head and stepping up the cam would have only netted me around 300horse, respectable power but I wanted somthing more. A bow tie head flowed big numbers but it was a race head with 220cc intakes. It could be made to work but then you were limited by the throttle body fuel injection system. If your heart is set on using the v-6 and you are on a budget I would think about converting it over to a carb. I would never drive the Z in Korea, especially Seoul. Those people drive pretty crazy.

There's not a lot of money to be made restoring cars. I think most of the time you put more into it then it's worth. Then when you finaly get an immaculate resto, it's no longer a driver. I can appreciate people who do nice restorations, but it's not my style. I always want things better be it performance or comfort. Asking if you should modify a z car on a forum dedicated to modifying z cars.... survey says: "modify the z car"

The shifter I used was a Hurst Promatic, but the brackets I used will look similar to the megashifter. The thing to watch out for is how far the shifter goes when it is in park. I was going to use a B+M with a pistol grip but it really goes far forward into the center console. The picture on the right I posted earlier is from underneath without the driveshaft in place. I hate to suggest the dreaded "while you are at it", but it is a good time to upgrade the fuel lines. Also in the pic is the rear brake biasing valve brake lines.

I used ratchet shifter (I forgot what the name was) with a 200r4 and there is a lot of room inside the tranmission tunnel to sink the shifter down, but it requires fabricating a couple of brackets to lower the shifter. Later I made a box to enclose the bottom out of aluminum ducting and added some dynmat insulation in the box to keep the heat and noise out. It was pretty easy to do and still retain a close to stock look. Pay careful attention how far forward or backward you position the shifter if you don't want to cut up the center console or hit the heater control panel.

Those are some pretty cheap shaft mounted rockers. As far as quality I wouldn't know. I have some stuff from procomp and it's been okay quality. If you are only running a moderate cam at best, shaft mounted systems are an unecessary expense. They are for high rpm rocker stability when you start reving up above 7000 with a big lift cam. If it was me I would go with somebody elses roller rockers and save a few bucks, but that's just my opinion. I really like my steel comp cams roller rockers, but those cost more than those procomp shaft rockers

Watch out for some of those ebay oil pans. I had one so warped it could rock about a quarter inch. It looked good, nice zinc coating and good looking welds, but didn't seal. Speedway motors has a nice pan as well.

good luck and may the driveline gods watch over you!