getZ

What do you plan on doing with the car and how often. Drag racing frequently seems to pretty hard on a lot of parts. There was an article in z car mag a while bag with a guy to was more in to road racing with just the front and back tied together. It seems a lot of guys just do what you just mentioned and are fine. I remember one of the turbo guys mentioning seeing cracks in the floor starting to appear, but I don't remember exactly who it was, but if memory serves me correct it was a completely unmodified frame. A lot of guys have beefed up or replaced the frame rails. I plan on adding a heavier cap to my frame rails and connecting them to the rear rails along with a 6pt roll bar. I don't plan on waiting to see what will crack first.

Anybody running a 200r4 and B&M shifter? I just had a question about the lockup convertor plug and the shifter linkage. I couldn't find a mounting bracket that really worked well without running into the plug. I could fabricate something, but it is always faster if I can just use something available. It is for a B&M street bandit shifter.

I didn't realize forged 302 pistons were so hard to find off the shelf. You can always custom order them, but that is not necessarily a cheap option. You'd have to call JE or some other manufacturer and get a quote. What kind of head volume are you running? I found a set of SRP's that will yield about 9.5:1 with a 76cc cylinder head. Another option may be to stroke it to a 327. I believe it's just a crank and piston swap. I assume all 302s were all small journals, so you'd need a small journal 327 crank.

Last time I read prochargers website, they recommended at least forged pistons of 9:1 but said you could get away with stock rods up to around 500 horse, the reason being supercharged engines are easier on the bottom end. Personaly, I would run at least a 5148 rod at that horsepower level. As far as compression, are you planning on running a carb? EFI gives you more room for error flirting with the edges of detonation, but it is a very expensive upgrade. Intercooling is another option, but why not spend the money on lowering the compression with pistons now and have the option of upgrading to an intercooler later, besides prochargers intercooler isn't any cheaper.

I don't have a problem with clearance against the firewall. I used the JTR mounting kit and slotted the mounting holes as per JTR. Because of the transmission I'm running (200r4), I have the engine pushed as far toward the radiator as I could get. With the tranmission crossmember flush with the bottom of the floor pan, there was no room for the tranny cooler lines and that required a bit of sledge hammer engineering. Fitting an exhaust up tight required even more pounding away. I haven't seen pics of anybody that had to mash the firewall. Check out the member gallery section. There are a lot of good pics to give you an idea.

Of course there is always the "while I am at it" syndrome. The engine and trans are out. What a good time to replace the brake lines and install bigger fuel lines. The engine compartment is pretty bare now, maybe I should paint it while I am at....

My friends always joke with me about actually finishing a project car and I thought about for a while. It's building the car that's the fun for me, not to mention all the cool tools you get to buy along the way. Besides, it keeps me from doing yard work!

I had an old camaro with a 350/350 combo with 3.73 gears for a few years going through college and the only problem I ever had was the alternator going out. I did have the trans rebuilt but you could tell it was slipping for quite some time. Of course, my daily commute was only 5 miles. Everybody has their opinion of what a daily driver is. Creature comforts like aircondtioning can be a big deal if you live somewhere like Phoenix arizona where you can fry eggs on the sidewalk during summer. To me, fuel injection is more important than that extra gear on the transmission. I hate having to wait for the car to warm up like with a carburetor.

Aren't parts available through Holden?

If you are the same person writing from the Desert Z forum. I tried explaining some points to you but you I guess you understand what I was telling you. I hope you don't get offended because I would really like to see you get that car running again. An EGR valve does not go from the caruretor vent to the intake manifold. EGR stands for Exhaust Gas Recirculation. It's an emissions device used to reburn gas coming out of the exhaust. It goes from the exhaust manifold to the intake manifold NOT THE CARBURETOR. On the 280z engine it is mounted on the intake manifold with a tube that goes down to the exhaust. Yours is designed to be mounted on the exhaust not the intake with exhaust into the center and manifold connection on the side. I would pull off all the emission stuff you got on it, plug it up and make sure it is running correctly before you reinstall all of it again. If you need a bung welded on the exhaust for the EGR, I can do it for you for nothing, but I live in the east valley.

I finally gave up trying to find anything else but block hugger headers fitting. It's block huggers, modified headers or custom headers for the JTR mounting. I keep kicking the idea of getting sombodys wrecked z car, cutting the rest of the car off except for the front clip (including the fenders), mount an old v8 in it, put it up on a trailer and driving it to summit or one of the header manufacturers and seeing if they something else that will fit except block huggers.

airconditioning should be easy enough to do. A complete kit makes it simpler. Power steering has been done several times before using racks from various different cars. Should be plenty of info in the past forums to help you out.

I'm not so sure that setup will work without remapping the entire fuel curve. I think that system was programmed for normally aspirated cars. I thought that Holley did have online fuel maps though. As far as power, I don't think you will see any peak horsepower gains over a well tuned carburetor. It does make cold startups nice.

I assume you were talking about the tranmission cross member and not the engine cross member. Not sure using a chevy cross member is any easier. I'm not so sure it will fit the width and the height will more than likely need to be readjusted to get the drive line angle right anyway. My cross member will be a straight stock of 3/8 steel across the bottom with a center section welded on it to raise the end of the trans. Pretty simple and cheap, of course this means the exhaust will run above the cross member as well. When you are sorting out your cross member, the type of exhaust is a considerationl since most people tuck the exhaust down the center. I remember you said you were thinking about running a big block. Do you want to run dual 3 inch exhaust?

Just watch and make sure you have good oil pressure when you prelube the engine and when you break the cam in, don't just idle it. I always see varying opinions about where to keep the rpms at during cam break in. I usually run about 2000 rpm. The cam relies on splashed oil for lubrication. Run the engine to slow and there is not enough oil going to the cam. I usually prime the carb float bowls with gas and dump a bit of gas down the manifold as well. Do yourself a favor and get another set of eyes on the underside of the engine to watch for leaks while somebody mans the throttle and tach.

There were two styles of small block chevy water pumps (excluding the new LT-1) that I know about, a short and long style water pump. I thought the short was for 68 and below, the long for 69 and up. I believe the difference was about 3/4 of an inch as well. I know you can buy spacers for the short one, but it sounds like you have the long style.

Almost forgot about the JTR manual. You can order installation parts from them as well. The manual seems pretty good in walking you through a lot of the details. http://www.jagsthatrun.com/

72 240 in the middle of 383 swap Watch out for the dreaded while I'm at it (WIAI) syndrome. Check out the desert z site: http://www.desertzassociation.com/forums/ I'm sure you can find a lot of advice in AZ from four links and tubbing to a very mild v-8 swap. I can help some times between work and my project car. How radical to you want to go?

I didn't realize there were different bolt patterns for different r200's. AZguy, which type flange did you have on your r200, round or square?

That's funny, I have the oppsosite problem. Orginally I had a r200 with a 2.25 inch flange. I had to get a later model diff with 12mm ring gear bolts and it now has a 2.0 inch flange. PM me and we can do a swap.

I just put my engine in this weekend with a JTR kit. What keeps me from getting the engine any lower is the harmonic balancer hitting the steering rack. I have a 7 inch balancer so I suppose you could get a 6.6 inch balancer to gain you some extra clearance, but you are only talking about maybe 3/4 an inch. Something else to consider, I have a stock style oil pan and that already hangs about a half inch below the crossmember. I would guess with a scarab kit with the engine sitting much farther forward, the limiter on lowering the engine would be the oil pan on the front crossmember.

I was a little hesitant to use the frame as a reference because I wasn't sure it was exactly parallel, but it is probably good enough. Of course, this method also assumes the rear differential is also parallel to the frame. What did you title the thread you mentioned? I searched for a while, but decided to press the easy button hoping someone would have something easy. Your solution sounds like it will work.

I couldn't find any info on an easy way to check the driveline alignment in the horizontal plane when swapping in a v-8. I can see using a bubble level to check alignment in the vertical plane, but how do you check it in the horizontal plane with out any special equipment. I thought about putting a flat surface on both ends (tranny and diff) and hanging a plumbers bob at all four corners (two back and two front) but I wasn't sure how accurate that would be. Anybody got any ideas?

I used a 280zx lower hose. It does a lot of weird bends, but all I had to do was trim a couple of inches off the bottom hose and it worked fine. If I remember right the stock zx radiator has an elbow on the bottom and the arizona z car one is straight, so I think you have to trim a bend on the bottom of the hose. Okay, so maybe it was more like 3 or 4 inches. I'll see if I still have some pictures of the old turbo motor.

You might also check the head temp sensor, not sure if yours has one or not. When my turbo motor had the temp sensor disconected it really ran bad (rich) blowing a lot of smoke out the back.