Dan Juday

This thread is the best argument I've seen for EFI.

This has me thinking about guys like me that have adjustable LCA's with stock TC rods. Extend the LCA to get more camber and you reduce caster and vice versa. Makes me think this set-up is more harm than good and I should go out and buy a set of adjustable TC rods. Seems the more I do to the front end the less I like the results. It tracked better and was more predictable before I started cutting and welding things.

I used it when I did the same swap. You will need to redrill the hole for the tranny mount and use a couple of flat washers to to fine tune the u-joint alignment but I had no problems.

If you are trying to achive a seemless mating of the headlight buckets and the bumper and you want your bumper painted than you are going about it in the most difficult way by attempting to weld them together. You will get distortion of the bucket trying to weld it to the much thicker bumper. You will have lots of little nooks and cranies for rust to start growing. The easy, rust free way is to buy a fiberglass bumper and get a set of fiberglass buckets and glue and fill. You wont get any protection from a metal bumper, but frankly, the 240 bumper does not offer much anyway.

There's also the Hollywood Motorsports kit. Eric at Zparts.com used to offer it but a quick review of his site comes up empty. It has a nicer looking rear deck IMHO than the Origin but it was designed as a true roadster and as such has no top, and also no trunk lid.

Disheartened I'm not. I was only kidding. Of all five generations of the Z car I only like the S130 and the Z31 in chop top form. I am struggling with what to do with the car. Leaving it original would be the best thing to ensure it retains it's value. But those wider fender kits look sweet and I prefer the later, more rounded, Z31 noses. And I could drop a turbo motor in there and still keep it California smog legal. There's no rush. For now I'm just going to drive it and enjoy it. Almost forgot: Yes Larry, John's kit IS the Origin kit. He bought all the molds, instructions, and hardware years ago.

It's not mine. The one I bought is an '84 N/A. If it's a true Straman it's very rare. I don't know how many they made in '86, but they only made eleven '84's.

I'll overlook that Z31 rag top flame this time. Here you go: http://www.reactionresearch.com/zspyder.html Here's pricing: http://www.reactionresearch.com/pricelist.html#zspyder

PM me. Let's not hijack this thread.

You gotta love the 90* fan belt. I had a neighbor when we lived in San Jose that used to mod and race Corvairs. He said that belt was the biggest engineering hurdle GM had to leap in the whole car.

I used Body Shutze (sp?, sounds like shuts). It's also a 3M product. The body shops use it for this purpose. Sprays on with an old whiped out gun you would never try to spray real paint with (at least that was what I was loaned). It's black, rubbery, and kind of lumpy. It sticks to everything and has held up very well. I also sprayed my fuel tank with it. The lumpyness covers up any imperfections like welded in plates for rust repair and makes it look "factory" again.

How do you think that would look on a convertable?

Huh, nobody asks me why. But then, they have to catch me first.

Welcome to the dark side.

23mpg highway (might do better if I would slow down) ?mpg city (who cares!) '91 305 tpi WC-T5 with .63 5th gear 3.70 R200 rear end

I guess they figured out that they were losing the >8" market to Billet Specialties. 'bout time. Billet Specialties had no problem making me a pair of 15x10's in four lug for the rear of my Z. Many of the designs are very similar to Centerline.

The last pic, the crack, is a body seem. Those are common and can easily be dealt with by grinding out the solder, welding and then filler. The other damage is more significant, especially the way the door fit looks. It could just be a bent window frame from an attempted burglary. You should really have it looked at by a professional with unibody experiance. I don't know how much money you have in the car so far but that looks to my untrained eye as a deal breaker.

No way to tell without some dimensions. There's not much room in there. I've got a door lock solinoid from a Q45 working mine. It fits but it's not great. It worked fine with my old soft and worn out hatch gasket but with the new one I have to gentally push down on the hatch while someone else pushes the button. Kind of defeats the purpose if it takes two people to open your hatch, eh? If you find one that works well share with the rest of us.

Nazar, don't take this as a flame, but I just want to brain you. I've done two EFI swaps with Mike's kits and Mike's books ( V8 Z swap and the TPI/TBI book). Almost everything you need to know do the swap is in those two books. Dang man, the motor mount question is answered in the first couple of pages! The knock sensor question is answered in the TPI/TBI book. You have got to read dude, or else you're going to look silly asking questions like that. Don't take this post the wronge way. I'm trying to save you some grief.

Don't mean to ruffle any feathers John. The swap is increadable. Very nice work and a sweet car, just what the RX7 needs. My inquiry is because of our "wonderful" California laws regarding motor swaps in post 1975 cars. I have some knowledge of the hoops that Dave Greimann jumped through to perform the legal V8 swap into his 280ZX. Any smog shop that didin't know the owner of the car closely whould need to see the DOT and CARB stickers to legally do the smog check, regardless whether it passes or not. This is the only thing that keeps me from doing a swap like this on a late model car. I don't want to jump through the CARB hoops and I don't know a smog guy that will let me slide. The problem with having a smog buddy that will do that is that he may not always be there years later when it needs to be done again, and again. This limits the car's market, and hence the value, using this method. Again, no ill intent in my words above. I love the swap no matter how you pulled it off.

Thanks for measuring and posting the results Terry. This is the first time I can recall of anybody giving any quantifiable info on u-joint angles and vibration changes.

Dang. And I just bought a new anchor for my boat.

Wow! I concur. That looks great.

Very Cool. (he he) That's actualy very close to the solution I've come up with for my 1966 Ford/Grumann (bread truck) service van.