pparaska

I've never heard of a 0.030" over bore being a problem. Some race engine builders would sonic test a block before boring it, but 0.030" is very common and trouble free.

Only from a 25 mph roll - it seems to work fine. If possible, use the hole in the actuation lever that's closer to the pivot, as the throw on the Z cable is limited and the handbrake handle has to be up pretty far to activate the brake in my car. I do have the caliper play adjusted to the bear minimum as well. ------------------ Pete Paraska - 73 540Z - Marathon Z Project pparaska@home.com Pete's V8 Datsun 240Z Pages

Doh! Sorry, I thought I saw an I in there. Reading too fast as usual, these days! Thanks for the tip on the materials. I'm especially interested in the Brown Bread. I've done some damping design for submarine quieting, and I know enough that the foil layered stuff is much more efficient, weight wise. ------------------ Pete Paraska - 73 540Z - Marathon Z Project pparaska@home.com Pete's V8 Datsun 240Z Pages

I haven't compared the three sender's resistance/temperature data to each other. I'll do that. I figure if they can't make them and sell them calibrated, I doubt I'd have much luck getting them to send me another that's any better. I KNOW I can calibrate them myself, so I just do it that way. I'll have a page up on how to do it in a few days, if anyone is interested. ------------------ Pete Paraska - 73 540Z - Marathon Z Project pparaska@home.com Pete's V8 Datsun 240Z Pages

Relays draw very little amperage. Anything that draws less than a few amps is not worth putting a relay on, if it's only for the sake of power/voltage concerns (control issues aside). ------------------ Pete Paraska - 73 540Z - Marathon Z Project pparaska@home.com Pete's V8 Datsun 240Z Pages

First, mount the A/C compressor, condensor, and evaporator and drier bottle. You can go to a shop that makes A/C hoses and just buy the hose and fittings you'll need for all the parts you mounted, or get them from a parts house. Then take the stuff home, put the fittings on the parts you mounted and measure and cut the hoses to length (be very exacting here). Install the ferriles, put a bit of refrig. oil on the fittings, push them in the cut hoses and orient the fittings on the hose the way you need them. Take the hoses back to the A/C hose shop and they can crimp the ferriles on. That's how I did it. Go with R-134. http://24.4.88.29/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000267.html has some info on V8Z A/C Cheers, ------------------ Pete Paraska - 73 540Z - Marathon Z Project pparaska@home.com Pete's V8 Datsun 240Z Pages

You can fit a 17x9 and 255/45-17s in the rear of a stock fendered Z with 8" coilovers, and a rolled fender lip. I have this setup on my car. Check out "Wheels and Tires" on my site if you're interested in the particulars. This is the MAX you can fit under a stock Z fender. I don't think an 18" wheel would gain you much, and you'd be running some 35 or 40 sereies tires to make it work! ------------------ Pete Paraska - 73 540Z - Marathon Z Project pparaska@home.com Pete's V8 Datsun 240Z Pages

I got mine about 6-8 months ago for around $55 each, plus shipping from www.martelbros.com . They just drop shipped them to me. These were not the polished ones, but the cheaper powdercoated or painted ones. Yeah, pretty expensive, considering their's no real precision machining needed for hydraulics and there were assembled with the activating lever flipped over the wrong way (which I fixed).

Yeah, I like that CompHood. Very 70s looking . The first Z I ever saw in a magazine that got my attention was in a HotRod magazine back in 1980, I believe. It was a red Scarab owned by a dentist or doctor. I was in high school, had a hopped up 70-1/2 Camaro, and friends with Shelby GT500s, SS454 and SS396 Chevelles, etc., but this canyon burner really turned me one. It was the beginning of my desire for a V8 Z. ------------------ Pete Paraska - 73 540Z - Marathon Z Project pparaska@home.com Pete's V8 Datsun 240Z Pages

Just wanted to say I saw Mike's car yesterday, and it's coming along really nicely. Those brakes are SWEET. Very nicely done kit. Looks great. The wheels are really nice and should let the heat escape well.

Didn't someone here say that Arizona Z car is now totally out of the fiberglass business?

The Ammeter is ALWAYs working. It hooks to the output of the Alternator and then feeds the battery and some of the circuits of the car, the lower right three fuses I believe. To find out which ones for sure, pull the fuse box and see where the large White/Red wire connects to (10 gage). It hooks to about three sets of fuse prongs using a philips head screw. If you have a drain, try putting a low current ammeter (5 amp max ought to work) across the lower right three fuse prongs, with the fuses out. You may need to change the scale to a lower range to be able to read the current draw. Anyway, this will help isolate the current drain. The clock uses a tiny bit, as well as most aftermarket radios. These both should draw very little, probably less than a 1/4 amp total. Hope this helps, ------------------ Pete Paraska - 73 540Z - Marathon Z Project pparaska@home.com Pete's V8 Datsun 240Z Pages

One (very low resistance) resistor goes in line to the sender terminal from the sender. The other larger valued resistor goes between the sender tap on the gage and ground. They can just be hooked up at the gage. The issue is you need to see what the accuracy of the gage is and how far off it is over an important range (I use 180 and 210 degrees) and know what the resistance of the sender is at the indicated and actual temperatures to determine what resistors to use. In a few days, I'll post some general equations, etc. on my site to show how to do this - some time next week. Seriously, I'd go with a mechanical water temp gage next time. They are generally more accurate and don't suffer from voltage regulation problems (obviously).

I've tested 1 used and 2 new Autometer electric water temp gages. The used one (Street Comp) was off by 20 degrees in the 180-210 range. So was a brand new Pro-Comp. The other new one is Mike Kelly's Phantom. I checked it last night and it was off 8-10 degrees F from 180-210. Call me picky, but that's not acceptable. I've designed a simple resistor network to recalibrate the gages to read within a degree of actual temp in the 180-210 F range, but it usually hoses the lower temp calibration. I can live with that. Also, the gages aren't voltage regulated, so they read differently depending in the supply voltage. I'm using 13.6 V as the supply voltage, as that's a common or average voltage for a car that's running with the alternator spinning above idle. It's not a huge effect, but a cheap regulator chip insid the case of the meter would be appreciated by me at least. Anybody know what other gage brand out there that might be more accurate? I'd go with a mechanical (capillary tube) water temp gage the next time around. Those are usually more accurate. As for the Volt meter, I'm going to do what Mike Kelly suggested to me months ago - get or make one that plugs into the Cig lighter. [This message has been edited by pparaska (edited February 15, 2001).]

Lone, dude, you're building a car, but I built an obsession. The difference is mine took a decade, yours will take 1/10 of that! Thanks for the compliments! ------------------ Pete Paraska - 73 540Z - Marathon Z Project pparaska@home.com Pete's V8 Datsun 240Z Pages

I believe Ross has used both. I only have the 2000 version. I like it, but it bugs me that you can't put in more info on the cams. Of course, getting more info on the cams is difficult unless you measure the lift/rotation relationship yourself (not hard to do). What I'm getting at is you have to play games telling it how aggressive the ramps and lifter accelerations are by picking from Hyd. flat tappet, Solid flat tappet, and Roller type cams. They tell you to not use Roller for the street rollers. The problem is this choice has a HUGE impact on engine performance, in the real world and using the software. I'm capable of measuring my cam's lift/rotation curve, and I want to put it in. I'd also love to get that data from the cam makers, but that'll never happen (trade secrets, etc.) It'd at least be nice to know what kind of motion the cams are using (cycloidal, harmonic, etc.) and be able to play with those parameters as well. Other than the Cam guessing game, I like it pretty well.

Tony, Beautiful car! I really like seeing one of these GTO kits done up with all the racing suspension and brakes, and a 400+hp/lb-ft V8! ------------------ Pete Paraska - 73 540Z - Marathon Z Project pparaska@home.com Pete's V8 Datsun 240Z Pages

Sorry, saw this at work the other day and didn't have time to comment. Wow, that's an ambitious endeavor. Are you going to weld some kind of thick tube to the backplate to carry the bearings/stub axle? It guess a stock Z strut tube hacked off the casting and then welded to the tube/backplate would work. As far as moving the attachment point inboard, I'd want to see the effect on camber gain. It would give you less camber gain, I guess, but I'm not sure that's desireable. Anyway, moving just the bottom of the strut an inch will only give about 1/2" of inboard wheel clearance. I doubt it's worth it. Well, that's my 230am stream of consciousness anyway .

I put the Pro-Comp In-Dash 5" tach behind the stock Z tach's bezel/lens. Pretty easy to do.

Man, that thing is beautiful! I'll take two. One for some kind of car, and the other in the Thunder Mustang (P-51 copy)!

Come on now, Lone. You know if I was helping it would have been 13 years!

Another thing about the high rod/stroke ratio, a good chamber (high swirl), and a thin quench area is that since it cuts down octane sensitivity, it allows some pretty high compression ratios. I've seen 10.5:1 on 93 octane, and 11 might be possible with the big cam you're looking at. If you're playing around with this stuff, get Desktop Dyno to be able to trade choices. Don't depend on the absolute numbers, but the trends will be spot on, especially when you put the right flow numbers in.

One method that workds: Heat gun and Scraper. A torch cna be used as well, but not as safe and easy. Heat the stuff up in a 6" by 6" area, and scrape the now-soft stuff right off. The tiny bit of remaining stuff can be wiped off with any petro based solvent. Mineral spirits are cheap and works good. I've heard of using chemicals, but that's messy and you need to keep them out of hidden areas. ------------------ Pete Paraska - 73 540Z - Marathon Z Project pparaska@home.com Pete's V8 Datsun 240Z Pages

Rick, a few opinions on your build up: 1)Octane tolerance: I'd not want to deal with ANY octane boosters. But with minimal quench height (0.035 to 0.040") you can make HUGE gains in octane tolerance, not to mention more and broader power. The recent engines built up in Chevy High Performance have brought this idea back fro the old days. Another thing that adds to octane tolerance and power band width (rpm distance from peak torque to peak hp) is to use a rod/stroke ratio of 1.7 or better. It's hard to go too far with this. I'd be looking at a shorter stroke versus a longer one, if needed, and the longest rods you can find/afford. With a 3.875" stroke, you'd want a 6.6" or longer rod to get that. I doubt that would easily fit with a piston ring package that didn't have the pin in the bottom ring land. I might go that way to get the rod/stroke ratio. Did you ever see that article a few years ago in Chevy High Performance (I believe) where they built a ~350ish CI motor from a 400 block and a 327/307 crank (3.25" stroke)? It had long rods as well (Ford 300 6cyl.) It made tons of torque and hp on low octane gas (over 400/400, can't remember the details). I guess I go for the 427. 2) Heads. Wow lots of confusion on heads out there. Haven't the recent flow tests by Chevy High Performance shown that the Dart and Victor heads don't have much swirl? Also important for torqe and octane tolerance, not to mention a bit of top end power. I've also heard good things about the new AFRs, but not so good as well (Hi Ross). The Brodix Pro 1 Aluminum heads are supposedly very good in flow and swirl. I'm very keen to see some tests of the new for 2001 Edelbrock E-tec heads - the 200cc ones would be interesting for your setup. 3) Cams: It seems that I've heard nothing but great things about the Comp Cams Xtreme energy cams. The solid roller Xtreme series seems hard to beat as far as wide power band and great power. The XR280R (12-771-8) has a range of 2500-6500, (242/248 @.050 .570/.576" lift) and the XR274R (12-770-8) has a range of 2200-6200, (236/242 @.050, .564/.570" lift ) seem like good candidates. There is a larger one than the XR280R, but I doubt it's very streetable (3000-7000 range). Check out http://www.compcams.com/catalog/060_061.html FWIW,

Ambrose, Yes, I'd so GO FOR IT! There are a few others that have gone from Scarab position to JTR. Frank, other than all that, you'd need to shorten the driveshaft or buy a shorter one, right? About 4 inches shorter if you keep the same transmission. But install the engine/trans first and measure. I hear the JTR book is back in print. Definitely get it!