pparaska

Sorry to see the Porch go. I hope you don't miss it too much. (Sniff - I never got a ride!) But now you don't have to be a Porsche snob. Sounds like you're trading that to be a Bimmer Snob. Welcome to the club. The E36M3 - great choice! Will that be a track car, street car or a bit of each?

And clay'd paint /jk I understand it though. The OE wheels on my M5 are horrible to clean (They are now my winter wheels.) The CCW wheels Jim has would be easier to clean than those, but not much. The second set would be a lot cleaner - and if it was just a track car, I'd be going with the second set Mike showed (the 5 spokes). They might be lighter as well.

Mike, I remember you unboxing those to put onto Jim's car - I fell in love with the CCW's all over again that day. Personally, I think they only look good in Silver - to see the pretty metalwork easiest.

Mike, I know you had been knowing this was coming, hating the process of it, etc. You were preparing for it - but it's never enough - it still hurts. Very sorry to hear of your loss, hoping you are getting some comfort that he's now comfortable. He had every reason to be proud of you and you of him - two of the great ones!

Mike, sorry to hear you didn't get more time in the seat and that you couldn't fix it at the track. Since you said you'd be bailing early, I've decided to not sweat with you tomorrow. . Sounds like it will be a continuing fun project for you. That thing should be a bullet - get it on a dyno where someone knows their distributor curve, carby stuff.

Mike, I do remember the pan removal now. I must have been blocking that experience . That pan is larger than the regular SBC pan, so it makes it not so easy to drop. I know I can drop the 6 qt 60's vette pan on my 406 with little trouble. It's so good to see a project come together - I know you must be really stoked!!!

Mike - I was wondering if you calibrated the dipstick/tube/pan on the stand to see where it got to the point that it was too near lowest reach of the crank/rods (not really sure what that measurement would be - maybe 1" away??). I've never done an accusump setup, but it seems you'd need to - take that out of the equation (get the accusump full), - run the engine once the crankcase is filled with the amount you THINK it needs, making sure the thermostat for the oil cooler opens, to get all the air out of that circuit, - shut down the engine, and wait a few minutes for drainback to occur, - check the level on the dipstick. - Remove or add oil until it's at the happy mark you calibrated on the dipstick while you had the pan off. Luckily, the V8 Z allows you to pull the pan with the engine installed in most cases, so you could pull it, calibrate a mark on the dipstick the correct amount below the lowest reach of the rotating assembly, and replace the pan. So if you haven't calibrated it, you could do it now.

Olya wants to attend Summit Point with me (and bring her mom who's here from Kiev for the next month, speaks only a few words of English). Olya said something about sticking her mom in the passenger seat of the Z and having her go for a lap!

Mike, it's been a long road, for sure. But all the "stuff" that got in the way of slowing the build of the Z were important steps along the way, and helped shape you and the Z into better things (well, except the extra weight, Haha). Going slow on a project (hmm, how would I know?) can give you time to think and change as you learn more, not a bad thing. I'm still planning on being at Summit Point on the 12th (work is keeping me away on the 11th). I'll check in with you the night of the 11th to see if you need me to bring anything that you find you need that day. I look forward to seeing you and the Z and the crew! BTW, will the funny little honey be there?

You are welcome, good luck. I bet the stage I will be fine. Pete

I can only tell you this about how much power: -Desktop Dyno 2000 says about 500hp, 500ftlb - but I don't think it's quite there - its not really tuned well. -I could stay right with a Ford GT from 20-140mph on the back straight at VIR - glued to his bumper but not able to pass - I did that a few times in a row. -I've never dyno'ed the engine or the car.

I'm running a Spec stage II plus and quite happy with it. Pedal pressure is street friendly and it doesn't grab like a racing clutch. Holds the power and torque of my 6.7L V8, but then again I'm not running slicks, just sticky 245 wide Toyo RA-1 road race DOT legal tires.

Awesome! What are the cam specs or brand/part number?

Sorry, no vids from VIR or my last outing, Summit Point. I'm with you on the 5 series, my M5 with about 440 crank hp and smooth ride can at times be the preferable ride. But if I want a real adrenalin rush, the much smaller and lighter Z with 6.7 liter lopey, loudish engine is the fix. . I think the 6 speed (T56) would be better for my uses in the Z, if it was one with a similar 1st through 4th ratios and a 0.8 or 0.85 to 1 5th gear and a 0.6 or so to 1 6th gear ratio. 55 to 65 mph in 4th with my 3.7:1 diff and 255-40/17 tires is buzy, but the 5th gear in the T5 (0.68:1 I think) is too steep for those speeds with my cam. An in-between gear would be useful. I'm running a Holley HP 830 w/ annular venturis.

About 10 years ago, when doing this conversion, I bought a Tremec TR-3550, which is the trans the TKO is built from. I always thought it shifted like a truck. I was running a short shifter with it. I sold it to a friend and when he put it in his Z, using the same exact bellhousing and hydraulic clutch, but he used a long handle on the same Pro-5.0 shifter. That made it shift much better. If I'd known that was the fix, I might have kept it. My reason for going with the T5 and not a T56 was that I had an F-body T5 that was broken and decided to have a go at the G-force thing. It shifts quite well, but I will warn you the gear noise is near that of a straight cut trans. 3rd gear is pretty loud for a street car. But you do get used to it. Two other things I like about it is that it's light (about 85lbs) and small compared to the Tremec TKO and the T56. I wish there was a good long tube header solution. The TC rod mounts make it so tight in the bay, and I don't want to deal with dragging street rod headers that some have done. Custom has been a thought, but I've never taken the plunge. With a built 406 you're going to have a ton of torque and power anyway. Losing a bit from the block huggers is not really going to be noticed 99% of the time, IMO. I'm probably losing more real performance on the street from the carb not being dialed in than from the block huggers. I do have a set of Weber power plates (adds a circuit and allows use of Weber tuning parts) that I plan to install over the winter to help with that, as well as a WB O2 sensor and gage to help with that.

Maybe have the T5 upgraded. That's what I did: http://www.gforcetransmissions.com/tran_gt-5.asp

http://quarterjr.com/ many software apps for $99 I have no experience with this software, but for $99, I figured there might be some usefulness. I have Desktop Dyno 2000, and I figured this should be as good, maybe better (Engine Pro 3.1) Anyway, I have no affiliation, just thought I'd pass it along. Only good until Thursday night, midnight Pacific time

Overkill - awesome choice! Available in the US market, tons of capability for more power and awesome even stock! BTW, 57 users have voted in this poll, and there are 566 responses. Interesting...

BTW, how can you have a vote where at this point 51 members have voted, yet there are over 400 votes cast? I guess guests can vote? Seems like a very non-scientific poll. And useless.

Olya and I had a great time. The teething problems with the car are due to me not really doing much with it and waiting until the last minute to prepare it. But having the alternator go bad (an alternator with just a few hundred miles on it!!!) when I was about to put it on the trailer to head to the track was pretty much my luck. I would have been on schedule but for that. I had the oil leak issue at VIR 2 years ago, and got convinced it was a valve cover gasket. No, the intake was leaking at the back on the passenger side. Only happens at the track. Luckily, Mike and I were able to get it sealed enough that it was barely leaking - no more smoke. I need to pull the intake and reseal it. The coolant leak was due to me overfilling the system cold and overfilling the overflow bottle. My bad. We added water wetter and things were fine after that. The fueling issue - Not sure what that is at this point. Could be hot exhaust near the fuel lines, a failing pump, fuel pickup issues or all of them. Umm... I don't have a spouse! LoL! I had a great excuse to not go out on the track after putting the sealer on the intake/block - had to let it cure . I had a nice dinner with Olya, Mike and Donna at a nice little Italian place in Winchester. Olya enjoyed the ride in the Miata! Yes, the fuel delivery issue needs some serious attention. The tank is coming out, I will install the intank pump into the sump that is installed into the tank, and I will be insulating the lines anywhere they get close to the exhaust. I have some weber power plates to install into the carb and will work on making sure the fuel gets into the circuits and not slosh away from the jets, etc. Thanks for everything, Mike. We had a blast! Hope to do it again this year, not sure where, maybe VIR.

Personally, I think you are being silly. Do you really think that "Nissan" has an opinion on this? Do you really think anyone at Nissan is offended by someone using a non-Nissan engine in an old Z car? NO THEY DON'T. Mr. K loved my car when he saw it with the V8, signed the visor too. This is the silly attitude that got HybridZ.org started years ago, and here you come onto HybridZ with this silly nonsense. Come up with a GOOD, RATIONAL reason and I'll listen. Irrational crap like "a slap in the face to Nissan" doesn't belong on the lips of anyone who actually uses their brain, or on HybridZ.org.

Mike, I understand that a wet sump is probably not going to be the BEST solution. But I'm after a "good enough" solution. If you read on speedtalk.com, you'll find a post where Reher Morrison designed a Road Race Pan for the BBC that worked well enough for them to win racing with the big boys. Moroso makes it for them, but they sell it with a pump and pickup on the Reher Morrison site. Their testing showed that what you need is NOT a pan with "bat wings" in the sump, but a pan that is narrow at the bottom. This makes sense when you think about it - why give the oil a place to travel to laterally if you want it in one area to suck up with the pump? Doors apparently don't seal well enough to keep the oil contained around the pickup. Billet Specialties makes a wet sump pan that uses balls that roll to shut off the oil flow. Maybe this works better. "scotth@moroso.com" (Scott Hall) can be found on the yellowbullet forum saying he thinks they could design a pan for the SBC with the same type of design. That was back in Sept 09. I will get on the phone and talk to him soon about this... The issue is getting the oil to the pickup AND KEEPING IT THERE. A baffle above the pickup seeps to be as important as many other things. My biggest issue is how to run a dry sump on the street, without having to worry about heating the oil tank, priming after sitting for a week, etc. I bet someone has designed a system that's streetable, but I don't have time right now to deal with it... I've thought a hybrid wet/dry system may be the answer, but that'd be a huge R&D effort as well. I just will not accept that the 50+ years of road racing the SBC has not seen a solution to doing a wet sump design that will work for me. My car doesn't corner with as much lateral (acceleration or braking) g's as a road race corvette from the 60s. There must have been some satisfactory designs for a wet sump system that worked. Not everyone ran a dry sump, from what I can find. I was wondering about the Aviaid wet sump pan. They have a long history in RR oil pans, from what I've read. Here's at least one anecdotal post that shows the Aviaid doing better than the Canton pan on a Ford 289 (scroll to post #17): http://www.chevelles.com/forums/showthread.php?t=204618&page=2 This is the kind of thing I'm talking about - this is an OLD problem. It's been worked at for decades. It must have suitable solutions (wet sump road racing oil control).

That's a Hamburger Dry Sump pan. I suppose it might fit, but I'm really wondering if someone has found a WET SUMP pan that will fit the bill...

I'm in the same position - block hugger headers (wish I had something better - see other threads on that from of late) and I need a PROVEN good pan/pickup setup that controls the oil well in high-g left AND RIGHT turns for the old SBC that will clear those headers and pipes that come down from them and curve back for the exhaust. I'm running the Sanderson CC5 headers that JTR sells. I currently have the old OE Corvette pan from the 60s-70s, and a Z/28 pump, with the correct pickup for this pan installed so that there is 3/8" between the pan and the leading edge of the pickup. My problem is that on tight exit ramps (clover leaf) at high lateral g-loads (Toyo RA-1s - we are talking probably .9+ g's - most people swear we will fly off the road!!!), the oil pressure at 3000rpm starts at 60psi and goes down to 20psi during the turn, returning to 60psi as soon as I straighten out the car. I don't want to do this again at a track even 12-13 July (1.5 months away). I've read through the past posts on this (many of them I participated in) and even what I posted about Jim Biondo using the OE Corvette pan (6 qt, long sump) and him saying that it worked for him on the track doesn't hold true for me. Yes, I am sure I have the right amount of oil in the engine. When I built the engine, I put the pan on, put in 6 quarts of oil, prelubed it thoroughly (got oil coming out of each pushrod/rocker) with a full sized SystemOne filter and then removed the pan on the stand. The oil was basically right at the level of the horizontal baffle in the pan, which is JUST below the Milodon diamond scraper that I put at a high location, very near the crank but high enough to clear the pan baffle. So If I put more oil in the engine, it may well have the crank dipping into the oil. I know, I could get an accusump, and some say go dry sump. Since my track day is only 1.5 months away, I would like to just bolt on a known good pan/pickup. Sure, a dry sump would be great, but time, money and the unknown of will that work on the street without being a PITA are an issue. An accusump seems like an expensive band-aid to a problem that a good pan/pickup would solve. I've read on some forums that people use up the oil pressure in the accusump during long turns and this is why they go to dry sump. I have the Canton 15-240 pan, but it won't fit with blockhuggers. I don't want to get into hacking this thing up either. Canton makes a 15-244 pan for the F-body, and it looks like it will fit since the sump is shorter front to back, but it's 7.5" deep. I'd like to have no more than 7" deep. I suppose I could see how quickly they could make one for me that has less depth, or live with the reduced clearance for a while. My confidence that Canton made this pan work well on RR F-bodies is high. So I'm thinking it's the safest bet. I've looked at photos of the RR hamburger pan, and I'm not impressed. The sump is wide open left to right, no baffles or doors in that direction, like the Canton RR pans have. Other pans I've looked at don't seem to really address the left and right oil control well. The Canton RR 15-240 seems to be a proven design - too bad it won't fit. Any other options for PROVEN good RR pans that control the oil well in high-g turns, will fit with block huggers and not hang more than 7" below the block? TIA,

This is mostly a street car. I'm thinking that someone has come up with a decent way to keep a SBC oiled in a mild RR application without going to dry sump. Sure, it may not be as reliable as a dry sump but better than what I have now and acceptable for the short term. I will consider a dry sump system when I can find the time to do it - but with only a month and a half to go until the track day, I'm not going to start that swap... I'm going to start a new thread on this if I can't find a good dry sump thread...