pparaska

Old thread, I know. But I've searched here for quite a bit and didn't find the answer: Does the Canton 15-244 - SBC F BODY RR PAN fit with block hugger headers? I have the 15-240, and after measuring it and looking at the car, it's clear (as Mikelly and Jody found out) that it won't fit with block hugger headers unless you chop the extensions on the pan and reweld. I'm not into doing that, so I'm wondering if the fact that the length of the F-Body pan's extension/sump is much shorter, will it fit with block huggers? The issue is the block hugger headers have the collector close to the block and pointed down, right into the area of front part of the side extensions on the 15-240 pan. I realize that the 15-244 pan is 7.5" deep, and I'd really like 6.5 or 7" deep. I may have them build one that is shorter. FWIW, I'm running the old OE Corvette 6 quart pan and notice that if I'm flying around right hand clover-leaf entrances that the oil pressure goes from about 60 psi (Z-28 pump, pickup is 3/8" off the pan) to about 20psi at 3000 rpm or so. I'd really like to address this before the mid-July track days I've just scheduled at Summit Point through trackdaze.com. I COULD add more oil, but from my measurements, adding more than 6 quarts of oil means that the crank throws will actually be dipping into it when the engine is not running. I could spend a bunch of money and labor on installing an Accusump system, but that's a bandaid for a known oiling problem that I'd like to address with a good pan/pump/pickup solution that someone has proven to work on track or road race V8 Z's. Cheers,

Ron, that's a beautiful ride! Michael - you need to fill us in on your newly acquired Bimmer!!!!

On a Z with a V8 and a manual trans, I think the kick in the pants from hitting the pedal on a double pumper carb is worth the visceral rewards. Sure, a vac secondary carb will do fine, but on a light car, with short tires, probably 3.54 or 3.70 ratio, I found that a 650 DP worked great on my 327, and the HP830 DP is a great fit on my 400. On the 327, a 600 vac sec worked fine, had great throttle response off idle. But mashing the pedal, no matter how the jets, power valve, squirter, pump cam, vac sec spring were tuned, felt SOFT compared to the 650DP. To each his own. BTW, if you are trying to size a DP for your car, I built a spreadsheet that used the data from the Holley nomogram for DP sizing - see http://alteredz.com/tools/index.html Mind you, most DP carbs have too-big-for-the-street idle and power valve circuit restrictions and you will probably want to make them smaller (a piece of fine wire works well). You may need a bit more jet once you do this.

Mike, my Z has over 400hp, probably 400 to the rear wheels. You just modulate with the right pedal is all. It's not scary - except you get going faster than you are used to so quickly. But you're a driver and I'm a ham-fisted hack behind the wheel. So you'll be fine in that light Z with the torque and power!

Mike - I'm looking forward to reschedule this. Let me know! Maybe see if we could find something for the women-folk to do also?

Marine - good thinking there. I used 0.093" wall tubing for the engine frame rails. Take a look at the photos on that page - I tied them to the subframe connectors in the floor very well, and I added a piece of 1/16" steel plate to the firewall where they attach, lowering the possibility of the engine rails "punching through the firewall. So if I hit something, it's going to bend at the firewall or at the T/C bracket, not come loose and into the passenger compartment. But that's just my guess. I'm a mechanical engineer, but this is a gut feeling. No calculations were made on the stuff I did. ktm or someone other "real" structural engineer or chassis builder types can give their assessment - I'd like to hear it. You have a good point there though. We need to be careful of making parts stronger than they were stock, the crush design changes. But I'm doubting that the 240Z designers put a bunch of thought into that way back when.

Yeah, I saw what an exploding 283's flywheel did to the frame rails, headers, dash, pavement, etc. etc. in a nice 57 Chevy when I was in highschool. Ever since, the few hundred bucks for a blowproof bellhousing seems really cheap. If you put a Pro 5.0 shifter and a decently long (8 or 9") handle on it and use the Synchromesh, the Tremec 5spds shift decently. Make sure you align the input shaft with the crank center/bellhousing etc. But with the kind of torque you are using, I'd be looking at the trans that dr_hunt is talking about. How many $2000+ "maybe this will hold" trannies are you going to go through before you buck up for what will work?

Her car is DONE. It's used up. She can get a newer one that she'll love even more. Her car is a transportation appliance that is used up and easily replaced with one like it but in better condition Yours is hard to find, you have a personal attachment to it. Finding another is not as easy. Yours is probably worth next to nothing - so getting rid of it is not so smart. You would not believe the heart-felt advice I typed out and deleted.... (9 posts away from 5000 as I write this.)

If it looks like that there, it's probably almost rusted through most everywhere else. I'd either do the BadDog rails, or if you really want to get into a project, see my solution (about halfway down the page) This is a bunch more work than the BadDog part, but if your floors, firewall, engine compartment frame rails are shot, well, why not?

Well, I have 6 year old Toyo RA-1's on the rear, 255/40-17. They are pretty hard now. I'm probably going with some Dunlop Direzza Z1 Star Spec's next. My point is that my tires are hard and don't grip that great, so this issue of traction is hopefully temporary. I'm not saying it will be a mistake to do the 302 - I think it will be fun. The 3.90s may be fine (I'm running 3.70s). But you are going to need limited slip!!! A Turbo 400 has a lower first gear than the Turbo 350. That should help. An overdrive of some type would be a good idea. A gear vendor's unit on the TH400, or a T56 instead. Sounds like fun!

I built a basically stock 9.7:1 331 SBC with 461 double hump heads (bowl ported) and a Comp Cams 270 Magnum solid flat tappet cam for my first V8Z buildup. It was a fun engine. Loved to rev, sounded good, etc. But riding in Z's with 383s killed that for me. The next build was a 407ci SBC, with barely streetable solid roller cam and Canfield 215cc heads. Still running a dual plane (Performance Parts Crosswind - like the Air Gap RRM). Likely around 490hp/510lbft according to Desktop Dyno 2000. No Idea what a 1/4 mile run will be, but it will stay right with a Ford GT from a 15mph roll until I lift at 145 (did that a few times on the back straight at VIR, 2 days after I installed the engine). It's an entirely different world. Torque is too much for the tires, even at 70mph when I am turning more than 3500rpm and hammer it. It's now scary fast to most people, and there's no desire for more really, since it can't hook up what it has now. I doubt you could convince me to go back to a 327, much less a 302. Now a 377 - that sounds like a plan....hmm...new pistons, 6.??" rods, 3.5" crank.... Never mind - only if I break this 407! The 302 would be cool to listen to though, and the top end would be very fun. I'd run something like 4.56:1 gears though, and a manual transmission. Notice that the video of the 302 on the dyno had the thing idling at about 1900 rpm. I'd get used to that. Hence the 4.56:1 gear choice. Even that light little car is going to need that ratio to make it at all livable on the street. I'd be looking for used heads from a circletrack team, with shaft-mounted rockers and some nice valvesprings/retainers/etc. to keep the valves doing what you want them to do, etc. Maybe some 18 or 15 degree heads, since that's what many of them run. It's only money! Sounds like fun!

LoL - I have a BSME and MSME, did a Masters thesis the size of most PhD dissertations. I've done rocket science, and now I sit and write C++ code all day. Yeah, the hot chicks don't usually go for the geeks! But you are an example of that not always being the case, as your post in the "girlfriends/wives" thread proves. . I dabble in electronic circuit stuff now and again, but I'm just a hobbyist. I do own an oscilloscope though, and know how to use it! I think that qualifies me for uber-geek status. Yeah, I am often impressed with the women I see in the girlfriend/wife thread - that they go for us greasy gearheads!

Ratfink, that's two sets of photos in two threads today that show your taste and mine are completely the same as far as aesthetics, if you get my drift. The photos in both posts are beautiful and breathe-taking!

Since 1.565 is a longer distance (more distance from pin bore centerline to piston top), then it would stick above the deck .004" more than a standard 1.561" compression height 350 (3.48" stroke), 5.7" rod engine, correct? But a stock 350 with a 1.561" compression height piston would have the piston .024" down in the hole: 9.02500 - 5.7 - (3.48 / 2) - 1.56100 = 0.024

Pics attached, but there are more here also

The rear may be a bit strange, but the side view is beautiful IMO. WAY better than the 350Z, better than the 370Z, the G35, and G37, IMO of course.

Terry, the Blue Oval Z, in both incarnations has always been a huge inspiration for me. The new project is even more so. I hope to get back into the hobby more fully some day, and I will definitely look you and your threads/sites up! If only more one-off car designers and the big manufacturers could create such beautiful shapes and machinery tied together with such ingenious engineering and fabrication skills. You and your cars deserves many more awards than they will probably ever get! Best of Luck on the Texaco contest!

Definitely agree here - the stuff that's come out of the cam grinders in the last ten years is showing that unstable valvetrain dynamics that they THOUGHT were handled by the springs they had been using were actually giving away a bit of power before they actually hit easily noticable valve float. Lowering the linear inertia (directly related to the mass of things reciprocating) and rotary inertia of the rocker (related to the mass and how far the mass is from the fulcrum) has allowed the spring rates and seat/open forces to get lower or the max rpm go higher. Having beehive valvesprings that don't suddenly go into resonance at some rpm has helped too. The stiffness of the valvetrain parts (rockers and pushrods mostly) need to be high enough too. It's pretty enlightening to see what people have learned with spintrons and dynos using a lighter valvetrain, stiffer parts, and springs with more rate and seat/open force. Sometimes the hp gains appear hundreds of rpm below when the really bad valve float occurs. rate is actually lb/in (lbs per inch). Torque is lb-in (lbs times inches) or lb-ft. I know doc knows this - just correcting it for those that might be reading this and learning. Us anal-retentive engineers can't let that little stuff just slide by - sorry! Very true. Heat build up, flexing of the parts that isn't necessary (and takes away from true lift), increased where at the sliding points (cam/flat tappet interface, etc.), accelerated lowering of the actual spring rate (and therefore seat and open force). You have to balance not having so much spring force/rate that you don't cause these things needlessly, versus losing power due to noticable valve float (engine won't rev past it), and probably also losing power hundreds of rpm below that point too. Some interesting reading here: http://www.briggsracing.com/technical_talk/principals_of_valve_springs.pdf

Very good point. I have a plastic one I need to get rid of and start using the metal ones. The battery + 0000 steel wool + paint chips sounds like McIver trick!

I'm guessing that car control with very low PMOI can be troublesome if the tiniest little thing upsets it and starts it yawing. I can see how such a car would be very busy to drive, and very tiresome on the street.

Kim chose to leave us behind as far as having a presence here that he is public about. Who knows, maybe he lurks.

I hope you don't have a kid like that. It makes being a parent a bit tougher than if he was "normal". But if you did, you'd understand why that dad was proud. He doesn't want to shoot himself, because he understands his kid and loves him. BTW, the guy that wrote BitTorrent has Aspergers Syndrome (allegedly some would say). So success in business is even possible with it. I'm not saying the kid in the Pokemon championship has it, I just wouldn't be surprised from watching the video.

That would work fine, IMO.

Yeah, he's somewhat socially slow. Probably Aspergers syndrome. Have a kid with a condition like that, and that video won't seem funny. But it will make you glad - that some kid with less than a full portion of social ABILITY (nothing to do with effort, believe me) had a success in his life. His dad loves him and is proud - for good reason. His kid probably puts up with incredible heartbreak due to not being accepted - for not fault of his own. But his dad should be helping him life a more healthy lifestyle by not letting him eat the way he does and getting more exercise. But I've seen parents back off of the tough love that requires, because they feel sorry for the kid, don't want to add to their already very stressful life, etc. Growing up with that kind of a condition is difficult. You look pretty normal. Many people can't tell quickly that you don't have the tools everyone else has socially/mentally, so they laugh at you. I used to laugh at that kind of thing. Then I became a parent of someone with just a touch of that kind of social skill level. Life is a lesson.

The old guy has a foul mouth - might set off the net nanny software where you work... http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays I have tears running down my face from laughing!