pparaska

A safe rule to live by: Never be absolutely sure of anything

Well, hopefully they reverse engineered it enough to see how to make a great handling and braking track car. I'm wondering if the GT (40) will be as easy to drive fast on the track as the 360 Modena is.

Thanks! I learned alot going through all that when I did my Z - I figure I should pass it along...

Note that my Z has had it's frame rails replaced. They might not be exactly in the same place as stock - but I bet they're within 1/8" left/right at the firewall - where I made these measurements: Right side of engine block, back outer corner of block deck: 3-3/8" from vertical line running up from the inside vertical side of the frame rail. Left side of engine block, back outer corner of block deck: 4-1/2" from vertical line running up from the inside vertical side of the frame rail. O.k. So your diff is pointed forward, parallel to the for/aft direction of the car (by eyeball). And the diff is nose-up - pinion flange is tilted so that the top of it is further rearward than the lower edge. That sounds correct. With the low height that the JTR mounts locate the engine on the crossmember, adding the 1/2" spacers between the crossmember and the frame rails just lowers the engine even more - to gain more clearance above the distributor, under the JTR hood latch/bracket. I don't think this is needed - I've never heard anyone that has tried NOT using those spacers having too little vertical room for the distributor or the top of the transmission. I say, leave them out and try it that way first. Lowering the front of the engine/trans with those spacers installed only makes the crank/transmission tailshaft centerline even closer to level, and farther away from the more severe nose-up attitude of the pinion centerline - making the u-joint angles less similar (BAD THING). With the R200 mounted as stock it's nose-up by several degrees. With the engine trans installed with the 1/2" spacers between the frame rails and crossmember, and the JTR tranny mount, the engine crank/tranny tailshaft angle is around 1 degree nose-up from level. Since you need to get them close (within a degree is good) to the same nose-up angle to make the (vertical) u-joint angles nearly the same. The problem with raising the rear of the diff to adjust the nose-up angle of the diff/pinion CL to be more level is that the front of the pinion (the flange) is a good bit higher than the back of the tailshaft of the trans. This leads to large u-joint angles. Raising the rear of the diff helps keep the halfshaft u-joint or CV joint angles small under squat, and does help the rear u-joint angle approach the value of the front u-joint angle. That's why I like the Ron Tyler front diff mount. It lowers the front of the diff so that the diff is almost touching the top of the front tranny crossmember, instead of being an inch or more above it, when you have the stock diff mount in place. Lowering the front of the diff helps get the CL of the diff closer to the CL of the tranny (if you extend them and measure between them perpendicularly). That helps lower the u-joint angles. And low value, equal u-joint angles is what provides for less stress on them and less vibration under heavy acceleration.

I sometimes play one at meetings here at work Oh, I see. It sounds like the mounting of your Diff is really messed up. Another trick is to use a carpenter's square and lay it on the diff pinion flange. The long part of the square will help visualize the angle the pinion CL makes with the car. You can use this to help measure the rise/run as well.

That method I gave of finding the total angle is TOTALLY HOSED What you need to do is measure both angles, take the Cosine of each, multiply the cosines together, and take the arc-Cosine of that result to find the total angle: Cos(Total_angle) = Cos(horizontal_angle) * Cos(vertical_angle) or Total_angle = ArcCos[ Cos(horizontal_angle) * Cos(vertical_angle) ] If it turns out you have 1 degree of u-joint angle in the horizontal plane, and 1 degree in the vertical plane, the total u-joint angle is 1.414 degrees. My math and engineering teachers would kill me if they saw the previous method! Too much time in meetings and doing program management and not enough technical work - my mind is turning to mush! Anyway,... I'm wondering, did you put the taller JTR engine mount spacers on the driver's (left) side? That's the way it should be. If you had them switched, the engine would be shifted over to the left side of the car, and the horizontal u-joint angle would be large. The best way to measure whether things are lining up with a good for/aft direction is to find the center point between the inner control arm pivots, at the front and rear of the car. Tie a stiff wire around the bolts or something that stretches from one pivot bolt to the one on the other side of the car, and mark the halfway point on the wire. Do the same at the other end of the car. Now you can tie a string between these midpoints and use that as your reference for/aft line for the chassis. Here are a few cheap angle finders (for the vertical angles anyway): http://roofgenius.com/roofangle.htm http://www.toolking.com/shop/view.asp?ID=2225 $5!!! This one is pricey, but can measure the horizontal angles as well: http://tools.cheap-internet-store.com/PID0000000a00004c64786a647062397351/Bosch_DWM40L_Miter_Finder_Digital_Protractor_Angle_Finder/ Or just measure the rise and run of the triangle you're measuring the angle of, and use trig (Angle = arctan(rise/run))

I'll take some numbers down tonight. But don't sweat the side to side crank/tranny-output shaft to diff-pionion centerline offset too much. The JTR mounts move the engine over about 3/4", if you use the stock holes in in the crossmember towers (slot them in the for-aft direction to be able to move teh engine for/aft). Try to get the engine and trans positioned so they point forward, not at an angle left to right (no "yaw", so to speak). The R200 pinion should be pointing forward too. That way the shafts are parallel in the horizontal plane - important. Yes, they will be offset a bit, but in my car the u-joint angles in the horizontal plain were less than 1 degree - very acceptable. The real problem is: 1 - getting the up/down attitude (pitch) of the engine/trans to be the same as the pinion (measure with an angle finder laying up against the pinion flange on the R200. Do this by: (A) Playing with the tranny mount height, ( Not using the JTR-speced 1/2" thick spacers between the frame rails and the engine crossmember, © raising the rear of the diff (remove or cut down the Mustache bar top isolators), and/or (D) Lowering the front of the diff (the Ron Tyler designed front diff mount is GREAT for doing this. I did ALL of the above to get my vertical plane u-joint angles to be less than 1 degree. In my car the total u-joint angles (due to vertical and horizontal plane angles being added by TOTAL-ANGLE = SQRT(HORIZ_ANGLE^2 + VERT_ANGLE^2) are about 1 degree, and the same. I have NO vibration under heavy acceleration, but MANY V8 Z's do, especially the JTR conversions.

I can't find words, Tim. Incredible is not over the top enough!

I was WRONG - it wasn't the regulator! : (Wow – this got long!) You guys may remember my "stalling out for no reason" problem. First I was thinking it was carb, ignition, fuel pressure regulator. Eventually, the carb was ruled out, as well as the oil pressure fuel pump cut-out switch, fuel pump wiring. Bought a new regulator (same one as I had that came with the Holley Blue pump). That wasn't it either, although the one I had DID stick a bit sometimes. I stretched the spring in it and that went away. Several months ago the car left me stranded for hours and I ALMOST had to have it flat bedded. Got back to the car after a nice Auxiliary police dude gave me a lift to the phone where I called AAA for a tow (yeah, I need a cell phone – working on it). I was 2 miles from home, 12 midnight. THAT was the last straw. I'd had the Holley Pro-jection 4D 700cfm system sitting in a box for months (got it used at a great price from an old V8Z'er named David Spillman that sold his V8Z to jt1 on hybridz). I was pissed, and even though it was Spring, I decided the Z had to come off the road to put that system in, which included me running a new 1/2" AL hard line. I didn't like using the 3/8" AL hard line I had in the tunnel, as it was very close to the tranny. Plus the inside diameter of a 3/8" AL hard line is 5/16" - probably too small for near 500 hp the new 406 will have. I work slowly, and sporadically, so I only got the car back on the road in the last few weeks. Since getting the Pro-Jection on and running, I've been having trouble with the car dying on me again. I decided that since everything from the tank forward in the fuel system had been replaced, that the problem was the stock fuel pickup tube or filter sock inside the tank (assumptions, assumptions…). I had used Eastwood Co's tank sealer on the tank and was afraid I'd sealed the sock off partially causing it to "clog" sometimes. So I tapped out the drain plug in the tank for 1/4 NPT pipe thread, put a close nipple, nice open 90 deg. elbow and hose barb fitting on it and connected it to the hose going to the new Holley-spec filter before the Holley Pro-jection pump. I took the car out Thursday night and things seemed a lot better – soon into my drive it died one time, but I thought that was because I’d flooded it. I drove around for an hour twisting the knobs on the Pro-jection tuning box and got the car to run pretty good (although my vacuum is too low (12-14 inHg) for the speed-density Pro-jection computer to make it idle well. No biggie - just crank the idle up to 1100rpm and reset the TPS . A buddy (Glen McCoy - LONGTIME V8Z guy) and I headed south for Mike Kelly's Z bash Saturday – about 100 miles each way. Horrible traffic. And the stinking car cut out on us a half dozen times just getting to Springfield from rt 50 and 301. We stalled and had to fit on the just-wide-enough for a Z shoulder of the Woodrow Wilson bridge over the Potomac on the Washington beltway!!! NOT a good thing! The engine died again a mile down the road. Glen untwisted the gas cap and was almost decapitated by the cap, as I hadn't vented the tank (Jeez, I can be stupid!!!). My high tech solution was to let the chain on the cap lay over the edge of the cap receiver before twisting it on (only one tab engaged). We thought that was the problem. But the pump was too hot to touch, and only putting out 5psi (by the lousy, sticking Holley 0-30psi gauge - found out later that it was sticking. But it really was only getting about 5psi - not enough for the injectors to do much more than idle!!! We let the pump cool down and got back to 11psi and hit the road again. The engine died several more times on the exit ramp from the beltway to 95 south - probably the most littered shoulder I've ever seen - I can't believe we didn't get a flat. And the last time in the middle of an intersection in downtown Springfield, where Glen jumped out and got the back corner of his ankle/foot run over by the 255/45-17 rear tire!!! We pushed it into the gas station parking lot and went to get some much-needed water and to cool off in the A/C. My A/C is not working (it's on the to-do list!!!) Got back to the car, it barely ran, and put a full tank in it - it was down to about 2 gallons left - I didn’t believe my recalibrated Autometer fuel gage, but should have as it was near empty. The fuel being this low made the problem of stalling worse, because the pump is a few inches above the bottom of the tank (I should have listened to the instructions - I will fix that soon...) We were thinking it was just that the tank wasn't vented, possibly the pump was mounted too high to give pressure when the tank was ¼ full, and the pump got so hot that it stopped making enough pressure. But we were able to cruise (very gingerly) down to Fredericksburg and meet up with some fellow HybridZers, eat, look at some Z stuff, steal Z parts from Mike ( ), have a good time, etc. Oh, Doug Carrow very nicely informed me that my Z was leaving a little puddle of gasoline under it on Mikes new garage floor - Grrr - I had tapped the NPT threads too far and the close-nipple couldn't get tight enough. Doug suggested to epoxy it in - great idea! Doug is full of cheap, very inventive ways to solve problems and do mods to the Z - his Z is full of them!! We left and had an uneventful time going home - never letting the tank get below 1/2 (that's 1/4 on my non-linear gage ....) Of course, we were taking it really easy. Glen was doing the tiniest adjustments to the knobs on the Pro-jection tuning module (unlike my ham-fisted attempts that were getting no-where) and he had it cruising great - 5th gear at 1600rpm (yes, with that lumpy cam) and very nice acceleration away from there!!! No carb would do that! I woke up Sunday and found that my wife had left the garage door up earlier in the AM, since it smelled like there was a puddle of gas on the floor in the closed garage - which there was!!!! I knew I had to fix that immediately, so once I got a chance, I took the Z out to burn as much fuel as I felt safe doing so I could drain the tank and fix the leak. I did some tuning with the HONDO software the Dave Greimann has on his site - I could get it to bounce around 0.5Volts O2 at cruise below 3000 rpm with the knows near the middle of the settings or below, but above that 3000 rpm, I had to turn the main jet up to max, and the high rpm jet setting almost to max. I decided to see what O2 correction would do on the HONDO screen on the laptop and unplugged the tuning module from the ECU to allow that. Anything more than slight acceleration in the 3000+ rpm range made the O2 correction go quickly to 50% (where it tops out) and then the car fell on it's face. I figured the ECU must be hosed or the injectors were clogged or something. ECU hosed? - no biggie, my Megasquirt is working on the bench, and I'm close to having an adapter box designed to be able to plug it into the Pro-jection harness. I'm looking forward to the better datalogging and fine tuning I'll have with that, as well as using alpha-n for idle and speed-density above that. But I digress.... The car started to cut out on me again. The fuel level was a bit above "E" on the gage, which means there's about 5 gallons left. But I knew this was where the pump had to work hard to pull fuel uphill from a low level in the tank so I limped to a station and put a few gallons in. I got home o.k. and started to take the fuel out. I had some extra length on the fuel hose to the throttle body, so I undid it and used the fuel pump to fill my 2 gallon can in the engine bay. It TRICKLED out in a 1/4" stream (out of the 3/8" hose), where it should have shot out a foot or something! I figured I'd damaged the fuel pump by not venting the tank, and letting the pump get so hot.... 6 gallons later (glad the Eclipse wasn't full already ) and the pump wouldn't pump - the tank was empty. Still reading? Now for final thickening of the yearlong problem with the car cutting out.... I got under the tank and disconnected the hose I'd put on those fittings I'd just put into the drain hole of the tank. Then unscrewed the fittings out the hole in the bottom of the tank..... I could not believe my eyes! A piece of twisted up tan-ish stuff, about 1/4" in diameter was sticking out of the hole. I pulled out a 4" long piece. I unraveled it and found that it was an irregularly shaped piece of thin tan plastic that was TIGHTLY twisted and compressed into a hard cord. Probably about 10 square inches worth! I knew exactly what it was - Eastwood's tank sealer. I followed all their directions, but something went wrong. The stuff had delaminated from the inside of the tank and broke off and got sucked into the new tank outlet I'd fashioned. I remember hearing "crackling" when I put very cold (30 deg F) gasoline into the dry, sealed tank back when I first started the V8 in January 2002. The stuff cracked up and probably started delaminating on that day. BTW, the Eastwood tank sealer is white - I imagine fuel or additives turned it to tan. I then looked into the nipple/90 elbow/hose barb fitting assembly that I'd unscrewed from the bottom of the tank. TOTALLY (well, obviously not TOTALLY, but it sure looked like it!) clogged with the tan plastic stuff. I took the fittings apart and used my tiny needle nosed pliers to PULL the jammed wads of tank sealer out of the elbow. I unraveled them - approximately 4 or 5 square inches of the sealer had very tightly been packed into the 1/4†NPT female/female elbow by the fuel pump struggling to supply the engine with fuel. No wonder the engine was dying! I'm surprised it could run at all! The tank has to come out. I have the original tank that looks not too bad that I'll probably send out to have a bit if rust taken out of (near the seam, from what I can see through the filler opening.) I hope to be back on the road in a few weeks. That's got to be the longest post I've ever written (or read) !

Found the diagram. I'll make a prettier version this weekend and post it on my site and leave a link in this thread. My fan is from a 1984 FULLSIZE LTD. I understand that Ford made a fullsize LTD, and a baby, based on the fox floorpan (In 83, the Fairmont became the "LTD", and the Zephyr became the Marquis). LTD heritage: http://www.ford-fox.org/faq.php?myfaq=yes&id_cat=1&categories=Fox+vehicles "LTD split lines in the mid eighties, creating a fairmont based fox platform LTD. The full sized LTD was called the LTD Crown Victoria. The Crown Vic had the 255 and the 302, the LTD came standard with a 2.3 liter four (what a shame). " (from http://www.fordltds.com/information.html ) So the Fullsize LTD (LTD Crown Victoria) is the car you want the fan from.

You have to sign in with the yahoo account that you first joined the MS group with. Thankfully, the forums on Yahoo let you have mail from the group(s) be sent to an address other than the one that you joined yahoo group(s) with (i.e., Tim240Z@yahoo.com). Check your account info / profile to see if the email address that that group/username is using is valid.

Tim, When you put a resistor in the circuit, it may be parallel to something else giving you a different effective resistance reading. But the 330 ohm ones are for the LEDs, and if the MegaStim is not plugged into the MegaSquirt, the circuit for them is not complete, so you should read the same resistance on those when installed. Which 330ohm resistor was it? On the Com port thing, if the loopback test with Hyperterm worked, and your cable is pin 2 to pin 2, pin 3 to pin 3, you should be fine up until the MS box. Did the echo test in Step J., page 12 of : http://members.shaw.ca/megasquirt2/assemble.PDF work? Did you get a character on the screen? If so, at least the communications portion of the MS is working.

Note that the original BOM and instruction sheet had the orientation of the LEDs incorrect. The correct orientation is: "1. Install LED's with flats/cathode/negative terminal/shorter lead - facing the DB connector" (that's in "Colin's" latest V2 Megastim BOM/instructions at: http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/megasquirt/files/Megasquirt%20Stimulator/megastim.txt ) You have to have joined the Megasquirt group and be logged in to get to the files. This screwed mine up too - I gave my dad the older version of the BOM/instructions and he put them in backwards. Now it's a pain removing the old ones - I suggest cutting them off and soldering the new ones onto the old stubs left from the LEDs you cut off - the holes in the board are a tight fit for the LED leads, and you risk pulling the trace off the board removing the entire lead. I think my MS is built ok, but my MegaStim is down for repairs until I replace the LEDs. I went through the schematic last night, connection my connection on my board with the VOM and one of the LED traces is hoses, so I'm going to put a jumper wire in to bypass it.

Some of you may have heard of Paul Ruschman, who has built a few SBC V8 Z's for himself. Paul's dad, Ron, is doing a 440 Mopar swap. I can't remember if he's a member here or not. I saw a post on the IZCC mail list by Ron, where he gave the link to his site: http://ronruschman.tripod.com/car.html#car Cool!

250Z, that is beautiful! I don't think it would look as good to me in any color but bright red, and you hit that nail on the head! My next 240Z will have to be a GTO250. Ever since I saw pictures of the real one, it's been my favorite body style.

As far as I know, those AREN'T HID. That alone would keep me away, since that's what their sold as.

MANY times a day. Thanks for the reminder !!!

UltraMegaSquirt, I presume? I remember they were working on that. Glad it's ready. And I'm just now working on hooking my MS to my Holley Pro-jection harness...I see an upgrade coming!

If you don't hear from me on the diagram, email me. My memory is GONE. No idea where the relays are on the LTD, much less the needed resistor pack for the fan. I used simple harness relay sockets and VF40 relays that you can get in any decent parts store, although I ordered them from Digikey.

"Would have done different" on the blower fan: 1) Get the resistor pack for that fan from the LTD. The JY monkey couldn't find it and only they are allowed in the JY. Ugh. 2) You can probably get away with 1 (high speed) or 2 (high and medium) relays. Low doesn't pull much current (depending on what resistance you use for it). I believe I have a diagram of what I did. I need to start looking for it .

I used the 240Z fan housing box and put the LTD fan and motor in/on it much like the 240Z fan and motor. I had to open up the hole, and weld nuts onto the fan box to allow for the extra length of the LTD fan. I sealed between the LTD motor/fan mounting plate and the fan box with some heater hose made into a ring. No big deal. It makes the glove box get a bit crunched.

Hi Steve! I concur on all counts. I believe I measured 8 amps on high speed for the 84 Ford LTD (that's full size, not the smaller "LTD" of that year). I used the stock fan switch to resistor-pack harness from the Z. From that, I ran three relays, one for each speed (probably overkill), to route pwer from a 12 gage positive wire that hooked into a large +battery junction. 12 gage was used for ground to the fan motor as well. So the 240Z switch only handles the less-than-an-amp current of the relay coil. All high current wiring is new and runs through the relays and fan motor only.

If you have the OE roller lifters, the difference in camshaft price is worth the advantage of a roller cam. But if you have to buy the entire valvetrain for either, you can save several (3 to 4) hundred bucks running a flat tappet cam. Depending on the roller cam, it may have lazier valve action and less power potential than one of the newer Xtreme or Crane Powermax cams. This is especially true for 270 or less advertised duration, even some 280 adv. duration cams. Don't believe me, read Vizard's book on cams and valvetrains.

Drool! The engine install and bay are beautiful! No wonder it took 1st place! I hope the muscle car guys didn't get too mad . Congrats!

Yep, that LTD fan/blower will definitely do the trick. Did you get the resistor pack (for the different speeds) also? I made my own out of nichrome wire (like the 240Z) but it'd be alot easier to get the LTD part.