bjhines

Yea.. I'm only seeing grease seal lip wear on the larger diameter area. IIRC you can seat the new grease seal a little differently to get it to ride on a non-worn area. You can't do that in the rear though.

WTF! you want your cake and eat it too. They don't fit man!... unless you want a static display model.

The 280Z weighed hundreds of pounds more than the 240Z. You can remove a lot of this added weight, but some of it is welded into the chassis. There are hundreds of small details that chnaged from year to year. The 280Z chassis is DEFINITELY more reinforced than the 240Z chassis. There is also a lot of steel added for crash safety purposes. The crash reiforcements are not always adding stiffness or performance. They are just extra weight in places like the doors and bumper mounting areas. You can bend a 240Z door shell over your knee and fold it twice over and smash it flat with your heel. It will fit into a 12-pack beer box in your recycle bin. The 280Z door shell would take a slegehammer to fold just once.

Engines that puke a lot of oil out of the vents have more than just blowby causing their problems. In a Chevy V8 there are many types of oil control modifications that can reduce this problem. There are also a lot of oil system mods that can make the problem worse. In general; High RPM use will pump more oil than is needed to the valve train(top end of the motor). This oil can build up instead of draining back into the crankcase. You end up with valve covers full to the brim with oil(and none in the oil pan). The first time you slam on brakes and turn hard the oil comes puking out the vents. This is why you cannot run on most tracks without some sort of a catch can. My BMW M3 has a catch can that has a drainback tube that drains back into the dipstick tube.

Here is a picture of a street roll bar. Also... Seam welding is a *****. This is why race car builders order unpainted raw shells. Seam sealer and undercoating are hateful things.

The Guages are Autometer "Pro-Comp" style. Both those words are printed on the face so you would know when you looked at them. Some sales techniques arn't as successful as you might think.

OK.. Liveability... The gassy smell at idle is typical of this problem... usually due to poor atomization from old worn out injectors. In your case it is caused by the already mentioned issue.

Just to rehash it's purpose... The catch can is connected to the block and/or valve cover vents. These vents can spill oil under extreme high G cornering and high RPMs can cause oil to build up in areas it normally does not. So you are required to use the original venting system or use an approved catch can for spills. The catch can should contain a quart of oil without spillage. Most of the aftermarket oil catch cans are a quart capacity to suit most class rules. There are a lot of tanks and cans built for other purposes that may not contain enough oil to prevent spillage. The factory systems often allow drainback to the engine oil pan to prevent oil buildup and eventual spillage. You can use any variation you like as long as the tech inspectors are confident you won't make a mess on track, and your system fits their rules. You may want to consider a PCV system to pull slight vacuum on the crankcase. This would require some modifications to the catch can to allow proper operation of the PCV system. The main modification is to the breather filter on top of the catch can. This would need to be replaced with a check valve that opens to allow pressure to escape and closes to maintain vacuum when it is available. ...

LOL... My wife has no idea what goes on under the hood of a car. To her, That is something you open in emergencies to let the smoke out. My 6YO is semi-famous for knowing about cars. She has shown an interest from an early age, She likes to sit beside me in the garage and asks for every opportunity to do something on whatever I am working on. I have dismantled, setup, and demonstrated the internal workings of every part of the driveline for her. How many of you have been able to place hands on a stripped down manual transmission and seen how the mechanisms actually work. The same goes for engine internals on 1,2,4,6,8, v and inline engines. My little girl can look at a Ferrari 360 Modena(on the rack) and point out the tranny and the engine in proper location.

I don't think Nutserts will work out on the flange. I think you may actually have ribbed zinc-plated nutserts as opposed to the smooth sided Cadmium plated versions. First off, there are few of those fasteners that can be used on anything thicker than 1/8". Secondly, I don't think you will get retention without cracking the fiberglass flange.

Heheheh... I love to take passengers out for hot sessions on track. My wife decided that she will not ride in any of my Datsuns ever again. She only gets im my BMW M3 on the street, and with warnings for me to be cool. My 6yo daughter on the other hand LOVES to go fast and LOVES the loud exhaust. We are building a shifter kart for her.

The issue is not with horsepower.. It is with drivablility. The E88 manifolds are notorious for poor mixture distribution, the current arrangement would be nearly undrivable. TBI systems are different than what the poster has tried. There are several nuances to the TBI system to make it driveable(idle and part throttle mixture control).

Quote from JMortenson: "That looks really nice. I'll be doing this very soon. In retrospect would you say your bolts are longer than necessary? Looks like you have quite a bit of stud hanging out the bottom. Is the glass flush with the hatch? Hard to tell in the pictures. I think Mark turned me onto a plastic spacer bushing that was 1/2" long from mcmaster.com. That was for the windshield, but without looking I figured it would work for the hatch too. Lastly what did you bend the angle aluminum with? Is it easy enough to bend by hand? Looks a lot better than a flat piece of Lexan. My plan was to do a flat strip, but if the angle is easy enough I'll follow your lead." The 1/8" thick window is not flush, You would need 5/16" spacers to get it nearly flush. I used 1/4" thick HDPE sheet that is cut into spacers that are 1/2" wide and 1" long. I used 1-1/4" long bolts which will be 3/16" extra long after the nuts are installed. I could only get 1" or 1.25" bolts, so I got the longer ones. They are stainless so they can be custom cut to length on the lathe. The angle aluminum can be bent over your knee. I used the sides of the hatch to get the curve to match.

Well... I would be lucky to get this thing done by fall. I am trying to complete a hundred little details to be ready for the day the money comes back to roost in my accounts. If anyone knows a good deal on stuff.... I need a SBC Dizzy, Ign box, 2x safety harnesses, tires, Tilton brake master cylinders(x2), exterior paint, battery(PC680 or equiv), and about a zillion little small things.

I finally got around to installing the Beta Motorsports rear hatch. The hatch is a full duplicate inside and out. It is very light. I decided to pin on the hatch and install a lexan rear window. The rear window is 1/8" scratch resitant/coated Lexan. I managed to buy a piece large enough for a good price. The retaining pins are 3/8" stainless bolts with the heads lathe-turned down and holes drilled through for cotter pins. I have protective washers made of 18 gauge stainless sheet. The window installation details; I used 10-24 x 1 1/4" stainless button head cap screws, Nylock nuts, and stainless sealing washers. The spacers are 1/4" thick HDPE strips. The center supports are 1/16"x 1/2"x 3/4" angle aluminum. I bowed the center supports to match the curve on the sides of the hatch. I get a nice shape and a rigidly supported window. ...

Triple linkages are tough to get right. You can get all your idle openings perfect and then bugger the adjustment on the linkages at the carbys. Another issue I noticed is that heat soak will tend to result in increased RPMs at idle. They don't like hot air at all. You should smoke-test the intake to be absolutely sure you have no leaks while the engine is hot. If you have properly set up your linkages and you have no vac-leaks, then your problem is worn out throttle shafts.

I was waiting to see how you installed the rest of the lexan parts. Where ya at man?

15x7" with a 225 width is your max without mods.

You also need a castle nut and drill the bolt to lock the nut. You should use a bolt with enough UNTHREADED length to engade all the parts that the original(smooth) spindle held tight. There should only be enough threads to fully tighten the nut. You can order AN bolts in much finer increments with extremely short threaded sections. But then the cost gets extremely high.

You may have another problem that will exacerbate the issues with mixture distribution. You are spraying fuel upstream of the throttle plates. This will wreak havoc with mixture atomization at idle and part throttle. The condensed fuel droplets will be even more prone to following the path of inertia instead of airflow. Your O2 sensors will not be able to deal with these issues.

Well.. You can look at the manifolds and see how the mixture gets sent past the sharpest angled runners. The N36 is marginally better, the angles are reduced somewhat, but the 2 into 6 intake configuration is not very good at all.

I would add only one thought to this discussion. You should use the same sized feed and return lines to make absolutely sure the regulator can keep pressure ROCK STEADY under all conditions.

I welded individual O2 bungs on each of the primary tubes ~12" from the ports and intalled 2 meters to monitor mixture. I traded the pair of O2 sensors from bung to bung to get a good idea of what was going on. I had this set up with SU carbys for a little while and then used them to tune triple Weber DCOE45s. I found that the mixtue distribution with the original E88 manifold SUCKS BALLS. There are 2 cylinders that run rich, 2 stoich, and 2 lean with the E88 manifolds. I don't care how you tune them you can only shift the overall mixture lean or rich. Reading the plugs confirmed this as well, 2 plugs are black, 2 are brown, and 2 are white when you get the overall mix right. The E88 manifolds just don't work very well and may cause problems for you in the future.

You can pull the caps off the transition port openings and visually look to see where the throttle plates sit at idle. If you have one or more of the plates opened too far then idle can become erratic. Transition slots/holes need to be completely closed off at idle. Idle should not be set by your throttle plate set screws. Those are not there to "Sync" the carbys. There are usually bypass screws to do that job. Your idle air bleeds may be too small or your carby has some partially clogged passages.

Pull the cover and check your bearing cap bolts before you go any further.