sweetride2go

I had to enclose most of this race car. We used rivits, lots of rivits! In areas where acessability was needed we used zeus fasteners. Zeus fasteners hold pretty tight when done correctly, I'm pretty sure you wont get any rattles. The rivits drill out really easy. You might consider getting a Cleko kit - http://store.summitracing.com/partdetail.asp?autofilter=1&part=SUM%2DG1850&N=700+115&autoview=sku these really help laying out sheetmetal, amongst other things. Here's some Cleko's in use on the right side of this dash. It's not inner fenders, but here's a bunch of sheetmetal work for a firewall. Cheers Ryan~

Alright, so time for an update. I think we finished with the small cups, and as far as the big gauges go, well, I found an easier way to do it utalizing the autometer housing(thread - Also, Garvice, the faces seem to be painted aluminium, at least with these Pro-comp gauges. Here is what I hope to be the final version on the small cups, or the 2-5/8" autometer gauges. On these however, I'm still going to modify the factory side by removing the cross bar that seperated the original gauges. The big gauges; I ended up removing the small lip on the insert here wich opens up the face a bit and exposes all the lil 'tick marks' for the face of the gauge. Now I just need to repaint these in some flat black, and it should be just like new, hopefully, lol... Here you can see where I vary gingerly ground out the lip with a die-grinder. This is how it looked before the modification. And the final product from the side. From the front you can see how much better it is. Cheers Ryan~

This is from Dave's web page on the 4-Lug install instructions. However he does not say wich one to do first or wichever. http://www.arizonazcar.com/frontz4luginstall.html "both bleeders on each caliper need to be bled." Also he notes: "Pay attention that the bleeders point upward when the calipers are installed correctly" But it sounds like you may have both those subjects taken care of already. Anyways, good luck. Cheers Ryan~

My friend is working on these skateboard trucks, and this is the prototype. There is still some massaging to do here and there, there will be some minor asthetic and structural changes in the next prototype, and we still need to send this out for some actual testing at a park, etc... My question to you, and for anyone else at the moment, is would you buy these(havn't worked out a price yet)? Do you see any changes that need to made (astheticaly and/or structurally)? Basically what he is looking for is objective critism and trying to guage interist in the product. Also, maybe you engineering types could chime in if you see an issue... Any imput will help since I'm not a skater. I have to many other hobbies where I can easily injure myself, haha. Cheers Ryan~

I can't say it is or isn't the best place, but I mounted my regulator on the firewall just to the right of the battery. I thought this would look the cleanest and keep the line fairly short. I'm running 1-3/4 primary block huggers and I feel that I have a descent amount of space between the firewall/fuelline and the exhaust. Here is the best shot I have of it at the moment, in the top left. The pic is a bit old now too, all the braided stainless is done now along with the exhaust being installed... cheers ryan~

I originally had a relatively mild 327 and found no fuel starvation issues. Since then, I've been in the middle of an engine swap, and I have built a 383 and thought the OEM fuel pickup in the tank to be to small a diameter. I can't back that up with paperwork. Hopefully someone else will chime in with the potential of the stock fuel system on the Z. The stock pickup goes right to the bottom of the tank. I decided to cut out the top half of my tank so I could install my new pickup (-8 AN, and I bent it in the same manner of the factory pickup) and I added 5" to the sides of the tank so I could increase the volume. In hind sight, however, I would gladly trade the fabrication time in my modified tank and just put in a nice fuel cell... It would have saved me a lot of time and headache... Cheers Ryan~

I ran several searches, and couldn't find quite what I was looking for in regards to the necessary components for the vg30dett. I know pleanty of people have done the swap so hopefully someone can help me with this question. I just recently purchases a '91 vg30dett with the transmission(manual), ECU, MAF, and engine harness. My question is, what else do I need to make the engine run that I don't have? I know I need a fuel pump, but is there like a relay box, a VSS converter, or other components that may have been mounted on the car that I will have to track down? Thanks Ryan~

Mine isn't done, but here is an almost up to date pic. I like to call it progress, haha.... Cheers Ryan~

Sooo, finally an update! We've made some progress, and we have had some setbacks. First off, I think the smaller gauge cups are finished, maybe. Heh.. Second, we've been working with the big two, the tach and speedo. Mounting them hasn't been so much an issue, but getting the backlighting to shine to the front has been a bit of a pain... First off, here's the latest in the small gauge prototypes. However, it's not the final, we have one more prototype to cutt. The changes from this one is that the backlight has been clocked about 25* to the left of its current location to free up space behind the mounting band. This picture shows the mounting band on the cup. Here is the recess we made in the back of the cup for the backlight. This allows the use of the supplied autometer gauge backlights (seen to the left). Here is the tach still in its autometer cup, the front half of the factory Zcar gauge, the two backlights, and our fabricated cup (blue) to hold the tach, replacing the white autometer cup. Here is the cup by itself. The tach removed from it's autometer cup and now installed in our own. Now, loosly installed into the Zcar front half. I left one light out, and we also labeled the pins on the back for signal, battery, lamp, ignition, etc. And we have the tach from the front. Not quite shure if I should open it up just a bit to show a bit more of the gauge face. Also, since I will be useing these on my car, I still need to install a few LED's into the actuall face of the gauge for turn/high beam indicators. I'm still working on the design of the tach cup. I am not getting any light from the two backlights to pass the gauge and illuminate the face. I've thought about using strip LED's adheared to the outside of face, so to speak, but I'm afriad that this may be too bright. I've also thought about using ultra-violet LED's, mainly to bring out the text on the face. That and the purple hue would really accent the rest of the car, being that it is purple, haha... Thoughts and objective critisism is more than welcome. Cheers Ryan~

I ran my fuel line similar to PaulR's, except on the inside of my fabricated 'frame rails'. This line is stainless, and the equivilant to -8AN, wich was probabily a bit overkill, but oh well.. ...and my new pickup for inside the tank. Cheers Ryan~

POR-15 makes a product called Hardnose. We painted a tube chassis with it and it looked great. Unfortunatly it didn't hold up near as well as we hoped (chipped easily). I would recommend trying the epoxy paint, we have used that with better results. Oh, and sanding tube chassis' is a pain, literally, hah... Here is the chassis, beginning assembly... Sorry for the poor picture quality. Cheers ryan~

Well, we're still working on it, and I should have some more models cutt tomarrow. We just finished cutting out a socket for the backlight bulbs, and making holes for the 'band' that goes across the back for mounting in the dash.

Ok, so it took me a little while to get the photos, but here they are as promised... Oh, and sorry for the large images... Here is the H4 housings containing the HID's in the Hardbody. H4 housing... Close-up of the HID bulbs in the H4 housing... Here is both ballasts for the drivers side... And, here is the load harness/relays/passanger side ballasts mounted and tucked away... PS: I would like to say that the bulbs work magnificantly, however I wish the housings refracted the light differently. So I may switch up to a Hella H4 housing someday... The low beams are a bit to focused, and the high beams are absolutly redicilous, projecting a beam over 20' high and well past both sides of the road. Cheers Ryan~

Just thought I would share some of the work we've been up to latly. My buddy Joe is using a fuel injection system on his Gen-I small block that requires the use of the 'small' electronic distributor and coil, wich in this case happens to be a MSD-8226 coil. However, the image in Summit and the coil we got are not the same, just fyi. Hints and tips for modifications or errors is always appreciated. Thanks. Coil in mount... Cheers Ryan~

I retrofitted my D21 pickup with bi xenon HID's, using H4 retrofit housings for a Z31 (wich upgrades them to the H4 bulbs) and tossing the H4 bulbs and using a H4 type HID bulb, and I didn't have to deal with those goofy looking projector units. It was all pretty much all plug and play, and I'm going to do the same thing to my S30 (except with the round H4 retrofit housings obviously) when it is closer to getting back on the road... I'll take pictures. cheers Ryan~

Thanks guys. I'm half way toying with the idea of producing the back halvs (the blue section) since they bolt right up to the factory face side(the black side). I'm sorry I havn't updated in a long time, the project got side-lined, I just have to many projects going on at once all of a sudden, heh... The only reason they are blue is because that happened to be the color of the material we had laying around at the time. Optimally, I think white would work best as to help reflect the light from the backlight. Those cups I already made only fit the electric auto meter guts. However I don't think it would take long to redesign a cup for a mechanical guage's guts and still allow for the sending unit line through the back. As far as where I left off ealier, we have the outer cup(the black half) mostly done, and I even sourced a guy that has a CNC water-jet and will cutt out the glass for them. cheers Ryan~

Has anyone here installed this system? Does anyone know the size of their fuel maps? I'm still looking, but how would this compare to say the StealthRam system? (cost, maps, setup)? Is there a big advantage to the retrotek system over the others? Thanks Ryan~

haha, gosh, it shure is an ugly diff isn't it! Great progress though!! I suppose though that GM engineers didn't bother thinking about asthetics when designing it... I've never seen those rubber doughnuts before, but they must be strong though, eh? I wonder about the availability of those in the states, though the only thing I can think of with GM IRS is the Pontiac GTO(ie: Holden Manero). Cheers Ryan PS: Any idea what size the the ring gear is, or equivelent to third member size? Like a Dana 44, 9 inch, etc. ?

If it were wired in properly, I wouldn't worry about it. Like he stated above, several manufacturers have been doing this for years now. There is another thread on here somewhere regarding the possibility of doing a swap from a couple european cars, an Audi I think? but I couldn't find it. I wonder if these electric assist systems have some sort of 'override' in case of an electrical failure, that they would not inhibit the complete loss of steering?

Strange makes vary nice components. However, I never got to drive the car, but the aluminium struts is what the owner purchased for us to install on this chassis. He also went with Strange rear suspension. Sorry, this pic doens't show the front suspension setup very well. This one kindof shows the rear setup... Like I said, I don't know how they perform, but the craftsmanship seems good. Cheers Ryan

Unfortunatly you can't see it vary well, but our main hoop is verticle. However, I can't verify the rules, but this chassis is NHRA certified.

Thanks guys! Now I'm thinking about doing the outer piece too. It should be fairly easy to do since the overall shape is there in the back section. This would also eliminate any modifying that I would otherwise have to do to the OEM outers. I will do the lense in Lexan or better yet, I'm going to see if I can get this one peticular glass shop to cut me some lenses that will fit into the new cups. This shop has a CNC waterjet and does a lot of custom glass for hot rods and such... Oh, and I'm thinking about making the back sections out of a white plastic to help with the backlighting, the blue was some nylon my buddy had laying around in his shop. I still have to design cups for the tach and speedo. I don't know how similar the S30 dashes are in reference to gauge placement. I thought they were the same, but thats just an assumption. So far, for the 4 autometer gauges that I have, all being ProComp 2-5/8" 90* electrical, these gauges all have the same dimensions in how they are mounted(ie: the three mounting pins on the back). Cheers, Ryan~

PS: Sorry for the SUPERSIZED images.

I always liked the way the autometer gauges looked in the stock Datsun housings. Especially with the 'ProComps' there is a real crisp, clean look. You know, "doens't look quite stock, but almost does," lol. Unfortunatly this means buying several hundred dollars worth of gauges, cutting them out of their autometer housings, and then mounting them somehow. I, however, wanted to make the "somehow" a lot less work and give it a little more(or less)of a "bolt in" approach. This is what I have done, so far... First off, here is the two side by side. Depth is the same, diameter is the same, color is not, heh... First off, obviously we need empty Datsun gauge cups. Soo, I gutted the old guages and kept just the fronts. Here is an ealier attempt at utilizing the OEM back section. Notice the three notches in the center we milled out for mounting the gauge. The problem here is that the gauge is electric, and I didn't feel there was enough room, the metal is flimsy, and bla-be-da-bla, well, I just decided at this point to build the back from scratch. So yah... Ok, so after an hour or so vary gingerly trying not to cutt off a finger I coaxed the autometer's gauge bezels off (I now wish I kept the glass). Here's the gauge with no bezel/glass, and just the guts... Here we go! After a few hours of designing and cutting, we gave birth to a new gauge cup. Now with the guts installed, almost a frankenstien (spelling? haha). The front has now been put on. Here's where it got tricky. I didn't cut out the little 'crossbar' on the Datsun unit, and so for the needle to pass by the gauge had to be set correctly via the back of the gauge cup, or by setting the depth in which we counterbored we effectivly set the face height. The other factory to keep in mind is that there is still no backlight, and inorder to light the face we spaced the face of the gauge a little less than 1/8" away from the Datsun's black plate, you know, with the crossbar thingy... This will hopefully allow enough light from whatever backlight I use to get by the autometer face and light up the face so I can see it at night. So far, I don't have any tweaks to make. However, the cup still isnt quite finished. The top and bottom still needs to have a bit milled off and a few holes drilled for the 'back bar' (I guess you could call it that?) that holds the gauge into the Datsun dash. I still have to find a backlight of some kind and drill holes and mount it. But so ya, this is it in a large nutshell, *grin*... Cheers Ryan~

After paint, though it was sapose to be dark red (black cherry) instead the painter got dark purple (black berry). I should have gotten a paint code. It came out ok though... In the shop, needed to end a roll of film and I got this. haha From the back..... Cheers! ryan