280zwitha383

spouse and spawn.....

yeah that does look sweet Auxilary. I especially like the fill-ins to make the engine compartment not look naked. Very nice work. What kind of power/ quarter mile times/fuel economy are you expecting from this setup?

if you look at his feedback and the things he has sold you can see a jet turbine and a jr. dragster that he said he had some "little" jets on.... I need to get to know this guy.

I'm still trying to close my mouth.... Is that considered a hybrid?

In a hurry to get my engine together I forgot that someone took my distributor apart and obviously didn't put any grease underneath the module to keep it from frying. I have a bypassed 5 wire module which is bad now and I was wondering if it's possible to convert my distributor to a 4-wire module since there are good aftermarket modules available. Is it as simple as it seems? I have a 4-wire module on my truck and I could easily look at it later to compare the two but even if it looks promising I don't want to order a module and then not be able to use it. The guys at the parts store said it's not doable but I wanted to ask some people who might actually know. Thanks

So my friend is in from out of town and he's a really big import guy. The last time he was here I gave him a ride in the ZX and he tripped. He said I had to be running 13's easy.... To that I laughed and asked him if he was serious. Anyway, this time he comes down and now all of the sudden he asks what I run in the 1/4 mile. He says, "shouldn't you be running 8's or somewhere around that time in this area?" Once again he got the "are you serious" look followed by a strained yet polite response. He said I should be running 8's because I'm at a lower altitude then NM and he saw some guy with almost my exact setup that he thought ran 8's. And all this time I thought I was doing him a favor by showing him a car with something over his precious 200hp mark. Oh and the last time he was here he told me that I had to have atleast 500hp at the rear wheels because that's how hard he thought the thing pulled. Other than that he's really knowledgeable about cars..... Everyone in the family thinks so

My cam is an SLP51010 which obviously does not have an integrated iron gear. I put a bronze gear on the distributor now but I didn't know about the break-in of that either. I'm guessing after all is said and done you would come out cheaper with a polymer gear and call it a day. Mostly I'm just worried that the pieces from the iron gear got into my bearings and I'm wanting to know how long it will take to know for sure that I'm not eating them right now.

:sigh: Well I ate my iron distributor up fairly badly with my roller cam and when I drained the oil I looked at the filter and poured some of the oil out and poked at the shiny silver stream that came out along with the oil.... I just finished my 500 mile break-in but I'm worried that some of the particles got into my bearings. Of course I changed the gear out and I'm hoping it's not too late. What I'm wondering is how long until I'm out of the woods and know whether or not I'm not eating my bearings away? I'm not knocking or anything of the sort yet and hopefully I flushed out most of the stuff with some cheap oil I ran for about 5 minutes then drained. I wish I would have read about putting magnets in your oil pan before I assembled this engine. Anyway, thanks for any input.

Does it have air conditioning? I might consider buying it and flying to CA but the drive back would be horrendous w/o a/c. I'm a bit of a pony when it comes to heat....

Yes that is a very nice Z. Where are you located?

Definitely new motor mounts. Then I would try tightening the bell housing bolts and torque converter bolts (assuming you are running an automatic). Balancing the driveshaft isn't a bad idea either but I would try the other things first.

Do it! You're on the right path with the 700r4 and donor vehicle (if you still have it). You'll need to research the header clearancing mostly I think.

lol, move in for the kill grumpy....

Any idea on the numbers for the engine. $5,500 for that magnitude of an engine seems dirt cheap to me.

People just don't get it...... I had a ricer friend of mine tell me I must have been pushing 500rwhp because it threw him back more than anything he'd ever been in. I told him that was the torque that he was feeling and that I'm probably "only" pushing 400hp to the wheels. All he knows is peak hp and unless my car really changed his way of thinking that much that's all he'll ever know. He also said, "you're running 13's easy". That was when the conversation ended.....

I would only tell people that you really like and who you think would actually appreciate the information on the site. Personally, I have only met one so far. Most people are so set in their genre of cars/engines that it wouldn't do them any good, which is fine because they will most likely be the ones who are left in the cloud of dust and burnt rubber.

Gotta love the little talking lady......

Anybody tell me how involved the rx7 V8 swap is? Around here you can find rx7's pretty cheap. Someone said the differential is stronger than a Z, are they stronger than a ZX differential? I'm just wanting some information on it because I've heard about it but never really considered doing it. Weight? Power rating of differential? Mounts? Thanks for any info.

Ditto Z Driver, unless I'm answering a really stupid question I find myself having very little to contribute to the knowledge of the people on this site. I've also spent hours upon hours just reading all the info.

Right now I am running a new ZX radiator with my 383 and it is not cooling sufficiently. I am running some version of the Taurus fan but it's not one of the bigger ones (it measures about 13" in diameter). On cool nights I can level off at say 235 degrees which I know is not desireable. I am however running a fairly wild 383 with the stock oil pan. If you read Grumpy's post about cooling he recommends a higher volume oil pan since oil also cools an engine. I have noticed that with my hood off I have significantly less to no cooling problems. I think a bigger fan may be in order for me before I can definitively say no to the ZX radiator for your sbc conversion. I would try it since you have it and see. With a bigger fan and a milder engine I think you might do fine and I have heard of other people doing it.

I have to agree with 69rscamaro as far as crate engines. Crate engines = dependable low compression small cam engines that are overly padded to fulfill their warranty IMO. You would have to spend a lot more money to get the same power out of a crate engine as opposed to one you rebuilt yourself (assuming you did it right). It's the classic difference between new and used it seems. You can either pay more for new or pay a lot less for used that may well do as good of a job as new. Rebuilt engines should last you just as long as a crate engine if you do it right and you can build them how you like.

I was wanting to know if someone could tell me more about the Taurus 2 spd wiring. As I have it, I have a wire going to a switch in the cab to a relay that goes to one of the + terminals on the fan. When I got the fan I took it apart and eventhough it has two + terminals they are both connected to the same thing inside so I can't see how it is a 2 speed fan unless the differentiation is in the amount of power supplied to the two prongs. Maybe I don't really have the 2 speed fan?. I got it out of a junkyard it says it's out of a '96 Taurus and it has the blades like the 2 spds I have seen. I have tried hooking my hot wire up to the other terminal and even to both at the same time and it still pulls the same. It does pull a lot of air but I fail to see where the two speeds come from. Thanks for any help.

Well I've got good news and bad news. The good news is one of my roller lifters did not have the spring in the hydraulic part and I simply went and bought a new lifter at the parts store for $11. The bad news is I'm the idiot who left the spring out because when I got the lifters, I disassembled all of them and cleaned the old oil and whatever else was in them out :sigh: Anyway, thanks for the input guys.

Out with the old....... Somehow I can associate with the mentality more than I would like to admit. Seems that if I had done whatever it is right the first time it still wouldn't quite be good enough. Oh well. Sounds like a sweet deal. Will the twin turbo ever make it to the Z? But then what will you put in the Monte?......