Update After a Long Time Away

[Cannonball89]

Hi Guys and Girls,

Just looked at my post history and it looks like 2013 was the last time I have given you all any updates on the 240z Turbo.

The truth is, not a whole lot happened until this summer. 2013 was my senior year in college, and immediately after that I moved to Florida for about a year and half, the 240z had to stay in Maryland though. I came back to Maryland in 2015, and drove my car some, but was bugged by what seemed to be fuel delivery issues. I have been busy with my recently found career as well as other projects and had to leave the Datsun on the back burner for a while, but I have done a few things that I will provide a brief description of here, and maybe a full thread on a couple topics if I feel it would benefit anyone to know the details of.

I've really just had the back end on jack stands for most of the summer. I had bought the stub-axle kit to adapt to the STI R180 and sourced a 2007 STI R180 way back in 2012 or 2013 and just now got around to installing. While I was at it, I had a custom driveshaft made that connects the 280ZX Turbo T5 tranny to the STI R180, with 1310 U-Joints, as I had blown the stock size U-Joints at the drag strip many years ago. I already had a custom shaft made for the stock U-Joint size when I first did my Turbo swap, this one was a bit of a challenge sourcing parts that would work with 1310 but I will probably write a post soon detailing what I used.

I also had a sump installed on the bottom of my gas tank, and sealed the tank with POR-15, in an attempt to put a rest to my fuel delivery woes. Originally I had been using the stock 5/8" pick-up tube in the tank to feed a low pressure pump that then fed a surge tank, which then fed a high pressure pump for the fuel injection, and it worked great at first, no issues. For some reason, recently it did not seem to be delivering the fuel the engine needed, so with the sump installed, and two 3/8" gravity fed outlets feeding the fuel pump, rather then the pump trying to suck the fuel up out of the tank through a 5/8" straw, I won't have any more issues of that nature.

I got this all wrapped in the end of July, but of course I then discovered that one of my rear brake calipers was seized. I am using 1983 280ZX rear brake calipers, and when I first did the install I could drive to Advance Auto or Auto Zone and walk out with them. Now, they are almost impossible to find. Major auto parts stores don't stock them, Summit Racing shipped me what they said was the proper part, but it had a smaller piston diameter and a totally different parking brake arrangement. Motorsport Auto was finally able to get rebuilt calipers to me, but I had to wait several weeks and the quality was not nearly as good as I expected (had to clean media from bead blasting out of the bleeder valve port, as it was totally blocked). I should have just got a rebuild kit but didn't feel like fooling with it and didn't anticipate it being such a hassle to obtain parts that used to be readily available.

So now, I think I am finally able to try driving it a bit for the next month or two of decent weather remaining here in Maryland. Hopefully all will be well, but I know that leaving a car sit for extended periods often brings about issues. My plan, if everything is mechanically sound, is to have some professional dyno tuning over the winter. I am running Megasquirt still, and have really only street tuned it. The one Dyno session I had didn't really amount to anything because I had the spark duration and dwell set in such a way as that it would not rev over 5000 RPM. I really need to find a shop not too far away that is good with Megasquirt and/or older Nissan/Datsuns. I am thinking P Tuning in Manassas Virginia may be a good fit. I will call and talk with them first though. 

So hopefully I can stay active on here for a while. I have honestly forgotten a lot of the finer details of things that I used to know off-hand. Sort of learning all over again. I'll try to stay in touch. 

 

 

[loy]

A friend took his to AMS in Gaithersburg.