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I'm pretty new at working on cars, so this is probably a dumb question: Is it bad to remove the spark plugs (or other bolts for that matter) from the cylinder head when the engine has been warmed up? It seems to me that there would be some problems with the threads being damaged what with the different heat expansions of each metal... Is it OK to do if i'm sure the threads have had some high temp anti-sieze put on them before?

If you can't find someone with what you're looking for on a parts car, Chloe at midwestz sells the entire unit(new). I bought one from her a while back and the price was lower than MSA and VB advertised. It was shipped promptly in some pretty extreme packaging(good!).

I've been getting it too, but i've attributed that to the massive amount of oil being burned (about 1 quart every 400 miles).

Do really old springs have any problems with changing stiffness or size when they have been sitting around uncompressed for a long time?

What part of the country will your school be in? That will have a lot to do with whether you can use it effectively as a daily driver. Living in Texas, I can tell you that using a 240Z without A/C as a daily driver is definitely not ideal. During most of the summer my Z stayed in the garage on the hotter days and I ended up driving something else. During the winter in the Dallas area they tend to go nuts dumping sand and whatnot all over the bridges. Some people say sand isnt harmful, but just head downtown to where they keep the piles of sand under overpasses... the sand has literally caused the concrete of the support pylons to disentegrate. After a good freeze and subsequent sand-panic, my Z will probably not come out again until after a few good warm rains (be it spring or otherwise). Having not properly rust-proofed the underside yet, I don't want to turn a relatively rust-free Z into a mess. I'll likely be transferring to UT in Austin next fall, and I plan to bring my Z along provided I can get some other guys in on splitting the rent on a house with a garage. If the Z has trouble, I can always ride the metro bus system.

Nice! Your car is gonna be great!

hahaha, good stuff

Welcome to the site ironbloc! You could start out looking for an engine by hitting up car-parts.com and doing a search for stuff in illinois, but i've never seen any real great deals listed on there. Occasionally a good deal local to you pops up on the zcar.com classifieds for a cheap engine in need of a rebuild. I've been in the market myself to get an engine to tinker with, and after keeping an eye out for a while, something fitting the bill finally comes up, but I don't have the garage space right now! arghh!

Synthetic : I've heard the same thing about old engines in general. From most people i've heard that you shouldn't use synthetic unless you start using it right after the break-in after a rebuild (using regular oil during the break-in). Read something about some oils having a detergent in them that loosens up oil gunk that collected over the years and lets it float around and cause trouble clogging stuff up!

I wonder if ANYONE has tried out that MSA aluminum rad that is supposed to be a direct swap? Seems pretty pricey!

There have been some other threads about those wheels

The spacer dimensions I found on another site were 0.699" thick 6.102" outer diameter 3.189" inner diameter with 4 holes equidistant from the center at 2.0311" all around, then I have 0.4134" listed as the hole diameter. I'm not sure on that hole diameter, I might have just arbitrarily put it in (while making this cad drawing I am referring to, made it a month or so ago) since I can't find that number now, but I assume it should just fit snugly around the studs it goes over. Hope that is useful info for someone I'm not in the market right now, but when I get to buying some 15" panasports I will probably upgrade to the vented rotors myself. (maybe next year :classic: ) I thought about making some spacers and selling them for like 15 bucks a piece (mostly for practice making a part from a schematic, etc) since I found a cheap place for the 6.25" aluminum barstock (ebay strangely enough), but I couldn't come up with a good way to cut off the piece without wasting a lot of metal with my equipment. I would have to buy a lot of extra hardware to go with the machinery and it just turned out to be more trouble than its worth considering it would only take a minute or so by a CNC. Still not worth $80 though IMHO!

4 studs and a 114mm distance between the centers of the studs (space between them across the center of the rotational axis)

It really isn't that great, I played it for about 30 minutes and never messed with it again. I've since deleted it. In related news, the next Gran Turismo game (for PS2) will have an S30 as well as some other classic sports cars from what i've seen in the trailer. I have not been able to find a list of all the cars that will be in the game yet though. It looks like the game now has a rally mode as well. (I've never played GT3 or GT2, so if this is not new, pardon me) The trailer (50mb) can be found here http://montane.atmos.colostate.edu/~jason/images/temp/gt4tgstr.mpg

Cuong Nguyen is his username and his swap is really nice from what i've seen. I think the biggest obstacle to swapping out an rb26dett in the USA is just getting the parts... I've seen some pretty outrageous prices quoted for importing the necessary stuff. Maybe the engine from a supra TT would be an easier swap(from a financial standpoint) since they were sold in the states?

Another thing to consider is if it has multiple components that need to be made by a shop or something(for use of a prototype or something), farm out the different components to different shops so noone sees the whole picture except you.

There are a few guys who have swapped an RB26 into an S30 series body. It may be a straight 6 with 2 turbos next to it, but the Z engine compartment isnt tiny like a honda civic... Check www.hybridz.org

No personal experience, but I think the US Patent and Trademark office website is a good place to start http://www.uspto.gov/

I've heard the swap is more trouble than it's worth.

Yes, the majority of women really do not give a crap about cars at all. A lot of the girls I talk to here and there are under the impression that their boyfriend's bone stock honda civic is virtually a street legal F1 car(wonder where they got that idea?!)... oh, and they(the car) look "cute" too apparently!

I am really enjoying seeing all these pictures! Alan, Would you happen to have any photos of the nissan displays at the 1969 Geneva Motor Show? My father saw the Z there for the first time while he was traveling and I think he would enjoy seeing some photos. Andrew

I had a really hard time trying to solder the contacts on the back of my fuse block. There is a layer of some dielectric film over the metal that just made the solder bead up on the surface. I sanded it pretty well, but it seemed to be more trouble than it was worth (especially when another member gave me a good deal on a clean used fuse block) to clean out/flatten the back head on that rivet so it would hold on. My box was the short pigtail version. I don't have a picture of my original block, but you can see what i'm talking about in the picture of the good one. http://www.classiczcars.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=3997&size=big&password=&sort=7&thecat=500 My original block looked just like the picture TexasZ linked of his. I actually failed an inspection because of it! The parking lights wouldn't come on after I drove it to the inspection station (on the last day that the registration was still good!). Didn't figure out until I got home what the issue was. Seemed the combination of some corrosion and the loose joint (not held in tension by the plastic) caused the connection to be intermittent.

Does anyone have a picture of spacers others have used with the vented rotor setup?