AK260

Well fellas (and ladies), it’s been a rough week! Auntie ‘rona took a delta flight, came to visit and has not made it a pleasant stay! Our eldest came home from a summer camp at the local school and a few days later we had a text to say one of the kids in his bubble had tested positive. We tested negative, so we went off onto our long weekend away. A few days later he wasn’t feeling great. We all had PCR tests and except for the eldest they all came back negative. Soon our youngest had a temp too. We had PCR tests again and all of us were positive! Thankfully none of the friends we were away with are affected. We suspect the close proximity of sitting in a car for 4 hours each way would have done the trick! I’ve been the hardest hit as I am a man and clearly “man flu” is way worse than anything women experience in life - with the possible exception of childbirth! So my body has been feeling like It’s been tramped on all over by a herd of cows, big headaches, eyes and ears feeling like they’re being pinned / pulled out, big cough, no energy and having the shivers / sweats with 40°c / 104°F temps (a lower temp thermostat didn’t help). Other than that I’ve been tip top! Feeling better yesterday and hungry again, with a rare occasion of seeing the sun in the sky, we had an isolation bar-b-q for supper ... I could not smell a THING !!! Nothing! Not even standing in the thick smoke could I smell any charcoal!!! The taste has gone too! The burgers tasted like chicken, salmon or frankly anything salty. Mustard, which I can’t normally handle, no trouble at all, lashed it on!!! I can happily chew into an onion and pretend it’s an apple! My youngest told me that the benefit of having no smell is that I won’t get as cross when I go to brush my teeth and find he hasn’t flushed the loo! Silver linings!! Anyway gang, the moral of the story is, if someone as fit, healthy and strong as I am, with double vax can crash so hard, I hate to imagine what it must be like for those who’ve refused to vax. Astra and Zenica have been looking after me. I suspect my wife’s Pfizer is more effective hence her having a better time of it. Another theory is that (so my doctorfriend tells me) I had a mild version of covid when we got back from Skiing in northern Italy in Feb 2020 (European epicentre of C19 at the time). Apparently if you have had it already you get a stronger immune response to the vaccine and a re-infection - in my case I had a terrible response to the vax. So long story short, just wanted to say, take care of yourselves, this is nasty stuff and it ain’t gone away just because our politicians say it has or reduce public precautions to suit the narrative of the day. It’s also something we have to learn to live with, so we must keep sensible caution in place.

You’re most welcome. Yes it does sound like time to get a new one. A friend of mine just bought one and paid 1/3 less than I did. Hoping the same method works for you ... Also don’t go buying spare caps from them. The Beru cap they supply is junk (I won’t go into why) and there are many alternative manufacturers. Here are some for example: Alternative part numbers for cap ... (BERU: VK102, VK155) BMW: 12111351446, 12111353117, BREMI: 8017P, DAF: 163793, EPS: 1.306.072, FACET: 2.7472PHT, FORD: 11710256, KW: 806072, MERCEDES-BENZ: 0001580702, 0001582502, 0001585302, 10001585302, A0001580702, A0001582502, A0001585302, MWM: 606908730203, OPEL: 1212135, 1212138, PORSCHE: 90160295600, 91160293300, QUINTON HAZELL: XD138, SMPE: 44160, STELLOX: 21-00002-SX, 21-00746-SX, 21-00779-SX

So fella, if it’s any consolation, my shaft went wobbly with age too - so did the distributor’s! (OK, joking about the former!) Half an inch is significant and I wouldn’t keep driving it. You are getting spark scatter and that means random but potentially too much timing in certain conditions. I very much doubt that you’ve damaged anything with excessive timing if you haven’t been hearing it pinking/knocking. In fact if she’s not stuttering on pick up or cruising then you’re probably not getting any significant change in timing. These engines are rather hardy and can withstand a fair bit of abuse. If you want to put your mind at rest, idle the car warm, then do a compression test. You won’t damage your engine with irregular or too much timing at idle. What is the base timing set at and what is the dizzy’s total mech advance supposed to be? If you NEED to drive it, you can always dial it back 5 or so degrees. She will run but not be very keen. Frankly I’m amazed you haven’t seen signs of contact inside the dizzy cap. I’m a big fan of my 123 even though it took me a while to fall in love with it. Just make sure you don’t use the 280zx original black coil with it as it will stress it too much with it’s less than 1 ohm impedance. A Bosch red coil with 1.8ohm is ideal and will save you a lot of headaches but a flame thrower with 1.5ohm is OK too. I started a thread on the 123 if you fancy a long read about the ups and downs ... https://zclub.net/community/index.php?threads/123-ignition-for-datsun-l6-on-my-l28.25467/

In addition to that I have a niggling thought back there telling me that people are more interested in the latest electric cars. I do wonder if that will affect it. Then again we in Europe where electrification is the new fad aren’t worthy of it so maybe it will be fine in the US and RoW.

Most welcome. With a straight through muffler / improved fuelling I would have been able to pull another 500rpm out of the top end. I used the exact same set up on my modified L28 and found it running out of puff at the same sort of point. The Z story classic muffler I used on that setup after blowing up the turbo muffler (long story!) freed up about 1k-1.5k rpm more. In fact it now sprints into the rev limiter at 6.7krpm (but it is a different engine so I wouldn’t have gotten that much out of the L26). Without a centre resonator, it was however, unbearably loud for my soft ears (especially between 2k-3k RPMs where our L6s tend to “resonate” / drone). It would likely have been because of the much more aggressive cam and cam timing. It will probably be OK on yours with a stock cam. But be on notice for a centre resonator in case you have the same effect / your ears are as soft as mine. I’m “that guy” at music concerts with tissue in my ears! [emoji1787] I don’t know if Zstory does pipe work for the MSA header back - you have to ask Sean - but the fit under the car is pretty spot on.

Thanks Muzez, glad my clowning about had some value. I don’t think I will be doing the one from the outside anytime soon as I am using an iPhone and the thought of hanging £1000 of phone off the rear while tearing about doesn’t excite me :p But I will look into a second hand GoPro if I do something like this again. [emoji106]

Basically, at any point that the exhaust gasses encounter a change of diameter larger than where they came from, they expand (lose energy / velocity) and send a shock wave back up the exhaust tract. Now, in your situation you are not expanding but taking an existing travelling pressure wave and compressing it - in effect, this is creating a bottle neck / back pressure. For proper scavenging, you ideally want the pipework to be the same diameter from the collector point all the way back to a resonator / muffler to avoid suffocating (smaller pipe) or introducing new expansion harmonics (larger pipe). I had an MSA 6-3-2 header with 2.5” pipe all the way back to a turbo muffler with no resonator in between. The torque curve was utterly delicious.

These plugs in the above photos to my eyes look surprisingly OK / perfect. Were they pulled after idling or normal driving? At the risk of adding any confusion - Referring to your photo which I edited below: if I knew nothing about your engine and saw this photo, I would have said you have an electrical issue on 4 (not firing strongly / consistently enough) and that your front carb is running leaner than your rear carb. But then also would be asking why 3 looks OK, given it’s on the same front carb. Don’t go pulling the head yet - I strongly agree with what has already been said about doing a wet / dry comp test again and share with us please.

You’re most welcome, glad it was helpful!!

This is what is available to us in the UK - not sure if you are able to get the same tyres where you are: https://www.blackcircles.com/order/tyres/search?width=205&profile=60&rim=15 Avoid the Michelin energy savers like the plaque (as me how I know) I throughly recommend the Goodyear’s as I run them on my Z with over 200lbft hitting the tyres. The continental contact 6 I run on both my Audis and they are a superb all rounder. The grip in the wet and slippy UK roads is very well matched to their performance in dry conditions. Then there is the Falkens, the Uniroyals, michelin efficient grip. Avoid anything with a B or less rain rating as they just won’t be sticky enough in the dry for spirited driving and are generally more focused on fuel economy and are, in reality, van tyres! Good luck!

To offer an alternative perspective: I’ve been seriously considering this https://www.merlinmotorsport.co.uk/p/malpassi-filter-king-regulator-large-glass-85mm-with-8mm-unions-fpr006 I have a fuel thank that was lined with the POR rustproofing stuff, that has now started to flake off causing some strange fish to appear in the fuel filter. The ONLY way to deal with it properly is to get the tank opened up, media blasted, treated and welded up again. But what I like about the filter king is the big bowl that allows plenty of buffer when those conditions appear at WOT. It’s a sticking plaster I know! Again, you have to decide what to put before the fuel pump as this is a post pump filter. Lots of options from cheap ... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sytec-Uprated-Fuel-Filter-8mm-In-Out-Fits-Nissan-Silvia-S15-SR20DET-/223910510203 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sytec-Motorsport-Clear-Glass-Fuel-Filter-For-Carburettor-8mm-Fuel-Hose-Tails-ADV-/273897052635 https://www.lsengineers.co.uk/fuel-filter-lf72.html To quite expensive ... https://www.carid.com/qrp/fuel-filter.html Depends also on the fuel rate you are expecting.

My secret sauce is bottled lemon juice and a table spoon of salt in an old ice cream tub. Soak between 2-12 hours depending on how rusty and they come out perfectly. Just make sure you neutralise it quickly when you take out of the solution. Before and after on a TR6 water pump!

Oh wow! Thank you for sharing!! There are many out there but it’s great to see one with a personal recommendation from someone who knows their onions! [emoji106][emoji106]

No such thing as a dumb question (except the one not googled) :p Yes exactly why I used 6+3. The metal washer has very small dip in it making it slightly concave, so the sticky outy bit points away from the bar. Ps. Loving the alignment toolage!!! I used news papers under the wheels to help them slide about an did mine by eye. At the shop they found it had 5.4 and 5.2mm toe in. Too much toe but amazing how close you can get by eye or indeed what the eyes can see! Oh and I paid £120 ($167USD) at my local Nissan motorsport specialist, but they really know their stuff. So I feel your pain on the price of doing something so simple. It doesn’t take many alignments at that price to justify buying a half decent alignment tool. [emoji848]

Ps. Just realised his “gallery” has pics of some of the panels he does ... https://zclub.net/community/index.php?media/albums/z-repair-panels.159/ ... but don’t assume this is all of them, ask him and if he doesn’t have it he may even make one for you and add it to his list of parts.

And he’s a top bloke!!! Very friendly and helpful with great panels to boot! He goes by the handle “woody” in the UK Zclub. https://zclub.net/community/index.php?members/woody.2636/ If you don’t have FB but want to contact him, just set yourself up on the UK forum and use the “conversation” option to send him a PM. https://zclub.net/community/index.php

Yes indeed a small gap! But the gaps to the metal washers on mine top and bottom look different when the car is on a jack. One side is 10mm the other side is closer to 14mm. Probably because I was jacking under the diff. I have a ramp arrangement in my garage where the car is driven in, onto ramps when parked such that I lay under it and change an exhaust for example. The next time I’m in the garage, I will take a picture for you to show the gap when the car is on the ground / with suspension loaded up. I am so very pleased with the improvement they made to the car and have no clocks / knocks or additional noise - regardless of how hard I push the car or the state of the roads oh and it cost me less than $15. ;)

So if I’m reading this correctly, it’s saying that the cam cover / rocket cover works to suck blow-by gasses at full throttle through the airbox and at idle it’s done via the block breather and PCV valve. So - let’s choke get my own thinking: does this mean that blocking the block on and just using the rocker cover outlet is sufficient if you just plumb it into a tank!? Could that be the logic behind the DSI thinking on blocking them? As the captain pointed out, the bottom and top aren’t sealed from each other. So blocking the bottom one shouldn’t pressurise the crank case. But does blocking the bottom one just mean more regular oil changes required as the vapours are less effectively extracted? And doesn’t a catch tank without a vacuum mean the same thing really? Not sure about you chaps, but my oil is changed annually which equates to an average of 1000 miles per oil change anyway.

And from the FSM ...

Ok, what you see me holding is the metal washer at the bottom. Then glued to it is a 6mm (not 9mm my apologies) rubber washer, glued on top of that is a 3mm rubber washer. Makes sense?

So here’s a recent DSI engine pic below.- he doesn’t block them. I’m not convinced by the suggestion that if you block it, the fumes would just come out of the top. Why would Nissan and other manufacturers have gone through the trouble of putting vents at the top and off the block? But I don’t know enough about how sealed the bottom is from the top to have an informed opinion. And here’s a novel approach by [mention=32065]jonbill[/mention] - I love the no nonsense mindset! But maybe he can shed light on how he fixed it to the block.

A good read on the first two paragraphs ... https://www.burtonpower.com/tuning-guides/tuning-guide-pages/engine-breather-system.html

As much as I commend the creativity of this solution, something in the back of my head is nagging me that the PCV valve is going to clog up over time! *Scratches head, removes even more vitally needed follicles*

Wouldn't the block pressurise and create oil leaks everywhere?

Surely you can flare a pipe for an interference fit and with a bit of BFI* able to make it work? @Av8ferg - Datsun Spirit provide engines without them being in place - so worth dropping Eiji a note at how he recommends going about it. (*BFI = Brute Force and Ignorance)