jmortensen

Trap speed is more accurate. ET is pretty hugely affected by traction.

The new Mustang was .1 sec slower than a BMW M3 on Streets of Willow which is a very tight road course, almost like a very big autox. The new Mustang is no joke. I don't know how the 370Z would fare on that course, but I wouldn't assume that it would be as fast.

Yes. Case in point, drag racing calculators. Plug in weight and power and they can give you a pretty accurate 1/4 mile time. http://www.hotrodpitstop.com/tools.html

Any new Mustang is going to smoke your ZX (assuming it is as stock as it looks in your avatar). If it doesn't, the other guy didn't know you were racing him. This is true on a road course also. Your ZX would have been faster than my first car, a 79 Mustang with the 2.3L Pinto motor.

My understanding is that you cannot bore an L24 to L28 size, so you would start with an L28 block. In that case it would be a destroked L28. You could bore the L28 to gain back a little displacement. I'm a little confused on the pistons and rods, I know you can't run L24 rods with L28 pistons on the L28 crank because they come up above the deck a lot. It may be that you could run L28 pistons on L24 rods with an L24 crank, I don't know, but I can tell you that most machinists won't reuse a pressed piston, so I think you'd be in for new pistons regardless, in which case you might as well bore the block and get back some of that displacement. The E31 will give more compression. E31 with dished L28 pistons is like 8.5:1, and I think flat tops gives 10.x:1, can't recall the specifics. As a general rule of thumb I would suggest not running "the maximum" compression you can manage on a street motor. You hear of guys retarding the timing to run pump gas from time to time, and there is A LOT of power in those last few degrees of timing. I'd rather have the 9.5:1 L engine that runs with the timing set for optimal advance than the 10.5:1 compression motor that can only run total advance in the mid 20s.

If you build that destroked L28 you'll give up displacement and not really gain any usable rpm above and beyond what you can do with an stroked L28 on a "street" engine. If you're talking about revving to 9K, you're going to have a motor whose life is measured in hours, regardless of which one you build. You will however be giving up displacement and thus power vs the longer stroke.

Cost to speed ratio of a 2.7 stroker vs a 2.8 swap makes the 2.8 a no brainer if what you're looking for is a fast car at a cheap price. If you want a concourse restoration, then a swap is not for you. But if concourse is the idea then the stroker is off the table too, and one might just as well ask why people prefer to spend $50K on a car that will be worth $25K when it is done and still be slower than the one with the 2.8L motor swap with triples or a turbo, etc. If it's not a concourse car, how smart is boring the block all the way out in order to keep the matching numbers engine? It's still a driver, so what happens when the engine gets old???

Short springs on front.

Thanks. What you're describing on the American cars is called "carrier breaks". One carrier might fit from 3.08 - 3.90 gear ratios, then there is another that fits from 4.11 - 5.38 or whatever. They do this because as the gear ratio gets numerically higher, the pinion gear head gets smaller, and if you use the same carrier, the ring gear is farther and farther away. By using different carriers, the ring gear can be thinner and still mesh up with the pinion correctly. The R180 and R200 don't use carrier breaks, they use a really thick ring gear. Yours is a perfect example. That is a thick gear! You could swap gears from another diff, but if it is an R180 they changed the ring and pinions in 76 or so. I believe the ID of the ring gear got larger, I can't remember, info might be in that huge diff post. I think zcarnut on Hybrid Z once posted about using a thin spacer between the two. Regardless, you wouldn't want to put the ring gear loosely on the smaller carrier. The ring gear needs to fit tight. Alan is right, it could also be an R190. Tape measure on the ring gear will tell the tale there. That is a "racing" gear ratio, and the R190 was pretty common back in the day for club racers via Datsun Comp. I've seen a few around, even one that had a detroit locker in it. If you have an R190, I don't think you'll find gears for it or another diff with the ratio you want. Probably best to sell it to someone else who has an R190.

By the cross pin it's a Nismo clutch LSD based on the ramp angles, sounds like a 2 pinion (2 pinion gears, 2 side gears for 4 spider gears altogether). If I'm right that the R160's had a 3 pin setup then that would be an R180, which came in 2 pin and 4 pin. Of course you should keep it. Like Arne said previously, it makes a HUGE difference in a Z car. Remember the LSD additive when you fill it back up. Doesn't matter whether you use the Ford, GM, or Chrysler stuff, but you need something otherwise it will chatter pretty badly.

I don't see too many R180's but that looks pretty narrow. It might be an R160. It's probably an old Nissan LSD, if the cross pins look like this then that is a pretty sure bet: http://album.hybridz.org/data/500/90952way1.jpg If it has 4 of these square shaped cross pins, it is a 4 pinion, 2 would be a 2 pinion, I think some R160's had a 3 pinion setup.

You can also get a stick and wedge it between the steering wheel and brake pedal or seat and brake pedal to push the pedal down 1/2 way. This is like putting your finger on the straw and pulling it out of the liquid. Air can't get in from the top so brake fluid won't drain out the bottom. Still need to bleed the brakes after, but there won't be as much air as there would if you just left the lines open.

I wouldn't give up on door weather strips. There are a lot of options, there has to be one that fits, and it doesn't preclude you using the other factory strips that go around the upper lip on the body.

Hmm... my original and replacement hatch weatherstrip was forever falling off and being glued back on again. I was planning on replacing it with a door weatherstrip to prevent this from happening, and am disappointed to hear that it didn't work so well. What exactly was the problem? Not tall enough? There are other options out there that are thicker if that's the main issue.

I have a friend who runs that distributor with a Chrysler module from the mid 80's. Module is available at every corner auto parts store for $20. You'd have to wire it up, but I don't think it's that hard. Probably exactly the same as the GM HEI module, which is another that people commonly use.

I'm not going to tell you to do anything unsafe, but the springs in a 240Z are not that stiff and not that compressed compared to other struts. There are some out there that have a LOT of stored energy, the Z is not one of those.

Just have to be careful putting them back on, so they don't get overtorqued. I've seen an Illumina where the top of the shaft ripped off when a guy put the nut back on with an impact and wasn't careful about it.

John's ideas should work. If for some reason those don't pan out, an impact gun works. If you don't have an air compressor, you might see if the local equipment rental has an electric gun you can rent for a day.

All that picture proves is that they didn't use a picture of the S30 strut. Maybe Tokico didn't give them one. I have suppliers in my businesses that give me one picture for an item that might come in different sizes/colors/options. That doesn't mean that I don't know about the product, it means I'm not a photographer and I don't think people aren't getting the idea when they look at the picture that I have on my website.

One point in favor of the E12-80 is its trigger mechanism. It has a 6 point reluctor and a 6 point stator, and so long as you fix the vacuum advance (they're almost always broken) there is no gap to be set or anything like that. I believe the Pertronix works like the 280Z distributor where there is a sensor which has a gap that needs to be maintained for it to function. While that's a lot better than points which wear out, I have seen a car die due to the sensor moving on the 280Z distributor (at an autox no less).

LOM55 is the stock number for a Power Brute 240SX LSD, unfortunately the info I have doesn't say R180 or R200. Power Brute is made by the same people who made them for Nissan so it very well maybe exactly the same as a NISMO unit. If you want to take it apart you could see how many clutches it had and that sort of thing. Looks a little different than mine from a 300ZXT. Is it possibly a 2 pinion out of an R180? I've known 2 people who had the 2 pinion unit for the R180, and both broke it. One of them also snapped a mustache bar in half, the other wasn't too crazy with it but it broke anyway.

You should have a couple of threads showing on your gland nuts. If not, then that probably means that the strut insert is just slightly too short for the housing. I had this happen on both sides in the rear of my Z with Illuminas and tightened the nut against the housing, but the insert was free to move 1/16" or so. Made a hellacious rattle. Fixed by putting washers under the strut inserts and tightening so that one or two threads showed.

I'm putting power steering on my Z, but I'll be running a 15x14 inch rim... ;-) IMO if you're running 10 or less inch wide rims, you can go with manual steering. 10 would be pushing it if you weren't very strong. As to the steering wheel size, I don't really like to go above 13" on a Z. I find that my hands end up hitting the door panels with a 14 at autocrosses.

Not a turbo guy, but I understand that to build boost faster you want a taller gear ratio. More load = more boost. I think that's why the stock ZXT came with 3.54s and the NA ZX came with 3.90s.

Running for 20 minutes then dying is a classic module going bad symptom. Not running at all is a module gone bad symptom. If you have another one, I'd try that. I don't know how available those modules are, but I have a couple friends running those older 280Z style distributors with Chrysler modules that you can get at any auto parts store for $20. I'm sure you could run an HEI or a number of other modules as well if you need something fast. One of those guys also had the sensor inside the distributor move into the trigger wheel, rendering the thing inoperative. This was at an autox, and as I recall he finished a run and pulled into the grid and the thing just died right there. No warning, no nothing. I don't recall the spec, but there should be a gap between the sensor and trigger wheel. Could probably download the FSM from www.carfiche.com and find it.