Just Another Damned Z Car Project Thread

[conedodger]

Will do @Captain Obvious, I am researching with the Haltech site on that. It is 'monitored' by the Haltech guys, but most often they don't do the answering of questions. Because of that, you don't know what you're getting. After all, there are far more experts on the internet than there are in the world by about 5 times! 

What I could use now, is a 2D file of the inlet side of the '75 intake manifold. The reason I need it, is because I feel I'm going to have to make an adapter to mate whatever Electronic Throttle Body to the factory manifold. My son, who is an architecture student graduating in May of next year has told me he can make me a working drawing that I can send to my friend Larry who is a CAD Machinist to make 2-3 adapters. (I can't be the only one who wants DBW right?) 

[conedodger]

Will do @Captain Obvious, I am researching with the Haltech site on that. It is 'monitored' by the Haltech guys, but most often they don't do the answering of questions. Because of that, you don't know what you're getting. After all, there are far more experts on the internet than there are in the world by about 5 times! 

What I could use now, is a 2D file of the inlet side of the '75 intake manifold. The reason I need it, is because I feel I'm going to have to make an adapter to mate whatever Electronic Throttle Body to the factory manifold. My son, who is an architecture student graduating in May of next year has told me he can make me a working drawing that I can send to my friend Larry who is a CAD Machinist to make 2-3 adapters. (I can't be the only one who wants DBW right?) 

[conedodger]

Obviously, there was glitch. Maybe an admin can trim that response down to just once?

[Captain Obvious]

Haha! Nice glitch.

So this 2-D drawing for inlet face of the stock plenum... I don't have anything in electronic form, but I have a pencil sketch around here somewhere. Would that help?

[conedodger]

Might? I reproduced a Two piece Porsche rear fog light mount from a drawing on the inside of a box and made 50 copies... let’s see what Nicho can do with it.

[Captain Obvious]

OK, I'll look for my sketch.

So I've got some questions about this adapter plate you're planning... With the mounting holes being "close, but not close enough", there is significant overlap between the original pattern and the scheme for the 350Z. That overlap presents a set of difficulties in making an adapter plate. It would actually be easier if the patterns were radically different instead of just a little different.

Are you planning to make this thing from multiple pieces and sandwich them together?
Are you planning to spin the 350Z throttle body a little (clock it 45 degrees or something) so that none of the holes interfere with each other?

Something else?

Sorry... I'm just having trouble picturing this plate.

[conedodger]

Two pieces. Clocked so the mounting holes don’t argue.

[Captain Obvious]

Well if you're going to make it two pieces, you really don't have to clock the throttle body if you don't want to. You can use flat head screws or counterbored bolts to hold one piece to the manifold. Screw that into place first. Then use flat head screws to hold another plate to the first and have threaded holes in the new pattern on the second plate.

Not really a good description.....

Anyway, here's my sketch of the original throttle body mount. Let me know if you can't read the dimensions and I'll edit the sketch to make them more readable:

I made a spacer plate for the Sentra throttle body. The mounting pattern is the same, but the linkage interfered, so I had to move the throttle body out away from the intake by 1/4 inch. Here's a spacer plate made to the dimensions above:

And here it is next to the intake hole:

[conedodger]

Nice @Captain Obvious. I passed it on to Nicho...

[Captain Obvious]

Glad to help. Hope it saves some time.

You may find that the holes in my plate are a tight fit on the mounting bolts with the geometries and tolerances involved. The holes in the throttle bodies I've messed with here use larger holes than what I put in that plate. In fact, they used two different hole sizes on the diagonal. Two of them are really sloppy, and the other two are tighter, but still not as tight as what I did.

Anyway, you may find that you need to open those holes up a little bit to get it to fit without interference on the mounting bolts. Depends on the accuracies of all the parts involved. On the factory floor, they just want things to fit without a fight and they made the mounting holes sloppier to guarantee that happened.

[conedodger]

Thanks, I'll see if I can use this...

[conedodger]

So, a bit of finishing touches on the intake today. This is a 3M heat reflecting tape that I'm hoping will keep the header heat out of the intake. I will also wrap the headers down to the collector. 

Anyone have one of the factory heat shields for the brake aperatus that bolts to the bottom of the heat shield? I might as I have had a couple 280Z cars over the years as well but I'm no where near my parts garage...