LeonV

Let me know when you're ready for tuning, Bob. I can get you a discounted rate on dyno rental at Works Motorsports at Sonoma Raceway. I've tuned a few Megasquirt setups and would be happy to assist.

Correct, S30s use JIS fasteners. I'm not at all interested in stainless for the reasons stated earlier so if you can offer a comprehensive (or piece-wise, i.e. "engine", "suspension", etc) kit with zinc-coated (yellow and/or natural) JIS fasteners, it may just make for a compelling product.

Agreed, it's nice to have reliable, modern tech under the hood. The Rebello motor should be a ton of fun! I went a slightly different direction with my current Z, using 123ignition for timing. Still a distributor but it's digital and I have discrete control of the timing curve. Considering getting the Jenvey Weber look-alike throttle bodies if I go EFI at some point down the road. Keep us posted on your project!

Glad I could help luring you to the dark side.

Looks like a fun project, Bob! If you don't want to run a stock damper (nothing wrong with them unless old age has fatigued the rubber) I'd suggest running the BHJ Dynamics damper Dave sells. It has an integrated crank trigger wheel but looks like it may be a bit late for that.

Thanks for those Alan!

Brutal is the word to describe it. Damn!

Interesting, thanks for the data.

I'm not sure plastigage would work considering it tends to stick to whatever crushes it but it's an interesting thought. I could try using something like lead solder which will keep its shape after deformation and hopefully not remain in the combustion chamber. My strategy would be to set a dial indicator to the block and zero it to a plate mounted to the head. Without messing with the indicator, pull the head off, remove the gasket, and reinstall the head flat to the block. The indicator will say what the compressed gasket thickness is. Knowing that deck height is 0.021", piston-to-head clearance can be accurately calculated. Of course, this involves pulling the head...

No worries Steve! If (when) I pull the head off again, I'll try to get a measurement of compressed gasket thickness so I could give you an accurate, true-to-life number using the OEM HG. I'm assuming when you say 1.25mm gasket you mean uncompressed? Let me know if you need any help with your build!

Doing ok so far, I have about 2000 miles and 12 dyno pulls on it. Hopefully it stays together!

You bring up a good point, Steve, and I can't give you the exact number because I got antsy and never measured compressed thickness of a new Nissan HG. However, here is some data I documented a few years ago from my build thread on HybridZ: Like you say, maybe the Nissan HG compresses less so my piston-to-head clearance is possibly somewhere in the .017-.022" range.

Very nice, I bet it pulls great!

Hi Steve, good question. We skimmed .004" off to deck if I remember correctly. Like I said, it was an experiment and one of the things I wanted to learn is how much piston-to-head clearance I can get away with. There is a lot of (conflicting) info out there but I think I remember reading Bryan Blake's old posts about him running really tight clearances. Seems it's working well so far! Now get that L28 going, you won't regret it. Thanks Andreas! I was very happy with those numbers, considering my stock S2000 made 200whp on the same dyno and much less torque. I was bummed because I didn't have a full set of other e-tubes to test out. I was about to put some F16s in to test but only had 4 on hand. Too bad about your dyno session, time to get back in there! Dave cut me a good deal, I paid $1500. I'm local so no shipping was involved. This was for a valve job (including guides and valves), head porting, manifold porting (including pinning the manifold), and assembly. I brought the head to him fully disassembled. Even if it had cost more it would be well worth it, IMO.

Some may be interested in a bit of data that I collected yesterday. Ran my Z on the dyno all day, testing various jetting and playing with timing (first with E12-80 and then with 123ignition dizzy). The goals of this project was to learn, as it was my first engine build, try different things even if they go against "conventional wisdom", and enjoy playing in the sandbox that is Z-cars. Ran it on the Dynapack at Works Motorsports, where I used to work (no pun intended). Steve aka Datsuncrush, the owner of my previous 260Z, came by for support and videography! Basic engine specs are: flat-top L28 (0.5mm over), shaved and ported P90, Isky L6 grind cam (.540"/270*), 45DCOE with ported and matched manifold, and MSA 6-1 header with a nice and quiet 2.5" exhaust (resonator and Walker Quiet-Flow muffler) so I can hear those Webers sing. However, I'd like to think the devil is in the detail! Using the OEM head gasket, compression is 11:1. Piston-to-head clearance is .017" (less than 0.5mm!), that's with .021" piston pop-out from the deck. Because of the excellent quench and combustion chamber of the P90, it runs on CA 91 pump gas with 34* of advance all-in! The cam wipe pattern is cheated over to the pivot edge of the rockers. The head was ported by Rebello along with the port-matched and pinned intake. Running Supertech undercut intake valves and OEM L28 non-turbo head bolts on Dave's recommendation. Final jetting was 135/F11/110 (main/tube/air) but it leaves a lot to be desired. The F11 tube is a particularly poor performer in sidedrafts and causes dramatic lean-rich-lean swings (+- 2.5 AFR!) at WOT. I did my best to reduce that tendency by limiting the amount of air drawn into the tube (hence the 110 air jet). Unfortunately, I did not have other tubes on hand to play with. Venturis are 36mm. I plan to correct the mixture and play with cam timing another day but the end result is a good baseline to start from! The yellow line is with stainless steel mesh filters and red is no filter. They were worth ~6hp peak and 1-3lb-ft across the RPM band. And of course, the required video: Overall, I'm very happy with the results and the Z pulls like hell!

Yes on the exhaust studs, NO on the head bolts. The FSM specifies fresh motor oil on the head bolt threads before install to control bolt friction during torquing.

It's a Silvia with an S30 front end conversion, pretty popular in Japan.

The threads are much more likely to be M6X1.0, bolt is probably something like an M6X1.0X16. Getting the distributor out is very easy. Replace the base gasket while you're at it.

Ha, that thing is rad!

I'd guess $25-30k. Good luck!

Commonly referred to as the "Euro lip"

I don't recommend Delta. If you have used Nissan rocker and they don't have a big groove worn into them in the middle of the pad, you're ok to reuse. Much better than reground rockers for multiple reasons. This is coming from a combination of my own and others' experiences, as well as straight from Ron Iskenderian's mouth.

They're fantastic so far, loads of grip on the street! I plan to do some autoX in the near future and maybe a track session if I feel like breaking something, should get a better feel for them then.

Wired backwards? Gap too wide?