Captain Obvious

Let me see what I have here first before you send parts. I know I have a complete working unit on my car, so I can take handle measurements off that (assuming they didn't change any over the years). What I'm not sure about is if I have a broken one laying around. I'll take a look when I get a chance. I did have one more thought on a repro technique... Make the whole thing out of metal, but make the handle section narrower than stock (and not tapered). Then glue on a hollow white plastic handle. Or a black one. Or a teak one. Or mother of pearl...

Agreed. I'm assuming weather and heat exposure are the two biggest contributors to the deterioration. Have you got one where it's broken, but you have all the parts still? You could sent it my way and I could poke around with it.

Yeah, I saw that. The quote I'm hearing from a lot of people "Shite just got real!"

Right. Her - "Hey, honey... The zombie apocalypse is coming. What should we do?" Me - "Well I don't know what you're gonna do, but I'm gonna stay home and work on my Z."

Can you post a pic of a working one and also post another pic of what yours does instead?

Absolutely. That would be an easy part for 3D printing. My only concern would be how durable would it be? I'm not sure how brittle that stuff is. My SWAG would be that the original part is glass reinforced nylon. So @jfa.series1, the original parts all snap off where the handle meets the spherical section, right? Another possibility would be to just make a "handle" and drill out a hole in the original sphere and glue a new handle in place? Tricky tooling setup, but might take less time than making a whole new piece from scratch. I still think that painting a metal one flat white would be the best all around solution. I'll just have to carry a magnet with me to shows in the future so I can tell originals from repros and judge the cars appropriately.

Nice. I did the same thing with the Dremel. Cut out the peened section enough that I was able to get the old nuts off without smearing any threads. The post-process lathe work was gilding the lily just to clean everything up and make it look all nice and purty.

I get you bro. !! And I agree with your assessment about the rising VE. And also agree that would be very difficult with springs and weights. Maybe I could whip up some little programmable device to try that. With the state of world events, I guess I have the time to work on projects at home...

Yes we do. That would be quite cool. And thanks for the info links as well. I dug into the one from ls1tech and it led me to another one on that same forum which led me to another good one. Here's what I found: https://ls1tech.com/forums/advanced-engineering-tech/254868-ignition-timing-101-a-4.html and the original article it was based on: http://www.contactmagazine.com/Issue54/EngineBasics.html

Someone with a properly tooled lathe could make this:

Perfect.

That's exactly what I did. I chucked up one of the old nuts in the lathe and turned off all the distorted threads and then used that nut as a "non-locking test nut" to make sure I could torque up the stub axle nice and tight without any binding. Then once I was convinced everything was OK, I took that nut off and replaced with the distorted thread version from the ZX and torqued it till my eyes bugged out. I'd post pics of the nut in the lathe, but I think it's pretty self explanatory.

Nice! I bet that works great on the thrust bearing cap. How easy does it work on the rear cap? Mine rear cap(s) took quite a bit of force to pull out.

Searching through my stack of old CD's was fruitless. I was able to start over though and here's what I was able to whip up so far. Using the 280Z stroke length and center to center rod length, I get the following: Note that for my calculations, I used everything pointing straight up (TDC) as" zero degrees". So the maximum piston speeds occur at 75 degrees off vertical. About 75 degrees after TDC when going down, and about 75 degrees before TDC going back up.

Same thing cannot be said. The bigger the L, the higher the spike, but the same physics still applies.

No kidding!! I actually did go out to get beer yesterday as soon as we got the news. Then went to pick up some toilet paper and they were sold out. But at least I have the beer!

Thanks for the input guys. I'll look through this a little and also see if I can find my old piston speed study.

If that happens, don't come crying to me!

Haha!!! Seriously though, I'm on lockdown at home. Governor has put our entire county on lockdown for two weeks.

Two things. First, stay away from the Borg Warner stuff unless you can get all the parts. It used a different driveshaft and shifter assy and everything. It's not that simple of a swap. Second, they changed the differential ratio when they went to "the close ratio" transmission design and I'm not sure how well it would pair with your original diff. Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about it now. From the looks of those cars, they'll still be there in a year. Get your car on the road and put some miles on your current trans and see what happens.

Make sure the end mounting holes have some slop towards the outside when you mount it up cold. The head will expand more than the bar will and tend to pull the end bolts away from eachother. You want to make sure you have tolerance for that to happen without causing a problem. Blue Loctite would be good. After you get it mounted, you should also make sure you have enough oil pressure for the streams to actually reach the lobes at idle with hot oil. If the oil reaches the lobes at idle, it should be fine at higher RPM when the pressure is higher. And as far as getting your other one fixed... If it's the original stock style with the aluminum distribution boxes, forget about it.

Suppose I come at you with a banana? How about a pointed stick?

You mean too shiny and the wrong color? Ducking the incoming...

@240260280 Thanks for your input too. All that stuff would certainly have an effect, as does VE changes with RPM. With all your research... Have you come up with any curve that shows VE versus RPM for our motors? Any idea where it typically peaks?

Many moons ago I calculated piston speed in depth when I was poking around with header designs. I've got a file around here somewhere the documents it very well. It was a couple of computers ago and exists on a CD ROM somewhere. I'll see if I can dig that up. Right. So is there a timing number that you think is "optimum". Pick an advance at a specific RPM that you think provides the perfect 22 ATDC pressure peak and I'll plot that out. @AK260, you suggested two of them... 28 degrees @ 3500 rpm - your tuners numbers for your 10.5:1 motor. 34 degrees @ 2800ish - From "the Z world" Also when I get a chance, I'll back calculate your mechanical advance degrees into time measurements and see how that looks on a curve.