Captain Obvious

Haha! Agreed about it sounding like salesman. Best year for the EFI? What is about 78 that makes it so much more refined? My 77's feelings are hurt. And the dash... So he installed a new repro from the guys that are making them. HIS supplier. I mean, it's well written sales literature. It's just a little over the top for me.

Sorry, I wasn't specific enough with my question. Based on the tensioner and the way the cam gear looks, I figured it was an ITM kit. The question(s) is What ITM kit is it? What's the ITM part number? The reason I ask is that the ITM kit listed for the 240 and 260 is 053-90300, while the kit for the 280 and 280ZX is 053-90400. From the pic, your slack side guide looks like the one that comes with the 280 kit, not the 240 kit. Hard to tell with it mounted up, but that's what it looks like to me.

Or you could just use the one in the kitchen when Ms. J isn't looking. Ms. Obvious was distracted by something else while I took the toaster oven outside and did bad things to it.

I bet you'd let yours go for $49K if pressed.

When they are stating the size of a throttle body, they use the diameter of the butterfly. And usually, the outlet size is the same size as the butterfly, so that would make that a 70mm throttle body regardless of the larger diameter inlet side. Now, I have no idea if that throttle body you have there is the same as the factory supplied throttle bodies for the 350Z, but that one you have there would be called a 70mm. As for the mounting... Did your son make up drawings for an adapter?

Very pretty work. So what timing kit did you buy? I can see the ITM on the tensioner, but the curved (slack side) guide looks like the one for the 280, not the 240. I have also heard (somebody's post-purchase feedback) somewhere that there were some minor fitment issues with the front cover hitting one of the guides. Too much material on some spot and it hit the timing cover. I think it was ITM, but I don't remember for sure.

I did that a number of years ago. Back before I started taking pictures of stuff like that. My "jig" was a piece of coat hanger wire that was bent into the desired shape (over-bent actually to account for spring-back), and my "heat" was a toaster oven. Worked pretty well. I did some parts out of Viton and some others out of neoprene. PSA - Don't burn the Viton or anything else with fluorine in it. Some more detail just to fill out the story... I ran a pair of those tubes on a some round tops for a while and then pulled the round tops off to go back to flat tops. They worked great while on the car. No binding or other issues. However... Just a few days ago (quite coincidently) I was inspecting those round tops and noticed that the rubber tubes were failing. Cracking around where they were expanded onto the nipples at the ends. I don't know why they were failing. It was Viton from McMaster, so it should have been quality material. Maybe I did some damage with the heat.

Here's what Innovate says in the user's manual for the gauge: "Using a clock as reference, mount the bung between the 9:00 o’clock and 3:00 o’clock position. Welding the bung in the lower section of the exhaust pipe can result in sensor damage caused by condensation making contact with the sensor’s internal heating element." My interpretation of that is "anywhere along the top half of the tube is OK." That said, I think I would rather have it a little off 12:00 for the surface tension reasons Dutch mentioned.

That's not to code.

Haha! The stupid stuff we hopefully and thankfully lived through in our younger years.

LOL! So I saw a note (probably on Innovate's website) about sensor mounting. They said that if the sensor gets wet it can cool too quickly and crack some ceramic portion. For that reason, I think they recommended 3:00 or 9:00 with 6:00 being the worst not only from the standpoint of ripping the sensor off on a speedbump, but also for potential water damage.

I thought it was more complicated than that. I haven't really looked into it, but I guess I should dig around a little and get some learning.

LOL. Well that took a turn quick! I'm sure I wont. Only thing that has me a tiny bit worried is I bought it off ebay from the cheapest guy I could find. He's head and shoulders cheaper than the next guy and because he's so much cheaper than everyone else (and the MSRP of the device) that it sets off my scam danger alarm a tiny bit. Hoping it's all legit and I'll have it soon.

Easy for me to say, but the monitoring and logging of the sensor output sounds like a relatively easy ordeal. What I don't know anything at all about is how to deal with the heating element.

I just pulled the trigger on an MTX-AL. I'm assuming I'll eventually be in the market for something with more features (and a bigger price tag). But for now, baby steps. Thanks for the generous offer, but I'll install my simple gauge first and see what happens. If it were safe to have company right now, I'd be on my way up to spend some time with you. Hopefully soon my friend!

Sure I remember! Lets to that again! Having you as my co-pilot again would be a much better solution as far as I'm concerned! So I knew you had the analysis equipment, but I didn't know it was an LM-1. I guess at the time, I just knew it worked.

jonbill, thanks for that link. Good read, and simple enough for my little mind to work through. So it seems that the real value would come with a multi-variable logging system and you can put them together with multiple pieces, or buy one already packaged together (like the Innovate LM-2). I was hoping to get away cheaper than that. AK260, So you have the analog MTX? And I agree with your assessment as well*. There's a lot of value there too, but not as much as a multi-variable logging system. So do you get any meaningful info while just cruising normally and not at WOT? Or is the needle all over the place all the time? * Except for the Bond-esque part about flipping a switch and having your clock become an A/F meter.

Thanks Jon. Hmmm... I see your point. For my logs, I guess I was looking for mixture vs RPM. As far as engine load goes, I was going to have to do that by memory, as in "This was a full throttle third gear pull." and then interpret the results knowing those conditions. So I guess the question is do the stand-alone gauges (like the Innovate MTX series) even know what the RPM is and output the RPM data on their log stream? Does the MTX even have an RPM input pin? Or do I need something like the LM-2 to do that like blodi:

You're kidding... Wrong firing order? That was the issue?

How about a couple pokes for input (in no particular order)? @Chickenman, @duffymahoney, @jonbill @blodi, @JSM, @conedodger

Yeeesh. Too much black magic and voodoo in that ECU for me to ever consider doing something like that. If you ever succeed with this, I will drive my Z to your house and loudly proclaim in public that your kung fu is the best.

Current owner... Albert Hammond?

I want an A/F ratio meter like many of you other guys have so I can make a run with the car while logging the fuel ratio details. My short list is "I want to do data logging, and I prefer an analog display over digital." If I pulled the trigger today, it would be for Innovate's MTX-AL (analog). Why? Because I know nothing about such devices and Innovate is a big player in the market, and hopefully produces quality stuff. Any input about Innovate's logging and analysis software? If I don't like it, are there other third party offerings that I could use instead? Any other recommendations about brand or style? * I thought I had asked some of these questions in the past, but I just can't remember or find it if I did. So apologies if I'm rehashing something I've already done.

Well beyond the scope of the thread, but... The theory behind that is that the voltage from the coil will ramp up rapidly until it reaches the point where it ionizes the air in the gap and jumps that gap. By adding that additional second gap, the voltage will rise further before it finally jumps the gap. This is because the effective gap distance is greater and a greater gap takes a higher voltage to jump. By riding the voltage curve higher and holding off the spark a little, you can get a higher energy spark. It's also helpful when there's a carbon trace buildup. The carbon trace could provide enough of a path to dissipate the coil discharge without having to spark at all. With that second gap and riding further up the voltage wave before discharge, you can sometimes burn out the carbon traces. Assuming, of course, that your coil has the nuts to consistently jump a gap that big. There are plenty of risks, but (as you found) in the old days, it could sometimes get you home in a pinch.

Simply because I had all the parts handy, I took fresh measurements and ran some numbers: 280 throttle butterfly - 50mm diameter. This provides 1964 mm square area. The Sentra (96-98) throttle body as well as the 280ZX are also the same as the 280Z Carbs butterfly (both round and flat tops) - 46mm diameter. This provides 1662 mm square area. Now interesting (to me) is that the 1964 sq mm for the throttle body is shared between six cylinders, while the 1662 sq mm for the carbs is shared only between three cylinders instead of six. So for the fuel injection, it works out to 327 sq mm per cylinder and the carbs work out to 554 sq mm per cylinder. The carbs provide significantly more butterfly area per cylinder than the fuel injection. Now I'm sure Nissan did their research and found 50mm diameter for the EFI was good enough, but the difference is still striking. Working backwards from the carbs 554 sq mm per cylinder, you would need a 65mm diameter throttle body to get the equivalent area per cylinder. I'm no in any position to draw any conclusions from the above, but I was moving some stuff around today and had all the parts handy at the same time.