Murph

My quote included redoing all the vinyl over the strut towers, hence the price difference. Your new setup there looks the goods.

Mickie: I have the motorsport auto and victoria british catalogs and price lists (a few years old) here which I am happy to lend ya. They'll give you an idea of what parts are still available and the ballpark prices.

If it's of any use as a clue... When you try and drive it as is, at really light loads it'll miss badly, but enough that you can get it to 30-40kph. Try and give it any more and it will backfire, loose all power. Within about a minute of driving it'll degenerate to the point you can barely make it do more than 10kmh without it missing really badly....sounds like ~50% of sparks are being missed.

Ballast resistor is fine. Voltage to the coil is normal. Still misfires if you give hte coil the full 12V. My mates old man was around when I was having go at it an hr or so ago, and he's an old school mechanic. He spent a good hour and a half playing with just about everything (I'd rather he hadn't messed with EVERYTHING), but it's still doing it. Nothing made a difference. Mind you it's running even worse now have he played with fuel mixtures. Tried another coil btw, no difference. One thing he did was to put a piece of plastic under the rotor, so that if it has a crack, it wouldn't jump down to the dizzy. No difference. I think I'm just going to have to tow it over to my mechanic and leave it with him. Oh...will be going electronic as soon as I get my tax money.

I think you got your conversion wrong! 1.5M yen = 13600USD

Love it! Out of interest, how many GC10s do you guys know of in australia?

No not at this stage. This avo if I have time I'll be trying the coil out of the parts car I just sold, which is not an original. The one currently in my car is a 6 month old bosch GT40.

NGK BP5ES is what it has run since I've owned it. When I first replaced the plugs thinking it was just old foulded plugs, I bought the BP6ES (cooler) as that's what the book recommended. It ran well for a few days then started missing again. The thing is, I cleaned the plugs, but it still ran like $^!#. You'd think if the problem was fouling of plugs, then it'd run ok until it had fouled them agian. So I went out and bought the BP5ESs, and it ran great.....for a week... Again, cleaning them makes no difference. So my mechanics theory of there being a week link in the chain, and the low resistance of a brand new spark plug fit perfectly.

New plugs work well....but cleaning the week old plugs doesn't. So it's not the fouling itself that's doing it. They're only getting a light coat of carbon that comes off quite easily. The explanation from my mechanic was that a brand new plug will have a lower resistance, hence getting a decent spark. Then over the next few days the resistance of the plug will increase. It pretty much fits the pattern of what's going on. Mixture is known to be good. Valve stem seals are on their way out, but I see no reason why they'd be any different now to what they were 2 weeks ago. Besides, what's the likelyhood that 6 of them would totally die at the same time? If my logic/reasoning on any of this is wrong....then please point it out! Any ideas are quite welcome at this stage.

Wow! Congrats on the buy! That is one stunning car. I am now officially insanely jealous!

All the plugs are carboning up. I also know for sure that one week ago, that both the carbs were running a good mixture. I'm still sure it's electrical, as if I put new plugs in, it will run fine.

I meant 280zx. We didn't get the 280Z over here in oz....so I left it out.

Geez....that looks really nice. I'm not a big fan of them on 240s and 260s, but it suits the 280 really well.

My car has recently developed a misfire and I've been having a lot of trouble tracking it down. From what we've determined so far, it's a problem of not getting enough voltage to the plugs, as putting a new set of plugs fixes the problem for about a week, then it returns. Over the period of a day or so it will miss here and there, and then it all goes to sh*t.....missing at all revs/loads to the point the car is undriveable. There's a lot of carbon on all the plugs when it's like this, so it's not just one cylinder with the problem. Btw, pretty much everything in the ignition system was new as of 6 months ago. So far I've tried •two different distributors •new points •two coils •two sets of lead •new HT lead •two sets of plugs •new condenser •carbs and valve clearance were all set about a week ago so no probs there •two dizzy caps •two rotors •played with timing None of these things have made a damn difference. Voltage at the coil is good, and the problem isn't the plugs or leads, so it has to be coil->HT lead->rotor->dizzy cap. HT lead is new so we can rule that out. The coils, rotors and dizz caps I've used weren't new, so it might be them. Next on my list is to try a third coil, then if that doesn't work, then buy a new dizzy cap and rotor. Is there something here I've missed? This really has me stumped.

http://www.allzparts.com.au/

Hmm the V8 would be a good thing from that point of view on our local tracks. I'd still be very tempted to go one of the jap V8s over the SBC.

Well if Mickie B is staying around T'ville, then he wont have to be too worried about classes. AFAIK they only look at engine capacity, with a multiplier for anything boosted. Mickie: RB wont be too heavy for the track. It'd still be my pick. VQ30DET is from the Y33 Gloria, Cedric and something else......i think.

The bitumen sprints here at both the kart track and Mt Stuart are quite tight. Gary (7ONLY) was saying the other day that you want an engine setup with as little lag as possible. By the same token you also want it as light as possible. I'd imagine there's be bugger all weight difference between the Rb26 and the SBC. SBC would give good throttle response, but then again, so will the RB if you keep it up in the revs. If you really want to make it into a circuit car, maybe think about some lighter engines? How about a VQ30DET? All alloy V6, very compact and quite light, 3L, 206kW, more torque than the VG30DETT too. They go for ~$2500.

I wouldn't have thought SBC parts would be that hard to come by? Maybe have a chat to my mate Jaimen (silver tt soarer), as he has one in his Torrie. I suppose it really depends on a few things: a) Money... SBC is going to be much cheaper to buy and to get installed and running Tech... Do you want dinosaur (effective dinosaur I might add ) technology c) You want a torque monster, or do you want top end power? d) SBC is likely to cost more to run than the RB Personally, I'd go the RB, or if I wanted to go V8, at least a hi-tech V8, eg VH41, VH45, or 1UZ. Actually....the jap V8s aren't that expensive these days so would be worth considering. They'd be a bit harder to get in there though being physically larger engines than the SBC.

Yeah they're the same thing but flipped on all of them. That caught me out when I was putting mine back together a few weeks ago, as I hadn't noticed when I pulled it appart. I thought that point where the sway bar mounts looked like it is still in the centre of the control arm. Mind you I didn't look too closely. Edit: Wrote the wrong bloody thing.

I'd say 2000mcd would be plenty, but if you use something brighter, and it proves to be too bright, then you just turn em down with the dimmer. I'm not familiar with the 280ZX dash so can't say exactly what those lights are. I'd recommend you get your hands on a wiring diagram. Also check if the bulbs are wired in series or parrallel, as if they're in series, then that will change your resistor calculations somewhat.

A few more notes. Where incandecent bulbs will generally cast their light in all directions around them, LEDs focus their light in an narrower path ahead of them. Without knowing exactly how the bulb are setup in the dash, I'd guess you are going to need the widest angle LEDs you can find. If you still find that the light is focused into too narrow a beam and not lighting up the area evenly, you can then play around with some kind of small reflector to scatter the light where you want it. While rather fiddly, alfoil is good for this. Another thing to be aware of is colour choice. White or blue may look good, but the safest option is to go red. The photo receptors in your eyes are made up of rods and cones. The rods are highly receptive, but do not detect colour. The cones detect colour are but are less receptive (this is why you see less colour at night). Now, the rods take a long time to adjust to changes in light levels.... you'd all know what happens when you turn the light off! The rods response peaks towards blue, however they have little respone to red light. What this means for you in your car, is that you can be looking out of the car with the rods fully adapted to night vision, then look at the red gauges in the car without affecting the rods "night vision". Mind you, this is all partially moot as you're looking outside at the cars white headlights. But never the less, this still is a factor upto a point. This is why you'll notice that the dash lighting on most of the upmarket european cars is red. If I remember correctly red is also more relaxing on the eye. *If I buggered any of that up, someone correct me!

The resistor required for each of the LEDs will vary for different types of LEDs, as the different types are rated for different voltages and currents. To keep the brightness between the LEDs balanced, you will want to try and relate the wattages of the previous bulbs to the brightness (mcd) of the LEDs. For example, you will want the combination gauge illumination light to have roughly double the brightness of the instrument console light. Don't be too worried about the voltages and amperages that the LEDs are rated at when you're buying them, you'll sort that out later. Also keep in mind that a 2000mcd white LED will look brighter than a 2000mcd blue (or other coloured) LED. Once you have you're LEDs then you just need to work out the required resistors for each using this formula (someone wanna check i have this right? ) R=V/I where: V = the voltage over the resistor = Voltage supplied - Voltage the LED is rated at I = the current the LED is rated at For example: Many common high intensity LEDs are 3.6V and around 20mA. So R = (14.4V-3.6V) / 0.02A =540ohm If you find that they're a bit bright, you'll still be able to dim them with the instrument light dimmer knob. It might be checking before hand to see if the normal globes are actually getting 14.4V (or whatever you cars charging system runs at). Hope that helps.

Not unless you wanna shell out for the R34 getrag = $$$. With the sort of powerband the RBs have, I really don't think it's even worth thinking about a six speed.