Murph

That'd be a good enough reason for me to go urethane. Both inners and out outers came to under $100. If you want (probably not) the urathane pair that I pulled out of my car (which are in perfect condition), they're all yours.

Nice buy! Do let us know what you think of them once you get them in.

You can make plenty of power with an RB26 without having to do any major mods. Have you seen my mate Garys R32 GT-R getting around, silver, black wheels, plates "GTR R32"? That was making 280rwkw @ 1.2 bar on an unopened motor, stock turbos. Backed it up with an 11.6 @ 118mph. All the mods are external, eg huge FMIC, exhaust, intake, power fc etc. That gives you an idea of what they're capable of without going silly. Making a zed AWD would be far more hastle than it's worth....and you cost a small fortune. The hastle with it being a "4WD motor" is that there's a drive shaft going straight through the sump. I suppose you'd need to change or modify the sump on any RB to get it into a zed anyway.

When I enquired about a year ago, they didn't have one specifically for the zeds. Here's what they did recommend though.

It was always like that. Insulating fuel lines was another thing on the to do list. When the new motor goes in I'll probably totally ditch the factory fuel line setup anyway. Electric fuel pump and the heat shield fixed the problem anyhow, other than on the most extreme of days.

You'll want to talk to san_maru_zed. He was going to do the 1JZ swap into his zed. The 1JZ swap has been done before, not sure about the 2J though. Just remember that doing any of these swaps will not be cheap.

I knocked up a heat shield from some thin aluminium sheet a while back (keep the heat out of the carbs to help with the vapour lock problems I was having) which does a reasonable job of getting cool air flow to the carbs. I'm sure there's some hot air from the radiatior getting to them still, but there's no swirling up from around the exhaust at least. If I shut it down and let it all heat soak for a while, to the point the carbs are quite hot to touch, 10 minutes of driving and they'll be cold to the touch again, so the air getting to them must be reasonably cool. http://www.classiczcars.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=10616&sort=1&cat=3138&page=1

You're in luck, that's exactly the same setup as my 260 (it's an early 260, so the suspension is still 240 spec). I have the kings lowered springs with the KYB shocks. Springs: Not particularly hard, will give a smooth ride. I've found they've sagged a little in the ~9 months they've been in, but not much. It's a good ride height too being only a bit lower than stock, looks good without making the car annoyingly low. KYBs: Not too happy with them. They aren't bad, but not as good as I had expected. My main problem is that they're quite harsh on smaller high frequency bumps.....rather "crashy" I suppose. However, they're underdamped on the big stuff, especially in the rear. I find that on any larger bumps (not even that big) it'll blow fairly deep into the travel, which can be a bit disconcerting. I suppose the real catch here is, what options are there at a similar price point to the KYBs? Tokicos are supposed to be quite good, but are more expensive and AFAIK there's no distributor is australia. Next step up from there is the Konis, at which stage you're paying more than twice the price of the KYBs. If I could do it again, I would have gone for the Konis if I had the money available. If you can't stretch the budget to the Konis, the KYBs aren't a bad thing, certainly ten fold better than shagged 30 year old shocks....they're just not a great thing. Edit: Check out my gallery if you want an idea of how it will sit.

The HR31 is the japanese spec R31, which had the R200. I'm 99.9% sure all the Z32s had the R230, however I have also seen a few with a R200 swapped in. I assume this is due to a larger choice of LSD centers. From what I've been told, it's some of the bolt spacing on the LSD centers that differs between the long and short nose R200s.

Ripper: AFAIK the R32 onwards and the s13 on wards use the short nose R200 which isn't directly interchangable. HR31 is definitely ok, not sure about the Z31s. Z32s are definitely out being an R230. Oh, and long and short nose R200 centers are not directly interchangable either.

/me :stupid: Of course.

Howdy, I've just changed my rear wheel bearings recently, however I wasn't able to torque them all the way up to spec. The Haynes manual says 180lbft, however my torque wrench only goes to 150lbft. I wound it off the scale to about 160 and manged to torque the left wheel bearing to that, however with the right whee bearing I just couldn't get the leverage to get it to more than about 150 (guessing). I'd already been under the car for 7 hrs so was pretty stuffed at the time. Now, will this be a problem? Do they have to be torqued up to 180+? Thanks, Justin

Apparently there's a HR31 viscous unit for sale on either skylines downunder or skyline australia for bugger all. Pick a viscous unit up cheap then get yourself a mechanical center?

Here's the old bushes. And yes...the morons that have previously owned this car had 30 year old rubber bushes on one side and urethane on the other. :stupid: :mad: :eek:

If you do reuse them, definitely clean them up and regrease them.....especially the spindle spin itself. Edit: Might take some pics of the 30 year old rubber bushes I just pulled out of mine....that'll show you what you DON'T want them to look like.

I am in the process of changing mine as we speak. I'm using Noltec and bought them from Warren Skimming at Top Gear (local). The subframe bushes were replaced about a year ago, also with urethane. They were bought from Fulcrum, but I can't remember the brand. No useful feed back for you though. :/

Yeah nothing wrong with that. Big diameter wheels are just stupid on anything that's going to get driven fast.

Ewww... I can't think of anything much worse you could do to an old school z car.

MickieB: I have a good book on restoring zed cars. You're welcome to borrow it.

I hope by that you mean 'bigger' and not 19" bling bling chromies 'big'.

Sounds quite interesting Tommo! Let us know how it goes when you get it on the dyno and/or the track. For a comparison on fuel, my zed (basically a stock L26 with 240Z SUs) will do about 250km on 30L of fuel at best. That's driving on the street. Makes 250km from a full tank on the race track seem pretty good. P.S. You have any photos of the car?

There are a few major flaws with such a system that will mean it's highly unlikely we will see anything like it. Firstly the cost of installing such a system in each car and also for the infrastructure to support it. Secondly I see this as being a big safety issue. There are some situations where it's the safer option to exceed the speed limit, for example when overtaking. Other such situations also arise in daily driving too. Besides, such a system would be pretty easy to defeat should you want to.

Mind you though, you can still do 150km/h in even the shittiest of $^!# boxes. I can barely afford the zed! No spare $ around here. Doing heaps of work on it at the moment (including rebuilding the motor) which will be setting me back a bit over a grand or so, then I will have replaced just about every single part in the bastard. That'll clean out all the money I have atm, then rego and insurance are due soon which will eat up my tax refund. So hopefully smooth sailing from there on, so a few $ to spare (yeah I'm kidding myself I know ).

I'm in the same boat as Gav, haven't done an advanced driving course, but would really like to, just can't afford it. One thing I've realised with my zed in its current form, my ability as a driver is no where near what the car is capable of. Hence I'm also quite keen to start participating in the track days here, but that will have to wait till the car is ready for such outings.