Kevin Johnson

Memories of living in California! (Pleasanton, Livermore) My favorite smog memory was when I had to take my 70 Europa to the referee in Walnut Creek. The local shops weren't familiar with it and were also a bit worried about the ringers being sent out to nab them for fraudulently passing cars. On the way there the "chase" vehicle blew a cooling hose and had to be abandoned on the side of the freeway. That was the *reliable* new car. Laugh! At the referee my turn finally came and I carefully pulled out of my parking place. I was moving to the inspection bay when a pickup with a flatbed conversion came ripping through the parking lot. The guy drove *through* the front end of my Lotus. Big explosion of shattered fiberglass. I am guessing the car was so low that he didn't even see me. Two cars to arrange towing for. Picked up a rental car. Not a real good day. Long, long fight with the insurance company. They wanted to give me $1000 and total out the car. Let's see, that was about 14 years ago and I have since dragged that sad car across the country to FL. Has not been back on the road since. Long term project -- at least I got to drive it a few miles.

Yes, 3% on a statically mounted engine. I think higher numbers would be the case for an engine in a moving car with sloshing oil. I would not want to claim over 5% in any event because then TUV would be a problem in Germany.

Hi, I saw some hits on our site from your members and thought I'd comment... The blocks for the Datsun scrapers were lent to us by local SCCA racers. One of them had the Datsun competition pan for the straight six in the Z (nice piece, btw) and it has crank scraper louvers in it. When people ask whether stock cars need them or can benefit from them one of the best examples to point to is the Nissan VG30TT which has at least 7 different scraper devices in its pan in addition to a windage tray, sump baffle and pan kick-out. Many other stock engines use them (the Ford 4.6 V8, for example, uses four scraper devices in addition to a windage tray). We just heard back from a Honda racing team that tested the D16 scraper -- they got back between 1.5% and 3% hp depending on the rpm. Many people felt that because of the massive girdle structure on the D16 that windage losses would not be significant. (The VG30 also has a massive girdle structure, btw.) On the site, we show the dyno chart for the little 993cc Metro engine -- it regained 3% hp even while having a full windage tray. There are some other enthusiasts in our area that plan on lending us Datsun Roadster blocks (1600cc through 2000cc) so hopefully those will be available soon. If you are in the area (FL) and see some apps missing and have a spare engine you can lend us, please contact us. My wife, Samantha, and I really enjoy meeting car enthusiasts and hopefully we can make available this little part to make your engine that much better. Kind regards, Kevin Johnson Ishihara-Johnson Crank Scrapers