John Coffey

Glad you made it out OK. Next time, two kill switches, one within very easy reach of the driver.

My sensible is not your sensible. 325hp, triple adjustable shocks, and a sequential 5 speed trans are sensible to me. :-)

My subjective is not the same as your subjective. Typically Tokico HP shocks are similar to Illuminas on setting 2 or 3.

Just put it in the car and run it. You're sending way too much time inventing things to worry about.

If there's no miles on the car its not sorted and definitely not track ready. It takes hundreds of miles to sort a car out and make it ready for the track. It looks like a nice car otherwise.

1. Fix everything that is broken or not functioning on the car. That should burn up most of the $3,500 right there.

Once the odometer exceeds its mechanical limits (on our cars its 100,000 miles) the mileage doesn't matter legally or as a way to determine a car's value.

Beautiful $5,000 car.

You need to tumble the parts twice for about 12 hours each time. The first tumble is with an aggressive cleaning media and the second is with a polishing media. And don't overfill as Carelss mentions above. I used Eastwood green plastic for cleaning and rust removal and dri shine for polish.

From the current standards ISO markings are not like what's seen on the original Nissan fasteners. Also, the ISO TC-2 standards sub-committee did not publish their metric fastener standards until the mid 1970s so the OEM fasteners on the S30 we designed to JIC standards.

The needle changes the jet orifice size. Doesn't matter if the needle is tapered or has a flat cut in it. The idea is to increase the orifice size some amount. Purists prefer the taper. Racers do what's needed between sessions with the tools they have at hand. I've cut tapers and flats in needles, never noticed a difference between the style of mod on the dyno.

As far as I can tell the embossed 7 and 9 are there for quick bolt identification during assembly on the production line. They have no meaning regarding bolt strength. I ahve taken original fasteners, inspected them, ran them through a tap or die, media blasted, tumbled, and had them replated.

A lot of the fasteners are still available from Nissan in the original finish. Some enterprising soul can buy in boxes of 50/100 and create complete kits for sale to folks that are willing to pay extra for the effort.

Racing oils are not designed for low mileage. The base stocks are the same as any other oil - refineries don't make special cracks of racing oil. They just have a different additive package focused on higher rpm use and heat. They might also have fewer cleaners/surficants.

Pennziol GT Performance Racing Oil 25W-50. Highest zinc of any available engine oil at 1,968 PPM. Our oil analysis reports zinc levels over 2,100 PPM and its all we use in air cooled Porsche engines.

I wouldn't worry about the valves, valve guides, etc. Your plugs indicate the engine is running lean. Now that the valves are adjusted check your timing and make sure it matches the factory spec. If you don't know what that is, set it to 10 degrees BTDC and 850 pm. Check the float level on the carbs, set the idle mixture, and balance (sync) the carbs using a Synchrometer.

Oh geez! Take the bearings and hubs off the spindle - the rotor and hub will get in the way when welding the strut tubes. You don't have to buy new bearings or races when putting them back on, just repack.

Valve adjustment has almost nothing to do with fuel/air mixture. That is not the cause of your plugs fouling. Your mechanic may be right about the valves being too tight but he's wrong about why the plug fouling and mixture.

Left the choke on for too long.

I've found them in all K stamped truck R180 4.38s and 4.88s. Never in a R180 4.11, 3.9, 3.54, or 3.36.

Factory part. Originally made for the R180 front diff in the 720 4x4 pickup. Later extended across the R180 line to help reduce gear oil venting out the breather.

Well, the highest forces are on the ignition stroke but most engine failures caused by issues on the small end of the rod are not from that. If you have issues with piston pin retention in the small end you'll see the pin shift or the small end snap off near TDC on a non-compression or non-ignition stroke. Late model BMW engines are famous for that occurring on a free revving engine under no load.

Back in 2000 when I was building the Rusty Old Datsun I took the car to Bill Savage at T-Mag in Vista, CA. T-Mag did a lot of the suspension fabrication for NPTI when they were racing the GTP cars in the late 1980s. T-Mag also built ALL of Nissan's off-road and stadium trucks for at least 15 years during the 80's and 90s and Bill was the head of Tech for SCORE for God knows how long. Anyway... we did a lot of measuring and built a finite element model of the 240Z chassis. By far, most of the chassis stiffening efforts on the S30 should be done from the seats forward. The firewall, roof, floor pan junction is the most flexible part of the chassis. The biggest bang for the buck chassis stiffening improvement is a 10 point roll cage that ties the front and rear strut towers into a 8 point central safety cage. This mod is orders of magnitude better then any combination of other modes. The second biggest bang for the buck is full length, welded subframe connectors that go from the TC rod mounts to the rear subframe combined with triangulated front strut tower bracing. Third best is a welded in roll bar but that doesn't address the front issues. Everything else is just feel good stuff.

Regarding the direction of the diagonal brace: it doesn't matter. A straight bar is plenty given the factory diagonal braces already installed.

One issue with the urethane front lower control arm bushings is: torquing them to the factory specs induces a lot of bind. I've had cars come in where I can do a pull-up on the end of the LCA once the strut is removed. What I do is replace the 14mm nut for the LCA bolt with a Nylock and tighten the nut and bolt until there is some drag on the LCAs rotation but no serious bind.