Jeff G 78

I really like my Mitutoyo digital dial indicator, but it wasn't cheap. Spend the money to get a good magnetic holder as well. My Craftsman one is serviceable, but I wish I would have bought a better one. You will also need to make a piston stop. The easiest way is to break the ceramic out of a spark plug and insert a long bolt with the end rounded. Mine was made about 20 years ago in 15 minutes, so it's really crappy, but it does work fine. Someday, I will redo it by welding the bolt to the spark plug rather than rely on all of the washers and the nut. The degree wheel is actually made of wood by downloading a jpg of a degree wheel and cutting/etching it on a CNC laser. My racing teammate made it at the Tech Shop which is a local shop that is run like a health club with monthly membership dues. Do an internet search on how to use a degree wheel to get the full instructions. I will give a complete review after my race on the 13th. I am also adding a flex pipe to the exhaust right behind the header collector to take the strain off the manifold studs. Once the engine and exhaust are installed, I'll take more pics. I'm using the slip together MSA 2-1/2" exhaust system.

I used a degree wheel and the cam card. It's a fairly slow process, but it gets it exactly right. Find #1 TDC and set degree wheel to TDC using a piston stop. Measure 0.050" #1 exhaust valve open and compare to cam card Measure 0.050" #1 exhaust valve close and compare to cam card Install offset bushing that moves cam the right direction to match cam card Repeat until valve timing matches cam card

I thought you'd like that Guy! I have your other one on my L26 race engine. Thanks again for them!

I've been busy building my engine. The race is in a little over a week. Here are a few pics of the timing with the decked head and no tower shims. It's a little too pretty for a ChumpCar engine, but it should run pretty well.

Nope, it's a CWC blank with a stock base circle.

Will do cliff. I should be able to report back in about 3 weeks how it performs on the track. When I had the cam in my L26, it really woke up the engine. I don't think it lost much on the bottom and it pulled to well over 6500 RPM. The engine was old and tired though, so the overall power output was still low. With my new F54/shaved P79 motor and the addition of a header and 2.5" MSA exhaust, I should be making around 175 RWHP.

Leon, I run a Web Racing camshaft. Here's a quote from Bryan Little's website: "Webcamshafts of Riverside, California is worth checking out. They have 50 years experience with creating custom and antique engine grinds as well as a couple of decades of producing Zcar cams. And after talking to them on phone they appear to really know their stuff. It turns out they use CWC billets for their new Z cams and also create reginds (your choice), but they "Nitride" them which involves heating them to 900 degrees and in an ammonia gas chamber. Nitriding creates a super hard lobe surface and is considered to increase the life of a cam 10-fold." I also use only VR-1 oil which might help and I run a turbo oil pump which might have increased the flow enough to provide some oiling. All I know is that I got lucky.

Leon, the rockers and cam lobes look perfect. There are no signs of any starvation.

Thanks everybody. Steve had it right with 1/4" NPT. I found a plug at Napa and installed it with red Loctite. After looking at the plug, it must have never been there. There is no way it could have come out and not been stopped by the cam cover.

Pete, I did not clean it before taking thee pic and I can't tell what the thread is since they start about .3" deep in the hole. When I insert my thread pitch gauge, it is too hard to see the results due to the depth of the hole. I tried my tap and die set and none fit, but it was somewhere around 1/2". The minor diameter measured about .4" with my calipers. I will try a 1/4" NPT plug today after a hardware store run. I only have 3/8" NPT and larger plugs at home and all were too big.

Nope, no spray bar Steve. When I installed the Web cam into my L26 in 2011, I removed the spray bar and added the spray bar block off plates to the towers. Even if I was using the spray bar, the problem would be the same. No pressure would ever build in the drilled cam with the plug missing. I have spent hours tonight trying to come up with a logical solution and I'm drawing a complete blank. There is no way the plug could have come out while the cam was running in the car because there simply isn't space between the end of the cam and the cam cover for it to back out all the way. I measured the cam to cover distance at around 1/4" and the plug would have to be deeper than that. Had it backed out far enough to be loose, it would have rubbed on the cover and there are no witness marks on the cam cover. As for me losing the plug, I can't come up with any way that happened either. I pulled the cam out of the L26 which was out of the car and sitting on the garage floor and I carried it 5 feet to the workbench where I later noticed the missing plug. There is virtually no way for it to fall out in that time frame and I would have heard it hit an found it on the garage floor if it had. As for the plug, I'm not sure the CMC billet Web camshaft uses a pipe thread. It is threaded in close to 1.5" and it does not appear to be a tapered thread. If it is, that will make life easy, but it sure doesn't look like a pipe thread to me. I'm stumped... I agree that it should have chewed itself to pieces running without the plug and yet everything looks perfect. Maybe VR-1 oil is just that good?

First a little background... I bought a Web Racing #91 grind camshaft about 15 years ago for my '78. I installed it and it ran like crap. After some research, I learned that the stock EFI doesn't like aftermarket cams, so I pulled the cam, springs, rockers, etc. out and stored them. Jump ahead many years and I decided to install the Web cam in my L26 race car with SU's. I did that in 2011 and ran a 25.5 hour long endurance race with the engine. The cam did great and it pulled to 7k, but the engine was just not making enough power, so this winter I bought an F54 engine and began my build. I pulled the Web cam and corresponding hardware out of my L26 and started assembling my P79 head today. This is where the problem arises. As I was looking at the front end of the head, I looked down the barrel of the cam and I saw light at the end of the tunnel. I knew this wasn't normal as the internally oiled cam must be closed at both ends to force the oil out the lobe holes. I walked around my workbench to the back of the head and there was no plug in the end of my cam. Just a tapered hole leading to threads where a plug would go. My first thought was that the plug must have worked its way out right at the end of my last race, but after closed inspection, there is no way the plug could back out as it would hit the cam cover before the threads disengaged. There was no witness marks of the cam cover and no plug anywhere to be found. The cam lobes and rockers look perfect with zero signs of oil starvation or wear. One of two things happened. A, the cam never had the plug an I have been really lucky that enough oiled drooled out the lobe holes to keep things lubricated, or B, the plug was just about to fall out when I removed the cam from the L26 an somewhere between the engine and the workbench, the plug fell on the floor. I haven't found a thing on the floor and I even went to far as to pull the oil pan on my L26 to look for the plug or any signs of metal shavings. The oil had absolutely no debris or signs of starvation. I just don't see either of these scenarios happening. Does anybody have a Web Racing cam that they could inspect and tell me what the plug even looks like? I'm guessing that it's an allen head plug with a tapered head to seal against the cam. Is there any way my engine could survive 25+ hours of race conditions with no end plug? This is the best pic I could get. The lighting was never right to get a clear picture of the bore and threads.

Keep them coming.

I like it Guy!

You have not yet raced in LeMons, correct? You will get hammered with those mods. Jay knows Z cars (he owns a 240Z) and he and/or Phil will spot the Illuminas and ST bars right away. Poly bushings will get noticed immediately as well. Once they are on the trail of cheaty bits, the stiff springs and L28 will draw attention. Also, why are you running staggered tires? That will do nothing other than add understeer.

I had the same thought Chas, but it sounds like all ZX's had the rear sump.

Guy, I'm sure the pick-ups have to be matched to the pans. That's how we figured it out. I didn't check the ZX pickup on a Z pan, but I'm sure the Z pickup will not work in the ZX pan. I guess the other thing I need to check is if the dipsticks are the same length between the two pans. :paranoid: I found one post on zcar.com that said the 79 - 83 used the rear sump pan and another post that said either type can be used in a S30, but the center sump pan won't fit in a ZX due to the different crossmember. At least now, I don't feel as uninformed about the pan change. I thought maybe I was the only one out in the dark.

Nope, not a turbo. The engine was pulled by a friend of mine from a running car. The engine had never been apart and it had flat top pistons and a close ratio 5 speed trans.

I was in a hurry to get the parts motor off the hoist and back into the corner of the garage. Otherwise I would have taken pics of both pans. What I will do tonight is take picks of both oil pick-up tubes side by side to get an idea of the sump offset. Since the ZX pan was full of holes, I wrote "BAD" on it with a paint pen and bolted it back on the engine with 4 bolts and no pick-up tube.

Hey Steve, Guy and I were chatting about it and as far as we can tell, they don't pose a problem on an S30 since there isn't anything keeping the pan sump from moving rearward.. The S30 pan would likely not work on a S130 though.

I did have a duh! moment. The donor engine is an '82 F54 and when my teammate cleaned up the oil pan, he found a whole row of rust holes about 1/2" down from the top. I happen to have an old worn out '75 L28 in the corner of my garage, so we hoisted it up and removed the oil pan. We went to throw the rusted pan back on the '75 engine when we realized the sump isn't in the same spot. We simply grabbed the pick-up tube from the '75 and finished the swap. Had it not been for the rust holes in the ZX pan, I would have cleaned and painted the ZX pan, assembled the engine, and then figured out that it wouldn't fit as I was trying to drop it onto the crossmember. I saved myself a ton of time and aggravation because of the rust holes. It's the only time ever that I've been happy to find rot on a Z!! I've never owned an S130 engine or car, so I had no idea they moved the sump. I learned something new about Z cars!

Hey Guy, here are a few shots of my engine parts. I just got it back from the machine shop and so far, I have just scrubbed and painted the block and oil pan. Everything measured well within spec, so I'm using standard rings and bearings. I'll start assembling it in a few days after I pull my old motor and remove the Web Racing cam and associated hardware. I hope to get it finished up and ready to drop in next weekend.

Speaking of keeping everything together, does anybody know how critical it is to keep the lash pads oriented the same direction as they came out? I always try to keep them facing the same way, but sometimes they rotate upon removal of the rockers and it's tricky to tell which way they were facing.

An N47 cam should be internally oiled. The best method would be to remove the E31's spray bar and block off the passages. MSA sells a block off kit for a few dollars. If you have plenty of oil pressure, you can run both internal oiling and the spray bar, but I would only do it on a new build. I run the block off plates with an internally oiled cam on my race car that sees high RPM for 24 hours straight. Other than the oiling method, the cam from the N47 will work fine. There were several different cam profiles over the years and they will each have slightly different characteristics. You can find the chart somewhere online that lists them all. I'm sure I have it somewhere. If you need it, PM me with your email.

Wait. Cam timing and ignition timing are two different things. Don't pull it apart yet! It sounds like your distributor drive is off one tooth. To fix this, you need to set the engine to #1 TDC and pull the distributor body. Look at the shaft. It should look like the hands of a clock at 11:25. If it isn't, you need to drop the oil pump and rotate the shaft. There is a mark on the oil pump and a mark on the shaft. Line those up and slide it in. It will rotate slightly as the gears mesh. Put one oil pump bolt in and go up top to look at the orientation again. It could take several tries to get it right.