DJZ's other 280ZXs

[DJZ]

Sweet man, I'll give that a go, probably a good idea to either get a water temp gauge or put the dash back in. It's weird, I've never, ever had trouble bleeding a Z cooling system before, tried pretty much everything I could think of, loosening the clamps on the top and bottom hoses and squeezing the air out, put the front of the car up on ramps, loosened the thermostat housing top off, changed the thermostat to a different one, blocked off the radiator but the bottom hose stays stone cold.

I'm thinking possibly the fan clutch is locked up as well which might not let it heat up fully at idle? That's the reason why I tried blocking off the radiator but I thought that was a bit dangerous with no gauge so didn't leave it for too long. I've got a spare fan clutch so might swap that over too.

[2 doors]

is the water pump ok ?

[DJZ]

Pretty sure it is, I did think about that. It's the old pump off the 3.1L motor, it wasn't that old when I took it off to put the LD28 pump on. Might be worth pulling that off too as well. The water that's been coming out has been very orange even though I only filled it up the other day.

[DJZ]

Got the crank collar fitted to the RB30 crank for two boxes of beer, I'm leaning towards putting the 30 into the other 2 seater, having two RB powered Z's seems a bit boring, I'd really like to put a VK V8 in it but funds and time are limiting factors at the moment and I've got just about everything I need to put an RB30 together apart from a turbo or turbos.

I was thinking about making a new sump out of aluminium, flanges are available and I don't think it would be too hard, my ali welding skills need a bit more practice though.

Dropped a spare RB26 head off to Flemings earlier this week, I'm trying to sell one of the spares that I've got, either this one or the old one from the 26 that was in the Z. He's going to hardness test it for me and give it a skim if it's not soft.

Bought a Mitutoyo micrometer to measure the shims and buckets, still practicing how to read it quickly, I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

[Bartman]

There is a knack to using them.
I scored a 25-50mm one with like an odometer dial on it. Makes an expert micrometer reader out of even a mug like me.

[85_Z31]

Bought a Mitutoyo micrometer to measure the shims and buckets, still practicing how to read it quickly, I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

Just have to take your time and record the results carefully, with diff shims i tend to measure them each a few times to be sure about their size.

a Crated up VK is about $6000, I don't think the importer has many left. My old man got one of the last ones from the recent batch.

[DJZ]

Yeah, I was thinking more like a VK45 rather than a 56 but in saying that a guy on Southern Skylines imported a 56 himself from the States for around $3k I think? A complete 45 I think I can get for around $1200 - 1500 and according to Wikipedia they make more power but less torque than the VK56s, but it's all money that I don't have at the moment.

[DJZ]

This is gonna be fun.

[2 doors]

lol push rod A series for the win

[DJZ]

Yeah, I wonder whether push rods and carbs is where I should be heading instead of in the other direction!

RB? RB? RB?



And this is why you don't cut the sump in half and rotate the bottom piece.



I don't think there would be much of a chance of an RB30 clearing the bonnet with 200ZR engine mounts looking at it from the side, the very front of the top of the rocker covers is well above guard height, and as you can see from the pic above the motor is way off the crossmember. This is a very quick mock up and basically a place to put the motor until I can get around to putting it back together and sorting out what I want to do with it. I'm pretty keen to build a twin turbo motor, I've still got a pair of factory 26 exhaust manifolds.