Howdy's '74 2 seater 260Z FJ20 DET

[Howdy]

Here are some photos after blasting and in high build.

[gav240z]

Funny I have my moments with my own project where I think it would just be easier to pay someone to do some of the tasks I'm doing. Then I read your post and I remember why I'm doing it myself, the truth is I've often been disappointed when I let others work on my cars. Not always, but the majority of the time yes. That's why I'm doing all these trivial tasks. Thanks for the reminder - oh and I'm enjoying your project thread also!

[Riceburner]

I enjoy the detail in your posts Howdy. My brother will be going through a similar process with his build shortly, can you share the details of the blaster in a PM.

 

 

[Howdy]

It’s been a while since my last post. Sorry, was busy getting plenty done on the Z. Finally after much procrastinating  it was a last minute decision to go with Audi Laser red over another VW /Audi colour (SUMMERBLAU)  which I wanted but could not get a consistent sample to remove any doubt about the variations in colour, besides, everyone knows red is faster than blue!!

 

I used PPG 2K and sprayed it in my garage and am pretty happy with the result considering I was battling against the complete Australian population of tiny black gnats, 40 degree heat, dust storms, crappy light and not so perfect eyesight.

[Howdy]

It felt good to get the colour on, finally after all the preparation. Now I could start putting it back together.

Ahh just chuck everything back on and get it back on the track. Umm. NOPE! Damm paint job’s too good now to whack on greasy old struts, suspension parts, motor etc. It’s like all of a sudden I caught Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and had to clean, sandblast, paint, or polish everything going back on the car, kept telling myself “it’s only a race car” but all reason went out the window and I couldn’t help it. Old bolts & nuts...........Ahhhhhhh Alright, OK then I’ll clean them up & paint them Jeeze it’s a horrible disease and I think I needed help, luckily the beer fridge was stocked with plenty of medicine.

Did a couple of improvements along the way such as build a smaller, lighter adjustable rear bar with a huge range of adjustment, install some bigger injectors, PPG dogbox, CV half shafts, better brake ducts and replaced the trusty Wolf ECU with a Motec M4. In the process of wiring in the M4 I cleaned up the old harness disguised as a bird’s nest.

 

The sum as it stands now.

[Loss of the CGAFF (no care factor) = + 3 seconds

Loss of 20 Kg excess bog and paint = - 1 second

Extra 2Kg in the door skins = +0.1 seconds

Loss of 5Kg bog in front guards = -0.3 seconds

Loss of the golf ball aero effect on the front guards  = + 0.1 seconds.

Loss of another 5Kg of bog in the dog leg section = -0.3sec.

Gain of 1KG new metal replacing air and race tape = +0.1 sec

Donation of 5Kg of sticky black Goup of unknown origin (under body deadener)  = -0.3sec.

Choice of colour (red) = -1.4 sec.

Better rear bar = -0.3 sec

Faster gear shifts = -0.2 sec

More fuel = more grunt = -0.3 sec

So that's -0.8 seconds a lap. Not too bad.

[reverendzed]

Great job man, you've stuck at it and it looks like you are achieving the result you were looking for - well done!

cheers,

Rev

[PB260Z]

Gdday

 

I have really enjoyed reading your posts, and was wondering when the next illuminating instalment would grace these pages.

 

The car looks great in the Audi red, and I understand your reluctance to out oily parts back on it.

 

It will be incredible when finished.

 

 

Cheers

 

PB

 

 

[Riceburner]

Great Job, Show car finish and plenty of grunt too 

[gav240z]

Did you paint 2K paint in your garage? It looks incredible but I was wondering if it was ISO free?

 

It looks amazing though for a home paint job I'd be very happy with that. If you're going to do a job do it properly - at least I try to do that 90% of the time. It's the other 10% where I don't and then get upset with myself later. So I understand the need to put nice parts back on, not just dirty old bits and pieces.

[Howdy]

Did you paint 2K paint in your garage? It looks incredible but I was wondering if it was ISO free?

 

It looks amazing though for a home paint job I'd be very happy with that. If you're going to do a job do it properly - at least I try to do that 90% of the time. It's the other 10% where I don't and then get upset with myself later. So I understand the need to put nice parts back on, not just dirty old bits and pieces.

Gav, it's not ISO free, I live on a big block, luckily there is plenty of distance between Neighbours. I run my evap cooler flat out without the water and direct it through the garage. It works great as it pressurises the house so no fumes at all get in but you do get a little dust in the paint. I would have hired a booth, however I wanted to paint all parts separately so there was no overspray anywhere and I could un-bolt every panel without cracking the paint (especially all the front panels). I would have had to be super organised (which I'm not) or go back to the booth a dozen times to do it all.

 

[zed74]

Impressive....

 

Well done on achieving  great result

[Howdy]

Thanx dudes, it's not a perfect finish but I'm happy knowing that the body is about as good as they get and it'll out last me unless it's destroyed in a catastrophic 250 KPH ball of fire in turn one at Philip Island, then again still could out last me. Finally I got the windscreen Guy to come around and put a new screen in and refit the rear screen. I've done it before but getting it to seal properly is not so easy. Cost $340 to supply and fit the screen and refit the rear which I thought was not too bad - took about 3 hours and the Guy was an expert at fitting the old school rubber seals without damaging any paint and I'd have no hesitation recommending him (very unusual for me, cause I don't trust anyone so I end up doing everything myself). His name is Stuart (Windscreen Master - 0400747506).

 

Screens in, I quickly chucked the wing and splitter back on, pretty well all done now, just a dyno sesh to thrash out the tune and a Friday at Winton to fine tune and sort out the mechanicals, then she'll be good to go. Probably need to go to bigger wheels, don't want to but there is no good rubber that I know of that comes in 14" anymore. I'm running the Toyo R888's in 225/50/14 but they are a full 3 seconds a lap behind the old Falken GRBs which I built the brakes and suspension around, however they haven't been available for a long time. I think the A050 Yokies might be the best bet but I want at least 205/60/14 and the widest they come in is 195.

[Howdy]

It's been a while since the last update. Been busy rebuilding the engine after a bit of a mishap. Took it to Winton for Friday test & tune and after about 5 sessions I had the mapping pretty close so decided to get a couple of clear laps for times. Coming off the old back straight out of the left hander, 2nd gear at 8000 RPM I missed third and hit first, it happened so easily, dog boxes aren't too picky about which gear they accept, they just grab it and go. It was a clutchless shift with just a blip off the throttle so she must have gone close to 10000 RPM. No bang, clunks or any bad noises, just a loud buzzing noise of the engine spinning so fast and loss of power. Actually while I rolled to a stop I'm thinking the big rev must have affected the crank angle sensor causing it to stall, the motor had no abnormal sounds, I even whacked it back in gear and tried to restart it but it wouldn't fire up. Little did I know but there was a huge fire out the exhaust from the unburnt fuel so I'll have to repaint the tail light surround.

 

That's wishful thinking for you, got towed back to the pits and pulled No 1 plug and it was then that I realised how naïve I'd been. It was hard to get out due to the other end being chewed up like it had been through a mincer. Instantly I knew I'd dropped a valve then sat down for a bit and pondered how easily this happened and what I could do to avoid it happening again. On pulling the engine down I discovered No 1 had dropped 2 valve heads and there was a huge hole right through the piston so you can see the conrod. There were bits of valve, valve guide and valve seats in all four cylinders, in the inlet manifold and exhaust. The turbo was completely seized by molten aluminium and there were dings in the cylinder from bits bouncing around in there. I thought I'd need another complete engine so I started looking around.

 

FJs have become very rare since I brought my last one and for a couple of weeks I had no luck at all, then I was lucky enough to be talking to a Datto 1600 shop and they thought they knew a Guy who had a head. When I had a look at the head I noticed that he also had a complete engine but he was not interested in selling it. After a while, however he decided to sell the lot so I now have a head and complete spare engine. After closer inspection I'm hoping that I only need the head to fix this engine. The machine shop seems to think the 40thou bore (to take the 1mm over size Wiseco forgies I had hanging around for such an occasion) will take out the dings in the cylinder walls and the crank is fine. I didn't want to chance the old No1 rod though it must have been super strong to withstand the forces trying to compress metal valves into aluminium combustion chamber so I got some H beam rods and ARP bolts. The biggest surprise is that the turbo appears to be perfect after I soaked the turbine wheel and housing in caustic to dissolve the ally off them so that should save some money. I'll probably also go for slightly more aggressive cams for this build just to fill the top end in a bit as the current power band starts to drop off around 6000RPM.

 

At the moment the parts are at the machine shop waiting to get done so I invented a first gear lockout mechanism so I can't slam it directly from second into first without sliding the shifter across neutral out of the first/second plane before sliding it back then into first. It worked out pretty well as it naturally forces the direction towards third rather than rely on the springs. I set my seat a couple of inches back prior to when this happened and noted that the change from second to third was a stretch so i'll extend the shifter closer as well.

[hmd]

Tony,

I was in the other red Z on the test day, glad you're on your way back.

Just build it so it can do 10,000rev just in case you grab 1st instead of 3rd again 

[KatoKid]

Fark!

[260DET]

Bloody H pattern gearboxes    Haven't looked here a while, car looks great, be interesting to see what your PI times are. There are some damm fast S30's in Vic, maybe it's something to do with that great fast and open circuit you all have down there

[Howdy]

Bloody H pattern gearboxes    Haven't looked here a while, car looks great, be interesting to see what your PI times are. There are some damm fast S30's in Vic, maybe it's something to do with that great fast and open circuit you all have down there

Yep, it's a fine line between the 2 gates so quick shifts need to be really positive and planned. I need to work on that because my shifting resembles stirring a pudding bowl, unplanned, last second, I call it the grab & chuck method, probably a legacy from a lifetime of using Datsun shifters AKA 180B, 1600, 240z where you got to first catch the gear knob because it's floppin around the cabin and then chuck it in the general direction of the gear you want because unless your an orangutang you can't reach first and third.

Last time I had this car at PI was in about 2005 and it did 1:50 without the splitter on Falken GRBs.

[Howdy]

Hey Guys, finally finished the FJ20 rebuild and ran it up on the dyno. Ran it in (sort of - showed it who's boss, let it cool, teach it again, cool, repeat but don't over heat the rings, which has always worked out well for me) and some basic tuning, pretty hard on a chassis dyno as it was getting a bit warm so will get it perfect on the track. 223RWKW @ 12psi about 6000rpm ain't bad for a 2L 4cyl. Man she's going to make some grunt at 25psi. Didn't even get a chance to muck around with the timing so it is real conservative and will have to go back and deal with that after I work out how to hook up the knock sensor to it.

 

I was a bit confused at the time why the boost was dropping off from around 6000rpm but a week later I found I had forgotten to replace the hose clamp holding the turbo to intercooler pipe so man that was a huge boost leak.

 

Next step, I'll take it to Winton and finish the mixtures but maybe won't need 25psi because I think that might break the gearbox. Then again self control was never one of my strengths.

 

So I got no secrets, the motor ended up: I saved the original block so 90mm bore (smidge over 2000cc) Wiseco forgies, 7.6:1 comp (yep I'm old school plus had these already in the shed), H beam rods,  arp bolts, Cams are 259A (old Wade grind - didn't want such small lift but ended up with them so reckon I'll give them a go - 281 adv dur - 224@50th, 0.348" lift) made up some adjustable cam gears, heavier valve springs, Garrett GTX3076R turbo (ahhh why not) 0.82AR ex housing, 750cc injectors (and it's now I read up about how good E85 is so got to stick with the 98 for now) new second hand head which I cleaned up inlet ports, enlarged around the valve guides, ported & polished the exhaust ports, matched the manifolds and smoothed the seat transitions, unshrouded the valves in the combustion chambers, cc'd and polished the chambers and valves). I made up a manual cam chain tensioner because I reckon the blowup might have been avoided by less cam chain slackness on the over run. Cometic SS head gasket and a proper balance. Also ported the oil pump galleries which made a huge difference to the oil pressure and made up a trap-door sump with scrapers and extra capacity which won't hurt.

[PB260Z]

That is a pretty impressive KW number.

What ecu are you running and can it run a fuel flex sensor ?

[Howdy]

I'm running a Motec M4 with full data logging & wideband O2 sensor. It's old but good. No flex fuel option which I really wouldn't use anyway as it isn't a road car. I can't run E85 without at least 1200 to 1500cc injectors. I'll see how she drives after tuning is done but will be close to the limits of the gearbox which is a PPG SR20 dogbox.

[Howdy]

So I ran the Z at Winton to gather data and work on the tune. It was a bit out due to the intercooler clamp being off while it was on the dyno. I just kept adding fuel until the injectors were maxed out. The 044 copy fuel pump was loosing flow around 18psi boost. Also the standard SR20 shifter was just crap with the dogbox so I was miss-shifting. The brand new nylon bush flogged out after only 3 laps. A mechanic from another car came up to me and inquired about the shifter as he noticed a few miss-shifts (5th instead of 4th into the esses) and asked to have a look. He advised me to get some stronger detent springs and a brass bush then gave me the name of the source. Nice Guy, involved with drift cars. The handling was not too flash, best I could manage was 37s with lots of understeer on turn in and exit. Soooooo it was time to take stock and make a few changes. Firstly I get a new fuel pump.044 Bosch, the copy is fine up to 18psi but dies in the ass after that. Trouble is EVERY EBay 044 pump is most likely a copy. I have a mate who's Uncle is a major importer of Bosch parts and his cost + 10% price is near double most "genuine" pumps on Ebay so I took no chances and got one from Speed Technology. I also got a short shifter off Ebay which I could modify to reduce slop. It has it's own detent springs so added to the new ones I got for the box, plus the mods I did to reduce slop, the shifter has an incredibly positive feel, so much better than the standard one. I also pulled the gearbox, replaced all the bearings, inspected the gears and dogs and relieved some material from the shifter rod gates and polished them to allow faster shifts between 2nd and 3rd. This made a huge improvement between 2nd and 3rd plus 3rd back to 2nd. The gearbox was getting to over 250 deg F so I lagged the exhaust with good quality heat wrap all the way down beside the box (the last heatwrap - drunken Ebay purchase - turned to glass and dropped off). This reduced the temps by 30 degF. To address the handling, or lack of, I whacked some old softer springs in the front and gave it another deg toe out but was a bit paranoid about how soft the springs were. I went from about 182 to 162lb/in which is real soft compared to most but my crap tires don't have a lot of grip (6YO Toyo R888's) and I had the rear bar on max and front bar on minimum so not a lot of choice.

Sandown rolls around and I look at the car on the ground with the front splitter only 60mm from the ground with soft springs and I'm thinking how long is that going to last? Poo, so I make up 10mm spacers for under the strut tops. That worked out OK but looked a bit 4WDish at the front. Ahh who cares, just testing the car. At Sandown the car handled surprisingly well, the track was incredibly slippery with something akin to Teflon covering the turn onto the front straight and it had a little oversteer on turn in which is just how I like it, especially for Winton, but I'll back off the rear bar and rebound slightly for next time. The shifter was awesome and made a huge difference to how the car drove. It was so nice to be able to up and down shift without the clutch. The only problem was I kept getting pulled off for being too noisy so never got a full run until the tester finally went home. The new pump held up but I did max out the injectors at 24lbs boost so I'll settle on 20 for now. Plus the head seems to be lifting and I'm loosing coolant - 1L lost = 1L pure water found in the oil catch can.

 

All in all pretty happy with the progress so far, the car was in the 1:25s and only a bit over 2 secs off the fastest car on the day and I can see another 2 to 3 seconds just in the driving, mostly over Rothmans into Dande Rd.

Did a leak down and all cylinders are under 2% which is pretty good but the loss of coolant worries me. No pressure in the radiator, just using coolant and ending up in the catch can so my theory is it's leaking into the crankcase and evaporating out through the breather and condensing in the catch can. Now I just installed some ARP2000 head studs and hopefully that might fix the problem.

[Howdy]

Quick up-date: Went back to the dyno to map the ignition properly but spent most of the time remapping the fuel due to some changes to the injector dead time which I did to get more accurate voltage compensation (was way out before). Had to virtually start from scratch again. Ran out of time but should be able to finish it off at the track. Graph is 19psi and yes it's rich as .... so there's more gold in them there hills when I get lambda to 0.82. Also will flatten the power out a bit more when I add some more timing and lean out after max torque.

 

It's not bad though, made my 450HP goal with 5psi less boost than planned and really friendly power curve for the circuit - 300HP @ 4500, 350 @ 5000, 400 @ 5500, 450 @ 6000, 400 @ 7000 and 350 @ 7500 rpm.

[Howdy]

Coilovers: I’ve avoided them on my cars in the past simply because they cost money and take a little time which might have been better spent on other things. In this case, however, I needed to get heavier rate springs for my car and no matter how many times I sorted through the pile of bits strewn around my joint, I just didn’t have the bits to make it work. Besides, next set of tires I plan to go to bigger wheels and 8 inches wide so I need more room at the front.

Back in the day I would just take the standard springs out to Thomastown where O’l Mate would shuffle to the window of a dirty old spring works and I’d hand over the carefully cut springs plus a piece of paper with the free length required (calculated using the tried and proven formula lifted from Fred Someone’s book “How to make your car handle”, Pouhn maybe)? Then a few weeks later I’d get back the new heavier springs with proper ends, not the sharp cut off ones that don’t quite fit right, not that there’s anything wrong with them as long as you don’t jack up or jump the car. [i wish I could remember the old Bloke’s name from the spring works – about 120 years old, took 20 minutes to get to the window and used to do all the touring car springs so I had to wait my turn but he’d get them done eventually and was so cheap because he still thought it was 1947. I’m talking $10 per spring. He would lend me lengths of spring steel rod of varying sizes so I could make up new sway bars then take them back for annealing and I’d have to remind him to charge me for the bar. Don’t see many Characters like that these days].

Anyway, after Winton and Sandown last year and from the meticulous data captured over the years (old 1997 diary with 10000 loose bits of oil soaked paper, cardboard, ripped up 6 pack cardboards stamped with my greasy finger prints) I calculated I would need to go from 211 lb to 336 lb (6kg/mm) in the back and from 162 lb to 280lb (5kg) in the front. This would give me the ideal ratio front to rear going by my fuzzy logic. [i call it fuzzy because it all starts out dead straight in my head then after a few beers towards the end of Fred Whatshisname’s formula, which you need either a photographic memory to recall the denominator or 2 memories on your calculator, both I don’t have, I end up going in continuous circles of “yep W to the power of 4 times G, got that one, just remember it and type in the value of N times D to the power of 3 times 8, OK, Ahhhhh forgotten the Numerator or is it the Denominator, damn should have done it the other way around and what on earth makes me think I can remember it to the 10^th decimal place?

I decided on the MRC weld on coil over kits. Had a good look at them, the quality and dimensions looked very good, have helper springs and the springs are not a bad price at $120 per pair (when I find out that I should have multiplied Fred’s numbers instead of divided). I ordered the 2 sets for the 55mm 260Z struts and 5 and 6K springs. The kits took a while but I wasn’t in a hurry and MRC were great to deal with, plus are local to me. The 5K springs were very hard to get so I ended up getting 2 pairs of 6K and a pair of 7K (392 lb) springs so I could run at Sandown and have something to play with. As it turned out, the 5s would have been too soft except during torrential rain so I am happy I didn’t get them.

The kits were easy to install, I already had sectioned struts front and rear, which is absolutely critical in order to get the bump travel, and my home made strut tops which just required grinding the spot welds off to separate them from the standard spring perch. The top spring perch in the kit comes drilled small so just requires drilling out to suit the inserts. The hardest part was buffing down the strut tube so the sleeve fitted over it as they are exactly 55mm ID which is the exact OD of the strut without paint. I used a length of emery paper for that.

Again out came the calculator and several beers later I had the exact position on the strut tube in which to place the sleeve. “250Kg per corner = X compression minus ride height by the power of the wheel rate divided by the square root of the …..ahhhhh!

Ha,  Amazingly at ride height my calculations were within 3mm on all four corners but that could be my garage floor. Suck on that Pouhboy.

 

Tuned out pretty damn nice if you must know. I did Sandown on the 7K rears and 6K fronts and these are definitely not too hard. The car is still very predictable, the springs are well dampened even on the softest shock settings and it is not skatey or bouncy at all. It doesn’t dive as much under brakes, squat so much under acceleration, and hits the curbs more solidly without the splitter rubbing like before. Previously the rear always used 100% compression travel even with 50mm out of the strut. And best of all it seemed very neutral in balance.

I did, however, have to carry out one further important mathematical calculation prior to Sandown. This too was lifted from good O’l Fred Whathisname’s book and it’s the one for sway bars. Not even going to mention that one but Pouhboy really knew his stuff because it worked out perfectly. As I couldn’t get the 5K front springs in time and the ratio front to rear using the 7R/6F compared to the 6R/5F springs is slightly different, skewing it towards understeer and I hate understeer, I made a new front sway bar out of one of those lengths of bar from the spring works. Its 2mm smaller than the previous bar.

I only got 2 sessions in and no time to play with the suspension due to the alternator failing (ended up being the wire to one brush broke) but I’m not sure I would have changed spring or bar rates anyway. All up I changed tires from the Toyo RRRs to Hankook Z214s plus the springs and picked up 5 seconds a lap. It was dry compared to damp patches previously though but very happy with the results.

[PET240]

This is very cool and am considering an FJ for mine. 

Any headaches/tips towards fitting, mounts etc?

Thanks,

Drew.