RB30X

Bloody Hell Scoot, its stories like that that make you wanna do everything yourself. They must have let the work experience kid do it.

KE40

Your engineer should either say you need one or you don't need one. He can't just recommend things. Your car you be safer if you had big rally spot lights and a bull bar too but did he recommend them. There will be no era specific high mounted brake lights because in that era. No one had them. Not for a few decades.

Hey mate I just remembered to have a look and I definetly have one. And it is definetly 9 inches, as I measured it against my .............. tape measure. I don't know what the differences between series one and two 280zx boosters are though as I have wrecked both and not sure what this one is off. cheers

Apart from the external fluid resoviour, they look similar to the T56 MC found in commodores.

This is very true. It's been a while since my chemistry lessons as well, although I do work in a metaliferous processing plant??? Also, sodium hydroxide is a 'base' which is the opposite to an 'acid' but both hurt the same. Peter, the spray on oven cleaner is extremely concentrated sodium hydroxide. If your had to use this you'd spray the can into some water then dunk your 'parts' in it. You could always de-oxidise those darker pieces Peter and polish them, they'll still be ok unless you left them exposed long enough for pitting to begin on the surface.

Just tell her you want to 'clean' the trays for her

I recently bought some cheap fuel rails off eBay. The reason they were cheap I’m guessing is because they were pink ……..or purple. Not that there is anything wrong with that. The worst part about owning purple fuel rails is telling your parents you’re gay. I’m just joking. My plan was to strip the anodizing off the rails after being inspired by a recent article in a Street Commodores mag. How hard can it be? Grab some Draino or Drain Clean or something containing Sodium Hydroxide. Oven cleaner spray works as well, but is an aerosol and the application would be different. I sprinkled about half of the little tube on the side of the Drain Clean bottle worth of crystals into an old oven tray. I then poured enough boiling water into the tray to completely submerge a fuel rail. If you’re only doing a few fittings you could use an old cut down soft drink bottle or something that wont melt with the hot water. Now be careful, this stuff is very dangerous and by heating it up with boiling water it is extremely bad if you get it on you or in your eyes. I performed this outside with a fan blowing any fumes away from the house. Give the crystals in the hot water a stir to help them dissolve. Throw a pair of gloves on, grab one fuel rail and lay it in the solution. Make sure you keep an eye on what happens next as the stripping rate will depend on the concentration of sodium hydroxide in your solution. The photos were taken during the stripping of the second fuel rail, and the results were much slower than when the initial solution was fresh and hot. After you really start noticing that most of the anodizing has gone you may wish to drop it in a bucket of water. The reason for this is the surface gets a slippery soapy coating on it from the reaction and it slows the process down. Once in the bucket of water, rub this stuff off the surface with your gloved hands and dunk it back in the tray to finish off the rest. Once fully stripped, give it a wash in the water again, rubbing the surface as before but this time let it sit in the water to release all of the chemical. Once the anodized surface has been stripped, the aluminium is prone to oxidation like any other bare metal surface. I plan on giving my rails a coating of an aluminium de-oxidiser just before I polish them using an aluminium polish. The finish below is straight out of the bucket of water (pre-polish) so you can see it doesn't look too bad already.

Speedhunters are doing their photos of the year again. http://speedhunters.com/ Check out the mad NA L series one.

Whoops. Me no speak no americano.

Valve clearances are fine? How did you measure that. The lash pads "should" be directly under the cam lobes and you use feeler gauges to measure the gap. Clearance specs are in the gregories manual.

Just make sure you have the right TDC as the crank does two revolutions per cam revolution. Take your rocker cover off when you're doing what Nato suggested above. The two cam lobes (inlet and exhaust) on the number one cylinder should be pointing up in the air at approximatey ten and two o'clock (I think, I might be getting engines confused) This will be the start of your compression stroke, hence why youre setting the spark up for this position.

This must effect what sort of clutch material you can use won't it Peter? With that oil leaking out all the time. Most of the aftermarket clutch materials give up with the slightest hint of oil in the bell housing. I was talking to the bloke from Race Clutch and he wasn't even interested in selling a clutch to me due to the fact it was going to sit behind a dirty old alloy LS block which expand and contract as they heat up and cool down causing more rear main issues than L series engines.

Those bolts with the round head on them that one side of the rocker sits on like a cup, those bolts can be lifted or lowered by screwing them in or out. The other nut on those bolts is to lock them in position once set. If you look back at your own pictures you can see that these bolts are all different heights which is what these gurus picked up on straight away. I believe you adjust the height according to your valve clearance. With both ends of the rocker touching the top of the valve and the top of the ball headed bolt, you wind the bolt up so the is X amount of clearance between the cam lobe and the lash pads. How did you go with finding replacment rockers? I've got two complete L28 heads which I'd prefer not to separate but I could remove the rockers for you if you're desperate.

You're very lucky Peter. Sounds like we only got bits and pieces of this rain. Down south they are evacuating whole towns from the rain caused by one little low at the start of the wet season??? Wait till it actually starts. Glad the Zed ran well, is it a comfy car over that distance?

I finally got the rear cover off the diff for an inspection. Yes, I have an LSD, check, what type? I don't know. The gears are 3.9's as expected. My new fuel rails arrived in the mail for christmas also. And before you ask, yes they do make them for men.

Well apparently the 365012 is actually a 240K front strut (on their list), and the monroe is the equivalent of that strut so I guess technically they aren't Zed struts but still fit? OK, I've pulled my foot from my mouth and wiped the egg from my face. That will be the last time I trust one of the children working at Autobarn. Those struts are different in every single way except that they both expand outwards. So this brings me back to square one. The exact KYB replacements are $270 for a pair off ebay or $350 each ordered in through Super cheap. Unless I can find an alternative.

Just talking to the guys at autobahn while trying to track down kyb's on a public holiday and they have a Monroe alternative for $150 a pair. Anyone running Monroe gas inserts?

I jacked the rear up yesterday to take the rear cover off the diff but got a bit de-motivated when I saw what a drama that job was. Instead I pulled one of my rear struts out to confirm they are shagged. I found out the are KYB 365012's. I think there may be a washer or two in the base as a spacer but they are pretty much the same length as the factory rear tube. The springs that were on it are 250lb which apparently are around 4.5kgs and the fronts are only 225lb or 4kgs. These are probably a bit soft for any track work but I do have 5kg and 6kg springs from the otomoto sleeve kit which I guess I could swap in as a trial. The rear springs are a taller one piece spring but are the same length as the otomoto kit with the follower spring included. Has anyone used these KYB struts before. I guess I will try and track down some more exactly the same as these ones but I'm not sure how much they go for or anything. Hopefully whoever originally installed the coil overs has matched the right shock with the springs etc, and at least left some room for stiffer springs. I don't know much about matching springs and shocks etc.

Yeah I grabbed some Nulon 90 weight today for it. I jacked it up and had a look under and OMG, they don't make it easy do they. You have to dis-assemble half your rear end to get the rear cover off. Looks easier to pull the whole diff out. I'll tackle that another day, as while I was under there I thought I'd check my rear strut condition and they are shagged so I'll replace them first.

Well done scoot, but I hope you were drinking the wd40 and pouring that vb on your rusty parts. That stuff is horrid, surely everyone doesn't drink that down there. I thought carlton draft had over taken the "Very Bad".

Hi. My R200 has a slight wirr on deceleration so I thought I'd open here up one day and check the backlash etc but all the info I have is for factory diffs. Does anyone have some info on shims etc required for setting backlash in these, and what oil are you all using in yours? Brands as well, but mostly after the weight you're using. Cheers

You can always tell a good welder by the size of his grinder. Looks good.

It seems to handle well. Did you end up putting coil overs in it? At least it catches itself on the slide if you know what I mean. Not step out one way, slap slap slap of the steering wheel, flicks out the other way, slap slap slap, bigger flick out the other way and then spin etc - bad example

But it's so boring without a radio/mp3 player, no matter how nice your engine sounds. I'm replacing mine as soon as I can.