Grandad

Hi PB260Z and All. That's a good and valid question and the current answer is I don't know. When I removed the gasket and realized what has happened I was thinking the motor needs to be stripped, everything checked and any damaged/compromised parts replaced but following discussion with Tuss and his assurance that any stress would have been absorbed by compression of the head gasket I'm a little more relaxed but not entirely convinced that the compression has not compromised components further down in the motor. While this has been going on Whittie (busy in the US) has been blissfully ignorant because the forum new post email alert hasn't reached him so it was only this morning when we had a Skype chat that he read this thread and updated himself, needless to say he is not a happy chappy and is currently about where I was initially. This is the body of an email he sent me after that chat. Just read the thread. Piston compressing the gasket against the head, gasket fudgeed, head appears to be damaged from the pics similar to the piston damage which could impact the bore if not cleaned up. Let's see what this guy says, but I think he needs to check and repair the head - it could be deformed at the edge of the bore which may mean new head. Then he needs to tear down the bottom end, new bearings, check rods for being true, replace pistons, rings and gasket. Once he returns it to Tuss, before being started, someone else needs to pull it down to check it has been stripped and refurbished. Clearly Whittie's not happy, we are not expert in this area but we know people who are so I will present this to three engine builders for opinion, if their opinion is unanimous that there is unlikely to be referred damage then I doubt it will go any further but without a unanimous result I think we will insist on a rebuild. At the end of the day we've paid good money for a rebuild but have been given a defective product. I have a feeling this is going to get rather interesting. Cheers Dad

Hi All The engine builder visited Tuss yesterday where he was presented with both the head and gasket, he was unsurprisingly speechless at what he was presented with, he has taken possession of both the head and gasket to take measurements on the gasket and undertake tests on the head. I can't wait to hear what he has to say. Cheers Dad

You've read my mind Gareth... Well done I'll wait to see what the engine builders response is but I did raise this topic with Tuss yesterday. I'm not an engineer but I do have some understanding of the differing strengths and properties of metals so considering this situation where the piston has come into contact with the leading metal edge of the head gasket which is in turn being compressed against the head my reckoning is that the softest component and therefor first to fail is the metal edge of the gasket but once that is fully compressed the energy generated has to be absorbed elsewhere, the next softest metal is in the gudgeon and big end bearings but the stress will be spread over the bearing surface reducing but probably not eliminating impact damage, the next softest is the piston which is showing signs of stress over a relatively small area, I cant accurately measure the damage depth without removing the piston but I can feel it and let's not forget this is a race motor and any damage like this will reduce engine life. My other concern is con rod damage, even though this is the strongest component above the crank we had to replace a bent one in the last re-build and it did not suffer impact. I have mentioned in previous posts that this blog has helped in keeping me both motivated and focused and what I've just written is telling me this motor has to be completely rebuilt under warranty with all new parts. Much more to come here. Cheers Dad

Indeed there is his name is Martin Falconer and Zed cars are his life, we first met him shortly after buying the Zed and have got to know him well, what he doesn't know about Zed doesn't really matter but he's modest enough to regularly say he doesn't know it all. To give you an idea of the type of guy he is we once had the Zed at the drag strip for a Whoop Ass Wednesday which is a night event for street cars and Whittie broke a drive shaft on the line at about 8.00 o'clock, we called Martin who lives fairly close to the strip and he said bring the car over I've got plenty of those I'll get the hoist ready so a towie we knew loaded the car onto his truck and we set of to Martins place, in no time the drive shaft was replaced and we were on our way back to the track, the officials were amazed to see the Zed line up again and Whittie managed a couple of runs before the night ended. Interestingly Martin is in much the same position Whittie and I were when we met him he has a son who has recently started driving and Martin has prepared a 120Y coupe for him to get into motor sport. This is him. http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/forrestdale/wrecking/datsun-240z-260z-parts/1055820156 Cheers Dad

Hi All I recently posted a pic of the engine builder's business premiss and mentioned that he is located at Malaga, I've just noticed that I have photographed two businesses and one has Malaga as part of it's name, I will alter the pic to remove Malaga Mechanical as I know nothing about that business and to my knowledge it has no involvement with my current issues, the engine builder I have issue with is at unit 6. (this pic has been removed) Cheers Dad

Hi All Checking the head gasket when it's fitted really is elementary stuff so he scores a very big FAIL on that one. As far as I'm concerned this engine builder now has three strikes against him, first was mounting the distributor drive incorrectly, second was using refaced (ground) rockers, I accept that is common practice and works well on push rod engines but the over head gear is critical on the L28 motor and a professional engine builder should know that and third is the gasket and head fitting generally. I removed the collets and took a pic without the flash and one side on each is clearly shiny indicating that it has possibly been touching something, I suspect the head, the collet would only need to be a few thou too big to cause a problem, I will shave them before the head goes back on and it will be interesting to see how warped the head is. Tuss now has the head and gasket and has called the engine builder to his workshop to please explain how the hell this could happen. In the meantime anyone on the sunny side of the country who is looking for a good engine builder, from my experience will be well advised to totally ignore this outfit in Malaga. (this pic has been removed) I should here back from Tuss tomorrow with an update, I feel for him because this raises the question that if the builder is prepared to allow this quality of workmanship on what he knows is a race engine, what else is he letting through that Tuss then fits to customer vehicles in good faith, I'd love to be a fly on the wall at there meeting tomorrow. To be continued. Cheers Dad

Hi All When the car was with Will having the body done the engine lay dormant languishing in a corner of the engine builders shop, once the body was finished I visited the guy to try and hurry him up a bit and noticed he had a lot of young people working for him and I thought that as he knows this is a race motor he or at least his more experienced people would do the work but that appears possibly not to have been the case. When I first lifted the head I was primarily focused on it and only briefly inspected the gasket for damage which initially I didn't find but did notice that that the gasket diameter was smaller than the bore. This is no 6 where you can clearly see that on the left and right the gasket clears the bore but top and bottom it does not, it's just now looking at this pic I can see the gasket failure from the water jacket at 11.00 o'clock. I wasn't initially concerned about the gasket thinking that the piston will not extended beyond the top of the block but in the quest for ever greater power and higher compression both the deck of the block and the head have been shaved and my research revealed that it is not uncommon for pistons to reach beyond the limits of the block and as long as the piston doesn't come into contact with the head or valves all is good and that would have been the case here if the correct gasket was used. Just as the piston has a bright spot where it has come into contact with the gasket, the top of the locating collet is bright suggesting it might not have been modified to allow for the reduction in clearance, while I will inspect the collett tomorrow to ensure what I'm seeing is not simply flash back from the camera, this is not a good look. Here's no1 and the gasket looks like it's been compressed between the piston and the head, there is also some indication of gasket failure just after 12.00 o'clock. OK so much for the top side of the gasket, here's what I found when I removed it, evidence of piston contact top and bottom. Failure at no1. I'm now feeling comfortable that the head is good apart from some possible minor warping which should be easily rectified, I'm thinking my next meeting with he engine builder will be rather interesting. More to come on this one. Cheers Dad

Hi All I just dropped the head off to Tuss who cast his experienced eye thoroughly over it and said the marks I'm looking at are more likely to be scratch marks than cracks also there is a core plug at the back of the head that has a heat sensor built into it so when the head is seriously overheated this sensor is triggered and altered permanently so the engine builder knows what's happened and any warranty is void but it hasn't been triggered so things haven't been ridiculously hot. Tuss thinks that the problem was initially caused when we threw the fan belt and lost most of the coolant first time out because at that stage the head hadn't been re tensioned, his suggestion is that some warping occurred at that time and progressively got worse, when I mentioned the coolant residue on the induction side of the valves he suggested that could be caused by backfiring through induction which makes some sense because when I got back to the pits after Whittie came in I started the car to diagnose the problem and it did cough back a few times before firing. The head will go off for testing tomorrow so we'll know the exact situation very soon but I'm feeling much more comfortable now than I was earlier today. Cheers Dad

Hi Gav The head has been worked and I suspect it was ported further with the latest rebuild although it wasn't requested, I had to put in quite a bit of time port matching the inlet manifold. I'm guessing the head is toast because of coolant in the inlet ports and what appears to be hair cracks and crazing, we'll know soon enough when it's crack tested. Cheers Dad

Hi All It's been a while now since Vince carried the Zed home from it's last Porsche passing outing and with all that's happened since my focus has been distracted away from the Zed but today is Fathers Day and today I get to choose what I want to do so with my kids either busy or out of the country I decided that following breakie and a walk on our favorite beach with Whittie's Mum I'd spend the day working on the Zed. First up I drained the coolant and while this is what I hoped I wouldn't find I guess it's in line with my expectation. Carbies and extractors came off and the staining caused by the breather hose touching the extractors was clear and the first thing to be corrected. Ok with that done I looked at the exhaust gasket and it doesn't look great but I'm not sure whether I should worry or not but I'm thinking some gasket cement is in order. At no1 TDC it's time to lift the head and unfortunately my hopes of finding a blown gasket are not realized but you can clearly see which cylinders have had to deal with coolant issues. Why is it so?. On inspection of the head I found evidence of coolant on the inlet side of no 1 no 6 and no 5 I suspect cracking and there is coolant residue visible in these pics. Time will tell, I'll drop the head off to Tuss tomorrow for testing, hopefully it is reparable. In case you're wondering, I've had a great Fathers Day as I hope all you Dads have and it was topped off by Ricciardo beating Vettel once again. Cheers Dad

hmmm busted by benny but it is a cool skid Here's on of a 2012 R/T the same as Whittie has. Cheers Dad

Hi nizmOzed Here's the Chrysler CEO in the latest version of what Whittie has. Cheers Dad

Hey MaygZ Thank's for that you are of course entirely correct on all counts. There's been no movement on the Zed here other than changing wheels and setting the car up on jack stands so it's at a comfortable height for me to work on however my motivation is slowly returning as there are a couple of events coming up that I want to do. I know this is a bit off topic but Whittie has hit the ground running in the US in just over two weeks since his arrival he's celebrated his 26th birthday, been welcomed into his new role by his company and shown to his exclusive office complete with name plate on the door (a nice step up from his previous work station), he's found a house on a few acres with fencing and stables on the edge of town and will take delivery of his Dodge Challenger R/T next Wednesday, he sent me a pic but I can't extract it from the email so maybe he can post a couple or I will later but basically this is it. http://image.popularhotrodding.com/f/hotnews/1103phr_2010_dodge_challenger_rt/32416642/1103phr_01_z%2B2010_dodge_challenger_rt%2B.jpg On top of that he took his electric RC car to the local indoor facility that by the way is over double the size of our largest out door facility here but I guess everything is bigger in Texas, anyway first time out on a track he's never run on before he managed to hit something very hard and break the chassis but still limped home into fourth place overall, I can't wait to see his results once he knows the track. Cheers Dad

Hi All We've known for some time now that Whitties departure to the land of milk and honey was coming, he had a few little delays that I thought were really good because it kept him here just a little bit longer than expected but in the end the horses are gone as is the float and Falcon tow car also his old reliable bunkie Mirage uni car that filled in as a motorsport car while the Zed was off the road is gone and as I write he & Mrs Whittie are in the air somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. Whittie will make his new home in Huston he's on a two year contract and can stay in the US for up to five years before having to take on a green card which at this point in time he doesn't want to do but time will tell. International experience of two to five years is highly regarded in Whitties chosen career and will make him even more employable than he already is, clearly I'm extremely happy for him and immensely proud but to say I'll miss him is a massive understatement. On the bright side we now have a destination in the US and it's not far from the Circuit of the Americas so a visit to coincide with F1 makes sense also dealing with companies that won't ship outside the US is no longer an issue. I've got the Zed for safe keeping and apart from fixing the head gasket still have a few finishing off jobs to do and then it will go into storage, I will use it occasionally and possibly do a few events just to keep it ticking over but somehow Dad Racing just doesn't have the same ring to it that Dadson does. Whittie will need a car and has already done some research below is a link to his current first choice. http://www.drivesrt.com/2015/challenger-srt-hellcat/ Cheers Dad

Hi All I'm currently out of town for a week and tried to remove the head before leaving so any repairs could be done while I'm away but ran out of time so it will have to wait until my return but I did get the cam cover off and what I found doesn't occur in a lap and a half so this was always going to happen and I guess the sooner the better. There doesn't appear to be any water in the sump oil so I'm not expecting any bearing damage but I'll inspect it very closely when I drain it and run some flushing oil through when I get it going again. Cheers Dad

Hi All That vid Whittie posted shows how good the 44-1 gearing is for our track, the car is approaching the rev limiter in 5th down the hill and doing the same in 4th on the front straight and is right in the power band everywhere else. Well yesterday certainly didn't go to plan, it started out well enough the threatened rain didn't happen and we caught up with some friends we haven't seen since the Zed was stripped four years ago. Whittie's first outing was good and he reported the brake balance good enough that we can now fit the remote adjuster, once again the car attracted lots of attention and positive comment. Because this was a low key test and tune day with no flaggies on duty I decided to try and get some pics from over the hill at the back of the track which is not open to spectators. I took a few vids of him going past from behind the dump truck tyre barrier. (please excuse the hand held camera shake). This one is out of focus until the end when I caught the steam escaping. I so love passing Porsches but this one came at a cost with precious little coolant left. With the benefit of hind sight we probably rushed things a bit too much putting the car on the track with only 500ks on it and pre the head being re tensioned, although at the time the engine didn't get overly hot I suspect the initial damage was done when we through the fan belt first time out. Although Vince is always happy to see the Zed this is not the way we had intended the day should end. Cheers Dad

Hi All This discussion is good but I have to agree with you PeterAllen that in person over a couple of beers would be way better. The install here is not complete as I'm yet to fit the remote adjuster which will change the equation a bit. I've considered fitting this a few times but decided we should get the balance as close to perfect as possible before installing it, the balance bar is relatively easy to adjust so I guess there is the potential for it to move with vibration but once the cable is in place it shouldn't because the knob is spring loaded so in cab adjustment is literally done one click at a time. Cheers Dad

Hi All Murphy has never been to far away from us during this rebuild, he has been credited with writing many rules and one pertaining to the installation of new equipment states "When all else fails the instructions will be read" Damn where's this been hiding? Cheers Dad

Hi All This is uncharted territory for us so was always going to take some time to set up correctly. The guy who made the brake lines for us fitted the master cylinders and to be fair he had everything in the correct starting position with the balance bar centered and horizontal to the firewall at rest but as he couldn't bleed the brakes that was as far as he could go, my best guess is that setup gave us about a 60/40 rear bias which obviously is far from ideal. As Whittie said he has done a bit of research on achieving the optimum set up then played with the master cylinder plunger length adjustments lengthening one while backing the other right off ultimately he ran out of free play at the brake pedal so had to adjust that as well, I think the current set up is just about right but we'll have a full compliment of tools with us on Wednesday just in case. This is how it came to us with brake lines done. This is one of the rods Whittie had to adjust which required seat out to gain access. Here's how it currently sits at rest. And here at full pressure, I'm not 100% satisfied with this it should ideally be horizontal to the firewall. Once we have the achieved the optimum balance I'll fit the cable to allow minor adjustment from inside the cabin. Cheers Dad

Hi All Whittie's back from his US reconnaissance trip and is now waiting on a work visa to arrive then he's off to the land of milk and honey for a few years but that's probably four about a month away so until then the zed is his daily drive and attracting lots of positive attention, even the coppers in marked and unmarked cars follow him but leave him alone, maybe they're just admiring it. Two days after Whittie arrived home there was a night event at Wannas under lights on first the long and then the short track, even though the BOM predicted storms he entered and I played pit crew and camera man, the BOM did get it right and there was plenty of rain but fortunately not much were we were. So with the road wheels off and race wheels on it's time to hit the track. This is Whittie's first run for the night, with the short 4.4-1 diff he gets through the gears pretty quickly but for our little track it's spot on. I so love the sound of this car. You may remember that my last time out in the car I mentioned I was locking rear brakes, listen for the bystander comment in this vid. Looking through the camera I couldn't see what the bystander did but this is what he was talking about. That pic was taken on Whittie's last run on the long track and knowing that the short track is far less demanding on brakes he kept on going. That was a good event to do because it clearly hi-lighted just how far out the brake bias is and Murphy sort of looked after us which was nice, the heavens opened up on our journey home in a way that would have stopped the event and the rear pads finally said enough is enough a couple of Ks from home. Here's what we found when we did a pad change a few days later, fortunately no major damage done but I'm thinking that with hair line cracks appearing new rear rotors might be in order. Next job is to get the brake bias set correctly. Cheers Dad

Hi George I think your current budget of 50k plus P&P is about right for starters but I'll be surprised if it comes in under 80k total. It's quite amazing just where the money goes without any improvement to the vehicle for example off the top of my head we moved Whitties car to have things done five times @ $200.00 ea return trip so there's 1k gone and then there's all the consumables that will be required over time plus annoying things like requiring one clip but having to but a packet of them while these are not major items it's surprising just how quickly the small amounts add up. Regarding your choice of engines if this were my project I'd go with the original. I look forward to following your progress. Dad

Hi All Another day another little issue rectified, I picked the car up from Tuss today and all is good the rear yoke has been machined and the temporary spacers removed so there is now more than adequate clearance and the vibration that was there when the rubber diff mounts were highly compressed is gone and the car feels relatively vibration free. This is the rear yoke when the diff was initially fitted. And now Of course if I'd been there when it was fitted it would have looked more like this. In all the years we have campaigned this car we have never collected more than a light oil film in the catch can so when I fitted the new one I considered it was there merely to comply with competition regs and look better than the old plastic oil bottle so I was really surprised when the breather hose that has been happily located in the same place for years decided to move over to caress the exhaust with rather spectacular results and also when the catch can decided to release oil because I hadn't properly sealed the drain plug, to my surprise once removed I emptied about half a quarter litre of oil from it. Now I have two issues to contemplate, why was there so much oil in the catch can and why did the breather hose that has so happily remained in place for many years suddenly decide to move? I decided to remove the catch can to seal the drain plug and noticed that the dip stick was not fully located, I have experienced some difficulty with this since the new alloy sump was fitted but didn't think to mention it to Tuss when he retentioned the head and changed the oil, when I fully inserted the dip stick it showed the engine to be over filled so I guess that goes some way to answering my question. I suspect that with the crank case over filled oil has been forced out through the crank case breather with much making it to the catch can while some was trapped in the breather hose which as a result of extra weight has moved and ultimately made contact with the hot exhaust. When I finally moved the car after it died in the drive last Saturday there were two distinct oil marks on the paving I had to deal with so I decided to remove the catch can and fix it. Clearly it had been leaking. The fix. So then came the clean up, I gave the paving a thorough wash down to ensure it was saturated first to prevent any oil staining on paving that's not mine . Carbies don't need a drink. Solvent and degreaser will be helpfull. I was busy doing the front and rear under body clean up when I took these pics and didn't even look at the colour contrast at the time but I can see why Whittie chose this paint. I think Will's going to be pretty happy with his work here. With the car looking so good I can't help but look back at some of Will's effort, he really does have passion for old cars. With the cleanup finished and everything back in place it's easy to see how the unsuspecting could think the dip stick is properly located when in fact it isn't. I guess this is what shake down is all about. Cheers Dad

I'm really looking forward to watching this one come back to life.

Hi All Well it's going again and in all the time Whittie's owned this car I've never heard it crank so fast. In the end I decided to go with a remanufactured unit simply on price, time will tell how long it can keep the smoke inside but I'm thinking we won't revisit this for a very long time. The car will now go to Tuss to have the rear yoke issue fixed. Cheers Dad

Hi All The event on Saturday was fairly unremarkable, it was wet in the morning which concerned me a bit and I ended up forgetting the video camera which was a bit annoying anyway a couple of laps into my practice I had a rear brake lock up and then could smell burning rubber which I thought was a bit odd because I had a rear wheel lock up I then could smell oil burning and when I checked the mirror I had blue smoke billowing out behind the car a quick check of the guages at least gave me some confidence that it wasn't anything major but it was straight back to the pits anyway. It turned out to be simple enough the crankcase breather hose had touched the exhaust and burned a hole so a little duct tape and a couple of cable ties and I was going again. I enjoyed my next run the car definitely feels better and the 4.4 diff is perfect for this track the car is in the middle of the power band at every corner so I just need to work on my driving now. Unfortunately I must have let myself become a little dehydrated because I started the get some minor cramping in my hands, it's nothing new and Poweraid usually fixes it so I downed about a litre of it but it takes time to work and on my next run I was so far off the pace I was being caught by guys I would normally be driving away from so with that I headed back to the pits and packed up then watched the last of the event before heading for home. The class lap record Whittie set at the last event didn't stand for long, John Hurney a local driving instructor entered his TVR and took almost 3 seconds of Whitties time setting a new mark of 67.7 sec, I know there's nothing like a challenge but I recon that will take a bit of beating. The trip home was uneventful enough, when I got there I had to stop in the drive because there was a car blocking entry to the garage so I moved it and opened the garage door but when I tried to start the Zed it didn't want to know about it, we've had a bit of a starting problem and put it down to an old battery not holding charge so I decided to jump start it but that's when I realized that the battery is actually fine and the problem is faulty starter motor seals because the moment I turned the key the seals failed completely and let the smoke out and I know from experience that once the smoke escapes that's it it just won't go back in. So now I'm stuck with a car that won't start on an uphill gradient. Fortunately there was another car in the drive so I tied a short rope to the front and did the tow shuffle eventually getting it into the garage. I did the ring around and searched the net for starter prices and found they are all over the place so finally removed the old one to see if it had a part no on it and it had Ingrams written on it so I googled it and came up with Ashdown Ingram which is where I got the fuses for the new junction box a few months ago, they have an amazing web site complete with parts catalogues and their price was the best. They're now firmly saved in my favorites, here a link to their site clicking the links under Our Product Range will open the parts catelogue. http://www.ashdown-ingram.com.au/ Cheers Dad