another newbie

M

Michael

Active Member
Greetings!

I heard about this forum from HybridZ.org. As I'm also much enamoured with big blocks, exploring here seems to make perfect sense.

My eternal project is a Datsun Z with a Chevy 454. It is basically a tube chassis with the Datsun unibody cut to pieces and then welded back together around the roll cage, with the firewall set back 6". That part was done by a friend; once he deposited the mostly-finished car into my hands, well, I was ecstatic at first, but then overwhelmed. It all sounds great on paper, but in practice I've been confounded by the "simple" things - wiping cam lobes, not getting sufficient spark, trouble with pushrod oiling,...

This has been going on for around 10 years. I drove the car briefly about 2 years ago, when the cam-sprocket bolts backed out (it's one of those continuously-adjustable timing sets) and ate into the aluminum timing cover, scattering aluminum shavings all over the engine.

The moral of the story seems to be.... you can be a "checkbook" hot rodder, or a true do-it-yourselfer. But if you reach higher than your abilities, and try to mix checkbook hot rodding with do-it-yourself, be careful about getting in over your head!
 
WELCOME TO THE SITE

you sound like me back in about 1969, I built my first tube frame full roll cage big block camaro, I thought I knew what I was doing......long learning process later I had it running high 10 second times

ask questions ILL try to make the learning curve far easier
 
Hey! Welcome!

I'd love to see pics of your car as I'm contemplating stuffing a BBC in a Z, myself....thanks to Grumpy's convincing.
I'd also REALLY love to see some pics of the tubular chassis you're doing.

Sounds really cool!
 
Thanks for the welcome! Assuming that I've figured out the file-attachment protocol here, a couple of pictures should appear below or above. Several are hosted on HybridZ, but to see them, you'd have to join that forum. Eventually I'll set up a page on cardomain, yahoo or whatnot.

The tube-chassis route is not necessary to fit a BBC Chevy into the S30 Z; there are several examples of BBC Z's with essentially no chassis mods, other than pads for the engine mounts. Of course, there are the weight and balance issues, as well as those of structural strength. Aluminum heads etc. help with the weight distribution, but the "real" solution is firewall surgery. Mine is a semi-tube chassis, retaining most of the unibody, but with extensive reinforcements, some of which are visible in the pics. Inside the engine bay, the largest challenges are routing the headers between the "frame rails" and driver's-side header vs. steering column. Here again engine setback helps.

As for getting my car back on the road.... later this winter I'll have to select an ignition system. Coil-on-plug, wasted-spark and other crank-trigger systems are probably overkill for my application, but I do want an electronically-adjustable timing curve. Options, to the extent of my familiarity, are the MSD "digital E-curve" distributor, or the Crane version (see for example http://www.popularhotrodding.com/tech/0 ... index.html). The Crane looks better-built, but with coil and spark-box costs 2X the MSD. Then I'll need to worry whether my bottom-shelf Holley 750cfm 4160-type carb is a dead turkey.
 

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Heh. It's smilin' at me. :D

To save Grumpy some bandwidth, and to keep all your pics in one place, I'd sign up for a Photobucket account and just use [ img ] [ /img ] tags around your pic links though.

Again, welcome! Looks pretty cool!
 
Welcome and very cool project. There is no such thing as "over your head" just roll up your sleeves and get back in there. If you get stuck step back and figure it out. If you can't figure it out post up a question and we will all try.

That must've be scary to jump on :lol:
 
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Its a good idea if your a decent fabricator, and don,t mind being a bit creative, but a roll cage and wheelie bars might be a good idea,
http://ywnv.vidiac.com/recentvideos/7/8398a7ec-f655-4e70-9d11-99ab012eba03.htm
 
That's a really clean-looking Z BBC installation! Any specs on torque/hp/quarter-mile/overall weight?

Is the engine mounted to the frame rails, or to the steering crossmember? Though admittedly it is less important in practice than in idle speculation, there is the nagging worry of how the weight distribution would work out. On mine the distribution is pretty close to the vaunted (but not necessarily optimal!) 50/50, and a rough guess would be that the engine sits about 8" aft of what appears in the above photo. From my brief driving experiences, steering-effort and overall handling feel not too different from stock - until the gas pedal is depressed, of course....
 
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