nickz32

After many hours research and consulting OCS, I decided to try something somewhat new with my piston rings. I have decided to run Total Seal Gapless pistons rings. The setup includes a gapless top ring, with conventional second and oil control rings. To my knowledge I’m the only person in the UK to be running gapless rings on a VG30, but I know of at least one other in the states that have shown very positive results. The term gapless is a bit of a misnomer. It’s a 2 piece ring, with their individual ring gaps rotated 180 degrees from each other, effectively making the area around the ring gapless. The positives include virtually 0 blowby (so a 0-1% leakdown vs 5% on a conventional ring), increased vacuum and reduced oil fuel dilution. The other benefit is you can run a larger ring gap on the 2 pieces, allowing the a wider margin for thermal expansion without the downside of increased blow by The only real downside that I can see is the cost, at around 30% more than a CP Piston ring pack. Hopefully this will help with slightly improving my idle vacuum (due to my cam profile) and a generally more efficient engine.

Also spent a bit of time with the burrs to clear out the casting debris and stress risers from around the bottom of the block around the crank journals. This casting debris is from the imperfect casting mould that leave small sections of iron/sand mix still attached to the main casting. In certain situations, harmonics can release bits of this debris which then has the potential to destroy the bearings, an engine, by being circulated by the oil system. Stress risers are similar. They’re very fine ridges in the casting that can form a weak point. Simple remedy is grind them back flush.

Well I got my block back from OCS last week and have started on the block prep for deep clean and assembly first job was to clear the excessive casting flash in the centre coolant channel and smooth the entry point out. Out came the long shank tungsten carbide burrs. A small but positive improvement

Nice to see all those upgrades make it onto the car, congrats!

Happy to say work on my engine block is now finished! Billet main caps were found to be up to 4 thou out of round. This time they have been machined using the ARP’s that will be used during assembly (unlike last time by EPR!) Cylinders were rebored to suit my 88mm CP pistons and cross hatching angle, depth and surface finish all set up for the Total Seal gapless piston ring pack I have chosen to use. I think I’ll be the first person on the UK to use Total Seal’s gapless piston rings on a VG30, so I’m looking forward to seeing if the live up to the hype

245 on an 8J will look like a balloon on a 8j….. an 8J is only 204mm wide The tyres you currently have a 2% smaller in diameter and circumference that the OEM wheel/tyre combo Personally would be looking at a 225/45r17. Plenty of very nice tyre options and only 0.4% different diameter from OEM size

If I’ve built and installed my engine by then (which I bloody hope I have!) I’ll be there

First purchase for the Z in a looooong time. I thought while the engines out, I may was well replace the steering column bushing with a @gktech_official solid bushing. More new parts arriving soon!

Happy to say my billet mains were salvageable and have been remachined to the correct size, and believe it or not, round! Dropped off my torque plate on Friday so the cylinders can be rebored and honed and block deck can be resurfaced. Happy that things are now actually progressing

After a bit of a delay due to work commitments, I’ve finally dropped my block off at OCS engineering to rework a donor block I sourced from Banzai Breaker a few years ago. They’re confident they can make the needed adjustments to make sure the billet main caps fit properly and the correct size! Can’t imagine it’ll be done this side of Xmas, but at least I’ve finally made a start!

Welcome back mate! seems to be a bit of an influx of OG members making a comeback, love it! Do you know what area the car was in when it was potentially broken for parts?

That looks like just a cover plate over the speedo, you should be able to remove it. The cut out at the bottom part of the Speedo is for earlier model Z’s that had a boost gauge there (that 1995’s don’t have). I’d certainly investigate how that cover has been attached and see if it’s removable

What’s actually wrong with your clocks? Because the speedo converter is wired into the input wires for the Speedo…. If it’s just the converter, there’s no need to change the clocks

Not really sure why you’ve jumped on a 24 YEAR old thread instead of starting a new one relevant to your issues

I had the same many moons back, ended up standing next to him as he went through the options on the machine, turned out he didn’t read the options properly and put it down as a post Aug 95 car rather than a pre Aug 95 car…. He wasn’t a fan of being corrected 😂