Tricky-Ricky

If there was oil showing on the stick, you should be OK as long as you where not doing any really hard cornering, generally speaking manufactures allow a little leeway. If the pressure gauge, or light have shown very low or no oil pressure then your in trouble.

If your Z is an import you will need a reader that's capable of reading JOBD.

Although the std wheel nut tapers should in theory locate the wheel centrally, its most likely the lack of a central locater that's causing the slight misalignment and resulting wobble.

Should I therefore consider 4 wheel alignment? Are there further implications to the reliability aspect of the suspension set up under normal driving conditions? Getting the geometry sorted is never a bad thing, 15 and 20mm on std wheels is not going to have any great impact unless its also very low, which will put the geometry out in any case, nor will it have any great impact on wear, if however you then fit wheels that have a higher offset, you could then end up with a total track increase of well over 50mm which would impact both handling and wear.

One persons knocking is another persons tapping......... Its virtually impossible to draw a concrete conclusion from that sort of description. I would suspect its a coincidence, and the problem may be low oil level, check this first followed by oil pressure and go from there.

I love the way people can start denouncing things IE spacers, and then fit wider aftermarket wheels with higher offsets, which do exactly the same while its true that fitting wheels or spacers will place slightly more strain on the components, unless they are excessive, its not suddenly going to cause catastrophic failure. And if you do fit wheels or spacers you may need to adjust the alignment from the std settings in order to not get adverse affects, I have also fitted both to different cars in the past and had no terrible side effects, but then if your going to widen the track, you would of course re think the geometry........wouldn't you

The 11 on the end denotes the gap, so 11 = 1.1mm

Couldn't resist putting it together to see the final result, and I think I have succeeded in making a pretty mediocre looking gun look a bit more special............. am I pleased definitely!

Thanks! its my own design, pinched some design ques from other makes but essentially its just something I came up with to suit me.

Recently re took up Air Rifle target shooting after many years, glad to say I'm still a good shot, anyway bought myself a budget Gamo Coyote PCP rifle, its very accurate but a bit lacking in style, and the trigger is a stretch, so I bought myself a nice piece of American Ash hardwood and have made myself a new more interesting and comfortable stock, here are some pics of the progress so far, just at the oiling stage. PS that door needs a bottle beside it labeled " Drink Me"

Great idea, if I want to shoot in relative warmth during the winter I have to open the French door and shoot into the garden, just finishing off making a new stock for my PCP rifle, will post a pic if anyone is interested.

Good luck with the build, although I feel you may be ultimately disappointed for your expenditure, Two things to remember when N/A tuning, and as the proverbial "no replacement for displacement" has already been mentioned, The first is to treat the motor as nothing more than an air pump, the more air you can get in, the more power you get out, so static airflow is important, but ultimately dynamic airflow is the key, N/A engines rely on their pumping ability, and both cam design and compression play a major part, closely followed by intake and exhaust design . As you say there is little about valve and port design of the VQ, but I'm sure there is room for improvement. And IMO with the VQ the one big fall down is the plenum, obviously ITBs are king in this respect, but if your not worried about a bonnet bulge, I would get someone in the know to redesign the plenum/throttle body setup, backed up with flow testing, Next would be a set of "properly" designed headers. And don't forget if any one part of the "pump" that restricts flow will kill power. Cam lift, cam timing and duration are very important in making the best of an N/A engine as with the right setup they will aid cylinder filling, kind of like FI, and that will help power, and don't forget that you may also need uprated valve springs to run suitable cams. Finally is ECU tuning, get this wrong and all the hard work goes to waste.

Replied to this over on the Skyline forum.

Me too!

The throttle body is unlikely to cause any power loss, unless its not calibrated to the pedal box, try a reset/recalibration and see if that helps.

Do you have an engine damper fitted? or have you recently fitted a new exhaust system, could be something touching.

Do you have shares in Castrol? LOL! There is actually no difference at all in the oil viscosity's you have mentioned when it comes to running temp the 0 in front of the w30 simply refers to the cold viscosity, and once normal running temp is reached has no bearing whatsoever on hot viscosity, Cold viscosity does help with oil circulation, however the difference between 0W and 5W is negligible, and unless we had winter temps of below -30f there is no benefit in using 0W over 5W, even 10W will offer the same protection down to -15f, sounds a bit like you have been doing too much reading of the oil company blurb fella. Oh and semi synth is just fine for performance road use, if you do serious track work I would say use fully synth.

Plenty of info here.http://www.350z-uk.com/topic/89535-oil-catch-can/#entry1349925

I thought Ian was doing the build and conversion himself?

Interesting photos, I remember having a Che Guevara T shirt when I was a teenager lol! The Lightning and old Fordson tractor are very surreal, I always think of the film "Wrong Turn" when I see that pic of Billy the Kid, he looks decidedly hillbilly to me, maybe that's why he got his reputation.

Take it the Citizen's advice/trading standards, and tell Curry's that your doing so....I suspect they will soon change their minds.

Or no thermostat at all!

Compression tester here, http://www.ebay.co.u...tester&_sacat=0 To test first have a fully charged battery, remove all spark plugs, screw in the compression tester into each cylinder in turn, wedge or hold throttle plate fully open, and turn the engine over at least 6 revolutions, and the same for each cylinder, and note the readings, I will have a look for the factory readings for you. A compression test will not always reveal worn oil control rings, but a leak down test will give a much better view of what the problem is, but due to needing a compressor to conduct a leak down test, I would advise taking to a decent garage for this. PS what oil grade are you using?

The PCV system consist of the low throttle/load breather which is on the left cam cover which goes to the plenum via a one way valve, which by the way is the one that sucks the most oil vapor into the engine. The second part is the high load breather which goes from the right hand cam cover to the intake pipework just before the throttle. Its unlikely to cause server oil consumption, unless there is bad ring seal, which will if server cause crankcase pressure and force oil vapor to the intake. So if the low throttle side one way valve has failed its unlikely to cause bad oil consumption on its own, Do you by any chance have a rev up motor? I would run a compression and leak down test if the oil use is excessive.