Kingman

Yeah, any news yet??

That's nice.

Find some 13:1 Electromotive pistons.

What's sad is tons of those dumb tree huggin' city lovin' yuppies are pumped for this thing to come out. It's ridiculous.

Uh yeah, the codes. That's what check engine lights are for. You do know almost every auto parts store does free code checks right?

Meh, it doesn't do much power-wise. Shifted the torque curve down slightly but the major point of it is to separate upper and lower intake manifold temperatures to cut down on the heat soak on turbo cars. They're made by my buddy up North, sold through ASCO. http://allthingsz.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_12_24&products_id=34&zenid=j5voh11kufq135tg8k6fh40tc6

Adjustable cam gears are becoming pretty common on VGs now. I put a set on my Z with stock cams and what a difference it made in the top end. Low-end was just as punchy. On the dyno the torque curve far surpassed the 4,500RPM mark unlike stock and flowed to almost 5,900RPM again unlike stock. With accompanying mods I'll bet there would be even more gain, such as a gutted plenum. Oh, and the dyno showed more power. More and consistent power too with the plenum spacer.

Boohoo. Started ripping the interior out to rewire my speakers and amp.

Though I've never had an issue with the starter not turning over, I did have a 3.2V drop where the ground cable from the battery meets the ground cable going to the block on the fender well (next to the power steering reservoir). Just goes to show what corrosion and grime can do! Next time it doesn't crank, hit the starter with a hammer preferably on the solenoid if you can. If it cranks right over there's your problem.

Give it a try, it would be weird as hell if that was what is causing the issue. Like I said earlier they usually just fail and the engine won't run at all, or do what James' rig did and intermittently not run. I've had one fail while sitting on the shelf, it worked when I pulled it out but not when it went back in. Good luck man.

Well if it's turning over it's not 180 out... but backfiring through the intake usually means the timing is off. How far did the rotor spin when you dropped the distributor in? If it spins too much it'll be a tooth off and cause the issue you're having right now. What you can do is take it back out and turn the rotor until it's almost facing directly left and then drop it in. Sometimes that's enough to line everything up just right. Are you sure you have the plug wires on correctly? Most wires are labeled as well as the cap so it's kind of hard to mess up.

The distributor gear does rotate a little as it meshes with the cam gear. Um, what do you mean by sounds a little violent?

Clockwise. Stick a pencil down there so you can see when the piston goes up, just don't let it bind and break in there.

No. Use the crank pulley bolt.

Clean off the crank pulley so you can see the timing belt marks and remove the NO. 1 spark plug (left front if you're looking at the engine). Align the furthest left timing mark on the crank pulley with the arrow and check to see if the piston is all the way up or down. If it's down, spin the engine over one more time until the piston is up top. This is TDC. Arrow. Dot.

Started replacing the ball joints, I'll finish them later...

Take it back out, line the dot on the gear up with the arrow on the shaft, hold the rotor in place and slide it in when the engine is at TDC. The rotor will point to the left and at a slight angle towards the front of the truck when it's in properly.

The distributor being off a tooth...

Looks like ass, the truck I pulled it out of had a spray painted black interior. Need to find some close matching blue paint and rhino line the outer trim piece but it's there. A CB will probably go there later on.

I had to run mine without a power steering pump for a month or two, no noticeable damage or more play than there was before. With how many miles are on it it would be impossible to tell if any damage down the road is from lack of pressure or not. Any good repair shop will more than likely replace the entire power steering system if one part fails because of this kind of crap happening. It might be worth it to stick a filter in the system to catch any extra debris that may be floating around in there so it doesn't make it to the new box.

Almost always when the CAS goes bad the engine won't run. The sensor simply fails outright and you get nothing - no injector pulse or spark.

I think a lot of the availability issue is because the VG33 vehicles are newer and haven't had as much time to hit the junkyards, unlike the Z31s, 200SXs, Pathfinders, Hardbodies, older vans, Maximas, etc. Sometimes there's zero VG33s on Craigslist and the next day there will be four wrecked caR50s or Xterras. But yeah, finding a good motor for $150-250 is pretty easy if you hold your tongue right. Hell there's a 17K mile VQ40 on Craigslist from an '07 Pathfinder. Says the engine was damaged but they only want $300 for it.

Very true on the price point and availability. But to find an M30 cheap, for me, is to find one with a blown engine. The reason the VG33s only puts out a little more power stock is because of the piss poor cams they have. The VG33 OWO heads themselves are much better designed than the A/B and W-series VG30 heads and flow more, but again the cams are the downfall. That's why you run the VG30 cams with the VG33... so you get the much better torque curve (what you would want in a car) along with the added power from displacement, freer flowing heads, and better cams. Cams make a big difference, you can't blame the whole entire engine for having the wrong power curve when it's only two parts that change the entire game.

Well you gotta do what you gotta do, but have you tried the for sale section here or posting a wanted ad? Lots of newly lifted R50s lately...