How stout is the engine / transmission?

[justjuiceit44]

I was wondering how stout the J30 engine was? Does it come with forged rods and crankshaft? Also, what are the horsepower limits of the stock transmission with a good transmission cooler? This car has the potential to be the ultimate sleeper.....

[gr8scott72]

I was wondering how stout the J30 engine was? Does it come with forged rods and crankshaft? Also, what are the horsepower limits of the stock transmission with a good transmission cooler? This car has the potential to be the ultimate sleeper.....

Rods and crank? What about the pistons? I think that would be more important for high hp.

A few on here have swapped engines to the 300zx TT engine. One that did the swap has gone thru several trannies. Search a little, the threads will come up.

Oh, I hope your pockets are deep and you like long, involved projects.

[justjuiceit4]

Well the Nissan 240SX comes with non-forged pistons and they can easily handle double the factory horsepower. I am not planning to make some sub-10 second vehicle, just something that could slightly beat a "sports car" if they do not know how to drive....which is a large majority of them!

Well I am very budget minded person! I had a 1998 Nissan Sentra and got it into the 13s quarter mile time for less than $300. It was fast enough to beat a lot of Mustangs, Camaros and my roomate's 6-speed Vette!

[NismoChi]

WoW, i'm a budget minded person, too. Can you tell us your secret, how to spend only $300 to bring a 16s+ 3500lbs car to a 13s beast. Consider a stock 200sx se-r of the same year ( same engine 140hp, transmission, but lighter 2600lbs, 900lbs less) did a 16.1s 1/4 miles, and a stock 2004 Honda s2000 ( 240hp, rwd, 2800lbs, 700lbs less) can't even break into the 13s.

[gr8scott72]

WoW, i'm a budget minded person, too. Can you tell us your secret, how to spend only $300 to bring a 16s+ 3500lbs car to a 13s beast. Consider a stock 200sx se-r of the same year ( same engine 140hp, transmission, but lighter 2600lbs, 900lbs less) did a 16.1s 1/4 miles, and a stock 2004 Honda s2000 ( 240hp, rwd, 2800lbs, 700lbs less) can't even break into the 13s.

Like this maybe?:

http://www.daleholley.com/nissan.htm

[brandonjustice93J30]

LMAO....wow

that's all I can say

[NismoChi]

Even that "thing" didn't break into the 13s.

[gr8scott72]

Even that "thing" didn't break into the 13s.

Nope, not even with the SR engine.

Of corse, they did have crappy 60' times and could've been in the 13s with better 60' times.

[brandonjustice93J30]

even the SE only had this:

Horsepower 140 @ 6400 RPMTorque (lb-ft) 132 @ 4800 RPM Transmission Five-speed manualCurb Weight 2622 poundsCoefficient of Drag (Cd.) 0.330-60 MPH 8.5 seconds1/4 Mile (E.T.) 16.5 seconds @ 84.5 mphTop speed 105 mph

http://www.stealth316.com/2-calc-hp-et-mph.htm



you can see by the calculations that the 1/4 mile times listed stock only place about 114 hp at the wheels.

he would need a minimum of 287hp at the wheels to be close to 13sec at that weight and if he can over double his HP for $300...sign me up so I can ger over 420hp in my J. lmao

and

100lbs. in mass is worth .1 seconds.

[yodawill2000]

sentra beating a vette ??hehe

Daddy always told me .Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see.

That saying has done me well.

Please elaborate how you accomplished this feat.100 shot of Nitrous ?? Nuk Nuk

[brandonjustice93J30]

I'm thinking at least 150 - 200 shot...since the calculations showed he'd need nearly 300hp at stock weight to accomplish 13sec. lol

And if he got a used "nawz" set*chuckle* ..then maybe for under $300 he hit 13sec...for about 3 runs until the pistons melted....

[gr8scott72]

sentra beating a vette ??hehe

Daddy always told me .Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see.

That saying has done me well.

Please elaborate how you accomplished this feat.100 shot of Nitrous ?? Nuk Nuk

I have seen many fast sentras but they had MUCH more than $300 thrown at them.

[justjuiceit4]

Wow, I am suprised by the responses to my post, there is a lot of information that I have to go over!The car was a Nissan Sentra SE, I have the exact weight of the car for a project I did for my chassis design class, I think it was around 2600 lbs. When I ran it at the strip I took out the spare, jack, etc and typically ran a 1/4 tank of gas. Now as you may know that the SE did not come with a viscous limited slip differential, which made this car a horrible autocrosser, but not so bad at drag racing. Believe or not, both tires would spin pretty equally when pointed completely straight. I was very fortunate to run at a track where I could make 20-30 runs on any given day. On a very cold day (about 40 degrees), I had an awesome launch and ran 15.4@90mph with 2.1xx 60 foot time. This was with the stock tires! I have a theory that the limited slip differential actually increases drivetrain loses and it is possible to run faster quarter mile times with an open differential, as long as both tires spin equally. I have seen this before with a rental corolla.....stock it couldn't even break the tires free in mud! With a 20hp shot of nitrous it left two equal patches of rubber over 50 feet.Well, several years ago I got a dry nitrous kit from Compucar for a little under $300. It came with jets for 20, 60, 80, and 100 hp. I tried the 20hp and got excellent resutls. I had an adjustable fuel pressure regulator from my former RX-7, put it on and bumped up the fuel pressure for the larger shots. I tried the 60hp shot, but this was too much for clutch. I then took a 40hp and drilled it to a size between the 40 and 60 hp shot. My 60 foots stayed about the same due to a decrease in initial timing. I finally got to try out the 50 shot and ran against my buddies Vette. Now I wish people could read better, because I said I got into the 13s not a 13 flat! A huge difference! Anyway, I ran a 13.9xx@ 103mph and my roomate was a couple thousandths slower...so yes I beat him, if not barely! So yes a Sentra can beat a Vette, due to lack of driving skills or GM's horrible quality control.....one Vette from the same year model could run 12.9 or a 14.9!FYI, the clutch was near the limit of the power it could handle at this point, due to the weak pressure plate, but I still made several low 14 second passes after that one. Also, I have made probably about 30 passes on nitrous with no problems and the car still gets well over 30mpg to boot! (not when on nitrous!)
Modified by justjuiceit4 at 11:02 PM 1/26/2008

[justjuiceit4]

I do not know why everbody was laughing at nitrous?! Most Nissans, 240SX, Sentra, Maxima, etc have more than enough power for day to day driving........nitrous is perfect for going to the strip or embarrasing that F-body or Mustang next to you at the stop light (I do not endorse street racing, however I do not object anybody accelerating as fast as they can to the posted speed limit!)

[NismoChi]

A 50hp shot of nitrous can turn a 16s+ 1/4 mile car into a 13s+ car, you've got to sell me some of those. Do you take money order or paypal?

[brandonjustice93J30]

yeah in that case...if a 50hp shot takes care of 3 seconds...then with that thinking.. a 100 shot can take 6 off of our J's and we'll be in the 9's

wait..ooooh a 200 shot will remove 12 seconds...we'll all have 4 second 1/4 cars for about $700...sign me up

again I go back to my calculations that it would take nearly 300 hp at the wheels to get a 2600 lb car to 13s...and even high 13's would need about 250whp. which is a 140hp diff from stock.

[justjuiceit4]

A 50hp shot of nitrous can turn a 16s+ 1/4 mile car into a 13s+ car, you've got to sell me some of those. Do you take money order or paypal?

Well actually the car was a mid-15 second car to begine with. Actually I really have considered starting my own nitrous company, since it seems so "magical" to most people!

[gr8scott72]

yeah in that case...if a 50hp shot takes care of 3 seconds...then with that thinking.. a 100 shot can take 6 off of our J's and we'll be in the 9's

wait..ooooh a 200 shot will remove 12 seconds...we'll all have 4 second 1/4 cars for about $700...sign me up

again I go back to my calculations that it would take nearly 300 hp at the wheels to get a 2600 lb car to 13s...and even high 13's would need about 250whp. which is a 140hp diff from stock.

Easy killer.

I have run a 13.9 in my VW golf with the 1.8 turbo and that is front wheel drive and weighs more than the 240sx. I had chip, downpipe, wider street tires and that was about it. That probably put it around 190 hp to the wheels but it had huge torque numbers. Torque was probably around 240 -250 at the wheels.

The nitrous shot very likely was adding more hp than the shot # indicated. The 50 shot could've been more like 80 hp added.

[gr8scott72]

oh, and by your very own formula, you would only need 214 hp to get 2600 lbs to do a 13.99 1/4 mile

[justjuiceit4]

yeah in that case...if a 50hp shot takes care of 3 seconds...then with that thinking.. a 100 shot can take 6 off of our J's and we'll be in the 9's

wait..ooooh a 200 shot will remove 12 seconds...we'll all have 4 second 1/4 cars for about $700...sign me up

again I go back to my calculations that it would take nearly 300 hp at the wheels to get a 2600 lb car to 13s...and even high 13's would need about 250whp. which is a 140hp diff from stock.

Well I did not realize that I was dealing with some people who can do simple math! The 50hp shot took off approximately 1.5 seconds off my best stock run. I got a lot of flack from another site saying it was impossible to run mid-15s with a stock car.....if you have the oppurtuntity to run it over 100 times at the track, you can really experiment with a lot of different launch techniques and tire pressures. The non-ignorant person whould have noticed that my launch was extremely good and better than most stock F-bodies.You can do all the calculations that you want, but the proof is in the pudding. I hate when people plug in a few calculations and do not actually race or for that matter use nitrous. The 50hp shot may have added 60hp(due to a special installation) and 75 ft/lbs of torque or more (I did not mention how much torque it added). Your calculations are flawed because it does take into account the torque produced by the engine or the rpm that the torque/hp peaks occur. With nitrous the power is instantly there which can be more effective than say 60hp on a turbocharger or supercharger. Sure an older Civic SI had 160 hp, more than my 140 from the Sentra, but they only had 111 ft/lb of torque compared to 132 from the Sentra, hence why I was able to beat them at a street race.Hypothetically, if I was putting another 140hp to the wheels, I seriously doubt an adjutable fuel pressure regulator would provide enough pressure double the fuel pressure.
Modified by justjuiceit4 at 1:43 PM 1/27/2008

[brandonjustice93J30]

I am being easy...geesh..lol

and in his defense he didnt say 13.00 or 13.99 ..so..relaxing a bit on that maybe it's possible for the 13.99. if his shot was off from what he was thinking and under descent conditions. (cool air, sticky tires, good 60's)

The car according to factory specs was in the 16's...his baseline may have been different but my 3 seconds off were from factory specs. So my math from factory specs was fine. A non-ignorant person also overlooked the 60' time. So my bad.

My calculations were from a website that also did live run testing to back their calcs. there was a .10-.20 margin of error. But then again though like yodawill said: Daddy always told me .Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see.

So yes, those calcs could be wrong and didnt take other factors into consideration.

A lot of us may not run nitrous or anything on our cars, but that doesnt make our opinions any less than someone elses. The ones of us giving you flak about your numbers questions it because many cars double the price of a sentra at the least would take more than $300 to drop into 13's. Of course most of us were thinking NIB parts as well, not used.

And I'm sure your VW took more than $300 as well scott.

[justjuiceit4]

WoW, i'm a budget minded person, too. Can you tell us your secret, how to spend only $300 to bring a 16s+ 3500lbs car to a 13s beast. Consider a stock 200sx se-r of the same year ( same engine 140hp, transmission, but lighter 2600lbs, 900lbs less) did a 16.1s 1/4 miles, and a stock 2004 Honda s2000 ( 240hp, rwd, 2800lbs, 700lbs less) can't even break into the 13s.

First of all the Sentra SE weighed around 2600 lbs. and mine ran a 15.4. Yes it is possible to get better quarter mile times than what magazines report, they have to run stock tire pressure, full tank of gas and equpment, etc. They also do not have the luxury of running close to sea level on a cold day either. The S2000 sucks for drag racing because of the extremely high hp and torque peaks. The older S2000 only had 153 ft lb fo torque; a regular 1991 240SX has more torque than that!

[justjuiceit4]

I am being easy...geesh..lol

and in his defense he didnt say 13.00 or 13.99 ..so..relaxing a bit on that maybe it's possible for the 13.99. if his shot was off from what he was thinking and under descent conditions. (cool air, sticky tires, good 60's)

The car according to factory specs was in the 16's...his baseline may have been different but my 3 seconds off were from factory specs. So my math from factory specs was fine. A non-ignorant person also overlooked the 60' time. So my bad.

My calculations were from a website that also did live run testing to back their calcs. there was a .10-.20 margin of error. But then again though like yodawill said: Daddy always told me .Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see.

So yes, those calcs could be wrong and didnt take other factors into consideration.

A lot of us may not run nitrous or anything on our cars, but that doesnt make our opinions any less than someone elses. The ones of us giving you flak about your numbers questions it because many cars double the price of a sentra at the least would take more than $300 to drop into 13's. Of course most of us were thinking NIB parts as well, not used.

And I'm sure your VW took more than $300 as well scott.

Well the nitrous kit I bought was around $290 something brand new (its only a dry kit, so it did not include the fuel solenoid and plumbing), I used school's tax exemption, so no tax! Grant it that I did use my previous purchased fuel pressure regulator, one could easily do this set-up for under $300 with used parts.

My whole purpose of this thread was to see if the J30 has the potential for this type of performance...... My Sentra was quite a sleeper and that is the look I am going for. The beauty of my nitrous kit was I could hook up the system in less than 5 minutes and the bottle was hidden in a gym bag! hahah

[gr8scott72]

And I'm sure your VW took more than $300 as well scott.

Not much.

Used chip was about $300 and used downpipe was about $150. (Was a y-cutout pipe with butterfly valve that opened to straight dump the exhaust. Nasty sounding. )

The tires I had to have anyways so I wouldn't even count the cost on those.

[brandonjustice93J30]

With a swap it has potential....but transmission is your weak point as noted previously. leaving it n/a you're limited due to clearances and things engineered in the ZX chassis that are different on the J. The 300Z and J may share the same engine, but not the same compartment. There's a post about a chip for the J. Drape from here works on that, it's $39 plus s/h and you'll need some surface mount soldering skills to add the socket. NOS and cams and such you could treat the same as a 300Z, the only thing I've heard that wont fit are headers due to steering box clearances.

But if you were going to go with a nos kit on the J, I'd at least want a wet kit for added safety.

I've heard an interesting thing too with the VG30DE engines with that they have an oil injector to cool the pistons. I cant remember where I saw that or if it was one of those things I saw in a dream and thought I saw it online.

[brandonjustice93J30]

That's not bad.I've never really trusted used performance parts though....but if you know they werent abused. Then it would be ok.

[justjuiceit4]

Does the J30 use the same transmission as the 240SX? Is there a difference between the twin-turbo and non- turbo 300ZX automatic transmissions? It seems to me that an abused transmission, nuetral drops, long burn-outs, small cooler will fail no matter how strong the transmission is. I was wondering if you ran a massive transmission oil cooler and kept the temps down if the transmission would handle some extra hp or if clutch packs from the factory as just weak?

I am not a big fan of wet kits for nitrous. The number one reason people have bad experiences with nitrous is because defective fuel solenoids. In fact, I recently purchased a cheap nitrous kit off ebay for my go-kart. The nitrous solenoid worked fine, the fuel didn't! Also, unless you are using direct port, you will not get very good distribution.

I am guessing that the turbo engine in the 300ZX has the piston oil squirter, not the non-turbo one.

[brandonjustice93J30]

I found the site I read about it:

**The VG30DE block is far better suited for built internals due to the piston oil squirters centering the oil spray and not shooting it off center like the TT blocks (for piston crown cooling the TT pistons have a oil passage in the bottom of the piston that the oil squirter is aimed at and would cause hotspots on aftermarket pistons, other than that they are identical)**http://www.cardomain.com/ride/611217/2

I was thinking more of a computerized system where it checks the solenoids, etc, prior to injection...but more price involved. $699 + S/Hhttp://www.importperformance.c....htmlit comes with the complete kit for 25, 50, 75, 100 shots, computer module, etc...I actually thought about that setup about 3 years ago when it was still around $1200

and here's the transmission difference post:zerothread/294871

[justjuiceit4]

I did a bit more research and it seems that transmission in the J30 and N/A 300ZX is only rated for 225 ft/lb., while the turbo Z and Q45 were rated for 300 ft/lb. Supercharged GM cars such as the Grand Prix all have transmissions that run right at their torque limit at the factory, but I have seen several run above the power with coolers with not too many problems, but they do eventually have to get the transmission beefed up when they exceed the power by more than 100hp. I think a newly rebuilt or fresher transmission with an additional large cooler could handle a 75hp shot of nitrous for a few quarter mile blasts.My greatest concern with the J30 is the lack of aftermarket for struts/shocks.... At $880 for the deluxe kit, this is no longer a budget sleeper! However, there are a good amount of them in the salvage yards around here....

[brandonjustice93J30]

sleeper yes....but definately not a budget sleeper....

actually it's not a budget car by any means even as a daily driver if you expect it to last long and keep up on every maintenance item. (Ex: OEM plugs are about $10 each)

Q45 Tech can tell you average maintenance costs.

And my insurance is higher for this car than it would be for an 00 I30t, 99, Volvo S80 turbo, and a few other newer than 1993 cars.

Most of the guys that have dropped the TT have spent thousands of dollars. True you could start with a different car and get better performace on an budget, but there's nothing like whooping a true sports car with 4-doors and carseats for the kids in the backseat. Such a priceless look even with mine stock against an older Z28.