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Concur 100%. In my experience across several states, Zs only have a chance at truly being competitive in FP. Other classes will have cars that we can't keep up with, if they show up. It's never fun to be the only car in your class and "win." Like all forms of racing, one must maximize class allowances to allow the driver a chance to compete. The S30 just isn't a platform for competition against a modern car. It is however that platform that connects driver to the road most directly. Our Zs are among the most exciting cars to autocross in terms of adrenaline for this reason. Racers with faster times get out of my Z hooting and hollering. I'm with Jon. I target competing against a few cars or drivers. I prefer to have a passenger than drive alone. Why hog the adrenaline? Get in! I pursue excitement. I feel like I win, because I'm driving my dream car since I was 17. And that's my best victory, really. FWIW.

As of about 15 minutes ago, I've ordered all of the parts I need including an r200 to install into my car! They should all arrive sometime during next week. This weekend I'm going to drop my diff out of my car and take it apart to see how much damage I've done. I'll be attempting to sell anything that is usable. After I take my diff out, I'm also going to replace the u-joints on my drive shaft, and inspect my Trans and Torque Converter for potential issues, since I'll have relatively easy access to them! I'll try to take pictures as I go.

I went to fabric shop bought some thin foam and black marine vinyl. You can take your old as a stencil and make it a bit bigger you have about half an to an ich where you can pinch it in. Mine came off my roof wasnt clean and used a weak adhesive.

Carbotech XP10's are great on the race Z, not hard on rotors either. I could buy pads like Project Mu's locally but instead go to the extra expense of importing the XP10's, good people to deal with too.

Calling the cage done, at least from the dash back. Also hit the tubes and welds with Scotchbrite so they are ready for primer.

Socorob: If you lowered the car with springs or Coil overs. Did you shorten the strut tubes? If not you are probably running out of suspension travel and hitting the bump stops. Common problem. Then you have to put Box Car springs in the thing to keep it off the bump stops. Not ideal.

yeah, getting aluminum honeycomb, or honeycomb in general, to lay nicely over complex compound curves is inherently a challenge. It has massive compression strength. Shear, not so much, like you mention. Depending on the complexity of the geometry, you can sometimes carefully scarf, and bevel, core to make them flex, bend, or conform better. Sometimes you must cut the core into many sections and lay them side by side, instead of one continuous piece. It definitely can be tricky. Getting resin within the combs themselves shouldn't happen, if you're using the proper materials that these were designed around. Prepregs. If you're using these types of cores, you should NOT be using hand layup. That defeats the purpose. Very much like a laminate that includes both chopped strand mat, and a carbon fiber skin. That is not a "carbon" laminate. That's mostly fiberglass and the carbon is doing very little, if anything, to the structure of the layup. You see virtually no weight savings over the "fiberglass" versions...and the carbon isn't even allowed to do its job... It's simply a more aesthetically pleasing cover, which there's nothing wrong with...just stop calling it a "carbon X". If you're using prepregs and honeycomb it is a breeze. The prepreg fabric only has enough catalyzed resin for itself, so you must use a sheet of "film adhesive" (a literal sheet of catalyzed resin) to join the fabrics to the core. The film adhesive is just enough resin to, in a perfect world, form a little meniscus over the top of each of the combs, holding a firm and uniform bond between the skin and core. If it is too resin rich, the laminate becomes heavier (like you said) and brittle. Resin rich comes from hand layup. In a perfect world, when you test the physicals of the laminate, the core itself will fail, and the skins will not delaminate. high density foams are a wonderful material, and work well in combination with honeycombs, but as you can see from even my brief touching on the topic...there is a lot of variability, and tailor-ability to composites....which is one of its greatest advantages. If you understand the materials, and how they are designed to be used, you can customize the laminate to do exactly what you want, where you want. Only robust in those areas that need it, or strong in a certain force, while others areas that don't need said requirements can be as lightweight as possible. I think the main reason behind most doors being metal is simply it's the best bang for the buck. It's wonderful at dispersing load, and provides good intrusion protection. You will absolutely see a weight savings with a carbon, cored, door over its metal counterpart - but doing so would add exorbitant cost and effort. As far as physical performance, the carbon door would be superior in virtually every way, but only if properly constructed. If not properly constructed, it could be devastating. I was extremely lucky to learn from, quite frankly, one of the Composites wold's leading authorities, Henry Elliot. Now a head consultant for the Oracle Team USA Americas Cup team. I oringinally had planned to make full carbon, FIA legal, composite doors while at school. When I told him about the project, he raised his eyebrows big time... Basically told me not to do it....he told me that the juice was not going to be worth the squeeze. "if ten pounds is what makes or breaks your race, you're on an entirely different level of skill.....Don't sacrifice safety for weight, that's not how composites are supposed to work." "don't sacrifice safety by chasing numbers." is essentially what he told me. If you aren't going into making doors with these thoughts in mind, you shouldn't be making doors. That's my humble opinion.

What I was thinking! Your working back wards, start with the EFI and go from there ! You can make decent power with a stock t3 and a NA to T l28 with a decent EFI system.

Never thought about it but it but it would work... I love how at the end he says "now you have seen how easy this is to do". That looks like 4 days worth of work for 4 corners.

Actually, it was the whole Tune that was just not very good. I did a Remote Tuning session with Brett and built him a new Tune from scratch . It's running fine now. There is a problem with noise on the Coolant sensor, but we are addressing that. Idle issue was actually due to very poor VE and Spark Maps. Large jumps between adjacent RPM and Kpa cells were one of the big issues. There is no Sync loss now with new Tune. Another happy Customer

Thanks for the replies the links will be a great help. jcb

^ Jim here was able to help me out, thanks all!

Trying to fix

jhm, Thank you for taking the time to reply, I will see id if they can help out.

Here's how my 4 pt roll bar was constructed.

His car is a series one, and yours is a non-US '78 260Z, so you should expect a bit more weight, all else equal. I read a post from John C once saying that an early 280Z chassis was 100lbs heavier than a late 240Z, and a late 280Z was 300lbs heavier than an early 240Z. Seems like a big difference for just a chassis (I believe that was the context) but that's the only info I've ever found. I have a '76 chassis and an early 71 chassis, and I'm hoping I can weigh the two while stripped down and compare. I don't know how the non US late models compare to the US models.

At Cars and Coffee, I found a nice spot for some pics...wish I had a higher end camera for some more picturesque photos like EF Ian's... But these are the best ones I've personally gotten so far I think, the spot and the lighting were just right...

Hey there! That's exciting to hear about the block and the hatch. The hatch has been growing on me, but I haven't put the stock hatch on it yet to compare! I had actually heard that about the TC rods, and was going to get the OEM rubber bushings for that! Scary stuff... And it totally looks like all the wiring in the car will have to be addressed at some point. Its functional for now, but not elegant by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not great w/ electrical stuff, so I'll likely be enlisting the help of others with that! I look forward to continuing this build! Thanks again for the info!

Owner of V3 sent me an update picture. Pretty freaking cool if you ask me. I checked the 3D model and tilted the amount they did the intake side of the water jacket is just below the outlet so hopefully there won't be any steam pocket issues. Snifff....I'm so proud:)

Ok, thank you all so much for your time and ideas. It turns out that I'm just a big idiot. I couldn't find whatever was smoking, almost took the dash off in my search. It took me a long time to even get to this point because I've been busy with school and work and the daylight just isn't what it is during the summer months (yet). ANYWAY. I get out the multimeter and do some more tests. I figure I'll try to make it smoke some more with the middle panel and vent panels out so I can see where it's coming from. This means I have to jump start it again, but I wanted to see how the voltage was doing before. OH, LOOK AT THAT, the battery is at 12.3 ish volts. THAT'S WEIRD. so I touch to the engine, yup, still 12.3, so the ground is good. Maybe I should actually test the positive connection. Hmm... would you look at that, it's only giving 3 volts. So I'm a big idiot. I take off the terminal and clean it (again! I swear to god, I brushed and cleaned very thoroughly when I changed the battery), notice there was some grease which came off. Don't know how it got on there. Starts right up when I reattach battery to terminal. I swear. to. god. I can't believe I'm so dumb. Drive it around the next day, it stopped again. Popped the hood, cleaned the terminals again, works again. WTF. I think it must be the anti-corrosion grease I bought which came with the felt pads when I got the battery. Never been an issue before, so idk why it seems like it's an insulator now. Fun story on the picture, before I cleaned the terminals off the second time, I found I could jump the car to itself using the battery which had a poor connection. Anyway, sorry for wasting everyone's time, but thought you deserved an update. TL;DR: OP is an idiot and didn't clean the grease off the positive terminal of the battery when installing. It was the battery's connection the whole time.

I have experienced the same. I used Firefox, currently up to date. V58.0 It appears to be a browser related issue. I was able to leave feedback (and see feedback) using IE 11.0.9600.........