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mustard-z

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  1. Yeah, it seems that there are quite a few people who use the SLC. His latest version has many of the features of the iDash but in a more compact package. We really didn't need or want a digital readout because it's not terribly useful for tuning, at least in our thinking of things. For us, having speed, rpm, vacuum, fuel pressure, egt, afr all logged together is much more useful for tuning a car. We did think for a while that the LC1 could be a good way to go, but there was just no real cost effective way to get datalogging onboard the car without spending a load of money with innovate products. Plus, i saw many reviews that indicated that innovates products may be temperamental. I think we made the right choice for us and I hope he is able to sell more of those products and continue the support for it as we have thought of many grand plans to incorporate other features into our logging plans.
  2. Just got the car running again after replacing the oil pan and adding the iDash. This is the first log out our iDash. It clearly shows our mixture ratio is too rich for our altitude at idle which is OK because we tuned our car for near sea-level conditions in Medford, OR. There are several other tuning nuances which we discovered with the wideband O2 sensor, when we get back down there next weekend we'll see how we accurately tuned the car without the wideband O2 sensor. Super excited to see some more results from this logger, as well as add the additional channels for oil pressure, egt, map, accelerometers and stuff.
  3. Here's some of the sensor wiring that we pulled into the engine bay. These wires will send RPM, Manifold pressure, Coolant Temp, and Oil Pressure to the iDash We chose to mount the iDash between the seats to keep it away from the heat/dust/dirt. I taped a few of the unused connections so that they wouldn't get filled with dust/dirt if we made an off track excursion. Here's a picture of our dash layout with the autometer gauges that we are still going to use. iDash interface on my Mac during testing.... Overall picture of the car during this and other mods recently, after I went off track an put a hole in the oil pan.
  4. We recently completed modifications to install an ’84 Corvette rear suspension assembly into our autocross 280z which was necessary due to the fact that we kept breaking Subaru LSD R160 units with the Chevy 350 V8 we installed a year or so ago. Consequently, the car has been pretty stable since this upgrade and has left us with the troublesome problem of “driving†the car and enjoying the power and maneuverability! Due to some minor fueling issues and the never-ending quest for more power we decided to get on the hunt for a wideband O2 sensor so that we can more accurately see what is going on with the engine during actual driving conditions and not just throttle rev’s in the shop or hot-rodding it on local roads. Our particular quest was to find a unit which was simple to integrate into our car and had the expandability for logging additional inputs from the engine and other things. We spent a fair amount of time researching and just happened on a product called “iDash†This product, for us was the pinnacle of what we had been searching for and blew us away with the feature-set. The system is developed by a company called 14point7 and you can find more information about it at http://www.14point7.com Essentially, what you get in the “iDash†is a wideband controller with added abilities to log all the necessary vital engine parameters for both naturally aspirated engines as well as turbo/supercharged ones. It included built-in accelerometers,and a webserver. This thing uses the latest html and flash to provide the dashboard for all your logging inputs. If this hasn’t quite peeked your interest, the product comes with an included wireless router so that you can access this dashboard and download logs WIRELESSLY! Many will probably look at www.14point7.com and say, man that looks great but how many have been sold is it a stable product? Well I can’t for sure either since we’ve only had it for a few weeks, but we did talk with the developer Alan and he took over an hour to personally demonstrate the product to us over the internet so we could see how it worked. In fact, after we placed the order it was in the mail the same day. He is located in Canada so delivery took about 1.5 weeks to our door but he’s very responsive to email and has been very helpful during the install. Moving on to the install, given our simple wiring necessary for a race car, implementation was rather simple in our case. All the harnesses you need to wire it into your car come in the kit and only 4 wires tie it into the vehicle electrical system, (2) 12vdc switched power connections and (2) ground wires. Installation took us a few hours to pull apart the dash and add the wires and wire sheathing. Since we had already been messing around with a narrowband O2 sensor for tuning, installation of the new wideband unit was quick and simple. The iDash comes with an O2 sensor bung if you are installing for the first time. Some quick points on the configuration of the unit, testing the wireless functionality prior to final install is recommended and worth it. It allows you to play around with the software and see how things work before you commit to the final install. Important to note that installing the iDash as close to perfectly level is important for accurate acceleration feedback. It’s also important to configure the accelerometers before you bolt it in permanently as they are not configured, at least in our case. It’s a simple process, best done with a laptop and a digital level. We kept getting stymied by the pop-up windows that are used on the webpage for calibrations and other functions. We normally used Google Chrome for manipulating the iDash, as Alan said that the best experience would be using Chrome, but for some reason we couldn’t get the pop-ups to be enabled through Chrome for calibrations so we used Safari instead, which worked great. I’d definitely suggest making your order WITH the auxiliary sensor kit as existing sensors can’t be used due to resistive type outputs, additionally, if ordered at the time of the iDash you get a break on them which softens the financial blow for filling up all those logging inputs. For around $500 we are logging what it would have cost us we figure close to $1000 using other products on the market and the iDash has a much more future-proof design in our book with expandability built-in. If you try out all the competitor’s software you’ll find it a bit glitchy and that it looks like it was designed for Windows 95. The iDash by comparison works pretty intuitively and smoothly and is much more convenient to download logs via wireless than always have to carry a cable and laptop, now this can all be done by smartphone. I'll add a few pictures of the install and of the logging page in a subsequent post. Overall, if you are interested in some "out of the box" functionality I suggest you at least give a look into the iDash. Just to let you people know if they were wondering, i'm not affiliated with 14point7, just a happy customer looking forward to using this thing and promoting what I think is the most innovative product on the market for this stuff.
  5. My dad and I co-drive an XP autocross 78 280z at local events and run wide hoosier slicks which are pretty soft, 22.5x9.5x15 R35 compound on the front of our car. The car has a SBC with iron heads/waterpump, etc but aluminum air gap intake and the engine is mounted on JTR mounts and is attached to a T56 tranny connected to 84 corvette rear suspension. We have standard steering knuckles on the front with GC coilovers and 325lb springs. We've got home built tubular front swing arms using heim joints to relieve suspension stiction. The car drives well and is very fast, the suspension transitions quickly but the steering lags behind leaving it tough to navigate full offset gates or "esses" at speeds of about 35-45mph and with the offsets distanced about 30-40 feet apart. Larger sweeping turns are OK and even tight turns seem OK provided there aren't large steering movements just prior to the turn. We used info from this post to help us in our endeavor: LT1 w/ Subi rack Our installation generally follows that link but uses an 87 Subaru Legacy rack AND pump, as we figured a matched set would be better than mix and match. We modified our crossmember to lower it to reduce bump steer. We made our own mounts to hold the pump appropriately and hydraulic flex lines to connect the two. We are using the proper fluid at the proper levels and don't notice any odd noises coming from the system. The feeling of the steering on these quick transition turns feels like it "lags". Another way to state it is that the steering wheel force is quite variable, all the way from what it felt like with 225 DOT slicks on with manual steering to a fully power steered car with no problems using these wider soft slicks. Driving it in the pits is no problem and you can maneuver the car with ease. We're at a loss for what causes this problem other that some parts may be worn out with the pump/rack. It seems to us something like a pressure relief valve isn't opening soon enough causing the steering force to get real hard in the direction you are trying to reverse your steering input! Is this possible? Any info would be helpful, hoping that we could change a spring in the rack or change the pump and maybe that fixes it. Thanks for any help, Aren
  6. I'm not in LA but Bend, OR and have the V6 toyota calipers and rotors on a 78Z with 15" Diamond Racing wheels and would be willing to test fit them for you. Aren
  7. Thanks for the info. Generally our car turns in just fine and is very responsive. So our thinking is that we would like to maintain the current handling characteristics but generally improve things where we can. We have the most problems putting power down so making the rearend adjustable would be a good plan. It sounds like moving the inner pivot of the front suspension up a bit will help both raise the roll center and help minimize the bump steer. On the rear of the car, I think the C4 rearend can be mounted to allow for roll center adjustment and definately the dog bones can be mounted to allow adjustment in anti-squat. Cary, do you have contact information or can you put me in contact with Dave or Sonny so that I can talk more with them? there is some reservation that the DANA36 that we have won't be strong enough for the power we are making, something like 300-350tq. Although, our car is lighter than a vette so maybe we will be OK.
  8. We've been preparing to transplant a '85 C4 vette rear suspension into our autox/track 280z. We've leveled the car and measured all suspension pivots for the front and rear suspension links to determine what roll centers the car currently has based on the book "How to make your car handle" by Fred Puhn. Currently, the car has an AZC type chromoly tubular/heim joint suspension along with ground control camber plates and coilovers with 300# springs and an 1-1/8 suspension techniques swaybar. The rear has the same camber plates and coilovers but with 325# springs and no swaybar installed, and ajustable eccentric camber bushings on the inner control arms. We run 23x10x15 hoosier slicks on 15" steel diamond racing wheels. Additionally, we've modded the steering rack to the subaru power steering rack and located it as far down as possible, but haven't yet relocated the inner control arm pivot up to help minimize bump steer. We've got a few questions: 1: What is a realistic and optimal roll center for a car of our use. Currently, our font roll center is about at ground level or maybe 1/8" below ground. What effect does having a roll center below ground have on handling? 2: What is an optimal roll center for the rear suspension? Our roll center is approx. 1.75" above ground. 3: Is there any provisions in the stock 280z rear suspension for anti-squat? If so, how is this calculated? 4: The C4 rearend can be setup to have anti-squat and from what we've read 25% is a theoretical maximum. What would be a good number to shoot for when installing this rearend? I know that Doug Rippie Motorsports offers some brackets to reduce the anti-squat in a stock vette, but we are unsure how much anti-squat is present in the factory suspension to begin with. Any help is appreciated.
  9. we've got an auto-x 280z with a 350 in it with 25x12x15 r35 slicks and the short steering arms and it it just about impossible to move at 0-10mph, above that it is managable as long as you have been working out and haven't too much time in the car in the last week. going to the gym is probably not an option as you become too distracted with just turning the car and cannot focus on braking zones and how the car is working. I recommend power steering as that is what we are working on right now. Aren
  10. I too had to clearance my 1-5/8" diameter primaries to gain clearance around the spark plug boot. I've got the straight plug heads as well. I don't think you should be too worried about making that small dent in the tube for clearance.
  11. grumpy, is there any reason you shouldn't use 180 deg boots on a SBC? Seems like they would be easier to pull off being next to the headers and all. Aren
  12. considering the engine has only 6hrs on it, I would say those accel wires suck! I guess we should dimple the headers, get new msd or taylor wires and use the thermal sleeves and hope that solves it. Thanks, Aren
  13. We just got our autox car back together with our V8 conversion and ran into a small problem. We've got: 355 SBC Vortec heads, mild cam JTR kit JTR spec'd Sanderson 1-5/8 headers After the car gets hot several of the sparkplug wire boots are braking down and arcing to the primary pipes! We found that 5 or so of the 8 wires are doing this. We are using Accel 8mm wires, because we had them around....but now have to change cause they sure aren't cutting it. My question: is this normal? We bought some MSD wires and the boots on those look just as large as the Accel boots. Clearance on the tightest plug boot to primary is about 1/32". We looked at the fiberglass sleeves to help protect the boot, but we would have to dimple the header to even make those fit! We also found some new wires by Accel that have ceramic boot?!? Has anyone tried these? Any help would be great! Aren
  14. does anyone have info on the conversion to the push-type slave setup?
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