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I have meaning to start up this thread for long time. In the past 10+ years I have learned quite a bit about building and racing early Z cars. So I decided to take all my knowledge and build the "ultimate" racing Z. But of course that is a relative term. More precisely, an early Z that is built loosely to the IMSA GTU rules of 1978 and legal for vintage racing. This actually allows quite a bit of modification, so my attempt is to apply lessons learned from 40 years of racing into a car than can compete with muscle cars from the late 60's. Both HSR and SVRA group the GTU cars in with typical 60's early Trans Am V8 American monsters. So handling and cornering speeds are critical because HP is a losing fight. I have a pretty good idea where I want to be in terms of performance, so power to weight is priority #1. I doubt a Z can ever be the dominate car in this class, but hopefully it can be competitive with the guys that are build to the rule book. A 800Hp 180mph Duntov Corvette is just another animal all together. With that in mind, I have become obsessed with weight. The shell I started with weighed 500 lbs, and I took some more out of that. I would love to come in at 1800 or 1900 lbs dry, but time will tell. There is a 3L limit to this class, and I am confident I can get 300+HP to the wheels based on previous builds. However, the engine is the last thing I will be working on. I have a library of photos from what I have already completed and have a goal of finishing all this up in the next 12 months. I am starting out this post with pictures of the shell I started with. It was built up by Chris Leone in Orlando does race car prep for a living and builds a pretty mean cage. He was going to build a V8 based car and ran out of desire. I had originally bought the wide body kit he had for this car and have since sold it and decided to go with an unusual kit I purchased from a dude in Tampa. Anyway, he offered it to me for a very reasonable price at a time when I did not have the money. He also had it for sale on Hybrid forums. Some kid in Daytona ended up buying it and drug it up there without really knowing what it would take to finish it. Months later I saw the kid had it listed on Craigslist for the same price he paid. I ended up buying it for more than I could have paid Chris earlier, but also got an engine and tranny thrown with the purchase. It is actually a fairly early 70 240 and I will post the info when I can dig it up again. I think most of its history is just rust. Even the small amount of original car that is left has multiple patch panels welded in. I guess it goes to show no matter how bad the rust is, you can still build up a race car. Needless to say, this car is not a project for the timid. It needed practically everything but the cage. But so far nothing has really thrown me off yet.

You know we have all been there when you get three similar responses to a problem within a few hours 😂 when I was young and dumb(er), I once lowered my car onto a breaker bar to loosen the tranny fill hole. I don’t have a dedicated full hole on my r180 cover (from a Subaru STI) so I drain completely then fill with a specific volume from the axle shaft hole. The spec is easy to find with a quick search online, or from any type of service manual.

almost done tuning the transmission (shift/throttle timing)... IMG_0405.MOV