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Hey dude right there with you! I've been working on my z since June 2015. Kids, houses and responsibilities have all pushed it farther and farther back. But I feel like this is the year and I'm hoping you get back in the game too! also, are the Howe Racing TA2 front control arms made for the 240z or do you have a different cross-member up front? They sound enticing for sure!

Good update! This right here ^ is why I committed to keeping mine fully a street car and I'm glad I did, but part of me also wishes I could go race occasionally without being scared I'll ruin it haha

Howdy HybridZ! Seems like the trend, y'all get an update at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year! Might need to reframe my temporal perspective and do every 6 months. This was a slow year for the car and myself. First year since I've owned the car that it hasn't gone to any events! Wish I could say it was because I was doing a bunch of sweet mods and we're hitting the track hard next year, but that's not how it went. Overall, since 2020, the "smiles per $" has been way down, and I think I probably burnt myself out doing the V8 swap as quickly as I did it. Combined with the wreck, I felt like I really needed to step back, re-evaluate and take the year off to figure out how I want race cars to fit into my life! A big thing I've found is that since this just isn't a street car, and has no ability to be a street car, it's tough to get that "just gonna go drive the dang thing" and get excited about the project. Starting to find motivation again, which is nice, and I'm aiming for an event or two next year. That's not to say I didn't get ANY mods done this year! I got the Haltech 2500 into the car, and got it tuned. That was a fun small project, with a bigger price tag, but I'm hoping that it solves a lot of problems moving forward. It did reveal that some of the problems with this current engine are just that. The current motor is a L33 aluminum 5.3, but it's just not making great power. Compression and all that looks fine, but it's only putting down 330hp, when we'd expect closer to 400. Putting that out of my mind for now, and going to run it like this. A new engine is just not in the budget right now. I also did quite a bit of work on the front suspension. I've been running the Apex Engineered arms up front, and have been happy with them. Full disclosure, Ohm is a supporter of the build, you may have seen the car on his page! After running a handful of events, I felt like I had 2 problems to resolve. 1) I needed more track width. I have a 1" spacer in the front, and it's just another thing to check on the car, also while making scrub radius work. 2) I needed a beefier ball joint. The Apex arms use a factory sized ball joint, that is a better material, but after running a few track events, getting up on curbs and getting pretty spicy, they were just not up to the task. Bigger is better, so I went and upgraded to a Howe Racing TA2 front control arm, with their thread in ball joint. The arm is 2" longer than factory, and allows the use of an improved ball joint, the design of which is derived from a 3/4 ton truck. I feel pretty good about this mod! I got some work done on managing airflow on the front of the car. With the freshly chopped fenders, I needed a way to get air out of the wheel well, and made up some Kevlar pieces to help with that. I also made a plug for a radiator extractor vent that will help direct air out the hood, rather than spilling around inside the engine bay. I'll need to snag one more fitting for the dry sump, but otherwise, things are looking in good shape. I'm excited to let the car be "done" for a little bit this year.

12-19-2024. Dash center plate painted up.