RPMS

I think your best results would come from using a grinder to remove all but 1/16" inch or so of the fiberglass/bonding substance, then using a disk sander and a light touch to remove the remaining fiberglass. The key would be to remove as much material as you can with an aggressive method, then switch to something gentler when you get close to metal. Perhaps RacerX can recommend something that might melt off the fiberglass instead?

Is this the only lifter that will work in your application? If not, I'd be REAL tempted to send the whole set back and have them exchange it for another manufacturer's product. Seems to me that if one lifter has failed right out of the box, I would never feel confident that the others would last 100,000 miles. If Summit gives you that sort of problems, maybe you should switch your business to Jeg's or PAW? You're right - selling out-of-stock merchandise isn't cool.

Oooh! Oooh! What HE said! Why didn't I think of that???

That wasn't a "homo gangsta look", that was a look of extreme constipation caused by having rice shoved up his ass from getting pasted by SUV's all night long! Can you imagine what he wrote in his "racing log" that night? May 7, 2003, 8:00pm. Raced a turbo Z-car - Lost. May 7, 2003, 8:20pm. Raced an Integra - Lost. May 7, 2003, 8:30pm. Raced a Civic - Lost. May 7, 2003, 8:45pm. Raced a 1973 Pinto - Lost May 7, 2003, 8:50pm. Raced a 2000 Yukon, for God's sake - Lost. May 7, 2003, 9:00pm. Went home, drank a glass of milk, went to bed. Tomorrow will be better...

WOOF!

Stock iron crosses that have been "Custom" painted in battleship grey?

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but why couldn't you just cut the top roof skin off of a donor car, bond it on using your favorite method, and then use filler to smooth the seam? I'm thinking that you could apply the new roofskin the same way you would apply a hood scoop. Don't cut off the old roof, just put a second skin over the existing one, patching the sunroof hole and reinforcing the existing roof at the same time. Who would notice that the roof is 1.5mm taller than stock? Am I completely crazy for thinking this would work?

Tom, I've seen the same thing, and it does indeed look kick ass! Saw it a few months ago on an old T-bucket, and just about wet myself. Fat rear tires w/ no fenders, semi-gloss black paint, and just a little bit of accent chrome. Truly old school!

ToyotaSupra17, (what IS your name, anyway?) A few things: 1) Discover the value of Capitalization. First letter of a sentence, proper nouns, etc. Skipping all the rules in something so small probably indicates that you'll skip them elsewhere as well. Heavily modding a car isn't something in which you'll want to be flouting the rules. 2) Avoid ingesting quite so much caffeine. 9 posts in five hours with some of them begging for responses looks a bit desperate and needy. Mountain Dew is NOT your friend. Okay, that said... Welcome to the board. I think your mods sound interesting, even if they're not something *I* would do. A Celica front end ( I think you're talking about the "angry bunny" headlights that climb way up into the fenders, right?) and a Supra (fourth generation, or third?) tail end grafted onto the body of an S30 Z sounds awkward, at best. I've seen an early Z front end grafted onto a 240SX, and that really seemed to work, so I guess there are cases where it can be done successfully. Photoshop is cool, but you might want to explore a pencil and paper (and no, I'm not being a smartass). You'll learn a lot more sitting there for hours thinking it out and drawing it out than you will if someone else does all the work and you just look at the result. Remember that if all the visual elements don't integrate on the car you're planning, if it all the mods don't work in harmony with each other, you'll end up with a mishmash of visual elements that don't work with each other. For example: Take a look at Terry's car (BlueOvalZ). Notice the way your eyes flow over the car from front to back, drawn from one element to the next. (I usually use Pete Paraska's car as an excellent example of this, but his car isn't heavily modified visually, like you're thinking about. ) Think 'Simple'. Think 'Clean'. Think 'High quality'. Distinctive elements are best used as jewelry on a beautiful woman - sparingly, and to best effect. Don't try to put EVERYTHING you like on one single car, or it will probably turn out looking like a rolling joke. Keep it simple, and you'll succeed famously. Also, gullwing doors are a magnificently bad idea on any car that wasn't specifically designed for them. So are T-tops. Together, they form one hell of a bad idea. For your first Z, keep the body original from behind the headlight nacelles to behind the doors, and you stand a much better chance of success. Later, when you've got years of experience behind you, you can attempt to get really wild. Just my .02. Post pics when you have them - I'd love to watch your progress!

Actually, that's a LOT faster than I'd been led to believe! Sounds like a pretty good solution. Thanks for the correction! I may get one of those myself!

Brakes? What brakes? And no, the rear tires are completely inadequate for the task at hand. 400 hp, a 3,500 rpm stall speed, and rubber that skinny would be damned scary on the street.

Don't snip it if you want to keep your air conditioning. Although the placement is unusual (most that I've seen have been mounted in an aftermarket panel to the left of the console, underneath the cigarette lighter) the wire/hanger thing sounds like the tube that runs to the evaporator of your air conditioner, regulating how cold the evaporator gets before shutting off the freon flow. Of course, if you're like 90 percent of the folks on this board, your AC doesn't work ANYWAY, so cutting the regulator tube won't affect a single thing! Oh, and welcome to the board! You'll find it a wealth of info.

Plan on using about six or seven cartridges per tire. I understand that the larger rear motorcycle tires can use three cartridges, and a wide automotive tire probably uses much more air than a motorcycle tire.

ANYTHING is possible, given enough time and money. I don't think anyone on this list has created an imaginary friend for themselves, though. I think you'll be breaking ground, here.

Thanks for the replies, guys! Spotfitz, I'm looking for ANY sort of part time job that will allow me to still work my primary job, which is M-F, 2-10pm in North Richland Hills. I'd prefer something that would allow me to stay clean, so I didn't go into work el-stinko in the afternoons. There's a dry cleaners I passed by the other day with a "help wanted" sign in the window. Maybe they need someone in the mornings. The really ironic thing is, I'm making enough to JUST pay my bills, but I'm a month behind on my mortgage, so they apply each payment to the overdue balance, then hit me with another $40 late fee each month. If everyone would simply add the amount currently overdue to the back end of the note, I'd stop accruing debt. The fact that my credit is shot means that nobody is likely to refinance my house at a reasonable rate. On the positive side, I haven't used a credit card in the past two years, and everything is now CASH. I have no car payments, and my dogs are paid for. In short, there's nothing for anyone to reposess. I think I'm going to call for a meeting with a debt negotiation company. It sounds like they *might* be able to reduce my credit card payments somewhat. I don't mind eating beans and rice two meals a day, as long as I feel I'm actually whittling away at my debt. Spending everything I make paying off interest is extraordinarily unpleasant. Kinda like getting kicked in the crotch every morning as soon as you get out of bed - you finally stop wanting to get out of bed! Scott

You know, there are actually parts on there that I like! In spite of myself, I like the rear hatch. I'm certain I remember several folks on this board who were wanting one of those, so selling it should be easy. About the interior.... Wow. What were they thinking?? The right hand drive is cool, it's too bad the dash is so toasty.

Hey, guys. I've got the engine, I've got the tranny, I've got almost everything I need for a conversion save a driveshaft and a harmonic damper, and I'm going to have to put my conversion on hold for another year or so. I've been looking forward to this for a couple of years now but now I'm having to put it on the back burner, and I'm bummed to say the least. The bills have been mounting since I had to change jobs last summer, yet I've managed to maintain the fantasy that I'll be able to finish the job on my current salary. But finally, I've had to admit defeat. The final straw was finding that my v8 will probably have to be installed into our truck to get it to pass emissions (it's doing a fairly passable imitation of a mosquito fogger, lately) and it looks like I'm going to have to get a second job to keep my house out of foreclosure. There goes any spare time for working on the car. Not only that, but I may well have to sell the Z to bring in some money to pay the house taxes. I'm so poor that if it cost a nickel to take a dump, I believe I'd have to throw up. *sigh*. I used to think life would get easier when I was "grown up", but it never improves, does it? I mean, I can do lots of things now that I couldn't do then, but overall it seems that there's always something to worry about, always something sort of imminent financial crisis on the horizon. Okay, I'm done now. Any advice from the collective wisdom?

Isn't it nice when the group moderates itself? Thanks guys, for both being mature about this. Makes this forum a nice place to spend time. Scott

I'm using black automotive carpetting from Pep Boys, but after a year or two I'm probably going to invest in some good quality plush outdoor carpetting from a flooring store. The problem is, they have a minimum purchase requirement that's 10x what I need for my project. Maybe I can do a group buy when the time's right... I want it to look great and insulate from sound and heat. Anyway, when you try to get the carpet from on top of the hump, you might investigate the possibility of removing the center brace from the dashboard support. IIRC, it bolts to the brace and to the transmission tunnel. If nothing else works, just get after it with a razor knife.

Heya, Jaime. Yeah, I've got power locks on my early 260. Actually, to tell you the truth, I've got power LOCK. I've only gotten around to doing the driver's side, but the passenger side will be cake since I've figured out what all's going on. Unfortunately, I can't advise you as to which lock system to purchase. Since I've got a BMW 535i parts car taking up space in my driveway anyway, I pulled the lock motors and controller out of it and am using that system. Mounting the lock motors is fairly easy. I have them mounted against the inside of the door, where the glass just barely misses hitting them on the way down. I welded a second rod to the door lock rod about four inches down from the lock knob, and I attached the other end of that second rod to the lock motor. It works well in conjunction with the codealarm system I put in there. I've been trying to get pictures put up on the web of this issue, but I just can't get my ass in gear. Maybe your question will be enough to motivate me this weekend!

You know, that's one of the only motors I'd consider swapping into a BMW. It's smooth enough to be worthy of the task. My only concern is durability/reliability. I've got friends with THIRD generation motors who just can't seem to get things sorted out right. I know, this is probably apples/oranges, but do the fourth gen motors peter out as frequently as third gen? What's your take on the issue of durability, Black Magic? Scott

No, no... It makes perfect sense. Think about it - when you're playing GranTurismo with your X-box and your opponent crashes, do you stop to make sure they're all right, or do you continue on their way, laughing and hooting? They're behaving as if this real-life street race is a game. I don't honestly believe that they UNDERSTAND the consequences of their actions. If someone changes into their lane when they're trying to pass at a 50 mph speed differential, they'll just hit 'Reboot' and go on their way, right? It's always worked on the video games... I'm not blaming video games for their stupidity in real life, by the way. I'm saying that these kids are having difficulty separating fantasy from reality.

ROFLOL! Most excellent!

Damn, Thure, it sucks to be you! A couple of years ago, when I made the 300 mile trek south to buy my Z, the alternator in the BMW blew, forcing us to abort 50 miles from home. Then the next day, the Z died on the way back home, 50 miles from our starting point. Then the next day, the alternator on the truck died on the way down to retrieve the Z! Sometimes you just have NO karma in your account. What kind of BMW you got? A bad day driving a BMW is better than a good day driving a Geo.

I've got a second point of view here, one which may not be appreciated by the other members of this board! If you just want something to make the body shiny and one color, go ahead and shoot it with some of that cheap paint. It probably won't last long, but it will probably last long enough for you to save up some money for a GOOD paint job. Heck, if you plan on stripping the paint anyway later, go ahead and shoot the cheap paint now. Just don't invest a bunch of time and energy getting the body perfect if you're going to re-do it later. Think of this as a practice paint job.