RPMS

Lexuses (Lexii?) are good transportation machines, and they can be quite fast, but none of the ones I've driven have had SOUL. I respect the choice of the BMW M3 above - it's an excellent car in all respects. But myself, I'd choose the e28 M5. A little more room inside, a little more demanding of the driver, and not as many creature comforts. A bit easier to diagnose and fix, since it's a bit less complex. I think if you could only have one car to do everything, the earlier M's are tough to beat! They pretty much define (in my mind, at least) the concept of "fun street car", although Mike's Corvette sounds pretty good. If it weren't for the small cargo capacity and no rear seat, that would probably get my vote!

Congrats! Isn't that a great feeling?

That option sheet was a blast from the past. Just $42.15 for the Posi rear end, but $61 for the AM radio! What a hoot. Personally (and I know I'm going to get stoned for this) I think the interior is as ugly as an old shoe. It got the job done, but wasn't nearly as well done as others of the time. It just looked too utilitarian to be in the top performance car of the time. Spartan is okay, but that was just plain homely.

To be bluntly honest with you, 75% of us are telling you to get a better chassis because the one you have is pretty bad. You're thinking of doubling (or tripling) the factory horsepower in a chassis which has maybe half the strength of what it used to have. That's a REALLY bad idea. Before you decide one way or the other, I'd suggest that you remove all the undercoating, matting, and sound deadening inside and outside the floorpan, transmission tunnel, frame rails, firewall, and wheelwells. You'll have to do that eventually anyway to do your repairs, so you might as well do it now. Once you have the metal exposed, you can get a better idea of what you have to work with. I'd be willing to bet that there's a lot more rust hiding on your car that you don't know about yet. Take a look at MtenneZ's link to see where rust commonly hides on these cars. If your Z is anything like mine was, the metal that's left on the floorpans is paper thin after years of corrosion. It looked solid, but I could push a screwdriver right through it. I welded in new floorpans and partial frame rails, and now it's fairly solid. The rust that's left on the car is in non-structural locations, and I've treated it so it's not getting any worse (I hope). Your car looks really nice on the inside and the body looks pretty good. But your salty roads up there, combined with the minimal rustproofing these cars came with, just about guarantees that you've got a bigger problem on your hands than you know about. I hope I'm wrong, by the way. Good luck, and be sure to keep us informed as to your progress! It's always good to hear about cars that have recovered from the "tin worm".

Sorry if this has been posted before, but with the new board I can't tell if it's old news. I thought it was cool, and y'all might be interested. http://www.arielmotor.co.uk/ Scott

I got replacement vacuum pulloffs from my local carb rebuilder for about $25 each. They've been very good to work with, selling me all the small parts I need at pretty cheap prices. And Magnum? I haven't personally tried every carburetor out there, but it's my understanding that a properly set-up Q-jet will be smoother and more consistant than most other carbs out there. I hear over and over that Holleys are easier to adjust and tune, but don't have the ultimate driveability of a Quadrajet. It's kinda like learning to adjust the dual carbs on the 240 - it's work, but ultimately worth it.

Cool! I bought a bunch of white LED's off eBay with the intention of using them to light my interior. My thought was that red LED's emit well through the red plastic brake light lens and they give it a blood-red color, in addition to being less than 1/2 the price of white ones (last time I checked). I'm glad someone is further along than I am on the project. It's actually been so long since I worked on it, I don't remember whether the LED's are still in place, or if I put the incandescent bulbs back in! How's that for lack of commitment to a project?

That karting video is awesome! What, is that like 4 lbs/hp, or something? The way that thing accelerates is incredible!

Who cares whether it's the absolute fastest? It's still freaking fast out of the box by any definition, and it's got the most voluptuous bodywork on the planet. There will always be someone that's faster, someone that's more expensive, or someone that's more exotic than yours. If your dreams are based on being the absolute best, you'll forever be disappointed. And why should I care that it's got a Focus' steering column? As long as it works right, who cares?

I agree - if the car can be aligned properly and is in otherwise good shape, having some repair work done on it isn't necessarily a deal breaker. It's not like you're buying a new car, or one you want to restore to 100 point condition. Given your budget, I'd concentrate on getting a car that was in good mechanical shape with dull paint, rather than getting a pretty car that needs mechanical work. You can drive a car w/o pretty paint, but you can't drive one with a bad driveline or brakes.

VERY nice! It's going to be a real head-turner!

Forgive my ignorance in all this, but won't removing all the rubber from the top of the strut put undue stress on the shock towers? I've heard people talking about them stress fracturing on hard-driven cars. Is this a concern?

First off, how do you know it's stock? Have you owned the car since it was new? Even if it is indeed stock, some of the components are probably 30 years old. Rubber wears out and gets hard after 30 years, and will significantly degrade the ride quality. Replace all the rubber bushings and the struts, and I'll bet you'll see considerable improvement. You're not screwed, you're just assuming that what you've got is as stock as it gets. It ain't.

Was out slumming at the Candlelight Inn in Arlington yesterday evening, and saw a very nice yellow 280 with painted 240 bumpers, fender flares, and sidepipes, which suggests it was some sort of hybrid. I left a card on the windshield, hoping to entice the owner to visit our beloved site. And darn it, I gave the address as HybridZ.COM! I hate when I do stupid stuff like that. I hope he has the brains to try .ORG when the first address doesn't work. Does anyone happen to know who might own this Z? License plate read 78 280, or something similar. It was a sweet ride!

My 260 has a mostly stock suspension in it, and I'm amazed at how compliant the ride is. My advice would be to replace all worn pieces in the suspension with new rubber, and go back to stock springs and struts. For noise reduction , Brown Bread (do a web search) has been widely praised. Put it under the carpetting, on the firewall, and inside the doors and all interior body panels you can reach. Also, replace the u-channel window seals and your wind noise should go down significantly. Good luck!

Great post, Droop! Welcome to the forum. We're glad to have you here.

At first I didn't really like it, but the more I think about it, the more I understand why he did it. First off, don't think "$80k NSX". Think, "Well used $30k NSX". And he didn't duplicate the F40, exactly. It looks like a combination of different Ferraris - the F40, the Enzo, and some of the Testarossa in places. It's like they knew they'd never be able to exactly duplicate any one Ferrari, so they just gave it a lot of imitation Ferrari flavor, and keep the audience guessing as to which one it was. And after you're done, you've got the rock-solid reliability of the Honda underpinnings instead of the notoriously high-strung Italian workings. Maybe for $50,000 you get a car that performs well (if not as well as the real thing), looks sharp enough to turn heads, and is more reliable than the real thing. And nobody can argue that the bodywork was really well done!

Great link! He answered 95% of the problems I encountered when building my first blast cabinet years ago. Wish I'd seen this back then...

Government Employees Insurance COmpany. My parents had them when I was learning to drive. At that time, they charged out the wazoo for teen drivers. When I got two tickets and one not-at-fault accident over four years, they dropped me like a hot potato. No warning, no "one more and you're history," or anything. In my opinion, they're a bunch of syphillitic cockroaches. Quote me on that. With the accident, I was on the phone with them on a daily basis (on the pay phone in the high school cafeteria) trying to get them to pay more than $800 for my Porsche 914. Bastards.

In one Z I had an amplified antenna that was only about 12" long when extended, and sat flush with the mount when retracted. I don't know the manufacturer name, but it gives you somewhere to start... Or you could get something like this: http://www.sportsimportsltd.com/hirautflexel.html.

It's already been said six times, but I'll take the time to say it again. BAGGIES! I started off putting everything in ziplocks and labelling them neatly, then I got lazy and just started pulling stuff off. "Oh, I'll remember where it goes." Wrong. The parts that were in baggies went right back on where they came off of. The parts that weren't bagged are still sitting in a box waiting for me to discover what the heck they're for. *sigh* That'll learn me.

I had a 280 door I was thinking about adapting to my early 260, and I decided that after all was said and done, it would have been too much of a hassle getting the latch to work. Sorry 'bout that.

There's a RESERVE on that? What a piece...

You don't need a bigger garage (well, actually we ALL need a bigger garage!) you need better tools. They need to make one tool that does everything. They sorta did that with woodworking when they made the ShopSmith. They need to do the same thing with metalworking tools - a grinder/torch/MIG/drill press/lamb shearer/barbeque grill/sawzall sort of thing. And make it portable, and butane powered. Get to work on that, will ya?