mom'sZ

that's funny! Anyhow, interesting.... you are the first person I've heard who wasn't impressed with these things. Although most guys would be thrilled with HP numbers that were to high and not bother to try to verify. How about using it as a tuning tool? Even if they are 'overly optimistic' numbers is it still accurate enough to tell if you've made a gain? And how about for lateral Gs, you can go to the drag strip or dyno for HP or straight line acceleration testing but there is no easy way to verify handling improvements. The one model also seems to have some features aimed at helping a road raceer or autoXer with lap times. Hell, I was ready to order one of these things. Then again I love techy stuff... ha ha ha

I found it!! the guy's name is Pete. Here's a link to his web site http://alteredz.com/structuralmods.htm the first part is how to replace the front frame rails, but down toward the bottom there is a drawing with dimensions and pics. check it out

Hey Lunar240Z: I worked in the paint and body business for 25 years. I did a lot of panel replacement, collision work, and restoration. To answer one of your original questions, as to how much you would be spending on sheet metal, it's cheap! You can go to a metal shop and just purchase a sheet. Like plywood, it comes in 4' x 8' chunks, which should be plenty for two full floor pans. I can't remember exactly but should be under $30 or $40 bucks. Make sure to get plain cold rolled steel, no galzinized. As far as the replacement panels, well... that has to do with what you want to get out of it. When I was a young man doing this type of work, (quite a while ago) they didn't make all these replacement panels. We basically had to make everything out of plain sheet. In that way you guys are lucky now. I tried to zoom the picture of the too intense pans, it looks like they have some beading and are formed to replicate the original pans but it's hard to tell. The beading in the original factory pans is what gives them a lot of their strength. That's hard for your average guy to duplicate. It depends on what part of the pans needs replacing, how handy you are with sheet metal fabrication and welding. And finally the rail question. I've heard a lot of guys talk well of the bad dog rails. Although I'm not sure I love the idea of just placing them over the old rails, if I was replacing my frame rails, I won't want the old rusty ones inside my nice new rails. I've also heard of one member here on HybridZ who has a nice web site with drawings and dimensions and pictures on how to do it yourself. I can't remember his name, I will try to find the link and post it. Not to nit pick or anything, even thou this is kind of a chassis question, it might be better suited for the paint and body forum. Check there for lots of info on welding, panel replacement and methodology.

very cool.. So you set the thing, you punch it, youi haul *** a bit, and then you stop and it tells you your horsepower? sorry for being an idiot. any how, you don't have to tell me about the whole wind resistence vs power thingy. I learned that years ago motorcycle racing. Raced heavy weights - 750 cc and up, they went up to 170 mph. At that speed, aero was important. Also raced a lightweight - around 400cc. Well one time I'm racing the light weight and I crash the damn thing. Bugger up the fairing pretty good and didn't have a spare. I was bummed out but found some number plates and went out there without it. Guess what, went faster, seems that pretty fairing didn't help, it created drag and slowed me down. Left it off after that.

so.... no body wants to make a comment on my strut brace question? here it is again So anyhow... back on subject, here's another question. Once one replaces the stock upper mounts with camber plates, what do you do for a strut brace bar? Most seem to attach to the stock mount bolts. Make a custom one? I don't really want to weld a bracket to the tower. IT competitors seem really paranoid about any welding in the area as constituting reinforcement. Suggestions anyone?

Great attitude!! And as a retired painter, you did real good, way better then most.

Thanks Forrest, that makes me feel a lot better. And you're right, the tiny bit of movement I can get out of mine could hardly be called adjustable caster. I was able to get both sides the same and on spec. I agree about the support from GC to. I had read their people were friendly and helpful, that was not my experience. The kid (he sounded young) who answered the phone was snotty and short. I was told they would help me pick spring rates. The kid said "whatya wanna do for spring rates?" I told him what I was going to do with the car and what I considered my best baseline guess and he went "ahhhh... o.. k". He had me on hold for a long time before he even took my order, and then he seemed like he was in a big rush to get me off the phone. He even forgot to ask what kind of strut inserts I was going to use. Then the instructions... ha, for the camber plates - none, and for the coil overs, like somebody said earlier in the thread, it looked like a fax someone had scribbled all over. It all worked out well in the end, I love the way the car handles now. By the way, those tension/compression bars are nice!

whew... and a shot of John's sexy custom made strut assemblies too... very nice!

Jon: I agree, infinitely adjustable (within the range of travel) was a selling point for me to. The needle bearing thing really was important to me to. I had heard how some of the other types rattled really bad after a very short time (or an off). I read where guys have had these on street cars for tens of thousands of miles and no rattle. Evildky: yeah that's why I posted the price. A hundred bucks a piece is not a cheap alternative. I'm still trying to find those other weld in plates. When I get home tonight and get on my other computer, I have some stuff linked and I think I can find it.

I'm no race engineer, but one thing you said in your last post got my attention. You said: Its easy to just say "switch to coil overs", but what rates? and If I do, I may need to upgrade my shocks as well. (shocks are a several years old) Well I don't want to sound like I'm suggesting you just 'switch to coil overs' but... one of the cool things about switching to coil overs is you are no longer stuck having to find similarly sized ones to the stock springs that have a better rate then stock and cutting them down to get ride hieght where you want, or purchasing expensive lowering springs that only come in a few rates, or having custom springs wound. With coil overs any 2.5 inch spring will work. And there are TONS available!!! Some of them really cheap, check out some of the circle track web sites on the net. I've seen them as cheap as 70 buck per pair! Now the initial investment for the coil overs is a pretty lot, but, once you get the struts set up for them, you can swap rates relativly cheaply until you're blue in the face. And the threaded collars make ride hieght adjustment a simple on the car thing! If your serious about autoXing or road racing, I think you'll find varing conditions or tracks require varying spring rates. If you want to set it up once, get it to you liking, then leave it alone, then not so much. You can get any spring rate wound in any size from a number of spring shops. I found a rate calculating excel spread sheet once somewhere on the net, I'll try to dig it up. And like I said, I'm no race engineer, and your set up is ... ah ... unique. I think your going to need to know overall weight and front to rear weight distribution. Strut inserts: all I can say there is from what I've heard the tokicos are only good to about 200 or 250 lbs. spring rates. So if you intend to go much higher, you might want to factor them in to this as well. By the way... NICE LOOKING CAR!!!!!!!

OK... I feel compelled to say something here. I don't mean to lead anybody down the wrong path. I couldn't agree more with Jon, best case scenario, you're not going to get a lot of caster adjustment out of these plates. I guess it has a lot to do with what you expect to get out of a given modification for a given amount of money spent. Over the years (I'm not a young man) I bought a lot of aftermarket car parts. A lot of them were JUNK, outright junk! When you buy a header, and it will not even bolt up to the head, no less fit the chassis, that is junk. And Ground Control's stuff is pretty... expensive. (pricey). So if you purchased these camber plates because you wanted to try some caster changes and you spent six hundred dollars for all four, or even just three hundred for just the front, and you couldn't get the desired caster adjustment, I'd be pissed! And if you had to modify them just to get them on the car, then you really might be pissed. (understatement) To get back to the header example, I don't know how many sets of headers I've bought over the years and had to file some bolt holes, or notch a tube or two, or had to remove the header to get the oil filter on and off. And then the damn thing LEAKED!!! I don't know, I've come to expect all aftermarket car stuff to be less then a perfect fit. In fact when it goes on with not to much of a fight, works half a$$ decent and isn't just a template I use to make my own... I'm happy! I purchased camber plates and coil over kits from Ground control. For those two items it was a lot of money. When I got the stuff I looked at what was in the box for all that dough and got depressed. But as I began to install the stuff, I started to admire the workmanship and quality. I began to think about if I had gone to a machine shop and had asked them to make me the same thing. Let's face it, a lot of guys make a plate to go on the bottom side so they can mount the CG plates on the top, they're good looking pieces. And when I got up under the car and saw the area they are suppose to go, I felt the shape was just right. Now fit. When Jon said his didn't fit, I noticed his car was a earlier model. I thought I had hear the towers had changed through the years. I assumed that is why his experience wasn't the same as mine. When Forrest said his car was a 78 and he had to file to make fit. Then I thought, wow, I guess I got lucky. But let me just say this. I was a paint and body man for twenty five years. I specialized in panel replacement and heavy collision. To say I'm farmilar with factory unibody assembly technics is an understatement. I know what kind of slop is built into production unibodies. Years ago, I put a rear subframe into a dodge dart for drag racing purposes. After cutting the stock rear rails and most of the floor from the firewall back out of the car, I was trying to square the chassis so I could get my new rails in straight. The car had never been wrecked by the way. Well I drove myself CRAZY! (I was nineteen) In the end, I came to find the stock front rails were a quarter of an inch out of square, from the factory! After measuring a bunch of other of the same kind of cars, I came to believe mine was one of the straighter. So... what does this have to do with Z cars? Well when I got into doing my camber plates, I looked at how the towers were made. How the three (I think) pieces that are welded up to make each tower fit and how they attach to the longitudinals. (unibody for frame rail) I could see room for slop to creep in during the manufacturing process. I marveled that they made this car with no adjustment what so ever for front end alignment. Hell, I could see a difference between one side and the other ON MY CAR! So the fact that these things fit without grinding on my car and not on Forrest's car doesn't surprise me. To me this just points out how hard it must be to make an aftermarket part for a car that fits well and works. Forrest, when I had a problem with my water temp sender for my fuel injection and posted a question in the trouble shooting forum, you posted and try to help me. (nobody reads the trouble shooting column) I appreciated that then, I looked at your car and it was obvious from your posts and your car that you know your stuff. I'm sorry the GC plates weren't what you had hoped they'd be. Mine fit flat against the bottom of the tower with no grinding. It was tight, but no grinding. In fact, once I stuck my head up there and held them in place, I marveled at how well they were shaped. One thing I noticed, if I didn't get the four mount bolts aligned just right with each other the plate didn't want to slid. Now please don't be insulted, Im sure yours really didn't fit because of the reason I just mentioned. (body slop) And I'm sure your work is top notch and your abilities. But one slid well, I did another and it would not, and I thought WTF? I had to relieve one hole a little, then it slid. And thats the thing, with no grinding, mine actually have room to slid a little bit! I SWEAR!!! But as Jon says, best case scenario, you're only going to get a little bit of adjustment. Like I said in the begining of this painfully long post, I guess it depends on what you expect. I looked at how these things installed, and I worried that if I didn't get the holes squared just right, that the alignment would be off. I hoped that with the tiny bit of castor adjustment they afforded that I could get the alignment back to stock castor. I needed camber adjustment so I could lower the car. And I wanted to eliminate the big rubber donuts on top of the stock struts. I'd heard the eccentric bushings move under extreme use. I considered these my best bet. A lot of guys in this forum talk them down, a lot of guys at IT.com forum swear by um. go figure. If you want to play with castor, and you're not restricted by class rules stipulating stock control arms, maybe some of those neat adjustable control arms would do the trick. To the original poster, if he's still around, to you Jon and Forrest, and anybody else who's bothered to read all the way through this post, I'm sorry. I've gone totally off the deep end here and I appologize. I like the damn things. Andy

I'm sure once I say this I am going to get flamed. This is just my opinion. I spent a lot of years doing paint and body work though. IMHO once you 'cut' the paint job (color sand, buff, what ever) it never looks quite the same as one straight out of the booth. (depth luster and shine wise) Black is the worst when it comes to this. That's why a really nice booth is so important. You can come close, it takes a LOT of work. Take RacerX's advice, to the letter. Read ever word carefully. Like he says... go slow, work a very small area at a time, keep the buffer pad CLEAN. Also, it looks to me (hard to tell in a picture) that you have sanding scratches you haven't buffed all the way out yet. Use a water hose when you are sanding, (not a bucket) rinse the panel clean with it often, make sure you're not dragging a piece of sand around between the sand paper and the surface.

Keith: you know I read this thread and was kind of wondering what would Katman say. My favorite Katman quote on sway bars "personally I don't like how bars wanker the chassis" Still laugh everytime I read that.

evildky: AZ Zcar sells steel weld in plates, 99 bucks per corner. Here's a link http://www.arizonazcar.com/coil.html They are all the way at the bottom of the page. They seem to include the upper strut mount and hardware. I know nothing about them and am not endorsing them, just providing a link. I can't seem to find them, but I seem to remember, when I was deciding which to buy myself, somebody had just steel plates like you describe. They were cheap to, i thought, like forty bucks. I tried to find them and couldn't, will keep looking though. And they were big, so you could, it appeared, replace like the whole top of the tower, and then some. If I were going to go this way, I would want to replace the top couple inches of the tower to provide more room for adjustment. But then you are getting into some fabrication. But if you can weld the plates in, you should be able to handle something like this as well. John C.: interesting... oh the shifting tides... seems like a lot of car of the month stuff to me. Maybe they should work on their driving. Oh... who said that, has my evil twin escaped again? So anyhow... back on subject, here's another question. Once one replaces the stock upper mounts with camber plates, what do you do for a strut brace bar? Most seem to attach to the stock mount bolts. Make a custom one? I don't really want to weld a bracket to the tower. IT competitors seem really paranoid about any welding in the area as constituting reinforcement. Suggestions anyone?

CybrStuff: Just curious, what exactly are you trying to ascertain? How much HP your car is making when cruising down the road? Are you just curious or is there some other reason you want to know? I'm just wondering. My understanding about performance meters is that they can calculate HP from acceleration using the weight of the car. So long as you accuratly input the weight of the car, they are fairly accurate from what I've heard. When these things first came out, I was excited. I haven't gotten one yet but intend to. Until recently your average person wasn't allowed to even own a accelerometer, apparently they are a key component in rocket guidance systems. With an accelerometer and an accurate vehicle weight, calculating HP figures would be very similar to how a momentum dyno works, such as a DynoJet. And no one seems to question their accuracy. Anyhow, just for another data point, years ago I read some stuff that was talking about how much power it took to keep a vehicle moving down the road once it was up to speed. This was years ago when gas mileage first became an issue. If I remember correctly, it was a miniscule amount. Something along the lines of a two ton car moving 60 MPH took less the 10 HP to keep it up speed. I think 7 HP was the number. So... does anybody have one of these performance meters. If so, what do ya think? Are they cool? Does it work. Can you tune with it?

so they trade the restrictor plate for 150 lbs. ?

oh... to the original poster... sorry for the total thread hijack

Absolutely, couldn't agree more. But I think some things may be conspiring to give the 280 a little better a chance. Last year (I believe) in 2004 the SCCA opened up the engine management rules allowing the fuel injected cars to tinker with their black boxes. The rule change was made (from my understanding) not so much because it was for the benifit of the whole class, but more so because they were aware some guys were doing it and there was no way to easily detect the cheating. So it was easier to let everybody do it and thus level the field. I don't think the guys who still have to run a carb see it that way but anyhow... So with the advantage of the open fuel injection control coupled with the extra displacement the 280 was strapped with what is now considered by many to be a porky min. weight. Jump ahead to the 2005 season, the newly classed BMW gets a restrictor plate because it is considered an overdog. The SCCA doesn't want to mess with the bimmer for at least two seasons to give the chance to see if the plate had the desired effect. So the rumor mill has it the BMW will remain unchanged for 2006. But apparently quite a few other models are going to recieve competition adjustments. Like I said earlier, it's pretty common knowledge the 280 was spec'ed to heavy. So... (fingers crossed) Hey, it doesn't matter to me. The car I have is the one I want to race. I don't delude myself into thinking I'll ever be good enough to get to the front. I just want to do with the car what I believe it was made to do. Go fast! I originally had hoped to find a class it would fit into. Not really one it would be a dominate model in. Just a class I could fit in, so I could go out and have fun. To me, the fact that the Z car is still considered to be one of the best cars for the class all these years later shows that it was a great car to begin with. I don't care if a 240 is better suited then the 280 or not, I just wanna beat the RX7's and BMW's ha ha ha....

I thought of that... I meant to mention it, mine is a 6/77 280. I was almost sure they had revised the strut tower and gave a little bit more room up there in later years. But I wan't sure and didn't want to talk about something I didn't know about for sure. I think the strut tower area also was built stronger in later years as well. Again... I don't know this for sure. I want to stress, I am no expert, this is the first time I've ever done this and the first car I've ever done it to, your results may vary. I did want to relate my experience and try to relate why I made the choices I did. The original poster seemed to be trying to make a choice between the various options available. One of the reasons I wanted to explain why I chose Ground Control's plates was because I believe the AZ zcar weld in plates are much cheaper and because of the limited room up inside the tower for the GC ones to fit may make the weld in ones a better choice for a street car where racing class rules have no bearing... if you have welding capabilities. While welding in the plates you could do some modifications to the tower and provide all the room you needed to do all the adjusting that would ever need done. In the same manner, I believe for some folks, the EMI plates could be a great choice because they bolt in with no modifications to the tower at all and so the car could be returned to stock later if an original restoration became desirable. (ah... I think... from what I've read... John C. would know better) With the ground control plates, even though you don't have to weld anything, you still do really have to butcher the tower with a grinder. Restoring it back to stock would be... ah ... difficult. (and that's coming from a twenty five year veteran of the paint and body business, most of it doing panel replacement, restoration and collision) Anyhow... jmortensen, your experience was different from mine, it sounds like the ground control plates aren't going to provide caster adjustment no matter how much you grind them. From my understanding there is a bit of a compromise when it comes to road racing a stock bodied Z car. If you use a earlier model it is lighter (always a good thing in road racing) but more flexible. If you use a later model one, it is heavier but more rigid a platform. In SCCA improved touring, where the chassis must remain stock and only limited amounts of reinforcement can be done the later Z might be a better choice. In another class, where more latitude is given to reinforce the platform, the earlier Z might be a better choice. I didn't think about it that much, this one is the car I have.

jmortensen: I can't agree with you about the ground control plates not providing any caster adjustment. Here's why. before I installed mine I searched this web site and read everything I could find related to camber plates. One thread was a guy who had bought a set used, with no instructions, and he was asking how to install them. (they come from GC with no instructions anyhow, at least mine did) A number of members posted with advice about how to install including a few who posted pictures. Well I bagan to install mine as per the advice given on this web site and as I did, it occurred to me that the common method described here wasn't quite right. I'm going to try to post a link to the thread, hope it works. http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=102847&highlight=camber+plate In that thread I believe you posted a pic of your installation. Also Dan Juday describes how to use the plate as a template to grind the required openings in the strut tower. Well if you look at that picture, and you think about how the plates work, it seemed to me that it was not going to allow any caster adjustment. The caster adjustment is provided by the slots in the plates where the four mounting bolts are. (the four around the outside) If you only grind slots for the four camber adjustment bolts and the strut mount in the center as suggested by Dan Juday and shown in your picture, then there is no room for the plate to slid from side to side to provide caster adjustment. Once you widen the slots enough to provide room for the side to side adjustment, there really is very little material left between the bolt slots and the center slot. In fact, there really is no point in making slots for those bolts at all since the bolts have to slid from side to side as well as back and forth. In the end I found the best thing to do was make it all one big hole. In fact you kind of end up with four 'ears' of tower material where the four outside bolt attach to the tower. It's a tight fit, especailly the two bolts closest to the engine, the two outboard ones have more room. Now, like I said in my first post, to get the whole advertised range of caster adjustment (1 deg +/-, 3 degs +/-, I forget) you may have to grind some off the plates on the side in the direction you want to go. If you get up under there while you're installing them, and you put the plate up there, you see there is very little room for it to move (slid) around. It helps to clean off any undercoat that may have gotten sprayed up in there. Maybe I'm wrong in how the caster is provided by the plates. But looking at them, it seems to me the only logical way it could work. And I don't mean to insult anybody's work or knowledge, especailly you jmortensen, I've read a lot of your posts and I admire your abilities. In fact if it wasn't for this site I would have never even attempted this modification on my car, and I love the results. Thanks everyone! A few more notes (sorry long post) from my experience. First off, I think there might be a way to do this and retain the stock rubber insulators, but I think the common method is to eliminate them. Well doing so increases road noise and ride harshness A WHOLE BUNCH! But road feel is greatly improved. The other thing I want to point out is (like I said in my first post) I chose the ground control plates because of my desire not to modify the strut towers by adding metal. Iv'e heard the eccentric control arm bushings can move around under extreme use and within the rules of the class (IT) I consided the plates to be the best option to provide alignment adjustment.

I bought the ground control camber plates. I'm very pleased with them. They are not cheap. I paid 299 per pair and bought 2 pair, two for the front and two for the back, for a grand total of about six hundred dollars. But as far as I'm concerned it was worth it. For a camber plate that requires no welding, I believe they are the best choice. The strut tower must be modified by grinding holes for the plates to move in. I didn't want to use the weld in ones because my car is being prepared for SCCA IT racing and although you are allowed to add material to the strut towers, it may not be for the purpose of reinforcing the area. The general concensuis in IT seems to be that any welding in the area constitutes reinforcement. But if I wasn't restricted by class rules, the weld in ones would have been given more consideration. The room up inside the towers where the plates sit is very limited. To gain enough room to get the full range of adjustment you may have grind the plates some. The quality of the plates is top notch. Be sure to tell them what strut inserts you plan to use.

I'm almost positive you are right. In fact, I think nissan actually licensed the rights to build the motor from M/B. Read it somewhere in a history about the car, will try to find the piece and post a link.

cool, little far from me though busy boarding up the house down here in south FLA

really... and where exactly is here because if it ain't to far... I wouldn't mind being... there