ZROSSA

Thanks 68vw. The offset must be similar to the cobra r's i will run. Same size spacer is needed. Douglas

Very nice car. Looks like you had to roll the rear guards a bit to get the tires in there. Do you have coil overs as well? Just trying to get an idea how much work I need to do to get my 10.5 rims on my z. Cheers, Douglas

John, I dont think that doing any bracing forward of the strut will gain you anything but weight. Why not mount the engine solidly and transfer the loads through it? Douglas

Cool car and wicked fabrication. They dont seem to have followed the "rules" when it comes to proper cage and stiffening. Bends in tubes that are not needed and tubing joined in the middle of other tubes abound. I see this a lot in cars made to go in straight lines. Wonder why? Douglas

Making pipes from copper is very easy, just braze them. Pumbing supply shops will have all the stuff you need as well. Douglas

I see a pretty nice one running around town every once in a while. Never seen its owner though so I have no idea where it came from. Must admit I was surprized to see one in Hawkes bay. Pretty small town. Douglas

Probbably only Aussie shiraz, so no harm done! Douglas

So what is not that light? Its certainly compact. My wife has one in her people mover, I really like the way it sounds. I think vw has just made a new vr6 as well thats about 3.6 lts and has a narrower block angle. Lots of turbo and supercharger kits for these engines. I wouldnt mind having a play with one myself one day. Douglas

I have a 76 sr corrolla that i have been playing with for a good 15 years now. You may be able to get a sbc in there but it wont be easy and it will hang way over the front axle. When i but a 2tg in it the handling changed noticable for the worse. i guess the weight gain was around 30 kg on the fron end. Maybe try a buick v6 or some thingsimilar. Weight will be the big issuie. Douglas

Sack face, What part of NZ are you in? There is a local guy here , Hawkes bay, that is making adapters to mount toyota five speeds behind your engine. Last time I was in his w/shop he was doing a twin turbo set like yours for drifting. Guy is pretty smart and made lots of cool stuff. Douglas

Dont the front Hubs from 70's firebirds bolt on? Douglas

Igor, You need to think this one throught mate. You wont come out ahead by swaping a diesel into a petrol truck, particularly if you are going to use different companies engines and trans. You would be better off trading. I had a ford courier (Made in thialand) for about 3 years. It was a 2.5 tdi with 280nm of tourque at 1800 rpm. Not sure of the exact conversion but it should be close to what the vw tdi has in foot pounds. With my z on the trailer this thing struggled, big time! It would make power from just over 2000 rpm but you would have to slip the clutch to get it there. Dont pull out in front of traffic! The engine with a load on was always working hard. It had a lot better fuel consumption then a petrol engine would have in the same conditions but still a bigger tdi would have been the answer. It would have sat at 2000 rpm all day, mine was having to do 4000 rpm and constantly shifting to maintain speed. Douglas

Yellow is not really my thing, However "crome yellow" with the black highlights as you described them would be wicked. It would show of the other details of your ride. Nice work Btw. Look forward to seeing it move again. Douglas

There is an engine called a polymotor. Its a 4 cylinder 4 valve headed engine that was designed for speedway work I think. The 2.0 lt version made 300 bhp on methanol at reasonably low revs. From what I remember it was ceramic with c/fiber bits as well. Came in about 20kg lighter then a bdh cosworth if I remember correctly. Douglas

Jon's right. There are toyota turbo diesels that will bolt in there. I had a landcruser parado as a co. car for a while with a 3l turbo diesel in it. It moved along nicely for a heavyer the 2000kg truck. We have some pretty large hills ( some may call them mountains) around here and I used to love the way you could leave it 5 th gear and blast up the hills at 140kph. They are better now with common rail fuel systems and intercoolers. I wouldnt touch the VW. Douglas

My first welder was a henrob. I seem welded my race car with the damn thing. After that I bought a mig. Much happyer now. The local distrubuter of the henrob offered classes so i took soom. I could do some neat stuff with his set up but I never seemed to get mine to function the same way which frustrated the hell out of me. It might have been that at home i was always working on rusty old cars instead of new metal. I am a hell of a lot faster with a mig and get less warping. Mind you, I am not a good welder. Douglas

I had a similar thing happen when making the front end for my corolla. Took weeks to dry and then stuck in the mold. I use the same resin with a new batch of mekp and it happened again. Now I dont buy resin form that shop! I guess thay dont sell enough of it and it stay's on the shelf to long. So the lesson I lernt was to deal with the big shops and get a fresh brew. This means getting it shiped in where I live. Douglas

You can run more rear brake bias in the wet becuase you dont have as much forward weight transfer when wet. This means you will then be locking up the rears in the dry. Always a compromise. You choose. Cheers, Douglas

Speedracer, When i was a kid in Atlanta I used to go to a summer camp called tellico Mt camp. Very pretty part of the world and some rather nice twisty roads if i remember correctlly. My Dads side of the family are all from tenn. around Sweetwater. and the trystate area around johnson city. I visited about two years ago and he took me to a vally called Haynes vally (our last name) where we found old grave sites with Haynes' in them back to the early 1800's. Kind of cool. Anyway, I now live in New Zealand (have done for 24 years)but have always had a soft spot for Tenn. The people that we meet in our few weeks of traveling were nice and always seemed to be interested in where were from and how we ended up in tenn. It was nice. In other parts of the states Cal. in particular people just wouldnt give you the time of day. Douglas

Bugger, Just lost 15 mins of typing. http://album.hybridz.org/showphoto.php?photo=6307&cat=500&ppuser=8086 This is the nose cone I have made. If you look around my photos you will see the undertray thats attached to it. It runs flush from the front of the nose cone to the engine crossmember . Its made out of two layers of glass with a foam core and two more layer on top of that. Very light, stiff and strong. http://album.hybridz.org/showphoto.php?photo=6311&cat=500&ppuser=8086 The car is still in paint jail. Spot primeing and sanding when ever I can get to it for the last month. Work and a new addition to the family have really cut back on zeddy time. Douglas

Howdy guys, Took some photos yesterday. http://album.hybridz.org/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=8086 The car now has 3 coats of spray putty and we are ready to block it back. The colour will be a deep burgandy red, Grab a good bottle of pinot noir and add some flake to it and thats about the colour. It has taken 3 years to get to this stage. The end seems in sight. I realize that this thread is about aerodynamics, the photos will explain all. Cheers, Douglas