katman

If you want to race later on as you say then it would behoove you to read the rules for whatever santioning body you think you'll be racing for. Try http://www.izzyscustomcages.com/ZCageArticle.html to start.

"Billet" just means at some point the material went through a cogging process to turn a short, fat lump into a longer, skinnier lump. Base material and engineering have way more to do with a part's strength than does whether or not it started life as a "billet" for what we're talking about. Not exactly a forging, and may as well start with plate (which is probably what 99% of so called billet parts are machined from anyway). The difference betweed solid "billet", AZCar, or stock control arms is going to be diddly/squat wrt handling and ride. Ride, or what most people think is ride, and NVH, is all about bushings, shocks, and the ratio of sprung to unsprung weight. Handling and braking is probably 95% tires and driver for the normal range of streetable mods- i.e. any front running ITS driver would kick your butt on a road course with a $250 suspension and stock brakes if you let him mount up his Hoosiers and some HT-9 pads. The rest is just for show. Eh, that's just what I think.

I'm with Gary on this one. In ITS we saw no advantage to going over about 65 ft-lbs of breakaway, and usually just ended up increasing our operating temps. Plus, in the rain it sucks at 100 ft-lbs, and sometimes us non-NASCAR types have to drive in it. Expecially for auto-X where you want to avoid understeer at all costs, I'd stick with the lower breakaway.

Well lessee here. A .020 overbore is good for about 2 cubic inches, or say another 2 hp. Rods, crank, and flywheel obviously add no power. Unless you paid $1500 for head prep the valve job is probably no better than stock. Without more compression and serious head rework a cam is good for maybe 12 hp somewhere in the rev band. Cold air intake and headers, maybe another 10 tops. I'd say 220-240 is 20-40 optimistic. But I could be wrong...

There's a guy in a one man welding shop in Dalton, GA that is in to racing dune buggies and I happened to need him to weld a 4130 hollow sway bar I was making for the ITS car. Good old boy had a V8 he had made from two Kawasaki motors. Made his own dyno and was tuning it. Cool. Heck, if you can weld two motors together why not 4 for a V16?? Now that would get you a crowd at the local Z club meet!

Looks good, sign me up. I'm sorta tired of spending more to ship parts than the parts cost, so heck I'd saw the thing in half to get it within UPS specs if that's what it took. I can fglass it back together, sniff a little bondo dust, and presto!

I have to second Ross's concern about strut (shock) travel. I wish I had a buck for every lowered street car of ITS racer that I've consulted on that had some goofy handling problem that in the end was caused by the shock bottoming out or extending to it's limit. In ITS I usually recommend 2.5 inches of bump and 2 inches of rebound to stay out of trouble, so on softer street springs you'd want even more. Bottom line, after you get your ride height where you want it check where your shock relative to it's available travel.

Very nice camber plates and adjustable spring seats. Their AD shocks, however, need more rebound capability for road racing.

I've had problems sealing the water jackets on some of my race engines. Some engines worked fine, others nope. Regardless I wouldn't consider one on the street.

Carbs = semi metered fuel leak.

The long lost Z-Car Magazine article on building an ITS 240Z cage: http://www.izzyscustomcages.com/ZCageArticle.html

Nope.

I don't have a problem with the "ricers" as long as they can spell and use punctuation.

I could be wrong, but isn't that tranny to wide to fit in a 1st gen car?

Had lots of trouble with the AD shock in ITS racing on this coast. Not enough rebound capacity at that spring rate. Sorry, got spoiled with our ShockTek remote reserviors before they were outlawed.

Not exactly. While they're all interchangeable, there was a subtle design change after '71 I think. The early ones are more prone to cracking in an ITS type racing situation. Proly nothing to be concerned about on a street car.

I was supposed to be in Australia at the end of this month on business, but changed plans. Would have liked to have seen a "spoon drain".

What do they weigh and what kind of aluminum?

John is, as usual, correct.

Automotive machine work, and especially "performance" machine work, is one of those things that truly is a "you get what you pay for" proposition (and I'll add- "and sometimes you get even less"). Those that really do know how to make additional horsepower have paid the development money to get there, and expect (and deserve) to get it in return. Get a second mortgage and go Sunbelt. IMHO, of course.

Just one quick note. There's more to a cam than lift and duration numbers. The amazing thing about the Sunbelt cam is that it can use less spring pressure than stock due to the lobe profile. This is free horsepower. It takes something like 75 hp just to drive a stock cam at 5000 rpm. A roller cam (nee Malvern) or low spring pressure cam like Sunbelt's gives you some of this back. The Schneider and other traditional vendors' cams are very old profiles, often copies of copies of somebody else's. The software for designing cams and simulating the results to the engine is much better today as you might imagine. Dang few people are still developing the old L series motors these days. Sunbelt is one of them.

Looks great!

Understanding Engineers - Take Two To the optimist' date=' the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. Understanding Engineers - Take Seven "Normal people believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet"[/quote'] Hey, what happened to takes three through six? How about "Arguing with an Engineer is like mud wrestling a pig- after a few hours you realize you're covered with mud and the pig thinks its fun". Like I said previously, the parts might be just fine. I see nothing wrong with asking how it was substantiated. If it weren't for the occasional engineer on this site asking the tough questions we'd just be a bunch of posers like on zcar.com

No main hoop diagonal? You get what you pay for. For a street car this adds a bunch of weight up high and gives you some nice pipes to bang your head on. For road racing these cages would not meet the safety requirements of real sanctioning bodies. I think somebody before has mentioned they are NHRA legal, so if the track where you DRAG race requires it you're good. Do you need that bar that goes through the dash? Well that depends on what it is you want with a cage in the first place.