markrolston@mac.com

I plan to call them about 18s but I don't want 17s as it's too hard to buy race slicks for those and I'm not even sure if my huge brakes will fit inside 17s. mark

sounds interesting. who are 'those guys' ?

yes, apparently. So who does? I did find that Image Wheels Uk will do them in 18s but not as nice as the watanabes. So I'm still scouring for other makers.

thanks. Drop by anytime to see it and take a ride. just send me a PM. The new one is at Andris Laivins shop (http://www.laivins.com/) but it's still only a rolling frame. I think wheel fitment is a huge part of a car's visual profile, especially with a car like the Z that can look relatively old and tipsy with the wrong wheels. It's also great for the Z's shape to use larger wheels as this changes the apparent scale of the car. 17's seem about right but I use 18's because of tire availability as 17's are hard to buy slicks for. 18's are on the verge of being too big for the style of the car. In my case I actually built the flares over the wheels so the tight fit is no accident.

It's this one: http://www.thezstore.com/page/TZS/PROD/7AD1/50-1411 It comes in either fiberglass or urethane.

true. I could be embellishing. It's likely not quite that fast by the point in the pic given it's about halfway along the straightaway.

That's about 150mph on the front straight of Texas World Speedway. The airdam almost completely tucked under. That's one reason I added a front splitter. The first splitter I made got ripped off at 100+ by the air pressure and made quick a trail of smoke and fragments.

Here are the two sets I use, a set of Boze 18x11 Mesh for the street and a set of CCW 18x11 classics for the track. Btw, can anyone point me to where I could find a Watanabe/Panasport style wheel in 18x11 with 5 lug pattern? I'm looking at those for a new Z I'm working on.

nope. I'm comfortable with three factors: First, I modeled the wheel against similar wheel designs using the same billet. Second, BOZE will assess the design before building the wheel and I'll assume they know what they're doing. Lastly, it won't be the track use wheel. I'll use standard mesh CCWs for that.

The wheels are definitely inspired (copied?) from the spoke pattern of the RS4 wheel. The depth and cut are somewhat different so I'm hoping it won't look like I just mounted an audi wheel. I may tweak it a bit to given it a more original profile. The cost is actually only $160 total more for them to do the custom shape. It's a two piece with the center milled from a billet. Since Boze tends to create wheels custom anyway, it's not a huge deal to load up a different file. I'm sending them the cad file nearly finished out. They will address bolt hole and mounting surface issues from there.

No updates this month. December has been distracting. I plan to hit it hard in the new year so things should move fast, hopefully starting with the engine and a set of wheels to roll it around on. below is a render of the wheel design I created that will get made by Boze Wheels. I plan to get the car registered. Since it's so old the rules are very lax. That's a huge benefit to building on old platforms. In fact I'm planning to have the car look finished from the outside- ie: carpet, full dashboard, door sills, etc. so that the underlying tube-frame basis should not be immediately obvious to the walk-up viewer. It's only when you look into the back hatch or lift the front hood do you see how radical the design is. That's the goal at least. Lastly, I'll certainly share my HR engine build up as it goes. I plan to open it up in Jan or Feb and start poking around.

It's a modified Corvette C6 setup. The Arms, Hub, and Spindle are C6 with a custom steering arm and unique geometry given the more narrow width of the Z car. The brakes are a Wilwood 14", six piston setup designed for a Z06 brake upgrade kit.

We got the door bars in and part of the front frame bracing. The door bars are low enough to still allow easy ingress but will require we move the door handle. Not really a problem. It's not like it's all custom anyway. I designed the door bars to fit neatly with the seat lines but be high enough to provide critical rigidity. The front brace is designed to be removable so we can get the engine in/out.

There is just over 4" clearance under the hood. I expect just enough for the intake. If you look closely, next to the oil fill spigot there is a paper cutout of where the ITB horns rise to. So we know it can fit. But even then we're considering just using throttle bodies for a simpler setup. With a turbo motor ITBs offer minimal gains. But they are still cool so I'm still kicking around the idea.

It's starting to look like a real car. Here are some recent pics with the body back onto the frame. In a week or so we'll split the project between bodywork and continued frame buildup. Right now we're thinking the body will be bolt-on like some kind of giant RC car. mark

The Fuel Cell is an ATL 17 gallon with foam and surge tank inside it. The pump is an aeromotive A1000. It hangs a little below the rear body line and required a 4" bump in the rear deck.

flattered. but sometimes it seems all the gold I touch turns to Z's

thanks. nice parts but I don't think distribution is much of a problem under pressure from a pair of turbos. With the engine draw from a normally aspirated setup it may be but as long as there aren't constrictions I'm going to be more concerned about volume than perfect distribution. And yes, oval shaped, curved horns are what I'm thinking. A short curved pipe between the head and the ITB, then a curved horn will allow for plenty of freedom to position the plenum. this is what I'm imagining (but better

I haven't chosen a radiator. That'll be way towards the end. I'm going to use Jenvey ITBs and make my own plenums to cover the horns. The key to clearance is to use curved horns rather than the straight horns shown in the ITB pics. Then I can make the plenum as big or tight as needed.

It's rolling now! we got it finished enough to roll so we could get it to the upcoming San Antonio Zcon09.

I used oval piping for the lowest sections with separate pipes for each turbo

Rumor has it that there are a few cool custom cars located outside of California

Who here is going to Zcon09 in San Antonio on September 28? http://www.zcon09.com I'd love to see other RBZs there. I'm bringing my RBZ along with the unfinished VQ-base 240Z I'm working on.

I've been tinkering all summer so I have a few updates to post: underside pics: and reworked interior: I posted a lot more pics of the work to my site. For now I plan to stop working on this one and concentrate on my second Z project.

check this out. It's not often we get to see this side... I took a set of pics of the bottom of the car while I had it up on a lift and composited the pics into one image with Photoshop. A much larger image is posted to my blog at: http://web.me.com/markrolston/NewSite/Z-Blog/Entries/2009/9/2_Underside.html