capt_furious

Went TDY last week. Just a few:

Thanks! Glad to pass along a little knowledge.

If you're going after more width for the wheels, your efforts should be concentrated in the wheelwells. Everything else works around this. Widening the entire car is a novel approach, but it breaks down in many areas, and most of them have been pointed out. Jonas has the right idea. Pull the outermost sheet metal outward, and leave the rest of the car alone. No need for custom glass, you're not chopping the whole car down the middle. Done right, you're essentially sectioning the car longitudinally, in two places, pretty much right along the belt line. Jonas' approach works great in the quarters, and if you're good with sheet metal and a little trickery with mechanical bits, you could probably pull the door skins a few inches outward to match, as well. The biggest problem is in the front fenders, and getting them to blend into the headlight buckets. Do it wrong, or make too many compromises, and it'll look terrible(remember the wide body kits that used rectangular headlights? YECCCCH!). Do it right, and you should get a nice wide fender without having to resort to making a lot of custom pieces or over-fabricating things. You'd have to carefully cut the front fender down the top of the beltline and progressively taper it outward as you move back along the car. The hard part is covering the outside front of the wheels, which is an aerodynamic issue if you've been following along in the aero section. So, attack from another angle, add a section down the outside edge of the hood. This would require steel headlight buckets and adding your 3" section to the inboard side of the bucket. Move the scoop and lamp assembly outward. I'd whip up something in Photoshop to illustrate this - I was, actually, and had a nice fat computer crash - but it's late, and I've got other stuff I should be doing. In short, don't make more work for yourself than you need to in order to accomplish what you're after. If the outer wheelwells are preventing you from fitting wider wheels and tires, widen those, not the entire car, unless you're after a wider track...at that point, you might as well start with a different chassis. Section the fenders and quarters much as Jonas has done, and move them outward. The only dilemma is blending the rear edge of the door to match, and moving the headlight buckets and front valence outward. The back of the front fender can be left open for air extraction out of the wheelwell and engine bay.

A little bit on racing stripes: They were popularized in part by the Gordon Bennet Cup, Grand Prix, and FIA rules in the early 20th century and came on strong in the 1950s and 1960s. Most of the color schemes and stripes / patterns denoted the country of origin of the car's owner or racing team. The late '60s and early '70s saw sponsorship colors take hold and push out national colors in most racing disciplines. That's why there are so many red Ferraris, Alfas, and Maseratis. Ditto green and yellow Jaguars, Aston Martins, Lotus(Lotii?), and BRMs. Same for silver BMWs, Mercedes, and Porsches(actually, they're supposed to be white, but to reduce weight in the '30s, some cars were left in bare aluminum, and it stuck). U.S. colors at the time were blue over white...which you see on Cunningham C4-Rs, Shelby Cobras, GT40s, Mustang GT 350s and a number of other '60s era U.S. cars. There's a bit of folklore about the direction and placement of stripes and their origin. Tread with caution on this next part. Supposedly an offset stripe would help track workers (especially on a track hosting a race in the LeMans series, with many cars and teams coming from all over the world, in a variety of configurations) locate the driver in event of a rollover. Another benefit of an offset stripe supposedly is that being down the driver's line of sight, it will give them a subconscious reference of the vehicle's orientation on the track, especially in a spinout or when transitioning quickly across the surface. Supposedly Briggs Cunningham was the first to apply a longitudinal stripe to a racing vehicle, with the Cunningham C2 in 1951. Japanese national colors are an off-white with a red 'meatball' and black numbers. I wasn't about to slap a giant hinomaru on my Z, so I took a little license and did this instead: I stopped the stripe short on the hatch, since I'll get a spoiler on there eventually and I didn't want a stripe sticking out underneath it, and the stripe doesn't go all the way down the front, either. Purely my personal opinion, but the Z doesn't lend itself to full length stripes the way other cars do. Datsun had a factory longitudinal stripe on the Z in the form of the ZZZap! package: In the end, it's your car and the colors & style of stripe should suit your taste.

These are copies of the SSR MKIIIs. The ribs on the spokes aren't nearly as defined(I think the SSRs have a magnesium sand-cast center), but they're the only available copy at a fraction of the price. Fine for a street or mild track car. Konig makes good stuff, but it's possible that these are relatively heavy. The false bolts are plastic and likely will melt off with a good heat cycle. I think someone here had that happen on another set of wheels and replaced them with short allen head bolts. The name is a bit silly, and it's cast right into one of the spokes. You shouldn't need spacers with them.

The car hobby seems to attract a lot of know-nothing knowitalls, and cars in general seem to attract a lot of well-meaning but empty comments. I've had my Z mistaken for a Porsche, a Ferrari, a Honda, a Toyota, a 510, a B210, and people always seem to know something about the car that shows they know nothing at all. Occasionally you run across someone that DOES know what they're talking about, and it's refreshing. It was worse with my first two cars, a '68 and later a '72 Plymouth Fury. The '68 seemed to get the most confusion thrown at it. 'Oh, Chevy made those, didn't they?' 'No, it's a Plymouth.' 'Yeah, and Chevy makes Plymouth.' 'No, Plymouth is a Chrysler brand, like Dodge.' 'I thought Chevy made Dodge.' *buries face in hands* '...just...stop.' 'Hey, nice Pontiac!' '...uh. Thanks.' 'What is that, an Impala?' The '72 drew a lot of attention, it was a cop car with 5 antennae, push bars, a spotlight, Mocom 70 police radio, CB, dogdish hubcaps, and it was all white. Nobody knew what to think of it, other than to make a LOT of Dukes of Hazzard and Blues Brothers references.

Not the most bizarre thing I've seen coming out of Japan, but it's up there... Crap...it got stuck upstairs. d@mn you, Austin...

Looks as if it's been sitting in a body shop for a while, with all that dust. That's what a $800 header looks like? Man, I bet I could sell mine for $1500! A fool and his money...

The WM Z uses a Kaminari piece for the airdam. It's actually pretty nice. You need the right foglights for it or you'll have big gaping holes.

That's a pretty unique airdam! I'd try getting it patched up and have it used for a mold if there's anything still left of it. A body shop with solid fiberglass capabilities should be able to do the job right...hopefully it won't cost much more than buying a new airdam, which wouldn't necessarily work with the rest of your bodywork.

I had a set of those, they're American Racing. Be VERY careful with them and don't overtorque the lugs. I had one split right through the hub face between diagonal lug holes.

Have a read through the Aero section to get an idea of how a properly kitted Z should look. I'd agree on what others have said, make it functional instead of visual. ...and those wheels seem huge.

Try the MoParts forums. Lots of knowledgeable, helpful people there.

Good lord! I wouldn't have let them keep it for more than a day! Get your car back, NOW. Pay the fines if you have to, and THEN go to court. That's absurd. You've got them by the short hairs, start yanking before they bleed you dry.

I've bought the slaves at Napa the last two times. The bag on the one that went on the car today said Made in Italy. Maybe it is just me. The fluid's pretty dirty, I should flush it. Might be a big factor. How can I tell if it's over stroking? Pull the dust boot off and have someone push in the pedal while I look at it? I've got the adjustable pin and holed fork, if that's relevant.

I've had my Z since March of '04 and I've gone through three clutch slaves. Is this normal? I just had another give out today on the way home from work. Seems as if these pieces are really failure prone, unless I'm doing something wrong. How often should they be flushed, if at all?

<--- The Wingnut, fwiw (I'76 player since 1997) Let me try this as an attachment. I can't believe I'm this inept. At any rate, it should be easily recognizable, simple, classic, tasteful, but alluring. You get the idea.

Okay, here's a link to the pic I was trying to post. I guess it only shows up if you've looked at it already. And wandering off topic, Red, speaking of 3D models, there'd better be a Z in Outlaws.

This? Thank cygnusx1, he found it.

Took this tonight. We had a great sunset.

Careless, I like the idea in general. The H-S emblem is incredibly elegant and something along those lines would definitely be appropriate for a Z...something complimentary for a 'Fair Lady', a sort of anonymous, graceful, yet alluring piece, sort of like this:

VERY nicely done! So...when are you setting up a group buy and producing 20 sets?

Taste being subjective, Nissan's styling department has been smoking a lot of high-grade controlled substances in recent years. I'm of the opinion that the S30 lives on in an ironic place; the origin of its inspiration - a British GT: Yes, it's a $200,000 + car, but the design philosophy is far more present in that design than in the current Z. Visually, very little would have to be changed to make it look very similar to an S30 without suffering aerodynamically. The body lines, headlamps, grille and glass are far closer to the original Z than anything Nissan has produced in 20 years.

It came off of another forum I'm on. Here's a copy of a news article(scroll down to the first June 16th item) from a TV station local to the car:

Yeah, not a Z, but certainly a hybrid! I tried putting this in announcements but evidently that's for admins only.