Dragonfly

Jerry called me a little while ago and told me he is going to run a special on the lca's, he is going to sell them for $675 for the time being. For anyone who would like to ask Jerry some questions directly drop him an email at support@zraceproducts.com, you can also ask me questions about any of the ZRacezproducts stuff here in the forums, by PM, or be email milezgray@yahoo.com. Dragonfly

I figured out real quick that he wanted to rip me off. I think he wa hoping that I was a little more gullable than I actualy am. My setup is pretty straight forward and could probably be done in a fairly reasonable time frame I just have to do some research to find someone that I feel I can trust for doing the dyno tuning. Thanks again for starting this post and putting some real information out here for us to read and for proving that there are still some honest people out there. Dragonfly

I've learned alot from reading this post and one of the things that I knew was possible but did not know how it worked was how the operator can force a car to read higher or lower numbers. I was at racelegal when a local shop brought their Mustang dyno to the track, they were charging $50 for three pulls on the dyno then they would give you a printout and some advice... I decided that I would go ahead and put my car on the dyno and see what I was putting down. The first thing I noticed was after the car was all strapped down and ready for the first pull they had not come up with a fan anywhere, I asked about a fan and the operator told me there was cool air outside at night that fans were not nesissary (sp) I knew that was bs but I had already paid my money, was strapped down and all my buddies were waiting for the results. So I went ahead and did my first pull which the operator told me would be a 1/4 mile run using the dyno and I should drive the car as if I were drag racing. After doing that he asked if I thought the 1/4 mile time was what I thought it should be (it was 13.xx) and I said probably so he told me we were going to do a pull for numbers now that the dyno was set for my car. The operator did a few things on the computer then told me how he wanted me to bring the car up, I followed his instructions and as I was making the pull I noticed that in 4th gear I stopped accelerating at about 4500 rpm even though my cam is supposed to make power through 6000 rpm after 3 to 5 seconds of my engine lugging at 4500 rpm and my temp nearly going off the scale I shut it down and refused to do the third pull. The operator gave me a printout that said I had 155 peak hp and 157 peak tq then he told me that my car had alot of problems and if I brought it into his shop that within 8 hours of dyno tuning they could gaurantee (sp) me at least 50 hp and tq gains. I knew that was a full blown load of bs and that they were just going to adjust the dyno to show me what they promised. I did not know until now how they actualy did it I just knew they could. I have ever since that time told anybody and everybody that ever mentioned there shop to avoid them because they are ripoff artist. I am glad there are people like Drax out there that want things done right and is honest about what he does. BTW I run the 1/8 mile in 8.7x seconds at 79.xx mph and my car weighs about 2565 lbs with me in it. I am not sure how to translate that to hp but I bet its more than 155. Dragonfly

Some of the things you say I do not have an answer for but I can give you some insight... When Jerry decided to make these he wanted to use the engineering that had already been done by Nissan which is why they have the curves you see (they match the curvature of the stock parts), because he wanted them to be considerably more heavy duty than stock he used heavy walled tubing etc. which has caused the part to acualy weigh a few ounces more than the stock parts. You are absolutely correct that any idiot can unscrew the heim joints out as far as they want. I did give Jerry a hard time from the very begining about the non on car adjustability of these parts but in his mind he felt that after it was setup it should be locked down and not adjusted on the car other than camber which would be done with camber plates. Dragonfly

We have found that the initial set up takes about 45 minutes to get exactly what you want after that it is recomended that you use camber plates for the majority of your future alignments. Dragonfly

The price is $875 and they come with everything you see in the picture. To answer another question and explain some of the reason for the price I will tell you a few things that are not on Jerry's website. The reason the sway bar mounts are so close to the bar is for a better alignment of the links to the sway bar, in the current location you have the least amount of lateral load on the link at any point of suspension movement. The suspension uses FK 7/8†male heim joints which are rated at 68k psi (the following link shows the furmula to arrive at the rating) http://www.aedmotorsport.com/FK/ENGINEERINGDATA.htm and cost $98 each. The arms are constructed with all 4130 chromoly. Main frame 1 1/2"-.120 wall chromoly tubing, Inter-frame is 1"-.120 wall, and 3/16†inter-plate, all chromoly. Jerry built these things to handle the power his car makes (tuned for 1150 flywheel hp on race gas). Jerry also has an unconditional lifetime garuantee (sp) that if you ever break one of his lower control arms he will replace it for free as long as you send him the broken one back with pictures of the car and an explination of how it happened. Dragonfly

A number of years ago (before I knew about HybridZ) I made a set of very simple camber plates that had no monoball in them and only used the rubber piece from the factory to handle any play... well after breaking two struts off I decided to pay the money and get proper camber plates. IMO if you do not have the monoball you will break the threaded portion off the top of your struts. Dragonfly

My buddy Jerry of http://www.ZRaceProducts.com has added his rear suspension package to his website and ebay store now so I wanted to post a pic and get some opinions. So what do you think??? BTW here is the link with some info about the setup http://www.zraceproducts.com/hot.php. Dragonfly

Looks like a nice Christmas gift to me... Dragonfly

I used to have that wing on my 240Z but I sold it with the hatch for $100 after I got the CF rear hatch from John C. You can see the wing in this pic. Dragonfly

Being a non profesional and making preperations to do the same thing I must say GOOD JOB. From what I can see it looks great, hopefuly mine will look that good when I am done. Dragonfly

Just make sure that when your done the seat is mounted just as solidly as the factory seat was. It is important to remember that a seatbelt is only as good as the mounting of the seat in an accident. I am assuming that you are going to be mounting the Recaro seats that were pictured above, so that leaves me to assume also that you will be using a 4 or 5 point harness (seatbelt). Dragonfly

The side mount bracket that is shown requires that the original mounting points inside the car be removed and the new brackets are mounted to the floor then the seats are mounted to the brackets. If you try to mount the side mount brackets on top of the existing factory seat mounting points the seat will be way to high your head will be wedged against the roof. Because I did not want to take that route I bought the Momo "Cup" seats which allow side mount or bottom mount. Bottom mount uses the factory mounting points (without the sliders). Dragonfly

I would take the car to an auto parts store and have everything tested, there is a possibility that the new battery is bad. Call the parts store first to make sure they do the testing and to insure there is no charge (Pep Boys charges you but they will test everything for you). Dragonfly

It does not matter what alternator, voltage regulator, battery you run as long as the system works... Which means that the battery should read aprox. 14 volts with no load and the engine off, when you start the engine the battery should not drop below 12 volts. With the engine running the alternator should supply 12 to 14 volts to the battery and when you turn on your headlights (with engine running) the alternator output should never drop below 12 volts, if it does not read in the 12 to 14 volt range your voltage regulator is not working properly (16 volts is to high). The amount of amps the alternator puts out is determined by the electrical loads it has to feed. Use whatever you want just make sure they pass the above test, also if you do not have enough load capacity in your car to use more than 60 to 65 amps there is no need to run a higher amp alternator, anything above what you can draw is never used. By the way you can get all of the above items tested at most any auto parts store for free (they will load test your battery and it WILL smoke but if it is good it will not be damaged). Dragonfly

I am not a battery expert either but what I can tell you is that the CCR (cold cranking amps) only has value when you are talking about starting the car (no alternator providing power), what you need to be concerned with when the car is running and the alternator is working is the batteries AH (amp hour rating). The greater the AH rating the better your charging system will be able to handle the electrical draws it has been tasked with. As an analogy imagine an air tank/compressor, the tank would be your battery and the compressor your alternator... your engine turns the compressor fast enough that you do not need the tank, but when you have something with a larger draw you are now taxing the compressor so with the tank you reduce the amount of stress on the compressor and the larger the tank the less stress you will have on the compressor. The point of all this is that you need to consider what it takes to start the car, and what the typical loads will be and what the max load will be then size your capacities accordingly ie CCA, HA, size, weight, and alternator amperage. Dragonfly

I've got CF/Nomex hood and CF/Lexan rear hatch from John Coffee and that saved me alot of weight. The FG fenders were more for no rust and IMHO easier repair of any damage (I've had my car hit and run more than once now). Dragonfly

I have not weighed the stock fenders as I have not had any for quite some time but my stock looking FG fenders weigh 11 lbs without anything attached to them. Dragonfly

That is a pretty large chunk of money for a damper but what I can tell you to give you an idea of the reason for the price is that Jerry (owner of http://www.zraceproducts.com) is providing these dampers to Nissan to test and use on thier race cars and they will be released as Nismo parts for a much higher price, also and much more importantly is that these are the exact same dampers used by Mercedes (sp) for their ultra high end cars as well as Ferrari. http://www.zraceproducts.com spent more money than I will mention to get the manufacturer to build them to fit on our Z car engines. By no means am I saying that this damper is a must have for anybodies (sp) engine but http://www.zraceproducts.com does offer a great warranty on every part he sells and that includes parts used for racing such as these dampers. Dragonfly

For those of you who have the "newer" Z cars who's flashers will not work with LED's this is what you should get http://www.superbrightleds.com/tail-brake-turn.html, take a look about halfway down the page at the LED flasher unit. Here is the info on the flasher http://www.superbrightleds.com/pdfs/flasher-spec.pdf. That should take care of your flasher problems. Dragonfly

Take a look here http://store.zraceproducts.com/enginecomp.htm. they are a little on the pricey side but they are in my opinion the best you can get. Dragonfly

This car belongs to Jerry the owner of http://www.zraceproducts.com, it is not quite the same but not to far off. Heres another angle... Dragonfly

What year is your Z? The older Z's use a mechanical contact for the flasher and have no problem flashing an LED. You can also get LED's that have a flasher built into them which means you do not need to use the load equalizer which in my opinion defeats the purpose of using LED's in the first place (to reduce the current draw on the electrical system). Also any where you place a load equalizer you have to be concerned with heat (you may notice they have a small heat sink on them) and not put them any where that the heat they produce will cause any problems. Dragonfly