wfritts911

I am willing to bet you just sheared the joint and it flailed around and blew the cover out. Dunno what clutch you have but if you have a harsh clutch your odds of breaking axles goes way up. I've sheared a lot lol( 5 now). Slipping the clutch a lot generally keeps them alive, its just the clutch shock that kills them. Buy some spares to take with you and start looking towards some sort of axle swap -Will

Ya I could run almost any brakes I want, but the calipers with the Ebrake function tend to be a lot more expensive(Broke college kid here). Which I might end up just paying the extra coin for calipers with the ebrake, but I could buy calipers without the ebrake and pay for a line lock instead which is dual purpose. I would just lock the fronts for a temp ebrake. I just hate having to turn my car off everytime I get out of it if I cant get it to sit still cause it isnt perfectly flat or I can't turn up towards the slight incline. The Z has never had an ebrake since I got it going in March, its missing one of the clevis' for the ebrake cable to clip onto the lever on the hub/brake cylinder. I've never had a problem with it other than needing to get out for short term to move my bike or run back into my apartment to grab something. The town I live in has lots of hills and I can parallel park just fine without an ebrake. And my car had stacks out the hood at one point, I don't need a 2x4 to seal the "That guys gotta be a redneck...". I wear my steel toes when I ride my bike and sometimes when I drive the car, and I've used my toe to stop the car from rolling several times lol. -Will

A 3 inch collector would be better, and 3 1/2 would just cause even worse clearence issues. 1 7/8 will also be a tight fit. Are you going with JCI Mounts or custom ones? -Will

Nice, I am totally game for that. We can have our own Z Car Power Tour. It's too bad they are all 1/8th mile tracks. If we can make that happen right after I get out of school for the summer it will be perfect, cause then when I start working I won't have to try and ask off. Need to round up some other Z guys to meet up with. -Will

I am totally game for 4 drag strips in 4 nights. But what dragstrip races on a thursday or monday? Finding ones that race on friday, sat, and sunday should be hard. I'll start collecting axles now or finish my axle swap before then. My Aunt/Uncle live on some lake in Alabama and my family has always gone down there for a long weekend each summer, I've missed out on the last 2 or 3 trips cause of work/living with my brother in Virginia so maybe I can make it down there and we can mix our dragstrip runs in with that, I love a good road trip Also the dyno graph is accurate at 2500 or even 3000. I didn't get on it til right after 3000. Pretty much when the torque curve goes horizontal is when I was WOT. But the LS motors really seem to wake up around 3000 anyways. I'm going for Mechanical Engineering(Makes sense right?). I would love to get into the automotive field after college, but dunno how realistic that is. In truth college is kind of my back up plan, I really want to start a performance/offroad shop with my brother and start fabbing parts as well as doing repairs/mods on peoples vehicles. My brother has a '90 Ford Bronco that we 3.9 Cummins Turbo diesel swapped, 1 ton axles front and rear, 3 link front end with coil overs with a massive 16 inches of travel, etc. Almost all custom built other than some random brackets that were easier to buy cause we didn't have a drill press and hand drilling 1/4 plate is how you get broken wrists lol. I built my brothers Dana 60 in his apartment living room while I was staying in Virginia Beach with him for the summer. Its not done yet but we've drove it down the rode a few times. It's a big work in progress still, but should be pretty wicked once it gets finished. And I'll get your beef jerky next time I go home, I should have got it when I went home to build my exhaust, but I was too busy as it took a lot longer than it should have to make a Y pipe and run it out the back. Promise I didn't just con you into giving me a free catch can my dad does actually work for jack links. -Will

Hmm interesting points, also the megasquirt can incorporate a GM flex fuel sensor to read for ethanol content(E85) which I have been considering switching too. Sure would be nice to have it account for E85 or gasoline when I cant find E85. A built in two step and E85 switching sure would be nice. Damn, now I'm gonna have to spend all my free time researching megasquirt instead of doing homework lol. -Will

Hmm I hadn't thought of that, good point. How I have my axle swap going I plan on using a line lock for temporary ebrake functions, but long term I always leave my car in gear. It would be nice to be able to get out to move my bike out of my parking spot without my car rolling away though(Don't have an ebrake right now either). Good to know on the Summit line lock, I will probably purchase one when I do my axle swap one of these days. -Will

Haha I only tell people I don't like that my car is pretty much stock with bolt ons lol. Told a guy I raced in a SRT10 truck a while back that it was pretty much stock with the 2.8L straight six. He was rudely awakened when I was coming back on him hard on the back end lol. The dyno video showing bolt-ons wasn't my doing. He also called my heads "decked", I told him "decked" was an extreme understatement lol. My buddy has EFI Live and I have a 98 Motor/wiring/PCM which works nicely cause EFI Live can tune unlimited 98 models without credits(Read: tuning for beer). My buddy with a 260Z thats L28 Turbo is running megasquirt. The guy I bought my car from also had the L28 turbo running megasquirt, now he has a 240sx thats KA24 turbo'd running megasquirt. They both really like it, but for the LSx engines the stock PCM's can be tuned to do almost whatever you want so the extra work to go to megasquirt isn't really worth it. If the stock PCM wasn't as capable I would go Megasquirt in a heartbeat though. -Will

Paging RebekahZ... When I do a line lock I will probably go with the cheap summit racing brand one, summit usually rebrands a good brand as their own and sells it for cheaper. As long as you don't plan on using it for an Ebrake, they probably all act pretty close to the same in short term. Durability wise I'm not sure, but almost any brand will probably work about the same. -Will

is the link to the dyno video. My buddy Mat(FlatBlack) used his gopro and got a really cool angle for the dyno videos. No problem CrayZ, I know when I was starting my LS1 swap I looked for track results for LS1 swap Z's a lot, and there wasn't a whole bunch for stock style cars. -Will

So this past weekend we had a dyno day here in NW Arkansas so I had a chance to get my Z on the dyno and do a little tuning. My setup consists of a 98 LS1/T56 with 799 milled .035 for around 11.5:1 compression. My own custom built longtube headers. Stock LS1 intake, stock cam. Tune that could still use a bit of polishing up, but its decent. Anyways on to the results/pics/videos. Dyno'd saturday morning on a Dynojet. For comparison a 98 Camaro with nothing but headers and a slight tune put down 330/341 torque. Anyways my final results after 4 pulls and a couple tune tweaks were 348rwhp@~5500rpm and 370rwtq@~4500rpm. Tune could still use some tweaking, tried to do some more logging at the track, my launch/1-2 shift were shorting something out or causing my buddies laptop to stop logging, so I was only able to get one log when I just rolled up to 3rd and 4th gear. And on to the track results. My best time of the day ended up being and the video is of that pass: 60ft: 2.0217 330ft: 5.3256 1/8 ET: 7.9681 1/8 MPH: 93.91 1000 ET: 10.2482 1000 MPH: 108.04 1/4 ET: 12.1520 1/4 MPH: 118.33 That poor fox body never stood a chance lol. This is the second time I've gone to the track on the same axles, normally I break them on a daily basis, but the one thats in there now must be made of unubtanium or something! I was shifting hard the last few passes as well, almost WOT shifting 3rd and 4th, launching pretty decent, and was getting lots of wheel hop, and it kept on going. If my local track back home was a 1/4 mile instead of 1000ft I know it would do 11s without changing a thing, I pulled a 10.06 in the 1000ft at my local track, and my MPH is up 2+ from that 10.06 pass. -Will

Nice car! And that thing gets down off the line! Did you cut the fenders for the flares pretty high and towards the front to fit the 28 inch tire? I thought a 26 inch slick was really close to hitting the front of the fender well on these cars. -Will

Man looking at those photos makes me realize how high my car sits. 4x4 status for sure! I need to get the rest of the parts for my coilovers. -Will

Continuing with the off-topic solid axle talk. As far as packaging goes, going with a torque arm setup like the 3rd and 4th gen f-bodies had should allow a solid axle with very minimal body cutting. Would definitely fit much better than a 4 link/ladder bar setup would and they can be dialed in to work really well. If I were to end up solid axle swapping mine thats what I would use, the coil over mounting and watts link/panhard bar would be the hardest part. -Will

Before I even read the thread I was going to say rust was probably behind the rust proofing cause its a Datsun lol. But that looks like it could be body filler of some sort. A grinder or a wire wheel would probably remove it. -Will

http://ls1tech.com/forums/conversions-hybrids/1247936-radiator-hose-t-steam-line-part-number.html That shows several options. I used a radiator out of an 80s or early 90s Chevy G10 van with a V6 and it has a fitting for the steam vent so it worked out nicely. -Will

It may not cause any real problems, but the steam vent lets the hot air pockets at the top of the heads. So blocking it off could possibly leave hot pockets at the top of the heads causing detonation. Will you ever see this in the real world? Maybe, maybe not. If you can I would try and splice it into the upper radiator hose or the radiator if yours has a spot for it. -Will

Hahahaha that was good. -Will

I wouldn't even consider using the normal JCI driveshaft in a car with a tranny thats built to hold 900. Call up any reputable driveshaft shop and have them make you a custom 3 inch or 4 inch one, the JCI one is a little baby steel shaft. As for spacing the transmission back a half inch, I would think it would still fit, will be a little tighter around the front part of the tunnel, but should be fine. Can't speak on the clutch choice, I have a monster stage 3 and its been great aside from it kills other drivetrain parts, but its a 6 puck single disc so it doesnt really meet your manners requirement. -Will

Interesting. I never really considered the weight difference between grade 5 and 8 bolts. If my Z comes in heavier than expected when I finally get around to weighing it, I might have to go through some of my bolts and either downsize and/or downgrade them. Definitely agree with the above statements, ounces make pounds, pounds win races. Also good to know that hard lines weigh less than braided lines, guess that is motivation to break out the bender when I finally get around to redoing my fuel lines -Will

Definitely recommend getting it running/driving with the stock motor first, then after you get all the little swap things worked out, decide what you want to do to get more power. Trying to mod it before the swap will just make it much more difficult if it isnt running right. Welcome to the forum! P.S. SunnyZ was being nice, that steering wheel is horrible! -Will

Oh the joys of fuel injection. I daily drive my bike which is always a PITA to start on cold mornings. One click on the Z after it sitting for a week, and it fires right up. Can't wait 'til I can manage to get a fuel injected bike. -Will

Looks like its coming along good, I just now read back from where I last posted, glad to see your going with the TTT backing plates. It might be earlier in this thread and I forgot, but what did the DSS quote you on axles with the 8.8 inners and the Z31/Z32 outers or whatever you plan on using? I've got the line on a Z32 TT R230 setup for a steal and will be taking a machine shop class this semester and might be fabricating some backing plates/strut tubes similar to the TTT design. Just trying to figure out if using the R230 and just getting shorter axles would be cheaper than finding and IRS 8.8 and getting custom axles. The diff/gear choices of the 8.8 sure is a good selling point. If I can build the backing plates/strut tubes it will end up being cheaper than a solid axle swap and should be close to bullet proof -Will

Judging by the looks of the front of that pan, it looks like it would allow it to go a little bit further down than a stock LS1 fbody pan. Given the LS1 pan is 5.75" deep I would make it at LEAST an inch shorter than that. My pan hangs an inch below the crossmember at least. Although I think my crank pulley limited me from going any further down so I'm not sure the shallower front would help any. With a small underdrive pulley you could possibly go even further down. A 4.5" sump would probably be my choice, although not sure what that does to oil capacity and possibly going dry on hard turns. -Will

Put mine under the passenger side dash, well technically its in the passenger floorboard, but ready for brackets to be made to hold it up in the dash lol. Originally had it next to the battery in the original location, but it was a bit tight and I wanted a cleaner look. -Will