Pop N Wood

Sports Compact Car magazine tested the cars from the movie. I haven't bought the mag yet but another post said the Yenko, a 1969 427 Camaro, was the fastest car in the movie. Said most of the other cars did the quarter in the 14's.

Louvers are disco. I always associate them with the 70's. You guys have talked about FnF so much I actually rented it just the other day. I enjoyed it. No worse than a Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson movie. The plot was a blatant formula rip off of that Kennea Reeves-Patrick Swayse movie (Point Break?). The thing that caught my attention was the way they tried to sound knowledgeable about cars by rattling off the model numbers of a bunch of name brand parts. Makes me better understand why new members always start posts with "I've been contemplating a new engine idea for my Z, what do you think of a (fill in the blank) with twin turbos?" One funny thing, the DVD included a bonus track about the guy who supposedly started the whole F&F scene. They said his name was Racer X. No relation to our RacerX I hope?

Wal Mart sells harness kits. Hook one up to your existing wiring then you will never have trouble removing the player again. The harness kits even decode the wire colors and show pin layouts.

The age of the cylinder head design really doesn't have much to do with it. It is more from a lack of effort that a Z head doesn't match up to a Supra's. Stutz and Duesenberg were building DOHC 4 valve per cylinder engines over 90 years ago. The techonology has existed forever, it is just that some car manufactures put more effort into it than others.

Leaning it out will cause the hydrocarbon emissions to go WAY up. Ask me how I know. You will get the lowest overall emission numbers when the car is tuned to run right. If your cam is not too radical and your engine in good shape/tune, then you should have no trouble passing a sniff test using standards from a 20 to 30 year old car. If you have to meet the standards for a newer engine, then you might need a little more. Sniff tests don't test the car under a very wide range of conditions. That is why most smog laws require quite a bit more. I also think that is why smog laws don't want you to do anything to your car. It is too hard for them to determine how the change will affect emissions.

Halon suppresses fires by "by chemically disrupting combustion", not by displacing oxygen. It acts as some sort of catalyst to prevent combustibles from reacting with oxygen. That is why places with a lot of electrical equipment switched from CO2 to Halon. CO2 displaces all of the oxygen to smother the fire whereas halon mixes with the air to prevent combustion, but still allowing people to breath. Trouble is Halon is a CFC just like dry cleaning fluid, so it is not desirable to breath. The Navy uses foam to suppress liquid fires since, if applied correctly, the foam will blanket the pool of flammable liquid preventing air from reaching it. If applied incorrectly the water used to create the foam will wash off the foam layer re exposing the flammable liquid. That is why foam is not really effective for a burning car unless you can build up enough foam to completely engulf the car. It also doesn’t work well for burning walls or ceilings. The really scary thing about the foam the Navy uses is it is derived from animal renderings. Rumor had it when released in the water the foam was as effective as chum for attracting sharks. I know, slow day at work.

Doah. This is why I am leaning toward a 95 LT1 instead of an LS1. My 1970 240 has NO room for cats. BTW, how did they "catch" you? Did you try to reregister the car?

Would like to second everything said above, but keep in mind that Halon is rated for electrical and liguid fires, but not type A fire such as paper and solid materials. So good for a car, but not your shop. The manufacture of Halon was banned in 1994 (like Freon it hurts the ozone). I am suprised Halon extinquishers are still so readily available. Dry chemical extinquishers do make a mess. The chemical is corrosive and will damage wiring if not cleaned up. Still, as a back up to a readily accesible bucket of water they are probably the safest and most cost effective solution for a workshop. Here is a good info page on Halon http://www.h3r.com/halon/faq.htm#q1

I have made work benches out of fire sprinkler pipe I picked up in a scrap metal yard. It is regular steel and quite easy to work with. BTW, if you want pipe find a scrap metal yard that will sell you stuff by the pound. You can buy a pick up truck load for what Home Depot charges for a few lengths of pipe and some sheet metal. Obviously for a given size, seemless or electron welded tubing will be stonger than black pipe, however what is the difference in cost? For strut tower bracing is it really necessary? We are not talking life support equipment here. You just want something to stiffen the towers without adding too much weight. You could almost do it by bending sheet metal braces. For the short lengths of strut braces I would want about 1 inch OD tubing. If anything 1" black pipe would be excessively strong because it is so thick walled. But if cost is more important than weight, what is the harm?

Man, I'm staying off the streets of Texas!!

I don't have first hand experience with that specific make and model, but for welding sheet metal that "quad position heat setting" will probably drive you crazy. Try and hold out for one with the continuously adjustable heat control. Also consider a gas upgrade a must have option.

link no work

I have 2.5 inch pipe on my 240 engine with MSA headers (the CARB legal ones). I would go with 2.5 inch pipe, but admittedly it probably won't make much difference in performance either way. I think any low end torque enhancement has already been realized once you get out of the headers. The plumbing from the collectors back can only add back pressure, so the larger the better. Ground clearance with the larger pipe is adequate, and the weight difference is negligible. I should say my only real complaint with the exhaust set up is the air pump causes backfires out the tailpipe when decellerating. It caused some issues with the safety inspection here in Maryland. I often wonder if a more restictive exhaust (like the stock set up) would make the difference.

That guy sure thinks a lot of his car. Good thing, too, because at that price it will probably stay his for a while.

Isn't this part of the reason the I think 78 Z's added hood vents? They sit right above the intake and really let the heat pass.

Another option is to take your stock radiator to a shop and have it recored to a 3 row core. I did it some years ago for only $100. My 3 row core cools well. I have read posts on this site that the MSA 4 row core radiator doesn't cool very well. At some point the extra surface are from adding additional rows gets overwhelmed by the added restriction to air flow. A 3 row core should cool well.

Personally I like the old car smell of my Z. I was going to suggest febreeze. My daughter threw up a quart of yogurt on a 100 degree day. I lived with the smell for 3 days before using febreeze to completely remove the smell. Leaving your windows open when it is parked should also help. BTW, ozium also works, but it only attacks the smell in the air. In fact, it was so effective at killing smoke smell that the Navy considered having a tube of it in your pocket as possession of drug paraphernalia.

Grab the hot wrench. If you just heat the top of the bolt and angle the torch just right, with a bit of practice you can cut off the head without damaging the fender. A more time consuming but safer way is a grinder with a cut off wheel. For the ones that haven't been stripped yet, soak for a day or two with penetrating oil then heat with a torch before wrenching.

Not to disrespect anyone, the idea of adding auxilary radiators in the fenders is interesting, but IMO is an extreme fix. If your car can't keep cool with a standard sized radiator and known good fan, then you have something else wrong. The simple approach is to hunt down and fix what is broke first. From reading many a post on cooling, most cooling issues get fixed by getting adequate air flow, not adding bigger radiators. Assuming that all the obvious things have been checked (theromostat good, no air is system, lower radiator hose not collapsing at idle), then in this case replacing the black magic fan is definitely the place to start.

That's Pete's car http://mywebpages.comcast.net/pparaska/index.html I am sure he could tell you. Wonder why that cardomain.com site has put there name on it.

A number of people have bought harnesses from this place http://www.painlessperformance.com/ Have never done it myself, but the only thing people seem to complain about is the cost.

I would not make any apologies for that Arizona Z car brake set up. I would have bought the same set up some years ago if I had the money. I have read posts from people who have that set up and they rave about it. Hell, even the guy at Reaction Research says it probably one of the best Z brake kits around. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the lack of a parking brake. The price may seem high, but fabricating brackets is not cheap either. Especially if you get them wrong.

sounds like a nice set up. Where did you get it from?

The engines are close enough, but Corvettes have the tranmission built into the differential (transaxle). The F body's have the nice engine/trans combo a Z needs.