Pop N Wood

My 1970 Z has never stunk of exhaust fumes. Wait, I take that back. It did one time. But that was because I had a bicycle in the back with the hatch propped open. When I bought my car used 13 years ago, the guy who restored it had replace all of the rubber seals. Thus that is my guess. Replace all of the rubber, adjust the hatch so there is a solid seal all the way around, check the taillight gaskets and make sure there is no rust or exhaust leaks. I have always wondered why some cars (like Volvo's) run the exhaust pipe all the way to the rear, then at the back of the car make 2 90 degree bends to have the exhaust dump outside of the rear corners. Last idea. Ever drive an old station wagon with the rear roll down window? Those use to be exhaust fume death machines also. But most of them had a curved spoiler at the top of the back hatch that blew air down from the roof past the hatch. Don't know if that would work with a Z but it did with the old wagons.

Plus excessive turbo lag can make cars harder to drive through the curves. A good, trained drive can make up for this, but there is something to be said for throttle response.

Engine A has significantly more horsepower than B. And if you have ever read any of Grumpyvette's posting you know you need to build for max HP so you can put more torque to the rear wheels through the appropriate GEARING. Engine A equals engine B's peak HP at something like 7000 RPM. Thus engine A will be producing more HP from 7000 to 9000 RPM than engine B is capable of at any RPM. I would think you could gear a transmission to let you run the entire race in this 2-3 thousand RPM band. So I vote Engine A the hands down winner.

You also need to tell us what type of tires and wheels you are using. Running 50 or 40 series, low profile tires will have a huge impact on ride. A good suggestion might be to take the car to a good alignment shop and have them inspect the suspension components. They will be quick to tell you what needs to be done. If everything is truely "shot", then there are plenty of people here who will walk you through what needs to be done. You may find the previous owner added stiffer spring, struts and large sway bars. You may want to think about what type of ride you want. If you want a smooth daily driver with good performance, then pick the suspension component carefully! You can get very good performance out of a Z without totally sacrificing ride quality. But lowering the car and adding coil overs, stiff springs, Koni struts, large sway bars and wide, low profile tires will definitely produce a car that your wife will not want to ride in.

Want to second what Greimann said about voltage drop across undersized wires. Would also like to add that the problem is a little more severe than stated since current draw through an electric motor goes up non-linearly with a drop in voltage. In other words, cutting the voltage in half more than doubles the current draw. Undersized wires that are too long will cause a voltage drop across the wires. But even more importantly, even slightly dirty or loose connectors will cause an even bigger drop. That is why Lone was seeing the wire melt near the connector. Cleaning up the relay contacts with an ignition file will help keep the excess heat down. It is kind of a viscous circle. The more voltage drop across the wires and connectors, the lower the voltage at the motor and thus more current is needed. More current increases the voltage drop and thus more current. Higher current also increases arcing across relay contacts pitting them and increasing their resistance. I like to put a little solder on crimp connectors that pass significant amounts current. The solder greatly improves the connection, ensures the connection never gets pulled loose and most importantly seals everything up to prevent corrosion. Of course, all of this could be avoided with a mechanical fan...

I have never liked the look of armour all on tires. Especially compared to the dirty, untreated tread. I think Lemon Pledge does a much better job. Cleans up the tire leaving it a nice dull black without making it shiny.

OK, now I understand. Just like a bicycle wheel is composed of a rim, hub and spokes.

I would think you would have to move too much air to be practical. I don't think 750 CFM of engine suck is going to create much of a vacuum under a moving car. I know at one point either Indy or F1 cars were using oversized "radiator fans" in the rear of the car to improve downforce. But the teams modified the set ups based on the tracks because the fans stole enough engine power (or was it increased drag?) to reduce the straight away speed by several MPH. They only geared in the fans on road courses with lots of turns. Either way it took some serious HP to draw the something like half inch of vacuum under the car. The sanctioning bodies eventually outlawed the fans for safety reaons. They didn't want to risk mechanical failure and have the car suddenly lose half a G of cornering ability in the middle of a turn. I do rember the original 300 ZX (I thnk) ads claiming the car wheels (or is rims more techinically accurate) were designed to blow air outward, drawing a vacuum under the car to improve downforce.

OK now I am confused. Is a "rim" only the outer part of the metal par t that is used to seat the tire bead? Is the portion where the lug nuts bolt on technically part of the "rim"? If I buy a set of "Cragar SS"'s with no rubber, are these not rims? Or are they rims with integral bolt hub carriers? And if you want to know if a certain "wheel" will fit on your Z, then wouldn't you have to specify the dimensions of the rim AND the tire size to know?

Hey, order up some kim chi for me. BTW, what does a Korean keyboard look like?

Didn't the original Scarabs use glass packs under the car in addition to ones in the back? BTW, where do you find a dual INLET muffler? I have been looking and all I ever see are single inlet, dual outlet mufflers.

http://www.zcarparts.com/

Nitrous was used on most WWII fighters. They also lockwired the throttles to prevent it's use except in emergencies. Breaking the lockwire allowed the pilot to use full "War Emergency Power" (WEP). Most engines were only rated for something like 5 or 10 minutes of WEP output before they had to be torn down and overhauled. If the plane landed and the lockwire was broken, this told the ground crews that the engine was toast. But this is an extreme example. WWII fighter engines were built to go balls out and rarely lived more than a few months anyway. BTW, there are some pretty good posts in the HybridZ archives about nitrous and parties. Apparantly automotive nitrous is different than medical grade nitrous and may be unsafe due to the higher levels of impurities.

BTW, I am not a lawyer. I am an engineer. Everything I know about signing tickets comes from court ordered traffic school(s). The last of those was several years ago, but they did occur in a couple of different states.

Do you have exhaust or gas fumes? When you removed the vent lines from the tank, did you seal the openings that the vent lines passed through? Also make sure your tank is still vented in some way. Otherwise as the gas heats up with the morning air, it will build up pressure that has to get out somewhere. Maybe through the fill tube into the tank? Might also try removing all of the carpet and interior panels from the hatch area. Then put the car in an otherwise dark garage with a work light underneath. Move the light around and look for light inside the car. If light gets through, then so will fumes. I would say keep at it and find the source of the leak. A lot of guys seem content to live with fumes. My 70 has no such problems (once I replaced all the tank vent hoses).

Alright here I go again. Not to disrespect you, I am sure there is more to your story than what is in this brief posting, but from what you wrote, Tomahawk Z, it looks like you made your own bed. The reason the drunk driver will get his license back before you is because, unlike you, he is not refusing to play the game. If your insurance is higher, it is probably because of your driving record and not your refusal to recognize the legal process. If you made a stand to protest some wrong that was perpetrated against you, then surely you had to know there could be a price to pay. And Kevin, your story about the municipality that came under such close scrutiny is a prime example that our system WORKS. Case in point, California has laws to protect against speed traps. When I lived in LA there was one town that risked having all of their speed limits rendered null and void because the town had not performed a traffic speed survey to ensure, by state law, that their limits actually reflected the speed people traveled. Nobody had to go to jail or write lengthy diatribes with Every Other Word In Title Case or Quotations to make this happen. But the one thing that I want to stress over and over again is that refusing to sign the ticket accomplishes ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!! If you want an audience to argue the righteousness of the laws, then traffic court is your forum. One last note. It is very easy to criticize something, but offering a better solution is another case altogether. Come up with a simple solution and reality will bite you in the a$$. People can be very unreasonable. People will purposely try to break the system. I think everybody involved in this discussion has stated they feel traffic laws have to be enforced in some form or the other. If you guys can’t see why money is the ideal form of enforcement then you are playing games. And yes, people on both sides of the law can abuse the system, but as Kevin pointed out the system generally can be made to work.

The densities might be different, but I doubt it would cause this problem. The read out might be inaccurate, but I doubt it would be pegged at full all of the time. Probably a broken gage or sending unit (I assume it is a float type sending unit?) Try pulling the sender and manualy moving it up and down to see what happens. Could something in the sending unit be incompatible with gasoline and have disolved?

Using mechanical points without a ballast resitor will cause excessive sparking everytime the points open and close. This will greatly reduce the life of the points. If you have any type of electronic trigger module, then you can get rid of the ballast resitor by simply removing it and splicing the wires from either end together.

Be careful with true radar jammers that actually transmit. Actively transmitting radio waves is regulated by FCC rules. It would be very easy to build an active police radar jammer that would make the police radar read any speed you like. I think boat radars are at the police band. It would be just as easy to get caught. The device in the link above is a "passive" device. It doesn't actually transmit radio waves, it only mixes up the police signal when reflecting it back to the police radar. While valid in principle, I doubt it could be made to work well enough to trust. To be 100% effective, the mixed up signal would have to be stronger than the reflection from your car. Since the physical area of the box is much smaller than your car, the signal from the "jammer" is probably going to be much weaker than the reflection off your car. Of course I have never tested this. My cousin swears hanging a CD from your rear view mirror will confuse police radars. Now if the position of the CD is just right and it is wiggling around just right, then it is possible the CD could momentarily confuse the radar. But once again, I would not bet a ticket on this. Now what does work is what Lockjaw said. Get a nice, low to the ground, fiberglass car with a radiator that slopes backwards (i.e. a Corvette). Such things tend to reduce the amount of radar energy that gets reflected back toward the radar (just look at an F117 to see what I mean). This won't make your car invisible, but it will reduce the range at which the radar can get a reading on your speed. If you couple this with a good radar detector, you will be able to see him long before he can see you. This should give you enough time to brake before the radar can lock onto your speed. Car and Driver did a test on this many, many years ago. They took a Corvette and a 911 and measured ranges at which the police radar could read their speed. They then went on to install panels of radar absorbant materials to see how close you had to be before the radar would work. I think they got it down to something like a quarter mile. Their idea was to build an active radar jammer that was connected to a radar detector. In normal driving, the jammer would be off. If the detector went off, then it would turn on the jammer for a few seconds to give you time to brake. Once you started slowing down, the jammer could turn back off since police radars will not register a speed until it gets two separate measurements that agree. This way you minimize the time your jammer transmits and thus reduce the chance of getting caught. Driving near a truck will also work. The truck signal will be so big, the police radar will probably not see your car. Trouble is, if the truck is speeding you might get his ticket since the cop won't know which vehicle the reading is from. Of course none of this will work on a laser.

If it came out of Daisy....

denny411 That was a pretty good link for active jammers. I didn't think it was even legal to sell such devices. Now their stuff looks like it would work. People really need to be careful with things like that. I read something recently about radar guns screwing up the speed pass system at a gas station. Mess with Mobil's money machine and someone is likely to look for the source of the interference. And remember, if you can buy a radar detector to detect the cops radar, the cop can buy the same detector to detect your jammer. You might get away with it as long as the jammer's are not very common.

Sorry for stirring up the mud guys. I was trying to understand the gist of Kevin’s contentions and thought I would have some fun with this thread. I figured anyone who tired of it would do what I wasn't able to do and just stop reading it. At the risk of inciting another riot, I would just like to point out I was never trying to either defend or condemn cops or their actions. I was merely trying to point out what the cop could and couldn’t do, and that maybe Kevin’s objections could be better directed. I was also trying to issue the same warning that someone else vocalized and hopefully prevent people from creating more trouble for themselves. Lastly, I wasn’t offended by any of this (although that “Since Jim Powers is a Lawyer..†comment came pretty close ) and hope everyone else feels the same.

I told myself I was going to stay out of this discussion but I have never been one to listen to my own advice. You guys have the entirely wrong attitude toward cops. Most of them get pissy with people because they get tired of dealing with attitudes all day. I have gotten out of more than one ticket by simply being polite to the cop. I have gotten out of even more tickets by going to court and having the cop not show up. (I like it when they don't show, for god's sake don't start forcing them!) That is an automatic dismissal in both California and Maryland. I have even had judges throw out or reduce the fine after I have politely and rationaly explained the situation. I truely don't understand your interpretation of signing a ticket. You cannot be arrested for not signing a ticket. What you can be arrested for is the traffic violation that led to the ticket in the first place. Think about it. When soembody is arrested for something serious, then they are immediately taken to a police station to be booked and held over for trial. There are all kinds of written procedures (some call them laws) that tell them whether the person can be released on a signature, must post bond or if they have to be jailed until they can go before a judge. Traffic tickets are a special case. Since most traffic violations are minor and most REASONABLE people are going to take care of them, we have a system that allows people to sign the ticket thereby agreeing to deal with the ticket. Our society has granted this to each other as a CONVENIENCE and because it makes sense to do so. Signing the ticket is NOT a contract. It is mearly a piece of evidence that prevents you from later claiming you did not recieve the ticket. Now if you feel this convenience is not a convenience but some sinister assault on you sense of self, then by all means, don't sign the ticket. Go to a police station and promise them money. If you don't want to promise them money than I would think you can choose to sit in jail until a judge can see you to try your case. Now what you all must realize is the cop has no more say in any of this than you do. The cop did not set up the system. The cop is not even allowed interpret what he should or should not do. By law he must simply do what the laws tell him to do. Thus when you ask the cop "what will happen if I don't sign", he is not threatening you. He is simply informing you what the laws state. (BTW, for those of you who complain our licensing system is too lax, this tends to support this because anyone who has a license should already know this.) And whether he tells you this or not doesn't change the fact the "sign or bind" rules exist. Thus by your twisted logic a cop could never ticket anyone for any reason because of the Top Dead Center rule. But the most rediculous aspect of this whole discussion is something all of you learned individuals should already know. Simply put, the cop is not capable of determining innocence or guilt. In our country that job is left to the judge (or a jury if you want one). All the cop does at the trial is present evidence. And what the cop saw or thinks he saw, like it or not, is evidence. So if you truely have a hard on for our means of enforcing traffic laws, then don't be moron enough to argue it with some poor cop. He doesn't want to hear it. If you really think you are smart enough to have discovered a legal loop hole based on "natural rights" that invalidates our entire means of issuing tickets, then tell it to the judge.

I would take it as a massive complement. But yeah, probably should kick his A$$ just the same.

Can the Toyota calipers be made to work with any type of vented rotor?