Ben280

I don't really know what caused the oil pump gear to fail here. I was using the correct crank snout gear, or so I thought, but clearly that still failed. My one thought is that because I'm using a Hoke crank trigger kit, that somehow the shaft was able to shift laterally on the snout gear? There is a bit of movement there, but I assume the distributor would hold it more or less in place. Clearly with a distributor, once this drive gear failed, the motor would shut off on account of erratic spark. With the crank trigger kit, it was all too happy to keep running. Shame on me for not wiring the pressure switch into the ECU with a safety strategy. @tube80z, Didn't really look into the v6 stuff. My goal was to keep it straightforward and easy, so the LS family ticks that box for sure. The L33 is all aluminum, so it should serve to keep the weight down a bit. Drop in ready for a lot of my existing parts, or easy to get parts as well. Now to decide what to do with all my L series parts. Sit on 'em or sell?

@clarkspeedAsk and you shall receive! I'm still not very good at taking photos as I go. Dirty hands and not wanting to touch the phone I suppose. We're going back to June 2021 here. Pic of the car after it chucked a rocker at ORP. Where'd the rocker go? Not that much carnage all things considered. Just a little peck on the cheek Back together, placed 3rd in Unlimited at GTA at the Ridge. (1:52.8) 2022 season prep starts with needing to get engine temps under control. Howe racing radiator and Setrab oil cooler should do something cool. Apex Engineered sent me a strut bar to chop up, since theirs didn't work with camber plates. New radiator means I can get rid of the inner fender wells and lean the radiator down at a pretty good angle. Helps with airflow, and eventually I'll duct it out the hood. Starting to plan for mounting a fairly massive splitter on the front of the car Big rear wing to match. Zebulon MSC design 14" chord. Splitter mounted, need to duct air into the radiator somehow. After watching a few cars burn down at events in early '22, I decided to invest in a suppression system This is a 2.25kg Novec system. GTA 2022 went well until it didn't. Coasted in on a cooldown lap after seeing a goose egg for oil PSI. Got home and parts were still hot after sitting for 6 hours... That Cam looks pretty dry. I think that piece should still be attached! The culprit!

I figure with the dogbox, a button clutch should make for an excellent experience. I do need to upgrade my winch with this plan, but I think the performance might be worth it. Looking at the quartermaster 7.5" for now, but also considering a 10" for more "drivability".

My buddy who runs Aerowolf made a pretty sick youtube video as well of the mods I made to the car over winter. I'll try and do a photo dump shortly, but this is a pretty overview of what happened, along with a medium speed lap at PIR to close out.

Here's a video of the car from the session before the oil pump gave up. I would have really liked to take the car sub 50 before more power, but alas, not to be. Aiming for .45's with more power and better (fresh) tires.

Man, I'm bad at updating this thread. Maybe since I hate facebook and instagram is losing its charm, I'll start posting here more. Long story short, we went road racing, and my Rebello is no more. Oil pump gear failure roasted the camshaft. While I think the L series is an excellent motor, and I've enjoyed the past 6 years with it in the car, the need for more power and not an unlimited budget/timeline to get this thing back up and running means we are going V8 in the full spirit of HybridZ. An Apex Engineered LS subframe and a junkyard L33 are on the way. I've got a few things to get for connecting the trans to the motor, but luckily, having a Jerico makes this much easier! To button clutch, or not, that is the question. Also investigating headers. Ohm says the CX Racing long tubes work nicely, I haven't been able to find any photos of how they sit. The car isn't as low as it once was, but I don't like when headers are the lowest part of the car.

It's important when ducting the radiator like this to make sure you blank off the sides as well, such that the only place for air to go when it gets to the front of the car is through the radiator.

ZCG's numbers show it's certainly no slouch, although I wonder if with some compression and ethanol this would support 400whp+.....

I'm right at the crossroads of what do I do with my L series for time attack/road race use. Swapping for a V8 has appeal, but I just saw the post on Z car garage, and, well. Time to investigate! This is really an incredible project Derek.

15x7, depending on the offset will be the limiting factor for things like the bumpsteer spacer (too thick and the tie rod will hit the wheel barrel). A quick steer knuckle can help here, since it brings the tie-rod closer to the car centerline, but for a EP/ITS car, I'm not 100% convinced you need fast knuckles. Auto-x, yes, track car, not sure. That bushing looks like a way to adjust the trackwidth/roll center without going to heims, as limited by class rules. Tube arms and heims are tube arms and heims. Go with the ones that tickle your fancy and go from there. I think the Apex rear tube arms have some distinct advantages over the T3 rear tube arms, but unless you can change the inboard mount, that's gonna be your weak point IMO. Keep one eye on the rule book here, you don't want to go spending money that boots you out of the class you want to be in.

Quite the fleet! We've got a 1987 BMW 325e (AKA Garbage heap), my 1997 12v Ram 2500, a 20' enclosed and my wife's tesla out front. So a similar hodgepodge of junk. The Z lives in a 1946 2 car garage, so a root cellar with a wine nook haha. I'll be sure to post up when I make it down to the Willow area, see if some of you Cali folks want to come make a day of it!

Are you North or South? If North.... Well, you got room for a truck and trailer? Hehe. I know a bunch of the endurance racing guys go down there in march for the season kick off event, and most of the time don't have issues. NIMBY's are clearly the worst, and I think the track has had it's own management issues over the years. Certainly something to look into tho, would be a lot of fun to do a few California trips!

Big Willow/Streets of Willow would be a blast, but 15+ hours towing. Laguna has a lot of cool points, but yes, the sound restrictions do seem goofy. Probably better to do it now before this motor gets swapped out for something louder! Maybe late this year I'll make the trip to Willow, there were a couple friends who made that trip already this year. It would be interesting to see how it stacks up against the late great John Coffey.

Would love to get down to Thunderhill! Didn't realize Sonoma was relatively close, any others worth visiting in the Bay area?

Turn2 Lapping day at the Ridge Motorsport Park up in Shelton Washington. Practice day for the Global Time Attack event happening in late July, where I'll be losing in the Unlimited category haha! I'd like to get into the 1:50 flat territory, and maybe with some bravery and more aggressive shifting I can make it happen. Aero cars can go sub 1:50, but I need more power to get that quick. One day I'll remember to invert the Y axis on my datalogger, but for now, you'll just have to enjoy the backwards version! Thanks Jon!! Getting more confident.

Another weekend, another day at the track!

Marugen Shokai http://home.att.ne.jp/sky/FairladyZ/ Can also get them from RHDJapan: https://www.rhdjapan.com/marugen-shoukai-works-over-fenders-standard-type-s30-s31.html Designed for a front G nose car, so lots of modifications needed to make em fit a standard car with or without an airdam.

Thanks guys! @clarkspeed Daytona sounds like a real trick with the speed differential. Can you opt for a main shaft that you can just barely get rolling off the line, but allows the top speed? I keep thinking about a Winters style quick change, so I don't have to rebuild a couple of rear ends around my diff. I think my ratios are good for my power, and I just need to modify top speed with final drive. Looking at west coast tracks, I think a top speed in the 150's is ideal. much faster you need tons more power, and a 5 or 6 speed to keep the ratios reasonable. I took your note and the Maximum Motorsport design to heart, so when I needed to build my own, I opted for .250" plate. It ended up being a problem, since I had to bend it with a torch and vice! Really needed a hydraulic press to go with the torch haha. Tire size was a big driver of this full conversion. All the new tires coming out share the 315/30r18 common size, and most race series include some form of a 12x25.5r18. The benefit of top speed gearing is an added bonus! A quick link to the gear calculator I've been using: https://www.blocklayer.com/rpm-gear.aspx You can tie this together with a dyno plot of the car, and make sure that you maintain good powerband. It also lets you play with all the variables, so you can plan changes!

Exedy OEM on a lightweight flywheel is a great choice, Exedy makes good stuff. ClutchMasters makes a good flywheel for our cars, I'd recommend that as well. You don't need extra clamping force with stock + power levels, so no need to go full stage 6 unsprung whatevers. A Tilton 5.5" would be the next best thing, just because it will reduce rotational mass enormously, but it's at the expense of everything else.

Hey Clark! Sorry not sorry Conversion to 18's was a major project. Gearing isn't fully sorted out yet, it was geared short for autox use, so it's not quite ideal for the track yet. Going to 18's gave me a 25.5" tall tire, from a 23.5" tire, so keeping everything the same has moved my top speed out a bit at the expense of low end grunt. I have a 3.90 rear end and a Jerico 4 speed, so I can get fully nutty with the ratios. I'm considering going back to the 3.54 rear end (need to find one) to get some more top speed, but right now being gear limited to 135mph feels just fine by me! Roll center was hard. The Apex Engineered rear sub frame has movable inboard pickup points so that was fairly "easy" to bolt up. Just running as much adjustment back there so the control arms have a little angle. The front was "easy" as well, since when you start with a clean sheet you can sorta do whatever you want. The new front knuckle has a 2" correction built in, so imagine a second roll center adjuster added in on a normal Z strut! When I was running the 16" wheels, I drilled the front subframe to get additional roll stiffness. For the time being, I'm using the factory holes to mitigate bump steer, but am planning to space the rack up to try and get some of that back. Making the custom struts up front was needed to keep the low ride height I was after. I'd like to go a little lower even, but I'm at risk of hitting the tires into the upper frame rails. I went out to ORP on Monday, and thought I'd give you folks a quick ride along. Was practicing my shifting with the dogbox, so there's some gratuitous 4th gear grabs, (you can see where I checked to see if I snagged it once or not!). I need to work on running the motor out more before shifting, grabbing that 4th gear shift too early really kills the acceleration.

Oooooo dials. Love this car!

Congrats on a serious score!!

The other thing you can do to check the ratio, mark a dot on the input spline and a mark on the output flange, and count the rotations. 3.54 or 3.90 would be likely for this diff I think. The finned cover is $$$, nice piece!

With that spindle pin fused in there, I'm not sure! The drums have value to some of the road race guys who can't get nice ones any more, I sold a set a long time ago now for $75. I think T3 is still buying the rear housings, but those have some value as well. Everything else on there I'd classify as useful, but only to a small group of people. The halfshafts are increasingly tough to find, you can probably get $100-$150 out of them. You'll find most people are moving away from these as you are, so we all have the same stuff sitting in our garage cabinets!

Check out Longacre or Joes Racing, they make a lot of good tools for us homegamers to keep tabs on alignment. You can also do string alignments and things with plumb bobs, but I like having the right tool for the job! I will say, having the tools to do alignments at home or at the track is great, and it's pretty helpful to check, but I would recommend taking the car to a shop once or twice a year, to get the thing fully lined up. Particularly when you've done a full suspension rebuild, it's very helpful. They can address things like Caster, CAI, KPI and wheelbase which is very hard to measure in a garage. My car for example has a nasty habit of getting longer on one side than the other!