Ben280

For track width, that rear heim joint and nut are the ones that need to be adjusted off the car. That "toe link" piece is just like a tie rod, and is designed to be adjusted on the car. You'd want to make sure the spindle pins are parallel to each other, and the centerline of the car. That would be neutral toe. For a heim joint, I THINK rule of thumb is 1.5x diameter inserted. So for 1/2" heim, you'd want 3/4" of threads engaged. Your understanding on the camber plate is correct and 2* of camber is a good starting spot. Personally, I'd set track width first and see where that puts you. There is a chance that you'll run out of adjustment on the camber plate, and need to narrow the track width to get camber where you want, but I think you'll be ok!

1) Nope, no bushings, just that bolt and the washers. 2) The washers are there to help adjust the wheel fore/aft in the wheel well, so you can get your strut to be vertical. 3) Track width is adjusted with the "toe link" piece, and that second heim joint. If you want to maximize your track width, adjust the rearward heim with the arms off the car, so you can match the length left to right a bit easier. 4) Totally normal! No need to eliminate the up/down pivoting, it helps in the event of binding from not getting the strut dead perpendicular to where the bolt wants to be.

I've used Innovative, AEM and PLX, and found PLX to be the easiest to use. AEM might be better for you since you'll be relying on a gauge (PLX integrated really well with my ECU). Didn't care for Innovative at all.

1 is better than none! I'm only using one on my car, but with the ITB's I'd have to go fully nutty if I wanted to tune per cylinder. Paying special attention to keeping the carbs synched up on airflow will pay dividends for you on this. One thing to remember about AFR gauges too, they measure the combustion gasses. So, if you're running very very rich, with a lot of unburnt fuel, it will read on the gauge as lean, which leads you to add more and more fuel with no change on the gauge. Ask how I know, haha!

If you are going to use this for race time troubleshooting, I'd think about running 2, one for each carb. One main one will certainly be an upshot, but two would give you some really good insight into how each carb is behaving. Personally, I like PLX widebands.

Agree on the "Works" style flares, that's what I'm using, on my car. HOWEVER!!! They are designed for a short style tire, not modern 24.5/25.5", you will have trouble fitting the diameter, even if the width isn't a problem. I know I am! Streeter should be able to order you the Works style fenders. These also won't work without modification on the front of a standard car, they are designed to be paired with the G-nose front end.

It would be helpful certainly, but I think in general, Apex and Techno (to name a few) aren't making parts which require that level of explanation. Quick steer knuckles, adjustable sway bars and RCA blocks are about as intense as anyone has gone until Apex started doing their subframes, allowing for roll center adjustment. Otherwise, listing a spec as "Up to 4* more camber over stock" or "3" wider front track than stock" or "Stronger!" are just, to my mind, stating the obvious. As a counterpoint, GKTech who makes a huge variety of drop knuckles and extremely modified components does a fabulous job detailing their R&D and decision making: https://blog.gktech.com/blog/gktech-rear-suspension-uprights/ I think if companies for the Z were making parts like this, it would make sense to detail choices.

Wideband sensors have a heater circuit in them, so you don't want to ground that to the same point as other sensors. I don't think Innovative makes a distinction here with their grounds, so you are likely seeing the heater circuit influencing your TPS. If you're grounding all the sensors and MS pin 7 to the block, you've got other problems tho. The sensors should only ground to pin 7, and nowhere else. These sensors aren't necessarily "grounds" in the way we think of them for power circuits, they end up being more of a 0 reference voltage signal.

A rules change meant that I needed to assess how I store fuel in the car. I’d built a custom fuel cell a few years ago which fit in the space under the cage, behind where the passenger seat normally goes. The SCCA decided to change the rules to require alternate fuel tanks to be SFI/FIA certified bladder in shell style with foam. 3/3 on things my existing fuel tank didn’t have. Luckily Radium Engineering makes some excellent small fuel tanks, that check all the boxes. I opted for one with their in tank surge tank setup installed, so I wouldn’t have to worry about running low on fuel. A likely thing when you’ve only got 6 gallons! Along with a fabrication project, adding more fuel pumps meant I needed more power to that area of the car. My electrical system is fairly old by this build’s standard, and been added on to for years now. I decided to update how power gets distributed, and integrate all the added on components into the fuse blocks! new fuse blocks installed and wired into the car Scope creep was really a thing this year. ADD much? Last on the list was getting the ABS installed. I had planned for this to be a mid season add on, but when I looked at what needed to happen as far as wiring, sensors and hard lines, it was “simpler” to get it done now. I opted to pair my 350z front hubs, rear tone rings and sensors with the BMW E46 M3 Teves MK60 ABS computer. There are a couple benefits here, it’s a 4 channel system, meaning each wheel is individually monitored and controlled by the computer. It’s also got dual inputs for my dual master cylinder setup, and maybe most importantly, it can be used in a stand alone mode without issue. More and more endurance race teams have been integrating these systems at a semi professional level for years now, so I felt pretty good about selecting this pump to do the job. It’s a fairly straight forward system, it needs a front and rear pressure sensor, and a Yaw/DCS sensor. Otherwise, it’s math! 3DM Motorsport provided the harness, built to an incredibly high standard. They also integrate the MIL light and an OBD-II port where you can plug in and access all the ABS diagnostics and bleed functions. The system went together nicely, about 60’ of hardline were needed so I got pretty good at bending it! ABS installed and plumbing started. Easier to put it here than try and get it in the engine bay. So! Where does this leave us. Basically a fresh car apart from the motor, transmission and diff. There are a couple things to wrap up, I need to finish installing the new sway bar, along with getting the fender flares modified and re-installed, but we’ve got a working vehicle that I can get out on track! Excited to get out to some events! After a successful first event! Test fitting the fender flares! Front is good, rear is gonna be a bit tight

Ok, finally have time to give y'all a long form update with some photos! Obligatory "go give my instagram a look if you want more frequent updates" since the semi-annual updates might not be enough for some folks here! The big goal this year was to get the car to work well on 18” wheels. Running slicks that work for one session only is a frustrating way to spend the weekends, and since all the hot tires come in a 315/30r18 for modern cars, that seemed like the obvious choice. While it seems like an easy enough conversion, things quickly spiraled out of control! 18x12 medium offset wheels are pretty rare, and add 4 lug to that, and it’s impossible. It seemed like going 5 lug was inevitable, but that would mean a switch of all the brakes in addition to the hubs. Front hubs would take some thought, but the rear hubs seemed easy enough to use Techno Toy Tuning uprights with s14 5 lug hubs and z32 rear brakes. New rear hubs. s14 + z32 + T3 A solid upgrade over what I’ve been running, but require a little bit less figuring. With the s14 hubs, I opted to pair these with a real Frankenstein axle setup. I knew I wanted to run an off the shelf axle, both for cost as well as ease of replacement. Enter Nissan’s unique Lego ability. For the final combo, we have s14 5 lug hubs, 350z axles, Weir Performance chromoly stub shafts. Weir Performance makes a lot of awesome parts for the drift crowd, among which is the 350z axle conversion. They make a 29 spline R200 stub shaft, cast with the 6 bolt pattern for the 350z axle. Weir Performance stub axles preparing for fun mods. The 350z axles caused a bit of an issue, since you may have guessed, a 350z is much wider than a 280z! Enter my buddies over at Apex Engineered. I scooped up their new rear sub frame for the R200, along with their lower control arms and had them extend the arms by 2” to cover the difference in axle length. The Apex subframe has the advantage of inboard heim joints over the standard poly, for a bit more rigidity, and roll center adjustment. Trying to keep a low ride height with the 18” wheels would require a lot of roll center adjustment. A quick modification to the bolt on uprights from T3 and the rear was buttoned up. Full rear setup installed in roller form Mmmmm shiny! Tone rings nice and lined up. Ready for a sensor! The front end was a real trick. The fronts of these cars become a real adapter mess. Roll center adjusters, quick steer knuckles, brake adapters, weld on struts, and an old style wheel bearing to boot. Too many things! I wanted to integrate all these adapters, an improved brake caliper solution, a modern bearing style 5 lug, a 2” drop knuckle, and since we’re going a little crazy, why not include provisions for ABS. The 350z again seemed like a good place to look. They use a bolt on bearing/hub, is reasonably available, and integrates ABS in a good way, via magnetic seals. I took a huge amount of measurements, modeled the hub, desired brake package and ended up with something that I could manufacture! As my machinist friend put it “Testing custom uprights on track is an expensive proposition” so I reached out to the guys at Zebulon MSC in Colorado to do some FEA on this part. I gave them a lot of info about the car, and he returned some analysis and suggestions for where we could lose some weight and still increase some strength. 3d rapid prototypes through to final piece With the parts piling up, it was finally time to bolt everything up. COVID delays meant assembly of the car didn’t really start in earnest until end on January. Luckily, things more or less went together easily, and a borrowed set of wheels got me to an alignment at the end of February. The alignment was easy, the Apex parts offer a lot of bulk and fine adjustment where you need it, so that was all good. It did turn up some issues. My planned strut housings for the front end, some stock style s13 housings, didn’t like the selected ride height. I ended up building some custom strut housings that included a pretty extreme drop and some shorter springs. Ride height is where I want it, but I have a good bit of travel. New "Max Low" strut housings. So suspension, and brakes done. Excellent! Off to the races. Or was it......

You mean the posts living happily over in the "Apex 8.8 Subframe Review" thread locked by our dear friend Tube80z?

https://www.instagram.com/p/CJ__dlgsZD6/ What would you like to know? I'm running their rear subframe, front control arms with tension rods and rear control arms. Lots of other custom parts too, but I might have some info you're looking for!

Send them a note, they are usually pretty happy to do degrees of custom work. I asked about getting my subframe not powder-coated so I could custom weld on some mounts, to which Ohm responded "Well what do you want, we can probably make that happen for you".

It depends where you look, this site certainly seems to collect frustrated experiences with Z vendors far and wide. I've got a version of their R200 kit custom built with long nose rear diff mounts, and it was a much better install experience compared to my old T3 mustache bar, which required ratchet strapping the mounting bolts in the car together. T3 did have an excellent post recently about the issues they've been having with their lead times and supply chain. COVID has really messed up a lot of stuff, and the car market in particular has been hit extremely hard. So far I've been very impressed with my Apex subframe, apart from the bolts they use for the rear brace. Who has a 13mm hex key!? Better geometry for the rear arms, superior arm design, what's not to like! It did take a bit to get, but again, I had a number of custom touches I wanted done.

Ex parts counter guy chiming in. COVID has made most automotive shops beyond busy. When I left my shop job, mechanical work was booked out a month, parts were backordered, dyno appointments were almost 3 months out, and the phones were ringing off the hook. All these operations are small, even the ones that seem big are likely only 4-5 people. All these shops are trying, but I suspect demand has them absolutely buried right now. Techno Toy Tuning has been very vocal about their delays. As for phones, if you're a small operation and you have the choice between answering the phone, and having a 15 minute conversation with someone who MAY make a purchase, OR you can pack 3 web orders, and make a call to figure out why your supplier sent you the wrong brake boosters, I think it's a pretty obvious choice. Not saying it isn't annoying, but cut these guys some slack. Apex Engineering, MSA, Z Car Depot, Datsun Garage, Whitehead and T3 haven't been around this long cause they screw people over.

I'd be interested to see if there's a good way to interpolate that data and make it work. I don't think the MK60 would care at a theoretical level, but trying to bump a 35 tooth count up to a 46 tooth for example seems tricky at best, particularly with real time data.

The MK60 does require the same tone rings on all 4 corners, but it's not super concerned what that number is or not. The 3dm Motorsport guys said really anything between 40-50 teeth ought to work. I'm using Q45 tone rings on the rear stub axles and they do match up with the 350z front hubs I'm using. Oh yeah, this is the front hub now! Yes, almost all rule sets require a full bulkhead separating any aftermarket fuel modifications from the driver. This is just an in progress pic, and since I posted it, a bulkhead has been installed! I think it's arguably safer since it's fully inside the car's roll cage (and about 2" off the floor). It's also a fully SFI/FIA rated fuel cell. It's also much better for the weight distribution, which is why I've done it!

At some point yes, the megasquirt doesn't have a great track record for knowing what to do with traction control. The car will probably get a Link or Haltech in it's future tho, and at that point, TC will be turned on for sure.

The Mk60 units can be run in a stand alone mode, and it references some pressure sensors and a DCS/Yaw sensor to get a good sense of what's going on. In the future there's options to upgrade this computer with some custom tuning to make it very similar to the Bosch motorsports unit.

It's a Teves MK60 from the E46 M3.

COVID rules in California are causing the Crows NT to be stopped. Big one is they had a catastrophic failure of the timing equipment for the ProSolo in Charlotte, so that program is stopped while they figure out what's up and how to fix it. Tired of the bad feelings surrounding it. From what I understand, all the existing Pro's are changing to Tours or Match Tours. And ABS! Although fire suppression is likely happening soon.

Been a bit quiet over on the forum for a bit, but never fear, this off season has been the most eventful in my 9 years of Z ownership! Haven't had time to post all the fun updates here, long form writeups are tricky blow by blow, but my Instagram page has more frequent updates. I'll just drop this teaser here for now: Auto-x is slowly going out of style, so rather than scrap the car, or revert to a very tame historic road race spec, I'm starting to move towards time attack/time trials. Still in line with the FP rules tho, for SCCA outings!

Most AIM systems include a datalogger setup in the dash, the exception being the Strada series. The PDM system includes a "dumb" dashboard, and the datalogger is in the PDM. The AIM software is a bit easier to use compared to the RaceCapture, and it's a bit more track focused. RC is very much the "megasquirt" of the data world.

Lol engine codes. The digi dash is run off the RaceCapture box, which is primarily a datalogger for the car and gets info from the MS3 via CANBUS. The dash itself is a Amazon Fire 7. It was a good solution at the time, but I've been thinking about upgrading to an AIM PDM with a 7" display. The Amazon Fire tablet is a bit dark and hard to see in direct sunlight, but let's be honest, you're not staring at it most of the time. The Racecapture software lets you customize the dash pretty thoroughly, so I've got warning screens that will pop up if my oil or coolant temps get too high, or if battery voltage drops (belt gets chucked). Overall, this was a good budget solution for also integrating more data acquisition into the car.