74_5.0L_Z

I ran 245/45/16 when I had the stock bodywork. Check your front tire clearance at full steering lock in both directions. Mine would rub on the frame rails near the sway bar mount. I had to limit the rack motion to prevent contact.

Thanks, I was going by memory, and I am getting a little older....

Yes, that nut must be tight as well or else you will have slop in the strut during its motion. What you can do though is to put a tubular spacer between the shoulder on the shaft and the isolator that attaches to the strut tower. Just make sure that you have full engagement of the threads and that the nuts are tight. The 225/50-15 will fit much better 24.7 tall rather than 26 " tall.

The gland nut that holds the insert in the tube must be fully installed and tight. You can and really should preload the rear springs of that rate and length. As a rough estimate, you can assume that you will have approximately 600 lbs of sprung weight at that corner. Therefore when you let the car down off of the jack, the spring which has a rate of 250 lb/in will compress 600 lb / 250 lb/in = 2.4 inches. If you don't preload the springs at all, then the car will drop 2.4 inches before the force in the springs equals the weight on the corner. If you preload the spring by 1.2 inches then the car will droop 1.2 inches before the force in the spring equals the weight on the corner. Without knowing your exact corner weight, you will have to play with the preload. Here is what I would do: 1. Put a tie wrap or bump rubber on the shaft of the insert so that it is tight and will indicate the travel of the shaft in bump. 2. Adjust the preload to 1 inch (250 lbs). The loaded spring will be nine inches long. 3. Install the struts, push the tie wrap or bump rubber down against the gland nut, and lower the car onto the ground. 4. Verify that the tires don't rub and then roll it back and forth to settle the suspension. 5. Jack the car back up and measure the distance that the tie-wrap or bump rubber moved when the weight of the car was carried by the springs. -----The measured movement of the tie-wrap or bump rubber is the amount of droop travel that you have available with the springs preloaded by 1" If that number is more than two inches and the car is still too low, increase the preload and repeat step 2 through 5 until you are happy with the ride height. DON'T ADJUST THE SPRINGS TO GIVE LESS THAN 2 INCHES OF DROOP. If you cant get the height you need with 2 inches or more droop, then you need to do one of two things: Stiffer springs or redo the strut sectioning to make the tubes longer.

I run Hoosier A6 tires. I only use the car for autocrossing and track days. I found that my driving record stays a lot healthier when I don't drive the Z on the public highways.

That is a really tall rear tire to try and use with sectioned rear struts. You probably should not have sectioned the rear, instead put a spacer under the insert to fill the tube. My struts are sectioned as per John's instructions, but I am running 23 inch tall tires (275/35/15), I have flares so that the tires car fit into the wheelwells, and I am running really stiff springs (8 inch 450 lb/in rear and 8 inch 500 lb/in front). As it is, I only have 1.5" of droop travel at the rear. Here is an old thread where I went through a simlar issue: http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/62475-sectioning-struts-for-koni-8610-1437race-insert/

What rate and free length springs did you use? What size tires? What year car? Are you using camber plates? If so, which ones? Pictures?

My car is on race rubber (Hoosier 275/35/15 on 15x10 wheels). The tires are 23 inches tall by 10.1 inches wide. The bodywork is a modified SubtleZ body kit, and the car is really low.

Gollum (AKA Nathan) contacted me because he could not find the spreadsheet with all of the wind tunnel data that I put together way back when. The link to it is in post #14 of this thread. I tested the link to make sure it still works. I've duplicated the link below. http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=2279

What I did to make the job easier was to use the face of the brake rotor as a fixture. I have a spare 280ZX rear rotor that I clamp in my vise. I then place the stub axle onto the rotor and align the wheel stud holes of the stub with the wheel stub holes in the rotor. Now because the centering hole of the factory rotor and the pilot on the axle are concentric everything should line up nice. I then drop all of the studs through the holes and install hardened washers and nuts on the far side. Then a little at a time (working around the bolt pattern) I start to tighten the nuts to draw the knurl of the studs into the axle. Being careful not to exceed the torque of the studs, I tighten them all and use a drift and hammer on the back side to help then in. Then I tighten the nuts again and repeat until all of the studs are fully seated in the axle. The use of the rotor prevents warping of the axle flange face and assures that all of the studs go in parallel. I hope this helps. Dan

Hey there Mr. Gibson. I haven't heard from you in quite a while. Are you still doing the brake conversions? I am still running the Stage II brake set-up that I bought from you 10+ years ago. And in response to your post, the Modern Motorsports adapters work great (even better if you have adjustable length rear control arms).

You will most likely need a custom driveshaft made. It's not that expensive. I had my Ford T5 to datsun R200 driveshaft made for about $250 (twelve years ago). That price included balancing and all new parts: tube, u-joints, slip yoke and Neapco adapter flange . All you need to be able to tell the driveshaft shop is the center to center distance between the u-joints, the make and model of the transmission, and the make and model of the differential. Any decent shop should be able to do the rest.

You will most likely need a custom driveshaft made. It's not that expensive. I had my Ford T5 to datsun R200 driveshaft made for about $250 (twelve years ago). That price included balancing and all new parts: tube, u-joints, slip yoke and Neapco adapter flange . All you need to be able to tell the driveshaft shop is the center to center distance between the u-joints, the make and model of the transmission, and the make and model of the differential. Any decent shop should be able to do the rest.

Whose V-Bands are you using? I bought mine from Mandrel Bend Solutions, but I haven't tried to use them yet.

I don't know if it would cut deep enough to go through the strut tube, but it might. I used it to cut all of the pieces of my mandrel bends for making my headers. Starting with 18 ga 1.75" J-Bends bent on a 2.5" radius, I was able to make many cuts in the bend radius. As you probably know, all mandrel bent tubing is oval in the bent section (even the highest quality bends). So it is a bit more challenging to make the cuts in the bent sections, but I was able to use the Ridgid cutter to make all of my cuts. The key I found was to position the tube so that the section to be cut was straight up and down, and then align the cutting wheel on the mark with the cutter adjusted loosely on the tube hanging straight up and down under the influence of gravity. After alignment, slightly tighten the wheel against the tube and then slowly rotate the cutter while adjusting the wheel to account for the ovality in the bend. Make several back and forth passes to verify that the cutter is cutting in the plane and not creating threads. After alignment of the cut is verified start making full passes while slowly tightening the wheel into the tube. The cutter will leave a razor sharp edge on the inside of the tube. So deburr it immediately and be careful. Here is a picture of my passenger side header that I fabricated using this cutter. The picture shows the header mocked up on a junk engine and ready for welding.

I bought the Ridgid 65S tubing cutter. This thing cuts my 304 stainless tubing with no problem and works on tubing from 1/4" all the way to 2.625". It comes with two cutting wheels, and I bought four extra wheels in case the stainless tubing dulled the wheels. After more than 100 cuts, I am still on the first wheel. http://www.ridgid.com/Tools/65S-Tubing-Cutter/EN/index.htm

Monte Carlo Blue Pearl Metalic (1997 Acura NSX). It looks wierd because of the light filtering through the tree above.

The only tires that fit these wheels and my car are race tires (Hoosier A6/R6 275/35/15 or similarly sized Hoosier or Avon slicks). Currently I only use the car for autocross so it is not a problem for me at the moment. However, I plan to start using the car for track days and I don't want to be stuck using Hoosiers for that (gets expensive fast). I hope to find some 17 x 10 CCW or 18 x 10 CCW wheels so that I can use some of the readily available 285/30/18 or 295/35/17 tires that seem to abound. Unfortunate that would require me to raise the car a couple of inches. Currently, the center of the front crossmember is 2.75" off the ground.