74_5.0L_Z

I am using mounts of my own construction. The mounts in the stock sheet metal version used the ford 5.0L rubber motor mounts and some brackets that I made. The new version uses a front plate/mid plate setup. In both versions, the engine is in the same position: Centered left to right. Center of crank shaft even with top of frame rail at front of motor. Harmonic balancer centered above steering rack. Engine angled with front angled upward at 2.5 degrees. Drivers side head is 1" from fire wall.

I use the Griffin 24 x 19 in my car with no problems at all, but my car also has a tube front end. I used the same engine combination in the previous version of the same car, and used a 280ZX turbo radiator without problems. I live in Florida where it gets pretty hot (high 90's F) but not nearly as hot as in Kuwait. I never tried to fit the Griffin radiator to the stock radiator core though I believe it will fit with a minimum of fabrication. It is 24" wide and 3" deep. The spacing between the factory frame rails is 25.125".

Craved, I am not 100% certain which way air will flow through those vents. They are a little forward of the cowl and outboard of the centerline of the car. They may or may not be in the high pressure area of the windshield base. Somone should do some wind tunnel work to find out. My main concern was to control the air coming through the front of the car. The hood that I started with (SubtleZ Cowl) had two holes like the later 280Z. I could have just filled them in, but I decided that additional vent paths for heat might be a good thing. So, I acquired the two small vent covers from Reaction Research and blended them in.

Thanks guys. I will line up the dzus fasteners when I finally secure them to the hood. Yes, those are factory FRP buckets. They are secured to the SubtleZ fenders using epoxy resin w/chopped glass filler (West Systems 406), the factory fasteners, the inner sides have been filleted to the fender using the same resin / glass mixtures, the seam was then ground down and refilled with epoxy/ glass, and finally the seam was covered with epoxy/ S-glass cloth. If it shows after the paint job I will be rather upset, but it would be a lot of work to change then now.

I used a closed cell foam from Michigan Composites. It isn't affected by the resin or other chemicals. I used two different thicknesses 1/4" and 3/8". The 1/4" is easily shaped into curves, and the laminated 3/8" gives good stiffness. The foam is yellowish in color. Yes, I did the SubtleZ rear flares as well.

As the title says, I borrowed an idea from Terry. I hope that my car will someday look as good as his. I still have a bit of work to complete before its ready for paint. I post updates as I go along.

Quote: Originally Posted by Daeron could this have been it? This was from 74_5.0L_Z's photo album here on hybridz.. but looking at it a second time, it s hard to see if it prevents that much air from traveling under the car.. obviously his setup forces it through the radiator, but the point is (seems to be?) to avoid it pushing below the car entirely, and leaving the airflow no choice but to go through the engine bay and then out the engine bay vents. I dunno if I am right nor not, but that was the car that *I* was thinking of regarding your comment, there, stony.. What you guys have not seen yet is that all the air that goes through the radiator comes out through the hood (I have shamelessly emulated BlueovalZ's hood). I have also closed in most of the gap between the top of the bumper feature and the bottom lip of the hood. I'll try and take some pictures tomorrow and start a separate thread. I don't want to pollute this one more than necessary. The radiator opening is sealed to the radiator with rubber gasket. The ledge between the bottom of the radiator and the front of the air dam is 18.5" wide by 21" deep. I'm hoping to take advantage of the high pressure area in front of the radiator.

One thing that I am interested in is the position of the center of pressure, and the effect the various modifications have on that position. For high speed stability, it is desirable to have the center of pressure behind the center of mass.

Great job guys!!!!! Did you try out the headlight covers? Do you need any help crunching the data? I am good at that. I am a mechanical engineer, and one of my prime responsibilities is making test data comprehensible. I would love to help.

I used a hand held grinder with a 4.5" cut-off wheel and tin snips. The metal that I removed from the firewall forward (not including fenders, hood, crossmember, front apron) weighed 95 lbs. The tubing that replaced it weighed less than 50 lbs. Oh, do yourself a favor: Remove all of the undercoating and sound deadening material before you start. It's easier to do that before you have the car bolted to your fixture. Don't ask me how I know that....

"I'm not quite seeing where you are attaching the tube chassis to the structure points of the z!" You'll discover when you cut off the front end that all the metal of the Z is very soft and flimsy. At that point you will not feel very comfortable attaching anything to the firewall as a stuctural element. My solution was this: First, hard mount the car on a surface that gives you a good reference to work from. For me, I built a 2 x 12 wooden structure topped with 1" MDF that just barely fit between the stock frame rails (25.1" wide). This structure extended from the rear (Point C of the factory frame drawing) to past the front. I then aligned the car on this structure and bolted it down. Then I made sure the whole thing was level. From that point on the car did not move relative to the structure. Next, I built frame rails (similar to pparaska's). These were welded to the rear cross member, to the floor pan, and to the firewall. After I had the frame in place, I built the roll bar. It is tied into the rear shock towers and the rear of the rocker panels. From this, I extended door bars forward through the firewall. The door bars then connect to the hoop in front of the firewall. The point where the lower door bar meets the firewall hoop is also welded to the front of the rocker panel, and also meets a bar that angles to the frame above the T/C mount. The point where the upper door bar penetrates the firewall is just below and outboard of the clutch master cylinder. This point is triangulated to the frame and to the strut tower. The bar across the top of the firewall hoop was mainly there to connect the top legs that go to the strut towers. My front end is attched to the car through the framerails, rocker panels, and door bars. However you decide to do yours, spread the load through as much surface area as possible.

You mean something like this:

anyone?

Has anyone here done business with http://demonspeedshop.com/. They have some pistons that I want, and they are considerably cheaper than everyone else (~$75 less than summit for a set of eight). This seems like a really good deal. Almost too good to be true. I would really like to get some feedback about these guys before I send them $500.00. Thanks

I am using the griffin 24 x 19. It works very well. The only time that I even have to turn on the fan is in stop and go traffic.

I would not go back to bare metal to fix the low spots. Just rough up the area with 80 grit, and apply a thin layer of filler centered on but larger than the low spot. After it cures, blend and reprime. You will probably have to repeat several times before all of the low spots are gone.

Try Parrish-Heacock insurance. They insure racecars/show cars for stated/apprasied value. Their rates are very reasonable, but they limit use to a ceratin number of miles per year. You must also own a primary use vehicle other than the Z.

Terry, I'm glad to hear that you will be flattered rather than insulted. I am currently working on making a hood very similar to yours. I plan to post pics next week. As always, you are one of the best sources of inspiration on this site. Thanks, Dan