Leon

There are no MAP or MAF sensors in the stock system. Get the FSM and start troubleshooting.

The ES setup is not adjustable. My statement applies to eccentric bushings, which you can use if toe is slighty out. Has the car been dropped down and rolled around/driven a little bit to let the suspension settle? Were the joints torqued with the wheels loaded? 260DET makes a good point. Before thinking that it's out, take it to an alignment shop (or get creative on your garage floor if you're savvy). The Z is curvy so looks definitely are deceiving.

Rear toe is not adjustable on the stock 280Z. If the bushings are eccentric, then they are not oriented correctly. Otherwise, you may have a bent control arm, bent frame, warped mounts or combination thereof.

Your valves hit the pistons due to incorrect timing or there is something lodged in a combustion chamber.

You may have a point Tim, I had restrictor design stuck in my head. The important effect of taper in the case of starting big and decreasing as you approach the head is the bandwidth/magnitude. A longer and slower taper increases bandwidth while decreasing magnitude of VE gain, and a shorter but steeper taper will do the opposite. An rpm range must be specified in order to properly design an intake manifold.

Which is funny because you have to take off about an 1/8" total from the poly bushings to make them fit, at least in my case! Your bushings may fit perfectly without washers.

That's exactly the fallacy I spoke of earlier. What you describe is physically impossible. Precisely! If you have a car with a heavy rear weight bias, the rears can actually be doing more work than the fronts in a turn. John points out very clearly how whether it's front or rear wheel drive, you are compromising lateral traction for acceleration on one set of wheels. It all comes down to adapting what you have to the intended use. You can make a FWD handle well and you can make a RWD handle well. People who don't understand vehicle dynamics love to make up things and perpetuate fallacies like "RWD rules because the fronts can turn and rears can accelerate" or "FWD always understeers." It's knowing what you have and how you can make it do what you want it to do that will make a car handle properly.

What's your point, exactly? In a corner, all four tires are dedicating their grip for cornering, the outsides more so than the insides, whether a car is front or rear wheel drive. Two wheels, either front or rear, also dedicate some grip to acceleration when the driver is on the throttle. The advantage of rear wheel drive comes in where upon acceleration, weight shifts to the rear, loading the rear tires and unloading the fronts. It has nothing to do with the so-commonly stated, "FWD sucks because the front wheels steer and drive the car."

Interesting discussion, although I did not have time to read it all. There were a few unknowns and some misinformation though. One thing I want to comment on is runner taper. The reason for the 7 degree number is because it's the maximum theoretical taper before flow separation (bad). A smaller taper will give your intake a wider tuned bandwidth but overall magnitude of VE gain will be less. Reverse that for a bigger taper. Another post that irked me: The flow in an intake is always turbulent. The air horns simply increase/move the VE boost caused by wave tuning. The second sentence is essentially true, just stated in a somewhat awkward manner.

Not if he is using polyurethane ones...

A "velocity stack" is nothing more than an extension of an intake runner. The only difference being the ends, having a taper and bell-mouth. This improves pressure wave reflection. I have the calcs somewhere but don't have time to dig them up. They involve knowing your valve timing, air temperature (for speed of sound calc), and runner geometry among other things. I guess the question is, are you willing to give up X amount of performance for ease of packaging? Runner design will have a huge effect on your engine, as SKiddell points out.

If you are getting ES LCA bushings you may not have to worry about shimming with washers since their bushings are over-sized. I had to sand my outer LCA bushings to fit the strut. Good luck!

Runners have, or should have, a design rpm range in which there is a VE boost caused by pressure wave resonance. Runners should also be designed with as few pressure losses as possible, meaning as straight of a shot into the combustion chamber as possible. I think it makes more sense to design runners with those criteria in mind, and then adapt a plenum. If I were putting so much effort into designing an intake manifold I would be working with an ITB setup. IMO, it would be easier to get right and you'd get better performance in the end. I don't mean to sound harsh, so take it for what it's worth. More power to you if you keep this up and get a nice design out of it.

Agreed. I'm not convinced that strut flex has any noticeable effect on camber. It may give piece of mind if that's what you're after, but in the end it's just unnecessary unsprung weight, IMO.

Contact Derek, I think he still sells them. You do need to know what thickness you need though.

I'd grab that thing in a heartbeat!

Nice!!!

The straighter the runner the better. Bends introduce pressure losses. All of your concepts have bends in them, and in my opinion, the performance cost of the bent runners outweighs any advantage for the sake of a "better" plenum. It just doesn't make sense to me to design the runners around a plenum and not the other way around. My 2 cents...

Ouch, I don't like the look of that! South City huh, I'm in San Bruno. Just pulled the pins in my 260Z earlier this year. Hang in there!

Running that rich for 20 minutes will definitely make the manifold glow! You're dumping tons of extra fuel out of the exhaust ports some of which then burns in the manifold.

I plan to do data-logging on my triples when I get the new exhaust in and the WB02 finally installed. It may depress me enough to go to EFI.

I don't mean to be overly critical, but I think you need to slow down and work on driving technique. Have an instructor ride along with you and see what they think. I think that will do much more for you than trying to play with suspensions settings. Tune the driver first, then the car. Good!

No way. Given the description of the rust, I wouldn't pay more than $800 and it would probably end up a parts car. As you can see, I'm not very ambitious when it comes to fixing rust!

The ARB does not affect traction on launches, but only in cases where there is lateral weight transfer. More bar means more weight transfer, thus a greater tendency to lose traction with a rear bar since you are taking load off of the inside tire. You mention understeer, but when do you understeer, during transients or steady state (think slalom or sweeper)? I would experiment with different setups as you've begun to. Try with/without rear bar and with/without front bar, with having rear bar and no front bar being most prone to oversteer. Also try different alignment settings. Set rear toe to zero and see how it feels, then set front to zero and see if behavior improves.

How is color dependent on the location of the job? Paint it whatever color you want...