240hoke

AIght I just ordered the .25" spacers off ebay. Doesnt seem to be too bad a deal. Ack they charged alot for shipping though 10 bucks. I didnt really wanna grind on my pretty calipers lol. I think this will be much better. Ill let you know what happens. PS. Just out of curiousity I dont see how changing the offset affects how close the center section is to the calipers. has anybody else run the AZ rear brakes with a 16" panasport rim and had this issue? -Austin

get them turned?

Hey man. Well to some extent you dont want your car to ride that low, unless your doing it just for looks and then go right ahead lol. You can defintily get it that low with coilovers and sectioned strut housings. Just do a search and youll find a wealth of info on that. I can get my rear to sit that low without anything in the car (motor, doors, glass, etc), and I am still running the stock isolators up top.... with camber plates.... well yeah you get the idea. I wont be running my car that low but its nice to have all the adjustment you want. heres a picture before paint to give you an idea...

Right, it would be the outside corners like on the top and bottom towards the outside and i would guess about 1/16 of an inch give or take a bit. Seems to be the farthest away from any machining in the caliper. I'll try and get a picture today. Also if i get wheel spacers, where could I find something like that. Having a custom set made looks expensive although i think i could get it done myself at school. -Austin

Hey guys, I just got my new panasports (16x7, 11mm offset) I got the 11mm offset due to the fact that I need a little more fender clearence with the car so low. I was told that these would be perfect and was infact what they put on all there z cars. Anyway they rub my arizona z car wilwood setup just a hair in the back. My zero offset wheels didnt rub at all, I dont know why this is. But at any rate both sides rub just a little bit on the top and bottom corners, they are rubbing the inside of the wheel. i talked to a couple people who had some exprience wit hhte calipers and said there was plenty of meat in the area to take some off. Looking for more opinions on the matter before i start grinding! thanks

your a pretty big guy. I would say the least bike you need is a 600, and it might be a little small for you. I would say look into like a gsx-r 750 or something similar. I would prolly go ahead and get a 1000cc. But thats only if you can be responsible and control your urges, you can get into serious trouble on a 1000. I had a cbr600f3 and a cbr600f4 I love both but the aluminum framed bikes are sooooo much better. 600 was PLENTY fast for me but i weigh like 160 so lol...

Wow all that looks all to familar! Have fun hehe. heres what i did. I basically just started working with some scrap metal I had laying around from the floor boards here you can see a little bit of how it turned out i need ot take a better picture

Hey, Ive been workng on wiring my 240z the past weekend, got a good bit done.. but still a good bit to go. Ive been cutting connectors off my old harness and splicing them in like mentioned. Ill have some pictures next weekend when i finish it hopefully. Getting new connectors would be awesome, but i didnt see it as worth the extra hassle and $$. I think all total you reuse like 4 stock connectors. (two for the rear lights, and two for the combo/igntion switch) Everything else is a spade connector or one of the male female type things. On the soldering I have been using a soldering torch, frekkin awesome little thing. Would never use a soldering iron again. Uses butane and heats the wire up in just a couple secs then i slide some heat shrink tubing over it and heat. seems to be plenty strong.

Im runninmg a custom corvette c4 setup up front with aluminum hubs. And im running carbotech panther xp pads. Should keep up -Austin

hehe *in the process of* I will have a write up in a couple weeks i hope. Project has been halted for school.

OKay to give everyone an update. I just talked to Alex Costa tonight. He apoligized for not being able toget in touch with me and said that he was very busy with his new shop so much so he hasnt been able to get online. The set of pistons he promised me were at the machine shop still and they used them for a different motor without his knowledge. He says that he has ordered 2 new sets of pistons -- on for himself and one for me and they should be too him shortly. I havent recieved the pistons yet but I have talked with him which gives me a better feeling. So as of now hopefully everything has been straightened out.

hehe Pete, i didnt look at your site at alll, nope i swear, I decided on a "half cage" because the only wreck i was in i i hit my head incredibly hard on the top of the roof right above the door. I believe that if i would have had a cage i would have suffered a severe cuncussion. So like many of you i say no full cages for the street w/o really good padding.

Hey man, Your pretty close to me now too! Hope to meet you sometime, you do some incredible work. We gotta have a z meet for this area sometime...

I would go ahead and build a cage in the car. IMO a 4 pt roll bar isnt really gonna do much good -- that is unless you build it right and tie it into the car preferablly welded. The autopower type 4 pt. rollbars arnt going to give you much chassis strength, after all they are bolted to the fenderwell. In my last z I had a autopower unit, in my current z i built a 6pt cage which i believe is the best way to go for all round comfort in a street car and being usful as far a stiffening goes. Heres what i did: http://www.geocities.com/projectzt/halfcage If your serious about stiffening I would also look into subframe connectors. These can be done many different ways. The easiest would be adding on to your stock frame rails. hardest cutting everything out and running all new metal. Search for subframe connectors to see what everybody has done. I too did subframe connectors "while i was at it" Heres what i did: http://www.geocities.com/projectzt/SFconnectors.html

I wanna second that, I am running the AZ car wilwood package on the rear and it is topnotch. Everything fits great and is top quality. Great company to work with too.

To answer your questions and not give you random advice on how to drive, if your looking for a bolt on kit you should do some reasearch in the archives and look up the different toyota 4x4 setups, one is vented and one is not. Both are inexpensive and relatively easy. ....interstate might as well be a racetrack where i live, i swear last year when i was going to school people thought they were playing nascar on the way to work. 80-85 in the fast lane was about as slow as you could go.

Sounds like you either have a bad master cylinder or air in your lines. While you prolly need to go through your entire brake system first checks for leaks around the MC (inside and out) and then if nothing is found try bleeding your brakes very throghly

agreed

the flapper should be pretty stiff and flip bac kas soon as you let off if it

Hey All, I made a post about not receiving my pistons a while ago from Alex Costa. I thought he had a good reputation as he seemed to advertise alot on the boards and mike personally knows him. I sent im 758 dollars for a set of pistons. The day my check cleared he dissapeared and I have heard aboslutly nothing from him. Wont respond to emails, or telephone calls, and he never gets online. Now Mike told me a nice story about what happened but to me this explains nothing. Unless he is on his death bed he should be able to at least contact people and try and set his buisness dealing right. As somebody said his reputation is worth more then a set of pistons, well i guess this isnt so. I filed a dispute with paypal, he didnt respond to them for 10 days so they tried to collect my money, they were able to get 48 dollars. NOW I hope in a few days to be able to delete this post and apoligize with a happy ending -Austin Hoke

Okay to elighten everybody and some of the all knowing and responsible people unlike myself, that drive 5 under and never make mistakes.... I made this video to show my car after i wrecked it, it was a compilation so i could watch it from time to time and remember it, an inspiration for my 240z. I wasnt the one who went public with it. And i am not mad at them at all for it. Two of my friends both posted it up. And first of all i will admit that YES, the wreck most certainly could have been avoided. We were traveling too fast in an area that we didnt know. But the reality of any situation is sure you can look back and say "oh no i would have NEVER been so irresponsible to do something like that" "man its so easy to see they are gonna wreck, what a bunch of idiots." But think about stuff you have done in your life. And YES i have learned something, I doubt i will do something quite like that again. i have put way to much time into my 240z that im building to ever put it in such danger. I will be making more appearences at the track and driving schools...... BUT now heres the entire story for you gossipers to talk about and have fun with, it doesnt bother me too much at all. There was a car meet in the mountains for a local car club. The ride was all planned out and we had a police escort to the blue ridge parkway. Hundreds of cars there. They had a helicopter rented to take footage and a DVD was going to be compiled of the ride. My car was choosen as one of the featured cars for the video. (The video was never finished due to the helicopter footage getting messed up but thats a whole nother story). If you want the trailor you can find it at http://www.hightach.com --- Fast forward. It was finally the end of the day (around 6:00 or so, i had been driving since 5 in the morning). Since we were all from charlotte the group in the wreck decided to ride home together. The videotape... well we had been taping from earlier but for the wreck i actually didnt know he was taping he had been reviewing stuff and messing around wit hthe camera. The cars in the group were and in order: A black tt 350z, me, a silver tt 350z, a lancer, a 240sx, and a ford lightening. I was BY FAR the youngest in the group most were in there early 30's. The tunnel was around a blind curve as you can tell and the inside was very slick. The 350z hit the water and brakes and started to spin. i thought he was going to come around on me and i was going to broadside him. This was the only thing that was really running through my mind as I had never been in a bad wreck before. I really didnt want to hit that car especially with a passenger in it. I too hit my brakes to slow as much as i could because i had no idea what the 350 was going to do. This caused me, of course, to lock up and slide into the tunnel. The 350z in back of me then slammed into me i would say at fullspeed and knocked my car to the otherside of the tunnel where i ricocheted to the other side again, in front of the black 350z, and slide out of the tunnel. i have no idea what else happened behind me but i know it was a mess. Looking back i strongly believe that had the 350 not spun and i had not hit my brakes i would have made it through hte tunnel. You may not believe me but i knew the limits of my 260 pretty damn well. But all that is hindsight and looking back, me being in the sam situation, I WOULD HAVE DONE THE EXACT SAME THING. I hit nobody in the wreck and nobody was hurt, that is worth far more then my car. It was a bad series of events on a bad day, i dont really put anybody to blame. NOW pick up your stones and throw away, but i doubt any of you are very perfect either. in fact, most of the stuff i have heard is more ignorance then you have blamed me for, since you have seen a 5 sec video clip. But its not too bad, you should have read the stuff people on zcar.com wrote. But anyway Im home for hte weekend from college and Im going to go out to the garage to work on my 240z. Which I might add will be twice as fast as the 260z. Kinda scary huh

I think you dont know the whole situation and you should keep you opinions to yourself. thanks

I would double check the AFM. Sounds kinda like the problem I had with mat's car. It would start and run pretty damn good but if you gave it any gas at all it hated it but would eventually rev up with some coaxing. The afm spring had gotta off by alot (dropped perhaps i dunno). Anyway tightened it up and wah la. Also have you checked the timing?

Looking good mike! Keep up the good work, I cant wait to see your z's in person one day. Maybe next SEZ!

Ill install you auometers btw they are a piece of cake