Jesse OBrien

Can't wait to see a video of it screaming around the track. Looks like a great build so far. ... have you considered a dehumidifier for the garage?

Turns out I still have the car, so I'll probably ship it back to myself sometime before winter. It sounds like you didn't read the history of these drums. Tapping with anything on these doesn't work. The whole drums sat in a vat of penetrating oil for 3 days, and I slammed them with a hand sledge every few hours. I'm going to have to just replace the rear LCA's completely once I have the car back. There are no fins, and the outer rim of each drum is completely ripped off. The center hub is wedged and rusted on well enough that it might as well be welded. There is no gap anywhere, they're just frozen. I'll get some pictures when I have them back, so you can see exactly what I mean.

So New Hampshire drivers are superb. All that bad-weather driving seems to make a big difference. People use directionals, merge correctly, and rarely drive under the speed limit. These things make sense to me, and make driving waaaaay more enjoyable. Screw California.

No, definitely no pictures. I had been trying to sell the car for nearly a month, nobody wanted it even when I dropped the price to $1k, so it's either parted out or crushed now.

I do the same thing. I've seen enough people who think 'merging' means literally merging their car together with another one, and run the gauntlet of the onramp like so: 1 - grip wheel firmly in both hands 2 - mash gas pedal 3 - gaze steadfastedly toward the lane you're merging with 4 - ignore cars going faster behind you... they're behind you, THEY should be watching out for YOU. Because of the number of times I've seen this practiced all over the US, I tend to hang out in the leftmost lane pretty universally. ... where I come from, some onramps have stop signs on them. Seriously. Those can be pretty intense.

People still look at me funny when I say California has the worst drivers I've ever seen. A BMW owner flipped her car in front o my office today. Either that's spectacular skill (she was doing about 15mph) or her driving is spectacularly Californian. ... and by that, I mean bad. Read more: http://www.drivendaily.org/news/flipped-bmw/

I have a rebuilt externally-wastegated Turbonetics t3/t04e hybrid (.48/.63) that's about perfect for a 2.8l engine that I'm selling for $500, and a generic turbo with the same specs for $350. PM me if you're interested in either. Pretty much anything will do 10-15lbs of boost, it's just a matter of where in the rev band it can do it.

I think my favorite I've come across was Myron's. http://www.drivendaily.org/owners/featuremyrons-s30/ (he has a whole build thread here somewhere, but that's the link I had handy)

Just so nobody's confused, I'm still driving cross-country, and still doing it in a 240z, but in a different one that's been through a shakedown period (of sorts). I just sent the downpayment on it this week, but I don't actually pick it up (or see it in person) 'till I fly in on Mar 29th. I'll definitely post updates once I get there. I can promise more reliability and fewer miles per gallon for the trip.

One drum off, I couldn't pick it up. I had to sweep and vacuum it. I'll get some pics. By the way, the car's up for sale if anybody can take it to a good home sometime soon.

I hear it's been 'warm' out there. Any progress?

Don't we all, now? Really, deep down? I'm just looking for 'subscribed threads'. I don't want them to be gone.

Sorry, but it is. She's gotta go. Just help me send her to a good home. Details here: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=159940

That agrees with my experience, I just wanted to be 100% clear on the size difference. It's kind of odd though, my 72 240z fit those calipers perfectly, like they were made for each other: http://www.drivendaily.org/projects/brake-caliper-upgrade/

Which 4x4 calipers? Does each caliper have two of the same-sized pistons, or two different-sized pistons? I ask because there are a few different castings of the 4x4 4-piston calipers, and one fits the vented rotors with a spacer, and the other fits the stock rotors.

Still lots of progress but not finished. I've had a few people come look at it and a few people express an interest, but this Z is up for sale for $3500. I'll make it an official with a 'for sale' post this week, with pics and all the contents of my goodie bags.

I have a freshened 3.54 r200 here. PM me if you're interested.

Megasquirt gains you tuneability. That means mpg, reliability, and power. It'll make a huge difference whether you're n/a or turbo, and assuming you have average mileage gains, it'll pay for itself in around 4,000 miles (20mpg average with stock Nissan ECU vs 40mpg average with a lean setup and a light gas foot using Megasquirt, assuming you spend ~$600 on Megasquirt). Make sure you have access to a wideband o2 sensor, and it's probably a good idea to dedicate a laptop to tuning, at least for a month or two of driving every day. EDIS gains you accuracy and reliability (no rotor/cap assembly, just an optical sensor and a wheel attached to the front of the engine). Timing advance can be dialed in exactly for every rpm/throttle condition possible with Megasquirt if you set up MSnS (megasquirt 'n spark). It's a tried and true combination, and doesn't require a whole lot of work or tools (only one small bit of machining on a lathe is required). I'm doing both at the moment, but don't have all my supplies yet so I haven't posted anything. Braap did an amazing writeup a few years ago about EDIS in his old track car, I'd suggest reading through all of that if you want to understand how it works (and see some really cool timelapse photos of spark plugs firing).

Yeah, I did come across some pretty bad cases all-around. Right now I'm focused on getting the bushings out, and I think I've come up with a pretty decent solution: I started by using that same sway bar bolt and a few sockets as spacers, and just applying tension to it by tightening a nut on the end. That didn't work out so well, since the sway bar bolt isn't exactly the sturdiest long-skinny bolt ever. However, the theory is sound, so I started digging around in my spare bolts bin for something a little burlier. I found one (will post pics later, don't remember where it came from, might have been a motor mount bolt from a Honda, at least that's what it reminds me of). The important part is to get a bolt/nut combo that's thin enough to fit through a 1/2" drive hole (3/8" will suffice, but this is a lot of force, so go with the stronger sockets if you've got them). Put a smaller socket on one end, and a 24mm on the other end (24-26 will probably work, I used a 24mm). Add washers, spacers, whatever you've got so that the nut will thread and apply tension. Finger-tighten the assembly, and line up the large socket so it doesn't touch the bushing (just the lca around the bushing) and the smaller socket is only touching the bushing. Apply liquid wrench/pb blaster/wd-40 liberally. Apply time and more corrosive lubricant. Apply time again, then more corrosive lubricant. Don't rinse, but repeat as many times as you have time for. Put some safety glasses on, and wear gloves, and tighten it down 'till the bushing pops loose or slides out slowly. Mine slid out eventually. It took some time, and I'd tighten it a few threads, add some lubricant, let it sit for a few minutes, then repeat. I considered hitting it with a hammer while it sat, or just tapping the housing in hopes that it'd help wriggle the bushing loose, but I think it's more likely to wriggle the socket assembly loose so I decided against it. reference pic of final assembly:

I just didn't know what term to search for apparently, I thought spindle pins were only in the front, I was all confused by the terminology. Got a process that gets them out pretty easily. The new bushing kit came with sway bar bolts, so I'm putting the threaded end of the old sway bar bolt against an end of the spindle pin. The other end of the spindle pin is facing down (but not resting against the ground, I used a pair of jackstands to hold up the spindle). I put a little piece of an old sway bar bushing in between the old sway bar bolt and the spindle pin, and whack the crap out of the sway bar bolt. I'll draw up a diagram when I finish, assuming the one good spindle pin stays good by the end of it. One of the spindle pins was bent before I even got to it, so I have to replace that one at the very least. The other looks to be in good order, but I'm testing my removal method on the bad one just in case.

Well I don't have a way down there, and sure as hell don't plan on carrying my rear suspension on BART, and can't take work off tomorrow (especially tomorrow, in fact). Anyone know where I can get a couple of replacement bolts that would go in there? I have no problem ordering new ones so I can whack the hell outta these, and just put new bushings on new bolts. Come to think of it, I do have a tap and die kit. I could always just thread the ends of a regular rod... On a very related topic, I remembered I had this site bookmarked (which I'm sure many of you are familiar with already, and he's probably wandering around hybridz somewhere as well): http://atlanticz.ca/zclub/techtips/suspension/rearend/index.html That writeup just rocked my socks and made my day. I had totally forgotten about it, so if anybody else ends up doing bushings this is pretty much just for reference.

Awesome, that's exactly what I needed to hear. Time to break out the bigger hammer, and toss a nut on the end of those threads (I'm re-using the bolts, at least).

I searched. Promise. Since I didn't find any good info on removing the rear lca from the strut/hub assembly so I can replace the bushings when I searched here and my hayne's manual, I decided to go on the safe side before melting the old bushings out and ask. I'm mostly asking if there's one single threaded rod that runs through the entire LCA, or if there are two smaller ones on each end (more like the inner side of the LCA). If I just have to yank the bushing out without having good access to it, I'll torch it (carefully) and slide the replacement in. You can see the bolts I'm talking about here: Thanks in advance!