jeromio

I definitely need to tear everything apart, bleed, change pads, etc. - but it did make me start thinking about optimizing side-to-side. It sounds obvious now, but had you not mentioned it I never would've conceived of a gauge that screws into the bleeder valve: Doesn't look like SAE threaded - I would need metric.

More questions. Most discussions of brake balance are in regards to front/rear. I currently have a problem with side to side. I am experiencing some braking issues and I need to tear things apart. So it may turn out that something is just broken - braking performance used to be much better than it currently is. But during a panic stop, my left wheel locks up. Obviously not a good situation. I guess my question is, if you're really trying to optimize a braking system, the braking force needs to be very well balanced both front to back and side to side. So, are there ways of measuring this left/right balance and tweaking things?

So, do you know the sizes of the fittings? "Digging up" old threads is a proper usage of the forum: search first; add to existing discussion; consolidate knowledge to make searching easier. It's a cycle.

What size are the fittings coming from the stock 280 evaporator? Are they -8 and -10 AN? Not some kind of metric-y thing?

Fatal? How? Do you have drum brakes? If so, change them. Ross sells a nice kit for that too. If the stub fails, the caliper will keep the wheel from flying off.

Oh yeah, another point that probably deserves its own thread: doesn't having the anti-sway mount in the stock position put strain on the turnbuckle? The wheel/strut will go up, bending the arm up (on the normal pivot axis), but the sway bar end link will resist this, pressing down. This puts sort of a bending load on the arm that seems would get focused on the threads, no? Seems like it would be optimal to somehow mount the sway bar end to the strut, rather than the arm....

With the "non-on-car" type, you have to remove the LCA pivot bolt, then adjust, then see where you are. Plus, you can't do "fine" adjustments - only 180degree increments. This may not be too big a deal since I don't think I will be that anal about the precision. However, with on-car, you could conceivably adjust without jacking up the car - saving another step. I've seen guys do self-alignments on smooth concrete with newspapers under the tires - allows the wheels to slide a bit while you adjust. In my particular case, I have negative camber built-in based on the location of the pivot. What I'm actually after is the ability to remove static neg camber for "normal" driving to save the tires. Also, you're definitely right about swapping in a different turnbuckle - these guys are using an off the shelf piece. But I still need to have adjustable TCs...

And I still haven't bought any arms. . I found these on ebay today: This company is located in Mesa, AZ - same town as that other supplier of billet Al LCAs. These are on-car adjustable. However, they do not offer adjustable tension rods. Also, this design doesn't have the ear (with hole) for the clevis.

On my car I just pulled them apart - the glue was old and dried out and not really doing anything. It was a PITA to clean it out of the channel though for re-assembly.

He also used to (still does?) run http://fonebooth.com. I believe his email address was mike at fonebooth dot com or possibly mikeg. I bought a bunch of coilover stuff from him - but that was so long ago I no longer have the exact contact details.

LS1 and a turbo? You may as well budget for 10 sets of tires per year then. I have 9K miles on mine and I'm on my 3rd set of rear tires. Or at least find some noisy tires - the Dunlops I have are too quiet. I was apparently smoking them almost always without really realizing it. A co-worker was commenting on my "burn-out" out of a parking lot - what burnout, I had no idea - except that my tires don't last for shibby. You might just consider putting the motor in and running it NA for a little while...

I had the exact same problem. I got a passenger side Cardone axle from RockAuto that turned out to be a mishmash part. The driver's side shaft is a different length than passenger's side and the "nose", the splined part that goes into the diff is also a different length on each axle. Well, this one had what I believe to be a 300ZX driver's side shaft but the correct nose. So it went in the diff, but I could not get it short enough to bolt the susp. back together. The guy at RockAuto said the number was correct in the Cardone catalog, but he said they do tend to screw up with some frequency. They refunded my shipping costs - but it was still a PITA. BTW, I had ordered both axles, but they said that they couldn't get the driver's side - even though the online order system said it was in stock. These parts are becoming extinct. I did the swap several years ago, and I just recently paid the $$$ for the proper MM adapters. I guess it's all sunk costs now. Maybe I should buy that super fancy year end from that other thread...

Relays area always better than not. Especially for high draw apps like headlights. You want a heavy gauge wire and as little of it as possible between the lights and the battery. So right in between there you put a relay - one for high and one for low. Then you can run any kind of a tiny wire from relay to switch. There are plenty of good spots to mount the relay between the batt and lites - so it shouldn't really be much extra work. I have 5 relays all in a row on the inner fender by the rad support. Got the nice clip together mounts from waytek that use the nice Bosch relays (waytek sells those too). I have 2 for lites, 2 for fan and one for horn.

Oh crap. So I get punished for starting (and mostly finishing) my rear-end stuff early, eh? I'd have to flush my $$ and time spent already.... I'm sure JohnC et al will weigh in here momentarily, but, some comments: (Looks like the photos show a work in progress, so I'm sure you'll address these points) - Kind of a shame to see that killer work mounted to a stock LCA... - Need a gusset from the spindle pin plate to the hub carrier plate, yes? - Camber adjustment is way cool, but will require something more than the fricion of bolt/nut to keep it in place, no? - Have you seen TerryO's (blueovalz) thread on redesigning the geom. of the rear strut housing? Might be something to at least consider. I'm very impressed. I'm also happy to see that the S30 has an aftermarket that can support investment like this. Those pieces would look soooo nice with an anodized finish (I've read powder coating is a no-no for susp./chassis components since it impairs weld/corrosion inspection).

As far as mechanical changes, it might be possible to bend the arm of the sender float around backwards such that the float ends up "High" when the resistor feeler fingers are on the empty side of the resistor plate.

I was searching for "Will the JTR kit work with an LS1?" when...oh wait, that wasn't me. Actually, I was spending all kinds of time trying to find info on coil-overs, brakes, strut sectioning, etc. at zcar.com. You know, that place where threads sink down into the nebulous archives after a day or so and there are always all kinds of arguments and almost no tech? Much better info over here. I read for awhile before finally registering. I wonder what my first post was about? I'm guessing it was to do with strut sectioning.

Better to cut less and make up the difference with plain old pipe as a spacer.

Well, I guess for my part of this thread, I'm in sort of the "well, that's not it either" mode - which is obtuse, I know. The fronts do actually happen to be from Discount tire where I got the wheels. They used to be the rears, but I rotated (then proceeded to burn down the rears and had to get new tires - damn horsepower). I do always criss-cross, sequentially tighten the lugs - sort of a ritual that someone, somewhere, maybe an uncle, taught me when I was 12. I'm actually not positive that it's necessary, but Im too chicken to stop doin it. At any rate, like I said, mine is a stupidly wierd situation. My drive home, for instance, was totally smooth. Vibration free. Drove at all kinds of different speeds ranging from 50mph to 85mph and everything in between (traffic was random on the commute). But this morning I had a slight vibration at around 65mph. It's just a wacky situation. Same car, same tires, same road - same everything. Maybe there's condensation inside the tire and it just happens to settle out strangely some days?

Anyone ever have an intermittent vibration (felt in the steering wheel)? I don't just mean only at one speed. What I've been experiencing is some days (maybe half the time), everything is perfectly smooth, from 10-80mph. Other days, I may get a vibration at one speed (say 50-55mph or 65-70mph) that goes away in other speeds or a vibration that is almost constant from 40mph all the way up. Sometimes the vibration is very minor, some times it's really bad. I can't tell if it's weather/temperature dependent. I'm sure it must be tire related (all susp./brake stuff is new and I've checked/rechecked bearings, lugs, etc.). My steering rack seems pretty tight - though I'm sure my "test" is not really adequate. I need to get new tires soon (after sourcing some adjustable LCAs), but this problem is just too weird. Worst part is I have a squeak somewhere in my dashboard and when I have a vibration day, there is a maddening noise - and since I can hear it over the LS1 exhaust noise AND my ear plugs, you know it's bad.

Those look really good. Make sure they can be adjusted to be shorter than stock. For my car, I need the arms to end up at least 1/4" shorter (due to lca pivot relocation). When you price them, it would be helpful if you could include the adjustable strut rod - even if the parts are off-the-shelf. Personally, I don't mind paying a few extra bucks mark-up to have all the parts arrive in one box vs. me having to place lots of orders to various places. These do look very stout and on-car adjustable (with lock nuts) is a nice differentiator.

Well, that would certainly seem to address the problem - if there is one. However, is there a problem with the "original" (AZ) design? B/c if not, I definitely prefer its simplicity vs. the modification.

Looking forward to that. It's amazing to me how many variations there are available for rear arms compared to fronts. If you can keep the price to the $500 range (all inclusive), I will be very interested. I need to buy tires, but I need to get adjustable arms before I do that. I'm very, very close to just buying the AZ arms.... I'm also curious to see more discussion/information about the sway-bar mounting on these (and the old-style AZcar). I have zero concern about the slightly inboard location for the TC mount point, but the potential twist from the little lever-arm of the sway bar does seem like it might be a valid issue. The resist is loading the clevis in a twisting (bending) force. Maybe this isn't a problem? I'm sure there's a pretty large installed base of the old AZ design out in the field. Then again, Dave did completely re-design and now has a sway-bar mount that is almost identical to stock. I like the outboard ball-joint for elegance of design and have no concerns about it's ability to handle the load. It's also a more readily available part for R&R.

I was actually going to buy these, but I reconsidered: The guy says he based his design on the old AZ car arms, but made them on car adjustable. They do look nice. And the 2nd adjustment is out past the mount for the sway-bar end. I also like the elegance of using that tie-rod ball-joint instead of the typical, more complicated mount for the stock ball joint. The trouble is that these are not really on-car adjustable. To adjust you must either disconnect the TC rod clevis and the sway-bar mount, or else disconnect either the inner heim or the outer ball joint. Also, this brings me to another issue that I don't think has been discussed. One extra advantage of the "on-car" adjustable designs (which use some sort of independent turn-buckle mechanism) is that they offer a much finer adjustment. Maybe this is not that important? With single adjustable (and the arms pictured here could be called "triple single adjustable"), you must spin the threaded part (heim, ball joint, whatever) 180* - so your minimum adjustment is 1/2 the thread pitch. Actually, with the design pictured above, if you disconnect TC and SB and spin the center section, you have to go one full turn and the adjustment is actually thread pitch times 2. Not so good. The only buy-able LCAs I've found that have true on-car adjustment (from azcarbum) lack jam nuts (which is odd) and are actually more expensive than the arizona Z car LCAs. The more I think about this, the more I am leaning towards just buying Dave's fancy (non-on-car adjustable ) aluminum arms: If I build my own, it's gonna cost around $300 for all the parts. And since I'm daily-driving this car right now (yes, I am now deaf and have kidney damage ), I would probably be better off buying a set of stock LCAs to cut up (so that the work on the car is just a quick R&R so I can get to work on Monday). So it's almost like <$200 extra to just buy a set.... Or maybe I'm just trying to justify laziness and a lack of creativity.

I moved mine up by 13/16" and out by 1/4". I now have 1.5* of static camber on a car that is lowered such that the arms are almost flat at ride height. BTW, this is good for turn in, but terrible for street driving. The car follows in and all road irregularities and my tires wear excessively on the inner tread.

Yes, there is a cross piece that bolts to a strengthened part of the frame tube and also to the motor-mount thru-bolt. I'm not sure it's absolutely needed, but I had a slight concern that the motor could bobble side to side.