jeromio

The FAQ is floundering. Perhaps we were a little too ambitious. It does have several sections that are filled in (I won't say complete). Maybe I could just pull out the empty sections and we could post what we have right now? Might be key if we could subsume that UBB faq link (the one under "HybridZ" text between "search" and "forum home") and then take the UBB faq and make it a subsection, the "Site" or "Posting" section or something. Make it Section One. That way the faq would be readily available and visible since its purpose is to head off the redundant, already answered questions.

Cool. Great find - thanks. Eesh - they have some pretty steep minimum order requirements though. Great stuff - lots of weather-tight connectors for instance. It's just that you have to order enough for 5 cars worth of wiring .

Those look very much like Porsche wide body (turbo) rear fenders. Much like that other, purple Scandanavian Z that someone posted a link to a few months back. As I recall, for the purple car, the builder posted a reply that stated that they were steel. Not exactly a kit.

I've had experience with both Painless and American Autowire. The former was less $ and easier. The latter was equivalent quality, but the inkjet on the wires was spaced waaay to far apart and hard to read in places and absent in others. Also, it had mistakes in both the diagrams and the wire labels! Sucky. Ron Francis kits look really nice, but they're twice the price. Too high in my opinion. Go with the Painless - get it from Summit or some other online place - much cheaper.

The tail lights are very different. In fact, most everything is different between the ZX and the early Z. The Zs have a swing arm Mac strut susp. on all 4 corners. This is actually unlike the C3 Vette which has a sort of a double arm with the driveshaft acting as the upper arm (very similar to the early Jag rear - on the latter Vettes they use a fancier multi link). The ZX has a completely different, semi-trailing arm rear suspension. Uses the same diff and the CV halfshafts are similar (I and others here have ZX turbo CV shafts on an early Z). But the arms and geometry are totally different. I have some pics on my site which is in my sig below.

Yikes. I think we all assumed you had the short collars on there already. Those look like the 8 inchers. Mounted waaaay too low . Here's a shot of mine, the collar is the same length as yours but it almost goes to the top of the tube. As to the spring issue, the strut carts are there for rebound damping. Their stiffness will contribute to a harsh ride since they will help cause the suspension to resist movement when absorbing the impact of a bump. But, since you have the adjustables, try this: set those Tokicos on 1 and then go drive on a bumpy road. My guess (only a guess - not an expert here) is that you'll still get hammered by the bumps and the car will tend to not recover from each bump as nicely. Regardless, I can't see how going to a stiffer spring can do anything but cause the car to be more brutal over the bumps.

I could possibly agree that Nion's car might be bottoming since it is so low. Maybe. But mine most assuredly is not. I have lots of suspension travel and an expansion joint is certainly not going to cause bottoming. Jumping up and down on the front bumper for instance, yields maybe 1 inch of maximum displacement of the car. It's just stiff. Really, really stiff.

Yes, but shortening the strut has nothing to do with camber. IOWs, 2 cars at the same rideheight, one with sectioned struts, one with stock struts, both will have identical camber. The sectioned strut car has more bump travel, but that's the only difference. It's the lowering that affects the camber. Lowering causes the control arm to angle up. Since the top pivot is fixed, the relative distance between the hub and the chassis is effectively reduced and its equivalent to the whole strut angling more towards the car, thus resulting in positive camber gain. (ie, wheels like | | or slightly / - not good) Ideally, in a Mac Strut susp, the control arm should angle slightly downward when the car is at rest. That way, when the strut compresses during corning, the arm angles up causing that hub to chassis distance to increase, effectively "swinging" the strut outwards and resulting in negative camber increase. Lowering the car flarnks up the whole equation. Thus the JTR pivot point relocation, which corrects a bump steer problem but also helps this camber problem on a lowered car. Of course, moving the pivot outwards helps too (maybe too much ). I'm a little confused by your explanation of the strut sectioning and why you can't use longer collars? It sounds like maybe the collars were slipped on, then the struts were sectioned, and then the resulting weld bead was left alone "trapping" the short collars in place? I hope that's not the case, but I can't imagine another reason why you couldn't switch to longer collars . At any rate, grind that bead down, and stick some longer collars on there. Also, why're you switching to stiffer springs since it pretty much sounded like you're not very happy with the harsh ride quality you've got with those 150/175s?

This may be slightly off topic here, but it occurs to me that one of the major problems with the Northstar (after following the various links that were posted here several months ago) was that water pump thing, which was caused by the motor being mounted at the pump. With the Northstar mounted "conventionally" in the Z, this problem should disappear, right? Anyway, I second the request for pics. Especially of the headers. I love looking at headers

Zs use a Mac strut susp on all 4 corners - ain't gots no upper arms. Mikelly is selling adjustable arms - do a search in the brakes/chassis forum for info or there may be info in the Store section of hybridz.

That is a really low car. But other than that, and the wheel/tire combo, you have almost the same setup that I have: sectioned struts, 150front 175 rear, stock front sway, no rear. I have the non adjustables though. My car rides like a skateboard. It's a kidney abuser. Corners insanely and has very quick steering. I have done the JTR hole relocation mod on my car. And yes, you do have to remove the old washer and spot in a new one. The washers are there to both reenforce the pivot hole and to provide a nice "pocket" for the bushing to fit into. The mod I did, 15/16 up and 1/4 out seems to have eliminated bumpsteer (by a seat of the pants estimation). But it also really increased negative camber. With fresh tires, the car is like a mosquito - darts back and forth, turns in if you even think about moving the wheel. Once the tires settle in, it's easier to manage. Eventually I'd like to get some adjustable control arms to fine tune things a bit. I would think that with your sectioned struts and lowered car, you'd actually have little or no negative camber left. (Negative is the wheels making an "A" shape, Positive is a "V" shape which is not good for handling) I keep hearing people talking about 250, 300 and even 500lb springs. Madness. Maybe for a track only car. These cars are light. My experience has been that 150/175 is too stiff for a reasonable daily driver. I'm actually considering swapping in some softer springs. Expansion joints are just too murderous right now. My next formula is going to be a slightly larger front bar (perhaps a stock 280Z bar) and a smallish rear bar with a change to 125lb in front (if I can find them) and the 150lb springs moving to the rear. In theory, this should get me some more compliance without adversely affecting cornering.

My experience with running 12 volts to a coil (a regular, non resistor coil) has been coil that lasts about 5-6 months.

Well, as I said, I ain't gots the knowledge. Just something to look into and be aware of. Also, my understanding (again, obviously incomplete and potentially flawed) was that the key to Tig was the tungsten electrode, not the polarity. For instance, I can very easily switch the polarity on my Mig. I'm sure that changes the properties of the welding, but in my limited experimentation with this, I couldn't tell. But either way it wasn't tig welding. I agree, the welded Els are not the ideal solution, but I am confident that the end result will be strong enough. This welder dude is crazy anal retentive. Has an almost unhealthy attention to detail. And I may have also misconstrued what his point about the Mig weld strength issue was - I kinda glazed over as he went into detail. Hell, it may have been as simple as he didn't want to have me pull up to his shop with the completed cage and have to look at my ugly welds

I'm not a metal expert, but I would be somewhat worried that heat bending rollbar tubing would weaken it somewhat. When I talked to my welder friend about the troubles I was having (cold) bending the DOM tubing, he suggested buying the Els (the 1 3/4 ones for the truck were on sale, and the 1 5/8 for the car were not - WAY expensive). So I said, Great, then I can just weld 'em up - easy. And he said, With your Mig? No. You'll heat up the metal too much and weaken it. Spot them in place, then bring them to me and I can do such and such and mumbo metal so and so or something. Anyway, he knows what he's talking about and I don't. Next time I see him I'll ask him about this hot bending thing.

Well, too much rust can definately cause a 240 to be worthless. BUT, as others have stated, for $500 you're getting alot of stuff - even if you just consider the thing a parts car. Plus, after looking at Tim's site with the rotisserie and the work on the floors and rails - very inspiring. Kinda almost makes me wish I had another 240 to "do right", ya know? I'd buy it. I'd have to wait for my wife to go out of town or something though

Don't get the regular hydraulic bender. You can use that to make slight bends, but nothing over 30 degrees or so. After seeing this site, http://www.blindchickenracing.com/tools/Tube%20Bender/Tubingbender.htm, that someone here posted, I really wish I'dve done something like what these guys did. That link they have to ProTools has lots of nifty stuff. Roll bar tubing, at least the thick wall DOM stuff that I got, is VERY expensive. Kinking it SUCKS. What I've done is to buy some 90 elbows that I'll spot in place and then get my friend to Tig in properly once everything is all setup.

Alright. I'm looking for content. I just incorporated John's latest Engine section. Looking for more! Even if you don't necessarily know the answer, there's lots of places (many mentioned in this thread) that have valuable info that can be incorporated into this FAQ. Think about all the questions you've asked about your car in the past, write them down (well, type them down) and email them to me. Then just go thru and find answers. It doesn't have to look pretty or be good copy - I can run thru it and fix grammar, spelling, etc. Don't worry about it! I just need the content. I think that the Wheels issue is a really popular question - which is why I broke it out separately. People always wanna know what will fit. I set up a table with the idea that anyone and everyone who has wheels on the car (you've got those, right?) would email me the specs of the combinations that fit. For stuff like Owen's column switch mod and Pete's various relay electrics, I think we might need a whole 'nother section. Electrical. Whaddya think?

Yes, definately part of Drivetrain/Differential. Word is okay. But straight text (copy from Word, paste into email) might be better. Oh, didn't see John's post. I changed the driveshaft bit. Also, in the Scarab question/answer, I tried to capture some of the points made in that Loooooong thread we had going a few weeks ago.

Many people (I would be one of them )would say that the stock caliper is not the biggest problem with the Z front brakes. The non vented rotor is not able to dissipate heat very well and therefore causes a great deal of fade which reduces braking performance. You know what we really need? We need a GTech, several cars with different brake setups and a big chunk of pavement. Several 60 to 0 (and perhaps 100 to 0) measurements would give us alot more acutal data to go on. There are, after all, several different bolt on brake mods and then there are the aftermarket brake kits.

Check out http://240z.jeromio.com/faqdraft I have a start. Don't want to be too presumptious, but, feel free to email me content. I can add it to what I've got. Also, please don't hesitate to criticize the format and such. In fact, please DO!

We're wailin' on this FAQ. Any and all help is not only appreciated, it is demanded! JohnC provided the entire Swap section as well as the opening blurbies. I've been sticking little things here and there. I pulled some differential stuff from the cheat sheet. R230 stuff would be way cool.

Well, I'd really rather not until it looks somewhat presentable. It's so far from complete at this point. (Speaking of presentable, I really need to re-do my main page - ugly.) How 'bout this, I put a tiny little link at the very bottom that says "FAQ Draft". If you go to http://240z.jeromio.com/faqdraft and hit Ctrl-D (assuming you're using IE), it will bookmark it for you (or you can click Bookmarks->Add in Netscape).

Hey, there's also alot of info buried in Dennis's cheat sheet compilation. Any volunteers to pour over that (http://240z.jeromio.com/sheet.html) and come up with a ew Q/As?

OKay. I imported the stuff that John sent me. Again, anyone and everyone please comment on the format, color, layout, etc.

This is me re-iterating my willingness to help out with the site. Here's the content of the email I sent to SuperDan in regards to his request for assistance: quote: I'd be interested in helping out. Although it's not my vocation, I do have some skills and html/imaging tools. I'm actually right now (when I'm supposed to be working) creating some little widgets to automate the process of making my own site look better and more consistent. How is the server setup - is it a Linux or other Unix, or is it NT? That last part, me wondering if this is an Apache/Linux box, is because I have one of my own (hosts the various jeromio.com sites as well as about 30 others) and have some familiarity and skill with that platform. In addition to straight HTML, I can do DHTML/Javascript and I also have access to the Flash 4.0 authoring tool and can write up CGI tools in C, C++ or Java.