ZR8ED

Hi Davy: My wheels are actually made by Simmons. I prefer them too! hehehe

I'm getting older and I want to use what little time I do get to spend with the car to do work that I really don't want anyone else to do, and I actualy believe I make enough money that I don't need to do it myself.( At least that is what I tell myself...go figure..) Too much hassle to do it myself. The car is low ya know. Difficult to dispose of the oil etc. I've been going to the same shop for several years now. They all know my car, and I don't let anyone move my car. It's my way or the highway! Besides they hold my door open for me to get in! I feel like the king of the road hehehe!! Scott.

Scott. I am working on a trip strip for my S30. If it works, I will end up making a mold of it. I want to paint it body colour, and I would like it inconspicuous as much as possible. I posted a pic in this forum of my idea, though I used a strip of cardboard to illustrate a basic idea. I'll post pics once my prototype is finished and ready for "seat of the pants" testing.

Ok So I'm completely involved in Zed's at the moment. I have worked on my car every day for the last week, and I'm on hybridz every day. Anyways. I have had this slight oil drip last summer, only a drop or two in the garage. No biggie. Well it got biggie this past few weeks. I've been driving the car and working on it a lot lately, and the size of the oil leak has gotten larger. It was recently 3-4 drops of oil. Now it is 100 drops of oil yesturday. I was getting pretty worried that it was something $$$$. So my hunt for oil leaks suddendly went to the top of my todo list. I could not believe what I found! The oil changer dudes tighten my oil filter, and maybe used a tool to tighten it. Part of the filter casing had crumpled slightly. (like crushing a pop can) and oil was leaking out of a stress fracture!!! I guess driving it around the last two days finally made the fracture worse! I'm feeling pretty lucky right now. That could have easily happened while driving on a long trip, and I would not have noticed til I saw the oil pressure drop. Soooo. Time for my spring oil change AND filter. I've seen filter leaks at the seal, but never because of it being slightly crunched! Scott.

It was electrical. I unhooked the SAFC started the car and it ran "ok" I then hooked it back up and everything was fine. I must have moved a wire while relocating the SAFC controller. I made sure all of the connections were tight again. Humphhh!?! Well .... back at it.

Update day two. Reinstalled SAFC. Start car. Car runs fine. ???????????? Anyways, Not sure what happened, but I reset my fuel pressure and within 2 hours of rushing home to work on it, I was driving out to the other side of the city to make my Z club meeting! I'm going to continue tuning this week if it doesn't rain. The car performed beautifully on the highway, and I learned a few more things about how and what I need to adjust. Life is back to being good. Will keep you all posted on the progress. I haven't given up yet, though I am running out of patients. Investigating MSII as my final option. Cheers.

This efi stuff is getting pretty old. I'm now starting into season 3 of not running a nice as it should. I'm either rich at idle or lean up top, etc.. Well I'm running out of patience, and its becoming $$$ obvious that a standalone is what I should have done in the first place. (I'm stubborn I suppose) I've been doing plenty of reading, and am looking at the kits, and the only thing holding me back is a fear of starting all over again with wiring. I have been reworking my stock 86 300zxt harness that I installed with the vg30ET into my 280. I have removed all unessasary wires, etc. I have had it apart many times now, and I'm doubting myself as to my abilities to wire a ms system. I have a FSM so the colour coded wiring has been pretty easy to deal with. I guess my question is where do I start? Label every wire connection, and simply pull out all my fi harness and start fresh? I'm no electrician, and I am unsure how to begin a project like this. I don't want to spend my whole summer on this project. When I did the vg30et swap, I had a trusted friend and mechanic from start to finish, with 50 years of combined Z knowledge and all the tools we could use. Now I'm on my own. Any ideas? suggestions, words of encouragment? Scott.

Update. I'm not doing well. Let me clarify that. I thought I was doing well. I had the car set up for cruising nicely. I just needed sometime riding shotgun with my buddy so I could program while he drove. Until.... I did some work on my front signal light, and more importantly moved the control unit from inside my glove box to outside on the centre console. This was to make it easier to reach and do more tweaking. Well I started the car up and it was running pig pig rich. My wideband was pegged at full rich. WTF??!!! well lots of checking wires, I even adjusted the FP and still pig rich, I even set the lo throttle 1000rpm ne point to -50. Still pig rich! I got ticked off and unhooked the whole damn thing. Pretty straight forward, and I left everything still there ready to hook back up. Well I started the car, and well it started. I was able to adjust the fuel pressure, and leaned it up a bit. Took it for a spin, and at least it was drivable. still rich though. Rich to about 12psi, and then it gets lean. Well I'm going to hook it all back up, write down my settings, and re initialize the SAFC and start over. If this doesn't work? I may get the ecu reburned. or maybe megasquirt, if I can find someone local familiar with it to help me out a bit. I'm a bit PO'ed! right now, so I decided to quit before I break something. Back to it tommorow. Scott.

PrOxLaMuS© You are really working hard there man! It looks good! You are taking this aero stuff to heart. It seems that many here that chipped for the testing are taking cues from the data aquired! That is the best part! We all came together, and are actually doing something with this knowledge. The spirit of hot rodding! Keep up the effort. DO!, while some others talk about doing! Scott

Rags. I am using Aluminum, and I'm pretty sure the guy said it was .025. I had asked for material that was about 24 gauge. Thin, bendable, easy to cut with my electric metal shears. (electric metal shears from Princess Auto. It looks like a standard electric drill, except with metal shears on the end.) BUY electric shears if you're going to mess with thin sheet metal and aluminum. It is like cutting paper, and far easier than hand cutters, and you can cut somewhat complicated shapes! I picked up the aluminum at Metal Supermarket. They are open to the public. The entire job cost me $22 for aluminum, and a few dollars for the poprivits and nuts/bolts, and $9 for the 3/8 black door molding to trim the panels to reduce any rattles, and to keep from scratching any paint. I can pull the whole thing out in about 10 min for access. 74Adam. I have had no issues with the torsion bars removed. I use the stock prop rod to hold the hood up. Thanks! Scott.

Just venting I suppose. Pulled car in garage. Running nicely. Turn off engine. Fix left front turn signal ground. Move SAFC control panel temporarily from glove box to centre console for easy adjustments. Start car to move out of garage. Runs pig rich? all the way rich according to my wideband. Even cutting the fuel pressure from 40 to 20. still rich. WTF? Obviously an electrical cause. This is getting old fast.. FI gremlins.

Ok so I got my act together again. I have got the "while I'm at it syndrome, and decided to do more extensive work to direct air into the rad and i/c I already had a lower piece that joined the top of the air dam, to the rad. I then put in an upper piece that joined the top of the grill to the rad to stop air from going over the rad. It worked great. The wind tunnel testing has got me interested in making changes on either side of the i/c to make sure air gets better directed. I am going for a cross between form and function here. The little vertical pieces were a real PITA to build and make a decent fit to the upper "pan" Well this post is useless with out pics so here goes. Finished. Scott.

Looking to out gun that little red Fiero with the black snorkle over the roof? He is pretty good at the king of the hill at Mosport. If your not an Ontario Z Car member, then you should be. Scott.

I was doing some work on the Z the last two days. I had my front left turn signal doing strange things. It would light up with the running lights. It would flash when i turned on the left signal BUT when it flashed, it flashed OFF. It did not flash and get brighter (it should flash and get brighter) I cleaned all the connections. Didn't fix. I checked for power all the way to the bulb connector. still no good. I then tried the right side connector. It didn't work properly either. ????? Ok so the wiring on the car was messed up? I ASSUMED the ground was good because the light would still light as needed either for signalling or parking lights. WRONG!!!! Lots more tinkering, and discovered the ground was not good ENOUGH. I poprivited a small blade connector directly to the bulb holder chassis, and attached a fresh groundwire, and wired it to the body. Light works normally! Warning. Do not assume you have a good ground, just because you have a ground. Whew. Another "assumption" lesson. Scott.

This may be more seat of the pants type experience, but here is my .02 cents. I had to take the car to have the exhaust put on. (headers only) I took the car out, but forgot that I did not have my hood latch installed. The hood lifted up quite a bit while I was on city streets. Enough to seriously worry me about blocking too much vision...as well as the cops seeing the car in a less than road worthy condition. I can't recall how much it came up, but is was more than a few inches. Anyone want to take off their latch and go for a quick drive and see how much it pops up. PS. The hood would sit back down most of the way whenever the car was stopped at a light. PPS. My car was much more stock in those days. re no aero other than the airdam. Scott.

I agree with making sure it is not too solid. I laid a thin strip of aluminum to the backside of the air dam, and attached thin aluminum L brackets and attached this belly pan. It is attached in I think 7 points, is easily removable, and the airdam doesn't fold under. It will give If I ever hit something hard enough. I also gained better aero downforce. You also get a side bonus of better cooling through the rad. Sustained speeds in excess of 120mph for 15 min, and the temps stayed dead on normal. The downforce allowed me to stick my arm out the window at 135mph and give a thumbs up as I accerated past a Ferrari 308 gts...but I degress that is another story from my past. The car was rock solid in handling. Back to the here and now of this topic. IF your going to do this mod to your air dam to keep it from folding under the car, why not go the extra effort and do a pan? The alumium, screws and pop rivits were under 75$ http://album.hybridz.org/data/500/bellypan.JPG

Good find! No way you can find one like that around my parts. 500.00 would get you a total basket case, that may or may not even start. Even junkyard worthy turbo cars can fetch 1000.00 Enjoy! Scott.

Well I got to the car this past weekend. I finally did the aluminum mesh in the opening. It took a bit of contortionist work to spread out the epoxy I used to hold the mesh in place. It is a tight fit working between the gas tank and the fascia. It turned out pretty good. New improved rear diffuser plans have begun, but some of the windtunnel info is not indicating that it should be a priority..unless the priority is for the car to look cool with a diffuser. We'll see how that pans out. In addition to my aero work, I have a major project to figure out this apexi SAFC II controller and get this car back to WOT capable (at least without going choking rich or the big bang lean) Anyone have one? Scott.

Thanks for the pointer in the right direction. I searched some honduh forums, and gleamed some info. I searched some Z31 forums, but found lots of "hey I just got this Safc. How do I install it?" little to no tuning info, except lots of "go to the dyno" What I did find, was that some of the 240sx forums are actually talking about their setups. Many use the z31 ecu, z32 maf, larger injectors and turbos. I found it quite close to my equipment. They had lots of settings used. They do vary from car to car, and all strongly cautioned against just "plugging in someone else's numbers" but after seeing different setups, I could see trends. For instance. the decel menu goes from 0 -100% in .1 increments. I heard many talk about using values in the .5% range. mine was at 15.5% big difference. Anyways, I've taken the info, and will start to work on it. I will post my settings when done. Maybe I will write a small faq if I figure it all out enough. Now I just need the epoxy to dry on a part of the car, I can then go for a drive later today! Thanks! Scott. PS. If anyone see's this thread and has some more thoughts, or have one setup in your car (any car) let me know what you think!

My bottom panel extends from the top of the airdam and goes back and above the lower rad support. I pretty much stops at the new rad support "wall" (can't really call it a firewall?) hehe the i/c sits on top of the lower panel. The I/c and rad are almost touching. There is not much room between, so I have no shrouding between the two.. The top panel is not as easy to do as on the blue race car used in the windtunnel. I still have stock hinges, so my cover can't extend all the way to the edges. I made it as tight as I could. The panel sits tightly on top of the original grill, and the lower "inside" flange of the stock hood is slightly infront. It is not a full seal however. The hood just barely clears the front edge of the cover where it sits on the grill. Clearance is in millimeters. To make the hood easy to open, I'm not sure how much more I could seal that part up. The sides don't look as easy to build I will make mockups out of cardboard first. Scott

More aero threads to add. Interesting reads. http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=91946&highlight=zr8ed http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=77236&highlight=zr8ed http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=104596&highlight=zr8ed http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=88938&highlight=zr8ed

Looks like I'm on the right track! yehaw! I will begin shortly on putting in vertical pieces of aluminum to keep air from going to the left of right of the rad though the rad support is sealed up pretty good. (I installed an aluminum sheet to the rad support with only holes cut for the rad opening, and i/c piping. On the highway I no longer see the hood flutter. not even a bit. I'm going ahead with my other idea of the roof mounted lip (ala 280zx inspiration) This is just a piece of cardboard tucked in to give a general idea of what I was looking to do. I may make mine out of fibreglass so I can paint it to match the body colour. Scott.

I used carcoversdirect.com I bought their noah. I also had them custom widen it to fit my larger rear flares. I described how I wanted it wider in the rear only. Fits great!

The weather has been great lately, I have my Z painted, and up and running. Been going out for evening cruises on weekends and the classic friday night cruise around town and down to the lake. Life is good. Then the Mrs comes home with this for me! What a great woman! No more old bbq that sometimes catches fire! No more running out of room on the grill! A MAN's grill! 1000 square inches 116,000 BTU's of pure cooking! So much for my part in reducing global warming! Large livestock beware! Oh I just gotta have a bbq party now!

Pic of the unit if it helps.