burninator

Is a wirebrush on an angle grinder too aggressive for this work? I had started using a roloc bristle disk on my air grinder in the spare tire well. But I don't even remember where I got it from and those things are pretty expensive for a consumable.

Just wanted to follow up with a bit of a progress update. I started stripping paint and bondo, used a head gun and a scrapper to get started, I guess I'll move on to a wire wheel at some point. The roof didn't look to bad, here is a wider view of the cracked area previously uncovered. I still can't figure out why it had any bondo at all there... The other side looks slightly worse, notably the seam, and then some rust on the inside the weatherstripping was covering... An example of some paint bubbling up with a bit of rust underneath at the rear of the hatch area that needs addressed... Spare tire well had a lot of rust, but still seems structurally sound... The fender that was the worst of my fears, not much more to say there that hasn't already been said... And the front part of the fender and rocker panel, this is the new area I'm most scared about. Looks like untreated rust just got covered in bondo and ignored...

Great tests! I particularly liked the first part where he tested all the lengths incrementally. For what it's worth, I tested my Z with SU carbs with the stock airbox backing plate that has short runners with bellmouths, and carbs only without the backing plate (no filter either way). Just wanted to see what difference it made, and to my surprise, it did slightly better without the backing plate installed. I don't know where I left the files. I intended to try to make something with longer runners to test, but never got that far. Maybe someday. I have access to a dyno whenever I want (I just don't have a running/driving Z at the moment).

I know I"m late to the party, but I had a similar issue when I got my first Z. It might be worth pulling off the distributor and making sure the shaft is clocked the right way, especially as it appears yours is mounted incorrectly anyway. As I recall the end of the shaft that drives the distributor has a small half and a big half divided by a slot, the small half should be on the left and the slot should be at the 11:25 position (you'll want to verify the accuracy of that with the service manual). I had to pull my oil pump (that drives the distributor) and re-clock it the correct way, it was non-running when I bought it and the person who worked on it before me got it wrong and it was 180 degrees out, sounded a lot like yours does.

Have you had the wheels and tires balanced?

Good luck on the project! I live in Belgrade and look forward to seeing you driving it drive around someday.

Thanks, yeah, the garage is dry, and I'd keep it out of the rain, for sure it would be nice to drive it, so thanks for the info!

So, I'm going to have to work on this bit by bit, and I can't really afford to get the car worked on by a body guy or painted any time soon. As I said earlier, I'm in a predicament with this. I felt like I couldn't drive the car with the cracking paint, and that was probably true, I didn't want rust developing under the paint/filler to eat the car. So I jumped into it and started chipping away. But now that I'm digging into it my concern is that the bare metal needs protection. It'll be garaged 100% of the time, but it could be a while (months... years?) before it gets finished. How long do I have before I need to be concerned about the bare metal? And is there something I can put on it to keep it protected that will be easy to remove for real body work? Somebody who does paint once told me that spray can primer can absorb moisture and doesn't do great for keeping metal from rusting underneath. Thanks, I'm super bummed I'm not gonna be able to drive my Z for a while, and I just found out my daily driver Subaru is gonna need a new engine which would cost more than the car is worth. So, yay! I'm having a moment.

Good point about saving money by doing the removal myself. I can probly handle that. Thanks for the link, that's not even too expensive. I will take a closer look at the roof. I definitely think your correct that this doesn't seem like the work of a craftsman, but I'm not an expert enough. I think you're right, that the whole car, or at least a lot of it, has a layer of filler on it, whether it needed it or not. The roof doesn't look bad from the inside, the headliner fell down, so I can't see the whole thing, but there is no obvious damage. And now that you point out out, is does look like the outer fender was cut away, but I could not tell anything from looking at it from under the wheel well.

I had some cracking paint on my fender and I was kinda hoping I could fill the crack and spray something over it so I could just drive the car for a while. But on inspection the crack had gotten worse, and seemed to be lifting and loosening up, so I decided to just knock the loose stuff off and see what it looked like underneath. What I found seemed odd to me. The body filler was pretty thick there, maybe 3/16ths of an inch near the bottom of the uncovered area, and it had these vertical welds you can see in the picture. In addition it had the bumps all over, maybe a dent puller was used there and left the marks, it's really uneven. I'm guessing it had some major damage in that area that was previously repaired. I guess I'm just in over my head and need to take it to a body shop. I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little depressed to find this. How bad is it? There was a little on the roof too, by the rear hatch, I'm assuming there is more rust in there too. Roof: Fender:

Good idea, that's an easy thing to try.

I feel the vibration and hear it. It's only at speeds above 60mph or so, and it happens all the time whether accelerating, maintaining speed, or decelerating. Even if I take it out of gear. The vibration seems to be coming from behind me. I've seen driveshafts with weights on them, they can be balanced at a shop right? Can half-shafts also be balanced, or would it need to be replaced? I swapped one half-shaft already to one I think is good. I could just swap the other and see if it changes. I also have a spare driveshaft and diff, I didn't want to just keep swapping parts to ones I only think are good without knowing what the issue is. I'll check all the mounts and bushings, just to be sure. But sounds like the driveshaft or half-shafts are probably the issue. Maybe I should grab some new u-joints for when I'm swapping parts.

Something in the rear of my 240 is vibrating like crazy at highway speeds. I checked the axels for play and changed out the one that felt marginal. I also swapped out the wheels and hubs to spares from my old car. It still makes the noise. Keep in mind, my old car was an autocross only car, so I never went that fast in it, not for any amount of time, and I was always racing, so I might not have noticed if it had a slight vibration at the higher speed sections. But I don't think it had a vibration. How likely is it the diff is causing the vibration? How can I tell? What else should I check? As a secondary issue, at low load like maintaining speed, or just when you stop accelerating and start to let off, but not decelerating, there is a whine from the transmission/clutch area of the car as near as I can guess. What should I look at there, is it something to worry about? *Edit - Meant to post this in the troubleshooting forum. Sorry.

OK, I take it back, I do see now how it changes the camber through travel. I also didn't think about it changing the roll center, and I don't remember seeing that on any of the threads about this. Like 260DET said, that's probly a bigger benefit than changing the camber curve.

If you haven't got an answer yet on this... The spring rates might be a bit high, but it depends on your tolerance for ride quality. They are probably too high for Tokico dampers, the Konis he suggested originally could handle them though. I don't know what other people run for a setup like yours, but for comparison, my autocross only race car ran 350's in the front and 300's in the rear with Koni 8610 dampers and it feels stiff on the street. I don't know why some people run stiffer springs in the rear, it never made sense to me, but with your staggered tire setup it might work out.

You seem to be saying that this adapter will alter the camber change through the travel due to the offset, but the length of the arms and location of the pivots are what controls the motion of the hub/wheel through travel. Since the hub is still ridgedly attached to the strut and does not pivot the offset does nothing but create an angle on the hub/wheel giving you some positive static camber (but you have a way of adjusting that). I don't see how this would affect the camber change through the travel one way or the other. The strut angle won't otherwise matter as long as it doesn't contact the body (which I don't think it will). I see the benefit as giving an option for adjusting camber (which is always nice) and perhaps a choice of coil-overs for those who don't want a weld in or sectioned struts. I also agree that it's a big ask for someone to buy this from you along with the struts to make it work if you haven't tested it yourself. I work for an aftermarket parts company and for new parts development we buy, or if possible borrow, a vehicle and do the install and check fitment, do the measurements, etc. before offering it for sale, when we're done we either return the vehicle to the previous condition, or give them the parts to keep for free. I've never heard of asking someone to buy a part just to see if it even works. These arguments are not unproductive drivel, especially when you're asking someone to spend a lot of time and money on a product you've never even tried on an actual car. They are important for you to understand the specifics of our platform, and for potential customers of yours to understand what they'd be getting into.

Yep, I think you're right. Thanks!

My current wheels... I've never seen another Z with these wheels. Anybody seen them before? They're some kind of Momo 14x6 mesh design. I don't know much about them, and couldn't find anything by Googling. They were on my old car when I bought it. Maybe they're super rare and valuable old school wheels that I can sell for a ton of money? I'll put that on the ad anyway. I'm planning on getting rid of them and getting something wider. I've been looking through this entire thread the last few days looking for ideas. Probly looking at a 16x8 since the tire choices in 15x8 are so few. Although one of the fenders is messed up so I might go with flares so I guess I'd need something else. And yeah, I stupidly put a 225 wide tire on them thinking wider was better, turns out that's not always the case, 205s were way better.

Oh, good I'll try just lowering it down like that. Thanks for the advice!

So if the clutches are different why does O'Reilly list the same one for both cars? Can't try the old slave cylinder, the push rod (or whatever you call it) is different and much longer (designed to go through a hole in the shift fork). Anyways, I measured the one from my old transmission and I think it's the short one. It's about .75" from where the shift fork rests on it to the back side of the bearing. A quick search shows the the 260Z would have a very slightly longer one. You could be right on. I'm not stoked about having to take the transmission back out. What a pain! I'm not sure I can lift the car high enough to take it out under neath, and to take the engine/ tranny out together through the top, not to mention putting it all back again, sucks. I just got the thing back in this morning

I didn't touch the throwout bearing or anything, just kept the one that was on the transmission.

My 240's transmission blew up and I scored a 260Z transmission to replace it. I didn't think there would be an issue, so I just started installing it. Thew the transmission on the engine using my old clutch which was still good. However I realized that the clutch slave cylinder would need to be replaced so I picked one up. I'm having trouble installing it though. I can't get it to compress enough to fit. I thought there was a chance the clutch was different, but O'reilly lists the same clutch for both. Any ideas?

Unless you're on Hoosiers or similar tire PAX will mean nothing for you. PAX gives you a target, but in my opinion is only accurate if your car and the cars you're competing against are prepared pretty close to the limit of the class, which you are not. Just find a guy who's consistently just a bit faster than you and try to catch them, then move to the next guy.

You could try swapping your springs front to rear. Putting the stiffer springs in the front should make it over-steer less. Or unhook your rear sway bar. If you have the ability to adjust, a little toe in on the rear might help too. Like others suggested, an lsd would also probly cure most of it and is on my personal list as well. I have a stock 2.8L on my 240 and it over-steers like a son-of-a-gun in autocross too. It's a blast to drive though. With practice you can learn to manage it and not spin, but you'd probly still be faster if you got it sorted.

The pressure might have been a bit low, I dunno, I'll be running higher tire pressures on the next set anyways. I went ahead and switched to R888s because they were available in a wider size. They do have more tread though, so the total rubber contacting the road is probly closer to a wash. I did get my car back from the place I store it and strung it up for alignment in the garage. It seems to have 1/8" toe out in the front as best as I could tell. So the toe in theory doesn't seem to hold. Is it normal to toe in when you add camber? My car is also quite low but I moved the inner LCA pivot up if that makes a difference there. On a positive note the rear toe is at 0 so I guess it's straight. Anyways, the tires lasted a long time, and like was pointed out with only autocross use the tires are going to take a beating. I'm not sure I know if I'm over driving the car, but maybe. I'll keep an eye on these new tires.