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I too was very sad to see it knocked out of the race. Very cool car and awesome to see something radically different on the track and competitive. I hope to see more of this car in future/other venues.

I have spoken to SSR on the phone and found that they could not sell me the wheel shells. They advised getting with a aftermarket supplier and recommended vrwheels.com. I ended up calling wheelflip.com. They seemed pretty comfortable with the idea.

I talked to Roger Kraus Racing this morning about potentially buying a set of tires and using them for an autocross car. Their response was that the sidewall on these tires is not stiff at all so they wouldnt really work well, especially in a (relatively) heavy car like mine (2500 lb). They recommended going to A6s or sticking with the Goodyear R250s slicks I currently run. That being said, they're cheap enough that it wouldn't be a huge loss to try nonetheless. It looks like the thread you linked made it to several other forums. I'm hoping someone out there will give them a try and find out how to make them work. That would cut my tire budget in half!

I'm in a similar situation. Currently running 1.5 deg camber, 4.0 deg caster which my bias ply slicks really seem to like. I plan to switch to A6s which I hear like 2+ degrees camber. Do you happen to recall the thread size/pitch for the TTT TC rod hex adjusters? I plan to machine some longer ones to get more caster.

Very cool. Curious to see how these tires in their softest compound compare to A6s, or even the bias-ply compounds. My tire budget would benefit greatly if they are comparable.

Good to hear you were able to get back home. Definitely not fun to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere. 69 second runs sound great! The longest runs we see down in Oregon is like 50 seconds on some very tight, low speed, courses. I really need to get up to Packwood...

I thought I would bump this up since I'm still looking for wheels. Wanted to add that 15s, 16s, and 17s will do but not really looking to spend much more than $1200. Doesnt have to be super pretty, mostly just wide and functional. Its a long shot but please let me know if you have something..

That looks really nice! I like my panasports but your car is really making me consider buying a set

It depends a lot on the tires you run. If youre stuck with 15s (somewhere around 275/35-15 race tire), theres not a lot you can do if you want to hit John's 80 mph target without spending a lot of money. A 3.36 rear end will get you to 65-70 mph (depending on you stock red line). A Cam/pushrod/valve spring kit may allow you to raise the red line to 7000+, which will get you 75+. Upgrading to 16s or 17s will improve things a lot - with 275/40-17 (or, better, 315/35-17) race tires and a 3.54 rear end will get you 79 mph in 2nd gear. Whatever you end up doing take into account the tires you will end up using as they will change things quite a bit. As I've mentioned before, I run 23x9 slicks on 15" wheels (more or less the same size as 275/35-15s). I start my car in 2nd and drive the whole course without shifting. It works very well and frees me from having one more thing to think about while I'm driving. In rare occurrences I bounce off the rev limiter but most of our courses are so tight its hardly ever an issue.

I like the last one but here are a couple more off the Honda Civic Hybrids...

Nice! You got me wishing my car looked that good

Buying a mill isnt only about buying the actual machine. Youre going to need a lot more "stuff." Lots of endmills, drill bits, taps, fixturing tools are all required for you to build parts. Some of these items are consumables. Youre going to want a good quality vise and table if you want your parts to be of any decent precision. Finally a good stock of materials at various thicknesses is going to be important if youre designing parts "on the fly." All this "stuff" is going to be the bulk of the cost when owning a mill. I'm sure if youre clever you can come up with most of this stuff but I would ask yourself "what is your project?" Do you WANT to build a mill, or do you WANT to work on your Z? If its the later and youre really only doing this to make parts for your car I wouldnt bother getting a mill. Instead get well acquainted with a CAD software and find some decent shops that do CNC machining, laser cutting, sheet metal bending work. Those shops have been doing that kind of work for years and will probably be able to produce better parts than you can make in your garage with no time investment on your part. Send them the design and they will make production/show-quality parts in just a couple days. Theyre cheaper than you think too. I just had my local sheet metal guy laser cut and bend me this fan shroud I designed to mount on my radiator. $50 and the part came out PERFECT! Sure I could have cut some aluminum, etc. and rigged something up but the fit and finish probably wouldnt have looked as good AND I would have had to mess around with it for a day or two. Why add more work? Use your engineering knowledge and design some awesome parts. Who knows, if you design something really cool you could put it up on here to sell

Techno toy coilovers would be the same as the ground control kit with tokico illumina shocks. Only difference is T3 does the sectioning and welding for you, which isnt a bad deal. With coilovers it really comes down to which shocks you want to run. As I mentioned already, for a street Z which wont see much track time and has coilovers mostly for tire fitment and stance it wont really matter which kit you go with. If you are serious about your racing high dollar shocks should be a top priority so I would lean towards tokico HTS shocks or Konis. By the way I've recently read about Feal suspension (http://odib.web.officelive.com/Services.aspx). Apparently they specialize in rebuilding/revalving Megan, Stance, etc. coilovers for much better performance. Prices arent too bad too. I plan to them my shocks in a year or 2.

Konis should be a much higher quality shocks that can be revalved to your spring rate, if you are truly serious about your racing these are what you want. Tokicos are also decent quality and relatively inexpensive. AZC has never published who makes the shocks for their coilover kits to my knowledge so I cant speak for their quality, but most who have them seem to be satisfied. The Mckinnley coilover kits use Megan Racing shocks, with a Z car specific valving. They are pretty cheap, chinese/taiwanese shocks. Searching online will yield very mixed reports on their quality, etc. For a street Z I dont think you can go wrong with any of these kits. All these kits will let you lower the car pretty far and can give a pretty stiff ride should you require it. The valving might not be right for your spring rates but on the street the difference wont be significant enough for you to care/notice. FWIW I run the Mckinnley kit. The kit was ridiculously easy to install and I've run the car on quite a few autox events and driven it 3000 or so miles on the street. I keep them on a softer setting on the street, for a sporty but relatively comfortable ride then turn them up for autox. I'm sure a set of appropriately valved Bilsteins or Konis would be a better setup for racing but the Megans do well enough and I'm probably not a good enough driver to really eek out the extra performance advantage.

That looks awesome. One of these days I really ought to hit up the national tour event up in Packwood. I want to see all the insane A-Mod cars with their huge wings and get my ass handed to my by the Frankenlotus...

What kind of tires are you going to run? I use a 3.54 clsd and 23x9x15 slicks. I start in 2nd and leave it there the whole time, no shifting. It woks awesome. I found that its easier to modulate the throttle in 2nd so you can get an awesome launch off the line, and (if you want to) the engine still has enough power to spin the tires even when theyre up to temp. 2nd gear caps out at around 60 so on some very high speed courses I might go to 3rd but most of the time its not necessary. Perhaps others will disagree but I think its about perfect for autox. Speaking of autox, I should probably get up and get going tech and registration is in an hour and I'm still "waking up"....

Honestly, if $200 is all I had to work with I wouldnt bother spending it. If the car isnt too bad (and youre interested in keeping it) put the car away somewhere where it wont rust away and save money to do things properly. If the car is a rust bucket I'd sell it or scrap it and buy something that is worth saving.

I've been interested in radiator options as of late. I ran the JTR radiator for a while until the plastic end tanks started to leak. Instead of ordering a new one I decided to try to find an OEM radiator that would work. What I found was a 1990ish GMC G10 sport van (4.3L V6) radiator has the exact same dimensions as the JTR radiator but a slightly thinner core (1.25 vs 1.375 in.). So far I've been using it with little issues but I always have a weird feeling in the back of my mind that its very close to being too small. I've found this handy but rather crude table to help with radiator sizing and it looks like my feelings are somewhat accurate. I've been thinking of upgrading and have been eyeing the various radiators available online. Many of them say "cools up to 600hp" but how do they arrive at this number? Anyone have any other tables or equations that deal with radiator sizing? I suppose it is an easy heat transfer problem to set up but a table or a formula would save me a bit of work.

I think your summer tires are simply able to sustain more speed in a corner than your 14s before they finally break loose and you start to understeer. Yes, roll center and stiffer sidewalls may be a factor but since youre on stock suspension you have lower hanging fruit thats causing you more trouble. Youve gotten some good advice already on where you can start improving your car's handling. Springs, shocks, swaybars are all variables in your car's suspension. I suggest reading about how these things work and what they do to your car's handling. As far as illuminas vs hp. Illuminas have adjustable damping which is nice for tuning your car's balance. They are also able to control higher spring rates.

The correct calipers are stamped S12W or S12+8. If you can fit the caliper around the vented rotor (with or without pads) I'm pretty sure youve got the right ones. The spacer goes between the hub and rotor, it looks correct. The wheel hitting the tie rod is not surprising. Your bumpsteer spacer is too thick to be used with that size of a wheel (I had the same issue). Moving the wheel farther out with a wheel spacer would probably be the easiest way to fix that for you. You could also machine the bumpsteer spacer thinner( or remove it altogether).

Youve posted before about your frustrations with your school. If it really is as bad as you say, perhaps the issue is with them and not necessarily you. Statics wasnt too bad of a class, lots of free body diagrams, but overall not too unintuitive. I think we used the Hibbeler book as well. I dont know if you already tried it or not but isolating what concepts you arent understanding and then seek clarification on it from the professor/TA worked well for me when I was having trouble. Usually they were able to set me straight in a couple minutes because it was always a small thing I didnt quite understand that was giving me problems. As far as what do engineers do. My school doesnt offer an Aerospace Engineering degree specifically, just Mechanical Engineering. I know we had interns go to Boeing to work on various design projects on the 787 and the 757 from wing related stuff, to landing gear, to interior many of them get hired on after they graduate. They also did manufacturing process related projects such as designing production fixtures, etc. There are lots of other companies in the NW that work in the aerospace industry making parts, doing FEA analysis, testing, R&D work, pretty much anything you can think of. If you look outside of aerospace the work isnt too different in a lot of aspects. For example, as an ME it is my primary job to design products for my company. This requires me to design various plastic injection molded, die cast, sheet metal, and work with other various custom design and purchased parts. I do FEA and tolerance analysis, put together BOMs, do various cost analysis, design production fixtures as needed, help setting up the production lines as needed, help the R&D group with their new technology development, support existing products, travel to vendors to do tooling reviews, do alpha/beta/pilot builds for our products, coordinate with my design team, etc, etc.. A lot of different stuff.. I dont feel that engineering is ever a pure 9-5er. The last few couple months we have worked 50-60 hours a week in an attempt to meet an unrealistic deadline (prior to that I worked 45-50 hours a week). I am traveling to china in 2 weeks to review tooling design for over 50 custom parts. In addition to time spent at work, everything you see has, to some degree, been "engineered." So working on cars, cell phones, computers, makes for a great engineering resource. You can spend hours looking at the design of the various parts and walk away with ideas or concepts to use on your own designs at work. First thing I did when I bought a cordless drill is inspect the various parts. Is there an interesting snap, detent features? Interesting complicated injection molded parts or unusual materials? Unusual coating or part finish? Do any parts have warpage, sinks, or other defects? There has been several times when I wake up in the middle of the night to jot down a quick concept, or a reminder to check something. My work is always in the back of my mind, theres no getting away from it.

Tons of people since the cars came out have been driving them as daily drivers. No reason to say you couldnt either, especially if youre willing to replace anything that needs replacing. I drove my LS1 z car as a daily driver, and single source of transportation for a year (10000+ miles) in all weather conditions that Oregon happen to offer (100+ degree summer, very rainy fall/winter/spring, and some snow in the winter, especially in the mountains). With appropriate tire choices I never felt like there was any place I wanted to go that I really couldnt get to. Having said that, would I recommend it? Probably not, there are better cars to fill the role of an appliance. I'm much happier now having bought my subaru to DD, it fits the role so much better. It lets me enjoy the Z that much more since instead of driving it out of necessity I drive it because I WANT to. I also enjoy working on the Z more since I no longer have to hurry to get the job done in time for me to leave for work next morning. Changing rear wheel bearings in pouring down rain, in the dark, after 10 hours at work just to make it back to work the next morning isnt fun at all...

If youre willing to invest the money I dont see a huge reason NOT to buy the higher end AZC kit. It will get it done and you wont have to worry about potentially having to upgrade in the future. Whether you need it or not really depends a lot on the application. I think any of the brakes would be ok for street/highway speeds. Autox speeds rarely exceed 60 and runs arent long enough to heat soak the brakes, so, again, most of those brakes will work ok.. Just add some decent brake pads. I dont have a lot of experience with drag racing but dont they have quite reasonable run off areas? In which case, again, most of those brakes you listed with some decent pads will be able to slow you down fast enough? If youre going to road race your car heat buildup will be a major issue then I would see going to vented rotors, wilwood calipers, etc as being more of a necessity. FWIW, my car has the vented toyota fronts and 280zx rear brakes. I daily drove my car and did autox all summer, brakes worked plenty well (but I only make 350 hp). Though I've never done so, I wouldnt hesitate to run drags with these brakes. As noted in other threads I found these brakes to be fairly front biased. As such, I'm switching to a more aggressive rear pad to compensate (should be finished this weekend) and hope to see an improvement.

I've done this job several times and have never had any significant difficulty I just took off the entire strut assembly and bolted a giant section of square 2x1 steel tubing to the lugs. Then I'd put the assembly down on the floor and have a friend hold it steady while I reefed on the lock nut with a breaker bar and a huge extension. The 2x1 square tube would keep the stub axle from rotating. You can do this on the car too, but I found it easier to take it out since you have more room to work with the breaker bar. I never had a problem with the nut damaging the threads, even if I didnt cut off the peened section. I'd run a die down the threads just for peace of mind.

That's embarrassing, you are correct, I forgot to divide by 2 for my moment arm. Luckily this does not do much to the formula other than change the final value (which is relatively meaningless on its own) by a constant. The caliper piston diameter is still the biggest player in this equation. Thank you for catching my mistake. Since I did not have the inner radius of the rotor I opted to make a simplification and just use the outer radius of the rotor. Since the brake pads are the same the difference between the outer and inner radii should be the same so I felt this was a reasonable simplification to make. Regarding using 280zx calipers and 300zx rotors. If the bolt pattern and location is the same you may be able to bolt the 280zx caliper onto the Modern motorsports 240sx brake caliper bracket, and potentially have it work with the 300zx rotor. You would have to take the two calipers and compare them side by side to make sure.