tannji

WoW, Big Brass ones, indeed! Do you think the car was intentionally loose, or he just has the amazing reflexes and skills to drive the car to its limits in spite of the looseness? There were several instances where he was really pushing the envelope, and you never see any fear or back-down... just hit it harder on the next turn, if anything. That might be the most impressive run I have seen at Nurburgring.

Left hand drive, no less......

That is just so Wrong..... I love it! lol That will give some old Mazda phreaks nightmares, I hope! = ) Keep us in the loop. tannji

Interesting.... thanks! = )

Well said.... and I appreciate your sentiments. I still feel guilty for thinking about owning projects other than the Z... but I know intellectually that my loyalty to the Z is emotional.... and I know that eventually I will add to my collection as well. Main difference being, I dont anticipate taking any grief for it amongst the car people I "know"... they are all here, and the open-mindedness here is second only to the incredible depth of knowledge. tannji

did you just mix and go, or was there some adjustment to the engine/ECU required? tannji

We are expecting more rain here as well.... outlook calls for mold and spore counts to go through the roof.... at least it is late summer and the pollen count should be low... We get deer within a few blocks of my house (right in the middle of Davenport, Iowa) but the only thing I have caught in my yard is bunnies.... the neighborhood is simply infested with all of Peter Cottontail's cousins. Never seen a city so full of rabbits before. You can always tell when a new cat gets loose in the neighborhood, apparently cats are born thinking they are rabbit hunters. I have seen a couple lose their "virginity" in my front yard... looks fairly comical, but sounds like mass murder.

There are not too many sights nicer than New Mexico after some nice rain... the brown vista is such the norm that when the wild flowers get their day, it is a complete shock to the senses. I am in Iowa, and have gotten to the point of taking lush green for granted... but I still think desert green is better, all the more so for its scarcity. I have been facing the prospect of moving back for quite a while now... and there are some things that I am seriously looking forward to. Wild flowers, adobe architecture, and chili roasting in the fall..... sigh..... = )

Congratz! Running our Daycare out of the house, we did similar increases in 6 months.... but now we can earn no more, and we have a 3 shift intrusion into our home life... I am very happy for you, and the grass does indeed look very green in your yard, lol.

LOL... I have been going back and forth over this... and the simplest option never even crossed my mind! Thanks JohnC... I may very well do just that. I am going to offer my Repair Manager $700 for both.... I think his main interest is getting them off his shelves as soon as possible anyway. Timing is good... probably picking up a 94 Honda Del Sol next month for a beater/commuter, it is pretty abused body-wise, but I can probably drive it home for $500. Worst case I spend the winter fixing the body and sell it early spring. Dunno how popular they are, I think Honda canceled production because they wernt selling for beans in the US.... but should be fairly easy to make a little profit on it. tannji

Bump? No input on the TIG? I get the idea that most people that dont like the EconoTig are used to using Squarewave technology, and I appreciate that... but would this make a decent learning welder at the very least? What do you/have you used? thanks, tannji

LOL... sounds great... but out of the budget until my current domestic and living arrangements change. To give you an idea, I was originally going to settle for a 135t 110V welder... until I came across some deals at work. I dont own a shop, or do anything that will help pay off the investment (yet) so $2000+ for a single machine to learn a process is a nice thought... but it goes on the same shelf as all the nice thoughts I have for nice billet aluminum performance parts.... one day almost certainly.... but not this week = ) On the plus side, I get everything from work at cost+5%... and once I have my bottles, Gas is rediculously cheap. Everything except Acetylene.... I am keeping my eye open for a deal on a nice Plasma cutter as well. Miller has a new one out that is tiny... but $1000 is still out of my range.

Just a bump for curiousity, how is it coming?

OK, so I am working at a welder supply company, and the repair department comes across trade-ins and abandoned equipment all the time. Today I was looking at a Lincoln SP255 and a Miller Econtig. The SP255 I can probably get for about $300 or so. It works well, is in good shape, and has been written off as a loss because apparently the control panels go bad, and the fix is more than you would spend on another comparable used unit. So I could get that with the caveat that it will probably break in the next year or 1000 hours of use, and I will dispose of it. Or not.... ya never know. The EconoTig is brand spankin new, never even been powered up. Someone traded it in on a "real" Tig. I want to learn tig next, and the price is right, probably $400 to $500.... but I have heard from several people that this model is lack luster with regards to AC Aluminum welding. Of course, that is what I particularly want the machine for, as I have some dreams of designing my own intake and some other parts. So, any feed back on these two machines? I havent heard anything but approval for the SP255 Mig... other than the control panel being too expensive to replace... so that looks like a go, pending confirmation that I can have appropriate AC dropped to my garage. (anyone know if it will run on 208? I havent seen specs on its input preference yet. The EconoTig goes for $1425 at Cyberweld, so I am getting an extremely good deal... but I would love to hear from someone with the experience with multiple machines to tell me if it might suffice for learning Tig/Aluminum, in spite of its supposed deficiency. For comparison, I have used the Lincoln 215 and 255C, and was very comfortable with them, passed the 10 weld test for John Deere Production Welding with no sweat, and that was after a 120 hour part-time course I took a couple months ago. I also used some 1960's vintage behemoth that used a rotary dial for voltage adjustment and had a separate top-mounted wire feeder... I never had a clue what my settings were, as the dials didnt seem to directly corellate to IPM and Volts in any way I could determine. I just played around till it worked for me... I found out a week or two later that I was at 27 volts and about 450 inches per minute! Had my teacher shaking his head and laughing at me... but I was knocking out perfectly flat groove welds on 1/2" plate, so he said he was fine with it, as long as I didnt tell the other students what my settings were, lmao. Anyhow... that is what little experience I have, and what I want to do most of you are already doing.... what do you think about either machine? Thanks in advance, tannji

Along this line of thought, I found a bunch of interesting parts by Googling "12 volt ceramic heater element"... Including fairly small units that actually used your existing coolant line for the stock heater core. (non electric heat, of course.) Here is one of the links I found interesting: http://www.accessconnect.com/backseat.htm

I have seen very similar artifacts result from cameras taken from cool environments to warmer and/or humid areas... it can cause condensation on the lense and chip... it also usually evaporates very quickly, leaving the average user with no explanation other than to suspect their camera or another user of faults = ) Actually had a customer bring a camera in several time with artifacts we could not duplicate.... until I met him in his car, and found the camera sitting on his drink tray, right in front of the blasting AC vent. A forty degree difference will cause condensation in all but the driest environments... and I was finally able to demonstrate it, to his and my complete satisfaction

I had a 240 with 350 SBC and the th350 tranny, with 4.11:1 gears, and a shift kit solved that problem nicely.... didnt help my RPMs, of course, but it allowed me to manually shift with the racheting bump shift, which I think was a Hurst. Drive worked fine normally, with the option of switching to the manual bump shifting when I "needed" to. Having run a similar 240 with SBC and the 700R4 tranny, I would never go back to the TH350... unless light to light ghetto racing was the only action my car saw. I drove the car from San Diego to Davenport, Iowa and averaged slightly over 26 mpg, the comfort and fun factor was better, and of course I was much happier with my cruising RPM range.

I owned a 73 Spitfire back in the 80's, and I always thought that a modded one would be a blast. You seem to be addressing the major problem areas already... the rear end blows for sure, I replaced the diff twice on mine, while in high school and living one my own... nearly caused me to sell the car, in fact. I have seen several hybrid Spitfires, and only one had appropriate chassis and cage mods... the other 2 both ended up getting their doors welded shut as a stop-gap bandaid. If you havent already imagined it, getting out of the drivers seat in a spitfire without opening the door really sucks = ) I remember that one of the spitfires had a Ford 2.3 turbo in it... and had a moderately serious understeer problem. I believe that was on stock steering and suspension gear though. Good luck with the conversion, that car will be a lot of fun, and will get some attention for sure.

Wow, I never saw Socorro that green, lol. Growing up in NM (tho in the Rio Grande river valley south of Albuquerque is a little greener than much of NM) I didnt know what green really was till I saw Northern California and Oregon for the first time. Now I am in Iowa with heat and humidity, and I really miss my brown origins, lol. Will be back home sometime soon tho... Aztec or Farmington area... not my favorite area, but maybe I'll work in Durango, lol.

I owned that kit as well back in the day.... have seen it with a simpler BRE-style rear piece.... didnt look very good, nor did it look right with nothing. I kinda miss the kit.... tho not all the attention it got me was good... as a early 20's driver, police officers seemed to assume that I was up to no good in that car, thank god they never knew it had a V8 as well. Cant wait to see how you finish it off... with the right details it will look very nice indeed. Do you have the huge airdam that came in that kit as well?

I am not sure this can be easily done... If you are using the open seal like most topless windows, the glass has to be rigid, even at the fully extended, closed position. On the S30, the glass is at its least rigid state fully extended, as it relies on the frame to keep it in position. I havent opened a Z door up in a long time, but I think you would need to find a way to make a track from top to bottom on both sides of the glass, inside the door, to limit or eliminate it's play. Cool idea for sure... maybe with some thought and interactive problem-solving, we could add another popular mod to the database. = )

WOW! I love the car, and it sound sick.... pure sex. But.... over 700hp, 2800+ pounds, and it does a 10.98 in the 1/4? Something just doesnt seem right. I imagine I will be able to do that in my Z eventually, under 500hp, similar weight, and obviously a fraction of the cost. Perhaps they are geared for top speed, but still, 0 to 60 in 2.9 seconds, would expect a better 1/4...

LOL, I just started welding, so I havent had the sweat problem yet, tho this week I probably will... temps are on the rise. Never had the pulled hair either, but I am sold on the beanie already as a preventer of pattern baldness from sparks and spatter. I smelled burning hair a couple of times, and was doing a jig in the booth... dont know if its my helmet in particular or helmets in general, but I got a lot of crap flying and hitting the crown of my head.

Cheapest I saw the chinstrap was for $80 or so... dont know if you have to order filters or such separately... the auto helmets start out at around $40 and up, and that usually comes with a select knob for filter #9 thru #13. I tried a conventional helmet just for comparison's sake, and I wont go back. Being able to see exactly what I need to as I trigger the arc vs, not being able to see it and no other advantages that I can see is a no-brainer, IMO.

I have read somewhere that the FG fenders are approx. half the weight of a steel fender, but it would depend on who made the fender and to what spec. I had the full California Z FB kit on a car, and had to repair fenders several times due to careless neighbors backing into them. There were times when I felt the weight savings was not worth the extra work. Of course, I think the CalZ fender was closer to the weight of a stock fender than a stock appearing FG fender would be... it certainly was after I got done repairing it