tube80z

Good to hear. I drove a Honda with EPAS and it sucked. The steering was numb to me. At low turning rates you could feel pulsing. Did you upgrade your steering joints to deal with the extra torque? That would be one concern using older parts with this. And my final question what amp range did you go for? Cary

Actually more distance is probably not that helpful. It allows more acceleration before impact. If you look at most new cars the interior has become cramped so that you don't have as much room to move before you touch the plastic. The key is to have something that spreads the load over a wider area. I have been looking closely at this for my new street car and haven't decided if I want to use structural foam in the roof rails or use tube that seats into the flat panel. I have already figured out you can run tubing inside the wheel well from the rocker up to the back of the fender top to complete the lower leg. Not really SCCA compliant but for a street car probably good enough. There are also a lot of clues to be taken from modern cars like the 3 series BMWs for how to reinforce the front end. And like Dan's cage you can do a cross bar the mimics what modern cars run under the dash. Cary

The pictures in the ebay ad show wilwood dynalite calipers. The front are 4 piston and the rear look like 2 piston. The AZcar photos shows wilwood superlite. It's a larger stronger caliper that has a larger pad. Make sure you're comparing apples to apples when you decide to buy. You can download the wilwood catalog to see the calipers these kits use and what options are available. Cary

I'm interested in the steering feel and how it operates when you let go of the wheel. In the ones I have driven they feel numb. I'm looking for the same feel as manual but with some assist and no damping when you release the wheel. Would love to hear thoughts on this. Cary

15x10s should easily clear with that on the front. I think mine are 3 or 3.5 on the backspacing. They have the bell but it does clear the AZ brakes but barely. Some wheels needed a small spacer and those may have been the 3.5s. It was a few years ago and memory isn't always the best.

A friend has had two of the AZ big brake kits and they fit under the 15x10 diamonds up front and the 15x14 diamonds on the rear. These are the 12.5 inch kits I believe. They had Superlite front calipers and dynalites in the rear. If you're looking at 6 piston calipers or 13.25 or bigger rotors I'm not sure. For Diamond wheels they often have an inner lip that will interfere if you try and run too much backspace. Luckily when this wide you often miss it. I have one of the 15x10s here if you want me to try and measure it or send pics.

Glad to see no one was hurt. I'm curious what cause the failure other than old age. I crack check mine each year when I'm running. So far I haven't found anything. My car generated 1.6 to 1.8 lateral Gs and I pound the FIA curbs. I don't torque my lugs as much but that's probably more to do with the brand. This probably isn't the problem either but how hot do your hubs get? I wonder if the spacer expansion could have worked against the hub. Like I said I'm totally guessing and this is just throwing another thing out there.

I've had a few 510s. I had one with a rack and a VG30DE conversion in it so I know what you're looking at. On mine I used the 240 rack and crossmember and made custom rear TC pickups. If you go here http://datsuns.com/projects/510-TwinTurbo/fvs_N.html this car was built the same as mine. If I were to do this again I would build a k-member to use as the rear attachments. On the car I would use epoxy and rivets to hold the bracket, which could be removed. The S30 crossmember mods needed for bumpsteer are in the stickies. They contain a lot of good info that will help you with this project. I have to admit that way back then I was very into 510s and was so looking forward to my new V6 car. Dave from Datsuns.com gave me a ride in his and it was fast. Then I got a ride in Charlie Barmissa's 302 powered V8 Z and I never worked on the 510 again. It still sits in my garage. I have a friend with a 510 very much like yours he calls Beefy. It sounds nice. Good luck with the project! Cary

Going along with what John mentioned there's a lot that can be done for free. Years ago for showroom stock and similar race classes a lot of tricks were employed to make the cars faster. Often crash damaged parts would be used. These are parts that were strategically bent to attain a specific alignment. You can bend the front steering knuckle to bump steer the car. You can bend struts to get negative camber. You can use a porta power to push areas of the car around. A little here and a little there adds up. You can decide of this is cheating/not ethical but it's all part of pushing the rules boundaries. And along those lines you can lookup betafoam from DOW.

I'm not sure what you are asking really. This is going on a 510 or a 240? for a 5 inch travel suspension you can get away with a 15 inch lower arm and a 7 inch upper if you're looking to make a double a-arm setup. If you're looking to fab up a replacement 240Z cross member or something for a 510 I'd look at making something similar to the Mustang K-members. Set your ride height and mount the arms level and if you want some anti-dive make the lower rear pickup adjustable. Stock S30 Z suspension is designed with bumpsteer. You either need to bend the knuckles or shim them down at the outer tie rod connection. Many people raise the inner to match the rack so if you build from scratch take a look at aligning the inner pivots. Hope that helps, Cary

I've been over this a lot with some friends who race the rolling craps Z. Not sure where you did lexan but if it's for the rear hatch go back to glass. I would not bother with poly and use new rubber bushings. There are plenty of tricks you can use to make them stiffer. For camber adjuster slot the strut towers. Why are you using bilsteins? You should learn the fine art of arguing about replacement parts and how you can modify those. I would also think about spending $10 on a couple of heims in strategic spots. Become a wood worker. Plywood is the cheapest material to work with and you can make a really nice wood airdam. The rear spoiler can be the rubber cover that fits in the rear bumper on a later 260 or 280. For a 240 I guess you'll make a nice plywood one. Laughing at the plywood I can send you some links of a guy that makes wood parts for his F1000 and DSRs. He used to race airplanes and boats. Springs and collars are $80 for the car and a gift for what you can do with them. Use a replacement insert or learn how to make the stock wet struts work. That's what people did in the old days. You have to get creative and push boundaries. We're not cheating or bending rules but we're taking everything as black and white down the center. If you want shocks and don't want to fight lose the header. Power is going to be less help than a better working suspension with higher rates. I would then do a lot of aero based on plywood. Vent the hood, open up the fenders by cutting and folding them (stock part still), splitter, and side splitters. You could make a wood wing but I'm not sure what they would say about that.

Do you not have enough budget to get springs? I have a friend who has a Z chump car and it has 2.5 springs. You get a budget hit for your build but they can be used. It was cheaper than what they charge for sway bars. Another option would be to do the old muffler clamp adjustable collar mod. A lot of 510s used to have that. You can use that to adjust corner weights or use it to help with balancing the car. Another oddball option would be to use really soft bump rubbers to augment the spring rate. Then use packers to adjust engagement. Nascar tech comes to chump car. My personal feeling is that there's a ton of aero that could be done to help make the car faster as well as get better mileage. That helps you get to the driver time limit on a tank and helps to keep the lap times up. Cary

I heard $2500 for the head as the price. But this is between friends and not necessarily a deal to the general public if that helps. Cary

There's a new never been installed in the box one here in Oregon. A friend is trying to buy it at the moment. The dry sump pic above looks similar to a friends EP car. They mounted the alternator high too. Cary

I researched this heavily and found for the LS engines they have poor oil drain back from the heads. So they have a tendency to fill up and when they do drain they fall back on the crank and cam, which ends up aerating the oil. One solution to this that's been used in old school engines over the years is external head drains. I found an informative article that even a dry sumped F5000 engine needed these for a specific track. These need to be 8 AN (1/2 inch) from what I've found and connect back to the pain using a shield so they don't end up getting backed up. You can also swap in pushrods with a smaller oil holes to help reduce the amount of upper end oil. I've seen various methods of venting the engine but it seems one option that looks to work well is via the valley cover rather than in the valve covers. To help deal with oil aeration and migration you can use a crank scraper. So all that is on top of the gated pan. Hope this helps, Cary

One reason I could see wanting to do this would be to set the steering axis angle and then adjust camber without changing this. This would also fix your motion ratio when changing camber. The question will be how much camber can you get this way. The second issue is when you move to a two-piece spindle design then you have additional compliance under braking and cornering. For a street car people don't care but for a hardcore racer this is something you want to make sure isn't a problem.

If this book is similar to some of the other SAE books I have purchased in the past it is more or less overpriced for what you get. While old Aerodynamics of Road Vehicles by Hucho will have most of what we'll ever need. It's expensive too but if you search used book stores a number of copies have been out and I found one for a whopping $5. Before plunking down money for this book I'd try for an interlibrary loan to see if it can be reviewed that way. Cary

Good point on 1st. I'd do it for the gears you plan to use. I'd call Liberty gear for actual prices. I was throwing around what I have heard but I haven't talked to them directly. G-force used to do T-5 straight cut gear conversions with dogs too. Not sure if those are still around. Download the Wilwood, Tilton, and Power Train technologies catalogs. They will have the part numbers you need for everything. The idea of using a 3-disk converted to a 2-disk rally clutch is so you can slip it a little more. I drove a corvette a few times that had a Tilton 3-disk and button setup and it wasn't too hard to get used to. You bring the revs up and quickly let it out to get going. You can go a lot deeper into corners under braking with these compared to a normal clutch setup. And you can't shift faster than the dogs engage. Just be accurate because if you're not it's still going in. Until you get good I'd recommend always using the clutch across gates and throttle lift when inline. The next step for hillclimbs is an auto clutch where you use a restrictor to simulate dropping the clutch at a certain rate. You set that with the bleed hole, and then determine RPM, and push the button to go. Something for well down the line but to keep in mind. I've been trying where possible to come up with ideas to eliminate inconsistency on launches. Cary

Not really. Ideally you rev match and either double clutch or drop it in. With dogs when the gears come together they engage. It doesn't matter if your doing 100 and select first it will go in. I like to left foot brake and you can drop down a gear by a simple blip on the throttle and pull it in. For up shift you let off a smidge and select the gear. Dog ring/face plate trannies require fast shifts to survive. If you granny shift it cause a lot of damage.

The nascar takeoff trannys will run you in the 2500 range and you need a bellhousing. You can do all manner of things with the gears including overdrive in case you think you're stuck to 1:1 for fourth. You can add a cheap low ground clearance bellhousing usually for around 200 and a tri-lite style throw out bearing for around 150. Reverse rotation starter is around 100. Then a 3 disk 7.25 clutch, which you can convert to a 2-disk rally style for a little more slip (if needed). All said that's probably 40 to 50 pounds less than the T-56 but you're looking at around $3K. For the T-56 you can have it faceplated, which is the same thing as dog ring engagement. I think they are around 1K for 1 to 4 and leave 5th and 6th with synchro for street drive. Dog engagement can be shifted as fast as you can move the lever and only takes a small breathe off the gas to reduce torque. There are some fancy bits that can be added for no-lift-shift using a load cell shifter and interface box. That's double the cost of the gearbox mods. You can also do the mutli-diks behind the T-56 using a flexplate for ring gear, button flywheel, and clutch. I think Ron Tyler found it was 38 pounds less weight than the Corvette flywheel and clutch combo. Unless you plan to go all out and want to dry sump the motor and lower it I'd probably lean more towards face plating what you have. Cary

Thanks Tony, I will keep on the lookout for a GEO system. Cary

Here's an option for 6-speed sequential transaxle, http://www.ebay.com/itm/GEMINI-CRAWFORD-6-SPEED-SEQUENTIAL-/131151078525?forcerrptr=true&hash=item1e8936a47d&item=131151078525&pt=Race_Cars_Not_Street_Legal That would get a little more weight to the rear. Any reason you didn't go for a Jerico tranny and save some weight? I have the similar C&R tranny and it's 87 pounds with integrated oil pump. I'm not sure what ECU you are using but Lingenfelter makes a box that works with the stock ECU that allows for no lift shifting controlled via a load cell shift knob. Very similar times to a fully sequential setup. V8 supercars used to run similar with their cars before they went sequential. They used all Motec electronics. Here's the link in case you haven't seen it, http://www.lingenfelter.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=LPE&Product_Code=L460135297&Category_Code=C163#.UzTNFPldXkU and a video of it in action, https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1878619807148. I haven't looked to see if they support aftermarket ECUs but they might. Looks like it's coming along nicely. Cary

I could think of many reasons, can't you?

I went and poked around some GEO forums and it seems they don't think they work that well. So those may not be the best choice either. Cary

With that design yes. But you can also use a slightly larger bushing that allows you to have left right threads in the same piece. Generally this isn't a good place to make camber adjustments at as you also change the toe settings a lot. Check out bung adjuster nuts at midwest control. https://www.midwestcontrol.com/series.php?id=194 Cary