tube80z

I bought a dealer sign both sides for $100. That was about ten years ago. Unfortunately it was destroyed in a windstorm before I could ever put it up in front of my shop. I haven't seen any of them around the Corvallis area for some time. We have a bunch of Datsun hoarders so who knows. Cary

I think you'll be very glad you did. I have an Auto Verdi 5-stage for my LS1. One stage is dedicated to the lifter valley. I did find out an interesting item I thought I would pass along. The LS motors it seems have horrible head drains compared to many other engines. One solution to help is to install external head drains. These are dash 8 and go into the heads front and rear where the spring pocket would be. Even with dry sump an LS installed in a F5000 historic racer in Australia was complaining about pressure problems in long lefts. I'm not sure what the tank size was but this solved it. And if you pull too much vacuum Peterson has a really cool valve that can set the vacuum level in the motor. It also works as a blow out valve if anything should go wrong. Hope this helps, Cary

Not sure about a street car but we've done this on a couple of race cars. One was under car exhaust, which always stunk up the car with a window, side exhaust (V8), and a rear exhaust. Keep in mind no side windows or quarter windows in these cars. Car was a lot cooler inside and no exhaust smell. One of these cars ran a rear wing and the other two ran rear spoilers. I never felt any air coming in from the back on these setups. I'm guessing since there were no side windows the air either reached equilibrium or what would have stacked up inside the hatch was let out. If you had side glass and it was up then I think you'd have a massive problem. My current race car project will probably not have a rear window because it is so much cooler inside this way. Hope that helps, Cary

John's work well but if you want ot buy a tool to also use at the track these are really good, http://www.girodisc.com/Caliper-piston-spreader_p_5970.html. You can also roll your own if you don't like the price. Cary

I think trying to use them for brake ducting might be more of a problem than it's worth. It used to be quite typical to see the lower frame rail used to carry the air supply and a round tube welded to the outside used to mount the flexible tubing. On a Z this is an area of low tire clearance and would seem like a decent idea. Here's a pic of what I mean: http://www.submariner.org/thepno95/Pictures/Subaru/Suspension%20stuff/Brakes/ESX%20Motorsports%20-%20brake%20ducts.jpg Cary

I was thinking a tranny oil cooler if you had one. It would be a good source of cool high pressure air. Cary

I think if you open the rear of the fender so there isn't a captured area behind the tire you probably won't need any fans in the engine compartment. I have the strut area behind the strut open on my car and have been looking at possibly putting louvers in the hood over this area to help evacuate both the engine compartment and the wheel wells. It really comes down to how much area I have left after creating a radiator duct. XP rules limit this to a specific amount of square inches. For hillclimbs we have much looser rules and I can run larger louver panels. Keep up the good work, this is all really interesting and seems like there's some performance locked away we can get at.

The other option is similar to the WRC cars where they vent on top but have two vents close the side. A lot more work to fab but the air leaves and goes around the side of the car rather than over the top.

Mine were in the same location but held with a couple large fender washers. And as Jon mentions if you go higher you can hook into the doubled sheet metal, which probably would be better if you don't have reinforcement. I did the same in the rear and also saw no problems.

I had mine on the car for 2 years with no problems. As long as you're not pulling the sheet metal so it bends it's fine. I ran this front and rear with turnbuckles to adjust the amount of droop. I originally considered redoing them to be a mechanical stop on the opposite leg of the ARB but this worked well enough and there's always something else you can do when things work on a race car.

I like the sway bar bracket. That's a nice way to do that.

Sorry to hear about the car, glad you're okay. I see you are using an AIM data logger. Have you added suspension sensors to your car?

Here's what I'd do. Match what Pegasus offers, https://www.pegasusautoracing.com/group.asp?GroupID=SCREEN. Things to keep in mind, finer holes won't allow as much cooling. It's a good idea to not have a flat screen but one that is shaped so you have less chance of blockage. It's usually easier to use stainless safety wire to connect the mesh to the frame than welding. Not sure that really answers the question but may help make a selection. best, Cary

SCCA XP and SM rules are a little weird. You can have any hood, which has been taken to mean you can have a duct built into it and it's a hood and legal. But you cannot duct the radiator. So the trick is to lay the rad down a bit and have the duct close down on it. For my radiator I welded the filler filler shut and added a dash 4 AN elbow. This goes to the remote reservoir where I connect the filler and the rest of the steam vents. This was a ex-NASCAR Roush piece that was $35 on sell in their used parts bin. It even came with caps and elbows. Cary

This works better if you have more than factory caster http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/41611-tc-rod-pivot-relocation-bad-dog-subframe-connectors-slotted-crossmember/page-6?do=findComment&comment=567622 Cary

Is there a reason you are making them so strong? You really want them to rip off or fold up if they are hit and not damage the frame rail. My personal preference is to put all the heavy adjusters on the inboard end where they move less. UB Maching and others offer adjsuters that allow you to use a 3/4 bung and run a 5/8 rod end in a left/right combo so you can adjust in place. For the tire end rather than putting a rod end in bending I'd use a spherical in a cup. You can weld that to the end of the control arm tube. For the TC to control arm weld some thin wall tube laterally across the TC tube and then hook this to ears welded onto the lower control arm. This is very light and strong and pretty easy to do. Very similar to this http://store.motorsportsconcepts.com/dtm-front-suspension-e30-e36.html Hope that helps, Cary

Those look good to me. In your other post you were asking about raising tire temps. There are a number of things you can do. If you can drive the car before you run accelerating quickly and then standing on the brakes. This will help get the core temp up. For setup if you increase spring rate it will work the tires harder and so will raising the car (if you can raise the RCs on both ends is even better). And you can sipe the tires. That will help them to get to temp a lot quicker but you can overdo it. You can also increase your damping ratio but that would require new or revalved shocks and may not be as easy as the others. Keep up the great work, Cary

Here's some really good info on understanding tire wear patterns and what they mean. http://www.formulastudent.de/academy/pats-corner/advice-details/article/tyres/2/ Hope this helps, Cary

Matt, the head on picture above is a prime example where when the car rolls a large portion comes from the inside jacking up. I'm not sure if you have seen any of the threads on droop limiting but this is what is addresses. Maybe something to think about. Cary

I hope to run it next year. I worked it last year and drove one of the worker trucks. So I have technically driven the road but not in anger. It's one I'm really looking forward to. I'd personally love to run the Dragon. It's lot more open than most of the hills in the PNW. They have a lot of tight corners and switchbacks. The closest we had was the now defunct pioneer mountain hillclimb in Montana. I think the next closest would be Hoopa in Northern California.

Droop limiters are like having much stiffer springs than normal. So when using them you may find the car reacts a lot quicker and generally will have less roll (the inside can't lift up as much). For a strut car I think they are a good tool to help control roll and if you get fancy you can also use to control pitch (lift). It's hard to say if they will make you much faster. They really show up in quick transitions, like on an autox. I forgot to ask but can you do more wing or splitter? More downforce should help find you time. On the front you have canards and s-flaps you could try (rules allowing). And on the rear maybe another element or more gurney (serrated ones can be taller and still don't have as much drag). The toe-link arms will help but if you have urethan on the ARBs I'd look to mount those in a lower friction way. That will make the car work better. For springs you can use a lot more rate and shouldn't really see issues. I'm always surprised at how high a rate I can use before the tires start slipping/skipping. ARB's seem to be more of an issue on this at least on cold tires. And speaking of tires you are losing 1 to 2 seconds a mile on R6 versus A6 tires (assuming they are new or in their prime). Gotta go, wife is not happy

Hope this helps, Cary

I may have missed those comments but generally I wouldn't lower the inner pivots. Either the same or raise them up depending on how low you go or if you want to raise the RC to help turning. What I found after a season of playing that game is it was better to run a lower rear RC and a swaybar. With a raised RC the car had good turn in but lost the ability to put power down. With the RC lower it would put the power down but was lazy on transition. I know a number of people don't like to use a rear bar but I think you'd want to at least try it. Results will vary as they say. Cary

If you have never hillclimbed before you should probably start with autox events where you can learn your car at high force levels and low speed. Then drive about 80 to 90 percent of that for the hillclimbs and that leaves some margin for when things don't quite go to plan. The majority of the people I see crash try and autox a hill and that's generally asking for trouble. For race tires you can always get some used tires in a harder compound that don't grip as well for getting into this. Then step up to the grippy stuff once you're reasonably comfortable. Hope that helps, Cary