tube80z

I've done that in the past. I can tell you that going forward I'm not for the simple reason is you need to lug around another battery to hook to the car before and after runs. And forgetting to turn something off really screws up your day. I made a quick connect on the side of the car where I would drive off and the base battery connection would pull out. While that worked it left a battery hanging around where I was. Not a big deal if you have friends that will move it but if you're a one man show someplace that might be problematic. I like AIM products but hate their software. They are doing a massive upgrade to Race Studio, which is their analysis package. It addresses a lot of my comments. One reason they are successful is they are doing tons of training webinars and show up at major events. There aren't too many places where you can actually get emails from the software developer asking for specifics around something you found or don't like. That said, they are a lower tier player compared to the big boys but I don't think you'd run into any use case where at an amateur or starting out pro user would have a problem. There are other companies that have similar products that might be better or not. Race Technology is one, which I hear has great analysis software. AEM has some alternatives but I've not seen any in person. Personally I'd leave this to the last item on your list only because the market is always driving forward and you don't want to be tied down by older products. My AIM system is one of their first to support cars coming from carts. I got a killer deal on it and bought it. There are plenty of things it won't do but it has enough that I can still do a lot of work using match channels to find areas of improvement. One thing to keep in mind is if you are going to EFI that many aftermarket companies have dashes now and the EFI system will do a lot of the channels via CAN. So that's a must if you need to stay current. And there are some cool PDM solutions running around. Have you considered replacing the column with 3/4 DOM tubing and joints (Woodward, etc.)? I lost a surprising amount of weight when I did that. And I moved the column over to make my pedal spacing better on my new car. The old car uses the stock box modified to take a balance bar. Add a horizontal false floor that's level and a heel stop. I wished I would have done that earlier. I drove a friends car with this mod and it was nice and seemed easier to use. Hope that helps, Cary

You need about 20 heaters added to your rig for realism of the cockpit

You can heat them with a torch until they fall apart and remove some of the top ring. You can get about an inch doing this. Then you have to modify the metal body of the isolator but cutting the cup in various sections so you can fold it back over the shortened rubber isolator and then tack weld the folds. This was very common before the widespread adoption of camber plates. For a street car it's nice as you get some lowering but also it tightens the strut top so in cornering you don't lose as much camber. Think of it as halfway between stock and camber plates.

Awesome job on the exhaust, well awesome job all around! Those headers were pretty common on all the tubeframe cars running hear in the northwest. They get very hot in the car so you'll want a lot of shielding. You might be able to vent some air from the cowl into the fabbed transmission tunnel to help cool it down.

What are you looking for in this book? I have and have only went through it one time and now another. The author seems to either be an academic or someone who has no real experience with racing cars. Almost all the examples are trivial to explain some vehicle dynamics concept with a nice easy to solve formula. I think if you're totally new to FSAE this may be okay as a starter but even then I have a lot of reservations. The author often throws out some rule of thumb or says this would make a nice starting point. In FSAE you better have the knowledge of why and not say rule of thumb, etc. Where this book is okay is showing all the bits that go into a car and some of the basics you need to think about. When it comes to the most important chapters (testing) it's very thin on commentary and gives no guidance on keeping records, what's most important to do first, etc. One thing Claude Rouelle harps on is when you win or the car is working really well you need to understand why. This is the only way you can ever get it back into this window when it drops out. My opinion is that I don't think there's any one book that covers it all very well. For the era the Z was designed in two books stand out for me although they are feeling long in the tooth now. Those Racing and sports car design (Costin and Phips), the Race and Rally Car source book by Staniforth, Think Fast (Neil Roberts), and the Carrol Smith to Win series (at least get prepare to win). And then things get hot and heavy on my bookshelf. So it really depends on how far you want to take some of this stuff. Hope this helps, Cary

They are worth the 30% just for the CAD models of all the hardware they sell. Another company I've been very happy with is MSC. While I haven't bought anything in the last couple of years they always seemed to have it in stock and shipped it very quickly

I think one thing you have to temper the don't use braided line for all the brakes is probably based on hose that was available 30 to 40 years ago. Someone respected said it and then it was passed down as lore. I think you have proved modern lines are fine and it's really up to the owner in what they want to run. The one area where a single master cylinder can help is when they use fast fill. That's where they use a stepped piston to move a lot of fluid initially and then it steps down so you have even force between the axles. I don't know if fast fill is the right term but that's what I'd heard from the McLaren/Ferrari spygate scandal where they had redacted court docs but only drew over the top with black rectangles so it was easy to remove and secrets were spilled.

The flow by the time it gets to the back of the car is a total mess. If you want to extract a better option would be to create a vent behind the spoiler and wing to help extract any high pressure air. Ideally your duct would be on top of the tire somewhat forward of centerline. This is where you'll see many of the fender louvers on race cars. This could all be done and contained in a duct that can be bonded into the inner fender. I'd run some pressure taps to see where the high pressure is and if the differential is enough either for the side exit to work or a rear exit. You don't need to drill any holes in the car to do this. Another option is to make sure you have the front of the tire/wheel combo not exposed to the airflow. You can create spats or s-flaps that can be used to aid in extraction.

Makes perfect sense to me. If they haven't been built maybe something to look at. Cary

One thing I add to these are safety washers on the outside of the rod ends on the strut. In case you need a link here you go, https://www.amazon.com/Safety-Washer-Prevent-Twelve-Through/dp/B07RB7RWMB. I think if you search around you can get a better price but it's been years since I've bought any. Cary

For the lower mount you can probably save more weight by doing away with the bolt that goes all the way through and rotate those mounts 90 degrees and it can be a double shear mount with two smaller bolts. I know that's not much weight but every little bit helps. And ideally use a toe-link rear arm design. Just a thought.

I'll take a moment to reply to the tone of this comment. On HybridZ we (admins) are not suppressing feedback about vendors. What we are doing is trying to make sure a thread stays on topic so that future users will be able to use search and find good quality content that is helpful and relevant to their search. Ideally the original thread should have stayed on topic and a new thread started about vendor feedback. A link could be left in the technical thread and both discussions could happen and be more likely to be found be search in the future. Hope that helps, Cary

I have locked this topic as it has strayed far from the original post. I will leave this up and if there are relevant replies that address the actual topic I will approve. I think there is enough good information to leave it rather than sending it to the shed.

I guess one question is how low RPM do you plan to drive? When racing I'd think most of the time you'd be above 2500-3500 on the low end and a light flywheel will be helpful.

I used to street drive a 10 pound flywheel with no problems. I personally think it has a lot to do with you set the bite point where the clutch hooks up and this can vary widely between pressure plates. That requires some fiddling between master and slave cylinder pushrod lengths. This isn't so much a problem for the inline 6 because they make decent torque off the line. It also depends on clutch disc material and if it has a sprung clutch hub.

They do. But I've seen this interpreted different from time to time. My car has a separate metal box over the cell and the lines where they are in the cabin. I got busted at a hillclimb (GCR rules) that I didn't have metal over my fuel lines (braided hose didn't count) so I did what any normal person would in the middle of nowhere. I built a cover using aluminum foil and riveted it to the floor here and there. Technically it was a metal cover. Rules were changed after that to be more specific.

Congrats on the first drive. You have an amazing project. I've helped a number of friends get theirs running but yet to have my own so I'm more than a little envious. Cary

This is done time-to-time on various suspension bits, like a-arms. The one problem is that any bending will cause bind in a setup like this. So while it may have really low static friction when you put lateral and longitudinal loads into the bushing/bearing. Anyone who used the old Delrin/Al replacements up put on caster or toe in the rear would see that it often lead to wear patterns on the bushings. While the stock rubber bushings may not be ideal for our cars the poly versions are often upgrades. The downside is that unless you take very good care of them they'll lead to stiction (friction that Jon mentions) and that can lead to an abnormally harsh ride over certain sections of road in a street car or lead to weird handling irregularities. I'm not saying all poly bushings do this as there are clearly really good one. But unless you give them care and feeding you may run into some down sides. Newer street cars still use rubber bushings, which I used to hate. But now modelling has gotten a lot more refined and rubber bushings are designed to limit flex in one area and allow more in another axis. Think of running into a pothole and the suspension has a little extra lateral movement that allows for the jolt that you normally feel to be reduced. So you get a win/win. And even sportier models often use the equivalent of spherical bearings (BMW M cars) but they have proper seals for long term use. Hope that helps, I know this is somewhat off topic to the original post. Cary

The spindle-pin bolt doesn't rotate. If it does then you have bigger problems. In a stock car the inner bushing tubes are all compressed by the spindle pin nut against the strut. The rotation comes from the rubber actually winding like a torsion spring. That's why it's typically stated in the manuals that you need to torque at ride height or off jack stands. As Jon mentions with poly the inner bushing tube is locked in place and the poly slides around the inner bush tube. A rod end setup works exactly the same.

For a friends street car that used the toe-link design and rod ends on the strut side I used a special capture washer on the outer side so if the ball in the rod end is to pop out the control arm still stays attached. On the inner strut side I used a rod end spacer that's similar to a conical design. The bolt was torqued to 125 ft-lbs (grade-8 torque spec) and a Stover nut was used. I used the same setup for a number of race cars but used a nylock instead of the Stover to make it easier to work on at the track. One thing I should point out is that I used a properly long 5/8 fine-thread bolt. Meaning the rod ends were all supported by the non-threaded section of the bolt. I had to find some really long bolts and cut off the extra threaded section. I see a lot of the kits sold with bolts that have rod ends on the threaded sections, which shouldn't be done.

The idea behind the spindle locking pin is that it is an extra safety mechanism. If you lose one or both nuts and washers on the spindle pin it can't slide out, assuming you have one that can actually be removed without the use of a large press. I have used a bolt in mine an no pin or similar mechanism and have no plan to ever again. That said I do regular bolt/nut checks on my car as part of their maintenance, which a large portion of the public think is either silly or a complete waste of time. Probably the same people who shouldn't be driving an old car without all the modern nannies or insert version of onstar they need when they lock themselves out of their car because it doesn't need a key to start.

On an old formula car I used to have it did the same thing sitting overnight. I found that the supply line to the pump had enough oil in it to supply the bearings on start up. I always would spin the engine a few cycles without ignition or fuel turned on to build pressure and then start. My system had to be ran for some time to get the oil temp up and allow the pressure to come down to a reasonable level. Cold my system would make close to 100 pounds of pressure. Once everything was hot that would drop to about 65.

The problem with this when you adjust your ARB or turn the car you also change the motion ratio. I also don't know if the ARB would act as a filter for some of the frequencies the damper would normally see.

Morgan Smith, who has the red Z with the large IMSA flares was running 550 lbs/in springs on his Z and using the 15 inch GY FA tires and the bushing died after a season. He was complaining the car was inconsistent and when he took the strut off I shook it and it rattled. The top busing was toast.

You'd be in revalve territory or very close. Just as an FYI try searching for "used race shocks" on ebay (https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=penske+shock&_osacat=107057&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313&_nkw=used+racing+shock&_sacat=107057&LH_TitleDesc=1) You can get a few that aren't in the best of shape for 30 to 40 dollars and you can decide if this will work for you. I bought some Penske 7300 adjustable shocks with base valves, two extra sets of pistons, VDP pistons, and a s-load of valving shims for $1400. I bought new coilover tubes from Allstar, scored on a used shock vice, and fill cup. To do this on struts would be more than I have in the rest of the car.