JMortensen

Also figured out the warning light mounts. The stock mounts set the light an inch from the smaller OD on the back of the tach housing. Mine needed 2" offset, so I cut and stretched the mounts. I figured this was preferable to drilling holes in the face of the dash to secure a home made bracket. I also bent up a couple pieces of aluminum so that I can secure the tach as well. Coming together pretty good. If I decide not to screw with the paint and just let it alone I can have the dash and gauges installed tomorrow. Might even do that if I have to repaint it.

Decided to do the crinkle paint, not sure if I like the results: I prepped it pretty good, cleaned thoroughly then wiped with acetone. I used a heat gun and kept the surface at about 120-140 degrees while it dried (monitored with infrared pyrometer), and I ended up with these spots where it didn't crinkle and it was shiny. The instructions on the paint can say if you don't get good crinkling, paint that section again. Did that. Got more shiny. Then I laid a second coat over the whole thing. Still shiny. I have a feeling when it gets dirty after a while the effect might not be very visible at all, but for right now I'm considering trying to take it off and start over. I did find another paint product that was supposed to be for trunks and floorboards called speckle paint and bought a can to see what it looked like. It has more obvious larger chunks in it. I might give that a shot tomorrow, and if that doesn't work out then strip it all down and start over. The rear of the panel, which I paid less attention when spraying, came out perfect. Figures...

I said nothing even remotely similar to this. Did you actually read what I wrote, or did you just shut off when I criticized DUI laws. Likewise for speeding, then. Wouldn't want to be a hypocrite. If the goal is to save lives that are taken by bad decision making, then speeders should be shot and tossed in the ditch with the drunks.

Let me try another tack: Speed was a factor in 30% of all fatalities on the road in 1998, contributing to 12,400 deaths. So surely those who would argue for shooting people by the side of the road or breathalyzers in every car would be equally supportive of the idea of a car with a governor in it so that it could not exceed the speed limit on any given road. Right? Save lives at any cost. Right??? http://www.smartmoto...al-crashes.html

There is a Kia weatherstrip that fits. You can search www.classiczcars.com and find it easily. I thought I was going to be the trail blazer by going to door weatherstrips, but apparently others have done it and it works fine. I think the door type weather strip is better. My original glued on hatch strip, and the replacement I bought, were always falling off.

I wasn't aware there was a spec for reaction time in New York. How do they test that?

Drinking and driving laws are a sham. I have had several friends killed in DUI accidents by drunk drivers, and I've also been the passenger in a car that was driving 38 in a 35 at 2:15 in the morning and watched someone get popped for a DUI not because they were swerving all over the road, but because she was driving near a bar at 2:15 AM. I think that there are a lot more of the latter than the former. In fact, just did some checking. In 2007 there were less than 13,000 deaths, and less than 3,000 of those were "innocent bystanders." The other 10,000 were either the drunk driver or the passenger of the drunk driver. So they have us all so paralyzed with fear that some drunk is going to kill us on the road that we'll do anything to stop it, and what we're doing is extorting money from otherwise law abiding citizens who may not be doing anything wrong at all. I didn't take the time to add the numbers up, but I think it's a fair assumption after scanning the map that the average number of arrests per state is probably in the 15,000 to 20,000 range. Let's take the low estimate. That is 750,000 people being arrested to save the innocent 3000. And again, do you think the cops catch 1/2 of the people who are within the technical confines of the law, drunk? 1/3? 1/4? 1/10? Probably not. I agree that people should be smart enough not to drive when they are intoxicated and held accountable when they don't do so. Some people can drive just fine at .08, some people are dangerous at .03. The laws should be such that people who cannot control their vehicle get punished, whether it be due to cold medicine, a breakup, death of a family member, too tired to drive, cell phone, whatever. All the cop cars have dash cams in them now, so there is no reason to rely on BAC for conviction of DUI. They keep lowering the BAC requirement, but I think that's because it pays the government to do so and people are scared enough of drunk drivers to think that these laws are a service to them. It's the cell phone thing all over again. The problem is not the cell phone. The problem is the person not making a good decision about when to use it. Pretty soon there will be a law that you can't eat and drive, or that you can't have car stereos, or that you can't talk to passengers. It's arbitrary and ridiculous and based on fear. When you look at the numbers, they really don't justify what is done in the name of safety. http://www.getmadd.com/ http://www.1800duilaws.com/dui-info/dui-arrest-by-state.asp

OK, brackets to mount dash are in. Need to make more brackets to mount gauges to dash, and then I think it's ready for paint. I used angle iron on the left side where the dash was about an inch away from the door bar. This was pretty easy to do. The lower mount on the dash was too close to the door bar to fit a bolt into, so I had the bracket line up inside the dash tab and ran the bolt out towards the door. This worked out pretty well. Bent and ground a piece of angle iron to hit the X door bar and welded that lower one on. On the other side there was almost exactly 3/4" from the tabs on the dash to the center bar, so I took a piece of 3/4" angle and bolted it to the dash and welded it to the bar, then put a diag brace from the angle to the dash bar. I have to admit that due to the proximity of the dash bar and the angle I was at I completely missed my weld up underneath there, and while attempting to fix it the weld turned into a big birdshitty mess under there real fast. Luckily it is in an area where nobody will likely be looking, and I have no concern over the bracket being weak or anything like that. I also got to use a trick that I learned from the Porsche shop I worked at 15 years ago. I crushed some leftover hard fuel line and bent it to make the top supports for the dash. My boss did that on the company racecar way back when. It had super thin and gigantic flares, so he used the fuel line to prevent the flares from buckling at speed. I don't know why, but that cheap racer trick has stuck in my mind and I've just been waiting for an excuse to use it. I just love it.

Thanks Dad. Let's all party like it's 1919 (that's a US prohibition joke).

Agreed. I liked the moonshine episode. I am not real fond of Ferrara and his lame attempt at a burnout just about cemented my opinion, but he definitely clawed back some points by catching so much air in that Caddy. That was pretty impressive.

Have you tried the HF cobalt bits? If you're a machinist, then they probably aren't for you. Like I said before, I've tried just about every bit you can buy outside of the machinist's quality stuff, and they're honestly the best I've used, hold their edge the best too. Only thing I've tried that was the equivalent was a set of MATCO cobalt bits, but that was an index of 10 bits that cost $50 back in 1993 or so. I think it's the cobalt material that makes the difference, and the HF ones are not coated. I've broken a couple and they're the same color all the way through.

Bad analogy. If T shirts were a dollar, I might just throw them away. But they're not. Spending my time and energy to prolong the life of a tool which costs $1 (HF cobalt set is current $115 for the 115 piece set - not on sale) doesn't make much sense to me. Maybe that's because I've tried to sharpen them and I suck at it, and the cost of the Drill Doctor is about the same as the cost of the entire 115 piece drill index.

Harbor Freight Cobalt set. I'm not kidding. I've used everything up to but not including the machinist quality stuff like Chicago Latrobe, everything you can buy at a hardware store or the local industrial supply house and paid anywhere from $.50 to $30 for a bit, and I haven't come across anything as good as those cobalt bits. I've heard people say you're not supposed to use cobalt in drill presses, etc, but I've used mine in my press, high speed air drill, low speed air drill, corded drill, cordless drill, pretty much anywhere you can put a drill bit and they just work great. And for the price you can not have to worry about them and just buy a new set when you lose too many of them or if they get dull. Might be the best tool HF sells that I've used, and I've used a lot of them. For the record, HF's titanium coated bits and HSS bits dull when you look at them wrong.

I hadn't considered isolating it from vibration, don't know that my mounting ears are particularly well suited for that since the rubber would be sideways. I had an MSD box mounted that way and it eventually tore up the isolators, although it didn't hurt the MSD. Can't really sit in the car because of the fact that it is on the rotisserie. I could before I built the cage, now to get in would be a little too hairy. That's a lot of weight hanging off the side of the car, and if it did go over it would likely be in the direction I was hanging off. Got a lot of pans in the fire, finishing up tiling a bathroom and working on a 2nd business, but I'm going to try to get out there this weekend.

Do you have any pics of this airbox you made? Or did you buy it somewhere?

It's not on your list Dan, but those Yokohama FA tires lasted FOREVER on my car. Granted, my car wasn't really set up right for them, but I would think my way too soft springing would make the tire wear worse. I ran one set for a season of autox and a couple track days, and then replaced them just because they were losing grip and were worn unevenly (much more wear on the outside edge due to camber loss as a result of body roll). I never ran one to the belts, never had a puncture, or any other issue with them. I gather from Cary that they don't grip as well as the Hoosiers, but if you're looking for longevity, that's an option. There is a cool factor to be had with the Yokos too. They have a kevlar belt in the middle of the tread that keeps the tires from expanding at high speed. Cameron, the FA tires are designed for a light car, but one with aero. I think FA min weight is 1250 lbs or so. BUT, those light cars can pull 3-4 g's under braking. so your 1250 lbs is effectively 5000 lbs at the tire. Your 2550 lb Z (guessing weight with you in it) at 1.5 g would give significantly less force, 3825 lbs, and that's assuming you can get a full 1.5 g in there. I think the problem with the Hoosiers is that they're like the other Hoosier race tires. Built to be light and fast on raceday, and who cares about longevity because racers are made of money. I expect A6's would be much the same story.

One more with messenger problems. I wonder if anyone has seen this thread. No responses from admins. I'll "report" my post to make sure it gets to someone...

It's actually a ratio, not a fraction. will be like 39:10 or 37:11, which is the ring count and pinion count. Divide it out for the ratio.

1. Your front roll center will generally be about 0, maybe slightly underground. Underground increases body roll, makes the car slower to react. Above ground decreases body roll, makes it faster to react. Close to level is good and keeps the jacking to a minimum. 2. Rear roll center should be higher than the front. Yours is. It is very difficult to adjust on the Z. blueovalz adjusted his. He was running 17" wheels and had a below ground rear roll center, so he added an additional roughly 3" of metal between the spindle pin boss and the bottom of the strut. He sold his Z but he's still around from time to time and a super nice guy. You could PM him and ask what the difference was, but I think he was done racing by the time he made that change. 3 and 4. No antisquat on the Z suspension. Anti-squat is a lot like roll center. The more you have the more the suspension tends to lock up. I would use springs to counter the squat, not anti. In general the same applies to the roll centers.

Movement again. I got a dash laser cut by Hybrid Z's own mario_82_ZXT. He saw this thread and was nice enough to approach me with an offer of help. We went back and forth emailing pictures, and finally he sent me a template of what we had come up with. I was able to print out 6 pages, overlap them and tape them together and tape that to a piece of cardboard and go and actually stick it in the car to see if it worked. Very very cool, and it completely eliminated any doubts I had about it not fitting. He even put mounting tabs on it and bent them for me, and put the 3/8" holes in the tabs so that I can just slap some nutserts in there and bolt it up. All I have to do now is weld some brackets to the roll cage, which should be pretty simple. This was SO MUCH BETTER than getting the HRP and trying to cut it up to fit, or trying to cut holes myself with my cheap ass HF drill press. So thanks Mario, and to you other guys who might be doing this, PM him or email at marioDOTmontesATgmailDOTcom. I've been considering what to do for a surface finish. So far I'm thinking crinkle paint would be nice and non-glare. The problem there is that if I do that then I can't stick labels on the dash surface. Alan has suggested that I put tape on the dash where the label will go and then paint, then pull the tape and paint satin black in those areas, then put the labels on. Only problem there is that some of those switch positions don't have a switch assigned yet. I guess I could just leave a little black space above those. Have to consider it a little more. In the meantime, here are some pictures:

When I write this it looks assholish, but it isn't intended that way. Do you have any idea what the proper torque should feel like? Just through experience I would think that most people would have a good enough idea of "tight enough" that they wouldn't trust a torque wrench that clicked for 70 ft/lbs when you were actually putting 35 ft/lbs through it. It makes me wonder if you dont have some other issue going on, like maybe you didn't snug the lug nuts down before you put the car on the ground so you got an inaccurate torque reading, or maybe the threads were bone dry or the lug nut was dragging on the wheel surface or something. Just seems impossible for lug nuts to literally fall off after torquing unless something else was going on. I like Dave's test. It' can be done at home with some very simple math.

Disagree. You will get a measurably longer amount of run time before fluid boils or pads disintegrate IME.I thought I had put that in my first post, guess I missed it. Other than the slightly larger heat sink, I agree. By screwing up the brake bias the stopping performance is worse.

3 pt belts were standard. That seatbelt from MSA looks very familiar. A buddy of mine put retractable belts in his 510 that looked just like that. I know they came out of a VW, not sure which model, want to say it was a van.

I think the spec on the angle is something like 5-10 degrees. I know John Coffey has linked to Schroth's "how to" page a billion times. Might try searching for that info here or on google. PDK brace is better than most. I don't know if there is a rule about how big the fasteners have to be, tubing sizes, etc, but I think I'd feel comfortable with the PDK. I ran a 4 pt for autox and track days. Lots of people will tell you if you're going to run a 4 pt you should run the 5 point, but I had seats with no sub strap hole and no welder to make a mount. Never had any problems, but I also never got in an accident. I hooked up the 4 pt behind the seat and ran the stock belt when i was driving on the street. The 4 pt is a real PITA on the street you can't hardly reach anything, it's damn near impossible to roll down the window, and I slammed the door on the lap belt more than once getting out of the car in the pits.

The other hole for the lap belt is on the rocker panel, not the floor. If you're going to use a 5 point you'll need to reinforce the floor. I think some belts come with really big washers. Not sure if that is considered sufficient or if you could have the washers welded to make it sufficient. I wouldn't use a typical MSA style strut tower brace for my shoulder belts, but the main thing is that the angle has to be right. If the mount behind the seat is too low or too high, it could be trouble.