JMortensen

Turn your struts down to 1 or 2 for street driving and it should be fine. I took my 75 year old father for a ride in my Z with 200/250 springs and Illuminas on 1, camber plates and monoball TC rods and control arms and he thought it rode pretty nice.

So forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is needed here? Double disk setup, flex plate, what about throwout bearing? Stock? Tilton? Someplace I can go to answer all of these questions? Thanks guys.

I was thinking of this originally but was told that it might be a little too light and cause issues on decel like locking up, etc. Have you had any issues there, and what did you pay for that setup? I have a winch on the trailer... still need to get a wench on the trailer though!

Bringing this one back from the dead. Looking for more recent recommendations for 5.3L LS pushing probably 350-400 whp. Spec 3 has been mentioned as has Monster in my checking around. I emailed monster and got a response that I should go with their Level 3 (spec 3 equiv) and that it holds down 700hp and chatters for 500 miles. Well, this being a trailer queen that won't see anything but autox for a while, 500 miles of chatter is a problem. Anyone have a solution that doesn't chatter that works reasonably well for this power level? I've read that the LS7 clutch is very heavy, so I'm kinda leaning away from that one. Looks like you're talking about 45lbs for the Monster with their lightweight flywheel, which still sounds awfully heavy to me...

^^Agreed. Distributors are inherently inaccurate. Don't use one if you're going to spin the engine up that high.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Not true. The thickest reinforcement piece in the roof there doesn't attach to the drip rail directly, so cutting off the drip rail doesn't affect how the bracket is attached at all. It attaches to the flat spot on the bottom of the roof/ top of door jamb where the door seals at the top and the windows seal to in the rear quarters. The drip rail is two pieces of thin sheetmetal, not a sandwich of thicker layers. At least that's how it is on my 70. Pics: The middle layer isn't attached to the drip rail directly, so again, I think this isn't true. What you have to do which might be a bit on the hokey side is weld the roof to the jamb area and then grind that down so that it is smooth, but it is a full weld, not a spot welded flange, so as to which is stronger I couldn't say. The flange may make the drip rail stiffer. As far as welding the jamb to the heavier reinforcement piece, I had my Z on a rotisserie, so I was able to lay a piece of sheet metal down and plug weld the reinforcement to the flat piece pretty securely. Without a way to tip the car over, you'd have to be pretty good at upside down welding to get it attached securely, and I am not good at that... It's entirely possible that later models are built differently, but this is the way my 70 was put together.

Reported this back on the other forum, got a guy saying he's seen a car do over 80 races over 3 years without any problems. If there were problems, the material could be changed out fairly easily. Gives me two thoughts: 1. Buy this and not have to screw with it. 2. Make a frame out of brake line or something easy to work with, and then skin it with whatever material I want.

Interesting point. I suppose one could box out another duct for intake and hook that to the core support, but that defeats the purpose of this one in saving the rad from damage in the event of a bump on the front end...

Just saw this on another forum. Even comes with a flange to glass into an air dam. I don't think it's going to get any easier... http://www.fivestarbodies.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1_2_294_530_1601

I was being facetious.

Oh Jesus. Look at all the old farts complaining about what the young whippersnappers are up to. Some quotes from other another thread I hope you'll all take to heart: "Looks like many of you are blinded by your own aspirations and preconcieved ideas. Id even go as far as saying a bit close minded." "As far as inspiration goes, I grew up reading Autoworks Magazine and my family is from Chiba-ken, so I guess my style is a mix of the street drifting cars and bosozoku machines out there… that is, if I had to put a label on my style. So why are people beating on drifting and not bosozoku. He may not be into drifting at all...just inspired by it. Look at this [piece of crap] as a piece of art...an inspiration.....nothing to do with function..what you may like... I may not. This hate crap is old...go get help. Its a car....and its not yours!" "I guess its his vission of a [POS]...... Ultra High Performance Slammed Rat Appearance." "It's pretty unreal the hate that's in this thread, I mean, really I could care less about what you think about his car. Everyone has an opinion, and whether or not the older generation thinks its garbage is really, simply up to them. We suspected such a reaction from the older guys anyway."

You're talking about 9mm 240 rods. I gave away my copy of Honsowetz's book but I think that all the L26 and L28 rods had 9mm bolts. L24 rods are longer than 9mm L28 rods, and the later ones (72-73 I think ???) don't have the weaker 8mm bolts that came in the earlier L16/L24 motors. You don't use the 9mm rods to get a higher compression ratio. If you just stuck an L28 piston on there for example it would hit the head. You need the right size piston with the correct pin height to compensate for the longer rod, and then you get the dish or dome you want to get the compression ratio you want. What the longer rods do for you is improve the rod/stroke ratio.

That sounds like you're saying you can't do a good job while going fast. My friend who worked as a Z mechanic and later for Nissan could do an L6 hot in just a couple minutes and they were all spot on, but he did nothing but work on L6's for several years. I suppose I agree that if you're slow, then do them cold. If you're not, I think hot is better because you're adjusting them where they run, although in fairness 911's are supposed to be adjusted cold, so you can make an argument for hot isn't absolutely necessary.

Look at the top picture you posted. You can see the flap, and on the inside, air is diverted up and out the wheelwell. That car is not using a splitter, but it does use a relatively flat bottom. Putting a flat bottom on a Z might reduce drag a little bit, but that's a HUGE undertaking to reduce a bit of drag on an already draggy car. I think as a practical matter, most people considering aero mods to a Z car do want to limit the air going underneath the car. They should IMHO also focus on getting the front of the car as close to the ground as possible, unless there are other under the car downforce producing tunnels, diffusers, etc. Most Z cars won't have any of this, and due to the relatively soft spring rates used in street cars, the simplest and probably most effective solution is an air dam that comes as close to the ground as you can get it. Just keep the air from going underneath the car, limit the air going into the front with a radiator duct, put some vents in the hood and/or fenders and you'll get downforce on the front end, just like a NASCAR. I think you'll get significantly more than the wind tunnel test cars did without the radiator duct too. People don't seem to want to model their car after NASCAR, but the pre-COT NASCAR cars make good downforce and have no splitters, diffusers, tunnels, flat bottoms etc. and in the most basic terms are probably the most realistic analog to a Z car you're going to find (not going to twist the cabin on a Z for left hand turns, etc). In my opinion a lot of the focus on splitters and undertrays for street cars is wasted effort. These things don't do much except reduce drag until they get REALLY close to the ground. At the point that you get them close enough to the ground to work, they become very pitch sensitive, so I don't think they're very useful at all to a streetable Z with streetable ride heights and spring rates. While I agree with what John says about raising the front end of a splitter and running a diffuser in front of the front tires being more effective (because it essentially creates a venturi under the nose which can be more effective than either the splitter or the diffuser alone), I just don't think this applies very well to Z cars. Another major reason the front lips are turned up or have a raised section in the front to make the car less pitch sensitive. I think this latter part is pretty important, especially if we were talking about a street Z which would tend to pitch a lot. So I guess what I'm saying is, if you're going to do it wrong, tip the front end of the splitter up so that it is less pitch sensitive. Here's what it looks like when a DIY team tries to really utilize ground effects diffusers/tunnels, etc to produce downforce: http://www.corner-carvers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41232& More on the same car (scroll down): http://hem.passagen.se/hemipanter/ Note, wheel travel is +/- 1 inch Frequency is 4 Hz to keep the splitter off the ground. I don't know exactly what that equates to in Z terms, but I would guess 800 in/lb springs for a fairly light Z.

This is a diffuser and those are strakes, not VGs, intended to keep the air pressure under the front of the splitter lower to increase downforce and to redirect the air into the wheel wells, and presumably out the side of the car.

I thought people doing this were using a top hat which rested on the insulator and kept it centered. I would think that just resting the 2.5" spring on the insulator would be a big problem.

Are you changing the carrier bearings too? Just thinking that could also be a culprit. The runout sounds like it's not enough to cause a major noise like you were describing.

The LSD isn't doing anything when you're driving straight, so if anything it would be a runout issue, which could be fixed.

If you find the ride harsh with 150# springs I'd suspect the shocks as the culprit. That's not a stiff spring, strictly speaking. Not sure what you mean about cranked up springs.

The problem is the inflexibility of the rubber insulator. It doesn't flex enough to allow the top hat to stay aligned with the spring perch. If you got Ground Control's newer style camber plate it would allow the two to stay aligned, and then the spring would compress straight. With the setup you have the strut is at one angle and the top hat at another, so when the spring compresses it bends and wears off the threads on the coilover. It's not particularly harmful, so unless you want to adjust the height to the area where the damage is or you want to buy a camber plate that can compensate, I'd continue to run what you have. New sleeves are going to get torn up exactly the same way.

Those look to be the 79 ZX rotors as well, deeper than the later rotors Rich uses. The problem with his setup isn't that it doesn't work as well, it's that it doesn't clear a lot of wheels.

My L28/E31 with a similar but slightly smaller cam required 95 octane to prevent pinging. I would go bigger on the cam or lower on the compression especially if it's one of the open chambered E88 heads with no quench.

Thrust angle is the deviation from straight ahead on the rear tires. You could in theory have the wheels totally parallel, but facing to the right 5 degrees, and the car would crab down the road (see old Volvos). Thrust angle shows you that regardless of the toe, the tires are pointed straight. Strings negate the need for the bars he's talking about because you measure from the string to the tire and that string is straight, so by verifying that you have the same measurement on each side of the car, you know that the thrust angle is good.

If you've already tried 3 different differentials, replaced the bearing in the nose (which is the one that goes bad most frequently), and tried various pinion depth and backlash settings, I have an idea for you which might work out better, and although inflection is hard to read sometimes, this is not tongue in cheek advice. Consider buying a car that isn't so horrible on the NVH. Find a Mercedes or BMW with big gushy insulators between the chassis and driveline and drive in peace and quiet. Japanese tin cans from the 70s are understandably not for everyone.