JMortensen

No, you don't have to section the struts to run any particular struts or coilovers. You can do it without sectioning, but if you go as low as the OP has, you'd be running pretty close to the bumpstops. I think I've seen this car in Monroe along with a pretty damn clean green one. If that's the car I believe it had different wheels on it, but it was very very clean. EDIT--Just noticed the pin striping in the video, this is definitely the same car. Very nice! Looks like a brand new car in person.

Already been done, and it is a very good idea: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/12/valeo_in_develo.html You could have any cam profile at any rpm, so you could have an engine that idles smooth as silk at 200 rpm and pulls as long as the bottom end will hold together. When I first started reading about this they were working on diesels trying to gain mpg for semi trucks. I think BMW was trying to get it working on one of their V8 engines, haven't heard much lately about it.

So what you are looking for is an open diff with 4.11 or 4.38, then you'll swap your CLSD into that housing. Try placing a wanted ad. That's what I did and almost immediately a member came up with a 240SXT R200 with 4.11 gears.

I'd look at strings. That seems to be what most racers do. It's on my list, but my list hasn't gotten any shorter in a while...

Make the opening bigger, cut out the rad support and lay the radiator down, put the duct higher and split the angle top and bottom. There are a couple ideas. Not sure any of them are necessary. It doesn't need to go down, just to the sides. Even if it did go down, you'd still get downforce from it, because all that air that can come through the huge stock grill opening and around the radiator and under it, wouldn't be getting trapped under the hood as it normally is.

Your rule for separation is for a diffuser going into a vacuum (unless I'm mistaken). For a diffuser going into a pressurized area, I think the reality may be some what different. Would there still be separation? Probably. Does that mean that the whole of the radiator wouldn't be used? Possibly. Would that matter? Maybe. It might be that by eliminating all the ways the air can get past the radiator without going through it you might see gains in overall cooling capacity even if the duct has separation in it.

If you're looking for the trim pieces, my brother-in-law is outside of Sacramento and he has a bunch of stuff. You can email him at MatM AT m2differentials.com.

74_5.0L_Z posted the gif. You can find it in his gallery. It works great and is, as stated, very tight to the body. In most racing organizations, grinding welds on your cage is verboten. Not sure about flux core wire either, but I would thing mig would be the minimum allowable also.

Seems to me that Mercedes did this the right way maybe 5 or 6 years ago, with motors to lean the tires over. Mercedes F400. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0_xC2gFTBg I think Ortiz nails the problem, which is that it would work on a relatively softly sprung and damped car, but the faster the inputs the more the chassis is going to respond as if it were bump and not roll. What happens if you drive down a heavily cambered road with a lot of bumps? Seems like the tire is going to be cambering all over the place. I'm skeptical, but I can see it possibly working on a street car to counter tire wear. Active suspension allowed F1 chassis to lean into the corner and it wasn't super soft and it didn't work like a motorcycle.

Got it. Video link works for me. Not terribly technical, but good to get a little deeper explanation anyway. Thanks.

I found them on HD theater about 4 races ago, and I've been DVR'ing them, but deleting after I watch them. The Focus WRC cars are the ones that prompted me to start this thread.

I spent an hour or so looking, found the cars, but didn't find anything (pictures or written) about the radiator ducting. Also unable to locate the wrc.com movie you mentioned, although I tried searching by the designer's name Christian Loriaux. Any help there?

I suppose you'd have to have a wind tunnel test or cfd #'s to figure that out directly. It would also be interesting to see if you got more frontal downforce from one method or the other. I tend to think that the side exit might be better because on most cfd drawings the low pressure at the wheel well is quite pronounced. Regardless, if you don't have hood vents, the air from the radiator isn't getting to the wing anyway, in an otherwise stock configuration. It's probably going out from underneath the car mostly. It seems like with most production car racers, the trick is to get as much downforce as you can in the front, then just put a wing on that has enough capability to match in the back. I think that's a generally reasonable strategy until you start getting into tunnels and diffusers, at which point you are generally getting out of production based cars and more into full on race chassis, perhaps with a shell of a production car on top.

Yeah, I've got some ideas there. The problem is I may have to make two front ends. One the way I want, the other for XP as I don't think they allow what I'd like to do. Basically I want to fold the front part of the fender in behind the wheel like a Spec Racer Ford. http://lh3.ggpht.com/garysheehan.com/RbRfiMdG2UI/AAAAAAAAAHk/3gfEkyWd4VU/SRF1.jpg

Had a dished piston .020" over L28 with E31, 280 valves, .490/280 cam, triples, light flywheeel, MSD, 2.5" exhaust. It was pretty strong, and I liked it. I ended up wasting the ZX harmonic balancer and building a flat top bottom end, not bored, shaved the head a bit, installed new valves which had almost no dish, and compression was up around 11:1. This WOULD NOT run on pump gas, even with the timing cranked WAY back. It required about 95 octane to keep from pinging. As drzed says, the flat top bottom end was a lot stronger and idled better. I would much rather lose a point of compression and be able to run the ignition for best performance than have to dial back the ignition on a higher compression motor. There is a lot of HP to be had in the last few degrees of timing. Video of the dished piston motor just after installing the 44's (read carbs not tuned): http://videos.streetfire.net/video/2000-autox-indisde-and-outside-I-think-my_8051.htm I'd still like to see what Pete's motor would do with either enough octane to run optimal advance or a bigger cam so that he could run optimal advance.

I was more interested in the Ford/Peugeot setup. My thought for my own car is to make ducts that direct the air to the fenderwells in front of the struts. I'll have plenty of room with an LS swap, and with the airdam I'm planning I should have a nice low pressure area in the wheelwell to suck the air out.

I've been watching some rally on HDNet, missed probably 5 years when they stopped playing it on Speed. Anyway I don't know if this is new or I just wasn't realizing what I was looking at 5 years ago, but they have some pretty inventive ways to get the air through the radiator and then back outside the car, and I thought I'd share some pictures. Skoda has a blueovalz, 74_5.0L_Z type duct up and out the top. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Saxony_rally_racing_Skoda_Fabia_WRC_01_service_(aka).jpg I've been having a hard time finding a good still picture of the Ford or Peugeot, but they have something that looks like the bell from a tuba or a funky subwoofer enclosure that fits over the electric fans and then the small end goes to a relatively small duct out towards the side of the hood. I didn't watch the whole video here, but check 8:15 for an example. There's a couple 510s and a 6 or 710 at the end... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjNT379LH8Q I think what I'm getting out of this is that the exhaust ducts don't have to be so big and straight. Gives me some ideas...

I would say that both of mine are next to useless. Looks like Marine1342 found a good one...

At least it wasn't on fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eepsCXpLY4

You might consider buying an old ITS or GT2 race car to start with. Speaking from experience, it will cost a lot more money to build one from scratch. I guess the question is whether you're going to get enjoyment from building or driving the car. I'm about 6 years into mine, always waiting on parts, $$$, or time to work on it, and I can tell you that I wish I had started with a race car...

I agree about having a shop do it. I have a Harbor Freight sandblaster and a HF bead blast cabinet, and both pretty much suck and are very messy to boot. You can't buy a GOOD blaster for that kind of money, and the one the shop would use is probably a several thousand dollar unit. They'll do a much better job with much less hassle. As for me I used a wire wheel on an angle grinder after struggling with that crap for a while. When the wire wheel had taken almost everything off, then I used brake cleaner to get the last bit off. Still took a lot of brake cleaner...

If you get a van I wouldn't get a 1/2 ton. For some odd reason the manufacturers tend to really under-brake and under-driveline 1/2 ton vans. I'd go 3/4 ton.

Offset bushings on the Z move pretty regularly. Haven't heard of this on the ZX, and I had a friend who just slotted his crossmember by hand and adjusted it with a prybar, and he never had issues with the alignment changing. I think the problem in the Z is that the suspension loads the camber bushing right in the same plane to get it to move. On the ZX the bushing is off at a weird angle due to the semi-trailing arm, so I think it would be less likely to move. Also the Z camber bushings fit into a clamshell kind of strap in the suspension. The ZX camber bushings are not held in a clamshell, they're held by the bolt that goes through the bushing, which I think is a better way to do it. No direct experience, but my slotted front crossmember on my Z never budged a bit and I did autoxes and track days with big sticky tires and DD the thing for 40K miles.

I think you're looking at the rear sway bar, if you're talking about the thing that says 025 on it. The parts that stick up from it are the blade adjustable sway bars. Looks like it's set on full hard in the picture.

Agreed. That sounds pretty slow considering the parts list. Probably a combo of bad carb tune and that muffler choking things up. Supertrapps really aren't a good idea (sorry to the guy who posted pictures of his, but it's true).