JMortensen

You must be planning a tall ride height.

It's a matter of degrees (pun intended). An aluminum heat shield works better than none, and one with a header blanket works better than without. Stainless is a better choice for a heat shield, no doubt. If you have the money, go stainless.

WD-40 is a BAD cutting fluid, ask any machinist. If you want something cheap that you can find around the house, use bacon grease.

Did you try pushing it in with a socket?

Looks like a bizarre box flare. The rears are strange looking too...

I still have a 3' stick of 1" hex aluminum I bought to do the same thing. For a tie rod this is fine. Actually I'm going to be running .120 wall tubing from Coleman for my TC rod as well, and that has a lot more stress on it than the tie rod. The difficulty in drilling and tapping the aluminum is why I ended up making some tie rods from the stock tie rods and a swaged generic 5/8" Coleman Racing tie rod. With yours predrilled I think you're a little better off, but it will still be a PITA, I'm sure. Good luck with it.

Cover it with a header blanket if you want to do that. I had a friend run two sheets of aluminum with a header blanket sandwiched in between.

Z's shouldn't rely on a ladder frame for stiffness, since ladder frames are inherently not stiff and they don't take advantage of the unibody construction of the chassis. Subframe connectors should be just one part of a bigger plan if torsional rigidity is the goal, and in that context I'm glad I put Bad Dog subframe connectors on my car.

Are you running the mechanical fuel pump or the stock fuel rail? Those are two ways to put lots of heat in the fuel before it gets to the carbs. FWIW, I've run my Mikunis with no heat shield in 105+ F degree weather and never had any fuel boiling issues, but I did get rid of the mechanical pump and fuel rail.

Sounds like you don't have the insulators between the carbs and manifold.

Manual says 20 ft/lbs??? I wouldn't do that, despite what the manual says. I tighten them to about 20 ft/lbs, spin the hub, then back it off and tighten again just a hair past finger tight. You don't need/want a lot of preload on the bearings.

I'm afraid to ask, but what spec did you torque your bearings to?

To each his own and all that, but how hard is it going to be to find that .270 WSM ammo, and is it worth the cost difference vs the old .270 Winchester? I suppose if you don't mind mail ordering it that might not be so bad, but I think it much less likely that you could go to the corner gun store and buy it off the shelf. How popular is that round? Is it going to die off and then you'll have to buy brass at big $$$ and reload it yourself or pay an even bigger premium on mail ordered ammo? Price comparison: .270 Win: http://www.ableammo.com/catalog/default.php?cPath=10480_14658_14743_14904_14794 .270 WSM: http://www.ableammo.com/catalog/default.php?cPath=10480_14658_14743_14904_14795

Where is the thrust block stuff coming from? Never seen that one before. If you're talking about a longnose R200, I think it's just flat out wrong. I wouldn't presume to know that there couldn't be a thrust block in a shortnose diff, because I don't have much experience there, but I would expect that to be wrong as well. The rest of your questions are answered in my huge diff post which is a sticky in the Drivetrain forum.

Bad Dog makes replacement frame rails for the Z, which replaces the original rail and DOES NOT connect the subframes, it stops under the seat area, and they also make subframe connectors. That's probably where the confusion comes from.

I agree with jt1 on the used bit. The pawn/gun shop in my area has probably a hundred used deer rifles on the shelves. While you might not be able to pick a model in the caliber you want and walk in and find it, there is bound to be something on your local pawn shop or gun store that suits your needs for a used but higher quality/accurate weapon better than a brand new cheap rifle that you can buy for close to the same price. .270 has always seemed to me to be a very useful caliber. It may not have the 4000 fps that the .17 does, but it is a much more useful rifle in general.

If one wheel hits a bump and you can feel that feedback through the steering wheel, that is totally normal. What is not normal or wanted is for you to be sawing at the wheel and the car to be tracking in a steady arc, or for you to hit a bump and have the car jerk suddenly to one side or the other. Sounds to me like you've got it fixed. Congratulations.

Post a pic of the carrier and we can tell you if it is an LSD. I would imagine that if you could see the 4 pinions without any disassembling that it is not.

Better check the size of the ring gear bolts and check for side stub shafts and seals that would fit the longnose housing.

You make it sound as though Quaife originally developed the helical LSD. I don't know that they didn't, but the Goldtrac for 9" Fords and the Torsens have been around for a LONG time.

Probably bad synchros. Not that uncommon, especially in 2nd and 3rd gear. I'll add SWEPCO 201/ATF 50/50 blend to the list of oils that might bandaid it for a while. When that fails I'd expect you need to rebuild it.

I have a mind like a steel trap... sometimes...

Pat, a steel cover might work but sounds like a lot of fabrication. I'd try adding a couple stiffening ribs horizontally across the aluminum cover. Just need to check for clearance with the mustache bar before having them welded on. Maybe a couple above and a couple below the bar itself.

The girdle covers prevent the main caps from flexing backwards under load, this flex allows the ring and pinion to move in relation to one another and chew each other up. Your problem is not the main caps flexing and causing a ring and pinion failure, your problem is that the diff is hung from the cover, so the cover itself takes the load (along with the front diff mount) that the 4 link or whatever suspension setup is used on the solid axle would handle. The cover in a solid axle takes relatively little load, and the girdle covers aren't there to strengthen the cover, they're there to strengthen the main caps. As for a solution, strengthening the cover will help, but might require some pretty serious trial and error. It's the elasticity of the mustache bar relative to the front diff mount that allows the cover to be flexed and pull the bolts loose. If the diff were rigidly mounted and the mustache bar redesigned so as not to flex, I think that would help too. Unfortunately that might be more of a race only setup as it would be loud inside. At least that's my theory after thinking on it for a couple minutes...

Looks like JG had that bottom end set up pretty loose. It's not about who is faster, it's about passing the slower guy. Witness Jarno Trulli last weekend...