JMortensen

Yes, but you'll do better welding stuff to the car with gas shielded welding.

It's not that big. Footprint is probably 18 x 36. Looks big in the pictures...

Metal band saw would be my vote. You can get a small one that will do up to 4" tube from Harbor Freight for $150ish. It is one of the best tools I've purchased from them and I've used mine A LOT. This is the only one on their website right now, but I'm guessing if you had a catalog or went into a store you'd find the typical price (they usually have 2 or 3 prices for every item, so you have to look for the cheapest one). http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=93762

Look under the rocker (the part under the door). There is a pinch welded seam. This is where two pieces of metal get pinched together and welded. That is what you want to measure to.

Shorter stroke.

Eh, I'm not buying that argument either. Reminds me of the Top Gear story on the GTR where I think Jeremy Clarkson said the motors were hand built and so they couldn't quote the hp within + or - 40 hp. If you can't track it down within + or - 40 hp, then your tolerances are too loose and things need to be tightened up at the factory. That's my take on it. If you build the same motor twice, to use your example down to 5 decimal places, it should make the same power, within a very tight range. The further the resolution on dimensions go, the tighter the power range should be on the final product. I'm not buying that there is some magic power fairy inside the engine that makes this one do one thing and that one do another. If that were the case, the idea of spec racing classes to keep costs down would be stupid because you'd have to keep building the same engine over and over and over in an attempt to get a "lucky" +50 hp to have an advantage over the field. EDIT--Maybe it's all about Bryan's super tight head to piston clearance...

The main thing a 240Z has going for it is LIGHT WEIGHT. Your mustang/miata example compares a 3500 lb car to a 2350 lb car. Bad comparison in my opinion. The Z needs some work to handle as well as a stock Miata. But if you're putting equal amounts of time and money into a Miata and a Z, and the money was $6K, I think you'd come out pretty close in the end, as they're both lightweight, small wheelbase cars with good weight distribution. The advantage that one has over the other is the gigantic engine bay in the Z.

Yes, I think this is the point. The weld won't be stainless, so if there is going to be rust anywhere, it's here. For Cameron, I don't think it matters because the rest of the pipe isn't stainless. It will probably be less rust proof than the rest of the pipe if it is aluminized, but just spray the weld with some hi-temp paint and it should be functional if not as rust resistant as stainless to stainless with full argon, purged tubing, etc.

I can see the boot being an issue. I messed with this a long time ago and I don't remember the washer and the O-ring. I thought that it was not an issue though, as the parts would be loose on the shaft and could still be cleaned, you'd just have to remember to slide them onto the shaft before you welded the part onto the end. I think the problem is if you cut 1/2" off the end, and then add 1/4" back, you probably will still have the shaft bottoming. I would be allowing 3/4" additional clearance of an R200 in the back of an early Z. I'm just not sure 1/4" extra travel will cover it.

If you weld the end on, why is the shaft then "unserviceable"? What do you need to do that requires taking the star washer (I prefer "ball cupper") off?

The 36mm Bilsteins have a digressive piston and are better in every respect. The problem is they don't fit in the 240 strut housing, and it will take some figuring to get them into a 280 housing. Using the 36mm pistons is worth doing.

That's not bad at all. Cheaper than Coleman too. Thanks.

You're going to want to take the doors and hatch off anyway. The last thing you want is to spin the car and have the door slam on the ground because you forgot to close it all the way. The windshield and quarter glass won't be heavy enough to cause a problem, although the windshield might change the center of gravity enough that it might be harder or easier to spin the car around than it otherwise would have been.

I'd bet money on it. I've had monoballs with less slop than that that were very easy to hear clunking. If you're using the gland nuts it's a non-issue.

So what did they cost through Baer?

I migged that stainless to mild with the standard Argon/CO2 mix of 75/25. That was my point. Mild steel wire, regular gas, welded it up no problem at all. I didn't even know it was stainless until the guy told me. I said "I didn't even know you could weld stainless to mild steel" and he responded "Neither did I."

You are right, there is no gland nut there, but you missed the point of the gland nut completely. The strut insert on the Sentra is captured in the stronger housing by the bolt on bottom and the lip on the top which functions just like a gland nut. Regardless of whether the nut is on top or a bolt on the bottom or what, the bolt on the bottom doesn't take the side loading from the strut (although it does take rebound forces). The housing it is inserted into takes the big loads. So when you step on the brakes, that stud at the bottom isn't getting worked. The housing that it installs into is doing the work, because that strut insert is firmly held in the housing at both ends. In Z terms, the strut insert that Justin is looking at doesn't have a lip on the top so that it can be held tightly in the housing without a gland nut. The Z absolutely needs one. Without it the strut insert would wobble in the housing, and the side loads WOULD transfer to the stud at the bottom, and this would be bad, not to mention it would clunk like hell as you drove around. The Z struts are firmly held at both ends too. The gland nut holds the top, and compression against the bottom of the strut tube holds the bottom.

No, mine were totally stripped.

Depends on what you're doing. If you're buying forged pistons anyway and you have a set of rods, it's a win/win. If you're doing nothing else other than change the rod ratio on an otherwise stock engine and you don't have rods and don't need pistons, there are much better ways to spend your ~$800. You can get those pistons from Ross through Summit Racing, just provide the specs - but you'll need to know the specs--bore, pin size, pin height ring gap sizes. I think there are threads listing the specs if you search you should find them.

That's a lot of filler! Here's the thread where Clifton discussed his FG doors. He says "probably under 10": http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=128996&page=3

Can't answer them all, but I can answer the important one which is #2: They are indeed on backwards. Long spring goes in back on all of the common spring kits. I think this is born out by the fact the front raised with the long springs. That's not right. If you've searched you've probably found other threads where people were asking why their car was dragging its ass around after putting the long springs in front. I know it's happened a couple times here and a couple times at http://www.classiczcars.com over the past couple years. I wouldn't cut any until you've seen them installed the right way, then I'd cut 1/2 coil at a time until you get the height you want, driving the car around the block in between cuts to make sure they're settled in the perches. They probably won't be compressed on the strut, most lowering springs aren't, so cutting more later isn't a big deal because you won't need a spring compressor.

I like Flexicoker's sig line, which is something to the effect of "Racecars, unlike women, must eventually respond to reason". He's doing SOMETHING right...

I weighed a 240 door before and after. Can't find the thread anymore but I want to say that after gutting and cutting, but without drilling holes around the perimeter it was something like 17 lbs. Clifton had fiberglass skins that were 8 I think.

You keep saying the same thing Tony, as if I'm comparing what Jeff did to something built by a half-witted idiot in their garage, but that's exactly what I'm NOT doing. His motor makes A LOT more than a Sunbelt EP engine (using hp specs per Coffey), and makes hell of a lot more hp/liter than the motor that was built for the Bob Sharp car. It makes more than Rebello's engines (even at his suspiciously high bhp numbers). My point is that there is an explanation for it, and I'm not chalking up a gigantic hp increase to "polishing this and tweaking that". All of my examples I've listed use carbs. It could be that the carbs are a choke point for the intake. I'm pretty convinced that there needs to be a fundamental difference in order to get a hp bump of that magnitude. The only thing that it could be seems to be the carbs. That's why I said I'd like to see what he can do in an EP legal build. If the numbers remain that high and if he can transfer his advantage from engine to engine (not much market for Z engines anymore), I think he'd get a lot of business building race engines.

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