JMortensen

I drove mine on the street with rod end TC rods for 20K+ miles, no problemo. But I suppose personal preference is just that.

Why don't you make up a set with rod ends? It would go nicely with the rest of your monoball/rod end suspension pivots.

I agree with Alan here. You should at least figure out what class you're going to plan to run in and then build to suit that class. As stated, classes that allow radical aero mods are likely to be fairly unlimited. The Z can still be competitive if you find some oddball series like the Open Track Challenge that John Coffey ran his car in. In terms of aero design, what you have looks fairly slippery, but I wouldn't be worried about slippery much at all. My own objective would be to get the most downforce out of the front end that you can. Getting downforce to match in the rear is fairly easy; just keep adding bigger wings until the rear keeps up with the front. Getting downforce in the front is the hard part. Think splitters, front diffusers, etc. I don't see a radiator duct at all. I'd put in a radiator duct and then either duct the air out the fenders or up through vents in the hood.

The problem with the fenderwells as the mounting points is that using them doesn't stiffen the chassis as much as attaching to the frame and the strut towers. Some people think that it's not a good mounting point, but I think the fenderwells are plenty tough. It's just not utilizing the roll bar to really strengthen the chassis.

I really don't want to tear you down, but here is some constructive criticism: The strut bar is OK, but the straighter the bar is the stronger it will be in tension and compression. It would have been better to make the brackets taller or at least mount them all the way at the top of the strut tower, as this would have required less bend in the bar itself and also attached the bar right at the strut top, where the chassis is actually going to flex the most. The bars to the firewall aren't doing anything useful. Theoretically they could try to prevent the strut towers from flexing forward, but they would be a lot more effective if they actually connected to the strut towers, and not to the middle of the strut tower bar. On your rear strut tower bar the bars that intersect in the middle would be stronger if they hit the floor than hitting the stock braces in the middle. It's kind of the same problem as the front bar. Load paths are not taken into account and it would be stronger if you attached to the frame rail than the braces. Roll bars should not be welded at the corners, they should be one solid tube bent to the correct shape. In my opinion what you have there should be removed for your own safety. If you crash and the tubes come apart at the welds you could have some serious problems. Roll bars are made from DOM tubing (drawn over mandrel). DOM tubing is stronger than plain welded tubing or pipe and is required by almost every if not every racing sanctioning body. I am guessing what you have there is not DOM. I'm sorry I can't give you a big thumbs up, but I'd rather you know what the potential problems are.

Congrats on the car. That sounds like quite a score! Here's a maybe helpful tip for you: I had those exact Recaros in my car for years. If you use the Recaro seat mounts the thigh section is WAY too high in relation to your butt height. Mine would put my calves and feet to sleep in about 20 minutes. I ended up modifying the seat brackets to level out the seat and it was much better.

I never said that it's junk. I only said that to LIMIT oneself to 35 year old technology is not the wisest move if the goal is to create the most EFFECTIVE solution. The reason that this thread got off track is that I dared to question Nissan's attainment of aerodynamic perfection. Sycophantic worship of Nissan or its history is not the way to find the most effective solution aerodynamically. I don't mind if you guys want to take a stroll down memory lane, I only took issue with the idea that the G nose can't be improved upon, airdam or no. Clearly 29PGC10 needs this reminder: This is EXACTLY what this site does. We have examples of all of the above and welcome that kind of innovation. If you have a problem with that, you're in the wrong place.

The rocker ratio of the L heads is 1.5, so the lift on that cam is .5775" which is huge. It sounds like a very large race cam just based on the lift.

That big one sounds about right to take advantage of the triples.

Reality is in direct conflict with your statement here. If they tried all these things, why did we end up with a car that is so poor aerodynamically speaking??? Or are you saying that they only did the testing for the G nose, and none of it for the production car that sold over 1,000,000 copies? I don't think they tried any of this stuff or if they did, they didn't evaluate it in terms of drag and lift. I think a person penned a design and they built it. The G nose is the same way. I swear I read only a week or so ago that they changed the ducting or added some ducting to it as a result of overheating problems. Seems like they would have had all of that figured out had it been so thoroughly tested. I don't think aerodynamics was really on the radar too much at that time. In fact I'd be really surprised if the Z wasn't advertised as aerodynamic by Nissan purely based on the way it LOOKS, even though the design is less that aerodynamic in actuality. Cars on the road now have cd's of less than .3. An internet group can get together and procure a day's testing in a wind tunnel. We have had 35 years of advancements to draw from. I can go to a bookstore and buy a book like Race Car Aerodynamics: Designing for Speed. What HASN'T changed? As to the appearance of the car, this is Hybrid Z, not classiczcars.com. If I were looking to design a new nose specifically to have less drag and lift, it WOULDN'T look like a Z front end when I was done, and I would be absolutely fine with that. And if I were trying to make the front end more slippery about the LAST thing it would look like is a Pikes Peak car. Pikes Peak cars are built for 1000s of lbs of downforce, not low cd. Absolutely nothing. Go for it. Again, go for it. Make sure you use the same wind tunnel so our comparisons can be accurate. You do realize what site this is, right??? Maybe blueovalz or 74_5.0L_Z will give us an idea of what it takes, but the materials invovled are not that expensive. Making molds to mass produce parts is one thing. Doing a glass over foam type of deal in your garage is not.

That video has been posted here before a couple years ago. They aren't lubing anything in the beginning, they're christening the engine, like breaking a bottle of champagne on the bow of a ship. Moving this post to the Non-Tech board.

3 or 4 guys can lift a shell. You could carry one into the back of a U haul. The more extra crap on the shell the heavier it will be, so strip it down before lifting it. Other than that if it has suspension, wheels and tires I'd use a tow dolly if you don't have access to a trailer.

I would suggest a larger cam to take advantage of the triples. Good deal though for $500!!!

That is exactly what I thought you meant, and I would not take your bet because I'm sure you could do it. I'm sure with a couple books on aerodynamics any of us could use some very basic principles to make a new and better front end. No need for most of us to hamstring ourselves with 35 year old aero tech. Look at it, learn from it, but don't limit yourself to it if you don't have to.

Exactly. And as to the vintage racers I couldn't even tell if Alan thought I was supposed to resent the scrutineers or the vintage racers. I'm a moderator for an email list populated by probably 80% vintage racers, and I have myself been a scrutineer of sorts (although it was simple tech inspections at various autoxes) so I am resentful of neither. Tony, you too are making the same assumption that Alan did with me. I didn't bring up anything about the G nose or the wind tunnel testing and made no mention of it being inferior or superior to anything else, so I think this is a sore point for Alan more than anything else. I can guarantee that if you asked an engineer today to come up with a design that made more downforce and less drag they could do it. That's not a criticism of Nissan's engineers, that's another 35 years of aerodynamic experience to work from. Likewise, I think OTM was saying the same thing. Not that a modern crappy fiberglass G nose with no ducting would work just as well, but that "some modern version [of a new front end designed with aerodynamics in mind]" might be able to do better.

I would expect that the tail fins were an attempt to stabilize the cars at high speeds, much like some of the old Le Mans cars from the same period.

Not so sure on this one. Look at his wheels. I think he was the extreme newbie who didn't yet realize that a car doesn't turn when the front tires are locked. I'm with z_cars_rule, if somebody gave me one of those cars and said don't worry about crashing I think I'd have a pretty good time...

I have no idea why you feel that this thread is the time and place to pick a fight, but knock it off.

I've seen several vintage racers try and justify usage of this transmission or those brakes. They don't always get what they want. So yes, they are "trying" to justify it and they don't always succeed. Sure, using a new car is a very wise idea from an aero perspective. If one assumes that being on a Z site people will be using old Z cars, then I would stand by my statement that race car aerodynamics were in their infancy in 1970, and trying to look to those cars for "good" aero modifications to your currently raced older Z is counterproductive.

I think the comments about the front suspension are usually made in threads where people are talking about swapping the rear suspension. I know I've made comments like "It's the front end that needs attention, not the rear" and my basis for making that comment is years of trying to get the front end to stick better for autoxing. That's not to say that you can't make a stock-ish front suspension handle with modifications, and everyone's interpretation of "good handling" is different, but if you're talking about a car where the guy has already torn out the rear suspension why hold onto the front? Certainly we can all agree that there are better suspension designs out there.

Please keep your direct communication with vendors offline. I don't mind if you post "I've been trying to get my parts back and Paulo won't answer emails" or something like that, but we don't want people using Hybrid Z as a chat room type of communication with vendors.

How about SLA? There have been posts here before about GT2 cars that modified the strut to accept and upper control arm, didn't look too hard to do.

I think there is a reason for that time delay and it has to do with people sending bots to search 1,000,000 things at a time and taking the whole forum down. You really can't wait 15 seconds?

I'm going to clean this thread up again. This is an informational thread about the different types and sizes of differentials and is not the proper place to ask what diff is best for you or what kind of LSD would work for you. Start another thread for those questions.

Our cars as in Z cars. Most Bilstein struts use 36mm pistons which are more digressive in nature.