JMortensen

Oh man those FJ80 trans/t-cases are HEAVY. My second job was working right around the corner from Man-A-Fre and we used to work on those suckers all the time. Using that setup for a car, especially a lightweight car, seems like a really bad idea. Seems WAAAAY too heavy. I guess maybe if you put 700 hp in front of it it might not matter...

Just the first set...

If you search here and at http://www.classiczcars.com this subject comes up every year or so and you should find some good info. I used an appraisal value to negotiate an "agreed value" with State Farm. In theory they agreed that my car was worth $15K and I've been paying premiums based on that, so if anything happens I *should* be covered for that amount. You will hear horror stories from people trying to get their money out of the insurance companies after an accident or theft despite an agreed value.

It would definitely work.

I feel like I missed a thread somewhere. I remember seeing this thing maybe a year back or so doing a 4 wheel burnout at the start of a hillclimb. I haven't seen anything else until this here...

You can use a strut tower bar with any of them, you might have to make your own mounts for the strut towers. On the AZC or TTT units that would require either welding mounts to the strut tops (which is stiffer and stronger anyway) or drilling holes in the strut top and making new ends that bolt to the modified strut towers.

Here is the new classified FORUM: http://forums.hybridz.org/forumdisplay.php?f=136

I've posted my similar experiences several times. In addition to all that you listed, I couldn't reach the window cranks which was a real bummer in SoCal. The worst is trying to go through a fast food drive through! I drove around with a harness for about a week and then bolted the seatbelt in on top of it. When I drove on the street I'd use the seatbelt and latch the harness behind the seat. When I went to the track I'd pull the harness out and use it.

My untested idea is that when the valves are going at 7000 rpm plus the wipe pattern might not be as exactly placed as it is when the engine is spun by hand and doing 3 rpm. I'd put it in closer to the center just for a "margin of error". Is that necessary, maybe not... but it would make me more comfortable. Plus, as I said, it is not necessary to run so close to the edge to maximize the lift if you can just buy a bigger camshaft. 1 fast z says the valvetrain runs louder when the rockers are offset like that. I'm guessing that they don't run louder because it's better for the longevity of the engine. I understand trying to maximize what you've got, but if you want more lift it seems to me that there is no reason why you can't maintain the rocker geometry as it was intended and just run the larger cam. If it were an ITS motor I'd understand.

I'd probably go with the .160's. If you want more lift get a bigger cam. That's my take anyway.

Although it's not my favorite design, the Autopower bar is pretty good in both of these respects, if you wanted a roll bar. As far as the strut bar with gramercyjam's setup, I'd weld the tube between the towers themselves not between the harness mounts. Of course, then the question is if you already have the tube welded in, why not just hook the harnesses to it?

Here it is from classiczcars.com:

If you're doing track days I'd do a 4 point roll bar and attach the harnesses to that. The other options would all work as well. gramercyjam had a hook welded to a rear strut tower that he used to attach his harnesses to. I think he might have pics in his album. I know he posted them here a couple years back.

For a minute I thought it was the AZC strut. I can see a few differences now that I'm looking at your pics.

http://www.shock-shop.com has a dyno. I'm sure http://www.shox.com also has one.

I don't know how useful that really is to us here. If you really want to analyze a set of struts you have to dyno EVERY strut to get an idea of how that particular one performs. So even one Z strut to the next from the same model and manufacturer can have significant variances. Check this post that John Coffey linked to this morning showing two K-sport struts. Looking at either graph one could make some conclusions about them, but when you compare the two you see that they are so far different that it's amazing they'd be for the same application. Comparing a graph from some other model of car and trying to make some sense out of the resulting info and apply it to a Z is nearly useless in my opinion. It does tell you that the adjustments do actually adjust correctly (seen some dyno graphs where full soft is harder than full hard and vice versa), but that's about it I think. While that is important information, it would be better obtained from struts made for a Z, preferably several of them so that we could get an idea of how consistent they really are.

Where did you get those K sport coilovers? I don't see a listing for a 240Z on their website. How did you adapt them to our strut housings?

Synchros actually need friction to bring the gear clusters to the same speed which is why gear lube is different than motor oil. Not saying the Slick 50 didn't help in your case, just that you're after two different things. My personal choice for trans lube is SWEPCO 201 mixed 50/50 with ATF. There's a bunch of good lubes out there so I don't think there is one right answer.

If there is room to move the camber plate up top, it would be fairly simple to modify the control arm on bottom. You could do something similar to what bjhines and I did, which is to cut the end of the arm off and weld on a rectangular tube, and then use a threaded tube end to attach rod ends and use a long 5/8" bolt through the spindle pin hole in the strut assy. You'd just weld the threaded tube ends into the tube 1" to the rear. http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=106457&page=11 That would be a lot more difficult, but certainly stronger in the end. If memory serves you're a drag racer though, and I thought I had read that the Z32 had a lot of anti squat making it not the best drag suspension. Maybe that can be adjusted out, not sure. I don't do drag and I am only repeating things that I have vague recollections of reading when the Z32 came out. Anyway it's something to look into before you start cutting up the unibody.

I don't think you can do it with stock suspension, because you'll be tweaking the strut shaft or the control arm big time when the suspension compresses. Basically the strut needs to line up vertically with the camber plate or rubber insulator. You might be able to get away with moving the wheel back by using a different control arm that didn't require the strut to be vertical at all times. The arm talked about in this thread might work: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=129154 You would have to have a strut top that allowed for the articulation. I'm thinking that a monoball in a camber plate might not have the necessary angularity to keep from bottoming out, and I think you'd tear up the rubber isolators from a stock strut hat in no time. If the camber plate didn't work in the stock position it might be possible to move it back within the narrow confines of the strut top to a position where it did function correctly. It'd be a lot of mocking it up to make sure everything worked without binding...

If this is purely being done to get a light wheel within a tight budget, then I think the 6 spoke ZX wheel is the best answer. They are extremely light and if you don't buy a set that someone has polished to a mirror, they can be had VERY cheap. I've seen a set of 4 sell for $50. Diamond Racing Wheels sells a 14x7 which weighs 17 lbs for $61 per wheel, just for comparison's sake. It's a cheap wheel, but not nearly as cheap as a set of 6 spoke ZX wheels.

My name is Jon, not Jim. My comment was not about you at all, I'm sorry you took it that way. It was about that one particular car and the reaction it gets from newbies (maybe I should have said ricers) who hyperventilate and swoon when they see it. I don't know who you are or what you know, so I certainly wouldn't try to pass judgment on your statements in general. I know you said you did some motorcycle racing in a previous thread. That's cool by me, and certainly counts for experience in my book. As for me, I have 8 years of autox in an extremely underprepared F Prepared car and some track days under my belt. I've learned more about the car and it's how its suspension works in the last 5 years (when I've been rebuilding it and NOT racing) than I ever knew when I was actually running it. I'm far from experienced by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not claiming to be the authority on anything, and I'm hoping that by combining the theory I've learned here at Hybrid Z and in a few books with the skills I've learned over the past couple years (welding, fabrication, etc) I'll have something that won't still qualify as woefully underprepared when I finally get back out there. I just hope that I can remember how to drive...

Torque distribution with wheel sensors? I hope not. That sounds like the traction control systems which apply the brake to a wheel that is losing traction. It works, but cars with that setup tend to burn the brakes up really bad on the track... There is a Z in Japan, if you search you should find it, that had the entire drivetrain from an R32 I think it was. Every time it comes up and pictures are posted it seems all the newbies want to build one. It's almost as bad as the OS Giken head. If I were to do an AWD Z car, it would get a FWD engine in the front and another in the rear. Or motorcycle engines with transaxles. I just don't see the traditional layout being too practical for the Z's chassis. I haven't seen the Cima yet. I guess that's a foreign car. Even the idea of the transmission being under the engine has me thinking "Where are you going to put that in a Z?"

I agree with everything in the first paragraph. DCR only works at 0 rpm. But in a sense, so does CR, because you don't get a perfect full fill of the cylinder (no more no less than than the area of the cylinder and combustion chamber) when the engine is actually running. Relating the CR to the DCR does provide more useful information than either number on its own. The more thorough a person's understanding of the concepts in their own rights, and how they relate dynamically to the engine's performance at different rpm ranges the better, and the better choices they should be able to make. I'm a bit split on this part. For sure emulating the best out there will get you a good result. But if you just use whatever they feed you then you're relying on them to improve things. I don't think it's beyond the scope of people here to improve on something that the "best" suppliers currently have to offer whether your talking about engines, suspension components, etc. Yeah, Norm certainly was wringing every last drop out of those SU's. I wish he would get a hold of a set of 44's or 45's and put as much effort into tuning those.

I kinda feel like we're making progress here. We may not be learning much about transplanting Subaru engines in Z's yet, but I think if he's not totally close-minded he should be learning quite a bit. If you want to talk about cutting up the frame rails to redirect the conversation go for it.