JMortensen

The cabinets are prebuilt units from Lowes, so they're not the most expensive things ever. I had never seen hickory before, it's apparently a new product for Lowes, but my wife and I both loved all the color contrast in the wood, so we went for it. I got the Formica cut today. It was actually pretty easy. Used a trimmer/router from Harbor Freight: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=44914 I also bought an assortment of router bits to go with it. I used a 1/2" straight cutter with a bearing. Worked fine. Now on the top I'm thinking about using the 1/4" radius router bit that came with the assortment I got. Anyone think that is a bad idea for any reason? I just thought it would be nice to have more of a curve than the 1.5mm curved router bit, which HF didn't have and I'd have to go buy. The scariest part of the whole deal is the next part: gluing the Formica down. I'm worried about getting the seam tight. When the parts are lined up the seam is pretty damn tight. I'm just worried about getting them lined up and not letting anything touch before they're absolutely perfect.

The FSM should have info on how to adjust the pedal stop. The other thing that is CRUCIAL is that you have some free play between the clutch pin and the master. 1/8" will do, but if you don't have any free play then the clutch can slowly start to disengage as you're driving. Won't make the shifting worse in my experience, but the clutch might start slipping when you shift. If you have a 280 then there should not be any adjustment at the slave cylinder. So once you get those set, then just pull the rubber boots back and look for fluid leaking on the master and slave, and that's pretty much it as far as I can remember.

Yes, it's a "reactive" LSD, so one wheel has to start slipping before it does anything. Then it kind of sloppily handles the slip when it does happen. There's been quite a bit posted on the differences, I'd look for one of Ron Tyler's posts on the subject.

There's a synchro between each gear cluster, and the one for 5th is smaller. So I think there's 4 in there, and 3 are the same. You would only be concerned with the 2-3 synchro.

A synchro is basically a 3/8" long cone shaped brass ring with ridges on the inside and teeth around the edge. It fits onto the tapered nose of a gear cluster, and then the end of that gear cluster has a cone shaped hole that fits onto the top of the next synchro, so the gear clusters and synchros are stacked onto the main shaft. When you shift, the shifter pushes a large round shift ring onto the synchro, which engages it via the teeth around the perimeter. The synchro then pushes onto the front of the gear cluster you want to engage, and then the friction between the two slows the gear cluster so that the shift ring can engage that gear and in that same motion it releases the last gear. That's a simple explanation, but that's pretty much what they are. The brass synchros can crack, but more usually they wear. If this thing is freshly rebuilt you might take it back to the shop that did the work and see if they're willing to do anything for you. If it was done by the PO or something then you'll just have to dive in and fix it. I haven't been into a manual trans in about 15 years and I'm only 33, but they're not hard to get apart and the synchro is pretty easy to replace. I think book time on a whole trans rebuild is 5 hours, if the trans is out of the car. If you have the manual it shouldn't be hard to work through it, although they'll have you checking clearances with feeler gauges and doing a lot of things that your corner transmission shop wouldn't do. If you still have connections to get parts I can tell you that I bought an RPM Superkit rebuild kit and it was $85 at cost + 10%, but the retail was $265, and that was probably 10 years ago (I bought a kit and haven't rebuilt the trans yet). You might be able to buy just the one synchro, but the rebuild kit comes with all the bearings front and rear seal, gasket for the input shaft, etc. If that stuff was all just replaced it would probably make sense to see if you can get just the one synchro.

I can't really speak for Tokico, but knowing someone who put a 1/2" impact on their Illuminas and pulled the top of the shock right off overtightening it, I'm thinking they are warning against tightening the nut with the impact rather than loosening with the impact. I can't recall the torque spec for the bolt, but it should be something like 30 ft/lbs which is hard to do with a 1/2" impact.

I haven't heard of anyone trying it. I will say that I think the clutch LSD would be a much better choice than the VLSD, which is pretty lazy in comparison.

Sounds like you burned up a synchro already. A quick shift while letting off the gas is not costing you enough time to warrant the damage power shifting causes in my opinion.

That still sounds like you're missing a part. MSA didn't send you something is what it sounds like. As said above, a picture would be helpful.

Impact gun. If you don't have one go to your local equipment rental and rent one. They have electric ones too if you don't have an air compressor.

That looks badass dude. Seriously badass.

OK, I have a beer on my desk, work is all done, wife won't be home for a while, so I'll give you my take. First, John and Paul (not to mention George and Ringo) are correct. For a street car you're much better off putting your money somewhere else. And Paul also makes a very good point about the front suspension. In my years of Z autocrossing, I NEVER got the front end to hook up as good as the rear, I always fought push, and I had all kinds of stuff done to the front to try and get it to hook up better. The front needs more attention than the rear. It's that simple. So why would anyone want new rear control arms? A couple reasons. I think the reason 90% of people buy a set of control arms for their Z is because they look cool. Not my thing, but whatever floats your boat is fine with me. You want bling, control arms offer bling. Another reason is to adjust toe. Toe adjustment is not something that a lot of people need to be doing, to be perfectly honest. If you're in a range of 1/16 toe out to 1/4" toe in and you just commuted in your car, you'd probably never notice that you had an alignment issue. If you're racing, the toe setting can make a big difference, but until you're at the limit it's not really noticeable unless it's bad enough to make the car crab down the road or cause unusual tire wear. Regardless, if you're after an alignment these arms can allow you to align your car. You might want aftermarket control arms to lose weight. As Paul suggested, the stockers aren't very heavy at all. There are better places to lose weight, but if you've exhausted all of those then I suppose this might be a reason. Probably the best reason I can think of to put different control arms on the car is to reduce stiction. Stiction is the initial reluctance to move caused by bushings that are stuck to the shaft. Stiction makes the suspension unresponsive to inputs from the road and is generally to be avoided, but this is especially important for a race car. Strength might be a reason to buy an aftermarket arm. I can't see this really being an issue unless you're rally racing, but I can see people justifying their purchase in this way. The last reason is you're racing. For racing you want the best combination of weight, alignment, precision, and free motion at the lightest weight possible. So let's go down the list: MM-- They use stock style inner bushings as far as I know. buZy suggested that there might be a "solid inner pivot". Not sure what that is, so I won't speculate. It seems clear that a stock inner bushing would work. If you use stock rubber there is too much deflection. If you use poly there is too much stiction. The outer pivots are rubber bushed, so they can also deflect under load. The rod ends are circle track parts, and they have a TON of threads exposed. This is the "threads in bending" thing that you'll occasionally hear engineer types warning against. So the MM arms have threads in bending, and they have by far the most threads in bending of the three arms we're looking at. That said, Ross is an engineer and I am not. It seems to me too that if you do adjust the toe to something other than 0 you're forcing the bushings to misalign which would cause yet more stiction. On the other arms the spherical bearing in the rod end rotates in the housing and doesn't increase stiction. Z Race Products-- These arms are overbuilt to a fault. The outer rod ends are 7/8" where most other arms use 5/8" rod ends. The weight on these as listed on their website is 34 lbs for a pair. That's a lot more than even the heavier 280Z arms. They still use stock inner bushings, so you still have your choice of mushy or sticky. I thought I read that they were going to come up with a toe adjustment that didn't require pulling the spindle pin, but it doesn't look like they've done that. So toe adjustment would be a real pain. Also I'm not sure why all the tubes are bent. A straight tube should be stronger in tension and compression than a bent tube, so it seems like you'd want to avoid bending the tubes wherever possible. It looks like they've gone for style points and even bent the tubes in the middle which didn't need to be bent at all. The outer frame could have been built with straight tubes, but it would have required a different configuration, probably resulting in more pieces and more welding. AZC-- The only good thing I can say about their new rear arm is that it uses rod ends on the inner and outer pivots, so it should reduce stiction a lot more than the other two. Other than that I think its a tremendously bad design, for all the reasons listed on the other thread. His old arms were much better, provided you got the later revised ones that didn't have a 5/8" nut turned down and welded into the end of the arm. When it gets right down to it I think this thread here http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=129154 is coming up with some MUCH better solutions to the rear control arm than anything above. Redesigning the arm to be an A arm with a toe link instead of an H arm seems like a HUGE step in the right direction to me. Read that thread to get an idea of why that is.

I was thinking of using a 3/4" rod end in the rear since that takes the load. I agree that 5/8" in the front should be fine.

I'm tired. Someone else go first and I'll do my eval later or tomorrow.

I just looked to verify for myself, and if anything the spindle pin housing is maybe a hair too long, but the rod end is damn near centered on the strut tube in the rear. This picture from Arizona Z cars website shows it perfectly: I thought the rod end would have to be spaced back. Now I'm thinking the 5/8" rod end and single shear might be enough...

Tom, have you seen how Terry Oxandale and I got our rear monoball pivots installed? Details in this thread: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=106457 I used a cheap circle track monoball housing and welded it to the frame and the uprights. Terry made an aluminum piece that held the monoball in the stock position. I think this would simplify/strengthen the arm itself, although it's not strictly necessary and entails it's own set of challenges. I don't like the 3rd design, but it sounds like you expected to hear that. Did you think of moving the inner end of the toe link further forward on the arm? That might be another option for gaining more sway bar clearance. I haven't really looked yet, but I suppose at some point that there is an issue with tire clearance. In general, attaching the sway bar to the strut is the way to go if you can. The sway bar will unload the inside rear tire, so it may be advantageous to get rid of it entirely if you can get some stiffer springs to control the roll instead.

Looks like stupid fun times to me. If I were there I'd jump in it and do some mud bogging...

None. They're made for a Chevy or a Ford or something. You'll need to turn the ID of the spacer out to fit the hub.

How about more diamond weights. All of their weights are listed on their website. I would figure 15x8, 15x10, and 15x12 would be the most commonly used here. Maybe the same in the 16" sizes. I think the "Avenger" is the lightest weight wheel they sell with a spun .095" shell.

I'm liking this wood on the front idea. Anyone know where can I get some hickory to do the front trim piece? I think oak would look funny on the hickory cabinets.

They don't have anything in the right size.

Not personally. Mat73GNZ bought a stick, I thought it was 10' and made quite a few sets and sold them to offset the cost. I got mine from him.

Or you could buy 12mm OD 10mm ID stainless tube off the internet and cut it to fit, deburr and you're done.

That doesn't sound good. I guess the other option would be a wood trim piece in the front. That would be easily doable. No actually, I'm not. I've read that over and over, but the way these cabinets went together and because I needed to use more than one sheet of ply it was really necessary to screw the countertops from the bottom up and also from the top down to get everything to line up flush.

I have bondo. I'll take a close look at the edge and see if I think it would need the filler. I think I'll do the flush cut bit first, then glue both pieces on, then do the radius bit last.