JMortensen

For the fuel system look up "surge tank". That's the best/cheapest/easiest solution in my opinion.

OEM gasket can be had from the dealership. Tune your engine correctly and you don't need to intentionally use a weak headgasket. Metal is great, but lots of guys have success with the Nissan gasket or Stone gaskets. Cheapo Chinese gaskets should probably be avoided, and Fel-Pro gaskets are a source of much argument on the site (I'm personally not a fan). As to the head stud kits, the benefit of that one is also debatable. If you've got money to burn you might want to go ahead, although I'd sooner put ARP rod bolts on my engine than head studs. Sounds like you're on the right track. Keep searching. Search the FAQs, search the stickies. These questions aren't always answerable with a yes or no, so you'll have to do some interpretation of the answers you get from the threads you read.

The problem with all of the ideas above (as far as I can tell anyway) is that the wing that you're referring to wouldn't be isolated. In the Primadonna example I'm curious to see how effective the wing is with the grill right behind it. My gut tells me not very. In the wing under the spoiler idea the wing is going to be affected by the air dam right above it. I don't know what affect that will have, but I suspect that if a wing were a good idea under an air dam, we'd see that on race cars already. That's not an airtight reason as to why it wouldn't work, but its enough for me that I'd have to be convinced that it would work. Canards on the sides of the airdam is a little tricky. There was an article in Race Car Engineering maybe a year ago or more and they found more downforce without the canards than with. I think it depends on the shape of the air dam and the fenderwells, but in their example putting a relatively flat vertical lip on the front of the wheel well created more downforce, presumably by creating a low pressure area in the wheel well and sucking air out from under the car.

A little clarification, the 300ZX unit has 1 clutch disk per side. There are disks and plates, the plates transfer torque to the diff housing, the disks transfer it to the side gears and out to the wheels. So when you add the 4 disks from the group buy into the 300ZX unit, you go from one per side to 3 per side, or from 2 to 6 total. I believe all the 180 units are already 3 disks per side or 6 total. The R180 LSDs never had the cheesy spacer in them that the 300ZX diff had, at least as far as I'm aware, so there is no need for adding clutches. The R180 did have another cheesy derivation though: there was a 2 pinion unit and a 4 pinion unit. The 2 pinion was pretty fragile. The 4 pinion units are very strong. If you bought in the group buy you got the 4 pinion unit.

Seriously nice Z there Jay. I've seen some other pics of your car with a large wing on the back. Is that still part of the plan? Did you see the windtunnel test section? Pretty interesting stuff in there, might give you some good ideas too, like sealing the radiator to the grill opening and such... Very very very nice job!

Unlike say a Ford LSD which has clutch friction material on it, the clutches in our Nissan LSDs are all steel. You can shim them tight again when they wear. I've got a thread on the procedure, and 240hoke talks about it and has some pics in his adding clutches thread. It's pretty easy to do.

I was thinking this too. Maybe a sway bar end link or something.

280ZX CVs are different and harder to disassemble and reassemble. Search, I know blueovalz has posted a write up on it before. I too don't think they could possibly slip. The only one that I could see slipping is the R230 setup that people have developed. As far as I know there is no way for the tripod bearings to slide out past their races which would HAVE to happen for it to slip. Otherwise it would break, but not slip.

Let's not make this personal, OK guys? (this means all of you) Tim, the thing about the Kameari is that there is no damage done if the chain falls into the cover. So as was stated, you simply fish it out and roll it onto the idlers and affix the cam gear. There is no tensioner to fall out, so there is no danger in the chain falling other than having to fish it back out. The string method that Alan alluded to would be valid in this case, because you could tie up the chain with a string to any close part, the thermostat housing, rad hose, whatever. I'd probably use a couple zip ties. The part has some very beneficial attributes in addition to not using a sprung tensioner which can fall out. Better cam timing is the obvious one, but you can also shave the head and adjust out the slack with the tensioner and an adjustable cam gear and not have to screw with lash pad adjustments at all. I'd get one if I intended to keep working with the L.

I am a math moron, but I'd say that the problem with the calculations is that it presumes that one is starting and stopping the piston in a linear fashion. Since the piston is connected to the crankshaft and the crank stops the piston while continuing to turn and not by absorbing the force of the piston directly, I would assume that the hp number would actually be a lot smaller. That's pretty crappily put, but that's the best explanation my physics ignorant brain can come up with.

I daily drove my Z with a rollbar and loud exhaust, later had loud induction (Mikunis), was red then silver, and never got pulled over in 8 years of daily commuting and 40K miles between the ages of 21-29. In Prox's case, I think the black hood is indeed the culprit. Paint it the same as the rest of the car, don't put any stickers on your car, don't put a huge wing on the back, keep it low key and don't drive like an idiot and you probably won't have any trouble. At least I didn't.

Put your ad or ads in the classifieds.

Very sad. I wonder what will happen with McRae's small scale production rally car...

This thread is getting old. If you follow the rules here at Hybrid Z you won't be told to search and your meaningful additions to the discussion will be appreciated. If you don't like the rules or refuse to follow rules than this might not be the place for you. If you think you can do it better, than do it better. If your "anything goes" forum really turns out great, the meritocracy that is the internet will prove you right in the long run.

A couple of points: 1. The internet is not conversational. It is not like walking up to someone in a face to face interaction and asking them a question. For a proper answer sometimes A LOT of time and effort needs to be put into the response. To ask the same question a hundred times and expect anyone to type out a lengthy, well thought out, thorough response is inconsiderate at best. But what happens a lot of times is that people who are guessing start answering with hearsay and then the issue becomes more muddled, leading to the whole "you can't believe anything you read on the internet" attitude. If you need an example just look up "OS Giken" and see some of the old threads from about 3-4 years ago. Ridiculously wrong information kept coming up over and over and over. That kind of thing does nobody any good. If the person who wanted to know about them searched first and found only good threads, the issue would be a lot clearer. 2. As has been said, the reason we tell people to search is because we want to make the search work better. It is an attempt to streamline the database, not an attempt to demean the person being told to search. 3. Go hang around at some sites who don't moderate so thoroughly and you'll see that most threads just end up in a pissing match, and the flame wars for the most part dominate the forum. Ours is not like that, and we don't want it to be. There are of course different interpretations of what is an appropriate level of moderation. We follow strict guidelines here, and that works. There is always the option to start your own forum if our level of moderation is too severe, and no one else's forum suits your tastes. And if it turns out really good, I'll sign up there too! Competition between forums will separate the wheat from the chaff for different users. I think our level of moderation frustrates the lazy and attracts the "outside the box" thinkers. I wouldn't have it any other way. 4. The idea that Hybrid Z "knows it all" is not correct, and somewhat insulting. We would be the first to admit we don't know everything, and this site exists to keep pushing the boundaries of Z car performance. There are other sites dedicated to original restoration where questions always have a "right" answer. This is not one. If you have something truly innovative to add, we would really like to see it and learn from you. But the threads that we respond to by asking the poster to search should not be the ones with something to add; they should be the ones asking repetitive questions. For instance, I would hope that we would not tell the guy who is talking about a new aerodynamic device to search. On the other hand, the guy who asks "Will an R180 stand up behind my V8?" or "How hard/expensive is a V8 swap?" or "What's the biggest wheels that will fit under stock fenders?" or "What brake upgrades are available for Z's?" is not likely to provide a new innovation. If he has a new innovation he certainly isn't stating it very well.

I'm still thinking that a good relatively easy solution for this might be to switch the mustache bar around and move the diff forward a couple inches. The CV's should handle the misalignment just fine. I'm hoping this is fairly easy to do with a Ron Tyler diff mount, and then the only real mod necessary is shortening the driveshaft.

There was an engineer/machinist that owned the building I was working in for a while, and he wanted to roll his very large tool chest out into the parking lot. He built a cradle type frame to go under the tool chest, then had some raised sections that the casters mounted to, because mounting the casters under the tool chest would have raised it way too high. The key for him was using PNEUMATIC casters because the surface of the parking lot was not smooth. Not sure if this project would benefit or not, but it was pretty slick. The bench I built (and left in the house that I sold in CA) was all built from 4x4s that came on pallets we used to get with deliveries at my work. That bench was the strongest, most solid bench I've ever seen. Topped it off with a 3/4" piece of ply and had plans for some shelves in the back, but ended up moving and selling the house. I still regret not taking it with me, even though it probably weighed 150 lbs. My current bench is an 8' long stainless steel chef's table with a cutting board top. It's pretty cool looking, but it ended up being way too wobbly. Some day I'll replace it with something uglier and more functional. In the meantime I'll have bench envy thinking about John's setup...

Did you search this topic? I had a good thread on modifying the stock pedal box to use dual masters, that would be my suggestion. Alternatively you can buy a modified box from http://www.betamotorsports.com which is really slick but fairly expensive, or buy a Tilton or Wilwood pedal assy and adapt it into your car, which is going to require fabrication. All options were discussed in my thread.

The taper on the post at the end is different for early 240s. I think about midway through the 240 production they changed to the fatter post and that stayed through all the rest of them. I don't think the original 240 tie rods are available anymore. So what you need are steer knuckles from a 280. Install those with your later tie rods and you're good to go.

I tried using one of these: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=94017 and it didn't go very far before all the abrasive was worn off. When it got down to metal the scratches it put into it looked a little deep to me, but I followed up with a quick once over with a die grinder and a scotch brite pad and that seemed to work. I could do the media blasting now, since I can roll the car around again, but I always felt like that was a sure way to get sand or whatever media into all the crevices and bearings and everything else. I did just recently get the 40 gal sandblaster from HF, so if that could be used with an appropriate media that might be a good option. Anyone know if this combo would work? Tried the Klean Strip stuff. It works marginally in my experience, and this car has a lot of bondo, so I don't know if that would work.

Sounds like Japanese bling stuff to me. They do lots of weird things. I remember one car that was posted that was supposed to be a really nice Japanese tuner car and the roll cage didn't have any bends in the hoop. It had welded CORNERS. Just because it's Japanese doesn't mean it's good, and just because a car is fast doesn't mean that everything about it is right.

The spring plates are the same size and thickness as the clutches, and I would suspect are the same material, just bent into a spring by a huge press somewhere in Japan. I have no reservations about putting a clutch disk next to a spring plate.

No, since I bought my house I've probably spent 4 hours in the garage. Hopefully things will calm down in a bit and I'll get back into it soon. Good news this year is I have a really awesome garage heater so I don't have to freeze my butt off in the winter. I did start stripping the paint and found that the car has two skim coats on it and 3 coats of primer and paint. I haven't found a really good way to strip it off yet, I've tried the chemicals and a paint removal pad on a 4.5" grinder. If anyone has any other suggestions I'd love to hear them...

Thanks Prox. What's up with the "cc" post there bj?

Never ever seen the bolts move on an S30. I just tighten mine to about 10 ft/lbs. Mine have some marks from adjusting them so often, but no scars from slipping. Not sure why an S13 would be any different. One thing I did notice early on is that it is MUCH harder to adjust the camber plates with the suspension off the ground. If they're fighting the suspension when they're making adjustments, that might explain why their plates are all scarred up.