JMortensen

If you can figure out the taper you might find the appropriate ream and just ream out the steer knuckles.

You can go that big, but you'll have to deal with the valve stem seal issue. If you deal with that then you can run a big cam with no worries. For a street car that's not extremely temperamental I'd suggest you stick to something around .490 to .530 lift or so. The really big .600 lift cams for L series are really road race cams and they usually have rpm ranges of 5000-8500. Plus they wear out your valvetrain faster.

If you're running stock FI you don't want to go very big, in fact you might be better off sticking with the stock cam. If you're carbed or running aftermarket FI, then that suggested cam isn't very large. Do realize however that when you get up to about .480 or so you run into issues like coil bind and the valve spring retainer hitting the valve stem seal. Running a bigger cam is worth the hassle in my opinion, but you'll need springs, retainers, and new shorter valve stem seals to get around those issues. It's not rocket science and all of those issues have been dealt with and described thoroughly here, but it's more involved doing the .460 cam that the guy suggested. Regardless of which cam you go with, you'll have to get the lash pads right to correct the valvetrain geometry.

Having done what 99% of our members would do and run a junkyard motor with a cheap rebuild (read no balancing) and had the damper come apart, I would report that there is a harmonic issue that exists. I think a lot of it can be overcome by proper balancing of the rotating assy and running a "good" balancer. The destruction of balancers (even new ones) seems to be even more prevalent in stroker motors, along with loosening of flywheel bolts. I think the harmonic issue is real. I don't think it means that you hit 7600 rpm and your engine explodes, but I do think it is real. GT racers run the stock crank to 9000 rpm as well, but the engine's lifespan is measured in hours. I'd be surprised if Tony's engine was running 10's of thousands of miles between rebuilds. I would also think that one of the aftermarket fully counterweighted cranks from SCAT or Kameari would solve or lessen the harmonic issue.

It has been posted and discussed before. I know you won't do this cygnusx1, but if someone starts talking about buying an OS Giken head for $10K or getting people started on a group buy or the typical BS misconceptions or confusion with the FIA or LY head comes up, I'll shut this mutha down!

You can probably just drill through the washers that are already welded to the crossmember. Did they give you any spacers for the control arms? You're going to need some...

Because without it you have to trust him that they're good. If you buy race shocks from someone you can usually ask for the dyno graph. If you can't get the dyno graph, if you can at least find out who makes them you can probably get a dyno graph from the shock manufacturer. If you check the shock thread and you'll see dyno plots for Tokicos and Konis. Most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a good shock and a bad shock from behind the wheel, so just going off of someone else's "I have these and they're great!" isn't enough for some hardcore racers.

I'm shocked, in fact, I really am having a hard time believing it. I figured if the tire didn't hit the inner fenderwell, it would hit the outer part where it curves down to the fender lip. Did you have a tire on when you were testing this? Both areas were a problem with my smaller diameter tires and I had to cut more and more of the outer lip away to allow clearance.

I won't be able to make those calculations for quite some time, so I was hoping someone had some existing info for me...

I guess I'd be looking for these values for a stock Z, but if you have them for any Z I'd be interested...

SR is a pretty popular motor to swap around here. I'm not going to put one in my Z, but I wouldn't put a 13B in my car either. The point is that as far as we're concerned, hp is hp and if it makes hp then its good. We have guys putting out pretty good hp numbers on SRs and they're likely to take offense to you calling it a crap motor, even if you preface your comment with "no offense but"... So argue the merits of one motor or another if you will, but please don't call x motor crap without backing yourself up. One guy who wastes 11 grand does not a bad motor make. My own vote is for the 20B. That would be a kick ass engine for a Z and would still be nearly mid engine. Check Auxilary's "So you want to put a rotary in your Z?" post. He's still not done, but he's gone through a lot of the BS required to get there.

I'd just deal with someone else over there. Or if you know the specs of the pistons you want, then just ask him to go by the specs.

The guy at Ross is apparently failing to factor in the depth of the head gasket. I can only assume that he was wrong because of the existence of VERY thin head gaskets for V8s. You don't find those super thin gaskets on L6's, so we have our pistons pop up over the deck to get the piston closer to the head (which is a good thing for quench).

Phantom Grip is a POS, don't bother. The Nissan CLSD is available through http://www.differentials.com and http://www.reiderracing.com and runs $550 or so. KAAZ and Cusco LSDs are more, but also a better design than the Nissan unit. Welded diff should hold up very well if properly welded. Have you read the diff sticky I wrote? If not, it has a lot of info on your different options.

You always have the naysayers and the non-believers, and they can bring a thread down to a level where it is hard to read at all. I know I've been into quite a few threads that I thought made serious progress towards the understanding of a given problem DESPITE a very high level of bickering throughout. Instead of reading the attitudes, read the information. I think that thread in question was the one where Dan Baldwin was talking about the chain "twanging like a gee-tahr string" and by the end of the thread he was a convert, although it didn't seem like he changed his mind as much due to the logical thinking through of the issue as much as hearing that someone else he respected used it and thought it was worthwhile...

Any idea how much weight aluminum saves vs steel?

Looks like a really fun car to me. I'm guessing it will make one hell of an autox platform.

Started at 18 with an original owner automatic 72 Z that had been garaged it's whole life. The only damage on this car was door dings from the wife opening her car door into the front fender of the Z. I bought it after some monkey had tried to adjust the needle heights to get it to pass smog for $2000, this was in 93. Had the car for two years, I put KYBs on it and cut down the springs and that was about all I could afford at the time. A friend of mine wrecked her Z so I bought the transmission, pedal assy, clutch stuff and was ready to do the swap and then one night I decided to go to Burger King. I was waiting to turn left into the Burger King and a Camaro rear ended me. The street I was on was a 35mph speed limit, but she was going more like 50. She pushed me into head on traffic where I hit an Acura Legend that was doing maybe 30 mph. Two very hard hits later, I had broken my nose on the steering wheel, my girlfriend (now wife) had left a dent in the dash with her forehead, and my car was wrecked bad. Amazingly the later style Camaro hit the car low enough that despite the fact that it pushed in the back of the car about a foot and a half, NONE of the windows in the car broke. It was pretty incredible. So I got a Toyota truck and played around with it for a while, actually made it a pretty good autoxer, and then my wife was talking about getting a car "with character". I convinced her that she wanted a Z, and we ended up getting one about a year before we were married, or 11 years ago. That is the same Z I have today. The original plan was to build it for her to drive on the street and that's what I did. It was a great street car with fairly racey suspension and we both loved it. A while later we bought a 99 Subaru Outback, and suddenly the wife didn't drive the Z anymore. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, as it gave me a little freedom to go even more racey with the Z. Pretty soon it was placing fairly well at the local autoxes, but everything was really getting worn on the car. Finally we moved to Seattle and I parked the car. The idea was that my wife would be in school for 2.5 years, and I would spend that time upgrading and fixing various parts of the car. Her 2.5 years turned into 4, during which time she got the job she has always wanted at Seattle Children's Hospital, so after some serious considerations of our options we decided to stay here. The Z had progressed from "upgrading and fixing" to "going ALL out" and it is still in the build process at this point. It's going to be about the craziest Z, especially in regards to suspension, that I've ever seen and while I occasionally get frustrated with my lack of progress I can't wait to get the thing back on the track. It's going to be a freakin MONSTER...

You're absolutely right about this. The problem is you haven't factored in the angle of the rod BEFORE you step on the brakes. If the rod is angled down from the front of the car to the control arm, then as you step on the brakes that will try to pull the arm level like you said, which will cause nose dive on the car. If you have the angle the other way stepping on the brakes will attempt to lift the car (irrespective to the weight transfer and all the other BS, but just looking at the TC rod here) which gives anti-dive. The other thing going on is like you say, the arm wants to be straight back, so it actually tends to reduce the suspension's ability to travel at all. Same think with the trailing arm rear suspension. If you could theoretically reduce the sprung weight of the vehicle to say 20 lbs and you were to step on the brakes the suspension would go to that straight back position in the front and the rear and wouldn't move from there, or would hardly move. This is a problem with some mountain bike frame designs and is more noticeable there because the sprung weight isn't enough to overcome the braking force.

Would you drill into a different hatch? I think those you linked to will all stay on with the tape, but I think you could do something more effective if you were willing to drill. Having used a small fabricated spoiler that stuck up about 2" as a last minute mod before going to the track, I can say that I think the small lip spoilers WILL have an effect, I just don't think that it's going to be as beneficial as something that is bigger and needs drilling. And why not drill? It's not like you're keeping it stock...

When you search, you're searching "the archives".

The difference in the struts between the early and late 260s is that the rear struts have a 3" spacer on them, and your early 260 likely needs a 2" spacer. That's easy enough to fix, but I'd wait until you actually remove them before cutting anything. When you do cut them you want a couple of threads showing when the gland nut is TIGHT, so the key is cut them long, and if necessary cut them again. If you cut them short then you have to shim them back up or make a longer spacer, which is a bit of a PITA. The springs should also be compatible, but I believe the 280 springs are significantly stiffer than the 240 springs. Whether or not that's to your liking is the question.

Porsches are also known for putting doctors into trees, due to their twitchiness. Having been to a track day and watched a 911 loop in front of me when they lifted off the throttle at 100+ I might have a slightly different perspective on the issue. By the way, I'll bet that most/all of those sucessful Porsche race cars have insanely stiff suspensions to minimize the toe and camber changes. This is absolutely true. The suspension is not the limiting factor at this point. I can't speak for John, but I was simply pointing out that the toe and camber changes pretty dramatically with bump travel, so I would definitely not go to soft springs in the back to improve traction.

Are you still counting windows, doors, hood, hatch, carpet, interior panels, etc, or do you mean a bare chassis? I can't say for sure, but I think the bare chassis weight is something closer to 600 lbs. This has been talked about a long time ago but I expect it will be hard to find in the archives. Three strong guys can move a bare chassis around.

Some people blame it on lash pads or improper installation, some on using old rockers instead of replacing them when the cam gets swapped, some on the lack of the zinc in their particular oil. I seem to have only read about this problem with Schneider cams, so that's who I blame. Speeder is right though, there are lots of good threads in the archives about setting your cam up correctly and they are worth reading.