JMortensen

I always tensioned it by hand, so I doubt i hit the 15 ft lb mark, but I do think they moved, because you could feel the bar tighten up. It was very similar on my bars that went to the firewall. Those would just keep tightening and tightening because the firewall wasn't sturdy enough where I attached my clevises. Regardless, I don't think it really matters on a stock Z with strut bars. The strut towers flex so much anyway that if you distort the strut towers .010" one way or the other I just can't see that tiny change making a real difference to the driver, especially when the strut towers are still flexing all over the place anyway. They do serve a purpose and they do make a HUGE difference, but they aren't going to positively locate the strut towers in relation to the rest of the chassis by any stretch of the imagination.

I tension mine up a bit, but I really don't think it makes much of a difference. In the Z they get pushed and pulled on especially with stiff springs, so if there is slop in the bearings, the real solution is to replace the bearings. I doubt that anyone could ever tell that there were slop in the bearings from the driver's seat though...

The sway bars are intended to follow along with the suspensions movement as long as it is even from one side to the other. It's doubtful that installing the bar would lift the front end noticeably, because the only thing that would be trying to lift the car would be the end link bushings. Preload is when the bar is unevenly loaded with the driver's weight. When you put the driver in the car, the left side sags down further than the right. You can remove the preload by disconnecting one side of the bar and loosening the other with the driver in his seat and then shimming the bushings so that they are not preloaded when you start to tighten them down. Then tighten evenly. You can get it more precisely dialed in with rod end links, but with poly or stock end links that's about the best you can do.

I don't think his car has CV flange bolts. It's pretty hard to figure out what the problem is based on your description, but I'd be looking for interference with the brake cables, etc as Pop said, and also looking at the U-joints on the driveshaft and halfshafts.

How about an Accusump? Get a bigger one, like a 2 or 3 qt model and that gives you more time before you run out of oil. It would also help if you ever did starve for oil under lateral g forces, and I'm guessing it might be simpler than modding the engine, don't know for sure though...

You need backlash in your ring and pinion gears. Backlash is one of those settings that doesn't really change unless something REALLY bad happens to the differential. Backlash might be .005 to .007" when you measure it at the ring gear. When you measure it at the pinion it gets magnified. 15 degrees sounds totally fine to me. If you got another differential it would also need to have backlash as well so it probably would not help. If you think I'm wrong you could pull the diff, take off the rear cover and measure the backlash to be sure its within spec, but I'd bet that it is. One other thing to check for clunking is the splines on the stub axles. As they wear the stubs can rotate a bit causing a clunk. Solution is to replace the stub axles and companion flanges.

Search here and at classiczcars.com and you'll find the discussions you're looking for. No need to rehash the whole issue again.

That was an awesome race! The RX7 driver was REALLY good in traffic. Funny thing too is the guy at the end in the tan shirt and brown shorts with the accent who says "Good f'ing race man. You guys are free to go whenever you want" is my ex-boss, Per Heldin! He was the service manager for the Volvo dealership I worked at in about 95. Raced an ITSS Firebird. Cool guy!

No, I didn't see that. I thought that was grease. If that is really welded together, you're probably going to have to get another rack, because even if you were able to turn the inner tie rod off of the threads, you'd really screw up the threads. Maybe if the weld isn't too deep you can grind through it, but it looks like a good weld to me, now that I realize it's a weld...

That is interesting. I guess I need to buy the cam I want and then test it for clearance.

I just checked the FSM for you since I had better luck with carfiche.com. It says "Check the inner for play and replace if necessary" which isn't too helpful, but when it describes installing the inner it says:

Looks like a pretty simple double nut setup there. Just spin the inner nut off of the tie roe end by putting a punch in one of the holes and hitting it with a hammer. Once you break it loose the tie rod should come off. I'd imagine that the inner is tightened down until the threads bottom on the rack, and then the 2nd nut is tightened down to prevent the tie rod from backing off.

Nah, I'd start from scratch and spend 1/2 as much money. This is not as bad, but still kind of like the Frisselle car. BEAUTIFUL car, but why spend $275K on a 240Z when you could build 6 or 7 similar cars (and not skimp at all) for that kind of money. You're paying a LOT for the Bob Sharp name on this one, so in the spirit of Hybrid Z I'd build my own instead...

I changed your title. We like it to be clear enough that any user should know what is in the thread without having to open it.

Flares? I don't think it's going to work without flares...

That's basically what most sportbikes run. The carbs are very similar to SU's. Since people have modded the sportbike carbs and installed them on an L6, I'd say it's already been done, but not with Z SU's to my knowledge.

Beowulf, when you post something we want users to be able to understand what the subject of your post is without opening it up. This helps others identify useful posts when they are searching the archives. I'm changing your title to make the subject clear.

Really??? This is interesting... When I assembled my engine I did not cut valve reliefs in the pistons and thought that I had missed out on that opportunity. Is a machinist able to cut the reliefs without diassembling the bottom end? That would open up a lot of possibilities for a larger cam for me... Compressed stock gasket thickness is .052". That means with my standard pistons and the stock gasket, I should be in the .029" range. Does that sound right? I realize now I should have measured when I was assembling, but I was in a bit of a hurry at the time...

Nissan Comp sells R&P sets, although who knows how many they have left. Currently they show 4.11 and 3.70 gears in stock at $650 on Courtesy Nissan's site. A new ring and pinion for a Chevy is ~$225, so I'd figure an aftermarket set should be somewhere in the middle, maybe $350 to $400. Personally I wouldn't try to set up a used set of gears in a new housing. The R diffs are so damn noisy as it is, and if you don't get them set just right they're going to howl. I'd try to find a diff with the correct gear ratio. Old Skylines came with the 4.375s, 3.70's are common in the Z31s. The 3.36's are tough to find and only came in the 74 and 79 2+2s as I recall.

Long: http://store.summitracing.com/partdetail.asp?autofilter=1&part=ARP%2D100%2D7713&N=700+115&autoview=sku Short: http://store.summitracing.com/partdetail.asp?autofilter=1&part=ARP%2D100%2D7708&N=700+115&autoview=sku These have 12mm x 1.5 threads, so you'll need new lug nuts. They fit the front hubs too.

I'd like to see a back to back comparison before I agree with your statement. I think the scavenging effect you referred to is somewhat overrated. I think most of the CP Z cars back in the day used true dual exhaust. Hard to believe that racers would carry around the extra weight of two complete sets of pipes if there was no benefit to it at all. You don't see many Porsche racers running single outlet exhaust either. You also need to factor in header design as it is critical to making power. Most cheap header systems are pretty crappy. Katman has referred to this before on many occasions, and I think his general conclusion was that the Nissan Comp header was the cheapest one worth buying from a performance upgrade standpoint. I'm still fairly convinced that my MSA 6-1 header did provide an increase in power, but I have no dyno sheet to back that up, and there is the possibility that my butt dyno misinterpreted louder exhaust for more power. Tube diameters and muffler restriction are less critical, but also can have a significant effect. I seem to remember the diameter being pretty small on the twice pipes setup. You can figure out the area of a circle using pi x r^2, and if you think your car should be set up with 2.5" single exhaust, that means that you have an area of 4.9 sq in. For duals to have the same area they would need to be roughly 1.75" each. I think a lot of people figure that one 5" pipe flows the same as 2 2.5" pipes, but it is not that way. So that means more weight that you're carrying around, because you have to carry two pipes that are fairly large compared to the single pipe.

Longer springs is the answer to raising the rear. You can increase the spring rate too, but if you're just trying to hit a particular ride height you just need springs long enough to get you there. I wonder how much travel you have with the car set like this. Have you ever measured? The thing to do is jack the car up, put a zip tie on the bottom of the strut shaft and then set it back down. Roll it around a bit to settle the suspension, then jack it back up and see where you're at. If your struts aren't sectioned, I'd bet you're running about two inches off the bump stop. Remember how low my car was at Marina? Well that's because I would lower the ride height when I got there, and then raise it back up about 3" when I went home so that I wasn't driving on the bumpstops all the time. It was about an inch and a half off the stops at this height:

Changing your title. "Important question, thanks!" doesn't give any hint of what is actually in the thread. We want the thread titles to let the users know what the thread is about BEFORE they open the thread, so that when they're searching for something else they don't have to look in this thread to figure out that it is about a clutch engagement issue.

L28 rod is spec'd at 130.2 in the How to Modify book. Courtesy Nissan shows 130.5 and also 5.13" 5.13" is 130.302mm, so ??? I never realized this was an issue before... A 1mm gasket is .040" thick, so if you used one you'd have .035" clearance due to your .005" pop up height. Sounds like you're right in the ballpark to me.