JMortensen

If you want to quickly and easily remove neg camber, as in drive to an autox, adjust in more neg camber, drive, then adjust it back out and drive home, then what you really want is camber plates. Attaching the sway bar to the strut instead of the control arm is a great idea and is commonly done on BMWs and Volvos and some other european car brands. I couldn't figure out how to get it done easily when I modified my sway bars, so I ended up attaching to the control arm again. There are pictures of Vic Sias's car floating around and he has them attached to the struts, but he was using some tiny rod ends as I recall. I don't think the forces that the control arm would be subjected to via the sway bars would be that significant compared to lateral forces from cornering for instance.

One thing I've figured out since the last time we were discussing this is that a 5/8" rod end only allows about 5/16" adjustment before you're technically setting it too far out. The rule is 1.5x the diameter needs to be engaged in the threads, which is 15/16" and the threaded section is only 1.25" long. The on the car adjustable style would allow you to double that length because you're splitting the distance between two threaded ends, so you could go out 5/8" with those. Plus if you've got a turnbuckle there you can buy a longer one (easy to find at places like Coleman Racing and AFCO) and get more negative camber without turning the rod ends so far out of the control arm. I still think "on the car adjustable" front control arms don't make too much sense, because you still have to adjust the toe every time you make an adjustment anyway, so it's not like you just move it and then drive away. To recap, if you're looking to adjust camber, there really isn't that much adjustment to be had and still fill the bearing manufacturer's safety requirements. If you want to increase camber, a longer control arm would be the way to go because you can lengthen the arm without having more threads exposed. If you get the on the car adjustable ones, you can buy a longer turnbuckle to change the length of the arm. The on the car adjustable ones don't get you away from the fact that you still need to change the toe any time you make and adjustment.

Are you running the stock FI? It doesn't like big cams. With a slightly larger cam I was able to get mid 20's mileage on the highway with triple Mikunis.

I believe Ross sells the whole kit with the CV's and adapters. You should email him directly to find out. He can take a while to respond sometimes so be patient.

I didn't realize that was an option. That certainly makes things easier...

If you have a camber gauge you can measure caster with it, but I think you really need slip plates to get an accurate measurement. The way to do it is to measure the camber with the wheels straight ahead, then turn them and measure the camber again. The amount of camber change can be calculated to find the caster measurement. The guy who made my adjustable TC rods tried to adjust the caster using a protracted angle drawn on his shop floor and what he gave me was I think 3 or 4 degrees off of what he said it was when I actually put the car on an alignment rack. The math works, so I think it is just moving the wheels the right number of degrees that is the tricky bit.

You should post in the vendor's forum about having had them made. If people are smart you won't be sitting on them very long.

Thanks for taking the time to take the Quaife apart and compare the two. This one is a sticky for sure!

One word of warning about cutting the flange off an existing header... some of them are REALLY CRAPPY!!! Look in the tubes and see how pinched off they are. Mine were probably only about 60% open due to whatever process was used to make the round tubing into square.

I know you're not asking me, but I wouldn't do it. Like BRAAP says, the angularity of the joint causes it to be used in a position where it is not strongest. While a stronger U-joint might hold down more power, it's still being used at a weak angle in your ZX due to the semi-trailing arm suspension design. CV joints don't have this problem with angularity (up to a point) and it's already been proven by others that they can hold down a lot more power than the 1/2 shafts. I'd put your money into CV adapter pieces and get the CV's in there instead.

Let's focus on the solidworks stuff and keep the corporate America BS out of it, OK???

You could also try some toe in out back and that would help quite a bit too, assuming you have the G Machine bushings or some other way to adjust rear toe.

That sounds just like the Torsen info that I linked to. The Torsen info said that the side gears both moved in the same direction. The Ford "Goldtrak" differential is a gear driven unit that you can actually buy different helical gears for and they have differently pitched helixes, some more aggressive than others. I don't think that this is the ONLY way to stiffen up the diff though. John Coffey sent his Quaife out to EMI and they preloaded it differently to stop his from spinning the inside tire in long sweepers. And like I said before, some of the Trachtech Trutracs have a bolt and wedge type thing that you can tighten to adjust the preload. I think what you're basically doing there is taking out the slop in the side gears, which allows less (possibly no) movement before the spiral gears start to hit the case, which is what creates the friction and limits the slip.

Fair enough. Just be advised that I hate strawberries. You might hate butterscotch. Doesn't make either of us wrong. Likewise on the suspension preferences.

Those are awfully expensive flares for a cost cutting measure. Have you considered the MAS flares? I think they're about the cheapest. http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=118582

There are really way too many variables to make this discussion worthwhile in my opinion. I'm not going to close the thread, but I just wanted to make the point. The biggest unknown is the person who is telling you how the car handles. I fought a never ending push on my Z, could never get the front end hooked up how I wanted, but one of my friends in particular would spin the same car EVERY SINGLE TIME HE DROVE IT. We both had autoxed for years and we would put in times that were generally within .3 seconds or so of each other, him in his 510 and me in my Z. This is why I feel that this whole discussion is basically pointless. It's like asking "What flavor of ice cream do I like?" We don't know. The best thing to do is figure out how you would like the car to handle and then build and modify it to suit your tastes. Now if you said, "My car pushes, what can I do to correct that" or "Once the rear end lets go I can't get it back" then we could have a discussion about that, because the things that will cure a pushing or a loose Z are fairly universal, and what you would really want to do is figure out to what degree you want to utilize those adjustments on your car to suit your tastes.

No sorry, don't agree with that. I see the springs as performing much the same function as the belleville springs in my Nissan CLSD. Although they have an effect on preload that is not actually their main function. Their main function is to make the diff perform more smoothly. You can preload the non-sprung Nissan diffs just as easily and effectively as the sprung diffs (detailed info here): http://www.gordon-glasgow.org/lsd1.asp Since I used to sell the Tru-trac and get complaints constantly about how it made crunching noises when turning, I can understand why the springs are added, and I think it is specifically to prevent those noises. As I've said before, I had a model Tru-trac sitting on my desk for months and I have put some time into understanding how they work, so I'm pretty confident that I'm right in this case...

Thanks for the link! The site must have just moved.

From Dennis Hale on another site (although he is a member here too):

Quaifes and OBX's are 1 way diffs and act just like an open diff on decel. The springs have nothing to do with deceleration. I guess my arguments haven't convinced you of that though, and I seem to have run out of internet available proof like the Tru-trac exploded view and diagrams that were on that old thread. Oh well, I tried...

You don't want to put torrington bearings in there because you'll reduce the friction and the torque bias ratio.

If you've got them both then you have the valves you need from the N head to go into the P head when you shave it, if you want to go that way. There was a website by a guy named Bryan Little that had the whole procedure and it is apparently now gone, but basically you shave .080 off the head, shim the cam towers up .080 and use the N42 or N47 valves. That restores the valvetrain geometry and keeps the timing chain tight. If you're going with a new cam (and you should with your goals) you'll still need to mess with lash pads and all that crap. If you're going to try and push the hp limits on pump gas, the P head is in my opinion superior due to it's better combustion chamber design and will allow you to run more compression and timing without pinging. This is an argument that has been gone over many times, so if you want to get the other side of the story, just search quench. The subject was positively BEATEN TO DEATH a few years ago so we really probably don't need to do it all over again.

speeder is probably right, it's probably a missing or nfg button inside the cap that would cause spark at the coil but none at the plug wires. That or the brass part of the top of the rotor is busted off or something. Should be right in that area. I got a little confused yesterday as I thought the last picture was the distributor in the car. That is the ZX distributor. I think you might have the early one in the vehicle now though, is that right??? If that is so, and you wanted to try the ZX dizzy, it's REALLY easy. That black part with the green paint on it in the last pic is the module. I was too lazy to look it up yesterday, but B goes to + and C goes to - on the coil. You will want to jump the ballast resistor for max spark power. That's pretty much all there is to it for wiring as far as making it spark. I'm not entirely sure but I don't think that the old FI system has anything to do with the spark at all, so I think you can swap this out easily and with no other side effects.

Correct. Think Ferrari, Ducati, etc...

Hey, do you think we could get you to pull apart the Quaife when it shows up? I was able to find numerous threads that say that they're identical to Quaifes internally, but none actually showed the two diffs apart side by side. I was also able to find several places that talked about replacing the crappy springs that they come with. You might not want to rule that out as a fix yet. Unfortunately I've looked and I can't find any pictures like we had on that other thread where they show force vectors and all that for the Quaife or the Torsen that works basically the same way as the Quaife (can't remember if that is the Type I or II). Here's another bit to continue the discussion from last night. If you just wanted to spread the side gears apart to create friction on the case, you wouldn't need all the spiral gears. You could go as cheap and easy as a Phantom Grip setup with two big plates that fit between the side gears with springs in between to force the gears apart. But that's not really what the gear driven units do. Its true that the side gears will get PART of the load, but by using the spiral gears you can really reduce the loading on any one part by spreading it out on many surfaces inside the diff. The side gears force the spiral gears out against the case, and so the friction is created by the tips of the spirals rubbing on the inside of the case as well as the ends of the spirals rubbing on the springs, and the spirals meshing with each other. The drive from the side gears to the spirals, and then their hitting the inside of the case DOES in the end push the side gears as well, but that is not the primary friction producer. In fact in the torsen diff, both side gears actually move in the SAME direction, Either they both go to the right or both to the left. I did find this on zhome.com and it explains the OTHER type of helical LSD with force vectors and all that stuff and has pictures of all the gears and how they move. The big difference between this one and yours is that the spiral gears are held on shafts. This forces them to the end of the shaft and it is then ONLY the ends of the gears and their teeth that produce the friction, where the Quaife and OBX and the other style torsen don't have any shafts for the spirals to ride on, so they actually move side to side (move into the springs) and also move away from the side gears until they come into contact with the case, where the end of the gears (toe) can drive against the inside of the case itself. http://zhome.com/ZCMnL/tech/Torsen/Torsen.htm