JMortensen

I think you're charting new territory. Good luck and keep us posted!

Looks fine to me. Should be a fun dual purpose car.

Just about any lowering spring is going to be loose like that. Again, unless your doing Dukes of Hazzard style jumps, it really doesn't matter.

I fixed your title. Try to make it so that the title is descriptive enough so that people know what's in the thread without opening it. This makes it easier for other people to search.

I've read that same book and I thought that was a funny thing for him to say at the time, but then I thought that you really have to put that comment in context. If you have a lot of droop like just about any Z with coilovers, then you have to get A LOT of air for the spring to come completely uncompressed. If you were driving a formula car with 3" of travel and the spring could come off of the perch at the top of that travel, that would be a problem and I think that's what he's talking about.

As a strict rule U-joints are stronger than CV's. In the case of a Z, the commonly available CV's are MUCH stronger than the commonly available U-joints. The stock halfshafts are a carry over from the 510, so the original design was for a 1600cc 4 cylinder car that barely weighed 2200 lbs. That's why I said if the U-joints are a lot bigger than stock you might keep them, but otherwise I'd go for a CV swap. I don't know if it really matters to you since this is more of a straight line car apparently, but the stock halfshafts are not just a simple slip yoke. They have big ball bearings inside that allow it to slip even under hard acceleration. These custom units look to be a more simple slip yoke. The issue there is that the torque from accelerating might not allow the slip yoke to compress and that might lock the suspension up. I don't know that for sure, that's just a guess looking at a small picture over the internet, so take that for what it is worth.

You might check the size of the U-joints on the halfshafts, but unless they're really big I'd still look at a CV conversion. Looks like someone welded weird ends on the mustache bar as well, as if to solidly mount it to the frame rail there and attempted to elminate the bushing in a weird way. Funky car. Am I correct in assuming it was built for drag racing?

I think buZy has this right. The other reason to limit droop is to limit body roll, but that doesn't look to be the case here. Search "droop limiters" and you'll probably find a bunch of threads where Cary (tube80z) talks about them as an autox modification.

My first Z was $2500 and I bought it from the original owner. Was rear ended at 50 mph about a year and a half later. This has got to be 13 years ago now. Current Z was $1500, bought it 10 years ago. Also bought a 80ZX for parts for $500 running and drove it 150 miles home. Have also purchased an 82 ZX for parts with a blown head gasket for $150, and a rusty 72 for $100. My brother-in-law Mat gets all the deals. Got a SWEET extremely rust free and mostly original 71 about 2 years ago for $500 (!), essentially bought a whole Z parts junkyard for $2000 (price was cheap but moving all the stuff was a bitch and a half). He now has another 240 and a ZX as well, but I have no idea how much he paid for those.

It's impossible for me to say for sure from here why his car reacts that way, but in theory the car with the V8 mounted further back should be the better turning car. I suspect the issue with this guy's car was one of setup, but again, impossible to say for sure. Look at just about any modern front engine/rear driver sports car and you'll see the same thing... S2000, Vette, etc. Engine is stuffed way in the back of the it's compartment in an attempt to get the PMOI to a minimum. They certainly don't do that to make them easy to work on...

10K is WAY too high to be even close to a believable number for an L24 on a $5K budget, let alone an L31. Also 230 hp is WAY low for a stroker with induction and a cam to spin that high. I don't suppose you have any dyno sheets to show us regarding this miraculously high winding and low powered L series...

This was titled: "Can someone tell me what you think?" The answer is I think that is the worst title for a thread I've seen in a long time. I changed the title, cpt jack in the future please try to use titles that give others an idea of what is in the thread before they open it. Helps other people search more efficiently.

Savage42's comments are a bit counterintuitive. Usually road racers move the engine BACK to reduce polar moment of inertia. GT2 Z cars move the L engine back for example. I've never ever heard of a road racer moving the engine forward to get more weight on the front wheels. That said, if the guy with the Scarab mounting position can go fast at an autox, he must be doing something right. I wonder what the same car would do with the engine in the JTR position... As far as the diff goes, there is one clutch LSD that came in a 87-89 300ZX turbo that is particularly weak. They used a big spacer inside instead of adding 2 more clutches to the clutch stack. This is a cheesy money saving thing to do, and we've seen several people strip the clutch tabs off of the one remaining clutch and then the LSD doesn't work anymore. However, the Power Brute LSD has a full stack and they should be MUCH more durable. They are well worth the price of ~$500 through http://www.reiderracing.com or http://www.differentials.com. If you want to spend more you can get an even better unit from KAAZ or Cusco.

AZC sells aluminum 5/8" TC rods and has for quite a while. I used 3/4" aluminum rods for 6 years or so without any issues and put 40K miles on them, autoxed and track days on everything from sticky street tires all the way up to slicks. 74_5.0_Z had an incident with a swedged rod where the rod hit the frame and bent, but that was due to his tube frame design, and not necessarily a weakness in the rod. Just food for thought.

Man, will someone just crush that thing so we don't have to have threads about it every time it goes on ebay??? This has to be at least the 4th time...

It's a great write up, but it only affects the 10 or 15 people that bought Phyxius's clutches, so maybe not sticky material.

Should be a 3.54 R200.

Yeah, cutoff wheel is what I've used for any spot welds that have needed to be removed since that portion of the project. I didn't try to remove the floor pans at all, and there may be some areas that are hard to get at near the rockers (just guessing) but the wheel would definitely be my tool of choice. You may want to look at one of the spot weld cutters too. That might even be better, I just never wanted to shell out the money for one.

Your local machinist can turn some from aluminum stock for you. I don't think there is a supplier for this in the aftermarket.

If you're shooting for a land speed record I would agree that less drag is crucial. I think the focus of a wind tunnel test for a LSR Z car would be TOTALLY different than one for a road race car. I had assumed since the talk previously was about increasing downforce that we this testing was going to be geared at cars that need to turn. Decreasing drag is also great, but if it requires a huge extension on the back of the car, well I haven't seen that one in the MSA catalog. I feel that since we are talking mostly about 2500 lb cars with turbos and V8s drag shouldn't be the BIGGEST concern. Certainly a concern, but maybe not the biggest. I'm definitely arguing for my own interests, so keep my somewhat selfish motives in mind...

365 kph might have had something to do with it...

Chop saws aren't for straight cuts in my experience. They're for rough cuts. Try a metal cutting band saw. I think you'll LOVE having one, especially with the project you're getting into. My $160 HF special bandsaw doesn't cut perfectly straight either, but it's close enough, and it's WAAAAAY better than a chopsaw. I can't believe how much easier the bandsaw made all of my projects. This is basically the one that I have, only mine is green and was a bit less expensive (must have been on sale): http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=93762 If you have the $$$ and the room, this looks like a much better unit: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=93507

I'm wondering why the ricer wing is out the door. There is no doubt that a big wing can make big downforce, and pretty much all serious road racing classes use a large wing in the rear for downforce, ALMS LMP1 and LMP2, GT, GT2, Daytona Prototype, even the lower classes are using them now, Speed GT and Touring classes, as well as almost every open wheel racer since the 70s. I'm just thinking that you guys may end up with a "Moby Dick" Porsche when this is all done sans the tail, and that won't really help anyone that doesn't want a 3' extension on the back of their car. http://www.geocities.com/simontmallett/mobydick3.html

Cut open a lower frame rail. Same extremely thin metal. It is a duct for fresh air, but look at where the strut tower attaches, and it's right at that frame rail. Without that structure there, the struts really are basically being held up by the fenderwells.

I have to disagree with everyone who is saying to save this car. Those aren't really inner fenderwells. They are the UPPER FRAME RAILS. That car is toast in my opinion. You could put it back together for the sake of learning how to build a car from the ground up (literally), but it's a waste of time and money. Maybe if it was a 54 Ferrari or something, but since it's a Z, I'd strongly suggest getting something in better shape to start with. Personally, I wouldn't drive that sucker faster than about 15 mph. It might completely disintegrate and I wouldn't want to go too fast in case I had to "run it out".