JMortensen

I had heard the "regular grease degrades the poly" myth too. I called ES before I installed the zerks and they said that the normal old grease works just fine and won't eat the bushings.

There is no kit to rebuild the LSD. The clutches are NLA. You can shim the diff tighter if you want more lockup: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=92629 If you just want to replace the bearings, that should be doable. I think they're all still available except the front pinion bearing, which is a ball bearing at the end of the pinion shaft. It is also NLA according to a recent post.

Yeah, but I'm sure nobody set the toe to 27mm toe in, which leads me to believe that something is worn out and that is what lead to the massive toe in that he had. The fact that it was that far off doesn't guarantee that something is worn out, but it should be a red flag.

Funny thing is I have the HF Unibits already, but had completely forgot about them until Cary mentioned it. Went and looked, and they only go up to 3/4". So hole saw it is.

Exactly, butt the two together in a vice and drill a hole. Then when you put the bushing in you just make sure that they go in so that the hole fits around the Zerk. I don't remember tapping the arms. I think I just drilled a hole and forced the threads on the zerk into it. The HF Zerks are metric threads, so it wouldn't be too hard to figure it out if you did want to tap the arms.

Yeah, they do come with a little packet of lube. But how long does that last? I just pulled off my sway bar bushings a while back, and the teflon tape around the bar and lube was LONG GONE. If you install a zerk, then you can lube them up whenever you lube the rest of the chassis, and they're really easy to install. Veritech, the swaybar project was pretty involved. Started out as end links and adjustable bars, ended up with all that crap. Looks like it's going to function GREAT though, so I'm excited about that...

What's the advantage in aligning to the ball joint?

The large bolt is a viable idea was what we finally figured out. The advantage is being able to lube the bushings later on. These bushings have a hell of a lot of stiction and they squeak when they dry out. I think you can do the same basic thing in the front too. I bought a package of zerk fittings from HF for ~$5. I did also "notch" the bushings so that there was a clear area around the zerk on the inside. Here a pic:

R200 pin nut torque is 137-159 ft/lbs. I don't think it's going to matter whether it is 150 or 250 if the diff uses a solid spacer instead of a crush washer for pinion bearing preload. If it did use a crush sleeve, then you'd want to tighten the nut until the preload was correct and forget about measuring exactly what that torque value is. If it's a solid spacer, you basically just need to tighten the nut tight enough so that it doesn't back off. I'd red loctite it and hit it with an impact that is known to get to 150. That's how I did mine.

You might think about installing zerk fittings into the outer end of the control arms. It's easy to do when everything is apart and then you can lube those suckers up from time to time. I installed them on the inner side too, that didn't work out so good because the inner bushing caps don't seal all the way around, but the outside worked well enough that when I wanted to pull the bushings back out I was able to hydraulic them out with a grease gun.

You might be right in that if I closed the end of the tube it would be reinforced right there. All I can tell you is that after looking at it set up the one way, I'm going to start out the other way when I get that new piece of tubing. If I don't like it, I can always cut an inch off and finish it the original way. Main reason is that when I was drilling it actually bent the tube wall a bit. I used the wrong drill bit and all the rest, I know, but the side where the hole wasn't so close didn't have that problem.

Yeah, you're pretty much stuck with a small cam due to stock FI restrictions. Schneider's Stage 3 that is carried by http://www.motorsportaut.com is about as big as you can go. Search the L6 area and you'll find lots of opinions on that cam and other options.

The longer the control arms, the less camber change you'll get. Make them as long as you can. Wheelbase is front to back. Wider front track gives better front grip. Wider rear track gives better rear grip, generally speaking.

That's a LOT of toe in. A LOT. MUCHO toe in. Is everything else in good shape, like the ball joints and tie rods? I just can't imagine that you could drive around with that much toe in all the time and not know it. I think you'd know it because the tires would be burning off the front of the car with more than an inch of toe in. 245 isn't stretched all that much on a 10" rim. 245mm = 9.64". 255 is just about perfect at 10.03". I'd flare the car properly to fix the problem you have there, and try to run 245s on a 9 and 255 or 265s on a 10, but 245 on a 10 isn't that bad.

Really? Even if he keeps the stock upper strut insulator? I seem to recall Dan Baldwin ran slotted strut towers for a long time, and he was racing the car, too.

Crap its Friday! Monday then...

Learning sucks sometimes... Figured out some things today. The control arm tube is thicker than .065. Probably more like .100. So my tubing walls look a little thin. I did go ahead and mock it up a bit since I had the tube. I cut back the rails on the control arm ~1" with a cutoff wheel. This part went fairly smoothly. Then I cut the tube to match the angle of the front frame rail on the arm. This also went smoothly. Then I went to mark where the holes would be for the adapters. OOPS!!! The edge of the holes were about only about 3/16" from the end of the tube. I had already cut my 2' stick of tube, so now there isn't enough left to make 2 new pieces that go all the way to the end. Not really a big deal since it looks like the tubing isn't thick enough anyway. So I need to buy another stick of tubing, cut it to the full length of the arm, and get it in .120 wall. Then I went to drill holes. Needed 1" holes for the adapters. I'm thinking that I should go buy a hole saw, but then I have regular drill bits all the way up to 1", so why not try that first. I'll tell you why! When you try to drill through thin metal like that with a big drill bit and a HF drill press that has about 1/4" slop at the chuck, the hole isn't exactly what you'd describe as "round". At this point I figured F it and drilled the holes anyway and then cleaned them up enough to fit the adapters in with a carbide burr. I also figured out that with the tube flush to the end of the flat plate on the control arm the length of the control arm is about 3/16" longer than stock. So when I hack up my control arms that I'm actually going to use, I will cut another 3/16" back from the edge of the plate. So it looks like tomorrow is the day. I'm going to order up the same tubing with .120 wall, get a hole saw, and start cutting on my control arms. It really doesn't look like it's going to be that bad, but as usual, I never seem to get it right on the first try.

What makes you so sure it's the zinc? As I said before, I'm running oil that has no zinc content, I've had 3 cams in the current head all with the same rocker arms, never resurfaced the arms. The rockers have about 250,000 miles on them altogether. Could it be something else?

Having worked for several others and now owning a mail order business I suspect that Bartman is right. One dumbass salesman or warehouse dude and he can screw up just about any order. I'm glad we have businesses that cater to Z owners. We have only a small fraction of the contingent of Mustang owners, or Camaro owners, etc. who are looking for parts so while not excusing the mistakes, we should appreciate the fact that the businesses are even there. Not just MSA, but Victoria British, Modern Motorsports, Arizona Z Car, Reaction Research, Bad Dog Z Parts, all those guys deserve kudos. Maybe I just feel that way because I talk to my friends with 510s and they have a hard time finding ANY parts for their cars.

I have coilovers and I was running Toy 4 piston calipers on solid rotors. New setup will be Wilwoods, we'll see if I get forced into a larger diameter rim. I'm not nearly there so I probably won't figure that out for 6 months at least at the rate I'm going. I don't think you'll fit that 15 x 9 under a stock fender without the coilovers.

Any good machine shop can straighten a crank. If you want the stroker do the stroker, but it isn't necessary to replace this crankshaft.

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I didn't even think about adjusting wheelbase side to side. Right now my car is straight, but who knows what will happen later in it's life. I think I'll use spacers. Do you think the safety washer is still necessary if I use the 5/8" bolt? The head of the bolt and the nut would certainly be big enough that it couldn't slide through the rod end.

Another good point. I suppose it all depends on the parts you are using, but it's a pretty good guess that most people are using Z sliders.

I see now why this says delete me. I responded to the wrong post I guess. I did delete your other one so now the original question is gone. Would you mind restating it?