JMortensen

I believe the VLSD has a higher spline count. It does in the longnose R200.

Looks pretty normal to me compared to the red one. Looks like the red one has a little added caster from stock.

First thing is what you were doing before pulling the plugs. The way to read plugs properly is to go WOT, then kill the engine and step on the clutch at a given rpm. Pull over and read the plugs right there on the side of the road. Then as mentioned, you have to actually know how to read plugs, and hardly anyone does. The easiest and cheapest way to get a good idea of what is going on is to weld an O2 bung into your exhaust collector and run a single wire narrowband O2 to a voltmeter inside the car. Get a good quality narrowband O2 (I used Bosch) and you'll get repeatable, accurate results. Shoot for about .8V on the voltmeter. Wideband is better, but narrowband will get you close, and it only costs ~$30 assuming you have to buy the O2, the voltmeter, and the wire to connect it all up.

OK I've got a bunch, but I'll just share a dirtbike story for Tom: A couple friends and I are riding the Backbone trail at Hungry Valley in Gorman, CA. We're cruising up the hill and I'm way out in front on my old DR350. I stop to check on my friends, who were swapping bikes. One had a new CR500 and the other a very old RM400. I see them pull behind a gigantic juniper bush and then I don't see them anymore. About then a guy on a RM250 comes screaming by me like he's on a motocross course. He rounds the corner with the juniper bush, and then all hell breaks loose. I see nothing less than the RM guy with crazy speed wobbles go flying off what looks like a cliff!!! Suddenly bikes and ATVs that I didn't even realize were there are racing down to the scene. Turns out that my friends were swapping bikes as I thought, and right as the guy in front got on the bike and fired it up (wasn't even in gear yet), the racer idiot came around the corner. They hit handlebars and the idiot's bars went under my friends and caught his thumb, pulling it backwards and breaking it in 3 places. He fell over at 0 mph. The idiot got the aforementioned speed wobbles and did go over a very steep embankment, not quite a cliff. His bike ended up way down the hill, but he ended up going over the bars and landing in another very large bush. People rushed to his aid, and to everyone's surprise he was totally fine. My friends and I started back down the trail and back to our truck. He rode that CR500 about 5 miles with no thumb, had to grab the clutch with his right hand to shift. Got there and cut his glove off and his thumb looked nasty. He passed out from the pain and we loaded up the bikes and took him to the hospital. He ended up getting the thumb pinned back together and now has made a full recovery. I guess the irony was that he was on the biggest baddest bike available at the time and was seriously hurt while doing exactly 0 mph.

No, it has more to do with the flexy chassis the Z has. The chassis on a stock Z will flex in a corner, or when the ground becomes uneven. Pull into an uneven driveway at an angle and listen to all the creaking of the interior pieces and you'll see what I mean. If you get over about 250 in/lb springs the body starts flexing when the car hits bumps in the road. In order to prevent this you need to start installing strut tower bars and other chassis stiffeners. All those aforementioned chassis rigidity and handling threads will show different ideas and implementations of solutions for those issues.

I think you could make it better (SCCA legal?) for the side impact issue by running another bar from the middle of the door bars down to the rocker, or if you wanted you could run another bar right on top of the rocker, then run a bar from the middle of the existing bar down to it. I really like Steve Parmley's setup for door bars, that's probably the one that I'll copy: The only thing I think I might do differently is to have the front end of the top door bar be lower to make it easier to climb in and out.

You can reuse the little S shaped brake line that comes off the stock caliper and attach that to a standard 240 Z brake line. That's what I did. The other option is to get a brake line that plugs into the caliper directly with a male end then has the female end for the attachment to the hard line on the frame. I haven't done it that way, but there isn't any reason it shouldn't work that I can see. You might be better off with an angled piece that comes off the caliper. I think you'll need to look at your car to see which is better.

It looks like an improvement on the G Machine style eccentric adjuster in that it has a lockdown mechanism. In fact there was a post on classiczcars.com where a rally racer was describing an eccentric and this sounds a lot like his description. He was saying that camber plates aren't allowed by AU or NZ law (can't remember which country it was--sorry) but that this type of camber adjuster was. I would prefer a camber plate up top as they are easier to adjust, and as always, eccentrics in the front mess with bumpsteer. There was another similar thread where a guy had redrilled his crossmember using JTRs 3/4" up 1/4" out suggestion and then was installing G Machine bushings. Unless everything is perfectly straight this seems counterproductive to me, because one camber adjuster is going to be at a different position than the other, so the bumpsteer will be different one side to the other. It's a minor complaint though, and I do think it looks a lot better than the G Machine setup, and it could be used with rubber or poly bushings, so it has those things in its favor.

I had problems sealing my L6 powered 240's windshield. In fact just about every 240 I've ever been in has had a leaky windshield. Most of them were driven hard. As has been said in many threads in the past, hard cornering should flex the chassis a lot more than 450 whp. I've also torn up radiators on my car from front frame rails flexing. I don't know that the two issues of torque and windshield sealing or radiator failure are necessarily that directly related. If you're just going straight, I wouldn't bother with a whole bunch of chassis strengthening. If you plan to turn, look out! There are TONS of threads dealing with chassis rigidity and handling. If you want to get some tips on how to strengthen the chassis, you need only look for those threads.

Sounds like the clutch hydraulics are shot.

I think Mike was trying to respond to a previous post, but actually created a new one instead. Mike, if you want to respond to a post just click on the paper and quill icon that is just to the right of the Edit and Quote icons at the bottom of a thread. This will get the cursor blinking in the Message box at the bottom and you just type your thread there and then click the Post Quick Reply button. If you click on Go Advanced that will take you to another screen where you have more options as to the layout of your response. If I'm wrong and this is intended to be a new post, then we have plenty of happy Arizona Z Car customers here and their brake kit by all accounts is a huge step up from stock on the early Z. Should be the same on the ZX.

Got a look at the car. It was hit about 4" in front of the rear bumper. The frame rails are perfectly straight, but the tail lights and bumper were toast as was the trunk lid and the RR corner was dented a bit. The bluebook on the car is low, so they were going to total it, but apparently my grandmother-in-law found a shop that used junkyard tail lights, bumper and trunk lid to fix it. I couldn't even tell where it had been hit. So it's basically a pristine looking 87 Turbo Coupe automatic. Looks like my father-in-law has made his intention of getting the car pretty clear, so I think we're pretty much a go on this one. Need to get that rule book.

I know of a couple racers who have adjusted each cylinder independently. I think it's overkill for everything but the most highly tuned race engine.

Wow! Very nice. I love the door bars, and I love the A pillar bars. Very tight to the body of the car. Question: How are you welding the top of the bars that are next to the ceiling? I'm contemplating how to do this myself, and I've heard three solutions: 1. cut off roof, weld bars, weld roof back on 2. cut holes in roof, weld bars, patch roof 3. leave bars hanging low enough to access top of the bars I don't like option 3, and it almost seems like option 1 is easier than option 2. What did you do? Was it one of these or something else entirely?

Yeah, this sounds like wrong sleeve thickness to me. Here's a good webpage for that: http://www.zparts.com/zptech/articles/trans_swap%20parts/4tobear_specs1.html Also I know the auto has a spacer for the flexplate. I don't know how thick it is, as I've never converted auto to manual, but if it is possible to put the flywheel on top of the spacer, that would give you the same effect as having a spacer that was too long.

A class that allows an RB in a 82 ZX probably won't have any issues with diffusers, because it's likely to be some unlimited class or other. If you're talking about SCCA racing, you can download the rulebooks online from their website. Start with the rulebook and work from there.

I was referring to this one from DP:

GC makes two different plates. The "road race" plate is the one pictured in this thread and it requires that you cut the top of strut tower and drill the 4 holes. The other type is a "biscuit" type that I think attaches without cutting or drilling, but has more limited adjustment. It is similar to the EMI plate. Design Products makes both styles and has them on their website, but I don't have the link for you (out of town). Maybe someone else will pipe up.

This has been answered too many times... thread closed.

Do you have a cast? If so, just you wait. You'll be looking like you want to be "ridden" when they take that thing off. I've never done so much physical therapy as when I had my cast taken off. Limpwristed was an understatement...

I think the ones that they have for a Z would work on a ZX. The main issue is that you'd want to have room to make the arms shorter on a ZX for more caster, where you want longer on the Z to add caster. You should be able to measure the existing rod and see if the aftermarket ones are longer or shorter, then you can get a shorter turnbuckle if you need it.

The machinist you use can get the valves for you. Also, you might consider some stainless valves. There is a guy in OR who is selling 280Z stainless valves for pretty cheap. There has been a thread on that seller (also sells on ebay I think) in the last few months, so it shouldn't be too hard to dig up. One other option is to pull valves out of an old N head. Either N42 or N47 works, and most of these heads haven't had valve trouble or more than one valve job.

No reason for downshifting to cause the booster to blow, nor should the engine vacuum cause it. kcelectronics is right that the bigger cam should mean less vacuum. I think you just got a bad booster. I'm going to move this thread to brakes/suspension/chassis where it belongs.

This is the reason why I disagree with John about where the strut should be sectioned. If you did it right up at the top, maybe 2" from the very top of the tube, you could do a really messy weld and get in there and grind whatever you needed to grind out. With the section way down low you're kind of screwed. I don't think you'll have enough room with another piece of tubing in there. Exhaust tubing is generally the cheapest crap they can get. You might see if there is a tube that fits that you can buy from http://www.onlinemetals.com or similar sites. You can buy one foot and that should be more than enough.