JMortensen

That makes me think that maybe the end link bushings were gone and the washers cut into the control arm. You could pretty easily add some metal to reinforce that area. Haven't seen that failure before though...

Why is it that it doesn't use more of the rocker? Mine came out like yours BRAAP and there was only maybe 1/16" inch on either end of the rocker that didn't get used.

Low friction means not poly bushings. Other types of bushings are better like the G Machine bushings, but really low friction means usually means monoballs/rod ends/heims joints. I started out my rebuild planning to use poly in the rear and poly on the sway bars, but Cary kept mentioning how bad it was. I really didn't know what he was talking about until I started to mock up my rear suspension to check for bind. I was using poly rear control arm bushings, and just had the strut assembled and the spindle pins through the control arms but with no nuts on the end of the pin, and also did not have the big 24mm bolts at the end of the control arms tightened down. When the nuts on the spindle pin and the bolts in the control arms get tightened, it compresses the bushings and dramatically increases the stiction. Even with it loosely attached like I had it the stiction was not good. I can only imagine that with everything really tightened up it would probably take 75 lbs of pressure on the outside of the control arm just to break the bushings loose and get the arm to move. Imagine when you loosen a lug nut and you push and push and push then it suddenly breaks free and starts to move. Same sort of deal. This made me want to do something else, and heims joints look to be the answer. I'm still working it out, but you can follow this thread to see where I'm at: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=106457 I did get the swaybars done as Cary said and I think that will help A LOT too. Here is the swaybar thread: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=105596 The front end of my car is all heims joints with the exception of the inner tie rod and the ball joint, and it's amazing how freely the suspension moves up front. Contrast that to the back, and it was easy to see that something needed to be done back there. This is a "how fast do you want to spend" thing, so if you decide to go all heims joints, the joints themselves are expensive, and then all the fabrication to get them in isn't cheap either. Doing it myself I probably saved a bunch of money, but I still have many many hours out in the garage redoing the sway bar stuff until it worked without binding (took me 3 or 4 attempts front and rear) and then there is the cost of the tools and all the materials, etc. Mine isn't going to be a practical street car when its done, so you have to ask yourself how far you want to go. Is it a race car or a street car? Heims joints don't last forever like poly bushings, and they don't dampen noise or impacts either.

If you want all out, go all out. If you don't want all out, don't run FP (and expect to win anyway). Lots of people run Illuminas with extremely high spring rates. All that this proves is that you can put a 600 lb spring over an Illumina strut, it doesn't mean that it works well. It also doesn't mean that those people won't be faster than you. As discussed in the calling all racers thread it takes a lot of effort to even know if one shock is better than another, let alone to know if the shock matches the spring rate. Forget comparing the BMW rates to your Z. They have semi-trailing arm rear suspension and what they're doing doesn't translate well to what you're doing. The numbers that you quote don't sound right though, because the semi-trailing arm rear suspension has a leverage ratio of something like 3:1 so the 300 lb rear springs would be the equivalent of a 100 lb spring on a Z which has a .98:1 leverage ratio. I'm really surprised to hear about the one guy with the 600 lb springs in front and 400 in back. I suppose it would depend on what else he has on the car, but my problem has always been to get the front end to stick, and I never had too much trouble with the back end. In fact, this ties into the Quaife comment too. The Quaife is just not a good autox diff IMHO. You tell me if your experience is different than mine, but mine up to this point has been a struggle to get enough camber and caster to keep the front end planted. If that's the case with yours then it helps to have the rear end stiff to get the car back to rotate instead of understeering all over the place, and that as John says is what the Quaife doesn't like. If you could really get the front end dialed in, then maybe softening up the rear might be an option. But as long as the you've got understeer, harder front springs and no rear bar is a no-no IME. A roadrace setup is totally different and doesn't require the instant turn in and rotation that an autox setup requires IME. tube80z is a fan of the really high spring rates and runs with a lot of Z's that are over 400 on various strut combos with various states of chassis stiffening too. Hopefully he'll chime in, but what he has said to me in the past is that chassis stiffening is VERY important. I think I might go down the path of running insanely stiff springs too after talking to him about it quite a bit, and I've been trying to stiffen the chassis for just that reason. I won't do it until I have struts that can handle the spring rates.

OK, you're right. I see now. Thanks.

I was wondering what you would say about this. I like the strap idea and I'll use it if I continue on with the tube ends. Thanks! I have to admit, you've got me a bit confused here. I think I understand what you're saying, which is basically that if you don't change the pivot point locations the angle of the control arm doesn't matter. I'm not sure that this is correct though. Think about bumpsteer spacers in the front for a second. The pivots stay in the same place, and only the control arm angle is changed. Same deal here, but to a much lesser extent. The height of the outside edge of the arm could be changed about 3/8" on the outside by mounting the rod end in the bottom of the hole at the end of the arm. Changing the angle of the arm changes the roll center, just like in the front. Or did I get myself turned around there somewhere?

Just use spacers in between the wires so that they don't rest on each other and it should be fine. If you don't have spacers you can use zip ties. Put one zip tie loosely around two wires, then put another one around the zip tie in between the two wires. Pull it all tight and that gives you about 3/16" between the spark plug wires, and you can just keep doing that every 6 inches or whatever until they're all held securely.

OK, I get it. You're using that allen flat head bolt to attach a clevis to the end of the rack. That makes sense too I guess. I'd probably just hack the end of the inner off and weld the clevis to it, but I have a welder and not a mill. Either way you have a removeable clevis when it is all said and done.

DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT preload the brakes. EVER!!! The master cylinder needs to fully release in order to open up the little ports that let the brake fluid back into the reservoir. If they can't release ALL THE WAY then they can't release the pressure. This makes no difference at first, because you let off the brake and there is no pressure, then you step on them and there is, let off and there isn't. As the brakes gets hotter from you applying the brakes, say, in traffic, the heat generated transfers into the fluid, which expands. If the pressure can't release back into the master cylinder reservoir then this results in a light drag on the brakes. As the drag continues, more heat is generated, more fluid expansion, more pressure, more heat, more expansion, more pressure, etc. I had this happen with my clutch once and I learned to have free play in the system. On the brakes you want a little free play in the master to booster connection, and you want a little in the pedal to the booster connection. 1/8" of free play in both won't make a noticeable difference in the pedal throw, but not having that free play will be a BIG problem.

The better your welder is, the better your welds will be. Buy as much welder as you can afford. For cheap I think the Hobart Handler 140 is good. For good 110 the Lincoln 135+ or the MM135 would be my choice. I own the MM135 and love it. Not familiar with the Weld Pak 100HD, but things you want to check for are gas compatibilty, infinite adjustability vs 4 or 5 click type settings, duty cycle, etc.

I think it was a 175/SR/14. I ***think*** that's equivalent to a 175/78/14. The calculator shows that is ~25" tall tire. I am definitely biased towards small diameter rims and tires, maybe I should have stated that up front. The shorter the tire the lower the car, without messing up suspension geometry. Also lowers the final drive ratio.

I think you're taking me a little too literally. The engine shouldn't be clacking like a diesel, but just tightening the valves until they make no noise is a recipe for disaster. It does seem that aftermarket cams are noisier than stock cams IME. There is one cam manufacturer which has had more lobe failures than any other reported here, and that is the Schneider cam that MSA sells. It could be that you're losing a lobe, and I would suspect that more if you had a Schneider cam. I don't know how people diagnose a lobe going flat until the car is really down on power and something is obviously wrong, unless there is a lot of metal in the oil or something. Just don't know the answer on that one. Lobes and rockers shouldn't wear from too little clearance. Cam lobes wear from incorrect lash pads, bad metallurgy on the cam itself, or damaged rocker arms. Symptom of a burnt valve is loss of compression, and if you do a compression test and put a couple squirts of oil in the cylinder it doesn't change the readings on the gauge.

Cameron's engine has triple carbs, cam, all the goodies if I remember correctly. I'd tend to think it should make ~230 whp if it is an L28. My L28 with triples makes ~240 whp according to the drag racing trap speed calculators. If it were a stroker I'd expect it to make 10% more due to the 10% increase in displacement from 2.8 to 3.1. Pull the pan dude. It's not that bad. I seem to remember fishing the stock pan out without any trouble. When I replaced it with the AZC pan I had to jack one side of the engine up a bit for clearance.

Check this out: http://www.sccoa.com/faq/tirecalc.html Look how tall your 60 series 17's will be. Almost 28 inches for a 225/60/17! That's ridiculously tall for a Z. Should be somewhere in the 23 to 24 inch tall range IMO for a street car. A 225/40/17 is in that height range.

That sure looks like fun!

The Hybrid Z server is super slow for downloading big files. Do you have the URL where you found the video? That would be a lot easier for people to view.

Too many variables for his numbers to be reliable for your car. Try this: http://www.geocities.com/z_design_studio/

That pic was a little confusing. I think he meant: Take a stock inner tie rod. Cut the ball part off the end, so that you're basically left with a flat piece of metal that screws onto the rack. If there is enough room, drill a 5/8" hole. If not, then weld two pieces of plate with a 5/8" hole in them onto the stub that is left so that you have a clevis. That's basically it.

It's pretty hard to figure out what cam you have. You could measure lift with a dial indicator and then try to find someone advertising a cam with the same lift. Or you could degree the cam and see if you could match that to someone's advertised cam timing. Tough to do, and even if you do the measurements some cams are notoriously far from what's listed on the cam car. My aftermarket cam wants everything .002 tighter than stock, so IIRC its .008 and .010 instead of .010 and .012. Don't go too tight trying to get the noise to go away, its better to have the noise. There is an old saying "Quiet valves burn".

That's what I wanted to hear. For some reason I can easily imagine the thing running the Silver State Classic in the 170 mph class...

I've got some larger 1.5" square tube I think. I'll take a look at that option tomorrow. I'm still not convinced that this will be easier than opening up the end of the control arm .008", but I think the larger tubing would work for this idea.

You couldn't find that info??? http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=112437

I've got pics of installing it on my car: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=106974&page=2 Installation was easy. If you have a particular question I'd be happy to answer.

I wonder if I could just get a flap wheel and use that to open up the end...

I thought I'd be testing all of my mods with a good season or two of autox... Seriously though, I really wouldn't want to hassle with that. If it came to testing or not doing it at all I'd just ream out the end and press in the monoballs. Taking whatever it was .008" off the end doesn't scare me in the least.