JMortensen

If you get the spring hot (using a cutting torch) you can ruin the temper of the spring. If you cut it with a cutoff wheel there really isn't much downside to it. Lowering springs and stock springs are both springs, and subject to the same issues with heat. Cut 1/2 coil at a time until you get the ride height you want.

I can't wait to see what it does.

Dan mentioned the bumpstops, but I'd like to reiterate: Energy Suspension polyurethane bumpstops are not good. They're way too stiff. Get some decent ones from Koni or FatCat Motorsports or someplace else. They should be a foam bumpstop, sometimes they'll even have a spring rate listed. They're taller, and you will engage them more often, but that's OK, because they're not stupid hard like the ES ones. If you're going to section the struts, figure out if you have a 240 or 280 chassis (260s were split). If you have a 240 chassis, you could section the rears an inch or inch and a half to try and even out the travel with the front end. If you have a 280, you can swap 240 insulators (or 280 front insulators) and skip sectioning the tubes in the back.

Dan is right, and I had the same experience. Had a Toy 4x4 setup in front and 280ZX in rear and did a driving school. One of the things they did was to experience skidding and loss of control, so they had sprinklers on a large section of asphalt and had us go through and stomp the brakes. Was told afterwards that my rears weren't locking up despite the water. Opened my adjustable valve all the way, still wouldn't lock rears. Finally downsized my front calipers back to stock, braking performance improved tremendously. A balanced huge brake system will have the advantage of being able to stop the car over and over without overheating. A balanced stock brake system will stop a lot faster than your mismatched setup.

SMH...

Seem to recall it's a Cannon manifold, has the cast balance tube integrated.

Congrats. Now that car is going to be a serious contender!

Definitely worth selling, in "slap it on and run it" condition it's probably worth $250 - $300. I sold one off of a parts car that hadn't run in 25 years and I got $150 for it.

In the meantime you can use https://archive.org/web/ to find their old pages. I think you'll lose pics.

No, I never used it. It's way too small to hook harnesses to IMO. They did have a cage that built off of that roll bar and was SCCA legal at one time. Real weird door bars. I don't think it would be legal today. Had a front section that bolted onto the roll bar.

The other thing to check is that the timing marks on the balancer are correct. I was about 17 and working as a mechanic and had a car come in that wouldn't idle unless it had 50 degrees BTDC timing or something ridiculous like that. I screwed around with it for a while, then finally pulled number one spark plug put a pen in the hole and turned the crank until I found where TDC was. Turned out the balancer had separated and the timing marks on the outside of the pulley had moved relative to the inside.

Retarded timing will get the exhaust hot too.

I thought the requirement was for "like" equipment. 5 points on both sides, for example. Or race seats with back supports on both sides, etc. It makes sense in that some people will have a full containment race seat, and use a stock seat with a stock belt on the pass side. An instructor is supposed to get into the car and ride along at much higher risk, because the participant paid $200 to do an HPDE with instruction. It's about safety for driving instructors.

How does this have anything to do with a HANS device? Perfect for... ??? Are you aware of how a HANS device works?

They've been making them that way since the 90s, maybe 80s. Long before HANS existed.

Used to have one of these Autopower roll bars. I thought it was supposed to be a harness bar, and I thought it was too small to use as a harness bar, so I added another tube between the backstays at about the same height to attach the harnesses to. If you can't weld, you can pretty easily buy a piece of DOM tubing, use a coping calculator like this one: http://metalgeek.com/static/cope.pcgi Easy to grind the tube with that calculator then you can have a muffler shop weld it in for you.

200 crank hp? I think that's a reasonable goal without porting.

The strut tower bar actually prevents the strut towers from bending out under cornering. When you take a left turn for example, there is a strong inward force applied via the contact patch at the right front tire. That tries to move the tire inward, and pull the top of the strut outward. So you lose camber under hard cornering. The STB holds everything in place. Since it just holds the original position, it won't affect the static camber one way or the other. It does also prevent the strut towers from moving together when you hit a bump, but that's its much less important function. What matters is what happens when you're turning. You should make your own. For a chump car, I'd just take some tubing and bolt each end to the strut towers. If you use round tubing, crush the ends and drill a hole. If you use square tubing, cut the ends at an angle and drill the hole. You can do the triangulation to the firewall too if desired, wouldn't be too difficult to figure out.

You don't need forged pistons for the kind of rpms you're planning on. If they aren't damaged, I'd reuse the stock pistons. Spend the money on a valve job. Loose bottom end + tight top end = hp. You might want to do a reground cam vs Schneider. I really like their springs, but their cams seem to have a habit of losing a lobe. Might be due to new oil formulations, but the other possibility is the cams are too soft, in which case a reground stock cam is a good option.

I meant to say "check to see if there is a 4th edition" not that there was one. He keeps updating and it's worth it to get the new info.

I think stiffer springs are going to be the ticket.

Evlevo and I have this right. You want the stiffer bushing on the side that takes the braking forces. On a Z or a 280ZX, that's the front bushing. On the Z, the control arm tries to move back under braking, pushing directly on the front bushing. The rear bushing is basically along for the ride. On a ZX the control arm also tries to move back, and the bushing that resists this movement is the front one again. The rear one is still along for the ride.

As Brad says, the limiting factor with the S30 EFI is the analog nature of the FI system. It's set up for stock stuff, so if you put in a cam, it can't adjust. Original S30 FI systems are 40 years old and have issues with bad connectors, etc, that a switch to carbs negates. A perfect running factory EFI unit should compete well with stock 240 SUs on a stock L28 engine. The other issue might be restrictions in the factory intake manifold, but if you compare hopped up engines with cams and headwork, etc and then ran the same intake manifold, say ITB EFI vs Mikunis or something like that where everything else is relatively equalized, you should do better with EFI than with carbs. When you start looking at those options, a motor swap becomes more and more cost effective.

ZX has the same issues as the Z, despite the rods being reversed. If you run poly in front and rubber in back, should be OK, or TTT or any other TC rod with an easy moving pivot will work as well.

There is a little bit on SAE cars, and he mentions the venetian blind rear wing he built for an AP car, but I think that's about it. It has A LOT more info than downforce though. You'll love it.