JMortensen

I worked for a Jeep/Eagle dealer in about 93 and there had to be at least one of those a week. At least you know the PO enjoyed it! My understanding is the way that failure happens is by taking it to a really high rpm and then letting off the gas suddenly, like when you're at the end of a straightaway and you jump on the brakes to slow for the corner. Great deal for $1500!

Are you talking about their epoxy sealer stuff? You normally don't cut the tank open for that. I haven't used it but my understanding is that you use the cleaning agent and you just roll it around in the tank, then you do the same with the sealer stuff. Welding the whole seam around the edge of the tank would be asking for trouble later IMO. If you had to cut a hole that's what I would do. Cut a small hole in the tank and then stick your arm in there if it's absolutely necessary. As to welding it back up, that's also a tough one. First choice would be tig, but you might be able to mig it up tight so that it doesn't leak. Definitely want to test for leaks if you weld it though. I had a friend mig weld up an oil pan with a more baffled sump and it looked water tight but when he was done it looked like the oil was seeping right through the welds.

You've got some really cool stuff on that car. I wouldn't get a new shell just because somebody made it. So far from what I've seen it looks like he made everything right.

Maybe he was running bias ply tires. Bias ply slicks are very common and they require a whole lot less negative camber. Flip them if you're going to run radials and you're going to race.

Am I remembering wrong? Aren't you the guy who HATES Hondas with a passion? Aren't you the guy who was talking trade for your Z at one point: "will consider anything but Hondas" rings a bell. I guess times change...

Damn that is tight. Looks like the TC rod JUST cleared the tie rod. No sway bar, or did you reroute it to the rear?

Congratulations and I'm sorry!

Sorry. The most modded 510 steering I saw used stock pitman and idler arms that were drilled out for 5/8" rod ends and used a drag link that was 5/8" tap tube and tie rods from the same. It was pretty cool, but no help to you. Never seen a rack swap...

Nah, when this motor dies I'm going LS1. Tired of trying to squeeze blood from the stone we call the L6...

Update. 4.5" grinder took a crap today. Off to Harbor Freight. Not so bad, I definitely got my $10 worth out of it... Did some heavy grinding today got the passenger side almost flush and rewelded. Man you can put one heck of a better weld on there when it's near flush. MUCH BETTER penetration, and a lot less effort. Instead of doing 8000 little spot welds you can really run a bead on there. Cut the driver side off, see the rust pics below. This side looked better but was actually worse off than the passenger side. Oh well. It will all be fixed when I'm done with it...

Actually my doors are going to be gutted. I was thinking of not installing the stainless window track though. Just have the chrome strip on the top of the door to cover that sharp lip and have it otherwise gutted.

I realized after looking at Terry's page yesterday that I left too much of a lip on there. Back to grinding and welding...

I've had my front crossmember slotted for years. Never had the LCA slip, and it enabled me to dial in the bumpsteer just right. I've been thinking over my TC rod modification thread that was going to use a very similar vertical bolt with spacers type setup with the horizontal rod end. Thinking now that I might be better off making a stronger than stock TC rod box and slotting it. Still need to do some testing to see if I can get full articulation out of the vertical bolt. If not I'm going with a slotted box.

Yep. Exactly why I took 74_5.0_Z's diagram of his main hoop out of the photo album section and had that same hoop bent for me by a local cage builder. I did modify it slightly by using 1.75 x .120 instead of his 1.625 x 1.20. Getting the hoop done is the tough part. I've cut and notched the diagonal with a Harbor Freight tubing notcher, but that's as far as I've gotten. Keep getting side tracked on other projects. If you have a welder, a tubing notcher, a chop saw, and something to cut the plates that weld to the floor and the strut towers and the roof like a band saw or a jig saw I'd say do it yourself.

The only concern I have with this type of mount is that the range of motion of the rod ends is going to be pretty limited. If the idea is to have adjustable inner pivot height, then you might be asking a lot of those rod ends. If the CA were perfectly flat than the rod end would have the maximum amount of motion up and down. So the higher the roll center the less droop you'll have available. Might need Cary's favorite: droop limiters. Your gusseted design looks plenty strong to me though...

When I bought my first new car it was a Subaru Outback and it was pretty expensive for me at the time at ~$25K, then I bought a house about a year later, and we really stretched for the mortgage. I tried to refi the car and the credit union flat out said no, they don't refi cars at all. So we asked about a personal loan and they said no to that too. Credit score was over 700 at the time, maybe I just used the wrong credit union (they really were assholes). Then again maybe it was because we had the mortgage now so we already looked STRETCHED. Finally we traded the car in on a much less expensive car and got the payment down that way. Never buy a new car with a high interest loan. The first one I got was 5.9%, the second 0%. I got a WHOLE LOT more car the second time, a GMC truck which we haggled down to ~$32K before rebates and all that crap, and the payments are pretty similar, IIRC they're within $30/month. One thing you could do to get out from under it is pay more each month. If they want $400, pay $600. There are loan calculators that will show you how much time that cuts off the loan, but it's pretty significant.

I left the end of the rocker open. The patches were just cut out of a piece of sheet metal. It already had a white baked enamel finish on it which is why they are white in the pics. I just ground off the paint around the edges. Baked enamel is stuck on there pretty good!

There was another thread about the Z33 6 speed. It looked as if there was an extension on the back of the trans. It appeared as though you could unbolt it and move the shifter forward ~9" IIRC. The problem was the tranny was readily available because the 3rd gear synchro would go bad on them. I wouldn't put that transmission in my car until they fixed the synchro problem.

More pics. Took me about 4 hours to finish up the passenger side rail. That included making a patch and patching the hole, welding the bit where the roof folds over in the back, grinding down the weld along the seam, and welding again where I ground right through the weld. I don't think I should mess with it anymore until I get some body filler. I'm hearing what you guys are saying about the filler. I haven't ever used filler. I've never done ANY body work at all. So I don't really know what's best, but the marine idea sounds good. Any trade names or anything like that you guys want to pass on I'd love to hear em.

No, we can't. First there is this thread, which really is pretty shocking - 300hp discrepancy between 1/4 mph and dyno: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=107745 Then there is my engine, which at 8.3:1 compression with a badly slipping clutch turned 108mph according to a Gtech, at a not so speedy 15.5 seconds. I understand they read about 3 mph high, but cut it down to 105 and figure the weight I had in the car (me and a friend) and you're looking at 2635 lbs, so roughly 240whp. I just don't buy it. I'd buy that number for my new engine with 11:1 and a lot more port work, but for that first engine it just doesn't seem right.

Not 3G acceleration. 3G lateral acceleration. Regardless, I'll take two...

Kinda like this? I know what it does and I'm impressed with that and it looks like it took some serious effort to design and machine it, but it seems way too complicated, plus it raises the rear roll center A LOT. Quite a bit more than a bumpsteer spacer does in the front, I think. Looks to be about 1.5" tall.

Just did the math. Two 3.25" circles have pretty close to the same surface area as one 4.5" (within 4 sq in). So dual 3.25's would be the way to go if 4.5" was what a formula said you should have.

2 2.25" tubes will have nowhere near the flow capacity of one 4.5" pipe. Not even close. Here's a simple way to show you why. Draw a 4.5" circle. Then draw 2 2.25" circles next to each other inside the 4.5" circle. SURPRISE!!! I'm just SWAGGING here, but I'd guess you'd need dual 3 or dual 3.5" pipes to flow the same as a 4.5" pipe.