JMortensen

Might be a road course vs autox thing too, but the front end will ACTUALLY TURN IN at an autox if you have more than 5 degrees. I did have an instructor who drove my car with 3 degrees at a road course say to me: "This car is great at the road course. How the hell do you autox it???" Ground Control recommended 3 degrees last time I checked with them for what that's worth, but my own experience is that doubling that works a LOT better.

I'll say it again, my TC rods with a similar design allowed me to run a lot more caster, and I think that the caster more than offset the camber gain or the increased dive. By a very large margin. I'm sure that anyone who uses Mike Kelly's or AZC's control arm and TC rod would back me up. EDIT-I guess I should also state that I am redesigning the rear pivot to get rid of the shortening of the TC rod. I agree that shortening that rod is detrimental, but the increased caster is HUGELY beneficial.

I'll say it again, my TC rods with a similar design allowed me to run a lot more caster, and I think that the caster more than offset the camber gain or the increased dive. By a very large margin. I'm sure that anyone who uses Mike Kelly's or AZC's control arm and TC rod would back me up. EDIT-I guess I should also state that I am redesigning the rear pivot to get rid of the shortening of the TC rod. I agree that shortening that rod is detrimental, but the increased caster is HUGELY beneficial.

There are some reasons to go belly up on the rotisserie. I was welding the firewall/cowl area on my car and I was sitting on the leading edge of the roof with my legs sticking out through the windshield hole. http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=106849

Nobody has mentioned it yet but switching to Firefox from IE is supposed to help too. IE and Outlook and basically anything Microsoft has vulnerabilities because they can access the entire file structure, which is why they are always targeted. At least that's what my geek friend tells me. He keeps trying to get me to go to Linux. Maybe someday when you can just turn the computer on and it actually works without having to have a PhD in computer science to configure Linux I'll take him up on that.

I wasn't trying to say that. You just misunderstood. I meant holding the car at a stop sign or a light with the clutch vs the brakes, not parking the car and putting it in gear.

Measure the old strut. Stick the strut down in the front housing and measure from the top of the strut to the top of the strut tube. Then do the same with the new strut. Subtract the difference, that's how much you want to section. I added 1/4" just as a little safety margin. When I was done I needed one washer in the bottom of the tube to get the strut tight with 2 threads showing on the gland nut. Remember though, if it is too long you can shim underneath the strut. If it is too short, you're screwed. You'd have to resection the strut to add more material in.

Thanks guys. Yes, I did pretty much the whole rear subframe from underneath. I did something which kinda halfway worked and did a lot of the bottom seams from the top. In some areas that worked really well, and in some... well not so good. But a lot HAS to be done from the bottom. Finally one day I was going out to the garage and I pretty much decided that I wasn't going to do one more frickin weld from the bottom so I bought the engine stands and made the rotisserie. I would NEVER try and stitch a car from the bottom again. Way too much of a PITA. Welding the cowl area was pretty surreal. I had the car upside down. I was sitting on the leading edge of the roof with my legs sticking out the windshield hole, and leaning forward to reach the cowl. That's kind of a weird feeling when you realize what you're actually doing... The rotisserie doesn't make it EASY, but it makes it so much EASIER. I've taken a couple days off and I'm going on vacation too, but I've pretty much got the front outside the engine compartment ready to weld. When that's done I'll go inside the engine compartment. Then stitching will be DONE. At that point it's back to rust fixin. I think I'm going to leave the Zero Rust and the seam sealer for last. The car just doesn't seem to be rusting in the garage, and I figure if I'm going to spray some paint in there I might as well wait until I can do the WHOLE chassis, which at this rate might be sooner rather than later.

What piece of the clutch did you find? That sounds like bad news to me. Anyway, here's some info on shimming them tight (which is pretty darn easy to do): http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=92629 The Power Brute diff sold by http://www.differentials.com and http://www.reiderracing.com are Nissan LSDs. You could buy a new one for ~$500. There are also the KAAZ and Cuzco diffs sold for the 240SX that would fit into our R200, just as long as you didn't get the one meant to replace the VLSD unit. The Quaife should work well for drag racing if you want to go that route, but it's another $1000 more than a new Power Brute. You might also see about importing one of these gear types from New Zealand or Australia (I know 260DET has mentioned them before). They have a different manufacturer there selling them for ~$800 IIRC. The Quaife is ridiculously overpriced IMHO. There's a lot of options. I think the first might be to see what happened to yours and if you can shim it tight again or if you really broke something.

Just check the center hole on any spacer you get. The ones you get at the auto parts store are like .005" too small in the center hole. On my car I fought what I thought was a tire balance problem for a long time before the spacers started to crack and I finally realized it was the spacer, not the tire that was the culprit.

I've got the Microsoft one, Spybot, and Adaware. Spybot is my favorite, Adaware next, then the Microsoft one. I had a Spyware executable program that I got suckered into installing on my computer. I installed it and then couldn't uninstall it. Spybot took care of that one. The Microsoft one either doesn't care about or misses the spyware cookies from what I've seen. Spybot and Adaware find the cookies, but you can run one then the other and they'll both find different ones. It is really frustrating that none of them are good enough alone.

Here is another excellent rebuild page: http://www.jrdemers.com/280ZX/distributor/distributor.html. He actually sells bushings too if they need to be replaced. I just gut the vacuum advance and rig the breaker plate so that it can't move. I've only ever seen ONE dizzy that had the plastic piece that holds the ball bearings in one piece, and it was cracked. Vacuum advance might be good for mileage, but it's not the best for performance. I'd suggest that you disable it then run a bunch more advance at idle. I like to start at about 18 and move it around from there. That puts you in the mid 30's at full advance.

I've worked on quite a few of these cars, but it was nearly 10 years ago. What I remember is that the US spec 928 came out with 180hp, and it wasn't until the DOHC S4 that they really got any balls at all in the US spec cars. I can't remember ever seeing a 4 speed. They were all dog leg 5 speeds with first down and to the left. You may be right about the Euro spec version, but it just doesn't jive with what I remember about the ones I worked on. It has been ~10 years though, and I think the only Porsche that we saw less of was the 914. We even worked on more 356's than 928s. Maintenance wasn't too bad as I recall and I seem to think that I liked doing timing belts on those better than 944s, but the electrical system was a friggin nightmare, and almost every one we worked on had electrical issues of some sort or another. It's a big heavy touring car, and it drives like one. They don't feel peppy, but you could cruise at 150 mph for hours and not be stressed about it. There was one guy at the time who had developed his own rear suspension and was very successfully racing a 928 in POC events. I think his was supercharged too. It was pretty shocking seeing pictures of his car in the middle of a group of 944 Turbos and 911 Turbos. It just didn't look like it was meant to be there. Anyway, that's what I remember about them.

[EDITED MYSELF] Cancel that last one. I just realized you were referring to Gollum's comment.

I'm not sure how long the Konis are. In my case with the Tokicos I sectioned the fronts 1 5/8" and the rears 2". If you could section them both 2" that would be ideal I think. You'll probably have to make a spacer for the rears, since you're using the same strut insert front and back. Do not section the rear to match the front or the *** end of the car will be dragging on the ground. Rear should be ~2" taller than the front. I know John's FAQ says to section them right at the spring perch, but I still think it's easier to do right up at the top of the strut housing, especially with the Konis. If you don't get them exactly straight you'll be honing the tubes forever if you do it 6" down, but if you section right at the top the job would be a lot easier to fix. Either way works though. EDIT--Should have said about 1.5" or 2" from the top of the strut housing. You don't want to cut the end too short otherwise its harder to get it aligned with the rest of the strut. I just hose clamped the strut to a piece of angle iron then clamped the top above it and welded the two together. Worked fine for me, but yours will be more sensitive to getting it perfectly straight because the Konis barely fit in the strut tubes anyway. I'd go with the 3/4" up on the pivot unless you're really going to measure. Measuring is not hard to do, just requires a couple of dial indicators. I think you can get into trouble going too much higher than 15/16, especially if you have poly bushings, because the control arm can hit the inside of the crossmember if you go too high. If you're OK with measuring, then I'd slot the crossmember and move it until the bumpsteer is minimized then weld your reinforcing washers in that spot.

Yeah, that's what I was talking about. Holding the car from rolling back with the clutch is not a good idea. Holding the clutch in isn't the best idea either. You're basically using the throwout bearing and the pilot bushing the whole time you have the clutch pushed in. If you put it in neutral and let the clutch out that's better for the car.

No, it won't be a big deal for a daily driver. No easy solution except to use a different transmission. I like the later ZX trans. Much tighter ratios.

A normal clutch is good for 80-100K with your average driver behind the wheel. The idiot that holds the car with the clutch on hills might get 1/2 that. As far as wear I look at the rivets and the friction surface. The rivets should look like they're well below the outer surface of the friction material on the clutch disk. Also the clutch will have some grooves in it, and when they're worn the entire surface of the friction material will be smooth, because the grooves are worn away. If you're worried about it you could just buy a clutch disk. Check the flywheel for heat checking. It shouldn't have deep blue or purple spots on it. If it does have it surfaced. The BW trans has very wide gear spacing. Might not be the best behind a NA 2.4 liter.

I thought this was a track car Mike. Brake lights, ignition, starter, fuel pump, Accusump, cut off switch, done...

Having sex in a car in broad daylight with the kid in the back seat is not good. Nobody is arguing that. Both adults in the car are seriously lacking morals. What Tony was talking about is kids seeing their parents have sex. Outside of the last 2 centuries it's a pretty safe bet that MOST children saw their parents having sex. They were probably in the same bed AT THE TIME in many cases. Funny story. My uncle used to breed dogs when my cousins were very young. My cousin Mark was in 1st grade and the teacher tells the kids about how the stork brings babies home and all that crap. Mark tells the teacher "That's not true! The boy puts his thing into the girl and they move back and forth and then the girl gets fat and then babies come out later!" Needless to say he was sent to the principal. They called my uncle down and told him what Mark had said, and he looked at the teacher and said "OK, its obvious that we have 2 versions of where babies come from. Which one do YOU believe?!!" I guess I just don't understand why people are so hung up on sex. It's almost a Victorian attitude.

Also with regards to the R230 nobody has really brought up the crush sleeve as a potential weak point. I know that was considered a weak point by the 9" and Toyota people, and I used to sell lots of solid spacer kits to replace the sleeves especially for drag racers. Haven't been following all of the R230 threads, but I was pretty surprised when I saw one a while back that said it had a crush sleeve. You 230 guys doing anything about that?

There is something to be said for a large pinion head. I used to see quite a bit more breakage out of the low gearsets than the high gearsets when I was selling diff parts. Thing is on Z diffs you don't hear of people shearing teeth off the pinion too much. Every once in a great while, but for the most part it seems like the pinion gear isn't really the issue. The lower the gear ratio the smaller the pinion head and the thicker the ring gear is. It gets to a point with some of these ratios where the pinion head is ridiculously small. We had a 7.33:1 R&P for a Ford 9" at the place I worked for. That is ridiculous. I think if you have the 3.54 vs the 3.538461, they both have basically the same SIZE head IIRC (in comparison to the ring gear diameter), but one has smaller finer cut teeth than the other. I wonder if it really is stronger with the smaller teeth though, Nissan may be doing that more for noise reduction.

That's what I had always heard about the Tiger. Neat idea, poor implementation, especially with regards to the suspension. Didn't that white one win GT2 more recently? I thought he won just a year or two ago.

Can't wait to see what you've got for me Cary. Thanks.

That's a new one on me. This is what I was talking about: http://www.wpg-autox.org/cgi-bin/yabbnew/YaBB.pl?board=Gentalk;action=display;num=1101187750 My understanding is that they got the delamination problem in the 710s fixed and they are now the tire to beat.