JMortensen

I agree with speeder. Looks like the wrong lash pads to me too. Maybe someone installed a cam without changing the pads.

Mid 80's Subaru XT Turbo. Real easy to tell because they put a white "LSD" sticker on the cover IIRC.

When you get Tokicos hot they get that blue discoloration. That in and of itself doesn't mean the strut is bad.

I thought the LSD would. The ring and pinion is a definite no.

Good deal. Hopefully you like the seats as much as I do.

I have a set of 44 Mikunis that the PO ran on a 40 manifold. There was a very good thread on Webers a few months back. Here it is: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=93343 If you read the stuff by NapaBill it may help out. There are a bunch of other Weber threads too. Search for Weber and just start reading. None of these are going to tell you what jets you need, but they should give you a good understanding of how the carbs work and what to try next.

I learned clutches when I was 10. It was a Honda XL70 motorcycle named "Sweet Pea". It wasn't too hard to transfer that motorcycle knowledge to cars, although you can't just put your feet down to keep from rolling back on a hill in a car. I bought my first automatic vehicle three years ago, it was a 97 Sentra, then my 2nd this year, a GMC 1500. The Sentra we got because traffic in Seattle is just insanely bad. The GMC was auto because they don't offer it in stick. I feel like I have a lot more control with a stick.

Whats the matter? You don't trust evil duckies??? http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=96707

Now THAT is impressive.

What is the suspension like? Stock? Stock suspension allows for one adjustment. Front toe. That's it. Stock caster is ~2.5 or 3 degrees. Stock camber is 1 degree positive. Not very racey. With the car lowered you get more negative camber, but you still have no method of adjusting it side to side, and generally you'll end up with a lot more neg camber in back than in front which is not going to help your understeer situation. If you want to make a track day car out of this Z then I'd suggest you start looking at adjustable suspension. Camber plates, adjustable control arms, adjustable TC rods, this sort of thing. Then you can really get into making the suspension work. Caster is a biggee. Some guys are running 8 degrees here. Makes a big difference over stock. Since you're talking radial DOT tires you'll probably want to follow 260DET's advice and shoot for -3.5º camber in the front, maybe something like -2.5 or -3 in the rear. Front toe out from 1/8" to 1/4", I prefer rear toe in of about 3/16" in. Check your rear sway bar for bind. My 7/8" Motorsports rear bar was binding big time. I switched to the Suspension Techniques rear bar to fix that issue. The most popular vendors for adjustable suspension would include: Arizona Z Car http://www.arizonazcar.com Ground Control http://www.ground-control.com Modern Motorsportshttp://www.modern-motorsports.com You can get different pieces from these guys, and then there are lots of threads about making your own control arms, rear toe adjusters, etc. When you think you want to adjust something search for it here first, and when you think you want to buy something search for it here and you'll undoubtedly find opinions on it. That's what I do. The search function will save you $1000's of dollars if you let it.

If you're just going to slicks you might want to get something that lasts a little longer and isn't quite as competitive. I was running Yokohama A005s which are a pretty hard compound road race tire in a 250/45/15. I wasn't as fast as I could potentially have been, but one set of tires would last a full season of autox with a couple track days, and then I'd switch them out because they were hard thru heat cycling, not because they had worn out. The problem for me was always $$$. I didn't have fully adjustable suspension when I first put slicks on. I couldn't get enough neg camber at that time, so if I had high $$$ slicks I would have just burned them right off the car in a weekend. By running a harder compound and easing into adjustable LCAs and TC rods, I was able to make the tires I had work pretty well. I now feel that next time out I might have a chassis and suspension that can really use high $$$ slicks to full advantage, but I'm still a bit hesitant at throwing lots of money at tires, because they are the most expensive consumable in racing as Cary pointed out and I'm not shooting for the national championship.

Tokico has a LIFETIME WARRANTY. If you still have your receipt call Tokico, they'll give you a return number and then you can send it in for replacment. I once sent a strut in without calling first and they just refused delivery, so do call first.

cbarton, I didn't realize which post this was. If referring to TEP was a joke, I get it now... if not, then search and find out more about TEP.

Search and you'll find more, but this thread deals with the 600 hp yellow car: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=81341 BTW I saw the yellow car when I visited TEP 10 or 11 years ago and it was a sweet car. Just not a 600 hp sweet car, supposedly.

So that would be this listing I believe: Part# Application Dia Thick Weight DBA 069A MUSTANG 330 28 9.1 DBA 069B MUSTANG 330 28 9.1 9.1kg = 20.02 lbs. I believe that this weight is going to vary from manufacturer to manufacturer somewhat. Regardless, that is 7lbs per wheel heavier than my still big enough 12" rotors.

This is PURE speculation, but generally when the automaker increases the deck height it's to allow a longer stroke AND a longer rod. If they did that with the VQ40 it's probably because the rod ratio would have been bad with the lower deck height. That makes me think that you want to use the whole shortblock from the VQ40, and maybe use the VQ35 heads if that would bump compression. If not it might be a better idea just to use the whole VQ40 engine.

If your level is accurate yes. Then you need to know precisely how many degrees you move the wheels before you check the camber again. I just drew a line on the garage floor with a protractor. If you (or he) had some slip plates you could tell exactly how many degrees you've moved and your results would probably be a lot better than mine.

I looked around and can't seem to find rotor weights anywhere on the web. The only thing I did find was a place selling the 13" rotors and had a weight of 41 lbs listed, and another place selling the baer 2 piece rotors that said the cross drilled rotors were a 5 lb weight reduction from the stock rotor. The 41 lb website didn't say if that was packaged weight or just the rotors or what. No disrespect to you Mike, but I'm having a hard time buying this because when I got my brakes I weighed the new rotor vs the stock and I seem to recall (it's been a while, could be wrong) that the stock unvented 11" Z rotor was 12 lbs. Seems really unlikely that a 13" vented rotor which is HUGE by comparison would only weigh 4 more lbs. You're right though, lighter tires and wheels can offset some of that rotor weight. But then you're talking about high dollar wheels and tires. You're going to spend the money somewhere. High dollar tires is what kills the budget IMO. Much rather go through $40 pads and $40 rotors every track event than $700 tires... Personally I still feel that the 13" brakes are overkill. Johnc only used 11.5" brakes on the ROD. I know, some hybridzers have 3000 lb Zs, but that's the exception rather than the rule for the guy who builds his car to road race. That is what we're talking about here, right??? If jtmny1999 is putting them on to look cool then rotor weight doesn't matter.

The proper way is on an alignment rack IMO. The bubble camber gauge backyard method is to measure camber then turn the wheel x number of degrees and measure it again, there is then a formula that you can use to deduce the caster. Caster (deg) = (180 / 3.1415) * [(camber1 - camber2) / (turnangle1 - turnangle2)] I tried to do it with the bubble level method and was off by 2º when I checked it on a rack. Not sure if that was bad calculation, not perfectly level floor surface where I checked it, or what. I guess I should say that if you have a perfectly level surface and have the string alignment system down you can do it very accurately. I didn't have that when I did it.

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT POINT!!! I went round and round and round trying to figure out why my wheels wouldn't balance. Turned out that the center hole in the autoparts store spacers were just BARELY too small. If you didn't pay attention (like me) you wouldn't notice that the spacer was too small. I finally figured it out when the spacer cracked. Then I got a set of billet spacers from Coleman Racing and opened the center hole up and suddenly my "wheel balance" problems magically disappeared.

OK, well my JSK Wilwood setup is 13 lbs. I think the AZC setup is very slightly lighter. How much does the Cobra rotor weigh? I've heard that it weighs 24 lbs. Is that not correct? If I'm wrong I will change my tune...

$700 that is well worth it IMO vs the heavy Cobra rotor. How much is the replacement rotor without the hat? $100?

I'm not impressed with the idea of 14" Brembos on a Z either, but I think that a 12" Wilwood setup is easily justifiable. Although the rotors might not be available at the corner store they are CHEAP through circle track supply houses (usually about $40), and the 12" rotors with hats weigh about 13 lbs. That off the shelf Cobra rotor is something like 24 lbs IIRC. That's a HUGE difference.

MSA IMSA flares. Power Stop sells cross drilled, slotted, and cross drilled and slotted rotors. They use Brembo rotors. I abused the crap out of mine for years and never had a rotor warp on me. I was very satisfied.