JMortensen

This might piss a few people off but in STOCK form a Z handles pretty poorly. A 944 handles pretty good out of the box. I'd give it to the 944. In stock form. Take them both to the nth degree and I think its REALLY close. REALLY close. My basis for this is that I've owned and raced Z's for more than 10 years, and I was a Porsche mechanic for a couple years. I've been to POC races, and I've seen a few (very few--like 2 or 3) 944T's that turn lap times WAY lower than I was able to turn, seen them beat factory Porsche Cup 911's and wacky 600 hp 911 Turbos with the giant double carbon fiber wing in the back, etc. But then I think the ROD probably would have taken most of those cars out too.

It all depends on the TIRES. I was running 9.5" slicks and an LSD and JUST got to the point where I couldn't mash the gas around every corner on the track. I realized the last time I went out that it was the first time I ever needed throttle control ever. I have about ~240 whp. If I were running skinnier tires I would have gotten there much sooner.

Love the lowered battery box. That's a really good idea.

WOW... check this one picture out! http://rally.subaru.com/rally/servlet/CarBuildingDetail?part=1&imageId=6 That's a lot of seams. That guy does some BEAUTIFUL work. Thanks for the link. That cage... OMFG...

You will need an R200 mustache bar if you don't already have one, the front companion flange or yoke from a R200 out of a 280, and the adapters from http://www.modern-motorsports.com. The diff rear cover with the fins won't fit with the existing transverse link, so you'll need to either make a new link that goes around the cover or you could swap the cover off of an R200 without the fins. That's all I can think of. If you have an R200 already then you just swap the companion flange and the rear cover and it is then a bolt in with the adapters from MM. http://www.modern-motorsports.com/catalog/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=56

My friend who runs his diesel on veggie oil is constantly saying the same thing. He envisions a small diesel running on veggie oil powering a generator which fills the batteries which drive an electric motor at every wheel. No transmission, just direct drive at the wheel. Kinda like a train in a way. The diesel powers the batteries, and the motor runs off of the batteries. The two don't need to be run together, and he thinks if he did it right the engine wouldn't even run most of the time. He wants to do this on his 4x4, and the only problem he says is that on the route to most of the trails he runs there is a solid 25 mile long grade, and with big tires and a heavy rig it would have to have a LOT of battery capacity or the engine needed to turn a generator large enough would burn a lot of veggie oil.

Hmm. I seem to remember only having to compress the valve springs 1/8" or so on mine, which wasn't that bad even with the aftermarket springs. Not sure why there would be a difference. Good luck putting it back together though.

Thanks for the compliment, means a lot coming from a quality fabricator. I need to shoot some more pics from below. The welds clearly went through the whole frame rail as evidenced from underneath, but it was a big PITA. Never again is my new motto. Or at least, never again without a rotisserie. Yeah I think I learned a lot about the car in general as you said I would. The whole rear of the car just isn't put together that well IMO. You've got so many seams and overlaps that it is scary, and once that dum dum comes out then it really becomes apparent that the seams aren't very tight, and it really makes you wonder about the structure of the car. My '70 might be worse than others, but some of my friends have taken to calling it the "Flexy Flier" so it obviously had issues. I've heard you talk a couple times about cars that had issues in the back, I remember once you were thinking that one car had lost the driveshaft, but I think that might be from the front diff mount and strap failing. That happened to a friend of mine and the diff tipped up and beat the snot out of the underside of the car with the rear driveshaft u-joint. Same thing happened to Mark Belrose. Can't say if that relates to your more recent 71 with the stress cracks or not. So far I haven't really found any chassis problems in my tub like torn spot welds or cracks, but I am doing the back, then I'm going to reinstall all the (new) suspension, then I'm going to strip the front and do it, so I still have a LONG way to go, plus I work like a snail which is why I don't wrench professionally anymore...

That is too cool!!! Sent him clear over the hedge!!!

1 has been answered. 2. Did you back off the lash adjusters before you pried the rocker arms off? Did you rotate the cam so that the lobe pointed up before you pried the rocker? Kinda doesn't sound like you did either. If you do back them off and move the cam so that it isn't compressing the spring then it isn't that bad to pry them on or off. If you don't then you really have to compress the valve spring before they'll move, and if it's already compressed because the lobe is facing down, then it's going to be a bitch. I had to do this a couple times while adjusting lash pads, and it really wasn't that bad. Sounds like you just missed a step in there.

That's why he was talking about installing the N42 valves. Basically he wants some stainless valves and can't find them for a P90, so he's thinking about modding the head to fit the valves by cutting the head and shimming the cam towers and installing the longer valves. All the geometry would be correct but this would raise the compression ratio quite a bit, not good on a turbo motor. And as J. Soileau 74260zt says, somebody has to make them for a stock length P90.

I used a 490/280 on the street for years in stop and go traffic with triples and a light flywheel, and no complaints. I think it is now a little small for my current usage. I've seen several people with the 460/270 who almost immediately think they should have gone bigger. The one variable I don't know is FI. If you are running stock FI you should look into the possibility that a larger cam might make it run poorly, not pass smog, etc. If you're running SU's or triples I would suggest the .490 cam. It's not that extreme, and IMO people tend to go too small on the cam in a Z.

The camber plates would likely be the same as the ones he's got for the Z right now. I'm curious to find out how good the struts are, what spring rates they can handle, etc. I know we get 240SX drifter guys saying they want 500 or 600 in/lb springs all the time, so the struts might be of that variety.

I like your front control arm turnbuckles. Is that 1" hex aluminum? Looks good, and easy to adjust.

I keep seeing this hybrid Accord commercial that gets like 37 hwy, and I think that that is REALLY unimpressive. I know, it has a V6, but it still seems unimpressive. And WTF is going on when car companies are touting 30 mpg on a super aerodynamic subcompact car? Seems to me my friends '85 VW Rabbit diesel got 45-50 mpg, and that was in '85. As I posted before on another thread, I put a cam and header and exhaust on my 2.4L Toyota 2wd truck and got it into the low 30's, and that's a pickup truck dragging around a windbreak behind the cab... I'm not one to shoot for mpg, but it really seems like doubling the mpg on these little commuter sedans should be easy to do. Maybe I'm just not remembering correctly, but weren't they were getting about the same mpg out of these same models of car when they were using carburetors and had much worse aerodynamics???

If it isn't a synchro problem lube won't fix it.

If you shim the same amount that you shave off the head, it puts the cam geometry back in the right spot.

Ouch!!! This was not the way to go. There were spots where grinding the top side and welding from the top worked just as I expected. More often than not it didn't work so good. I would start the weld just fine, then the frame rail on bottom just wouldn't be there (probably because of the curve of the rail and the fact that I wasn't trying to weld the edge of the rail to the floor) so I'd burn through to the bottom rail. I basically just sat there building up the pool so that it got back to the floor level, then continued on. Most of the time this went OK, but there were a few f-ups in there that I'm going to have to patch. Maybe someone with more welding experience could have dealt with these problems a little better, but this was not the best way for me to get this job done. I guess the only saving grace is that now I REALLY know that they're attached pretty well...

Sounds like that other guy doesn't understand how a progressive spring works. The linear rate springs won't compress at one end or the other. The whole spring compresses. The progressive rate springs have very tightly wound coils at the top end to lower the spring rate for the first inch or two of travel. Once the lower spring rate part of the spring compresses, then it gets into the higher rate. It's a spring that gives a soft cushy ride on a rough road, then has a more aggressive rate past that.

This one is answered by tannji: Plus there is the fact that Europe without exception has sided with the Palestinians and the US has not. You can make up your own mind about Israel/Palestine, but maybe our support of the Jews who seek to take over the 3rd holiest city in Islam might have something to do with their hatred of us. Then you can get into why they hate the Jews, which gets back to the Quran, etc. Europe on the other hand has not had such a friendly role in history towards Judaism... I suppose the scammers are afraid that we will take their money so they choose to steal ours as a pre-emptive move, not because they just want our money. Ridiculous.

Your mainshaft nut is coming loose I think. My transmission has never grinded gears, but I'm going to rebuild it because it has the mainshaft nut coming loose. I hadn't really associated the hard shifting with this problem because I only encountered that a couple times, but I did have trouble hitting second at an autox when I was trying to shift really fast. My main symptom is a bearing growl at idle with the clutch out, and more recently it pops out of gear while decelerating. Any of that sound familiar?

BS again Phil!!! I suppose that you haven't heard the stories of African children with polio because they thought the vaccine was a US plot to spread AIDS or make them sterile:http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/Features/0,,2-11-37_1481952,00.html Yeah, those African Muslims love us... On a funnier note, you ever seen http://www.ebolamonkeyman.com? I know you won't appreciate the humor (since it's funny) but when the Nigerian scammers figure out that they've been caught they almost always start spewing some crap about Allah smiting us, etc. You say "They have little resources so we didn't meddle." You got that exactly wrong. It's "They have little resources WITH WHICH to meddle." Some extremist Muslims want to kill us for who we are. Bush says pretty lamely "It's because they hate freedom." That is just a lame statement, and it should be "because they associate the evils in a free society with the death of their religion and culture, and are trained from a very young age to counter this threat with violence and terrorism." Since we turned and ran in the 80's and 90's in the face of terrorism, they figure this will work. Not any more.

I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on that one.

As far as the frame rails in back go I am going to do them from the top, just haven't started on those yet. I think I'm going to use Tim240z's method and dremel some 1" slots, then fill them in. I think with the power settings I'm using that I might not even need to do that, I could just go slow and let the weld melt thru to the bottom rail, but I'm going to take the extra time to cut the slots in the top just to be extra sure.

Well I started to clean up the seams, then it got cold. Too cold to be out in the garage. Months passed, and my thumb became stinky. Finally the temperature warmed enough that I went back out to the garage. Here are my first seam welding pics, some are just cleaned up seams, then there's some actual welding. Keep in mind that I have about 3 hours experience welding, including the time it took to do this stuff. I did what John suggested earlier in this thread. On the floor to strut tower seams where there was a big gap I did 3 beads. On on the floor, one on the strut tower, and one to connect the two. Makes the welds big, but getting right in the seam just pulled the dum dum into the weld and made it very bird poopy. One other thing. I do not intend to go with the pubic hair look for my carpet. But I did have carpet installed in this car previously, and the insulation was glued down. So I'm wondering if anyone has any cheater type method for removing the glued down insulation pubic hair looking stuff.