JMortensen

Jeromio-now might be the time to consider some G Machine bushings in addition to the poor man's toe adjuster. Until you get that thrust angle right the car is gonna crab down the road...

I would just like to point out that moving the pivot up 3/4 or 7/8 is not a true fix. To truly fix bumpsteer it needs to be measured with a gauge, and the correct amount of movement will change based on a number of factors like a bent car, modified suspension, bumpsteer spacers, eccentric camber bushings, etc. When I measured mine I only moved the pivot up about 1/2" and that was all that was necessary.

I run ~11:1 and I have my chambers polished with no sharp edges. E31/L28 combo 490/280 cam. I need 95 octane to keep from pinging and get a full 35º advance.

The LSD is going to make a much bigger difference especially at autox. I'd get the stock flywheel lightened, that only runs about $150 and you can get it down to about 15 lbs. A lightened flywheel is more prone to warping, but it should still hold up fine as long as you don't burn the clutch holding the car on a hill or be a dumbass and drive around with your left foot resting on the clutch pedal. Many machine shops can do this lightening for you. If you decide to hold out for a really light one, then I'd say do the diff first. You can just drop the tranny and swap the flywheel, you don't have to pull the engine. Clutch in a Z is a pretty easy job and that is basically what you'd be up against to swap the flywheel later.

I'm with you Nigel. Some people have to taste the poo to learn, and taste the poo they should.

LCD gets trails really bad from what I understand. DLP less so, plasma not at all. Plasma really is the best if you've got the $$$. Here's a pretty thorough comparison: http://www.avdeals.com/classroom/LCD_tv%20_versus_plasma_tv.htm

Now that you mention it, just leave the cap off and stick your thermometer in the top of the radiator. It might overflow a little when the thermostat opens, but so what? Better than buying a new radiator.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=8&u=/ap/20050106/ap_on_fe_st/wacky_warnings

Turn the TV off, then do the mute, 1, 8, 2, power and it will come on in the setup mode. When you originally posted mute+1+8+2+power I was trying to hit all those buttons at the same time. Not necessary. Just hit the right succession and you'll get it. One thing I did notice is that mine likes to be on setting one for the TV and setting 3 for the DVD, which is kind of annoying, but worse things could happen.

With a 1" drop I'd just leave it alone. Kinda like sectioning the struts, you COULD, but it's just not necessary IMO.

3/4 tons usually have bigger torquier engines, bigger transmissions, much larger and stronger differentials, bigger stronger frames, and bigger brakes. 1/2 tons have made a lot of progress in the brakes and engine areas in the last few years, but they are still lacking in the other areas.

That cam is a little bigger than mine which is a 490/280. I wish mine were a bit bigger than the one you're looking at but I think that's because of the triples. 510/280 sounds like it will do fine with SU's, and the build sounds good. Make sure he takes all the sharp edges out of the combustion chamber, even the spark plug threads that stick into the chamber. $650 sounds more than fair. That's a really good deal IMO. Power I'd guess somewhere in the 200 range. Should be fun.

http://www.arizonazcar.com/LSD.html I'm pretty sure that's what this is...

Rev it to 3000 rpm then and set it at 35º and ignore what it is at idle.

I ported my 22RE head and when I slapped it back on my idle was at 3000 rpm, so I would say that porting is going go have an effect on vacuum. Of course so will having a fresh engine (probably a lot more than the porting).

If your fan comes on too soon then what will happen is the thermostat will open and close all the time, because the coolant in the radiator will get extra cold, closing the thermostat, then it will open, let in really cold coolant, then close right back up because the temp drops immediately, and repeat that cycle. It's been frickin cold here, which does almost the same thing as having the fan stuck on. I had to put a piece of cardboard over half of my Toyota radiator just to get the thing to warm up properly. You might want to try that if you find that you can't get it to warm up. Sounds like you might have a stuck open thermostat too, though, because even with no fan the thing should still get to operating temps before the thermostat opens. If you have a good gauge you can watch the thermostat open and close like that even under normal circumstances, but the problem would be exaggerated if your fan came on at 140. You really need to find out if the gauge is right. Maybe you could get a hold of a pyrometer and shoot the radiator after it's been running a while.

Just an idea, but maybe that huge intercooler is causing problems with overheating at idle? Do you have both the radiator and the intercooler sealed to the core support with foam weatherstripping so that the fan can actually suck through all of those fins when it comes on? EDIT--looked at the pictures again and I now see that the IC is about 4" in front of the radiator. I'm not a turbo guy but my friends with turbos are pretty adamant that the IC and the radiator need to be sealed to the core support if they're going to be one in front of the other. Not sure if that is a hard and fast rule or not. Also, even if your thermostat was new before you rebuilt the engine you should replace it. Seen too many "new" thermostats fail after being pulled out of a motor then put back in when the motor is fixed or rebuilt.

That don't make no sense Owen. If the sway bar is connected to the frame and the end links are connected to the body, then it does nothing. It has to connect to the suspsension somewhere. I've worked on a couple 3 series and the BMW end links are very long and they attach to a tab that sticks off the strut. Terry is right, the advantage is that the end link doesn't get tweaked even under full compression or extension. It really is a better design.

http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=87758 There's the thread if anyone wants to read it again. I don't know how modified these suspensions were. Sounded like some were bone stock, some were raced, some in between. The point was more that the stock setup has it's weak points, and the TC buckets separating from the frame due to heims joints without bushings seems at best a minimal concern when weighed against the stock TC rod breaking in half because of poly bushings.

I think a lot of them were on ZX's, which have tension on the rod vs the Zs compression, but several were on Zs which suprised me at the time.

I originally did the TC rods to get more caster, but I found when I dialed in more caster it flexed my poly LCA bushings really hard. Then I modded the stock LCAs so that they have the rod end inner pivot. Now I have bind free suspension and I can choose whatever caster angle I want without worrying about bind or stiction or stressing parts. So in my case a problem did exist, and I fixed it. I do agree about the people who are buying control arms to save weight. There isn't that much weight to be lost. Maybe 2 lbs on a rear arm and 1 on a front arm, I doubt you could lose much if any weight on a TC rod. I will say this though. I've NEVER heard of anyone having a problem with a custom TC rod (aside from Mike's prototype 5/8" aluminum ones and 74_5.0's TC's which actually hit the frame rail and failed because of that), but we found something like 6 or 7 people ON THIS FORUM who had a TC rod break in half under the strain of poly bushings in a previous thread.

I had a 93 DR350 with a smaller front sprocket, desert tank and a couple little added things like stiffer springs and better rear shock. Ended up spiking myself like a football in a set of whoop-de-dos and breaking my collarbone in two places and collapsing a lung. This was about 2 weeks after my friend broke his thumb in 3 places after getting in a head on collision on his 95 CR500. That was the end for me, sold the bike and have been relatively accident free, except if you count that little mountain bike vs tree incident...

Definitely needs to get hotter. At least 180*, I run mine at 195*. It will run better and last longer.

I can only disagree and say that there must be THOUSANDS of AZC's control arms and Mike Kelly's control arms out there, and many more Z's with camber plates. I've only heard of ONE frame failure (not cracks but catastrophic failure), and that was on a rusted out car with rubber bushings. The frame behind the TC rod bushing literally exploded into rusty bits when the car hit a bump while turning. Being cautious is fine, but IMO you guys are a little over the top on this one. FWIW, I haven't found any visibly broken spot welds yet while I've been stitch welding the rear of my car. It got cold so I haven't been through the front of the car yet. I have a couple friends driving similar setups in 510s and Zs on the street and no one has ever had any structural problems.