JMortensen

From the auction: The most expensive thing he's got on there is the Weber carb setup, or maybe the seats. The roadrace V8 that just got posted might very well be worth $15K. This one is not. EDIT--Yeah, what you said!!!

This is a pretty constant thread on the IZCC email list. I can't believe what people think their Z is worth. I sure as hell hope that he doesn't get $15K for that car, not because I don't like the guy (I don't know him or anything about him), but because I want to keep my parts cars cheap. I've bought 6 Z's and ZX's for parts for under $500 each now. That's the good thing about Z's IMO. The first Z I bought was an unmolested '72 that I bought from the original owner, always garaged, no rust, paid $2000. My current Z was bought for $1250. Seems the "collectors" have unrealistic expectations for the value of a Z. The problem will come when ratty Z's actually start selling for $10K... Then I'll have to switch to RX7's or Miatas or something... Then there is my friend's '69. She ended up selling it about a year ago for $7 or $8K IIRC, and it was SWEET. Had a couple very minor rust issues, 60K original miles, numbers matched, had the early crankshaft, etc. I had believed all the hype and thought she would get $10K or $12K for it, ended up quite a bit less than that even though it was genuinely a rare car.

The pivot height doesn't determine the shift throw. The distance from the pivot to the ball (or the cup shaped bushing) at the end of the shifter does. The distance between the pivot and the ball is longer on the truck shifter. I see why you would ask if you need to raise the pivot. You would think that the shift linkage is solid and that you would need the higher pivot to hook up a longer shifter, or else it wouldn't fit. For whatever reason this is not the case. It just plugs in. There is no interference, and no vertical pressure on the pin that goes thru the shaft. I would think that the shift linkage inside the trans moves up and down a little bit because no matter what shifter you have the ball is going to be lower in neutral than when it is in gear. But that is just a guess, I don't know for sure. What I do know is that the truck shifter works, and that it is a lot longer between the pivot and the ball than the regular Z shifter. I learned about the truck shifter from a Nissan Master tech, and I've used one since I got my ZX 5 speed ~8 years ago. All of my friends use this same shifter in 510s and Z's as well. So that's probably 12 transmissions over the years (Z, ZX, 4 speed, 5 speed) using this shifter. None has moved the pivot.

What is up with Juan lately? Juan, you out there??? I've been getting emails back whenever I try to contact him...

Nope. Just plug and play.

I've never done it myself and I'm no expert, but I used to order glass on a weekly basis, and I thought that tempered glass could be cut with a water jet saw. That was the impression I got from the glass company anyway.

I took a friend for a ride on a twisty road in my Z. Coming up over a rise with a little lip at the top I got slightly out of shape, I took the 15 mph turn at ~50, etc. It was fun. We get back to his place and he says: "You wanna ride in a really fast Z you should get a ride with Jason... his still has all the stock suspension but he's got a V8 and he just steps on the gas and it goes completely sideways!" Different strokes for different folks I guess. I'm at ~240whp and I wish I had 300, but I think it helped that I built it up really slowly and didn't just jump into a Z with a whole buttload of power and then try to figure out how to drive it.

The companies offer the warranties because nobody takes them up on it. I warrantied a Tokico strut and they were pretty particular. I had to give a copy of the original receipt and get a return number. When the strut blew I sent it to them and they refused it. When I got it back I called, then I got a specific set of instructions on how to return it for warranty work.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/differential.htm

Look in the album section under video and "powerslide" and you'll see my Z getting sideways then accelerating and decelerating right in front of the camera. I'm running a MSA P.O.S. 6-1 header with 2.5 mandrel exhaust into the SuperTurbo. JC Whitney used to have them for ~$30.

From Gordon's website because I haven't seen a more thorough explanation anywhere: The website has pics too and you can really see what he's talking about.

I think if the A arm was bent you'd see it. I think it is the spindle pin hole that is misaligned. It only has to be a bit off and by the time you get all the way out to the end of the tire that little error is magnified a lot. If it makes you feel any better I bought a new rear sway bar that I can't use and a bunch of material that I can't use too, so you're not the only one having trouble with this project...

Sounds like another one of those badly manufactured struts to me. They basically drill the hole for the spindle pin is drilled at an angle. This small error is magnified by the time you get to the end of the tire. I don't know if there is a test to see if the hole is drilled wrong, or if it is more of a "if everything else looks straight it's probably a manufacturing error" thing. EDIT--You might PM John Coffey. I know he's seen this firsthand. I'm not sure about fixing this with our toe adjuster either. That is a lot of misalignment on the bushings...

That's a great story Alex. I'm not sure I could have taken the high road like you did, I think the urge to spell it out that he lost the job because he was an ass would have overtaken me.

The few pilots that I've seen with problems never made audible noise, but they all had trouble getting into 1st gear from neutral, because the input shaft didn't want to disengage from the flywheel even with the clutch pedal depressed. FWIW, I've never seen the bronze bushing fail, but I've seen several pilot bearings fail in this manner. I don't know what perceived benefit the bearing is supposed to provide over the bushing, but I don't run a bearing for that reason. Sounds like stuff coming loose to me Dan. Maybe its time to safety wire the crank bolts or get one of those high dollar harmonic dampeners.

I dug up that pic... You can see that the ramps and the pin are the same on both sides which makes it a 2 way.

Yep, it's a 2 way. Here's a link to my pics of mine that I got from a 300ZXT: http://hybridz.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=34048 Oops, pics aren't there anymore since the switch. It was definitely a 2 way.

I believe that was Lou Gigliotti from the Speed World Challenge series. Definitely a road race car, looked like it had a super tall 1st gear in the first video, something good for those 50 mph rolling starts.

Just in case you're thinking you need that transaxle to get 50/50, Z's already have really close to 50/50 from the factor. Mine is currently 49.5/50.5.

Go get a big air hammer (~$20 to $30 at Sears or Harbor Freight). Put the pointy tip on it and stick it in the dimple on the inside of the axle. Lean into it and pull the trigger. Or get a bigger slide hammer and fight with it for a couple more hours...

Mine rides great. It's a Toyota 2wd P/U with JC Whitney traction bars, a rear sway bar, and the sliders. It's got Bilstein shocks, and I think the shocks were the biggest thing in making it comfortable. The stock shocks were useless, I tried KYBs and they were WAY too harsh, then I got some Bilsteins... just right. Used to routinely place in the top 1/3 at the local autoxes when I was running it. The problem with shackles is that they are supported with bushings which have a lot of flex even if you go to polyurethane. This allows the axle to move side to side under the car. When you eliminate the shackles, then the axle can't really move side to side. It allows you to use the long blade of the leaf spring to keep the axle in line. Also this might not matter for your drag car but the shackles stand up when you hit the brakes on a car with leaf springs, which makes for a lot of nose dive. The sliders totally eliminate the shackle which REALLY cuts down the nose dive aspect of hard braking with leafs. I've been trying to get my friends with a 510 wagon to do this to their car, and can't quite get them to do it. Really made a heck of a difference in my truck though.

I used to autox my pickup truck and the one thing I did to that truck that made the biggest difference in the rear was to eliminate the shackles with a circle track slider setup. That and some traction bars kept the wheel hop to a minimum and really kept the back end under control. Worked great and I've got 100K miles on the sliders and they're still in the truck. Here's one that's kinda similar to what I have, except mine has ball bearings instead of plastic blocks to slide on: http://www.racecareng.com/RCE/index.php?action=3&UID=2004032820224564.68.82.165&part_no=UBM35-2105

I really hope I'm not coming across like an ******* on this one. I'm not trying to denegrate the idea. I DO appreciate what you guys are trying to do, I just think that if you're 90% of the way there, you might as well go the last 10%. Or just buy the right part first and not have to mess with it. But if you're going to the trouble of doing all the machining, make a slotted top piece and make it a camber plate. It's not that much more hassle (almost no work at all) and now the adjustment is there IF you want it. You could drill a couple offset holes in the ones Tom made and make them work like the EMI plates and use them to adjust caster too. I just think back to a post that John B made a while back and he was modifying the rear strut towers so that he could take out negative camber because his bias ply tires don't like lots of neg camber. With camber plates that might very well have been a 2 minute adjustment (for both sides). I know I can adjust out quite a bit. I had mine down to ~1.5 in the back and still had more to go IIRC. You start trying to align a car that is a little tweaked with control arm lengths and I think you might have a hard time getting the thrust angles all correct. If you can adjust top and bottom you can fix just about anything on an alignment rack. Tom Holt's stuff is freakin awesome, BTW. That car is just incredible. As to RPMs concerns, I'm more worried about the sway bars cracking the frame rails than the camber plates damaging the strut towers, but like John B says, it's a race car. If it breaks, you fix it and make it stronger.

Poly bushings.

OK, maybe I'm just being dense or something, but why would you go through all that hassle when you can just buy camber plates and you also get the adjustability in addition to lowering the car and getting rid of the huge rubber insulators? Seems like you guys are reinventing the wheel here. The camber plate kit has a total height of 1 1/8" from the bottom of the spring perch to the top of the camber plate. I don't think you're going to get a whole heck of a lot shorter than that even if you make your own. The upper spring perch also has the needle bearings that John mentioned before, and I think that is a pretty important part of the whole assy. If you don't have the separate needle bearing then you're relying on the monoball to take the load from the suspension and the twisting load as well, and monoballs really aren't meant to spin in their races like that. EDIT-- yes they are designed for that. Thinking of a rod end used in a control arm, and it spins just fine. What the hell am I thinking? Still, asking the bearing to spin with a huge sideload might be asking too much. The needle bearing definitely spins easier... How much time are you going to spend designing this thing and machining it, when you could have just bought a camber plate and been done with it. I understand some people like to do it for the experience, or the joy of making something, but this seems like a big waste of time and energy to me... or am I missing something???