JMortensen

Wow, how original. Sounds just like the completely full o' crap Bowling for Columbine. After I learned of all the "stretched truths" in that movie I felt violated. What's next? Is he going to make everyone afraid of cars by showing footage from horrible accidents. Oh, I think Nader already covered that one. People with black lung from tobacco. Hmm... that's been done too. Seems like scare tactics are quite popular (and effective) these days... I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't see how anyone could consider taking over a country and occupying it for a year with 900 deaths a "failed military policy" or a "quagmire". This has been and continues to be the biggest ass whooping in human history. Has it been perfect? No. Were there mistakes? Sure. But it is still a royal ass whoopin. Here's something that you don't see on the news very often. According to http://www.iraqbodycount.com (seemingly very anti-war site) there have been approx 13,000 civilian deaths as a result of military intervention in Iraq since the war started. Saddam officially took power of Iraq on July 16, 1979. From the time he took power to the time we deposed him, he had killed approximately 300,000 people. That's in 25 years or 300 months. Do some simple division, that's 1,000 PEOPLE A MONTH!!! WITHOUT A WAR AT ALL! Also for comparison's sake in Desert Storm we lost 378 men in combat casualties, and the war spanned a month and 9 days. So that's an average of about 10 men a day, which in the case of the Iraqi Freedom would equate to about 4900 American combat casualties. Is this giving any perspective??? We are KICKING ASS over there. No two ways about it. I just don't buy the argument that we shouldn't have gone in, or we didn't have reason to go in, or we are "losing" or are "not winning". We are kicking ass by any military measurement of success, we are clearly NOT victimizing the citizenry of Iraq or exposing them to a situation worse than they lived under before. Regardless of WMDs Saddam didn't keep his end of the CEASE FIRE agreement at the end of the first Gulf War.

Wasn't it Clinton who received a bunch of Chinese $$$ in his campaign in his last election? I thought that was more of a Democrat thing. Love these two! Some more (cause I live for this stuff): Democrats: You have to believe that outsourcing of jobs is killing the economy, point out that the TELEMARKETING for the Republicans is done from India, then when our economy rebounds, complain that the people getting jobs still aren't getting the good jobs they used to have--like...telemarketing. You have to believe that the only way to stop North Korea from getting nukes is to GIVE THEM A NUCLEAR REACTOR. You must believe in the power of words like God, Christ and pray to destroy the free will of our youth, but insist on the benevolence of words like bitch, ho, and gangsta and must fight the good fight to protect these constitutionally protected words for our childrens' sake. Republicans: You have to believe in the fight against abortion and then argue that an 8 year old should be charged as an adult to get the death penalty, and then argue that a 90 year old with cancer shouldn't have the right to euthanasia. You must believe that using fetuses for stem cell research is against God's will, clearly throwing them in the trash is favorable to God. You must believe that in order to protect our freedom the government needs to know EVERYTHING about EVERYONE.

That reminds me of a challenge I made back in the early 90's. I had an funny open challenge to people in my school to race anyone with a slammed mini truck. We would race on Pearblossom Hwy outside of Palmdale to Victorville. Anyone who knows the road will get the humor.

IMO, and it's just MO, drifting is about as entertaining as synchronized swimming. You know there's something sexy going on, but for some reason it's still not worth watching.

Check my new sig!!!

I actually watched a TV show on drifting night before last. I couldn't tell you who everyone was or how old the show was, but they were focusing on Rhys Millen trying to get his new GTO setup correctly if that helps. They were using an oval/road course. On the oval the cars were trying to get as close to the wall as possible while making the turn. That is NOT the racing line. Then there was a left/right chicane, and the idea was to get as close to the retaining wall for the right hander as possible, basically sliding sideways right at the wall, then catching and missing the wall by inches. Again, WRONG line for racing. Big time. Like a ultra hyper early apex.

A bigger wheel is good to a point. When you exceed the "good" size, then you start raising the car with the wheel diameter and running out of suspension trying to get the body of the car low enough for the wheels to look right. Unless major $$$ is spent on ultra light wheels you'll also get slower acceleration and deceleration, and potentially worse handling due to increased unsprung and rotating weight. You also lose some of the ability to use the tire as a spring, because it becomes necessary to run really high pressures to keep the rim from getting damaged when running a 35 series tire. 20s would look fine on a car designed for 20s. A newer car with a high waistline might be tall enough in the body so that you could fit a 20 on there and not have the ground clearance of a 4x4. Unfortunately despite the looks you still have to turn that big heavy 20. The two pics you've got there are perfect examples RCNSC. They show new cars with big wheels that aren't jacked up due to the wheel diameter. Compare those to some pics of Zs on big wheels and you'll see what I'm talking about. My feeling is that some designer came around about 10 years ago and decided that there needed to be very little gap between the tire and the fender, and that has now turned into a nearly universal design feature of all new cars. The wheels got larger, the waistlines got higher, and the style got more and more popular. Tire and wheel manufacturers pushed the trend no doubt, and just like the fart can exhaust manufacturers, they're getting rich off of the fad. My $.02, Jon

Do those guys install small brake kits or is Cadillac still putting on such small brakes that a 13" rim fits over it?

I'm a little late on this one as I haven't been following this thread, but I'm confused by the above statement. I would be curious to find out what exactly would be considered "ricey" Dorifto. My definition of rice was always form over function on a japanese car, and nothing says "I prefer form" more than the stretched tire look (not good for handling) with 5* of neg camber (not good for handling) on a street car that is 4" off the ground (not good for handling and have fun patching your fiberglass). Isn't drifting the ultimate form over function motorsport? You aren't trying to get there the fastest, you're trying to make the most smoke and put on the best show, get closest to the wall, drive the worst line possible, etc. If there were ever a "ricey" form of motorsports, it would seem that drifting would be it. Maybe you could argue that a hydraulics competition where they're spinning the bed of the truck around might be more form over function, but for actual driving of a vehicle it's gotta be drifting. Please understand that I'm not saying that the drivers aren't skilled, or that there are no redeeming qualities to the cars, just that they are built to make a show rather than go as fast as they possibly can. Is my definition of ricey just completely wrong?

Yep. You really don't want Zs too low. You can move the front control arm pivots up to counteract the roll center problem and/or use bumpsteer spacers, and you can section the struts so that you don't lose as much travel by lowering the car. Also by installing camber plates you get rid of the tall rubber insulators that are on top of the springs, which lowers the car a bunch with no ill effects other than a harsher ride. It is possible to lower a Z a significant amount using a combination of these things without having any negative effects. Without any of these things, if you lower the car more than about 2" you're asking for trouble. Here's some links to get you started on the suspension stuff: http://www.betamotorsports.com http://www.modern-motorsports.com http://www.arizonazcar.com http://www.motorsportauto.com Use the search function. If you have a question about bumpsteer or camber or caster, whatever, it's probably been dealt with before. Happy searching! Jon

They have the same picture for all of their rotors if you look at the bottom of the auction. You can slot solid rotors or drill them or both. I can't say enough good things about the PowerStop rotors that I got from NOPI. They were crossdrilled Brembos and they went through hell on my car and never warped. Not sure what that ebay auction is for, but you may want to call NOPI and check prices, I seem to remember them being a lot cheaper than $85.

What are you trying to compensate for there, Science Guy???

Top End Performance does this with Z flywheels, but I don't think they go under about 16 lbs with a stock flywheel. I think they have an exchange service for their lightened flywheels: http://www.racetep.com/flywheel.html You could get a Fidanza aluminum flywheel, I think they get down to about 11 lbs or so, and they're aluminum. Taking a cast iron flywheel down to 9 lbs is asking for trouble IMO.

http://www.ztherapy.com

Carrera makes strut inserts for Datsuns. You could have them made with whatever damping you want.

I'm with Forrest. I have a couple of suggestions to possibly help cut back on useless/double posts. One big help would be to remove the Search box from the top right of the main page (and most other pages). It doesn't work, and I've seen several people say that they did search and nothing came up. Also when they do search they usually don't click the button so that the search goes for all search terms together instead of individually. If the search were defaulted to the ALL setting, I think that too would cut down on the problems. These things can only help the users here. The ones who do search will get a better answer, and the rest of us don't have to read the same post 500 times. As far as the inaccurate answers go, this is a public forum and all we can do is point out the inaccuracy, although I suppose the mods could delete bad posts if they were wrong and not challenged. Can't expect them to find everything though.

The ZX front disks won't work on your Z. Blueovalz worked out a way to use a 300ZX rotor with the ZX caliper, so that is an option, but they won't just bolt up. Neither will the rears, I think. You'd need a Maxima caliper bracket to bolt them up. Suspension and brakes are totally different, but the engine/trans/diff would work, and you could grab the CV axles and get an adapter from Ross and get those on.

My opinion is that you should forget the Z if you want to drive people around. Go look at a 2+2 in person and try and fit in the backseat. It's not much of a backseat. That being said if you can deal with a 2 seater a 240 would handle better than a late 260 as it is lighter to start with. You'll probably be gaining some weight with subframe connectors or roll bar or cage so starting with the lightest car is a good idea if you're looking for handling. As an alternative I'd suggest a 510 with an SR20DET swap. That would be light and would handle great, smog exempt, but you'd need some flares for big tires, and it's aerodynamically challenged. If you can deal with a 2 seater, a 240 with a good airdam and spoiler, good suspension upgrades and an LS1 swap is looking like a reasonably inexpensive way to meet all of your goals with the one exception.

Sounds to me like you have a bar for a 240. I need a bar for a 240. I'm not sure if my MSA bar for a 240 will work on your 280, but if you want to try a sale or trade PM me. The difference is that the 240 bars mount to the verticals behind the diff, and the 280 bars (or the MSA 240 bar like I have) mounts in front of the diff to the frame rails.

Funny how giving away all the rich peoples' money starts to look less attractive when you stop smoking doobies and get a damn job. Suddenly that's YOUR money that's being given away.

OK, that's cool. Can't really be a better overall goal than "does everything bitchin". I don't think your Jegster chassis is going to handle really well with stock fenders and 345s though. I think you'll have a hard time turning it. It should go down the strip nicely though.

What is a pro-touring 240? I'm guessing it must be a drag racer? Never heard of such a thing. Seems like you'd be better off with a smaller wheel and more sidewall on a drag car though.

Kinda the same thing--liberal hippies in the cities and toothless rednecks outside the cities... I guess it's the same everywhere...

I never ran vacuum advance on my Z's (SUs or Mikunis), because they've always been broken when I got the car and they'll start advancing on top end runs, which is really bad. Never had the popping either. Plug the vacuum hose that comes off the intake to the dizzy, and set your timing at ~18 or 19 degrees BTDC and see if it still pops. If you use vacuum advance you'll get a little bit of in town driveability, but when you do a long top end pull like on a long straightaway at the track you won't have any vacuum at first, but then as you get into the higher rpms the vacuum starts to creep back up, which then advances the timing and can cause pinging. Of course, it won't if you set the timing to the factory level of 8* or whatever, but then you won't have your 36 when you need it.