JMortensen

If you have no idea where the fluid went, it's probably inside the brake booster. New master, dump the fluid out of the booster.

I just had a bitch of a time bleeding an entirely new system, and using a syringe and pushing the fluid through the bleeder to the master finally gave me a good pedal. I think you can buy syringes for this purpose, I happened to have one left over from my older kid who was tube fed for a while as a baby. Good luck.

Looks good. I'm in a very similar spot with the front end of mine. It's a pretty cool feeling when you pull the cardboard off and start to see the fender take shape out of the foam.

Word of mouth is essentially useless in this instance IMO. Might as well take the word of all those people who put a big brake kit on the front, leave the rear brakes stock and then report that their braking is a whole lot better than before, even though their bias has to be screwed with stock rears. How many times have you seen that? What would prove the shock's worth to me would be repeatable dyno plots from different shocks done by someone other than Stance, and adjustments that worked and had no cross talk. The onus is on the newcomer to prove his worth. I'm not saying it's impossible that they make good stuff, I'm saying I want to see actual test results. Old, but good, shock tech: http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets6.html

I'm sorry that my comment got your knickers in a twist, that's not my intent, but there's plenty of feedback on Stance suspension products in the Miata forums and there are a whole lot more Miata racers than Z racers. There is more and better quality feedback. They are considered a "get your car low cheaply" option in that market. Ohlins, Penske, Bilstein, and AFCO are the go to brands for serious racers there. AFCO now makes a strut for Mustangs, but I don't think they do any others yet. I'm pretty sure you can get all of the others on a Z car. Bilsteins and Penskes for sure. If I was building a car to go close to 180mph, I would want the best. YMMV.

The LS1 pan hangs down an inch or inch and a half below the xmember on most installs, right? The LS3 pan is 1" deeper. You guys running 4x4 ride heights, or just feeling lucky?

You might look into stance a little deeper. I don't know what the requirements are for drag racing, but Stance is generally a low price, low end coilover. The fact that it has two knobs on it really doesn't give you any indication of it's quality or the suitability of its valving for drag racing.

If you can't find anything, Kevko will make you a trapdoor pan for about $500.

Make sure you can turn the wheels. With that much scrub the wheels move back and forth in the wells a lot.

I don't recall the spec for this, but it's pretty low. A guy I used to autox with busted the top of his strut off overdoing it. I use an impact gun and just hit it really quick with the gun turned way down. With an impact you could hold the shock shaft by hand and still get a lot of torque on the nut.

There have been a couple people that have snapped the chromoly stubs from MM, and CF has them made by the same people. The limiter is the size of the shaft. regardless of the spline count, the shaft is still a fairly puny 1.25" diameter. Ultimately the 8.8 with bigger stubs from American FWD applications are going to be the best bet, but they require the switch to different brakes, struts, etc. The CF stuff is strong enough for 99% of the people out there anyway, it's the hardcore drag racers that need to worry about it. That's my $.02 anyway.

Looks like the trans hangs down below the frame rails. Might not be that big a deal if you plan on a taller ride height. If you want it really low it might be an issue. Tough to judge by the angle of the camera, but that's what it looked like to me anyway.

I bet that's it, and friction modifier will fix.

Ross said they were shorter in droop years ago. Always questioned it until I verified it myself.

There is some preload on the clutches, but unless that thing is jammed up really tight, it's just going to spin one tire (even if they call it "100% lock" and any attempt to drive like that will just wear the clutches). The difference between clutch and helical is that most helicals lose any ability to lock the tires together as soon as one loses traction. You don't hear many stories about clutch diffs lifting a tire, spinning that tire up, then snapping the axle when it comes down, but the fact that they don't instantly spin up doesn't mean that you can drive with the axle removed. You are correct that the droop is where the the axles are shortest.

It's a "limited" slip. You'd need a locker or a spool to drive without the CV in.

280ZX shift boot?

I got it off of a member of another forum. They're around though. Just search for brake duct fan and you should find some. Here's one place selling a few different varieties: http://www.circletracksupply.com/brake-ducts-hose/

You might be right, but well, I kinda threw them away a few years ago...

Didn't want to run a heater core or the squirrel cage fan in this car, so I got a used NASCAR brake fan and some sprinkler pipe and made a crude defroster. I've got about $25 in the setup, weighs about 2 lbs and seems to blow pretty good. Thanks as always to tube80z for the idea.

Too much grease is not good. Will make the bearings run hot.

A knee bar will still help in a side impact. I'd run the door bars as far up the knee bar as you can. The sill bar protects you from a low nosed car in a side impact, or if you go off the track or a road and hit a stump or a rock or something like that. Not strictly necessary, but a good idea.

Check with a tech inspector and see if this is legal for SCCA. I'm sure it is for autocross, but I would think that it wouldn't be for road racing, since you have no A pillar bar. Most track day type stuff doesn't have any requirement for a roll bar at all, unless you're in a convertible. 1. Are you trying to keep the stock dash? If you are, I don't think your supports to the firewall are going to happen. If not, I'd run a straight dash bar (at dash height) and then I'd have a second set of thinner tubing to do the firewall support. This will give you better protection if you get T boned, and the extra weight of the two tubes to the firewall won't be a big deal. Make your minimum requirement cage out of the 1.75 x .120, then do everything else thinner/lighter if possible. Thinner and larger diameter will be stiffer than smaller diameter thicker wall. I did all of my extra stuff out of 1.625 x .060. Same thing with the rear strut bar. Use whatever thinner tubing you decide on. 2.1.625 x .060, or 1.5 x .090, something in that general area is what I'd suggest. I picked by going to www.onlinemetals.com and checking weight per foot. For your yellow tubes I ran 1" square x .065, and I ran a tube from the TC rods to the xmember to make it a K member as well. 3. Not a fan of the X in the rear stays. I think you used to be able to do that instead of a diag in the main hoop, but not anymore. It's weight up high. I really like an X from the rear struts to the bottom of the main hoop and used that in my cage, but it's a real PITA to weld in. Had to cut holes in the fenders and dog legs to do it. 4. Yes, door bars should help a lot. One problem Z's have is flexing around the firewall. You step on the brakes, and essentially the car wants to fold at the firewall. Jack the car up and support it under the TC rods, and you can SEE the front end sag down under teh weight of the motor (at least you could on my 70). By tying the front and rear structures together, you'll prevent that beam flexing. Without it, you might have a stiff structure in front and another in the back, but nothing substantial to hold them together. I would put the front end of the door bars as high as you can, don't do it 1/2 way down the tube. Make that node the same one that goes to the firewall too. Every time two tubes hit a third, you should try to have them hit the target tube in the same spot. 5. Not so sure about seat mounts. I welded to the subframe connectors that I added. Not really seeing the benefit of welding a big spreader plate to the trans tunnel which is very weak anyway. Would make a lot more sense if you could put a connector tube across the bottom of the car, but most Z's don't have that option because the exhaust is in the way.

What kind of oil pan and how far does it hang down past the xmember? If it's 4" lower than the JCI kit I'd think an LS1 pan would be damn near scraping the ground as they're typically 1 or 1.5" past the xmember with JCI. You can do a drop base. Again, I'm using the NASCAR carbon fiber airbox (cheap on ebay and it has a 2" drop base. You can then pick the element height to get the total height you need and you might make it clear the hood if it's really that low. There are regular air filters with drop bases too, if you don't want the duct part. I bought the filter with a drop base just because it was cheaper than buying an element alone. If you want to pay shipping I could send it to you and you could play around with it and see what works.

I seem to remember removing it with propane torch and wire brush. Might have been MAPP. Been a while. Used to autox with a guy who snapped the A pillar right off at the cowl there. He reinforced, welded it back on and reinstalled the windshield and never had anymore problems.