JMortensen

Disconnect the front of the rod from the control arm. Take out any shims that may have been installed to increase caster on one side or the other. They should go on easy IIRC. Then hook the front of the rod back up, and set the car down. Tighten everything with the weight of the vehicle on the suspension.

Somewhere close to 35 total should be about right for max power. Maybe a few more degrees, maybe a few less, but right in that area. This should help: http://home.att.net/~jason510/dizzy_specs.htm

If you plug the vents you're guaranteed an oil leak. Either take the hoses and run them to a catch can which is vented to atmosphere or do as you said and plug them into the intake. Problem with triples is that if you plug the PCV into one runner, then that runner will burn air/fuel, and whatever oily crap comes out of the PCV. You can split it into 6 lines with its own little manifold, and run one to each cylinder (I think Dan Baldwin did this). Catch can is the easiest.

I think it's a little shallower than that, I just sectioned some and I think I cut them at about 1 1/2" and was below that part of the tube. Maybe more like 1". EDIT--It's thinner at the top where the threads are, then it gets thicker below (just went and looked).

That's the best reasoning I've heard so far.

Has anyone seen damage to a strut tube in the area heated when sectioning? I haven't. Nor have I seen anyone break the weld itself where a strut was sectioned. Also, the strut tube is welded from the factory at the bottom, the brake line brackets are welded, and the original spring perches are welded onto the strut tube. It's not as though we're welding something that wasn't welded on from the factory. I would think that sectioning them as high as possible would be a way to avoid a catastrophic failure later on, if that was a big concern. Even if the strut broke at the weld, the higher the weld was on the strut housing the less likely it would be that the strut insert could get bounced or jostled out of the bottom part of the strut tube. I think GC says cut them right at the bottom. If for some reason a strut tube were to break at the weld, I could very easily see the strut disconnecting from the spindle in this case (big accident ensues). This statement doesn't make sense to me. The original spring perch was welded on, so why ignore it? Seems like the thing to do if one were that concerned would be to include the original weld in the area being sectioned, so that the original "heat affected" area would also be removed. Again, I think all of this is overdone, and I always have seen them sectioned right at the top, about 1 1/2" below the thread. The reason given to me for doing it there is so that if you need to grind on the inside for some reason it is easily accessible, but there could arguably be a safety benefit to sectioning right at the top. The strut tubes are under a considerable strain, and I have heard of them getting bent in off road excursions, but I've never heard of one failing in such a dramatic way that it would warrant retapping the threads vs cutting and welding. Basically I think you guys are making a mountain out of a mole hill on this one, but I do admit that it may just be that I'm ignorant of problems that have come about from sectioning...

http://photos.yahoo.com/sss510six If you click on the button right below the search terms that says find all of the search terms then you won't find 20,000 matches (for future reference). I couldn't find the post that had this link by searching for L28 and T56, but I did find it with L28 and 6 speed FWIW. You'll see that it takes a bit more than a bell housing...

What would be the advantage of this? It would probably be heavier than a stamped steel stock arm. It would be more flexy (due to the bushing) than a chromoly arm. Is it just for show? Chromoly with rod ends is going to be as racey as it gets, I think, so you'd be taking a step backwards with regards to ultimate performance. As to your front brakes you got me curious if there was a 7 hole 13" rotor from Coleman or someplace like that, so I did a little checking. I did find some through Coleman, part #d30-137-1300-87 (1 3/8" rotor) or d30-125-1300-87 (1.25" rotor). I am assuming that your current setup uses a 8 hole on 7" bolt circle rotor like the JSK stuff I've got. http://www.colemanracing.com Jon

280ZX

This is the most useless thread jack I've ever seen on hybridz. If driftn wants to talk about pipe dreams like titanium engines I think he should start his own "Totally Unrealistic Ideas" thread. At least I can ignore that one without thinking there might be some relevant Z06 beating info on it.

There is a general rule of thumb that the exhaust should flow 75% of what the intake flows on a bench. You can get that number by porting the head correctly. I would think that porting the head would be cheaper than installing different valves until you hit the magic number, but if you wanted it exact you would need to find a shop with a flow bench. The other benefit is that you can make the whole head flow much better and still hit the 75%. I know the 75% is for NA, not sure if that goes out the window when forced induction comes into play.

I thought that valve was a PCV valve, and the check valve was the one that is usually in the hose clamped to the firewall... Kinda like a little hockey puck looking thing about 2" in diameter. I don't have anything like that valve he's holding on my triples, but my booster holds vacuum because I have the disk thingy.

That's funny. Part of the reason why I wanted to up the breakaway was so that it would run cooler. The theory I'd read was that the clutches only generate heat when they slip, so the more worn the LSD gets the hotter it will run. If they're too tight to slip than no gears inside the diff move but the ring and pinion. Interesting that you would have higher temps with the higher breakaway. Not sure what to make of that.

If you read the second page he talks about hitting bumps while going straight flexing the towers in, but under cornering load, flexing out. I'm sure our Z's are worse than most cars, and are probably really bad when you've got heavy springs in. It's really not a big deal which is right, as long as it gets fixed. I just thought it was interesting, and like I said before, suprised me a lot when I learned why and how.

Just a little backup for my point, this was the only site I could find that had any reasoning as to what the chassis does under load: http://e30m3performance.com/myths/Strutbar_Theory/strut_bar_theory.htm

That's what I always thought until I read a magazine article that used a dial indicator with a tell tale function to measure the movement. The strut towers actually move OUT on the loaded side of the car, and in on the other side (at least on the 944 that was the test car). Surprised the crap outta me too.

I don't think rod ends have any downsides as long as the strut bars control in more than one direction. The MSA bars with just a single bar could allow the left or right side to raise in relation to the other, but if you've got it triangulated I think that solves that problem or at least reduces it. Personally I like not having to disassemble a bunch of stuff to do a valve adjustment. The way mine are set up I can take off one bolt on the bar that goes across and "flip" it over and out of the way. Not sure how much work has to go into removal of the PDK setup to pull the valve cover, maybe that center bar comes off easily too, but when you look at something like the TEP setup it looks like a bit more work... I can also say that I'm sure the PDK setup does a better job than what I've rigged together, but when testing mine I went around a corner where the front always got loose prior to the installation, and it DID NOT get loose with my bars in place. In fact I got two wheels in the dirt. On the INSIDE of the corner. Big big difference. I used to think that strut bars were a ricey thing like a polished cold air intake, but I was WRONG. Way wrong. I'm happy with the performance increase that mine give, and it was a great confidence booster for me because that was the very first thing I ever fabbed on a car from scratch (or as close to scratch as I'll ever get--not going to melt the ore to make the metal for the parts).

Wasn't that the Comdex convention from 1996 or something. This one is OLD. You can find some sites where people added onto the list, I've seen some that were 50 points long.

Beautiful. Really beautiful. Anyone else notice the sharp taper from the throttle plates to the intake ports? Seems like they're making damn good power like that, but I was kinda surprised to see that... How's that for nitpicky!!! :malebitchslap:

You've got to look at a combo of factors: where the engine makes power, trans gear ratios, rear gear ratio, tire size. If you have a V8 or a turbo L6 that doesn't want to spin higher than 5500, you'll use taller trans gearing, taller rear gears, taller tires, or a combination. A high rpm V8 or a NA L6 that makes power from 4-7000 rpm is going to use lower gears. Also depends how you use the car. If it is a daily driver the primary concern might be freeway rpms. For an autox car, might be to keep the rpms high on slow corner exits. For a drag car, probably the most important thing is the trap rpms. Don't want to run out of gear and hit redline 200' before the line, but you don't want to chug across at 3500 rpm either. I have had the 3:70s for years and they were great when I had SU's on my car, but when I switched to triples they were an immediate problem. In my case I just bought a 4:11 and I'm going to swap my LSD carrier into the 4:11. But that works for my high rpm NA L6 at autox, and might not work for you. It's all about your setup and what you're doing with the car.

I made some with aluminum tap tube from Coleman. Just bought the tube, tapped it, used 5/8" rod ends. On the mounts I used 1/8" plate, if you look for pics of John Coffey's car, mine looks very similar to that. His triangulate better in the center of the engine bay, my rear mounts are more spread apart than his. I hit the vertical braces under the cowl, he apparently braced the center of the cowl area and ran the bars to the firewall in the center, which should work better than what I did. I don't have any pics of mine, but I believe there are some pics of John's at http://www.betamotorsports.com look for Rusty Old Datsun for sale.

Fuel injection is definitely the way to go. If you like the triple effect, maybe some triple TBs and a custom plenum.

OK, I've figured out that the wheel bgs are the same. Now I just need to see if I can get that special order from the old employer. Thanks for all the help everyone.

That sounds like "spyware" to me, not a virus. I actually got a call from a guy guaranteeing me that he could get my website onto people's browser for any search term. At first I thought it was a search engine optimization business, but then he mentioned that you need to run this program for the thing to work. Being the dumbass that I am, I installed the program. When you search for something, even if it did not come up in the search results, when you CLOSE the browser it would open a new window with the website that had paid for his "service". This became incredibly annoying in about 30 seconds time, so I went to uninstall the program. You CAN'T. I called him back and told him he was an @sshole and that his service should be a crime, how did he sleep at night, etc. He basically responded that it is not illegal so I could go F myself. Did a little searching on the internet and found Spybot - Search & Destroy. It is free (they do accept donations though), ran it and it got that crap off my computer. Apparently the main way to get this Spyware on your system is to download freeware, and it will install the spyware with the program you actually wanted. Antivirus software does NOTHING to prevent or remove spyware AFAIK.

OK, I didn't think that Timken was an option here, or else I would have asked my old employer who stocks about $500,000 in Timken at any given time. Question though: In looking at the Timken website, they show the following: seal - 224270 1 required inner bearing - RW116 1 required outer bearing - RW117 2 required On the RW117 they say 2 required??? Probably a misprint... but since I'm calling in a favor I want to do it right the first time. Anyone know for sure? Anybody have a Timken book to look at? Also they show the same rear bg for 240 and 280Z, but the guy at Nissan I spoke to said that 240 and 280 rear bearings were different. I thought they were the same, but the 280 stub was 27 spline instead of 25. They don't have different diameter axles, do they?