JMortensen

Looks to me like they wanted a longer end link and double shear mounting. The extra 5 lbs seems awful "extra" to me, but then again, I'm not using a 1289 lb/in swaybar (that's what calculates out for a 1.5 in bar).

Sounds like you have a bad master or slave, fantaz.

Wheels are 15x14, slicks are 13" Hoosiers off of a Formula Atlantic. I've done most of the following projects here, so pics of almost all of this are available: finished fuel cell install with new hard lines dual master mod brake plumbing JSK brakes install bought Austin Hoke's Corvette brake setup and used Superlites with it Hoke Performance caliper bracket whole lotta roll cage IMSA rear flares custom AL dash rewire car - Dave Irwin did this 3 lb battery tail light panel 5.3L/T56 motor/trans mounts flexplate and dual 7.25 clutch Accusump rear control arm droop limiters remove front fenderwells Beta Motorsports hatch and hood coneeng.com mufflers and merge collectors Schoenfeld IMCA headers morphed into DIY side pipes laid radiator down and ducted to front tube frame detachable front end Woodward ps rack right and left side window nets modded sway bars braced front strut housing to spindle Ron Tyler diff mount 39 spline chromoly stub axles and companion flanges modded Harbor Freight tire mounting tool for the slicks made lexan door windows with slider for driver's side What I still need to do: DIY defroster from NASCAR brake fan Finish wiring (windshield wiper is the big thing) glue in windshield make lexan 1/4 windows install doors and seat(s) mod another front swaybar - kinda messed up the one I have on the car right now. Finish gigantic front splitter Finish front end/fenders

Brake pedal tap works on open diffs too. Yes, sounds like another helical. 75% power to one wheel means 3:1 bias ratio. OBX is probably 2 or 2.5:1, so it might be a bit more aggressive, but really that's the problem with these is that they're not aggressive enough.

2.3 is pretty heavy for a 4 cylinder. There are varying weights listed online, but it looks like it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 lbs lighter than a 5.0. They can make a lot of power, but there are better/lighter choices these days.

Just turned 40. Katie is all excited about going for rides. They're telling me she needs to wait until she's 9, but she wants to go really bad, and loves riding around in our 99 Miata too.

Sounds like adjustment to me. The later slaves are basically the same, they just let the piston retract via the pressure plate springs. If you have yours adjusted too short then the spring will pull the slave all the way back in, and then you get nothing on the pedal. You need a bit of free play in there, don't adjust the slave until it is actually pushing on the fork. Should be able to get it close and then adjust so the pedal engages about 1/3 of the way up from the floor and be good to go.

I guess I forgot to update this for 9 years. I'll fill in the blanks later (or not), but for right now this is the big news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnBsFVZjT-k&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YLVifKqkHQ&feature=youtu.be http://youtu.be/btKLxaNgG5U

The difference will be less corrections to hold a line, in theory you might have less tail wagging under braking, I never noticed that though. You might not notice at all.

I should clarify. It wasn't just a bump on the track. It was a short hill. You come over a hill around a left turn, then track out at the bottom. This is followed by a maybe 10' rise onto a short straight. With my z being under sprung and over tired, I'm sure I had a lot of lean going on, then it was kind of a g-out situation where the bottom of the hill was followed by the rise. My issue happened going up the little hill. The car would jerk hard right. Scared the crap out of me the first time. There is also a long right sweeper and I really would saw at the wheel on that turn. Adjusted the pivot height and both issues were resolved.

There was a thread years back where bjhines had posted a chassis schematic and people were drawing out various designs. I'd see if you can find it and then start doodling and getting feedback from people here. There are some REALLY BAD cages that show up on car forums, and hybrid z is no exception. Just because there are a lot of tubes in a car or the welding is pretty doesn't mean it's a good design. You can stick to the regs and still miss out on great opportunities to improve the car as well. One thing that I hate to see on a Z is the rear stays from the main hoop going all the way to the back of the car and missing the rear strut towers. It is heavier, eliminates the rear crush zone, and doesn't tie into the strut towers which (along with the control arm mounts) are really how the chassis gets loads. If you're going to add all that weight, you might as well get some stiffness out of it. Tubes should intersect in a "node" if possible. Many times you'll see tubes that could hit the same spot on opposite sides of the landing tube instead intersect 4 inches away from each other. Another pet peeve is tubes that are bent which don't need to be. A bent tube is significantly less stiff than a straight one. Some tubes like the main hoop and the A pillar or halo bars and door bars have to be bent, but in general if you don't need it bent, don't bend it should be the rule of thumb. Also get the cage as close to the body as possible. You want as much space between you and the car that might T-bone you on the track as you can get. Get the door bars out into the gutted doors. Although the door bars bending out makes the chassis less stiff, in that particular case it's also safer. S bends in door bars should be avoided if possible. Some measure of foot protection is a good idea. I have a few of the listed errors on my own car. Once you do it wrong, you're not likely to want to fix it.

The old cheater move for 510s was to bend the steer knuckles and then (I still have a hard time believing this part) claim "accident damage" if it was contested. Really silly if true, but that's the story I've heard from different sources, and apparently they let that slide. Never seen a set of Z steer knuckles done that way, but you can still buy the 510 ones from DP: http://dpracing.co/images/DPR15.jpg How much it matters depends on how bumpy the tracks are where you race and how low the car is. My car was a real handful at Buttonwillow, after moving the pivots was pretty well transformed. No more sawing at the wheel to keep a straight line, no bumpsteer induced emergency lane change maneuver over one particular bump on that track.

No pics of that installation, but on mine there wasn't any way to attach it where I needed to, so I cut the stock shroud where it wouldn't work, and then made my own with aluminum and screwed it in to the plastic, put some seam sealer in the cracks, and painted it flat black. You can see that it's all hacked up if you look for it, but painted it's camoflauged pretty well.

Depends on who you're talking to, John. It's a point of contention to be sure, but Canton's own literature says the manual valve is the recommended for race cars. Lots of debate about which is the best, and I looked at quite a few threads in quite a few forums myself trying to figure out which way to go. Some people swear by the electric EPC valve, others swear by the ball valve. What's worse: running at 7000 rpm through a turn and hitting the 25 psi switch and getting the valve to open and release high pressure oil, or running a ball valve and having the pressure drop more slowly to 25 psi by the end of the turn? Seems to me it's probably 6 of 1, half dozen of the other.

Road racing trapdoors are usually a diamond shape around the pickup with trapdoors on the inside. Should work fine for drag racing too.

Moving the pivot adjusts bumpsteer. Using a spacer only changes the roll center and changes what part of the stock bumpsteer curve you're driving in. I did a FAQ on this. It's not entirely complete, but it will probably get you where you need to be: http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/38615-bumpsteer-faq/

Have you added clutches? If not, you should. The stock R200 LSD out of the Z31T cars won't hold up to a lot of power. Nissan cheesed out on the clutch pack and added a big spacer in there and took out two of the clutches per side. The imported Japanese LSDs out of the R32 Skylines don't need this upgrade. Have a look at this thread, then see if Savage42 is still making clutches. http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/52029-adding-clutches-to-the-clsd-r200/

How would you feel about running some scenarios for us?

The spacer is not only used to properly mount the shock. I've seen a Z at an autox with the rear sectioned to fit the strut insert with no spacer. The rear end was much lower than the (pretty damn low) front end. The guy had cranked in a bunch of preload to try to raise the rear up. Thing spun about 10 times that I saw. If that same car used a 2" spacer, it would have driven fine. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if the shock is in the middle of its travel at ride height, you probably don't need to section the strut. As to the amount of droop necessary, I don't think you really need more than the amount of sag you have. So to simplify, if you have a 500 lb corner and a 500 lb spring, you don't need 3" of droop. You need 1 inch, because that's the amount of sag that you have. Stock Z's (and just about every other production car I can think of outside of leaf sprung vehicles) don't have as much droop as they have sag. Of course, you don't need 5" of bump travel with 500 in/lb springs either, because you'll never use it. For my own car, I've got the rears sectioned 2" and I'm using camber plates which drop the car down another 1" or 1.5". At the ride height I intend to run, I'm using droop limiters to eliminate the extra droop that exists after the spring comes loose on the perch. When I eventually get better struts I'm going to try and find something with a 3 or 4 inch stroke. The rest is wasted on a really low, stiffly sprung car.

Seem to remember people mounting them to the other end of the toe link.

No offense taken, but I think we're still not seeing eye to eye. 6 inches isn't a short stroke shock, and if you use a 2" spacer, you shouldn't run out of droop unless you aren't low enough to justify sectioning in the first place.

You need a 2" spacer under the strut on the rear of a 240 and 3" under 280, even if you section. Without the spacer your ass end will drag and you will have no droop.

Was out in the shop today and had a look at my Miata header which is out as the engine gets rebuilt. It is a Tri-Y and the first two primaries might be shorter than the second length of the Y. This is an OBX header which is a pretty straight rip off of the Jackson Racing header, a well respected piece among Miata racers. EDIT-- here's another shot of a new Jackson racing part:

Was out in the shop today and had a look at my Miata header which is out as the engine gets rebuilt. It is a Tri-Y and the first two primaries might be shorter than the second length of the Y. This is an OBX header which is a pretty straight rip off of the Jackson Racing header, a well respected piece among Miata racers.

Tri-Ys are a 4 cyl design. 4 cyl merge into 2 Ys, then they merge in a 3rd Y. After doing this I'd suggest that fixing the Imca header would be more difficult than building one the way you want it.