JMortensen

The combination of pad compound, ducting and adjustment needed to make the stock brakes function at an OK level as a race car is not convenient or usable on a weekend warrior IMO. Pure street car, maybe, but not for anything that's driven hard on a track or even on a long canyon road. I've never heard an ITS or any other road racer sing the praises of the stock brakes. They were good for 1970, but time moves on. Jon

The 280ZX has a smaller diameter rotor, so the pad will hang off the edge of the rotor. The usual setup is early 300ZX rotor with a 1/2" spacer to get the caliper to fit over the rotor correctly. Jon

So far I think I've found the best prices at Behrents. Apparently AFCO has some good deals too, according to Afshin. Looks like Behrents' webpage is down right now. http://www.behrents.com I figured out the difference in the calipers too. The Superlite is physically larger and heavier, and uses a larger pad than the NDL. I had to special order the NDL, NOBODY stocks them except these guys: http://www.precisionbrakescompany.com/ and they were $30 higher than the competition. I called so many people that I can't remember who I actually ordered from, but if you want I'll let you know when I get them. Jon

What size wheels? You can run the JSK kit inside MOST 15" wheels. Modern-Motorsports makes a 13" brake kit which is gigantic and will clear MOST 16" wheels IIRC. 13" is damn huge, but some of the hardcore roadracers say unnecessary, John Coffey in particular. You would NEVER fade them though. I chose the JSK kit based on my 15" wheels and price of the kit overall. JSK's is not complete, just rotor hats, bolts and caliper mounting bracket, you can buy your rotors, calipers and pads to suit your needs. There are a couple of us just doing this now, so we can help if you decide to go the JSK route. Looks like my JSK front kit is going to end up at about $550, but that is not including ss lines, master cyl, and adj prop valve which I already have. Only the front end too, but I think its a pretty killer deal. I scored on ebay on the kit too. Would have been $675 or so otherwise. Still an excellent deal at that price. http://www.jskinnovations.com The page for the normal 4 lug 70-78 stuff isn't working right now for some reason, but this one for the 5 lug setup does work. The kit is basically the same except the hat is made for the 5 lug on this one and the one I bought has a shallower (is that a word?) hat for the 4 lug. http://www.jskinnovations.com/Wilwood3.htm Jon

Looks really good Richard. It's easy to see that you put a lot of thought into how/where it bolted up. Please let us know if you can feel a difference. Jon

I could use one too. If you find one, I'll be next.

EDIT-opie, you are confusing two entirely different things. American cars have "carrier breaks" where you use one carrier for 2.73-3.54 gears, and a different carrier for 3.73 - 4.11, as an example. A ring gear spacer sits between the ring gear and the carrier so that you can use a 4.11 gear on a 2.73 carrier, for instance. Nissans just have thicker and thicker ring gears the lower the gear ratio, and AFAIK there is never a need to change the carrier when changing gear ratios. IMO ring gear spacers (not bolt spacers, but ring gear spacers) are a bad idea. The carrier has a pilot where the ring gear fits on very tightly, and when you use a ring gear spacer the ring gear is no longer press fit on the carrier, and you have to use longer bolts to attach it. So basically the ring gear is now supported only by the bolts, which are longer and weaker than the originals, and you've now put in a lower gear ratio, which means more torque going to them. Not good. This is a ring gear BOLT spacer we're talking about. The earlier R200's had 10mm ring gear bolts, the later ones had 12mm bolts. The bolts go thru the carrier and screw into the ring gear. So if you have a later LSD from a 300 ZX and you want to swap it into an earlier housing (for a different gear ratio) you have 12mm holes in the carrier but 10mm threads in the ring gear. So you need a spacer to take up the space in the holes in the carrier. No machining needed. Just get 12mm tubing with 1mm wall thickness, and cut it to the thickness of the carrier, deburr/chamfer, and drop them in. The bolt heads on the 10mm bolts are 14mm so they should easily cover the ring gear spacers. Jon

Whoever does this first is going to have to buy a stick of tube I'm betting. It would be great if that person would cut up a bunch of these and sell 'em cheap to hybridz guys. Maybe throw an ad in the classified section... I know I've talked to 10 or so people who had a passing interest. Good way to recoup the price of the tube (which shouldn't be terribly expensive anyway). If I do it first I promise to do the above, but I've got other projects going right now. Jon

http://www.swagelok.com/downloads/webcatalogs/MS-01-157-SCS.pdf Part no SS-T10M-S-1,0-6ME http://www.eagletube.com/metric.asp http://mdmetric.com/4300/R-Metric%20Tube.pdf Part no R12x1 That's with about 5 minutes worth of checking... Jon

Yes, it should be possible, but why? Most people do away with the vacuum, but even hardcore racer types leave the mechanical intact. I JB welded the vacuum advance plate to the breaker plate on my ZX dizzy. I would think just take the weights off of the shaft and JB weld or safety wire them so that they cannot open would get the mechanical disabled. Jon

I keep thinking somewhere out there somebody is making a 12mm OD tube with 10mm ID. I don't think the material is terribly important, neither is a press fit. You don't have to press the normal ring gear bolts through the carrier, after all. If someone could locate that, you could just cut them to length, clean up any burrs, and drop them in. Jon

The N36 rumor is that the 260Z intake manifold is worth 10hp vs the 240 manifold when running SU's. Supposedly Rebello uses only the N36 for their ITS buildups. Always struck me as BS, but who knows... Jon

I've got a friend who has a funky Nismo LSD that is a gear drive unit, not clutch or VLSD. He says that the side gears have a different spline count than the clutch units. Maybe the same as the VLSD, don't know. I'd find out the spline count of a clutch unit and check and see if it matches the one you're buying. Jon

Well after talking to Wilwood and about 30 suppliers, I ended up with NDLs, which ARE stiffer than billet NDL's. $115 each. I did not see any narrow mount Forged Superlites, I was looking too. Oh well, I'm sure they will still be fine. Wish I had seen your post though Afshin. Brake line question: I already have ss lines in front for the stock setup, and I used the S shaped hard line again on my Toy calipers. Is there any reason why I shouldn't just cut one end off the S shaped line and put a 1/8-27 NPT fitting on there and save some $$$ on new ss lines? Thanks guys. Jon

In mail order businesses it is common practice to charge you right away when a product is being drop shipped. This is because the merchant (MSA) is really a middle man between the customer and the supplier. I do this all the time in my business. It's not always convenient for the customer, but it is not crooked. FTC says a mail order business has 30 days to ship after charging your card, or else they need to get authorization from the customer again for the additional delay in writing. ALWAYS go to the merchant and ask for a refund before taking it up with the credit card. An honest merchant will give you your money back if you want it, or will give you an update on the expected shipping time and let you decide whether to stick it out or not. Charging back via the credit card should be a LAST resort. Jon

So I just realized you have this caliper in your pics: http://www.behrents.com/Merchant2/4.19/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=BPW&Product_Code=WIL120-3xxx Anyone have any feedback on UL vs NDL vs BNDL??? I still figure I'll be saving better than 5 lbs per side vs the Toy calipers I've got now. Not too worried about weight, I just want what will brake the best and most consistently. Jon

Thanks Juan. That company has the BNDL, but I've only been able to find the one source for the 125-6500 caliper, which is http://www.precisionbrakescompany.com. This is the caliper you show in your pictures, and I think I've convinced myself that it is the caliper I should buy. Anyone else know of a source for these? Where did you get yours Juan? Come ebay or high water, I'm buying your damn brake kit this week (FINALLY!!!) Jon

It appears to me that there are two calipers that fit the JSK Wilwood setup: the Narrow Mount Dynalite, and the Billet Narrow Mount Dynalite. The regular version looks to be stiffer. The billet is .2 lbs lighter. Anyone have any opinion as to which to choose and where to buy? I was reading through some old posts and found Behrents which doesn't advertise the Billet ones and http://www.precisionbrakescompany.com which has both, but the regular is CHEAPER. Thanks, Jon

Took step one today: Bought a Millermatic 135 off ebay with Hobart auto darkening helmet, and added in a pair of gloves. Total: $607. Pretty good deal, I think. I was going to try and find used, but I couldn't pass this up! Jon

Gee Tim, seems like you forgot all about Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman. There are two motivations for limiting obscenity IMO: religion, generally used by the conservatives under the guise of promoting "morality" and "family values", and political correctness, generally used by the left to try and supress anything that is offensive to anyone under the guise of being "tolerant". IMO they're both wrong. I don't need a pre-school like atmosphere in order to feel comfortable. Talk about making laws for the lowest common denominator... Jon

One carb having different jets sounds really fishy to me. I can't think of ANY reason to do that. That's the type of thing I've seen (and done myself) when people ream their jets, though, because the numbers don't mean anything once they are reamed. It is entirely possible that none of those jets are what they say they are. I think Drax mentioned soldering jets and redrilling, but that's not always an accurate way to tell. If you just want to go bigger, then you just ream the jet or redrill larger and there would be no solder to give it away. I would suggest you take the jets you just bought and measure them against what are in the other jet blocks. Only way I can see to do that is to get a set of pin drills, find the bit that fits the holes in the new jets, and then make sure that the existing jets in the other carbs are the same size. Whenever I ream jets, I always scratch out the number on the jet just to prevent this kind of confusion. Reaming jets is not the way to go, BTW. I only did it in the beginning stages to get a rough idea of what to buy. The reams are cheaper than buying a whole tackle box full of jets... Jon

http://hybridz.org/nuke/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=30930 That's probably the best one. If you can't find something in a search you can always try wading through the pages and pages of old topics. I just went to the drivetrain forum and went down to the bottom and clicked on page 2, and there was this one. Jon

I want to stick with 15's, so the 13" rotor is not an option, but they certainly would do the job!!! I can't imagine a Z that would fade those brakes. I agree that the welder opens the door to MANY relatively cheap mods. Not sure that I would bother having Delrin bushings made, but if someone had them available I might look at buying some... Thanks for the feedback Drax. Jon

I put a hose clamp around the gauge body and around the original mount tab, after bending the tab so that it met the body correctly. Jon

Sounds like a bad master or a bad slave. Best thing is to replace BOTH. You can actually see which one went bad by pulling back the rubber boot on both and looking for fluid leaking. Good luck, Jon