JMortensen

We used 3/16" on my old bosses's Porsche, and half the Lexan cracked and came off at 160 mph from the air pressure inside the cabin. I think they ended up putting some holes in it with a hole saw eventually. On a friend's 510, we used 1/8", but we really don't expect it to see over 125 or so. Jon

Nice work Terry! I'll let everyone know what mine looks like when it's done. Probably springtime before I'll get to it. Jon

So were there 6 people there or something? If you took 5th overall in an autox in a Rodeo... In the clubs that I've run with, you would not have been allowed to drive a Rodeo. Jon PS--I'm SURE we'll see SCCA drifting events. Ricer money is still money.

Just a tip to make life easier (something you may already know): get a long 10mm wrench and loosen the top of the curved chain guide and push it back so that you have a little more slack on the chain. Otherwise getting the cam gear back on is a PITA. Jon

I had a friend with BRE stripes on his 510. He was in his late 20's at the time, and did not look like a punk kid (6', 240lbs, beard). He got pulled over CONSTANTLY in that car. When he repainted he went british racing green, then promptly made it a full on race car and now it gets trailered everywhere. He should have had the BRG on the street car, and the stripes when it went full race. Hindsight is 20/20. Jon

I'm running a 250 on an 8" rim and I want to go 9" or preferably 9.5", but I'll need flares despite the coilovers. They work fine, but I'm sure that the tires will work much better on the correct size rim, plus I can get a little more offset to widen the track a hair. Never had any instability at speed problems since getting the bumpsteer issues fixed. Jon

Aux is right. There are only a few worse vehicles to take to a drifting event. Possibly a Samurai or a Wrangler.... I doubt most places would even let you autox a Rodeo. Jon

My experience was that the hazards always worked fine, but the blinker would not flash in one direction or the other. The problem was not the soldered connections, but rather the rocker contacts inside. I tried to pull several of the 240 hazard switches apart, but the metal tabs would just crumble when you tried to pry on them. So IMO it could still be the hazard switch, but I was also working on 240's and not 280's. I hate stupid problems like that where it should be a simple fix but isn't. Good luck with it. HTH, Jon

I agree with jasonfen. Sounds just like my Z and a few others that had bad hazard switches. I replaced mine, but I fixed a friend's. Instead of beating the crap out of it (don't really know what that would do other than make you feel better), we flipped the switch several hundred times in an attempt to clean the contacts. Worked on her 240. Jon

Here's a better link for the D962: http://www.diasio.com/ Jon

Dot, I've heard stories of laying a sheet down on the original window and forming it with a heat gun, but I've never actually seen or done it myself. I'd be curious to know the answer too... Jon

Here's my favorite 'Busa powered car... http://www.radicalmotorsport.com/ and my second favorite... http://pub182.ezboard.com/fdiasiofrm10 Jon

I have to wonder if this might not be a result of the vacuum advance messing up your timing settings. If it still works, and you held the rpms at 3500 or something and then set the max advance, the vacuum advance would kick the timing up significantly. If you didn't set timing with the vacuum disconnected, try again. It just seems odd that changing the carbs would have such an effect. Was anything else done at the same time? One more thing. I don't mean to insult your intelligence, but there are 2 lockdown bolts on the later dizzys, and IIRC there are 2 on the 240 dizzy as well. One is pretty obvious and uses a 10mm bolt, the other is hard to see but uses an 8mm bolt and is on the opposite (hard to reach) side of the dizzy and is tucked up underneath the dizzy body. I've known people who owned their Z for years and had never found the 2nd hold down. If you haven't already tried to adjust it there, give it a shot. IIRC you can get more adjustment out of the 8mm adjuster than you can out of the 10mm one. Jon

Well I think this answers my question about angle and inch conversions: http://www.drivewerks.com/tech/home_alignment.htm Looks like I remembered correctly. They used a 24" tire in their example, I am running a 25" tall tire. Jon

I am now starting to wonder about either your trig, Terry, or the alignment machine I used to work on, or my memory of it. I used this machine just about every day for more than a year, and I would swear that on a 25" tall tire, degrees and inches were basically the same. .5* was .5 inches. So I used to set my toe to about .20* total, which I had assumed was roughly 3/16". We did everything in degrees at that shop, so I only saw the conversion when I hit a button to manually switch from degrees to inches, which I only did once or twice. I'm beginning to question how much rear toe I actually have in the car, since you are stating that 3/8" = .9*. It's been 5 years and a head injury since I was doing alignments professionally, so I'm wondering if I might be remembering my own alignment specs wrong... Also, your link looks like it's going to work out nicely. Good job. Jon

I have had a similar swaybar experience. I was driving my little Toy P/U through the canyons to go ride my dirt bike and it was getting a little hairy, especially when I had friends along and 3 motorcycles in the back, so I installed a rear sway bar. Contrary to what you might think, this made the truck plow really bad, so I then upgraded the front bar, and the problem was solved. I think you need to run both your front and rear aftermarket sway bars for the best results. 3 most important mods I did to my Z to solve the push in order of importance: 1. Increased caster 2. Increased neg camber 3. Installed strut tower bars Obviously you'll need some adjustable suspension parts to change the caster and camber, and strut tower bars are not stock either (you said you have a rear bar, no front?). On an otherwise stock Z with the springs and shocks you listed, all you can do is change front toe and tire pressures and ride height, although ride height will also change camber. These were the most important upgrades after the basics, better springs, shocks, and bushings. Eventually I ended up with heims jointed control arms and TC rods. The info Jkube asked for would be very helpful in narrowing down the possible culprits. Jon

Congratulations! Jon

You really have to measure bump steer to fix it. Some people say 3/4, some say 7/8, some say up 3/4 out 1/4. I wouldn't trust any of it. Jon

1994 Sentra SE-R with 5 speed and 86,000 miles in good condition is $3010 according to http://www.kbb.com, at least in my zip code. Jon

Here's a trick for brake line fittings. Get a cheap flare nut wrench, cut the end off, and grind some shallow grooves in the outside. Put that on the fitting, then grab it with the Vise Grips. The Vise Grips will prevent the end of the wrench from spreading. Works good. Jon

A friend of mine had a 200SX Turbo. What a pile. Car smoked CONSTANTLY. He never got to drive it for more than a month at a time, then it was time to replace the turbo or whatever went wrong that time. I seem to remember him going thru 3 turbos in 2 years, and also had to rebuild his engine because of his Centerforce dual friction clutch. Apparently the thrust washers in that engine were pretty puny, and using that clutch took them out pretty quickly. I never paid too much attention to that car so maybe I only heard about when it was having problems, which was pretty much a constant, but it really seemed like a POS to me. Could just have been HIS car, and not indicative of the breed. How about a Sentra SE-R for cheap fun? Jon

$76.00??? Geez!!! That's a little steep... Jon

Why is tuning with an O2 sensor a bad idea? Certainly made my life easier... Jon

Do you really want oily crap going thru the AFM? That plan seems suspect. The Bernoulli principle would keep air drawing INTO the manifold I think, even with a turbo. I think the check valve is probably there to keep backfires from igniting the compressed air/fuel/oil in the crankcase. Again, I THINK. Could also be that there isn't enough flow at low rpm to suck... Jon

I got rearended in my first Z when I was 18. I was turning left to go into Burger King, and since the damn window cranks are so far forward I unlatched the shoulder belt. Just then I got rearended by a Firebird going about 45 mph, which pushed me head on into an Acura Legend. Needless to say my face didn't miss the steering wheel. My nose was broken, and afterwards I could hold the steering wheel up to it and you could see the curve of the wheel in my nose. It was pretty gross. A little rhinoplasty later and I was almost as good as new (left nostril still doesn't do much). My wife, girlfriend at the time, hit her head on the dashboard even though she had both belts on, but it was pretty minor, just a little goose egg. I think the lady that hit me was drunk. Never found out for sure. She claimed she couldn't see me, but even after the right rear of the car was punched in about a foot, the brake light bulbs were still all lit, and my left turn signal was still on. NONE of the glass broke in the car. Even the hatch glass. Pretty damn amazing. The front was mangled up to the core support, and after that it looked pretty straight. Moral of the story--Wear your seatbelts! Jon