JMortensen

Just FYI, those Harbor Freight cable ends are rated to 900 lbs, but mine failed while holding up the suspension on jackstands. Don't use them!

Could always just get a Kevko pan. $500ish.

I got the 15 psi switch. I didn't want it coming on all the time so that I became inured to it. They have a 30 psi switch as well. For oil coolers, I like Coffey's advice. He suggests using a radiator with built in heat exchanger which brings the oil up to temp and keeps it there. I think a monitor is just going to be another gauge. If you're going to run an oil to air cooler, then you should run a thermostat so that the oil gets up to temp on the road. No cooler on mine since I'll be autoxing for a while.

I'm still here. There are several options for power steering. The Subaru rack seems like the easiest hydraulic option, then you've got the electric power assist, and the Woodward/Appleton/Sweet race racks. I chose the Woodward rack because the length can be customized, you can choose the rack ratio, and the amount of assist is also adjustable. It is supposed to have larger ports for the hydraulics so fluid flow won't create problems (you see this sometimes on stock ps systems when autoxing--they chatter and do other weird things). The Woodward rack is also WAAAAY more heavy duty than the stock rack so less concern about bushings and wear.

Warning light as described by Tony is the best way IMO, Keith. A datalogger might tell you after the fact, but I'd rather know I'm destroying my engine when I'm destroying my engine... http://www.jegs.com/i/Auto+Meter/105/3240/10002/-1

I also have a baffled pan (Kevko pan, not an insert, but same effect) and the Accusump. You could add a crank scraper on there too for a little more insurance. If you're still having trouble with all of that, it's dry sump time.

I don't understand why you'd go to all that trouble for another manual rack. If you go aftermarket you're going to have to figure out how to mount it, and at that point you might as well optimize it for XP. Faster is a big one, and power is necessary once you have the faster ratio. I haven't run mine yet, but I do think it will pay off in XP to have a 75% quicker ratio, especially with the huge tires. http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/97073-woodward-power-steering-project/

If you turn the engine off with the accusump open, the pressure in the accusump pushes the 2 or 3 extra qts of oil into the engine. 2 or 3 qts to the top end could cause a bit of a leak on the headers. FWIW, there is a bit of a dispute about the electric valve vs manual valve. My understanding of the arguments are that the manual valve has a lot better flow, while the electric valve will hold more pressure in the accusump and so the reserve pressure will last longer if you are needing it. After reading a bunch of stuff arguing both ways, I went with a manual valve.

Design Products racing does a better control arm which I believe is on the car toe adjustable and it costs thousands less. http://dpracing.co/Z_Suspension1.html

You don't have any way to change it, but yes, you have a 50/50 front rear split. Left and right are indeed left and right side weights. The cross weights are diagonals and that's the important one for road racing or autox, but you have to be in the car to get an accurate number, and the sway bar should be disconnected. And it helps if you have a way to change it.

Fronts look stock, rears appear to be 79-81 280ZX rear disk. The two together work pretty nicely. If you go bigger on the fronts you'll overpower the rears.

I ran coilovers and 15x8s with 250s (weird sizing on Yokohama slick). I don't recall the backspace, I think it was 5", and I didn't roll the rear fenders. There was easily room for a 15x9 with those tires, possibly without even rolling the fenders. A lot of the hipo 225 15" tires are REALLY wide to be called a 225, and they actually fit better and give faster lap times on a 15x9. Look at Miata forums. Very popular size for them.

AROSC! Is Paul Ellis still out there in the Dunestang?

If you welded the whole seam. On a suspect test rig. STBs work. I noticed Clive the other day say that he didn't think STBs work without triangulating to the firewall. I think that is probably wrong. I had mine triangulated to the firewall on one side where the firewall was braced in the cowl, and on the other side where it wasn't (Series I cars didn't have the same bracing on both sides). The firewall had separated from the cowl after a few years, and I can tell you, for sure, that it was still doing something noticeable from the driver's seat. The real test here would be to put a dial gauge on the strut tower with a tattle tale on it and then test with and without. All the rest is really just armchair quarterbacking.

I don't think that ducting to the brakes will be a big issue. Won't actually need ducts for a while, will be autoxing until I'm comfortable in the car, but when I do need them the plan is to run a small backing plate bolted to the spindle with the hose connecting to that to force ducted air into the center of the rotor. Shouldn't be hard at all to route the hose around the cable. Having the limiter connect to the bottom of the spindle would mean more room for ducting, but outside of that I don't think it makes much of a difference. Connecting to the sway and having rod end end links should be pretty solid too.

Your torque tube should still have some angle on it. The driveshaft needs a bit of angle. If you've taken a U-joint apart, you remember all the needle bearings in there. If you have the driveshaft perfectly inline, then those needle bearings don't spin. What that means is that every time you step on the gas the torque gets transferred through the same needle bearings which never spin. You would quickly wear them out and develop a clunk. Zfan1, as far as measuring the angles goes, an angle measure isn't really good enough. I just went through this myself and posted about it in this older thread: http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/43993-differential-laser-alignment-tool/ I agree with NewZed that driveshaft angles will cause a vibration and not a howl, and with heavy85 that pinion bearings are a likely suspect.

I'm not going to try to explain how a coil works, but suffice it to say that without a ballast resistor, the coil might be seeing 14.5 volts or so. With the ballast resistor I think the stock 240 with points was putting like 8V to the coil. Capacitive discharge in the MSD puts 400V to the coil if I recall correctly. MUCH hotter spark. If you have a carbureted car or crappy old injectors, a bigger spark can help you get better burning of the air/fuel mix.

Finally finished up the front droop limiters today. I did end up running cables and turnbuckles. Thinking at some point I may have to change the location and style of sway bar, and if I do that then I might do a different limiter, but this will work for now. I wanted to have the quick release pin, but having it at the bottom doesn't seem like it's going to work very well. Might have to switch to a bolt there and pin between the turnbuckle and the cable. The cable doesn't line up with the sway bar very well, so it's pulling at an angle on that little cotter pin.

No, it was Nissan factory EI. You're right that the MSD reverts to 1 spark after 3500 rpm. My explanation is capacitive discharge. Try getting hit with the stock coil, then get hit with the MSD. Or better yet, get your most gullible friend to do it... The nice thing about my friend's experiment was that they were done 10 minutes apart on the same dyno on the same day, and it wasn't a very powerful engine, so 10 hp was a BIG jump.

Don't ditch the 6AL. My buddy ran his 510 with the 4 cyl version of the Nissan EI and Dual Mikunis. Back to back runs showed 10 hp increase from MSD on a car that was making ~130whp. It is worth it to run it for the power, plus you have the added benefit of the rev limiter.

No seat of the pants difference going from wasted vac adv to no vac adv. I can't quantify how well calibrated my butt is though...

Could be a problem with either. Why not wire it directly to the 6AL? That takes out one variable. The two wires from the distributor go to the little pigtail on the side. I don't believe it matters which wire connects to which on the pigtail, but it's been 10+ years since I had mine working.

2 things to add: 1. Arne over at classiczcars.com tried to do this upgrade and had similar issues and after a ton of trouble, figured his out: http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/electrical-s30/37900-electronic-ignition-revisited-after-i-gave-up.html 2. The vacuum advance on the ZX distributor comes apart, and when it does the stator can hit the reluctor which I imagine gives you some scatter on the spark. I would at least pull it apart enough to check the advance mechanism. Although there are benefits to vacuum advance, I'd rather lock it down and prevent it from screwing up and just run more static advance. I was able to get 30+ mpg on SUs and mid 20s with 44 Mikunis running no vacuum advance. This page might help with the distributor inspection: http://www.jrdemers.com/280ZX/distributor/distributor.html

Chequered Flag has AL hubs too. I think Joe carries 4 and 5 lug. Those stock hubs are heavy, it's a good place to lose weight.

No, I meant if the idea was to spread the load across the face of the hub more evenly, a simple wheel spacer would do that probably about as well as a slip on rotor hat. With Z wheel spacers, you have to be a bit careful. I've bought several sets and never had them work out of the box. The cheapo ones from the auto parts store had a center hole that was about .005" too small. Such a small error that I couldn't figure out why the wheels wouldn't balance, but also couldn't figure out that they were too small. Finally found the problem when one started cracking. Later I got some nicer lugcentric ones from colemanracing.com and the pilot was way too small so I had a machinist turn them on a lathe to open them up.