JMortensen

SWEET! I love racing vids. Maybe I'll try to get my one autox run I did with an in car camera going again. A buddy of mine kept trying to cut it down in size with Quicktime Pro, but when I got it down to 10 megs or less, the cones started doing this really annoying click-vision thing. Almost made me feel sick watching it. Thanks, and BTW that Z06 with T1 suspension (I have no idea what T1 suspension means) at Buttonwillow is FAST!!! EDIT--Must be T1 like Touring 1 SCCA class... Jon

One more thing: GET IT BALANCED!!! Mine was WAAAY off. Jon

I'm using the 225mm from AZC. I've had it at 3 different machinists over the years. They all said the same thing within ***5 SECONDS*** of holding it in their hands: "So....you've got a scatter shield, right???" EVERY ONE. Kinda scared me. So I made a scattershield. I still want to get a kevlar blanket for the bellhousing, but I haven't done it yet. Needless to say its been to many autox's and probably 10 track days with no problems. It is THIN and scary though. I think mine weighs in at about 12# for what its worth. If I had it to do again, I'd go with a Fidanza... Jon

Do a search on broken TC rods. We just had a long thread about broken rods from poly TC bushings. Why the aversion to poly? I'd do them all poly myself (except the TC rods)if its a street car. Jon

http://www.colemanracing.com I'm sure there are MANY other places, but I've always been treated well when dealing with these guys... great catalog too. Jon

This 2 pinion vs 4 pinion thing came up fairly recently, and I had a question that never got answered. In a Ford 9" Traction Lok LSD, the difference between a 2 pinion and a 4 pinion is that the 4 pinion has a 2nd cross pin, and has the pinion gears and thrust washers in it. The cases are exactly the same. When I worked at a diff parts house, we used to sell the 2nd cross pin and spiders and thrust washers to people rebuilding a 2 pinion unit all the time. If you have a 2 pinion and a 4 pinion LSD, you may want to see if the case is machined for the 2nd cross pin. If it is, switching it to a 4 pinion would be as easy as taking the cross pin and pinion parts from the old unit and putting them into the new unit. Also, Savage is right, but even if the tooth count is the same on the ring gear they are cut differently for the pinion. 3.70 in a R200 is 37:10 and 3.36 is 37:11. The ring gears are not the same!!! The ring and pinion are matched and you need to have both ring and pinion from a matching set. Jon

Terry, I'm loving your graphics! Thanks! My other thought was 1" hex aluminum drilled and tapped for 5/8" LH and RH, then use the bolts and angle iron like you depicted. I'm going to put lock nuts on either end of the turnbuckle too, probably not necessary but what the heck. Jon

I don't want to put words into Terry's mouth, but my understanding is that if you run the alternator off the driveshaft you have less parasitic drag, because the driveshaft turns slower unless you're in overdrive since it is already past the gear reduction in the transmission. So assuming you have a 1:1 drive ratio on the driveshaft and the alternator pulley, if you are in first gear the engine makes about 3 rpms before the alternator spins once. It also would move the weight in between the axles, meaning lower polar moment of inertia. It's a race car thing. Since Terry originally built his car to be a race car and not a street car, he probably didn't have to power any stereo or headlights. Not sure how much juice you would need to run the car on the street, but I'd imagine you'd need a pretty good battery if you were driving at night in stop and go traffic for a few hours. Lot's of serious race cars don't have an alternator at all. They just run off the battery. IIRC that's called a total loss system or a dump system something to that effect. Less drag, more hp. Some also run electric water pumps to get the rotating mass off the front of the engine. Jon

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I have tap tube, which is what they use to make tie rods on circle track cars, and LH and RH 5/8" taps. Then you just plug a rod end into either end, and twist the middle to expand or contract. What you've got would probably work, but as you stated, it is designed for tension because it is a piece of rigging or netting for a boat. It's not that it wouldn't work, but it definitely looks out of place and if something happened to your lock down bolts on the uprights that thing would fold pretty quickly I think. Jon

Why don't you just use a rod end sway bar end link Jeromio? I happen to have some 5/8" tap tube, so I was thinking I'll do a 5/8" rod end, possible sleeved down to a 1/2" bolt. That turnbuckle you've got just doesn't look like it should be on a car. It looks like something that fisherman attach to a scale to weigh their haul. Jon

I wonder if you could fit a longer spring in there. Unless the struts are sectioned a lot, you should be able to, which would raise the car up. Jon

The real answer is that there is no generic answer to your question. Each tire is going to react differently. I think the cheapest easiest way to see how your tires are reacting is to put white shoe polish over the edge of the treads and up onto the sidewall, and take some hard corners. See how much of the polish gets worn off, and adjust the pressure accordingly. As John C stated before, you want the wear to go over the edge to the top of the sidewall. Any more than that and they are rolling too far, any less and you aren't using all of the available traction. Pressure can only adjust this so much, so next step would be adjustable camber. Jon

Anyone else scroll through the rest of the pics???

It looks awfully low to me for street driving. What's with the Konis though? Are you saying you cranked up the damping adjustment? That's not going to help your ride height. What kind of spring setup do you have. Are they cut stock springs or coilovers or aftermarket springs? That's where you need to make your adjustment. Jon

I thought the restriction in the How to Hotrod book had to do with keeping the water pump from cavitating at high rpms. Has anyone run a 510 pulley on their L6? Seems to me that their pulley was quite a bit larger than the Z, IIRC. I also seem to remember some of them running the Euro damper, so it sounds like the pulley offset would be correct. Jon

My E31 has bigger valves, and when the shop installed bigger seats, they ported the area you are working on. Seems to me that they tried to make the area from the seat to the bottom of the bowl as straight as possible with no big lip before the seat. That's about all they did on the head. When I took it off again to fix the stuff they screwed up on (valves were ground WAY too far to use stock springs with my .490 lift cam, valves were all warped, etc), I did a lot of chamber reshaping and polishing and unshrouding of the valves. I also notched the block to match the head, and cleaned up the short side radius. Don't neglect the chambers is what I'm trying to say here. The chambers can be really improved by cutting down all of the sharp edges and unshrouding the valves. Also for a NA motor, take down the ridge between the valves, it looks like the N47 has a ridge. My E31 had a big ridge between the valves, but the E88 in my garage doesn't. CC the chambers while you're at it. Keep posting more pics. Different angles too. You may want to consider the shave the P90 .080 trick too. That seems to work pretty good on a NA motor from what I've heard and supposedly they have the best port shape from the factory. Jon

This is all from distant memory, but the 240 and 260 had a smaller horn pad, and the really early 240 didn't have the holes cut out in the spokes on the wheel. Jon

Congrats!!! Now the real question: If you had it to do over again, would you??? Jon

Are you sure that link works. I only saw 2 pics, and I couldn't tell that you had done anything yet... Jon

I'm telling you man, I feel the same way. Maybe the Cal Poly Sports Car Club was just filled with idiot savant drivers or something, but we went to Buttonwillow and that's what the driving instructors were telling us to do, and I was one of the few who couldn't do it by the end of the day, or at least one of the few who admitted it. It's also possible that the others were lying, or that they weren't threshhold braking. Kinda made me feel bad, but hey, I still posted 2nd fastest time of the day... Jon

I think the piston you are looking for is the NapZ 2.4. The heads were the dual plug style. They came in 2.2 and 2.4 in the early to mid 80's IIRC. Jon

OK, we're doing the same thing then. It seems like I was the one of the few in my club who couldn't pick up the switching feet thing, but my problem was that I was standing on the pedal so hard that it makes getting the right foot on very difficult. Jon

OK, here's a couple questions for you then about left foot braking, John. My problem is with switching from left foot on the brake to the right foot on the brake when decellerating. Did you widen the brake pedal? I just don't seem to have enough room to get both feet on there. Also, my Z takes a pretty considerable pedal effort to slow down. Did you get small enough Tilton masters that this isn't a problem for you? I was thinking maybe about going with a bigger booster. Do you think that would help? Thanks, Jon

Bastaad, I've taught 5 or 6 people to heel/toe. Best way to start is in the driveway with the car in neutral just idleing. Stick you right heel down in the right corner of the footwell. Put the ball of your foot on the brake pedal, then rev with the side of your foot. You aren't trying to hit a certain rpm, just blip the throttle enough to get about 2K rev out of it. Then take your foot entirely off the pedals and do it again. Do that about 50 times and your brain will start to memorize your foot position, so you don't have to think about it so much when you do it on the street. Also, don't be trying this for the first time in heavy traffic situations. Side story--the cool thing in my autox club was left foot braking. I can do it at an autox when I don't really have to shift, but I was trying to get it down good enough for the track. Finally gave up on it when I was driving down a fairly busy street and went to shift and my left foot was still on the brake. I SCARED THE CRAP OUTTA MYSELF!!! For a split second I thought I'd been in an accident. Huge adrenaline rush... I guess you don't realize how hard your left foot hits the clutch until its on the brake accidentally. Anyway, moral of the story is don't be learning in heavy traffic. Once you get it down, then make it a part of your everyday driving. I heel/toe or just blip the throttle if I'm not slowing down too fast on every downshift on every vehicle I own. Jon

510 guys always switch to Z drums FWIW. Don't know of anyone switching to steel. What is the benefit of switching Tomohawk??? Jon