JMortensen

They must have changed the bolts between 240 and 280. Mine has 12mm bolts. I use a long 12mm wrench just in front of the crossmember, and a large screwdriver to keep the U-joints on the driveshaft from turning. When you get it loose, if you have a front mounted rear sway bar, you can pry the driveshaft past the swaybar (scratching the swaybar if you care about such things) and force it back in when reinstalling. I took my rear bar off probably 10 times before a friend showed me I didn't have to. Saves a lot of time to pry the driveshaft past it. I always seem to have to wrench the nuts all the way off to. It's a real PITA in my Z. Jon

I wonder if they have a problem with my Toyota truck built in Ohio. Jon

The liability of blinding everyone else on the road, not to mention yourself (think late afternoon sun on the hood) has to be why you don't see this. There was a guy in a town I used to live in who covered his whole car in tin foil. Not kidding! And he IRONED IT flat. It really looked pretty good, for a couple of years, then the foil started to peel up from stone damage. I never figured out what kind of car it was. I think an old Mazda compact from mid to late 70's. Jon

I agree Lockjaw. Can't tell you how many people I've heard say they BROKE THE SHIFTER! What the heck were they doing??? My tranny doesn't require a 250 lb pull on the shifter to change gears... Jon

A few weeks ago I posted to a thread where a customer was getting screwed by a shop and I said that he should dispute the charges with his credit card. Since then I've seen a couple more people saying they were going to dispute charges, possibly unfairly. I have worked for a number of mail order companies, and also a credit card processing house where I was part of the Risk Management team that assessed dispute and chargeback ratios and CLOSED DOWN accounts on a regular basis. Here are some guidelines for disputing and the consequences of those actions. When you make a big purchase, do it on your credit card. It gives you some recourse should there be a problem and should the merchant be totally unwilling to work with you. When you have a problem, CALL THE MERCHANT. Many times installation issues and problems with products that you are unfamiliar with can be explained or solved with a phone call. 99% of the businesses out there are not there to screw you. They say a happy customer tells one person, and an unhappy one tells 20. This is true, and businesses know it. Many things that I have bought through mail order businesses were damaged in shipping, or were not correct for my application, and this was only realized when the product arrived. THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY THE FAULT OF THE BUSINESS WHO SOLD YOU THE GOODS! Shipping damage happens. Wrong products are ordered. I've seen it happen 100's of times, and that is not always the merchant's fault. The end result of the call to the merchant may be the return of the item purchased. This should NOT make the transaction an adversarial experience. That's simply the way mail order works. The trade off for getting a great deal is that the merchant may be all the way across the country, and shipping charges will cost $$$. Unfortunately, you have to buy based on a description or a picture often times. In some instances you will get your return shipping free of charge, in some you will be required to pay for return shipping. There should be a stated shipping policy for any mail order business. IF YOU ARE IN DOUBT, CHECK THESE POLICIES BEFORE YOU ORDER! BUYER BEWARE! Disputes and chargebacks cost merchants $$$. They should not be done because you don't like what you ordered, or because of damage in shipping. They should be a last resort. If you have called the merchant and they are totally unwilling to fix the problem or accept a return and unwilling to refund you for FAULTY work or for providing products that are FLAWED, then dispute the charges with your cc. All credit card merchants have records on file of how many charges they have made, and how many disputes have been filed. When they get too large a percentage of disputes vs charges, their accounts can be shut down entirely. I've been the person who shuts the accounts down. This is not a pleasant experience for any merchant. I had to shut down accounts that I felt were not owned by crooks, but by companies who didn't communicate effectively with their customers. I also shut down lots of companies that WERE crooks. When your neighbor's dog is barking in the middle of the night, what do you do? Do you call the police, or go talk to the guy? I think that this is a good analogy. Talk to your neighbor, and talk to the business before you call in the big guns. Give them a chance to make it right. It is YOUR responsibility as a customer to let them know that you are having a problem. When you bypass the merchant and go straight to the cc company YOU are the @sshole. Too many people jump to the conclusion that "That guy screwed me, so now I have to get back at him." 99% of the time, this is simply not the case. I only bring this up because I feel at least in part responsible for the discussion that has lead to a number of people saying that they are going to dispute charges. As a business owner and with my prior experience in Risk Management, I want to let everyone know that disputes and chargebacks should be a LAST RESORT. Jon

If you're looking for performance, you don't want full advance all the time. Leave the mechanical and bolt/JB weld/braze the vacuum advance to the breaker plate. Then do as suggested above and set timing to ~35 total. You can also adjust the mechanical by lengthening or shortening the slots in that advance mechanism to give you more or less mech advance. If it idles at 15 or more and totals at 35 or so than you should be doing pretty well. You can change the springs on the mech advance, you want it all in by about 2500 rpm. Here's a webpage showing the tear down and reassembly steps for a ZX distributor, I'm sure it's pretty close to what you have. http://www.jrdemers.com/280ZX/distributor/distributor.html HTH, Jon

You're right. They didn't even spit on it either . I thought it was a CA thing, but you're in CA right? When I moved to WA I thought I'd find it for $5, but no such luck. I've been to paint stores, Home Depot, Lowes, etc. Best price I've found is $8.99/gal. I'd probably forego the AV Gas if I could get a good deal on Tolulene or Xylene, although I do kinda like the idea of the leaded lubing the valvetrain. Jon

OK, so maybe a bottle of Techron in every tank... Jon

lol

Thanks Bastaad for your concern, but I forgot to state that I've been mixing the AV Gas 50/50 with 92 octane. I've heard things about additives, and the fuel being less dense than pump gas, so you need to run richer with it, but never any problems with buildup. My impression was that the additives are there to make the fuel stable at all altitudes and all temperatures, as well as to make it more stable when it sits in the tank of a plane that won't be flown again for 2 months. Supposedly it contains less energy than Unleaded, and I know it is less dense. The lead should lubricate the valvetrain. All that being said, my engine seems to like it. A LOT. I recently had my manifolds off, and there was no apparent buildup on the valves at all. The guy who turned me on to the AV Gas is a drag racer and former co-worker, he's been running it for years with no probs. I suppose I could throw in a bottle of Techron every once in a while just to be sure, but so far, no problems. A lot of small planes and helicopters run standard piston engines, so I don't know how their motors would resist the buildup that would have caused the damage on your friend's motor. Tolulene and Xylene are $10/gal in this area, unless you buy a 50 gal drum. I've been considering that, but it is kind of a hassle to get the drum to and from the house. HEAVY! Maybe I should look into a 25 gal drum or something. Jon

I'd like to see someone make a triangulated front section and some sort of turnbuckle in the rear. Pass that along to the powers that be, Drax. It's probably already too late, if they'll be available at Xmas though... Jon

I'm no metallurgist, but I had always heard the exact opposite. Aluminum is more brittle, so you need a thicker piece of it to withstand stress, but it is stiffer thickness for thickness than steel. The design of the control arms was basically the same, but one was stamped steel and one was cast aluminum, most of the 944's I worked on were stock, including these two, eliminating the possibility that bushings were the difference. The two types of control arms are interchangeable, so there is not a significant design difference other than what was necessary to change the material used in the arms. I forgot to make my comment on Mike's control arms past tense. The point is that I think his arms are probably way more rigid than the stock arms, and that the aluminum would be tough enough to work with that metal might be a better option. Jon

Sounds like it's time to get a 2.8 bottom end and slap that E88(?) head on it. Jon

I think that was gasoline in a honeydew. That was pretty stupid. When I was a kid, we had much better ideas, like soaking a Nerf football in gas and kicking it down the street. There was that one time when I kicked the fiery football directly into the bushes in front of my parents' house... Nothing is quite so scary to a 13 year old as the sound of junipers catching on fire in the front yard. Jon

Juan, are you planning a cast aluminum suspension setup, or are you going to TIG everything together? I can tell you that there is a difference between steel and aluminum control arms. I've driven early 944's with steel control arms, then immediately driven later ones with the aluminum control arms. I even went to my boss and asked what was "wrong" with the earlier car, and he explained that it was all about the rigidity of the aluminum arms. Both cars were stock, and the aluminum armed car just felt much more rigid and was much quieter over bumps. I think you'd get the same rigidity out of the tubular arms that Mike makes, and aluminum might be tougher to work with. Jon

I did that too. That works great, but I think he was worried about the O2 sensor. Jon

I've been running one gallon to five gallons 92 octane to get about 96. Supposedly you can run up to 35% Tolulene before any problems with fuel lines, etc. Tolulene is 114 octane, and is used in the gas you buy at the pump (in much smaller doses). Xylene is 118 octane, and is usually the same price, FWIW. I've run probably 20 tanks through, and haven't seen any problems yet. Lately I've been running AV Gas, because it is CHEAP at 100 octane at $2.65. Not legal for street use, and it is a little less dense than the unleaded and tolulene or xylene mix. I was running the Tolulene and Xylene because I was tuning with an O2 sensor. When I was done, I took the sensor off. I never had a problem with it while running the mix. Jon

Is is possible to build one of those here in the US? Can you get eccentric shafts and rotor housings to do that readily? You could probably still have the tri-rotor mounted behind the crossmember... Jon

Maybe put some casters on it or something... That is a first floor table for sure. Jon

Wow, that's really surprising to me JohnC. I've been espousing the "don't run more wheel or brakes than you need" theory, but even I'd figure that you run into brake fade pretty quickly with 300 + hp on a road course with sticky tires and little 11" brakes. Am I wrong? Do you also have a massive ducting project completed in there too? Jon

You could get the 8" sleeves. Don't think you can really make a mistake with the long sleeves... Jon

Aux is right. Probably somewhere in the high one hundreds for a tight street car. Double duty street/track puts you in the 200's. You've got track springs there, and you will need Konis or better to dampen them. There was a big discussion on this just recently. Do a search. Jon

Brad, That doesn't look like pick up from other people's tires. Looks like you're just shredding them. Time for wider tires, or maybe some weight in the rear when you race. Jon

That was nice. I'm not much of a piano fan either, but that was really good. What bugs me about drugs are the people who think that they are SMARTER on drugs. I had one stoner neighbor who is barely literate tell me how he read Shakespeare stoned and "he really understood what it meant" but he couldn't understand what it meant sober. I asked him if he wanted to test that theory on some Shakespeare I had studied in school, and he declined. I think drugs trick you into thinking you know what you're doing. I had another friend who plays guitar, and he was convinced that he could play the entirety of "The Wind Cries Mary" by Jimi Hendrix until he sobered up and couldn't do it anymore. The best story though is a buddy of mine who used to freestyle BMX. He had to be stoned to learn this one manuever, which consisted of riding forwards in a slight turn, than spinning 180* and rolling backwards from there on the front tire only. It was pretty cool looking, and he was the only one who could do his drug found talent sober. He said that pot helped him feel his balance, and for some reason "click vision" helped too!!! Click vision while rolling backwards in a nose wheelie... FWIW, I think all drugs should be legalized, but if you end up in a ditch because of them, no one should be required to help you, and if you commit a crime to get drugs you should get serious jail time. Jon

I wonder if there is a decent posi for the Dana that comes in the Vettes. I seem to remember there only being one, a Dana tracklok (aka trashlock) which is weak at best in both strength and hookup. Tends to break spider gears, and has a very weak posi design. Maybe there are more available now... Jon