JMortensen

That's the page I was talking about! Thanks texasz. I'll bookmark that one. Jon

Here's my understanding of that issue, I'd love to be corrected if I am wrong. Wilwoods work great and they have a compound that is good on the street. However, when you change brake pads you need to push the pistons back in. They have no dust seal, since they are a "race only" brake. When you push the piston back in, you push dirt across the seal, which can cause it to leak. So the trick is to remove the pistons when you need to change pads, buy new piston seals (very cheap) and clean everything and reinstall the pistons. This of course means you have to bleed the brakes every time you change the pads. Jon

Someone out there has a web page that discusses using a P79 or a P90 (same chamber) and milling it for compression and using the shims to get the timing chain back to normal. I haven't been able to locate that page lately. Hopefully someone will know where it is. I think that's your best bet. The E88 came in 2 or 3 variations, sounds like you have the boat anchor version with no quench whatsoever (I've got the same head sitting in my garage). I wonder if the valves actually hit the pistons. Even if they just barely touched you would have had some driveability issues at the very least. It may be previous damage, but I seriously doubt that valves and pistons came in contact and you kept on driving the car without realizing it. Are you sure that those aren't flycut pistons? Jon

I should mention I've got a 100/100 paint job.... Jon

Sounds like Alex has a 20/20 paint job . Looks good from 20 feet away from 20 mph. Jon

I just checked my installation manual for my 6AL. It makes no mention of retarding timing at all. Jon

I've got the 6 spoke ZX wheels and Toy calipers. Works fine on my 70. Jon

Pallnet, I find that with my camber plates it is damn near impossible to adjust with the car on a rack. Very easy to adjust with the weight of the vehicle on the ground. I thought it was interesting that you have a different experience. FWIW, Jon

My 80 year old next door neighbor and I just had a conversation about the 240 and how she and her friend used to ride around town in a brand new 1970 240Z thinking how cool they were in it. She also asked why I was pulling to the front of the house to start it. She said she LOVES THE SOUND OF MY CAR!!! Jon

UGH! I almost shot coffee out my nose when I saw that. Jon

Pete, Aux and I and JDKGabe are discussing offline. If anyone else wants to join shoot one of us a PM Funny posters though. I'd hang those on my wall! Jon

Juan, you might also want to look at PBR rear calipers off of a Camaro or Firebird. They are aluminum and very light weight, and I think the caliper has the ebrake mechanism, not a drum in hat design. I think the SS versions came with these. They fit on a vented disc, and they should have more pad surface area than a 240SX caliper. Jon

If the problem is kickback, would power steering help? I know how hard it is to steer my Z on slicks, especially on a tight autox course. I've found that I don't like anything bigger than a 14 inch steering wheel either. In fact I prefer a 13, otherwise I seem to hit my hand on the door too much. Jon

Supras used to have a 7.5 inch diff. I'm not sure what the last gen had. R200 is basically 8 inches. Food for thought. Jon

Actually Aux, I DID miss it, because I was writing to back PeteW. Still, even by your own admission, all the founders were religious excepting maybe Paine, who did not say he was not religious at all, just that he disagreed with the organized ones. The thing I don't like about organized religion is the control it exerts over the public, and believe me I would be pissed if I went to a public building and they made me take the Eucharist before I could talk to a DMV person or something. I'm not calling you a Christian hater, Aux. I'm saying that the movement to completely exclude religion in our daily lives and from our government buildings is largely backed by haters. Mostly I think you'll find that those with a strong disdain for religion share a communistic mindset. Nothing happens faster in a communist society than gun control and secularism because they are the biggest threats to control. Religion was used to lead the Solidarnos movement to quash communism in Yugoslavia nearly 50 years after secularism was the government's position. There is nothing wrong with tradition, and if that tradition uses a bible that shouldn't make it illegal, IMO. That's the way we're headed though. The underlying principle seems to be if it would somehow insult or make someone feel bad, then we need to remove it. I don't remember the Constitution or the Bill of Rights guaranteeing a person the right not to be offended. If wiccas and buddhists don't want to pray in school, why can't they just have "quiet time"? That's what I had in school when I was a kid. My understanding is not that the teacher would lead the class in a recitation of the Sermon on the Mount, just that the kids could be quiet for 5 minutes. Why the religious can't just call this quiet time instead of prayer time is also a cause for debate. It's too bad we don't live near each other. I am dying for a good debate. I think we're doing it in the wrong place though. Maybe we should PM this stuff... I could go on and on... Jon

We're getting off topic again, but I agree with PeteW. The founders were all religious. The president swears on a bible when inaugerated, the witness swears on a bible when testifying, all of our money says "In God We Trust", IMO it's silly to pretend like Christianity had nothing to do with the formation of the country. The government is not supposed to be the national church. I think that's what the First Amendment means. Not that the government is supposed to be atheist. All of this BS about removing the 10 Commandments from the AL courthouse, and they are showing Ashcroft giving a press conference about the issue standing in front of a statue of the godess Venus (with her newly covered boobs, no less). Should we remove that too? Gargoyles from rooftops? Weren't columns used in Greek temples? Perhaps we need to remove them. There's a lot of Christian haters out there right now. I'm not a Christian (agnostic), but I'm getting tired of the haters, ACLU included. I don't understand why the ACLU doesn't see Ten Commandments as a free speech issue for the judge. Probably because communists prefer secularism. More importantly though, don't we have more important things to worry about than the influence of "under God" in the pledge??? Reminds me of militant womyn calling them "personhole" covers. What a waste of time and $$$. Jon

JohnC, what you are saying makes perfect sense, and I wish I had the $$$ to do a setup like you've got (I hope read this as envy, because it is, believe me ). But I was referring to a more general dislike of swaybars because they make the ride harsh in a street car, not because they have 500 lb springs in the car. With soft springs I think big bars are necessary. Gramercyjam, when I emailed Tom a few years back he didn't seem the slightest bit disappointed with his spring rates, FWIW. I'm not exactly a good friend of his or anything, so maybe he just didn't tell me the whole story. When we were talking he also said that he was somewhat surprised at the stiff spring advice (which I think came from Ground Control). I wasn't trying to say that 150/250 is the ultimate setup, only that he was able to make it work on the national level. I still think that there are varying setups which can be made to work, regardless of what the "proven" setups are. And I stand by the idea that the rest of the car, tires, suspension, weight, and most importantly the driver can make a setup great for one person and horrible for the next. Case in point: Every time one of my friends drives my car he spins. Every single time without fail. The only way I can get his car to turn is to turn in, chop the throttle, and stand on it all the way through the corner. We have both been autoxing for a while (8 years or so for me, probably 14 years for him), and our cars post VERY similar lap times on the big tracks and at autox. Put either one of us in the other one's car and we suck. Given more than 2 or 3 laps to figure it out, I'm sure either one of us would adapt to the other's car, but we always swapped at autox, so we would only get 50 seconds in the other's car, not enough to figure it out. Still, we have built our cars to perform the way we want them to perform, and that's why they drive so differently. Jon

You guys are right, I should have remembered that the wagons had live axles. One of my best friends has a wagon with coilovers and camber plates in front and was autoxing it. It was pretty darn fast too, he and his girlfriend beat quite a few sedans. The problem with the solid axle in his was that he wanted to get the car fairly low and had a problem getting enough bump travel. He said if he cut the bump stops any more the pumpkin would hit the bottom of the floor. Jon

Do a search, I think someone recently described how to make your own adjustable TC rods. Jon

Tom Holt ran 150 front 250 rear (I think???) for years and was competitive at the national level. I remember thinking "Wow, that's is really really soft in front." I think the key is to get the spring rates set up front to rear in a way that allows you to rotate the car with your driving style. I don't believe that there is a "right" answer for spring rates and sway bars, because so much depends on the driver input, weight of the car, tire size, etc. Unfortunately, changing spring rates isn't as easy when you are running the stock perches, because you are limited to what is out there already. Coilovers gives you a HUGE choice in spring rates, plus added adjustability of ride height and corner weights. I don't know why there is seemingly such a push to use stock or no bars on this list. I can say from personal experience with a 1" front and 3/4" rear bar that I am seriously under barred in front on slicks. My car leans way too much up front, and occasionally picks up a REAR tire in a slalom. It is probably a street vs race thing, my car doesn't lean much on street tires. I think the main issue with running soft springs is you don't want the suspension to bottom from roll, so stiff bars are required to ensure that doesn't happen, or as JohnC said, super stiff springs (but then you need the big $$$ struts to control the springs). Sectioning the struts probably wouldn't be a bad idea either, 1975, but if you're going to that much hassle you might as well switch to coilovers so you can play with the spring rates more easily. As cygnus said, in order to keep the tire patch flat you need to minimize body roll. But you can also decrease camber! I started out autoxing my Z 6 years ago with 1.25 degrees front and 1.5 degrees rear at the advice of a long time autocrosser. Now I am at 3 degrees front and 2.5 degrees rear. Use the pyrometer, use the tire pressures, and if you think your tires are rolling over too far, use some white shoe polish wiped over the edge to see just how far they are going. If they roll onto the sidewall, you can up the air pressure or decrease the camber, or increase the roll stiffness or increase the spring rate. Another $.02, Jon

You can get Porterfield pads for Toy 4x4. The come in R4S (hipo street), R4 (race), and R4E (endurance), and maybe a few others by now as well... Jon

I got a 240SX lower radiator hose and a fan switch for 210 degrees which runs my single speed electric. I don't see why you couldn't wire up another to come on at 195 like you suggest. You'd probably want to braze another bung (whoa baby!) into the same metal section of the lower hose. Jon

Yes, but the ZX should theoretically be a little more accurate than the 280Z due to the trigger mechanism inside the dizzy. Jon

510's are semi trailing arm rears and reciprocating ball steering, and the TC rods go forwards in the front instead of back like a Z. VG30T seems to be a pretty common swap. I think you'd really screw up the weight distribution with a V8, unless you did a 215 all aluminum. Dennis Hale did one like that, but he moved the firewall back, and it ended up being mid engine with very low polar moment of inertia. He said it was damn near impossible to drive, just spun every time you put some steering to the front wheels, but I think a lot of that was his engine placement. He designed it to change directions very fast, and that's what he got... To me, a 510 is a 2/3rds scale ZX. 510 guys don't like it when you describe it that way though. I've been in a few with L18's and L20's. If you do them right they are really quick. Fighting weight on a 510 can be 1800 lbs or less. Pete Brock said he could turn faster lap times in the BRE 510 than the Cobras. Fun cars, Jon

The rate of recitivism is exactly 0% in dead people. Jon