JMortensen

A friend of mine worked for a shop where a customer in a truck came in complaining that his car reeked and he couldn't figure out why. Turns out someones pet boa had slithered into the frame rail and gotten stuck, then died and rotted in the frame rail. They found it and removed it. Story was in the paper and everything. NASTY. Jon

Bumper sticker idea: Science--the new anti-religion religion. Lets not all live in fear. Nothing that I'm going to do is gonna save me from an eruption of that magnatude. I'm too close. And the last thing I want to do is to move to Australia and die slowly and painfully. Boy, come to think of it, you Australians are SCREWED! Moving on with my life, Jon

Tool said "The only way to fix it is to flush it all away". That's more about LA, though. Great song, aenima. I walked around saying "Learn to swim" to @$$holes in LA for about a year after that came out. Any band with a lead singer named Maynard has my vote... All we need now are some zealots to start spouting about how the Yellowstone volcano portends the coming of Armageddon, then we'll have ALL the freaks out and about. What about the 50 mile wide asteroid colliding with earth? Have we all lost respect for asteroids? Nuclear weapons, supervolcanoes, super underwater landslides causing 1000 meter waves, germs, AIDS, global warming, terrorism, World War III, asteroids, religious armageddon, the end of the millenium (in the wrong damn year no less). Seems there's a cause for every doomsdayer in today's society. I think that there is some underlying weakness in the human psyche that just wants to believe that we are at the end of all existence, and that we will be the last humans on the planet. I know a guy who bought land in AZ because of Nostradamus's predictions being interpreted to say CA was going to fall into the ocean. He was gonna have beachfront property! Science is now giving us some plausable reasons for the fear that has been instilled in us since the dawn of religion. I do agree with JohnC, though. If you look at the number of people killed in war since the Nuke, it has definitely saved millions of people. And every volcano eruption releases 1000's of times the amount of chloroflourocarbons that the US releases in hairspray. I want my CFC's back, and my damn R12 shouldn't cost $150/lb too. My $.02, Jon

Anyone notice the hit counter on this thing? Or the comments??? Freakin great!!! Jon

BG makes great stuff. Their power steering flush is worth it too for anyone who has a vehicle with power steering. It was the first thing we did on all 944's when they came into the Porsche shop I worked for. They also have some AWESOME axle/cv grease. Jon

That's a pretty common swap called a "Chevota". You can buy a kit from Downey Off Road. Jon

That looks like the Nissan unit. 4 pinion, clutch style, even the breakaway force is stock Nissan. The comp version supposedly has 80 lbs breakaway. The more breakaway the more push you get into a corner, but I think 80 lbs would still be very autocrossable. I love mine FWIW. Works great, and even with high hp and autox I can't spin the inside tire on tight corners. Jon

I think I have that same lawn edging on the front of my airdam... Jon

I always wondered why rally spectators stood at the outside of corners Anyone remember the Subaru flipping OVER a spectator in last season's WRC competition? That was amazing... Jon

One more thing. Most of the guys trying to upgrade on a budget buy 280ZX front struts and swap them in. Vented 10.5" (?) rotors, larger diameter than stock, and they pretty much bolt on. I've been in a few 510's that need 11" rotors for sure, and there are probably more people that want to make the car stop well and aren't so concerned about running slicks on a track, so you'd probably sell some 11" setups, I was just saying that if you look at hardcore roadracing/autocrossing 510's they will have 13's. Jon

True 510 racers usually run 13" wheels FWIW. Jon

That last bit sounds like air in the lines. Jon

Ivan, Put some bump stops in your suspension!!! Get some polyurethane bumpstops from Energy Suspension. Also, if you are bottoming (that metal to metal sound) very often you may want to consider sectioning the struts or running stiffer springs. Jon

Can the pedal go to the floor without actually pushing on the master??? I admit that I am not terribly familiar with the innards of a booster, but I thought it was basically a rod that went straight through and a huge vacuum diaphragm that helped to depress the master and I think there is a spring in there too which helps to return the diaphragm. The point is that I would think that even if the booster is completely wasted there still should be some resistance in the master... Jon

Thanks Yo, I'm gonna post my question there. Jon

I'll check and see if it moves freely. I did the AFM change after buying a cam and reading about it in the Downey catalog. Can't say I felt a difference either. I can tell you that with 2 1/4 exhaust, some mild porting and the cam I could get 32 mpg, and more power than stock . Too bad I couldn't use that head on the new motor. Didn't have time to have it rebuilt. I'm going to send it back to the engine builder as a core. Jon

Tim, I know a couple of guys that have cut the ends off their swaybars, welded on 3/8 x 1 x 3 inch piece of bar stock, drilled it in 3 or 4 places, and made adjustable bars then hooked up rod ends. None have ever had a problem that I'm aware of. In fact I was thinking of doing that myself. The swaybar is more of a torsion spring, so if the welding is of good quality and on the end of the bar it doesn't seem to matter that much. Even more extreme modification: a long time ago, like more than a couple of years - there was an article in Grassroots Motorsports that was saying you could cut a piece of tubing in half and weld it to the straight part of the bar in the middle to get a stiffer swaybar. I never liked the idea because you were welding in the area that gets twisted, but those guys usually know what they are talking about. Jon

I'm not sure what the heck is going on with this thing. I know this forum is probably not the place to ask, but I'm pretty stuck. A week before I moved the old engine developed a nasty knock. So off I go to buy a rebuilt longblock since I don't have time to build one right now, and now its running, but this weird problem develops. Now I'm right in the middle of moving and it's still acting strange. I may just have to take the truck to a Toy specialist. All of my friends in CA were mechanics, and a few of them were particularly good with 22RE's, but none of them has a clue what could be causing this problem. I'd prefer triples and an O2 sensor anyday. Kinda backwards, I know. I did change plugs and wires, cap and rotor looked good, BTW. Jon

Doesn't heating spring steel like that take the temper out of the steel? One fellow Z freak I know snapped his R180 bar after years of autocrossing - he was also known to lay some rubber down on the street pretty often. I hope you don't have the same experience... Jon

Just to give the opposing view here, I drove my Z with 200 in/lb springs in front and 250 in/lb in back, camber plates, TC rods with rod ends, front control arms with rod ends, sway bars, G Machine bushings in back and poly bushings everywhere else on the street as a daily driver for 3+ years. I did turn my Tokicos down to 1 when on the street, but everyone who rode in it only complained of noise, not a rough ride. A couple of times after an autocross I forgot to switch the struts back, and that was brutal, I admit. My setup is way more extreme than most would consider for street driving, but I did it for a long time, and still drive the car to autocrosses (haven't gone in awhile though). I think stiffer sway bars are a must if you're going to drive it hard... Jon

Clifton, have you seen the video? They hook birfields into a jig and pull on them with a lever and a FORKLIFT. The "super" birfields shear the axle shaft (and they have big shafts) before the CV breaks. AMAZING! Lots of Toyota guys are trying to get Dana 44 axles to fit into the front, I'd go Super Birf anyday. Great idea about having him do a ZX CV. I'm sure they would be bulletproof if he will do them. Jon

John, I suppose for that price you get to choose all of your gear ratios. That must be pretty damn cool. Isn't it possible to get a Jehrico with straight cut gears and adapt sequential shifting mechanism onto it? I wonder if that would work with a T-5 turbo bellhousing... Not that I'm looking into this myself. Just curious. Jon

Most masters that I've come across come with a "bleeding kit" which is 2 short pieces of vacuum hose. you just set the master in a vise, route the hoses from the bleeder screws right back to the reservoirs, and pump the master with a screwdriver. The problem is that when it shoots air into the reservoirs the fluid gets thousands of tiny bubbles in it, which kinda ruins the whole "getting air out of the system" thing. The original problem in this post was obviously that the guy had the rear calipers on the wrong sides. If the bleeders are on the bottom, you're going to be bleeding forever, unless you have a rotisserie to help you out... Jon

I've been able to get my 3/8 impact on the halfshaft bolts with a long extension. You just need to rotate the wheel until the U-joint moves enough to get the socket on. Jon

My pleasure. That's why we're all here... Jon