RebekahsZ

Add bad steering shaft to list. But this would give you steering play while parked.

Initial thoughts: bad tie rod ends (inner or outer), bad TC rod bushing, excessive toe out, loose wheel bearing? Lots of guys here like toe out, but i toe in per stock spec-i like a car that goes straight unless i turn the wheel. Most z-cars want to follow grooves in the road with a square edge tire. After my last alignment several lock nuts were left loose but I found them on inspection. Re torque ALL your hardware.

Send a pm to duragg. He has experimented with mixing pads for road racing with a similar setup. Stay away from Hawk HPS-I was very unhappy with them.

I just finished the AZC 4-piston brake conversion front and back and now it is time to move to the second winter task: Konis. I bought a used set of struts about 15 years ago from an ITS racer who was getting out of racing. I then assembled it with tokicos and ran it for 10-15 years. Before 2 years were up, one front strut blew, spewed oil on the floor and lost all rebound control. I have run it that way ever since, planning to replace it with another tokico when that project rose to the top. Well, it rose to the top and behold, no tokicos available! So, I bought a set of single adjustable Konis from johnc and now I'm trying to get the kit together. So, I pulled my tokicos from the back (I had a head start since I just finished a brake conversion and have the axles pulled for the AZC brake conversion). I started on the back. Axles are removed, no sway bar, coilover kit already done. I removed the brake caliper and let it dangle by its hose. If you don't remove the axles and the brake caliper, you can't drop the control arm low enough to get the strut to swing out. Removed the brake rotor. Lowered the bottom spring perch all the way and detached the upper seat/camber plate from the strut tower. Before doing that, I marked how I want to enlarge the center hole (I have stock towers and DP bolt-in camber plates) so that I can get the shock adjuster knob on at any camber setting. Basically I will elongate the center hole a bunch. Also marked where I want to trim some away from the inner fender to increase access into the strut tower from below and make changing camber settings easier. Lowering the control arm with a jack, I lowered all the way to the floor and swung the strut out of the fender. Used an air wrench to remove the strut rod nut, removed the camber plate/upper seat, the spring and the bump stop. Used a 2' pipe wrench to remove the stock gland nut and pulled out the tokico shock. Removed the spherical bearing sleeve that converts the camber plate to the tokico and inserted the sleeve that came with the koni. With the tokico, I had inserted the sleeve from the bottom and I had trouble with the nut binding on the camber plate, so this time I inserted the sleeve from the top down in order to move the big nut up a bit and allow a little more "wobble" about the spherical bearing. Have to buy a new 23mm deep socket in order to tighten the strut rod nut. Inserted the koni into the strut and DAMN! The shock binds at the welded junction of the sectioned strut tube. I had to use a rat-tail file to remove some rough spots in this area when I did the tokicos, so I kind of expected this. But, I was hoping against hope that I might get away with the coming pain of getting the shock to fit. So, I'm stuck until I find a good way to get past this obstacle. Hoping there is a super coarse hone that I can buy from Mcmaster-car with a reach of about 8-10 inches that will let me hone out the inside of the strut tubes-this will probably be a problem with every corner.... Anybody who has a suggestion, sound off-time for me to start searching on a solution to this obstacle. Pics when I can.

Dyno, schmino-we want a timeslip! Hope it comes together for you. Please post it up so we can all cheer for you.

Sent pics to your email. I would also like another wrench and weld a 1/2" socket to it do I can put a torque wrench on it. I have had a lot of trouble with my rear gland nuts loosening. The handles I made are only a foot long so I can use them inside the fender. I would like to be sure I torque them well enough when out of the car. Starting on this this week.

Send me a text to 256-366-4685 and I will text the number to you and send you pics of how I modified the wrenches. The handle on them is only 5" long and we are supposed to put 89-100 pounds torque on them.

I sit corrected. I appreciate the schoolin'.

OK. The basic 4-piston AZC kit is completely installed and bled. Why do all aftermarket brake kits position the caliper so that you have to remove it to bleed it? What a PITA. While I was at it I flushed the clutch hydraulics too. Let the clutch reservoir run dry (heard the dreaded sucking sound and thought: "Oh snap!" Spent the next 3 hours getting air out of the clutch system only to learn that the thing making bleeding so difficult was, once again, insufficient pedal stroke. I gotta ponie up and remove the clutch pedal and weld up the oval hole. Readjusted pedal stops and it bled no problem. Got the 9" slicks mounted on the 8" drag wheels after doing the mods needed for bead lock screws and tubes. One wheel took 8oz of wheel weights to balance-dang used ebay wheels! Looking for a second set of drag wheels for some 28X10.5s. Ordered parts to finish up the hydraulic handbrake and put new studs in the spacer. Also ordered fender welting from Speedway for the BAMF flares. Gonna straighten up some things in the tranny tunnel tomorrow and start planning to tackle the Konis. Perhaps I can make that 10X more complicated than it should be? What I do best.

The fascination with light wheels is funny. My hoosier R6s weigh so dang much that differences in wheel weight seem pretty trivial. I would like $60 wheels if they were made out of lead! Now if you wanna talk paper-thin drag tires we have something to discuss.

The problem I have with blasting and chemical stripping is the loss of all factory anti-rust coatings on the metal. And yes, the z car does actually have some. After stripping my car to bare metal 20 years ago, any tiny scratch in the paint immediately goes to rust. If I ever do a z again, I will limit old paint removal to only that necessary to get new paint to bond. And as for cleaning: never sand blast a fuel tank. Learned that the hard way too. Just scuff up the existing paint with sand paper and paint over it.

You go, boy!

Great pic. I feel like that might happen everytime I drop the clutch!

I'm praying you burn out and sell me that chassis. Beautiful work.

Thanks! My kids never thought I would get a smart phone, but now I'm out of control. The BAMF flares arrived. I have a lot to study on them. They fit poorly, but my fenders were very rusty when I got car and there is a lot of welding and a fair amount of bondo, so it is probably on my end. Will start on flares after brakes and shocks. Hope to make more progress this weekend. Times a tickin'.

With product drift, I wonder of some of the headers off the line crowd the plug wires more than others?

Next time I head to Little Rock, I think I'm gonna return this diff to its owner-I just don't have the energy for another project.

After studying johnc's link, I spent some time reading a couple of manufacturer's pad dyno charts (mostly on the Wilwood site). I have never before understood the real difference between a "street pad" and a "race pad." Street pad-install and forget about it 'till your mechanic says they need changing and annoy as few customers as possible. Minimum noise (this seems to be the biggest issue that folks complain about), minimum dust, minimum pad and rotor wear so they last a long time. Low coefficient of friction with adequate stopping in traffic and single panic stops on the highway, but poor enough stopping to keep ABS from activating all the time. Race pad-max performance and the hell with the rest. Requires frequent replacement of rotors and pads as needed, sometimes during a single event. Max performance at the cost of lots of noise and dust (sometimes molten metal sticking to wheels). High enough coefficient of friction to be able to get max use out of big, sticky race tires. Resistant to high temp fade due to repetitive high-speed braking. Looking at the dynos, it seems that most of the race pads have higher low temp Cfs than the street pads. I was under the impression that street pads would have higher "cold bite" after hearing folks talk about how race pads have to get warmed up to work well. Looks like I was wrong. I'm hardly driving my car on the street any more, so noise and dust is less of an issue. But, I don't run the car at sustained high braking temps but once or twice a year. So, for me, it looks like the real issue is heat range, because heat cycles seem to have a negative effect on rotor wear. There seems to be some discussion of whether running a race pad on a cold rotor causes more rotor wear than keeping the heat high and constant. So, perhaps that thought process would justify using a street pad. The BP-10s that Dave sold me seem to be the weakest compound that Wilwood makes-it is a true steet pad with their lowest Cf, along with the lowest heat rating and emphasis on being quiet. I DON'T want to repeat my mistake with the Hawk HPS. I am going to call him and see if he can swap them for some Poly Ds, which have the highest cold Cf in the street category. I would use this as my street, drag race and autocross pad. At the autocrosses this year, I plan to pay attention to rotor heat using a laser pyrometer to see ifit would be adviseable to go to a race pad (I was getting so out-braked last month). Will order a set of Poly-As for the drifting calipers since I want the highest cold Cf possible for that on-off switch that I rarely use. Will look at a set of Raybestos-43s (vs) the Wilwood Poly H for my annual track day(s) at A.M.P. May later try running these pads for all activities. Thoughts/recommendations?

Johnc-that link is awesome. My question about first lap was intended to find out how well they work cold (I'm going to have two sets of pads-one for high friction at low temp for street/drag/autocross), and one for track days (high temp). When i asked that question I was thinking of autocross when there can be an hour between 1minute runs and stuff cools off. I will go thru that link from top to bottom several times before I inquire further. That author's impression of the Hawk HPS matches mine to the letter.

Looking at your photo, how much camber front and rear? In the photo of the car in your driveway, the rear of the car looks kind of high. Can you lower ride height and add negative camber in the back?

How are they on the FIRST lap?

Dark grey. Check out SunnyZ. It doesn't show dirt, contrasts well with both silver/chrome and black. Looks good with red items too.

m1noel-thanks for talking me thru this. Since the p-brake calipers are "sided," it would follow logic that if I wanted my cable to come from the front, rather than the back as you did, I could just switch calipers side to side (run the left on the right and vice versa)??

Before the throttle changes, if I gave the car the slightest throttle on the back half of a corner-instant spin-out.

I had trouble keeping the as_ of my car under me early this season-first season with the V8. I tried softer shock setting, lower tire pressures in back, dropping the tail to give more camber, etc-nothing helped. Two things fixed it: 1) Hoosiers, 2) decreased the rate of pedal input to throttle plate movement. I have drive by wire, and my tuner reduced sensitivity from 100% (stock setting) to 35% (lowest setting). Settled car down a lot.