RebekahsZ

alainburon-you'd probably sell your house and your boat, your airplane, your timeshare in Vail, get rid of seven mistresses then sleep in the Z. That's gonna be a million dollar car! I got a W2 from the part time job I had just for Z-activities: almost $11,000 last year. I think it was $9,000 the year before. Just lost that source of income, so I'm gonna be begging to my wife to finish up. It adds up quickly, especially if you have to hire out fabrication and if you work to pay people what their time is really worth.

Actually, the front is set to johnc's street settings and the rear is de-cambered to as close to no camber as possible and might have been a little on the positive side. I'm going thru everything right now (trying to build exhaust at the same time) to allow me to quickly change from 1 degree positive to 2.5 degrees negative in the rear. I have to raise the ride height a little and widen the track back out about a half an inch. I'm installing taller springs of the same spring rate but gonna try using some spring rubbers between the coils to allow me to quickly increase the rear spring rate for drag racing. I'm increasing front camber to 3", maxing out my caster (which won't be very much due to fender/airdam clearance) and finishing some front droop limiters. It's never finished! The suspension stuff is fun when you get to to the point of just making adjustments, but there are a lot of compromises trying to make a car do a variety of things. I'm hoping to do some autocrossing in April, but its gonna be close. I think it is easy to make a handling car and it is easy to make a drag car. But, it is almost impossible and way more time-consuming and expensive trying to make a car that does both reasonably well. Comfort is last on the list, but I'd still rather do a road trip in this car than any other. Although not so much once it has autocross camber in-bad tire wear.

Found a nice summary on v-band clamps in the exhaust forum. I overlapped the v-bands about 1/8", although my cuts aren't exactly square. I'm going to take the v-bands that mount to the header and get a few thousands milled off the inside so they will assemble and disassemble OK after the header is coated. I got my v-bands from SIS and you really have to pound them on with a hammer using a piece of wood as a drift. Ordered a few more v-band kits and "all" my stainless bends and tubing.

Thanks for your video! I'm looking at your exhaust, bjhines, 1tuffz and domz and incorporating features of all of them. I'm gonna re-work my collectors some more before I have them welded up. I need to create more room for the big bend at the bottom. Gonna buy some string tomorrow to run under the car to act as a plumb line as I work back. The whole reason I'm doing this myself is to keep the exhaust tucked up as high as possible, allowing for the tranny crossmember and the diff. It looks like I'm gonna have to drop to the level of the bottom of the oilpan to allow for the big right angle that comes off the collector. Perhaps I'll get some work done tonight. An order I did late one night to Mandrel Bends Solution didn't go thru properly, so I'm gonna redo that tonight.

DPs from Betamotorsport. I love them. Only limitation is that you can't get your camber "perfect". One side might be 3.5 and the other 3.25 degrees. But that's good enough for me. I'm not trying to be national champ.

What's wrong with it?

Driveshaft is back from JCI and it looks good. Refer to threads in the drivetrain section and the fabrication section for the exhaust build-up.

johnc-where in heavens did you find that photo? It is like a horrible traffic accident with carnage-I can't look away!

Got driveshaft back from JCI in less than a week. John offered me a 3" driveshaft, but I opted for 2.5" due to close clearances in the tunnel-the first one was 2". It has the same wall-thickness as my old one. I stripped John's quick paint job off and noticed some welding flux on the welds. I wire brushed that to remove it (perhaps there was some flux on the welds on my old driveshaft making the paint crack (?) and perhaps it wasn't cracked after all) and wiped everything down with mineral spirits, then acetone. Anyway, the front yoke looks good, but the rear yoke looks a litte light duty (a lot more u-joint cap is exposed). I'll ask John about that this week. It is all painted now and ready to install early this week. I talked to John about the funny driveshaft shown above by boyracer. He said he has to do Jaguar driveshafts that way, but he didn't think he had ever supplied a Datsun driveshaft that way. Weird. I'd contact him if you still haven't installed it. He's really cool and I don't think he would mind.

You know, I never get past 4th gear on the track. I use 3rd on the 1/8 and 4th on the 1/4. Only use 2nd at autocross. Summer is coming-get that thing on the road! If you are worried about doing it once-that is a pipe dream. You are gonna break stuff and you are gonna want to make changes over the years. If I were you, I would not let the car go into the spring still on jackstands. Drive it! I build everything with the thought in mind: "I'm gonna have to take this apart again."

Made a bunch of tabs to be welded to the underside of car for muffler hangars to attach to. Loving my Milwaukee portaband saw and my Swag Offroad table attachment-that kit has saved me tons of time. Photos show final muffler mock-up and my lousy working conditions due to some home remodeling.

How did you move the brakes inside?

Rota RBR in Gun Metal 16X8 with 225/50/16 Khumos. I used Khumos because they were the cheapest thing I could have find-I'm not very kind to them! Someday I'll spend the money on something with a cooler looking thread. I have coilovers on the car. I've changed the rideheight so many times I've lost track of the changes. I recommend a coilover kit as the first modification to any z-car. I'm actually going back UP an inch-it gets rather tedious worrying about where all the speed bumps in town are. The un-flared Z is a bit out of fashion and I must admit it must be nice to have flares that allow running wider tires. I do like the wide "lips" that everybody has with flared Zs, but 8" wide is about the max I can fit within the z fenders even with camber plates and all kinds of suspension work to accommodate as much tire as I can. I've tossed around the idea of running ZG flares just in the back. For now, I'm happy with what I have. Thanks for the compliments! This is Hybrid-z: which for me means "Hybrid-never satisfied!"

Thanks for the advice fellas, and the pics - especially the turbo!!! I'll take lots of pics. Should I post them here, or in my build thread in the Member Projects forum?

"Final" version. I find that very hard to believe. Beautiful car(s). I personally like the gray one best.

"Final" version. I find that very hard to believe. Beautiful car(s). I personally like the gray one best.

Try not to torture yourself about the diff. Get the motor done, then sweat the details. Worst thing that can happen is to break.

I'd get a used gauge from somebody on the forum if you like the look. I used a sharpie pen and made a dot on the gauge to show how hot it got after the first startup. That became "normal operating temp" for the ls1. It never has exceeded that mark. Cheap and simple.

Building exhaust for first time. This is probably just common sense, but should I put on v-bands as I go, or build it continuous then cut it down in sections and add v-bands once it is fully routed? I'm leaning toward doing v-bands last.....just trying to figure out how to limit the curse words and frustration. Anybody want to share experiences?

Now that you are good at it, can you come bleed mine? I freakin hate bleeding brakes!!!!

Incredible! Hang onto your LT1 tranny so you can be the first on the site to use a LT1 T56 on an LS1 engine. You may get tired of having the LS1 T56's hydraulics inside the bellhousing where you can't get to them and the fluid gets filthy. Just thinking that you might want to keep it on the shelf instead of selling/trading it off. I can't wait to see your time slips.

Please post LOTS of photos of those headers and how you moved things around to allow their use. Installed photos too when you have them. Suscribed.

Sure will. It will probably be in April. The tubing came in today for me to mock-up the new headers, then to build the rest of the exhaust and get it coated-I'm making a LITTLE progress each week. I will wait until all that is done before being ready to sell them (I want to keep the flexibility of throwing the temporary system back together if a fun chance to race presents itself). I also have my temporary side-outlet exhaust with O2 sensor bungs that I can pass along to somebody. They are handy to install before that first start-up and for the first few weeks after getting the build put together. A lot more quiet system than just dumping all the noise into the firewall. Could be available sooner if I run out of money.....

Muffler brackets on-pictures show hose clamp, but the brackets are tig welded onto the muffler now; thinking about adding a third bracket that connects to the spare tire well to "triangulate" it and make it a fairly fixed point to plan pipes from muffler to crossmember. Rethinking the v-band going into the muffler, the clearance is pretty tight between that inlet and the tire-wish I had chosen an offset-type muffler. Driveshaft just hit my porch; some tubing from Columbia River mandrel bending on porch too. Hope to get some work done this weekend between a gun show, cleaning up a friend's property, on-call for the hospital, killing weeds in my yard (not the California or Colorado weeds), church and keeping my wife happy. Maybe I'll sleep a little, but I gotta see some car progress.

No-I'm realistic: the cutouts are just noise makers! I couldn't see adequate space on the crossmember or enough room for a strap to have any length or adjustability. I'm gonna try to dangle a strap between the upper spring perch and the swaybar. Anothe problem with the crossmember is the angle-I'm thinking of the force multiplication (leverage) for every inch moved inboard with the LCA attachment point. We need to get as far outboard as possible.