RebekahsZ

Do you mean shims for the pinion or the carrier?

Now I know why you guys are all hot to get power steering! I found a good way to stay motivated on my z-car: pay somebody to work on your tow vehicle/daily driver. I don't think my truck is ever coming home from an transmission cooler leak. So, I slapped the wheels on the z and am straight piping it to work tomorrow. Wife is taking rebekah back to auburn tomorrow, so I'm stranded without the z.

I carry race tires in my trunk/hatch. And a hydraulic floor jack. And a helmet. And a folding chair. And a small tool kit. And an umbrella. And a fire extinguisher. I couldn't do that with a strut brace. And I feel naked without my fire extinguisher-I know too well the guy who built my car.

You're the best. Lets hope I never need to.

Yes-more complicated on machinist. Plus I'm putting my mother to sleep so I don't have to listen to her nagging me and telling me that I don't know what I'm doing! Plus machinists are very exacting-you hope!

Finally! Johnc has gotten so mellow in his old age that he has to be baited and prodded out of hibernation. That is the perspective I have been craving. Thank you. I know im overly sensitive but i left my last conversation with cobramatt feeling very shamed/scolded for having a fast car without a roll cage. But, i think he was still kind of worked ip over the bad track antics that he saw at the zfest at Barber. You folks are the best!

I studied your approach. We know yours works-jury is still out on mine.

The knee bar is a bar that runs across the car below or above the dash. May not be required for NHRA, but is required for SCCA. It comes into play when you get t-boned. The only thing that keeps a car from getting squished in the middle is the firewall and the cowl. If you run it above the dash, it stays out of your way and doesn't bang your knees, but it doesn't contribute as much impact protection. If I dive into a cage next winter (got enough on the list for this winter), I'm gonna want to have it satisfy everybody. I will likely compromise on my door bars, angling them down a lot in the front and keeping them as low as is reasonable in back. I don't want to do a removable bar-just something else to fool with the night before I go to the track - which I hope, this year, is a lot.

I'm a surgeon. In the next two weeks I'm operating on 2 very important people in my life: my mother and my machinist. Why is it that I'm more nervous about operating on my machinist than I am about operating on mom? There's something wrong with me.

Finished rear suspenson droop limiters. I'm not actually thinking about how these will effect handling-I built them so the coilover spring will stop cocking on its top perch everytime I lower the car off a jack. This week I'll be working on droom limiter bracketry for the front. In this picture, you will see that I just made a 3/16" thick bracket that a buddy welded to the mustache bar-that is where the top end of the strap will bolt. The lower end of the strap will go behine the spindle pin nut on the LCA. In the completed photo, imagine the pencil replaced by a nylon strap.

Got the 3.54 installed completely and the vent line attached to the new puke tank. Finished rear droop limiter brackets-will finish the fronts then order straps from a 4X4 place. Pushed rear camber plates in to about 3 degrees negative and test fit street tires and autocross tires-no rubbing. Ran out of 3/16" steel plate for front frame rail "scabs" to reduce jackstand damage. I worked form 5pm to 1am-sure seems like I should have gotten more done.

Well done!

You do freakin' awesome work!

Try to find a corvette pan. Even the camaro/firebird pan hangs too low. Mine is 1" below the crossmember (the lowest point on the car).

Thanks, Josey. Its not the money that is delaying the project-it is dealing with the dashboard and the windshield. How about I pay you $500 to pull my dash and reinstall it (and tidy up all my shoddy wiring) after the cage is built? I can only imagine the gremlins I'm gonna have after that! Honestly, that is my hold-up. Also, not sure how to run the knee bar in a way that lets me pull a heater core if it starts leaking after the cage is in. I want it all welded in "one and done."

Argh, hidden in an appendix! If I want to have the option of going to Atlanta for a road racing lesson with cobramatt, I want him to feel safe. Believe it or not, i care about having credibility with this site's "royalty." Not being sarcastic. I think I'm gonna bite the bullet next year and go ahead and have a legit cage made once and for all. Next winters project. Better get back to this winter's. thanks for letting me thread jack.

Thanks for the links-I looked at them. I didn't find any prohibition or advice in the GCR to state whether the rollbar can mount on the fenders or not. I didn't find any reference to where the main hoop had to mount whatsoever. I also found only a reference to the maximum footplate required, not a minimum. I know NHRA specifies 6" X 6" - read that this week, but I haven't seen a requirement for floor mounting in their rules either. Maybe this will work out after all. Listening for more advice.

I don't know about 8.8s but when I took my RT mounted R200 down, the rubber inside the poly insulator had separated internally from the rubber. It wasn't a safety issue-yet.

That was mighty nice of you. This is a great forum! Looking forward to meeting that duragg guy someday.

johnc, JMortensen, cobramatt-I've seen bunches of threads that pooh-pooh footplates on the inner fenders. I like how much room my fender-footed roll bar allows in the interior-I'd like to keep it if it is legit. For SCCA (and by chance NHRA), do you think I can keep it as it is? What is your interpretation?

Didn't it want to twist all over the place when you were working on it?

It has been a while since I posted in the projects forum. Finished the racing season with a trip to a local 1/4-mile track where car laid down a best time of 11.0 at 126mph. I was happy with that for my first year after the engine swap, so I parked the car for winter "upgrades." Since then I have converted a 3.54 to CLSD and that should go in the car today. Other goals this weekend include pushing camber plates all the way in (done) to see if the shortened rear axles need additional shortening before setting car up with johnc's autocross alignment. Also designing and fabbing front droop limiters and designing a driveshaft hoop. Gotta design exhaust system and get components on order for that. That's probably enough for sat and sun. Before spring, car needs baseline dyno and tune and to set to autocross setup. Gonna go to longer coil springs-they are adjusted full up and car is still too damn low for the dragstrip return tracks around here-dont want to trash an oil pan. Hope to race all next summer (multisport) with as little time on the jack stands as possible. Reliability trouble in first season was limited to warped pressure plate due to driver error, and a blown fuse (although both of those took me a long time to figure out). Next winter will be the winter of safety mods: roll cage or maybe just a 6-point bar, axle hoops, billet stubs, external electrical shutoff, steel bellhousing, metal valve stems, lengthened wheel studs and open lug nuts, and whatever else. I'm gonna want to have car ready to race at any track without getting hassled.

Please post any pictures you have that show how you mounted a driveshaft hoop/loop in a Z-car. Most of my ideas make it too crowded to get the exhaust tucked up nice and high. It would be good if I did this project before building my exhaust if possible.

Doesn't the rollbar HAVE to go to the floor with 6"x6" footplates to be NHRA legal (I''m asking)? When I first built my car, I didn't worry about safety certification-now I have to do it all over again since I started drag racing! I've got one of those Auto Power rollbars like that and I've considered adding door bars to it too-I honestly think it would be fine structurally-the inner fenders have compound bends that look much more rigid than the thin, flat floor. But I'm not gonna bother since it wouldn't pass tech. Those little bars are really just dead-weight customizing pieces or a place to attach a shoulder harness (my excuse). I know you said that you weren't gonna do anything serious,but plans change as you enjoy your car more and more, then you gotta tear it all down and break paint and throw sparks and iron filings to re-do it. My local tracks overlook most safety rules - even helmets, and many of the other drivers race with a beer between their knees, but if I ever got a chance to do a Pinks, Passtime or Drag Week, you know I'd jump on the opportunity, and I'm sure those guys want you to be safety cert-ed. I'm tiring of re-doing things I should have done right the first time! So, give some thought to doing a legit rollbar-I wish I had. If I had the guts to rip back down to bare metal I would build (likely have built) a cage that was NHRA cert-ed to 8 seconds and met SCCA IT specs - that standard would even qualify you for a fun trip to Bonneville. Shouldawouldacoulda.

Dam n thats a lotta tire! Gonna need 55 gallon oil drums for wheel tubs and flares....