RebekahsZ

After laying down a bunch of low-11 second 1/4 mile passes last weekend, I decided to visit my mother this weekend in Arkansas. So, I swapped the street tires on, checked the oil, gassed up the HybridZ and drove the 6 hours from Alabama to Arkansas for one day of chores then drove back. On the return trip, I stopped in Conway, Arkansas and visited Will, screen name wfritz to compare project cars. Will is an amazing, 19 year old college sophomore studying mechanical engineering at the University of Arkansas. This kid has his act together! How many college kids go race at the dragstrip on their way home for Thanksgiving break? He built his conversion in about 2 weeks (it took me a year) and it is a super sano, clean machine that has a big appetite for axles (he had 3 spares in his trunk). He built his own motor mount system, replaced all the wiring and gauges. He is a great welder. With the headers sticking out of the hood, I expected the car to be loud, but at idle it wouldn't even catch your attention if you were walking by. Of course it is louder when accellerating, but amazingly his car is a lot quieter than mine. We spent about an hour checking out each other's cars, then we took them for a drive then drove each other's cars. His car was a great driving machine. Only problem my car had on the trip was poor venting of my gas tank when filling and unreliable fuel gauge readings. Aggrevating, but not a show-stopper. I'll add some pictures later, but the admins must be changing the way we add photos.

I know I'm in Memphis cause I've already been pan-handled.

Driving car to Arkansas just crossed into Mississippi where the roads are dippy.

I walked right into that.....

I really need to weigh it again - those numbers are from memory almost 20 years ago, so they should be viewed with caution. I think SUNNY Z is just trying to justify why with a stock motor I'm ALMOST as fast as he is! I'm sure he'll clean my clock soundly once he gets some driveline reliability. He's a better driver with a better car. I need a mentor to spoon feed me on how to set up a nitrous system for use only when racing for bragging rights. I still plan to try to bracket race on motor only with a 2500 launch rpm on the 2-step. Anybody want to talk me thru it and wade thru some stupid questions? If I'm thinking about it I should do it before taking the car for a tune in the spring.

Wish I was your next door neighbor to help, rags! My daughter usually does it with me if I can get her off her cell phone! Last weekend, went 11.0 at 126 in the 1/4-mile Today, driving to Arkansas and back 5 hours each way! Still no mufflers, heat, wipers or defrost. Gotta beat the setting sun-temp drops to 32 tonight. Keith

Perfect timing on this thread. My truck (the one I tow the Z with) has had normal 40psi oil pressure on the guage at cold temps, but when towing and good and hot, the oil pressure reading on the guage drops to 20 at cruising rpm 2000-3000rpm. Noticed it returning from the track this Saturday night. Once motor cooled, oil pressure was back at 40. 1) should I be worried? 2) should I try a different oil? It currently runs 5W30. I'd like this motor to last at least a few more years so I can concentrate on the Z-car. I know hybridz isn't automotive 101, but I trust you folks best.

I use a product called torque seal to mark my drivetrain bolts after I torque them. Then to ensure they haven't loosened,I just visually inspect them. I have to retighten my wheel lug nuts multiple times on a drag day.

Hey, alainburon - how about an update on your project? Maybe not on this thread, but somewhere...

I'm calling it quits for the season. The only place that is reliably open is the 600' track. All the others, you get ready, wrench all week and then they are closed due to cold or rain, or just the threat of rain. California dreamin'. Did you know there are 3 dragstrips in Hawaii? Anyway, as soon as my truck gets the heat fixed I'll be starting on converting an open 3.54 to a CLSD. Then exhaust. Then heat and wipers, etc, etc. Gotta quiet this thing down so I can do some autocrossing in the spring - hoping for a trip for that back to Little Rock, so we'll have to buddy-up. SCCA Solo II folks are serious about not losing their parking lots, so they don't tolerate noisy cars. It is amazing how much work it takes for each 0.10 in the 1/8th or 1/4-mile. Simply beating on the car just results in a car that is beaten up. When I start dragging regularly, I'll probably move the 2-step down rather than up. It sucks to go home broken and it sucks to delay racing to clean up oil - track is crappy all night and everybody hates you for bringing your wimpy car to the track instead of putting in a Powerglide and a 9-inch before flirting with the big boys. My daughter loves to quote one good-ole-boy who commented on my car at the track: "That car is bayed ayss!"

Feel free to paste my PMs into your thread. When I sold my Dells, I tried to send the buyer all my jets, etc. That lucky mustard got a great deal! I looked around tonight and only found some 60 and 70 low-speed jets and (2) 175 Air Correctors for the main jets. But - you are in luck-I didn't send him my book. It is called The Dellorto Superformance Tech Book with New Calibration Guide written by Bob Tomlinson. Since I don't need it anymore, send me an address and I'll pack this stuff up and send it to you. Are you familiar with this book? It has a chart to help pick venturis and some recommendations on jets selection. One big problem with the Dells is jet part numbers. It would make sense that to get more rich, you would move from a 1 to a 2 to a 3 and so on. Not so. A 9 may be richer than a 4 which may be richer than a 6. It was like the manufacturer was on drugs when making part numbers. I have a sheet of paper that shows one of my configurations, but I don't know where all my other notes are. Tucked into the book is the names of a couple of my Dellorto suppliers. One is Pro-Tech Enterprises in San Diego which serves the Harley Davidson crowd with Dellorto Parts. There was also somebody named Dave Bean who I ordered stuff from, but I'm not finding his number or address. I spent most of my time trying to get the little intermittent backfire out of the low-speed side of the car's operation. Dellorto controls the Low-speed part of the circuit with the Idle Jets. Idle jets increase logically: I think I settled on a 60. However, the Idle Jet Holder part numbers were just crazy and non-logical. According to Pro-Tech, from rich to lean, they progressed as 8,2,7,6,3,1,9,10,5. According to Dave Bean, they progressed from rich to lean as 7,9,5,4,1,6,2,3. So whats up with that? The idle jet holders were $9 each, times 6, so it was $54 to make a change, argh! I spent a fortune and still had that pesky little pop from time to time. I think my carbs had 36 venturis when I got them. I finally settled on 32s, and I tried some 28s, but it didn't really seem to matter. The reason I think you don't see much on Dellortos is that they are pretty rare, so parts is a real PITA, and there is a lot of trial and error (and multipy the cost of each trial by 6). CB Performance had some stuff too, I think I got my accellerator pump rebuild kits from them. In today's times, if I wanted triple sidedrafts, I'd go with Mikunis for parts availablility, choke mechanism and less leakage. Plus they are Japanese instead of Italian like Weber and Dellorto (am I correct)? Oh one other thing. On my intake manifolds, only the front and back manifolds had a tower to support the shared linkage shaft. The shaft therefore bent or deflected some in the middle which made the center carb hard to synch. If all three manifolds had a tower, I think it would have been easier to synch more accurately, but it would have allowed more of a tendency for the linkage to bind if there was any misalignment of the manifolds. Funny, I still had those dam n carbs from 1997 to 2011! Everybody was always very impressed when I opened the hood. Dellortos1.wmv

Wow.........If you can get me his Paypal info, I've got $500 in my car account from the sale of some parts I can send him today.

Check this photo of my tire wear pattern. The inside 3 inches look twisted and by the wear markers I am getting lots more wear on the inside of the tire. This is with 0.4-degrees POSITIVE static camber. From the videos above, you can see lots of rear suspension working. One of this winter's projects is to find some kind of rubber wedges to jam into the coil springs to further eliminate squat.

Got some videos cut down into small enough files to post. Burnout.wmv Steele Video1.wmv Steele Video4.wmv Steele Video5.wmv IMG_0914.MOV

I recently sold my DHLA setup on ebay and it was a very bitter-sweet goodbye, they were so darn pretty. After 10 years of working with them, I could not get them to make as much power/speed as the SUs on my stock L24 (using 1/8-mile drag times as my dyno), and my fuel consumption was terrible. Once you get these carbs running, don't let the car sit, you gotta drive it almost daily to keep them from plugging passages. The first few winters, the chokes worked well, but that eventually stopped and the car became a warm weather only car. Even though these carbs have about a zillion parts to clean and a ton of o-rings (must be nitrile), and jets to figure out, the thing I hated most about them was the vent location of the float bowls - they puked on my polished cam cover and ruined the clear coat, and fuel like to drip down the back of the bowls onto the accellerator pumps then drip onto the header heat shield. I used CBPerformance.com for aircleaners and velocity stacks. PM me if interested and I'll see if I can find the spec sheet from my final venturi/jet combination. They drove well at full throttle (and sounded incredible), but I never could get away from an intermittent lean backfire on low-power part throttle driving. I may have sold all the jets and paperwork with the carbs...

Probably SUNNY Z surfing porn on one window while having the site open on another. You gotta stop that!

Project update? What was the cost and time delay on that exhaust system? The "long" tube headers that 1tuffz had made were supposed to be 36" but wound up being about 24" long. Yours are 29". Was your choice based on some performance data or were you limited by what would practically fit into the car?

Super. Thanks for being a good purchaser. Are they going on the gray road-race car or a daily driver?

I think this biggest diet pill to swallow is you gotta start light with a 240z instead of a 280z. Its been a long time since I weighed it - that's probably not accurate anymore. I can't remember if I had the roll bar in then or not, my drag wheels and tires are a lot lighter than what I had on it then. Don't remember which seats I had in it or what state of undress the interior was in (I had some boat anchor seats in it once, but they sure were comfortable; I now have 14-pound seats in it). I've got a carbon hood right now that is about as heavy as a piece of typing paper. Bumpers and grill are gone, windshield wiper motor is gone, but is coming back, no undercoating, only paint on the floors, minimal stereo system, no real exhaust right now either. I don't know if coilovers save any weight, 1" swaybar up front, none in back. Now R200 instead of R180, don't know how the CV axles weigh out. Still have my stock spare tire installed since it is in the back of the car, battery is in back, too. Your car is nice enough to take a girl in a date - they would run from mine. Your car can go a lot faster than mine, you just gotta get more chances. You can't get any practice if you break an axle every time you try.

I weighed it about 15 years ago and it weighed 2160 without me in it with about 1/2 tank of gas. Haven't gotten it on any scales since then. I weighed 40 pounds less back then, as well! I think I'm gonna add some door bars to the roll bar to try to get closer to being NHRA legal - not looking forward anytime soon to adding a SFI rated bellhousing, since I've been all over the clutch lately - it is like a cancer I can't get away from! Both of those will add some weight. I think for this winter I'm gonna just try to get it autocross-ready and more reliable/easier to work on. Maybe next year I'll add a nitrous kit to be used in high gear for bragging rights only - I think it will just add variability and make bracket racing impossible. I bet that will get me into the 10s., but goes against my desire for trouble-free operation. I have no idea of what kind of "tune" my car has. How much performance can a computer "tune" be worth? I don't want to make anymore speed in the first 60' - I want to keep the axle system intact. Any more speed I make, I want to make after my last shift, so that's 3rd gear in the 1/8th and 4rth in the 1/4. Would you consider 10.999 "in the 10s?" I'm closer to the 10s in the 1/4 than I am to the 6s in the 1/8th.

2-step rocks. Car was fairly consistent for a manual trans. I am not immune to red-lighting. Timing system is based on a 0.000 for perfect reaction time. Run RT 60' 330' 1/8-mile/mph 1/4-mile/mph 1 .502 1.586 4.748 7.324/95.12 11.304/125.24 2 .041 1.584 4.683 7.207/96.95 11.119/126.31 3 -.004 redlite 1.605 4.737 7.275/96.74 11.225/125.68 Stopped and got a cheeseburger 4 -.136 redlite 1.619 4.738 7.293/94.92 11.284/124.55 5 .076 1.627 4.762 7.300/98.73 11.271/125.27 6 .155 1.582 4.703 7.241/97.74 11.170/125.96 Stopped and watched for a while 7 .054 1.572 4.758 7.348/96.07 11.321/125.05 Increased 2-step from 2500 to 3000 8 -.026 redlite 1.610 4.701 7.235/97.03 11.159/126.06 Increased 2-step from 3000 to 3500 and dropped air pressure from 20 to 16 9 .014 1.520 4.607 7.141/97.53 11.055/126.28 Put it on the trailer and headed for home

Please let me know when they arrive. I'll worry 'till you are satisfied. I have felt very spiritually empty since I dropped them off at UPS. How long did we wait for those? - like a year or more-plus all the drama? There was a 2010 or 2011 Camaro COPO at the track yesterday ($100,000 car) that ran 9.60s straight from the factory. He said all he did was put gas in it and air the tires. It had a Powerglide and an aluminum LSx 427 with the Holley snorkle-style intake from the factory. His headers looked just like the ones in the mail to you, except his weren't ceramic coated. The smell of 110 octane coming thru the floorboards straight off the collecgtor -yummm..... The whole reason I sold them to you was that I'm committed to my exhaust cutouts thru the front fenders (its a childhood dream thing) - the longtubes just put the collector too far back for me to pull that off. It still hurt to see them go. I'm curious to see how much the Kooks headers that rags is having made wind up costing him. Maybe in a totally custom situation I can have my cake and eat it too. It's only money!

Hell yeah! Thanks for the kudos. I'm going out when I log off to swap the slicks and skinnies for Khumo street tires on RBRs. Hoping to work in it some today with my 15 year-old daughter who just got her learners driving permit. I'm putting my truck in the shop this week to figure out why the heater isn't getting hot, so I'll be DD-ing the Z all this week. A few weeks ago I drove 3 hours each way to Birmingham in the Z-car and drove back in a driving rain. These motors are so sweet - not really all that loud just on the headers if you keep the rpms and load down. I need some door bars if I wanna be NHRA legal, but I real dread how that will kill my desire to drive it to work, dinging my shoes eveytime I step over the bar...

Congrats! I was at the track when you sent me the youtube link and it was super noisey. I could tell when it cranked up by how your camera man jumped! Its a big day. Lots of details left, but it won't be long before you are posting ETs! After working for 2 years on my swap (in a series of all night-er binges), it was a similar feeling to when Rebekah was born (actually when Rebekah was born I had mixed feelings of joy and scared shitless, where engine crank day was all joy). Finish the project well - I have had zero reliability issues directly related to the motor/trans itself. Every problem I have had I can directly relate to something bone-headed I did trying to take a shortcut.

Beautiful day today. Trailered down to Alabama International Dragway for my first taste of 1/4-mile with the LS2. Car ran great. Videos and time slips added tomorrow. My goal with this car has been 7.0 at about 100mph in the 1/8th and 11.0 at about 125mph in the quarter. I have been unhappy with the 3.90 diff (26" tires) in the 1/8th, but my drag racing calculator suggests that the 3.90 should be great in the 1/4-mile. The calculator was right! I'm going thru the traps in 4th gear just as the shift light is illuminating, but before hitting the rev limiter. A few passes with the shift light set at 6200 showed me that I'm too darn slow to stay off the rev-limiter, so I decreased my shift light to illuminate at 6000rpm: bumping the rev limiter stopped. Also gradually increased 2-step from 2500 to 3000 and finally to 3500. Car hooked fine at 20psi in the tires, but as I increased the 2-step rpm, I lowered the air pressure to 16psi to soften the sidewall and allow more twist. No handling problems today, although the slow down ara of the strip was very bumpy. 9 passes today - no carnage so far. Met my goal of 125 on the first run of the day, but the 7.0 1/8th time continues to elude me. Best run of the day: The last run of the day - I quit on a high note! RT: 0.014 (perfect tree at this track is 0.000 instead of the usual 0.500) 60': 1.520 300': 4.607 1/8: 7.141 @ 97.53mph 1/4" 11.055 @ 126.28mph Motor will remain totally stock - I was the slowest car at the track today, but I was also the only one that didn't break. Would love to have some different ratios in the tranny - 2nd gear is here and gone so quickly! IMG_0914.MOV