RebekahsZ

Its not supposed to. That is why I went with it instead of a McLeod multi disc. Didn't arrive tonight-Argh! I'm thinking about the Z Nationals on Oct 8th at Barber Motorsport. Never been to a national event before.

Fiollowed advice on ls1tech and called east coast performance in north Carolina. They sold me a clutch from mantic an Australian company. Model is mantic er2 .

I just sent my axles back to be re-heat treated. He's gonna keep mine shorter because I've shortened my LCAs. In fact, this winter I'm custom ordering even 1/2" shorter. We'll see how mine hold up-gonna start dropping clutch and feathering more to keep clutch happy maybe at the expense of axles.

Was this the stock axle or the after market axle?

Not too bad. As sunny told me, you need about 3feet of extension with a u-joint on it. Remove cross member and let tranny sag away from floor pan to expose bolts. Remember to disconnect wiring first (ask me how I know that tidbit?). Put a ziplock bag or something over tail housing to catch oil. Separate tranny from bell then bell from motor.

Thanks, buddy. Clutch should arrive tomorrow.

Thanks for getting me to the right thread. I searched the whole forum and the suspension forum without the hyphen. There it was in the fabrication forum waiting for me. If anybody else has any more pictures send them. By the way, the reason I'm interested is really simple-I'm tired of pinching my arm when I let the car off jacks and have to straighten up the spring. And I'm tired of having to jack the car so high to change tires. I've finally got a jack point that lets me jack whole side at one time. There may come a time when I'm lifting my front tire(s) at the strip so I want to do straps instead of the helper springs. I've learned something from each reply. Thank you.

Next project on my car is to limit droop so that my coilover springs stay on the seats when I jack up and lower the car. I have felt very uncomfortable with my current (spring tilting when unloaded situation). I've got some ideas, but there are guys on this forum smarter than me. Please post pictures of your systems if you've got them. Please don't let this thread turn into a debate. Just post 'em if you got 'em. I've seen bjhines set up (cable system)somewhere, but can't find it and jnjdragracing (chain system) sent me pictures already.

Sorry, your post has changed a lot since it first went up. I can't believe how light those tires are-makes changing them a lot easier for an old guy like me. They stick like glue, thus my burned up clutch. What front tires/wheels are you gonna run? I'd love to see if you have the same trouble I've had with wandering all over the track. I'm really interested in your ET/mph and driving impressions.

Don't worry about the rim back spacing until a tire is on it. Measure out your section width and see how much room is left. I hope you can go with the 10" tire.

Moved thread because I wasn't getting any replies. Figured forum was bored with it, so I didn't want it competing with more interesting and current topics. It should have been in the member projects to start with anyway. Car stopped shifting well (like not at all) only at high power/rpm. Went thru all the hydraulics without improving the situation. Dropped tranny = Burned up stock GTO clutch, probably due to poor technique at the dragstrip. Clutch disc looks fine, but pressure plate and flywheel have very uneven wear. Have car torn down waiting for new clutch kit to arrive. Hopeful this will solve problem. First 2-3 trips to strip car performed great, so I'm hoping to work on my goal of 7.0 and 100mph (1/8-mile) before it gets cold and tracks close. New clutch is a Mantic ER2 organic/ceramic single disc from East Coast Performance. I bought his whole kit, plus some sort of special brew of transmission oil for a total of $1200; includes everything from slave and lines/bleeder to flywheel and ARP bolts. Hope to install it this week if it arrives and start clutch break-in this weekend with the goal of being back at the track in 2 weeks. Had a nice visit this weekend from Aero Z who lives about an hour and a half away. Gave him an old set of u-joint half-shafts I'll never use again.

Congrats! Its a great feeling.

I usually discourage folks from removing the spindle pins to burn and hand saw out the outer LCA bushings because it is such a PITA for no real reward other than bragging rights. If you wind up trying to do this job anyway, I highly recommend the spindle pin puller loaner program on this website. I've done it with and without the puller and the puller really helps. Without the puller, just go ahead and order new spindle pins in advance cause you're gonna ruin them. I have heard that you can just replace the spindle pin with a long 5/8" grade 8 bolt, which is what I plan to try next time I have to do that job. Pollish and anti-seize the heck out of whatever you put back in there. Even with the spindle puller I'd rather get kicked in the nuts about 20 times than do that job.

I was actually serious. The way to remove the stock bushings when/if changing to polyurethane is to burn the old ones out with a torch. They are super durable, even at 40 years old. So durable, in fact, that I discourage folks from do a polyurethane "upgrade." Not worth the trouble, and it's a lot of trouble.

How do you open the hatch?

You'd have to light your car on fire to hurt one of those. Put the bearing back in it and run it.

I've seen folks tweeking their frame rails a little (and it is really not anything really serious) with just lowering springs without even going to coilovers. It is an easy fix - just space it down with a little aluminum stock (heck, I've used a little block of wood) and use longer bolts. It is an hour job, tops. All the different coilover kits are just variations on the same theme, it really doesn't matter which kind you use. So long as you limit your lowering to about 5" of ground clearance measured at the rocker, you will be fine. If you are tracking the car, you'll want some ground clearance for curb hopping and off-track excursions (if you always stay on the track, you could have gone faster!). Plus, if you drive any on the street, you will run into driveways and parking lots with speedbumps that you can't get in and out of even lowered as I am. The school where I do my voting just put in all new speed bumps and they are high as hello - pissed me off. Good thing I was in my truck, but I made a mental note: "can't drive the z in here." There is a reason why the low-rider set cruises slowly. I see you are from New Orleans. Safe and dry?

I think you've been perhaps searching too much and you are starting to mix apples and oranges. If you do a standard coilover conversion to allow the use of MR2 strut inserts into the front tubes and front inserts into the rear tubes, you will be fine with no real downside or any other mods. You will be able to lower your car as low as is reasonable for your stated intentions. The car gets impractical to drive when you get the rockers below 5" (the bottom of the car will be about 3 inches). The only thing you should have to change interference-wise is the front swaybar, which you will need to space about an inch away from the "frame." I also used bump-steer spacers between the bottom of the strut and the steering knuckle, but I don't know if those will work with 14" wheels without the lower balljoint scraping inside the 14" wheels. They are fine with 15" and larger wheels. I don't know if these bump-steer spacers are really needed or not, but you will lose more negative camber without them. It is with extended front lower control arms that you can run into trouble with insufficient steering rack/inner balljoint adjustability. Now, when you lower in the front, you lose negative camber, which will make your car understeer or "push." In the rear, as you lower, you will gain negative camber, but perhaps not as much or as little as you want. Plan on adding front camber plates (rear ones are nice too) SOMETIME if you are going to street the car, but do it NOW if you plan to track the car because you will want plenty of negative camber. The DP camber plate from betamotorsport.com makes this a pretty easy mod without any cutting whatsoever. I haven't had any of the problems you are worrying about (balljoints) and I've been driving on my coilovers for more than 10 years. All bets are off for the hellaflush crowd; they are pushing lowering to the extreme and the farther you get away from stock, the more mods will be needed. With coilovers, changing the rideheight is a breeze, but remember, you have to change the toe-in everytime you change the rideheight, which I find challenging to do accurately (without the little plates on bearings that alignment shops have) in my little garage that I share with my wife's minivan.

Around here they close the track for little technical things like that-you are pretty lucky. Seems like my tracks look for any little excuse to close. Probably be doing the stub axle thing next winter unless required to sooner.

Send me a private message (pm) and I'll tell you what I know.

As best as I can tell, it wasn't slipping. When it first started acting up, I tried to induce slippage on purpose and couldn't get it to slip. I am pretty certain that I was the culpret with too much intentional slippage on the line. I was also partially engaging the clutch with the line lock on to "pre-load" the drivetrain. I guess that was a good theory, but not a good practice. Gonna have to challenge the CV axles some more and just hope for the best. Thanks to JMortensen, it is easier to swap an axle than to change a clutch! This is my very first clutch work, so I'm collecting data from folks with more experience. Thanks for your input.

Been draggin' my LS2/240z, stock original 18k-mile 2006 GTO clutch, with slicks and as many posts have described, it stopped going into 3rd or 4th gear on high-power shifts. Around town it was still driving fine. After screwing with the hydraulics for over a week, I finally took the advice of several of you and dropped the tranny for a look around. Attached are photos of what I found. Most of the wear/deposits on the flywheel are in two places 180 degrees apart. Clutch plate looks fine by visual inspection. 1) what is the diagnosis? 2) Is this why I can't shift at hight rpm? 3) Can the parts I have be even temporarily fixed to get me thru next weekend's drag racing? I'm ordering a new aftermarket Mantic ER2 clutch system tomorrow, but I understand that it will have to be broken in over 300-500 miles. Even if new stuf is overnighted and I do a fast all-nighter assembly, I don't have time to do the break-in before next Saturday's planned trip to the strip with a friend coming from out of state. Can a pressure plate and flywheel be re-surfaced and re-used anymore?

While I'm waiting on parts...What are the chances that changing tranny lubricant will improve up-shifting? I'm running Advance Auto Dextron III. Thinking about trying some GM synchromesh... Found this thread in a jaguar forum (see picture) sounds familiar-wondering now if this is what I'll find when I tear down: "Well, now I'm experiencing what seems like synchro bearing failure, and I'm wondering if that "clunk" wasn't just a precursor to what I'm dealing with now. The car has 92000 miles on it. The transmission will shift into every gear just fine while standing still. If I accelerate very gradually and shift at low rpms, the shifter will drop into place from gear to gear fairly quickly - just about normally - with just a little extra pressure from my shifting hand. As I increase the rpm of the shift points, I need to increase the pressure on the shifter or have a great deal more patience for the shifter to drop into place. That effect starts at about 3000 rpm. Much above 4000 rpm, it wont shift at all. Exuberant acceleration, like on a highway acceleration lane, "just ain't happenin'."

Sunny, don't worry, I'm still looking at small approaches to the problem. I've ordered a speed bleeder for the remote bleeder line (I want to keep bleeding even though the pedal feels good), and I'm looking at different transmission oil (maybe synchros aren't working well with the cheap Advance Auto Dextron III I put in it. Anybody heard of a Mantic clutch? Dropped tranny last night: warped flywheel. Mantic ER2 ordered today from East Coast Performance.

Finding another down side to the GTO system, all these clutch systems are designed for f-body flywheels. So add the cost of a fly wheel to it. Have thought about trying to tear down and just replace clutch disc and slave, but I can't find a source for the disc only.