RebekahsZ

Brian at zccjdm has offered to order me a set from Kameari for $950. Gonna start buttering up the Mrs..... Once I have it on hand the trick will be to get somebody to put it together with one of my CLSDs. Maybe johnc would be willing if I pay some Porsche money. Will PM to beg when all parts are on hand. I'm willing to slap an LSD carrier into an open diff that is already set up, but Im not interested in trying to install an R&P from scratch. If it involves spacing the pinion properly, I want help.

I haven't heard that much about how much fenders save in weight. My CF hood does a lot (I haven't weighed them comparatively), but removing the steel hood was a 2 man job and the CF hood I can lift off myself (most of the trouble is with the hood pins and akwardness of the thing). I keep it on a hinge most of the time for ease of opening. Once I see your dyno graph I will have some questions about your cam (to learn, not to try to teach). Keith

I think 2600 is what most of us consider "race weight." You will have to make weight loss a major priority to do much better than that. ie-removing door glass, removing all of the door structure other than the skin, deleting headlights, heater, wiper motor, lexan windshield and quarter glass, lighter tranny, etc. For me, roll up windows and windows that don't scratch is a major plus. Wipers and a heater that has defrost capability is awfully nice too. zccjdm.com has a really nice looking fiberglass rear hatch with integrated rear spoiler. If I was going to lexan rear window and fiberglass hood-I would consider that hatch. If I build a second Z, it will have that hatch from the outset.

Thanks theatriks. Not interested in TTT kit. I know guys going 210mph on Mazda RX7 IRS with 900hp and nitrous. Those short nose diffs are bad about flexing and breaking the adapter cradles.

What's it weigh now? Cage?

I wouldn't cut them off-the "frame rails" are very thin. I have considered whether they could be cleaned out and used as ducting for turbos (?) if I decided to try twins with one in the battery area and one where the brake booster is.

Finish that to-do list on the bottom of your signature, then tell me what to do Camper Boy! No, seriously (I was just totally kidding), but at some point we have to stop modifying and start driving. If I stick with what I have, it may break every now and then, but I'm getting pretty good at fixing it. Its worth the risk for me to keep it simple.

Thanks-that was really fun.

Maybe. If so, I will go solid 9" instead of the independent 8.8. I saw that RX3 come in third behind Greg Ira, so a solid axle isn't the devil. Even though that Kameari 3.154 R&P is $1700, that's still cheaper than either Will's 8.8 IRS or a 9" SRA. Decisions, decisions. Then there's the option of starting over with a Z dedicated to going straight, and just keeping my trusty old Z as an autocross/track day car....or just selling it all and taking up yogo, or clogging, or starting my male modeling career. I hear that middle-aged, balding, harry-backed, pot-bellied rednecks are just what the agencies are looking for.

I ran my Dells on a stock L24 with only 32mm venturies. I even considered going down to 28mm venturies. You may just not have enough vacuum at idle to serve ventuies that big. With that arranngement, I never ran my idle screws more than 1-1/2 turns out from the bottom. I don't have any info on my jets-all my books and charts went to the new owner when I sold them 2-3 years ago. The problem that I had tuning my Dells is that the emulsion tube and jet part numbers don't mean anything relative to how large or small they are. I had thousands of dollars in jets and emulsion tubes in a tackle box. I had them tuned really well for full throttle, cruise and idle, but I never could cure an intermittent lean backfire pulling away from stop signs at light load. I selected the main jets by trial and error, choosing the jet that produced the best flying mile time between a pair of mile markers on the highway. The car didn't smoke or stink from the tailpipe, but that lean backfire spit fuel out of the float bowel vents up on top of the carbs, so the garage always stunk of raw gas. The car was still slower in the 1/8-mile with the Dells than it was with stock SUs. But it sure did look and sound great! There is a venturi sizing chart out there some where. I think I got that info from a Des Hamil book-something like "Weber and Dellorto Power Tuning" or something like that. To size your venturis you had to know the volume of each cylinder, so 2800/6=467ccs per cylinder. Read across the chart from 467 and that gave you a venturi size recommendation. If the car is stock, I would go to the small side to improve driveability. Realize why you run Dells-its from looks, sound, and retro/performance style. Unless you are an expert with these and optimize cam and head to support the system, you will not produce as much power as you would with either a single carb, SUs, or fuel injection. If it weren't for the stinky garage and the lean backfire, I might still have them. Search my youtube channel "RebekahsZ" and you will find a video of the carbs and the car running-I think it is the very earliest video I ever put on youtube. Do you have a vacuum line to the distributor and brake booster? I don't know if failing to put a vacuum line on your distributor would make a difference in idle performance. I had mine set up with a solid plate in the distributor and the vacuum port on the intake manifold capped. A big vacuum leak anywhere will affect idle.

Don't worry about the weight-get what looks good.

johnc directed me to zccjdm.com. Email inquiry sent.

You are brave to try all this yourself-and smart to be able to make any sense of it. Keep at it-you will LOVE your hybridZ.

I went to the Kameari site-boy that's expensive; I will try to call them this week to try to confirm availability, then chew on that price a while. Went searching for that 3.154 in the Nismo catalog and came up short. I did find it (and a complete LSD-equipped 3.154 R200) in the 1987 catalogue. Oh, to have a time machine! Gonna try a PM to johnc to see if he has any resources toward this problem. After that its a WANTED add in the classifieds.

When you say "Motorsport", which Motorsport do you refer to? Anybody know the link for the NISMO racing catalogue?

Ask him if he has worked on any Z-cars and see what he says. He did my Z-car's harness and tuning and I have had no trouble whatsoever (I did all the mechanical work). I paid 250 to have the ground wire on my harness repaired, then 500 for a dyno session. There were some little adjustments after that where he did not charge me. I would not have him do a total engine swap-he really bloodied me on an LS conversion on another vehicle. I think that if he does the work himself, it's good. But if he hands it off to one of his mechanics, its well....not as good. I'm pretty sure he does all the tuning himself. He doesn't talk much, so don't let that put you off. Double check any mechanical work, just like you would for any mechanical work done by anybody. Check fluid levels before driving car away. I had a lot of trouble with the second vehicle I sent him, but I'm driving it now and it is working out fine in the end. And be patient-he works when he feels like it.

Racing with friends can be tricky. You gotta let em win every now and then, or they will get discouraged and will quit wanting to race. At least keep the race close. And never admit that you peddled it. Make up some excuse like: my timing is messing up at the top end.

Try Culver Auto in Laceys Spring: 256-882-2450. Hold onto your wallet, and wear whatever worn-out clothes you wear to pay your water bill and local taxes.

With friends like that, who needs enemies? Keep up the good work.

Dexter and I got just a little time in on the Z yesterday and we managed to get the old inner tie rods off (definitely a 2-man job). At the factory they must use a spanner wrench of some kind a (and a lotta torque) to install the inner tie rod ends. There is a lock nut that has a large hex profile that I was able to buy an open end wrench to fit. But we had to use a monkey wrench (pipe wrench?) to bite into the tie rod end to break the torque. I would not try to do this without having some way to avoid twisting the rack itself as you struggle to break that tie rod loose. After getting the luck nut broken free, the tie rod was still affixed to the rack with red lock tite. Fortunately, I had installed travel limiting collar clamps onto the rack itself and I was able to put a second monkey wrench on that to restrain twist of the rack adequately to get the inner tie rod end off. The other side was just a repeat. Both sides of the rack use standard, right-handed threads, so both sides come off counter clockwise. A quick test fit of the Rare Parts tie rod ends confirms that they fit. Pictures and more good things to like about the Rare Parts inner tie rods after church.

I've been a-looking for a couple days and finally am asking for help. I have a 3.36 R200 longnose differential on hand, but I've been bench racing for a couple of weeks, and I think I'm gonna need something like a 3.18 R&P for my goals. I swear I saw a link to Nissan Motorsports or somewhere where this ratio could be special ordered(?). Does this ring a bell to anybody who can put me onto a source? I'm thinking that I need to go ahead and snag one of these gearsets before they are NLA, unless I'm already too late. Perhaps someone more search-savy can help me?

Way to go!

My shit would have to be so squeekie tight to pull that off. Sorry to bloody up your thread. Got a little crazy for a moment.

I really love the wrenching as much as the driving, so it might be fun, since the meets are going to 3 day events, to go up with a forged, built motor: run n/a on Friday, put a nitrous plate kit on it and swap the preprogrammed spare ECU to the nitrous tune, then run Fuel class on Sat, swap headers and ECU out for a turbo kit, and run Blown class on Sunday. Setting records in class on each run. That would be an epic weekend.

I'm not serious. I'm just bench racing. I have a lot of chassis work to do. Target date for a 200mph attempt is 2021. Just learning , reading and asking questions right now, looking at space requirements and cost. Learning about dollars (and hours) per hp, etc. I'm still trying to figure out why some folks lower compression ratio for blown motors and other successfully just strap boost onto the motor they have. Trying to deciide if I want to spend the money to build a grenade of a n/a motor, or to just skip it and go straight to boost. The guys I see going 200mph in the mile n/a pretty much buy a $20,000 NASCAR engine that has a million dollars of R&D invested into it. But they are spinning the hell out of it and have to get into dry sumps and the like. There's this BS rule that says that to get "a hat" you have to not only exceed 200mph, but you have to set a record on the same run. So it may boil down to which class still has a reacheable record when I really get serious. But I learned this year that a car going 10 miles an hour faster can drive entirely differently than when it was 10 mph slower. And I want to survive this. So it's back to the suspension. Hoping to get some hours in tomorrow, but my wife just issued the honey-do list and it doesn't look promising.