RebekahsZ

I run the Chequered Flag stuff just to be safe like Tim O suggested. I kinda wanted to be "one and done." There's no right answer. So far I haven't heard of anybody breaking a Chequered Flag stub. And the automatic and easy launch is your friend that will protect you more than anything else. If you are doing 1-wheel burnouts, you need to look for an LSD. Open diffs and welded diffs break axles. The weak link is the cross shaft in an open diff. The cross shaft cocks, the spiders lock and the u-joint breaks when one wheel locks up at half track. A very messy failure cause the axle takes out your brake lines as it flops around. 1-wheel burnouts really accelerate cross shaft wear. Even if you think both tires are spinning, have somebody watch. My buddy's car spins one wheel til it gets sticky, then both wheels spin. That's hard as hell on a diff. He's on open diff#3 and Im on CLSD#1 and I have a lot more passes than him.

I run a F-body pan and a Quicktime bell housing. I ran off the track a couple weeks ago and jumped across some corner curbing as I spun out of control. There are scratches on my bellhousing, but none on my oil pan.

Ask jnjdragracing. He's auto, big hp and fairly stock drivetrain. If you are going 12.0 and foot-braking? So you are at like 350hp? What trans and stall? At what rpm do you leave the line? What gear ratio? What tires and axles? What's your 60'? I'm kinda thinking you will be fine with stock stubs. The auto is your friend and so is the lack of a trans brake. Go bias ply slick and that helps surviveability even more.

Pete-I tossed that idea around but I don't know that much about fabricating and metallurgy. Can welding ever weaken a part by jacking up the heat treating?? That's why I just bought the CM. plus, it's kinda crowded in there with the sway bar and stuff.

Just ordered a 6"X12" piece of 3/8" 4130 sheet from AEDMotorsport.com. $130! Dang, that's half of the TTT kit. If I was in a hurry (and if I run into any snags), I will sure give the TTT kit a try. If anybody finds any 5/8-18 RH inner tie rod ends, give me a yell-I'd love to have longer swaged tubes made up to reduce exposed threads on my barrels.

After running a stock 72 tank to have a square "baffle" around the pickup for 3 years in a variety of situations: I would install a small plastic or aluminum tank with an intermal pump. I might even look at a system that has two pumps for safety in a NO2 situation (I don't know crap about NO2, yet). The stock tank takes up a lot of room and makes mounting batteries, trailer hitches and parachute mounts a real pain. Something smaller would be fine for track use and would just give a lot more options. My tank will run totally dry and keep the car running on the street, autocross and drag racing. But, on LONG sweepers, I need 1/2-tank of gas to keep from getting sputtering. It is sustained Gs that seem to be a big problem for me. So, I take a little lawn mower gas jug with me to track days, so I can top up when it starts to sputter.

The bolts are all perfect. The washer on the rear hole is bent. I think you are spot on about the need for more meat around the bolt hole. I'm waiting on a quote from an on-line supplier for both 4130 and 4140HT. My only real remaining question is on the clevis bending. Chicken or egg? My best pics are two quotes up.

Try the 280 insulators. Wait to worry about moving flares till you have done that. But you need to get some 280 insulators to see where the height is gained. If above the steel plate-you are good. If below the steel plate, you gain nothing.

Sorry 'bout your dock. Glad you are ok.

Point of failure: (see pics). The clevis is 5/8" LH. The tie rod shaft is 1/2 RH

Yum! I LIKE IT. I like it A LOT! Where did you get that fire bottle mount?

Rob, there may just be enough slop in the bolt holes to allow the theoretical misalignment to be neglected in reality. As we bench race, we assume zero manufacturing tolerances, which isn't really true. You are giving me good data to consider. If I misunderstood Gabe, he may be saying that from your 4-degrees, perhaps I could get 3more for a total of 7, which is no slouch. I haven't totally taken TTT rods off the table. If I can, I want to make my doglegs wider at the rear bolt as 74_ has done. I think that's where the actual bend started due to weakening from the loss of material after the hole was drilled. TTT rods have about as much material in that area as mine did. I think the bending of the clevis saved my ass. So I want to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water. The car has been squirrelie on braking for a while-the dogleg may have been flexing for as much as a year before it finally said "enough."

74- what does the frame end of your TC rod mount look like? Heim or inner tie rod? I think Im gonna just make a heavier dog leg out of chrome moly (or whatever the best alloy I can get is) for now since I think the failure initiated at the rear bolt hole (picture later). As I see the ball joint swinging like a pendulum from the camber plate, to eliminate ANY flex moment would require mounting the the dogleg approximately 3-feet below the ball joint and would assume no bending of the strut tube: a totally idealized situation. I think some flex/rotation at this point must be accepted as a reality. Maybe this winter I can step up to heavier clevises (3/4") too.

I think I just popped my LCAs in with the short side of the spacer forward, then added washers on the back side until the assembly was snug in the crossmember. From the wear pattern in my race tires I could afford to have a little less static camber. Shame race tracks have so many straight-aways! I'd opt for less straight and more curvy (funny hearing that from a drag racer!). I was thinking about the TC rod issue during the sermon this morning. My mind wandered back to my days in helicopter and I recalled the "Jesus nut" on a Huey. The Jesus nut was a simple, but imperfect solution to the problem of keeping the rotor attached to the helicopter. Its a situation where a single part or fastener separates one from a horrible flaming, painful death. My Datsun has a couple of Jesus nuts. One is the inner tie rod, another is the outer tie rod. The single nut that holds the rear stub axle in is yet another. Seems this TC rod attachment (dogleg/clevis/moment arm/associated fasteners) is also a Jesus nut of its own.

74_, I'm pretty sure you and I are on the same sheet of music. And fortunately, I understand the issue with rigid connection of the LCA to the TC rod intuitively, cause I sucked at trig (11th grade). If you had tried geometry(10th grade), you might not have lost me. Remember, I was raised in Arkansas and I now live in Alabama. We know how many stars are on the Confederate flag cause we can count 'em on our toes! Rob is from Louisiana, so he probably understood you loud and clear, although I need subtitles when he talks. From what I understood in your earlier texts, you kept the same basic design, but made it heavier duty: stronger dogleg with more meat around that rear bolt hole, and 3/4" clevis where I have 5/8, and larger diameter tubes. Am I missing something else? I wonder if there is a point relative to the ball joint, any point, at which the dogleg is not in flexion/bending? This may be part of why Cobra Matt went non-S30 on his latest front suspension make-over (?) although I'm pretty sure it had cost him a year or two of racing the Z. I was surfing the net for swaged tubes, clevises and inner tie rod ends. Not a huge job to go bigger (the only issue is non published specs on the inner tie rod ends). But I'm thinking about putting a dogleg on the underside of the ball joint (too) to put that clevis in double shear. Whatcha think? I'm off to church.

Rob, do you know how much caster your alignment has in it? I talked to Gabe via email and he told me that he has some spacers one can add to his TC rods to achieve 2-3 degrees of caster. I'm running 5 degrees now (limited by tire clearance); I want to run a lot more (maybe as much as 10 degrees) for my 1-mile runs in June. The purpose for me is to achieve a car that is so stable that I could release the wheel at 200 mph. Before this broke, this was gonna be a winter project, but this little breakage moved it up on the list. I wonder if flexing in these dogleg/clevis portion of the TC rod is why I had such scary "bump steer" under braking at the Ohio Mile. Imagine if this little parts failure had happened then! I feel pretty lucky.

Are you gonna be racing with a sanctioning body that will actually check this stuff? I was at ECTA and a guy tried to apply the automatic trans requirements (blanket) to a manual trans. They sent him home.

That's a nice, clean setup!

What would happen if I bolted the plate to the BOTTOM of the ball joint mounting web? Instead of the top? Will that stop the bending moment? I was all ready to buy TTT TC rods, but I just realized (and it was mentioned above) that without the clevis, I would lose the ability to adjust caster (which I really want to be able to do-allowing me to run LOTS of caster for landspeed and a little caster for autocross.

I've always wondered how the heck you can control the power when boost comes on coming out of a corner??

I saw a car with a Phantom Grip at the strip during ZCON. A beautiful 240z with a turbo'd 383. He did NOT have an effective LSD. You could see his right tire (that's the side I was on) stick then spin, stick then spin. In the meantime he was getting smoked by cars that he should have been beating. I cannot recommend this LSD based on this observation. My CLSD hooks and scoots.

Just gave chassis man the warning order: full cage, chute and containment seat in Nov.

Great, big, LIKE!

Keep you eye out for used 15" rims to try and figure out your back spacing. A good first wheel to try is a 15x7 with 4.5" backspacing (although I don't know the TTT rear kit like I do the stock kit). Once you get the wheel centered in the wheel well (preferably with a used wheel), get a pair of MIckey Thompson 26x8.5 ET Drags. That change alone (wheels and tires) will put you in the 11s.

My latest pic from ZCON track day July 2015, latest from Ohio Mile, June 2015, latest drag tire pic. It's the same car. Amazing what a difference wheels, tires, ride height, and airdam can make.