RebekahsZ

If you guys want to see a good and typical pure road race door bar setup go to Member Projects and find the thread on the first page called something like 280z Track Car by Performance Motorsport Fabrications. That style gives the driver lots of room and is easier to enter/exit. Best i can translate, the road race bars are designed to keep other cars OUT, and the NHRA bars are designed to keep the driver IN. I personally prefer the roadrace style bars. But, you gotta gut the door to have room for them. So, at least for dragging (where they like your window up), you'd have to configure a lexan quick removable door glass of some kind. If i didnt care about gutting my door, i would probably do the SCCA/NASA style bars with a removable diagonal to be sure everybody was happy. Compromises have ruled the construction of my car, same as yours. SunnyZ, I guess your bars passed tech at Drag Week(?).

Good to hear from you!!!

Ah, I'm gonna trust them to be fine. I don't intend to try to keep up with which wheel goes on which side or which disc goes on which wheel. That just exceeds my level of interest. I'll let you know if I have one wheel hopping down the track!

2-1/2 hrs east of Memphis. I'm excited that there is some hybridz hype cranking up.

I will give you 1,200 right now.

Yes you should! And stop in to see me in Florence, AL. My shop should be complete or nearly complete by then.

Car is still at fabricators to have fatigued sheet metal at the lower hinge repaired. His mom just died so it may be a while. The garage is coming along with doors hung and interior painted. It is bricked about 1/3 of the way up. Next is to get the gas in and install the heater, house fan, lights, etc. Worked on my landspeed wheels and tires today. Almost got that knocked out but one of the front 2-piece wheels leaks and needs to be re-siliconed. Hope to finish that before the weekend is over.

You will spin 335s just as well. The only thing I can't spin is 10-1/2" drag slicks, heated well and lots of VHT on the track.

With just 15" wheels, and bumpsteer spacers, the grease zerks in the outer tie rod ends, and the tie rod ends themselves can rub on the inside of the wheels. Removal of the grease zerks (install a little plug) and a little grinding on the tie rod will fix this. Going to 16s or 17s makes the problem go away. Think about making some blocks (even wood can work) to space the swaybar away from the frame a half inch to keep it from binding on the body. You can just use longer bolts that pass thru the sway bar bracket and the spacer.

Looking AWESOME!

By that time, my paint will have gone to crap and I will take all the trophies home!

Take a measuring caliper (they have them at Lowes) and measure the inside diameter of the center hole in your wheel. Then, measure the outer diameter of the round flange that is slightly larger than the nubs. If the center hole in the wheel is smaller than the center of the stub axle, your wheel won't mount flat on the stub. You will have a wobbly wheel like a clown car. Brother, please quit trying to make these crazy wheels fit-this is painful to watch. Save up and buy wheels made to fit the car. I think coming down from 14" wide to 11" wide is a step in the right direction. 315 is a plenty wide tire.

Sorry for double post. Just how old is old??

Switch to real drag slicks. To run that 315/17 tire Im going to assume you are flared. So, get some used 15x8 weld Draglites and mount up some 26x9 or 10 Hoosier or Mickey Thompson bias ply slicks. Put 15 psi air pressure in them. Let them smoke for a couple of seconds at 5000 rpm in a second-gear burn-out. To do a decent burn out you really need a line-lock system. With this setup and only 400hp I can 60' in the 1.6s all day and I occasionally go 1.4s. Be ready with a spare driveshaft and some spare axles, cause once you start hooking you will start breaking things. Install a driveshaft hoop of some kind. Remember, you will want to spin a little-dead hooking really breaks stuff. Do slicks before doing anything else. Just like autocross, tires do more for you than anything else. Ask around the track for who has any used 4-lug mustang Draglites (that's a dual pattern wheel: one set of holes is for Mustang; the other 4 are for Datsun). You may also find some used slicks. If you get this stuff used, you could be set for about $200 total. Buy new and it will be around $800-900. With a 4-spd, 26"tires and 400hp, you should go 11.0 at 125-130mph. A 2-step can be really helpful too. Try starting to leave the line at 2500rpm and work your way up till you find the point where you neither big, nor spin. Sometime you will break stuff when you find that sweet spot.

Switch to real drag slicks. To run that 315/17 tire Im going to assume you are flared. So, get some used 15x8 4.5" backspacing weld Draglites and mount up some 26x9 or 10 Hoosier or Mickey Thompson bias ply slicks. Put 15 psi air pressure in them. Let them smoke for a couple of seconds at 5000 rpm in a second-gear burn-out. To do a decent burn out you really need a line-lock system. With this setup and only 400hp I can 60' in the 1.6s all day and I occasionally go 1.4s. Be ready with a spare driveshaft and some spare axles, cause once you start hooking you will start breaking things. Install a driveshaft hoop of some kind. Remember, you will want to spin a little-dead hooking really breaks stuff. Do slicks before doing anything else. Just like autocross, tires do more for you than anything else. Ask around the track for who has any used 4-lug mustang Draglites (that's a dual pattern wheel: one set of holes is for Mustang; the other 4 are for Datsun). You may also find some used slicks. If you get this stuff used, you could be set for about $200 total. Buy new and it will be around $800-900. With a 4-spd, 26"tires and 400hp, you should go 11.0 at 125-130mph. A 2-step can be really helpful too. Try starting to leave the line at 2500rpm and work your way up till you find the point where you neither big, nor spin. Sometime you will break stuff when you find that sweet spot. If you only want to drag, you might re-think that manual trans.

PM me if 1 tuff z falls thru, although he's the man.

I assume you have taken your battery to be tested at the parts store? That's where I always start electrical trouble-shooting. It is the time of year for batteries to crap out.

Please PM me with your method for marking the street and track toe settings on the inner tie rods. I would love to copy you, but I couldn't come up with a practical way to mark them. I think you have a great concept. I drive so little that I'm not concerned about wearing out my tires from too much camber-they age out before they wear out. I leave my fronts with -3 camber and I switch my rears from between +1 camber for drag and -3 for all else. It looks like my front tires are falling off to the uneducated. Changing the rear is easy, I just neglect toe-in, since it really isn't adjustable.

Your door bars are out of spec for NHRA, which requires that the door bar pass between the shoulder and the elbow in the driving position. The NHRA door bar sucks for all other forms of racing. So, do what you want and see if you get away with it. In the meantime, I will be smacking my elbow every time I autocross the car, all because I have an NHRA legal door bar.

That Z in the middle is AWESOME! Hope you are stronger every day. While you are freezing in Franklin, I just went snorkeling, bathed in both a volcanic hot spring and a cool waterfall, and went sailing on a catamaran! Tomorrow is water skiing in the tropical blue water. Good thing the folks fown here dont mind a fat, hairy little man in a speedo! Keep holding down the fort back home and get well soon!

Push those fronts forward to cover about 1/2 of the turn signal and fill the turn signal hole. If you go to 17x9s or bigger, you will rub the flare and the airdam when you turn the steering wheel. It will look fine pointed straight ahead, then rub like a mother. Mock up your flares with intended wheels and tires with car sitting on its own weight. If you are going to track it, you need more room than most folks think.

I have held 3 different brands of flares in my hands and mocked them up on my car. Every one of them is too wide(?) in the fore and aft direction. I flexed my current pair to make them fit better and they now have cracks in the gel coat. Flares are one of those things that, at least for now, there are only imperfect products available. Ya need to design and make something better or just live with it like the rest of us. I think they were originally created to just cover the top of the tire for racing rules, and like many racing parts, they are intended to be light, simple and disposable. I doubt that the guy who made the first pair envisioned us paying $400 for a set-he probably made them at 2:00 in the morning the day before a race. At 42 years old, my Z seems determined to self-destruct no matter what I do to delay the process of decay. Car is at metal shop right now having some metal fatigue in the door repaired. I'm going to ignore the cracks in my flares until they fall right off the car. I just hope the screw holes line up for the inevitable replacements.

All you need is the coilovers, nothing more.

Gira-are you selling or just asking for advice? I know you recently snapped a half shaft... If you are selling a set, I might be interested.

Johnc is usually worshipped for his Adonis-like figure, so don't confuse him. Hybridz Rule Number 1: Dont Feed the Animals. You can make this as complicated as you like, but if you set the alignment where the FAQ recommends and leave it alone, you can work on other things, like your driving. Every ride height and camber change requires a toe adjustment, so it is kind of a pain to mess with it all the time, unless maybe you have a drive-on lift at home. Definitely not fun at trackside. I leave mine set for the year and get it checked annually. Shocks, tire pressure and tire temps will keep you busy enough at the track. Get a co-driver so you can see the course twice as many times on race day. Unless you are super consistent with everything, it will be hard to verify the results of changes in setup over a 1-2 minute course.