RebekahsZ

You want to double your cam and valvetrain costs, why?

But lower ratios than you really need due to how light the Z is. 2nd gear is super low in the M12-that's what I run. From everybody I have talked to, plan on doing a rebuild at some point. But at the same time, all my buddies said it was easy. And these trannys are "notchy"-mine grinds a little at commuting speeds, but is silk when driving in anger at the strip. I shift as fast as I'm going-shift slow if driving slow, shift fast if driving fast. You can feel it when it's ready to go into gear, so don't force it. I'm resisting the temptation to use a sexual analogy. But you get the idea?

Should be some good local wines available(?). Ditch work or extend your trip to meet up with 1 tuff z and give him a hug for me in thanks for the perfect door hinges he sent me!

Tearing down goes fast - going back together, not so much...

Try, try again. If alcohol doesn't help, lubricante with profanity.

Who can still get ATE blue (?)-oh, that's right, you are outside the US.

What kind of half shaft do you have? It may be that your total axle length is too short (I had this problem recently and had to be trailered home). Put it up on jackstands and put a jack under the offending control arm to simulate ride height. Unbolt the wheel end of the axle and pull the assembly down. Get your head up in there with a flashlight and check to ensure the c-clip is up inside where it belongs. If it is, push the stub into the diff and feel the c-clip do its job. Then examine the outboard end of the axle. You only want about 1/4-1/2" of wiggle room at that end of the axle. If you have more, that's probably your problem (axle too short). Now bolt it up on the outboard end. If you have Z31 CV axles pull the outboard boot back a couple inches so you can look into the CV. Wipe off some of the grease and see where the internal balls and cage are riding. If they are dangerously close to the inside lip of the CV cup, the axle is too short and will either pull out of the diff or worse yet, come apart at the outer CV. The clip in the diff isnt strong enough to retain the axle against tension. Its just there to hold it in against vibration. If its too short, you need a different combination of axle components. With Z31 axles, I'm currenltly running the longer M2 custom shaft on the driver side and the shorter stock shaft on the driver side.

I know that the 6spd is sexy, but I don't use 6th like, ever. 1/8-mile in 3rd, 1/4 and 1/2 mile in 4th and 1-mile in 5th. Autocross in 2d, road course in 4th. You can do so much gearing with tire diameter, that you could get by fine with a 4spd.

My trailer keys were in my truck (which is in the shop). Got the shop owner to FedEx me the keys and i coukd get to my jack (which was locked in the trailer) so I swapped on a set of 155/80/15s in front that I use for drag racing and street driving. Oh joy! It's like power steering and all wandering has ceased.

I'm glad you weighed in. I noticed on YouTube (becoming more valuable than google), that not only are the pressures high, but the air tanks they are using are pretty large. I don't know if that means that high volumes are needed too or what? Yeah, the videos all show the cars crashing down. I'm just fact finding (and I'm finding more facts since posing the question).

Yeah, in my searching I found the references to the high psi required for this system. Gonna look (just for fun) at larger diameter airbag systems that could work. Remember, I'm just looking and learning about what is out there. I did a tire swap this morning before work and I did it the old fashion way-with a jack.

Ouch

Johnc, how do I gravity bleed without getting brake fluid EVERYWHERE? And I mean everywhere-on my new pads, rotors, all inside the calipers, floor, etc? I have to be really careful when manually bleeding with a clear tube that always ties to pop off, and I still make a little mess. Marry the first girl that still loves you after bleeding brakes. True test of character and compatability. I don't know why. All we ask is for her to sit on her ass and move her foot when we tell her to. Don't know why this is such a challenge to all relationships.

No. Not at all.

The block is bad?

I'm gonna tolerate small increases in vehicle weight until such time that weight becomes enough of a priority that I am willing to do what I need to do with the driver's weight. If I lost 30# off of the driver, I could add a lot of neat gizmos. [sharedmedia=videos:videos:252] The jacks in these videos come down awfully fast - I wonder if that could be modulated.

The quick jack is cool, but I'm not lifting my tired old Z by the pinch seams-they are 50% spot weld and 50% bondo. If the Z had a "frame," I would be more open to the quick jack - type jacking systems.

I need a little help with terminology so that I can start searching and learning. What do you call this on-board jacking system? I work on my car constantly and it would be great to be able to pull into the shop and save a little time doing a tire swap to get the car ready for the next event (often a different venue) faster, or even to be able to do a tire swap with the car still on the trailer (maybe a little iff-y on this concept. Maybe cost prohibitive, but I'd like to at least look into putting a system like this on the Z in order to make it just a little more fun and a little less hassle. Anybody with experience with this type of system, feel free to contribute to my madness.

To help with the rears, you gotta tell me what kinda brakes you got back there-they all have different problems. Stock Z brakes have the bleeders at the top so they are easiest, but the big hassle of most of the "upgrade" kits is that the bleeders are oriented wrong and a big air bubble just sorta hangs out. You gotta get the bleeder to the top. And I still recommend that you use an assistant to do coordinated pumping so that the bleeder is open on down-stoke and closed on up-stroke. The only thing keeping air from coming around the threads of a speed bleeder is a little caulk. Also, on stock rears, you gotta use the hand brake a bunch of times to adjust the shoes to be in close proximity to the drums. A hole drilled in the face of the drum lets you do this manually (a trick from johnc). A little rise and fall in the reservoir is normal (barely detectable), but a lot of fluid movement means air in the system, and possibly excess movement if components (like the rear shoes). But, adjusting the rears would be the very last thing I would do after the system is free of air.

It doesn't matter if you bleed the front wheels first or the back-the circuits are independent and have their own reservoirs. Check your reservoir FREQUENTLY or you will have to start back over bleeding at the master cyl. If you have two sons, or two girlfriends, station one at the reservoir to tell you when it is getting low, but you add fluid yourself so you don't have to kill your son or break up with your girlfriend when she spills brake fluid on your $15,000 paint job. I have speed bleeders in all my wheel cylinders, but it is just for insurance. I still open and close the nipples old-school style so that a speed bleeder doesn't ruin my day, night, or week. For the fronts: Wilwood brakes on the front are mounted such that the air bleed nipple is NOT AT THE TOP! So, you will never get them bled as they hang when they are mounted. Air rises. This is the greatest obstacle to any bleeding operation. It fights those of us with internal clutch hydraulics like a MF-er. You gotta position the component such that the nipple is at the very top. For your Wilwoods, this means unbolting them and holding them in the proper orientation. I have a block of scrap wood that I have cut to the same thickness as my rotor, which I shove between the pads to simulate the rotor so that it is easy to put the caliper back on when I'm finished bleeding. It is easy to run out of hands during Wilwood bleeding, so get organized before you start. If you use a piece of wood like I have described, you may be able to leave the lower caliper mounting bolt in and just rotate the caliper up to get the air hole to a vertical position, then push the wooden block in at the top. Once you have the caliper turned up, bleeding will go fast, but these big calipers hold a lot of fluid/air, so be patient. The willwood bleeder uses a 1/4" wrench-use the box end. After you have bled the upper outer bleeder, bleed the upper inner bleeder. Don't crack the lower bleeders. You WILL spill, so have a can of brake cleaner and paper towels right beside you. To conserve fluid, if your fluid looks as good in your CLEAN catch can, you can put it back into your reservoir and recirculate it. Don't do that if you are going to be racing your Z in NASCAR, but for a street car, you should be fine. Once you have the front free of air, bolt it back together and move to the rear.

Your symptoms all say you got a lotta air in the system. Great description. A couple things (Im up early with a migraine). Start with bleeding the master cylinder. You'll never get pressure to bleed the wheels if the master is full of air. Once you have bled enough to have clean fluid in the system (and i mean totally clean, and if you are going no-shit road racing you might not want to do this), conserve fluid by recirculating it. Run a clear plastic tube from the bleed nipple at the master cyl back into the reservoir. Keep the tube under fluid and crack the bleeder just enough to let fluid flow. With the tube under fluid, you should be able to get your assistant to pump repeatedly without you having to open and close in a coordinated fashion like you will for the wheel cylinders. Get 100% no bubbles at the master at each bleeder separately. Them tighten up the bleeders and have a beer and kiss your assistant (or knuckle bump if you find that more appropriate). Remove the clear plastic hoses, clean up all the drops and places where you flung brake fluid on your $15,000 paint job. Do all your bleeding with the little baskets in the reservoirs-fluid will shoot out of the bottom orifice and ruin your new paint job if you don't. Those baskets have a purpose beyond catching dust and debris. Brake fluid won't blind you if it gets in your eye, and I have ingested quite a bit without too much brain damage (I swear those voices are real, even though nobody else hears them)!

Chris-your Avatar is just too damn distracting for me to think about cars! Ok, sorry I got distracted-I'm back. So, in review: there are two reasons. 1) "camber thrust" and 2) wide tires just give a lot of "feedback." I'm gonna compare the wide tire feedback as something akin to static or noise? Unwanted signal or unwanted information? Narrow tires would be like fishing for bass with a hook (like Chris's Avatar) and catching a single fish, whereas wide tires are like fishing with a net-you pick up a lot of bi-catch, rocks, sticks, old refrigerators, endangered species, crabs, etc, that you wish you could throw back? The foot print is just bigger, so your tires contact more "stuff", so you feel it? With narrow tires, you don't contact as much "stuff", cracks, pebbles, joints, etc, (your tire runs past it) so naturally you don't feel that stuff? It's that simple? If so, I think the wide tire is the greater contributor over camber. With squishy bias ply front runners, the car runs straight and true to 148 with no adjustment in camber-Ive been leaving the -3.5 camber in 24-7, 365 since the car gets so few miles. And I'd rather wear out tires than have them age-out.

Call me at 256-366-4685 tonight or tomorrow and I will try to help. I've been where you are. Put down the hammer.

Only from you, 260DET. Please fill us in, sounds like something we need to consider. BTW-the rebuilt LQ4 in my street truck is getting a new set of bearings and a turned crank after only 1000 miles of use. The block is back at the machine shop hunting for a crack in the block into an oil passage (?). This is the second set of bearings since the rebuild and the second oil pump, both due to lost oil pressure-something's not right. I never saw oil pressure drop below 25 on my factory gauge but it stopped going to 60 on start up after 500 miles. I don't want to get into the truck's problems on this thread, but you can see why I'm interested in monitoring my oiling situation on both my LS-powered vehicles.

40s with 32mm venturis (or smaller). Get it running with small carbs-that's hard enough.