blueovalz

I did the tuft experiment quite a while back and the higher pressure (and more chaotic air flow) at the base of the windshield diminishes substantially by the time you get about 1 foot forward of the windshield, which appears to be where your vents are located. These vents I have on my hood (which are located in a similar position) do an excellent job of pulling out hot air from under the hood.

Without knowing more information, I'd say you did the correct thing. The good thing about leaving whats left attached to the tunnel is that this is something that can be welded to if you need to place brackets in there later on for something.

I was hoping to see a Ford v8 pulled out and an L28 in it's place, but I guess I'll just have to wait on that hybridF?

17 X 11

Kit!. The few shots of Tom while he was driving as viewed from the passenger seat showed the Z door panel.

The 5" backspacing should be no problem. With 8" wide rims, you will be fine on the outside too. Your wheels will have a rim edge about 4" out, and on my 280, I had a rim edge that was 4.4" out using 16"X8" wheels with less offset than your wheels have, and they fit fine in reference to the lip (about 3/8" clearance between section width of the 245/45ZR16 and the fender unmolested fender lip).

He was only thinking of his family and what was best for them all. Sooooo many times our own offsping never realize this until after lollypops were long gone

Too bad you can't easily (i.e. modular design) put them all together for a 4 rotor motor. Long hood, and light weight, mmmmm. I'm not a Mazda nut, but how hard would it be to put 4 rotors together (two motors)?

The firing order (two different cams available for the SBF) will work in any SBF. The only thing required is to re-arrange the spark plug wires to match the firing order of either cam. Camshaft replacement is not a necessity (unless the stock cam is too "stock" for your tastes). As far as the eccentric lobe that bolts onto the end of the camshaft (that drives a mechanical fuel pump), I don't know if they are on the EFI motors or not (I would doubt it).

Well, you could (besides raise the differential) also raise the rear of the car a bit too, or a combination of the two. I'm sure that this will add even more weight transfer to the rear on launch. It's obvious your hole shots are great, so changing anything may not be of benefit, but for the drags, raising the car may help (launch and longevity)

My T-5 (WC) has worked great (so far) in mine (289 cid with about 377 hp at 6800). Not a lot of low end grunt, so it works great.

I'm not familar enough with the Toyota calipers to answer that question. But you could measure the bore diameter of the Toyota calipers (both pistons) and determine the area of each of the bores (then add the two together), and compare this area to the area of the Datsun calipers (just one piston). If the Toyota square area of the pistons is greater than the Datsun piston area then I'd say get the larger 15/16" master cylinder (it's about 11% larger I believe without doing any math here).

That's probably the major reason you're going through U-joints. Big squat, unless it is built into the suspension, is hard on the U-joints. If you could (using tie-wraps around the shock rod) measure the squat on launch, then you could build into the suspension settings this amount of travel so that on launch, the half-shafts would be in an ideal configuration (straight with little angularity) at max squat. High torque loads on U-joints require them to be well aligned. I even raised my differential up by about 1" to help in this situation. Of course, you will have to find a happy medium because as you travel down the track, the rear is going to slowly return to a normal static setting, which would create angles on the U-joints again (if they are straight when the car squats).

Excellent! Hadn't read Mad Magazine in over 30 years, but it appears to be the same mag it was before

I bought some "tall" valve covers on Ebay which gave me all the room I needed (plus more) for the roller rocker assembly I'm using. They had them for the bow-tie crowd too. They were polished aluminum with a thick flange.

A two inch spacer is a big spacer. There is quite an angle between the tranny and the side-stepped differential in the first place. Shortening the driveshaft will increase this angle (but only by a very small amount, so what I'm saying may be "fly poop in pepper" in the scope of the real world). With the torque involved, and without any imperical evidence to base my opinion on, I'd opt for a longer driveshaft.

Georgia, thanks for bringing this to light. When I was younger, I took a chance a few times on the "floor jack only" method of safe suspension. The stupid stuff you do as a kid. Then one day a friend of mine that works on hydraulic equipment showed me a jack where a seal blew out, causing the jack to collapse. Never again did I not use floor jacks. It's not worth being lazy, or saving time "because I'm only going to be under there for just a minute or two" to risk making all the people around you very unhappy (except the wife I guess ).

Can't answer your question, but if you have to have something like this, I wonder it a valve spring shim (I've seen copper ones) would work.

Well, the TSA finally screwed me on one of my many flights (over the passed couple of years) this weekend. For years I've had a key chain that was a miniature crescent wrench (about 3" long, functional, but just the same, a toy). It has passed all airport inspections until this weekend, when they confiscated it (read "stole" it). Yep, I hate to admit it, but my plan was to disassemble the aircraft while it was at the gate, using this "tool" (I hope someone is listening in). What pisses me off more than anything else is that this 1) This was as a gift, so it had sentimental value, 2) I have no means of recovering it back from these morons, 3) the TSA response was "you can check it if you want". "Oh, Right! I'll just go back through that 100-yard line of people waiting to check their bags in, and then wait another 20 minutes to get through you clowns again", I thought (the plane was boarding in 30 minutes at this point). 4) What ever happened to using discretion? "You want us to make the plane safer don't you" was one of their many replies to what became a controlled "fit" on my part. All I could think was, yeah, a baboon could.... well, you get my point without stepping on toes here. Reminds me of when I was an Air Traffic Controller. My chief was an anal retentive twit, that didn't know what to do if it wasn't written in black and white in an OPS manual (and it was a sight to see him do his minimum 1 hour of "traffic time" required each month). I guess that's why he was promoted to "chief" and became a government icon. Now to return you to your regularly scheduled program.

If the rear bar bolts onto the uprights, are you willing to part with just the rear bar only?

These aftermarket rear bars such as you described are mounted on the "uprights" (the steel plate brackets that are about 4" wide X 1/8" plate that holds the transverse bracket that holds the rear-most inner bushings for the suspension. Holes need to be drilled in the uprights to hold the bar bushings, and then the bar points forward for the normal attachment to the control arms.

Could you tell us how the motor has been mounted? The reason I ask is that there could be couple of answers to your question. If the motor is mounted to the Z cross member, then dropping the cross member slightly (provided no other interference issues arise with steering rod, etc) will raise the angle of the transmission tail shaft (which I assume is either low or at a low angle compared to the differential pinion gear angle). Another option is to raise the nose of the differential so that the angle of the pinion matches the angle of the tail shaft. But if the two axis are separated too far apart (while being parallel), then this will not fix that. As I stated in another post, there is a lot of separation between these to axis anyway, due to the sideways spacing of the pinion gear toward the passenger side of the car (due to the differential design).

My $.02 worth is look into the HTP welders. They have small and large welders. Mine cost $900 and is a 120vac unit (middle of the road welder from them). I bought it because of the high quality on all its internals. It's not a well recognized welder, but very good quality. http://www.usaweld.com/ will get you to their site.

They both are important, but in reality the two combine to form one single angle (i.e. an angle down and over toward the passenger side) I think that the side angle (based on your drawing) is going to be of greater magnatude then the vertical angle. The vertical angle can be eliminated completely with correct adjustement of differential nose angle, engine/tranny angle, or both. The side angle is going to be the major angle IMHO. It is very noticable, and with such a short drive shaft, I'm guessing it will be about 5-6 degrees (which is most likely where my vibrations are coming from)

The change from a 2.4 to a 2.8 will not cause any problems and most likely work better. I don't see any need for jet changes at all.