blueovalz

It sounds like you've got a good grasp of what you need to do. The 1/16" is no problem. Like I said, the wet mat will crush and conform to the irregularities of the scoop's edging. In regards to the front point that was cut off? I would add enough mat just under this area so that it will fill in the small peaking gap in the center, and also jut forward a few inches. This way you will be able to shape it after it hardens to suit your needs (perhaps another point like it originally had). You will notice that once this scoop is removed that you will see a very slight scalloped surface on the bottom of the scoop where the tape on the hood was overlapped (from variations of tape thickness from single thickness to double, or even triple thickness if you did that). This is not a real problem being the scalloping is only as thick as the tape is thick. But this is why I try to make overlapping minimal, or as an option, overlap 1/2 width each time so that the end result is 2 layers with a thin single layer groove instead of one layer for most of it with a narrow double layered ridge (yeah, it's kinda confusing explaining this in text). Anyway, it looks good. I'm holding my breath waiting to see the final result.

To place the 850hp (BMW) number into even better perspective is to consider the small (reletively speaking) amount of torque these motors have. I do not know at what point in the rpm curve that peak torque occurs, at but the torque output of these motors is near the 300lb/ft range . Put my mama's 390 Ford in a go-kart , and I could keep up with them at least until I redline in MY first gear at a lowly 5500 and then watch the BMW disappear toward the horizon ....quickly.

Let me add one more trick that I use when I make parts "on the car". This trick is one that I found accidentally, and works quite well IF, and its a big IF, you time it right. I've found that the bonding stage of the resin is at the very later stages of the hardening process. For example, once the resin gets that firm but crumbly stage, the adhesive bond that the resin has on the tape (or aluminum, paint, mold, etc) is only about 10% of what it will be with it fully hard and glassy. The bonding beyond this point starts improving quickly. So, with this said, my trick that I've used is to carefully test the waters (so the speak) of the resin's characteristics at the "firm but crumbly" stage. This can be done at a place where the resin was excessive and can be picked at with a pick or screwdriver to see how firm it is (it will be about like hard rubber), AND to see how well it separates from the tape. At a certain point, the resin will be firm enough to hold it's shape, but time wise, it's at a point before the "bonding" stage starts ramping up. At this junction, you can very easily and carefully lift the entire piece off the tape, and still have it hold its shape. Once the bond is separated, place the piece back down on the tape and let is cure completely. The piece will then lift off easily when hardening is completed. It may sound a bit tricky, but it works great in the absence of a good release agent. Good Luck. With additional comments from others here, I feel this string could be a great archive for beginner fiber glassing. Please update this string with any photos on how your project came out. Oh yeah, the way I found out how this worked is I accidentally dribbled some resin onto the good paint not covered by tape. I found that instead of using a solvent to remove it, that if I waited till just the right time, the resin (firm but not hard) could be pulled off the paint in one whole piece, without maring the paint. Would not have believed it until I saw it.

Raise it back up!. Okay, sorry for the sarcasm. I'm guessing your suspension has a great deal of negative camber. One method is the Delrin/aluminum eccentric control arm bushings, which will help a little, but probably not as much as you want. Then there are camber plates placed on top of your strut towers that allow more adjustment. Another option (rarer) is a set of control arms that are adjustable at ZF Racing .

What amazes me is the lack of transition from one "note" to the next "note". Obviously there is little mass to accelerate.

Kudos to RacerX. The foam filler I used was then undercoated (again, like he said, after sanding it smooth) to completely seal the water out. This combo has withstood the test of time. When you get through doing this, the underside of your wheel well will have a professional look and feel to it.

I filled my quarters (the void between the unibody quarter and the new wider fiberglass one) with minimally expandable foam. Get a good quality foam as the cheaper ones will shrink a small amount with time. Other than that, the only way I can see to stiffen the fiberglass is to add strips of glass to the back side, which sounds like it may be a bit tight back there to do this easily.

Here is a bad photo (turn up the brightness of your monitor to view it better) of the bar mounting behind the differential vs the more common front mounting. You will see that the bar arms go forward, under the CV joint, and then to the link which is forward the the joint (as seen by the link bolt threads extending through the bottom of the control arm). Even if your Z has not been lowered, I suspect that there is still not enough room (for an "above the CV joint mounting") between the arm end/link to prevent interference with the subframe that rides over the top of the link (barely visible just directly above the bar arms) when the suspension is fully compressed. Yes, there is no bananas, I mean, OEM uprights in this photo, but just pretend that they are there in place of the aluminum plate.

"This page is not available".

I've always considered it a study in throwing money at your car. But, I'm sure the same can be said about some of us too.

A better quality expanding foam may work fine, but here are my observations. The cheaper expanding foams will, with age, shrink or contract, which eventually leaves one side or both (in the case of a quarter panel) with a space between the foam and the metal. Water gets into this area, and with little air circulation, will eventually find an open in any protection applied to the lining, and cause rust. The foam idea IMHO will work, but I feel that for it to be effective and not cause more problems later on, it must be sealed completely. What I eventually did was use an undercoating to seal any cavity that had the foam in it (nothing worse that wet foam that starts getting stale and stinky too). so that it was a sure thing that water was not going to be exposed to the foam. Open cavities that are properly protected and allow constant air flow and circulation are good for metal protection. The foam, from my past experience, if not carefully applied and then protected, will cause big problems later on.

This, to me, would be a sure fire way to end up with a rust heap.

My solution thus far is a combination of two approaches. First, I re-evaluated how I wanted to set my suspension up. Instead of the stiff/weak spring approach (F/R) using a rather large bar in back as worked well in the past, I instead reversed the spring rates so that it was weak/stiff (again F/R). Then I used a much thinner rear bar that was modified (bent) in a way so that it curved around the boot rather than a straight shot against the boot. I've not yet been able to push the car to the limits on a skid pad to determine the final outcome, but under normal driving conditions, the balance appears to be fairly neutral. This (west coast?) approach at the suspension settings seems to favor this problem with boot interference. I feel at this point that complete removeal of the rear bar may even be possible, but only the skid pad will tell me for sure at this point.

Mike; I currently run the sway bar off the uprights (actually, off the plate that replaced the OEM uprights) and it can cause problems with interference on the rubber boots around the CV joints. A properly modified bar can be made to avoid the CV joint boots in just about all conditions except full droop. A compromise must be reached because if the links are made too short (bar will run under the joint) then the bar will hit the OEM control arm at full compression. Too long and then the bar will hit the boot at full droop. So a compromise must be reached. I modified the ends of the bar to gain additional clearance here, but it was still very close. I will look again at the possibility of mounting the bar above the shafts, but I believe that at a typical "lowered" ride height that most modified Z cars have, the interference between the bar ends and the subframe in that area will exist.

I like it, Thanks for the morning wake-up video

Mike is correct. The carrier has a stamped letter that must be used in conjuction with the same lettered casing I believe. When the two become different, the the shims will most likely be different too. To be safe, a complete swapping of the whole differential is the safest way to go. Those shims are very expensive from the dealer.

Neat!! I wonder what the costs are. Sounds very interesting and expensive.

Tomahawk's words ring true. I don't even want to talk about the time in my youth when I did fiberglass indoors (bad scene!). Anyway, use the chopped mat because the woven cloth will not hold as much resin, and in this case you want the additional resin because when you place the scoop onto the wet mat, it will slightly "crush" the mat, thus filling in the rough cut (gaps, uneven edges, etc) you made on the scoop to match the contour of the hood. With the colder temps, I'd first warm up the motor to full operating temperature. This will heat the hood, and thus warm the resin. I'd shut the motor off when you place the wet mat onto the hood, due to the chance that the vibrations could cause all this stuff to start sliding down the sloped hood. Big thing to note: The warm hood will be the difference between night and day on the cure rate at the temperatures you've mentioned. Also, keep the resin (autozone/home depot stuff will work fine) inside where it's warm before you start. If you feel you have the patience, mix a small amount with some resin, place it on the warm hood, and time when it starts to gel (starts getting thick and gooie), then gets kinda "waxy" (is somewhat solid, but crumbly), and then fully, glassy hard. For ideal conditions and based on your job, I'd not want it to start gelling until at least 20-30 min. Once it starts gelling, it's too late to work it, and if you're not finished, then you will need to start all over again from scatch on the fiberglass part. It will be fine if the gelling takes an hour or so. If it kicks too fast, put less catalyst in it, too long, add more, but a longer cure time will allow you to finish the job, were a too short a cure time is a royal PITA 'cause "I gotta do this $#!t all over again" if I'm not completely finished once it does start to cure. Once fiberglass has reach the "waxy" stage (strands of glass will not pull out of the gel, but will break it apart), and you're happy with the job so far, then let it sit, carefully cover it with some plastic (don't move the scoop!!!), and then a blanket or something to insulate it and hold the heat in. The glass will create it's own heat on the reaction, so try to keep the heat held in. One good thing about slow cure rates is that the heat build-up is not so intense, and thus it will not distort the piece vs a fast cure on a hot day. If you still have time, then heat the motor up after the resin seems fairly hard, and give it one good cycle of heat to ensure it will be cured when you're ready to pull it off the hood. When you do pull it off, be patient, (work slowly from a corner first) if it wants to hold, and you will find puddy knife will come in handy at this point to help pry it off. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Pop rivets work great. For years (still to this day) some of my bodywork is pop-riveted onto the sheet metal body, and fiberglass parts. Be sure to back up the blind side of the rivet with the appropriate washers to prevent pull-through if the part attached is fiberglass. I would also suggest using aluminum rivets instead of the steel ones if fiberglass is envolved too.

Your photos put your dilemma into better perspective. Let's try this. To begin with, I'd bolt this scoop on instead of bond it, but with the method I'll suggest, you will be able to do either. Being the scoop is so long, this causes the ends to be quite high off the curved hood's surface. My suggestion is (provided this is a glass scoop and not a plastic one) to cut or grind the bottom edge so that it more closely matches the contour of the hood all the way around the scoop (and remove any and all flanges that are on the outside edges of the scoop as you will not use these to bond the scoop onto the hood any more). Next rough up the surface around the scoop within 1" of the bottom of the scoop (especially on the inside edge) where it comes in contact with the hood using 36 grit or similar sandpaper, the rougher the better, to aid adherence to the fiberglass). Next, cover the hood with 2" masking tape (to protect the paint from stray resin, and the fiberglass part you are about to make), with a minimum of overlap (1/8" will be safe) between adjacent strips, then place the scoop on the taped hood where you plan to permanently locate it, and draw an outline (or footprint) of the scoop onto the taped hood with a Sharpie or something similar. Now, with the scoop removed, you now know exactly where the scoop will be placed because of this drawn outline. Next, cut out enough 2" wide strips of mat so that several layers of mat can be laid evenly along the inside edge of this outline. These pieces will be placed along the drawn outline or footprint so that about 1/2" of the mat will extend out past the outside of the drawn footprint, and the rest of the strip (1-1/2") will be on the inside of the drawn footprint. Thus you should have a 2" wide square-shaped "U" of mat resembling the outside shape of the scoop. Do all of this with dry mat as a trial run to make sure you have enough pieces to do this job and to make the total thickness of all the layers at least 1/8" thick. Thus with 2oz mat, you may only need 2-3 layers. With the cheaper, thinner mat, you may need 4-5 layers. Anyway, once you feel confident that you have enough strips of mat to do the job in one step, then clear everything off the taped hood, and mix up your resin (too much hardener will make it kick before you are finished, which is a big no-no). Before mixing the resin though, I'd suggest a light misting spray of WD-40 (if you don't have any mold release or wax around) onto the tape to assist the release of the fiberglass you are about to lay on it. Now comes the messy part. These pieces need to be dipped into the resin to ensure they are fully saturated, but not so much so that resin is running everywhere. Lay out the soaked strips onto the hood just like you practiced with the dry strips earlier. WHILE THE RESIN soaked strips are still WET and in place, place the modified hood scoop directly onto the strip of wet fiberglass so that it lines up with the drawn outline (which will still be visible through the wet resin) so that only about 1/2" of the mat is showing all the way around the scoop, and the rest of it is hidden because it is under and inside of the edges of the scoop. Make sure every thing is set (making sure the scoop will not slide away from it's location on the sloped surface) and let the fiberglass "kick". The roughed up edges on the scoop will give the mat a good surface to stick to. After it is hard, gently remove the fiberglass you laid out (with the scoop now bonded to it) off the hood, The bottom of the scoop (flange) now perfectly matches the hood's contour. Next, reinforce the joint between the scoop and the newly made and attached glass "flange" that you made, by applying strips (2" wide or so) of soaked mat on the inside of the scoop all along the joint where the two meet (otherwise, the scoop may separate from this flange because it currently is only held together through the thickness of the scoop's edge that was modified (perhaps as little as an 1/8" at most) to further strengthen the bonding of the flange and the scoop. Now, sometimes this reinforcing will slightly distort the shape of flange that you made, so you may have to repeat the flange making process one more time and with only one layer this time, to ensure a perfect fit after final reinforcement has been done. Now, trim (sand) the 1/2" of material off the outside circumference of the scoop, and then you are ready to either bolt the scoop down as I did in the previously sent photos on the last string (using the inside part of the flange), or you can use this same flange to bond it on, your choice. Sorry for the long post, but I hope this better helps you understand what I was describing on the earlier post.

That number is most likely the iron head weight. My aluminum headed motor (302/289) weighs just a tad bit over 400lbs with a HD water pump and the heavy headers that I have. The newer 302 motors (50oz balancing) have a crank that is several pounds lighter.

I cannot address your question if it is in reference to the motor itself, but in regards to the hybridization of you Z, keep in mind that the 302 SBF with EFI was a tight fit vertically. The Windsor (assumption here vs the Cleveland) is a bit taller, so plan out the vertical placement carefully.

I believe that externally, they are identical to the typical and well known "top loader" except that the case is aluminum instead of cast iron. It is lighter, and after I opened up the top, it appeared to be constructed identically to the other well known top loaders. The aluminum case would be the part that scares me, but it was a thick-walled casting vs the thin walled/ribbed method used universally today.

That pretty much cinches it. You'll have to spin it back in, then align the grooves or notches with the tabs on the back of the pads when you re-install the new pads.

Drew is probably correct. If it has an emergency brake as part of the caliper, it must be screwed back inward to put new thicker pads in. This is how they design these type of calipers to self-adjust every time you use the emergency brake.