qwik240z

Thank you. I appreciate your comments. This Q45 diff swap has been done by quite a few list members and no one has offered to make one of these. It is the missing link in an otherwise straight forward diff upgrade. The lack of having a bolt in part almost stopped me from doing this swap. I decided to spend the bucks to have a mount made and since it seems like it will work, I offered to share it with others that either dont' have the skills or the means to get one unless someone make it for them. I wish all of the ones that have made negative comments about this one would design a better one, produce it and offer it to the rest of the people that want them. I really don't want to get into making these but I will to help out other Z owners. It will take up alot of my free time. I am glad to be able to give back to the list. How many of you naysayers have given to the list? Again, if you want one, email me: qwik510@aol.com

If anyone is seriously interested in getting one of these, email me off list. I really don't want to waste my energy justifying this anymore. I want to do my part to help and I think this part will be more than good enough for most of us. The ones that don't like the design or the price can make their own or have someone build them one (cheaper). My email address is: qwik510@aol.com

So then why haven't you made one to help out the Z community? This has been a much needed part for quite a while. It would take you less than 2 Hours? I would have gladly bought one from you if you had given up 2 hours of your time to make one that is a better design and cheaper too. How nice of you to help out the Z community by offering a part that lots of us could use and only taking up 2 hours of your time to provide. Yes. Maybe now that this one has been designed, you could copy it in two hours. I seriously doubt that from the time you put the car on a lift until the time you went for test drive you could design and fabricate one and it would only be two hours. But nice try. Maybe you could try to help out your Z brothers and provide a part or a service instead of knocking something that may just be the answer many of us are looking for. If I had the skills to make one like you say you have, I certainly would have given up only 2 hours of my time to help out my Z car bothers, but thats just me! I didn't set out to have a front diff mount made for the masses. I set out to have one made for ME! I posted some pics of it to share with the members of this forum and I was asked by others if there is any chance of gettting some made. I looked into it. Here it is. If it works for me, I will be happy. I am trying to help the Z community. Give back a little for all of the help I have received here on this list. Are you doing your part??

I hope it is ok to post this in this forum. I didn't know where else to post it. Also, I did a search first so please don't bust my chops if it has been covered before. I am in the process of installing the Speedhut EL Gauge Lights into my stock 240Z gauges. The gauge bezels / surrounds are showing signs of wear and I would like to repaint them while it is apart. Does anyone know of a spray paint in a can that is close to the stock looking black color? Anyone done this before with good success? Thanks,

I think you need to re-read what I said. I am talking about a fabricator that I have paid to make this for me. He is not a Z car guy, Actually, he is an Oldsmobile guy. He has spent 4-5 hours so far on my mount. I bet it will take 2 more to finish it up. If you add up the dollars, that is about $400 that I will pay for it. If he decides to make these for us, the rest of you will pay much less. I am not complaining. I have invested about $30K invested in my Z so far. I do it for the love of my Z. The fabricator does it for the money.

I have mine and I started installing them today. I also have them in my 510. Very cool! I posted pics in this thread. Check it out! See this thread: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=105245

It seems that everyone has a different idea as to how this part should be made, how much it should cost and what torque and power it should be able to hold up to. Some of you are building cars for the drag strip, some for drivers, some for drifting, and some for road racing, etc. Everyone will have different level of HP, torque and intended use for their cars and they may not be the same as my intended purposes. From what I can see of the mount the way it is designed, I think it will work for me just fine, once we add some type of limiter (bump stop, strap) to keep it from moving up upon acceleration. As to there being a better way, I am sure that there may be. I don't plan to have to do much repairs to my car so I don't care if the diff will need to be supported with a jack if I want to work on the rear. Mounting from above or below doesn't matter to me as long as the part does it's job and holds the diff in place. I don't want to spend the money for this guy to design and re-design this part over and over until it meets the standards of everyone on the list. He spent about 4-5 hours on it so far and I am glad to pay for it as long as it does what I want and need. The guys at this shop have done so much fabrication work on much more powerful cars then my Z and I trust them 100% to design and produce a part that will do the intended job properly. I was trying to be helpful by sharing this with others but I now feel that it would probably be better to just let everyone design and make their own. I think leaving it to shops like Arizona Z car and Modern Motor Sports is probably a better idea. They have the resources and testing abilities and the engineers on staff to make a part that will appeal to the masses. Too bad that they have not made a front mount yet. I wonder why! Good luck to all of you. If I can be of help, let me know.

The guy works at a hot rod shop and is a mechanic/fabricator. He would have to do a project like this on his own time, not the shops time. Sorry for the confusion.

Z parts are getting expensive. $300 for a Billet Moustashe Bar, $350 for the AZC rear brace, $300 for a set of billet axles for the Q45 C/V's, $200 for Q45 C/V adaptors, and the list goes on. How much do you think a fabricator should get for his time, $10 per hour? Around here they get $70-$80 per hour. And that is during regular work hours. So is a profit of $20-$30 worth it tothe guy to give up his free time to make parts for us? After paying for the material and shop supplies, he will probably make $100 per unit profit on these and if he sells 10 of them that's a whopping $1000. It might take him 20 hours to make ten of them and he is taking his days off and evening time away from his family to do it. How much would you need to be paid to give up your one day off per week? I guess it is all relative as to how much money you make and how much you value your free time. If you have a family, free time is pretty rare. I wouldn't trade my day off for less then $500 cold cash. But that is just me.

Seems to handle well with the sway bar in place. No problems so far. Over steer is fun if you can control it.

See this thread about the front mount that may go into production: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=109245

I spoke to the fabricator who is making my front mount. He may be willing to build these for us. I need to get an idea of how many of you are interested. We need to finish mine first. Once mine is done, I will need to put some miles on it and test the strength of it, good reason to go to the drag strip too. Once we prove it is strong enough we can look at making more. From what we can see he thinks that building a brace that will sit over top of the diff and have an adjustable bump stop on top of it will take care of any front lift issues. If all this works out, we could provide a bolt in front mount for this swap. The estimated cost would be around $250 and it would be done on an as ordered exchange basis. You would need to send in your stock front mount and it would be modified as seen in the pics. If I can find a source for a few of the stock mounts I would buy them and then we could do it on a core exchange. You could buy the mount from us and pay a core deposit and then once you got the new mount installed, you could send us your old front brace and get the core deposit back. That way you wouldn't have to have your car off the road while waiting for it to be made. We will need to have around 10 people that want them to make it worth his time. If you are interested, please respond to this. Thanks,

Didn't know you made them. The one in the pics is from Dave at Arizona Z cars.

I emailed your concerns to the fabricator. He said that I jumped the gun by posting pics so soon. He was not there when I went by yesterday so I didn't get to speak to him. Here is his response: "David, Yes, it may have that much torque with some sticky tires. Your old rear had a limiting strap that went over the nose of rear that was a rubber strap, the rear mount was spring steel, & did move, & the limiting strap did come into play since rear was made to move under a lot of torque. With the Infinity rear bar now being aluminum, with hard urethane bushings at the ends, its fairly important that the rear has very little movement up frt, or the rear cover could break at the 2 rear mounting bolts. I am still going to make either a limiting strap similar to what it had, or more likely a rubber or urethane bumpstop directly on top of the nose. Where you saw it today is just where I stopped work, not really done there yet ;-)"

Not sure myself but I will ask the fabricator. Thanks,

In the process of the Q45 diff install. Thought I would share some pics of the billet parts and the front diff mount.

We took the Q45 driveshaft to the driveshaft shop. It seems that the Q45 has non-servicable U-Joints. Since it is a 2 piece design with a supported center carrier Nissan decided that the U-Joints would last much longer and if they did wear out they would sell them a new driveshaft. I ordered the correct flange from Powertrain Industries today. It will be here tomorrow. See my other post " Q45 Diff install" for pics of the front mount that they made for my car.

I think your guy is right. The welds were very clean and it is a big mother. I am pretty sure we will be using it. The one I had would need to be made longer. I don't think I would want them to weld an extension to it and then weld the end for the q45 flange too. Too may things to go wrong. The q45 one is long enough to be cut down and weld the chevy yoke end to it. I will try to get some pics posted soon. Thanks,

Bartman, Beck and Cozy, Thanks for your help. I really didn't want to hold up the guys at the shop so I took a long lunch break and went to the JY. I actually just got back for the junk yard. I pulled the entire driveshaft from the Q45. I dropped it off at the shop. Since my driveshaft needs to be longer, I think we may just take the front of my old driveshaft, have the driveshaft shop cut it off and weld it onto the Q45 driveshaft. Of course sized to the proper length and fully balanced.