zredbaron

for display purposes: it was a shame to not see the progression of images all on one screen to scroll back and forth between.

i meant to include these stills of the car from this past weekend. another not-so-great surface, but more flat at least. anyways, these images were cropped out of a medium-quality video from the bleachers. i remember before my suspension upgrade similar stills were requested. not sure if seeing these would change anyone's feedback, so i thought i'd submit them just in case. (can anyone say LATE APEX!? haha)

I definitely aspire to improve my hand-to-wheel technique. And the thought of letting a wheel spin freely through my hands sounds like a broken wrist or finger waiting to happen... loud and clear. if that's the case, then i will gladly wait the year. the car is more than a handful for me as it stands. as to the less front vs. more rear sway balance, seems to me that less front would have more ultimate traction since the inside front tire wouldn't be lifted up as much powering out of an apex. am i correct? if so, this benefit comes at the cost of what?

great replies, as usual guys. thank you! i'm quite proud of the progress we've made. i say we because well, i took your collective advice and you were right on all counts. john, i continue to admire your succinct, step by step recipes for success. jon, i'm having a hard time distinguishing between the difference between reducing front sway bar vs. increasing [adding] rear sway bar. would the former necessitate an increase in spring rate to equate to the latter? which is more ideal and why? speaking of spring rates, after noting the difference in handling in bumping up the spring rates, i find myself wondering if i should bump them up slightly again. i don't drive the car on the street, so who cares, right? seems to me i read about a chassis stiffness limitation (such as above xxx# springs, tube framing was req'd else the chassis would eventually flex and fatigue itself). what is the recommended spring limit if my only chassis stiffeners are triangular strut braces in both front and rear? as for the steering wheel, the wheel is 13" and with the leather gloves grabbing the lacquered finish, the grip is phenomenal, actually. to me, the slick wooden wheel and leather gloves and a speed racer helmet are one with the theme of the car. shuffle steering: yes, my technique could be better. that said, it also seems to me that there are transitions on the track that the shuffle isn't appropriate with manual steering. that is to stay, when you have to *muscle* the wheel, the shuffle technique doesn't have the torque to generate a timely steering input. right? i find that on the hairpin turns, the car likes a *very* slight flick to turn in, too. problem is if i flick too much, then i lose traction on the front tires and push. overall, though, when i watch the video again i see parts where my inputs are unnecessarily jerky, either because i didn't study the track enough or i'm correcting for an over-aggressive throttle input. and btw jon, i laughed embarrassingly loud after reading this:

18 months later, i can finally report back! autox video at the bottom. suspension upgrades: koni yellow race struts installed new springs - 300 fr / 250 rear weight reduction (+ associated weight savings estimate): braille battery (20 lbs) carbon fiber hood / hatch / lexan (80-85 lbs) removal of stereo, speakers, amp (33 lbs) removal of carpets, floor mats, etc (20 lbs) setup changes: removed oem rear brake proportioning valve (the T fitting with the restrictor) used brake booster that works so far (prev one was shot) removed rear sway bar (5 lbs?) ride height raised (not sure by how much, 1" or so?) corner balanced (50.0% corner balance, 50.9% front) front camber (maxed) rear camber (about 2/3 in) recommended koni settings as per johnc total weight, with ~7 gals fuel and 160 lb driver: 2380 (i regret having the car balanced with 7 gals of fuel now, but oh well.) my report: the car drives like a dream in comparison. granted, i have no experience to draw from other than my previous setup and other racer's cars that i've driven. my first event after two seasons was the SCCA NE Divisional Championship. my dumb ass entered the car into XP and was thoroughly beaten. (haha!) i knew that going into it, so it's all good. the race was at FedEx field in washington dc. the lot was much worse than i remember that club using. the lot was slanted, gravel-infested, had two different types of asphault, had a trickle of algae / water going down one corner of the course, and to top it all off had had long grooves where presumably electrical wires were run underground and patched poorly. inverted speed bump, basically. as crappy and frustrating as the course was, it was for the best. it let me throw my new suspension setup through the whole gamut, not just a solid course design but fun challenges like negative camber offset cones in a slalom right after driving through a wet patch. oh, and the negative speed bumps just before the apex of a slanted sweeper was fun, too. the conditions were, however, great for helping me shake some rust off of my driving. i was definitely over-driving the car at first, but i smoothed out a little as the seat time started to add up. each run had about 20 mins between runs, so the tires were always cold until halfway through the run. i was first heat, it was cool out, and my kumhos just wouldn't warm up. hoosiers didn't seem to have a problem. oh, well. made me a more careful driver though, which is what i needed. same problem the next day, but it was probably 20 degrees warmer so it wasn't as drastic an impact. tires aside, the car was perfectly balanced and 100% predictable. it was compliant to the bumpy course and surprisingly responsive. really the only harsh critique i would have for the car is contact patch. 225mm tires are just too small for the performance capability of the rest of the car. i think i can get away with 245 or 255 A6s. they have a slightly smaller profile, and in my repaint project i cut the fenders out slightly. luckily, the driver still sucks, so there's lots of free time to gain out there in the meantime! tuning between runs was limited to tire pressures and camber angles. i have the front camber maxed out, producing about a 7 degree F spread from inside to outside of the tires. i was able to get the rears pretty much even. (using a probe type tire pyrometer). i kept tire pressures around 22.5 psi rear and 24 psi front where i've learned like them. here are my findings with removing the rear sway bar: removing the rear bar with the quaiffe atb is INCREDIBLY beneficial to putting power down in a turn. not beneficial to a medium hp car, but if you're making power, this definitely lets you put it down well before the apex. hell, it helped me turn harder. basically as soon as you've changed the direction of the car you can put the power back down. i'm still getting used to it, as you have to be even farther ahead of the course with your throttle inputs. the problem is turn in. it feels like it slaloms half as well as it used too. i think going down to an oem thickness rear bar (the one i removed was the 3/4" MSA bar) and having it adjustable (probably to tune it down, even) would be ideal. i don't feel like i need/want much, but a touch might really help turn in. perhaps toe adjustment or spring rates would help, too. opinions wanted! i *feel* as though by the end of the event i have a decent grasp of my car's new performance envelope. studying my race video revealed a ton of time left out on the track. seat time, seat time, autox school, seat time. anywho, here's the video i spent way too much time playing with my mac to create: if you're paying close attention, you can catch the spots where the car's acceleration gets to make up for the driver's poor line through a given turn. i may not have been competitive as much of the grid, but probably had just as much if not more fun on course than any of them!

i'd be very interested to know how the AFR's relationship with torque changes over the rpm band. if i had an ECU, i'd do dyno runs with flat AFRs at 12.0, 12.5, 13.0 and 13.5. then i'd superimpose the torque graphs over each other and see where they differ. then i'd pick the best graph (for each rpm range, in case ideal AFR actually varies) and do two more pulls with +/- .25 on the AFR and superimpose them over the best torque graph from the previous round. i think that experiment would produce the graph we want to see. perhaps i'll do that one day when i go to ITBs. i imagine that as VE varies, so does the limiting factor in complete combustion (ie fuel vs air). i doubt the ideal AFR graph per rpm would vary by much. no more than 0.5 i would guess, but hey, i'm just making this up as i go. the question is, would this target AFR graph be universal for all 4-stroke engines, or all NA/turbo, or all L6, or completely unique for each application? speaking of turbo, i bet CR changes target AFR, too. damn variables! hence we all have to go to a dyno to see what our engines really want...

i presume that since its an american product, you would have the same problem; it will have a similar behavior to the autometer gauges. has no one duplicated this thread's procedure? what about the author? perhaps he can confirm/deny the actual installed behavior.

thanks russell! i finally did join the tidewater club about a year ago or so. i've only shown my face twice, though. truth be told, i'm intending to unveil the car at a local show the tidewater club is putting on this saturday in the hampton coliseum. extended to all datsuns and nissans. in other news, i never uploaded pics of some custom collars (if this is even the right termfor them) that i had to have made so i could finish installing my koni 2-ways. i had two problems. first, of the koni collars, only 1 of the 4 would actually slide into the spherical bearing on my ground control camber plates (the koni collars had ODs that varied within 1.5 thousandths). second, the collars were short, leaving a ton of threaded strut sticking out of the top. this was fugly, not to mention interfered with my hood closing, not to mention cut out about 3/4" of total travel. here's what i designed, with the original koni collars shown next to it: obviously priority #1 was for the damn things to fit. after that, i made the collar portion longer, to bring the excess threaded strut height down. i also slightly widened the collar, to match the diameter of the strut. finally, i lengthened the skinny portion of the collar simply because it only was in contact with about 2/3 of the spherical bearing when i thought it should get closer to the top where the nut cinches on the spherical bearing. more balanced stress distribution, at least in my mind. while all this makes complete sense to me in my own mind, this design isn't based on any experience whatsoever. if anyone sees anything that i did that is a 'big no-no', then please say so! here is a side by side comparison of how the camber plate mounting is repositioned. obviously the bump stop will be slid upward, but i left it down as a comparison. in both comparisons, the foam bump stop's top is flush with the top of where the strut itself ends and the threaded section of the strut begins. and this is how it fits using the custom collars: i was hoping you could see in the pic that the top of my collars are ever-so-slightly below the surface of the top of the spherical bearing. i figured if it stuck out then there would be vertical play, so i kept it below the surface. here's the final product. note the cheesy "it kinda looks like metal" paint on my strut brace. haha. and then once again, the final shot before the wheels went back on: so close, yet so far.... things left to do before saturday morning: - finish stainless steel hood pin hardware mounting - pick up professionally made (i hope) torsion springs - install braille battery when it arrives - flush radiator - detail engine bay (really not looking forward to that) - detail interior (and install new carpet kit when it arrives) - have rear brake lines redone from the T-valve back before my first race: - install new spark plug wires - tune my carbs shortly thereafter, maybe even before: - have the car corner balanced - experiement with smaller venturis in the carbs oy, that's a lot of work to do...

agreed!

i agree, jon's pilot jets sound like our idle jets. though i disagree for how long the idle jet is active for. i think it's out of the loop closer to 2500 rpm. it's a transitional circuit, after all. as per our discussion, at 1500 rpm i bet my mixture screws are useless, and agree that the progression holes are likely to be uncovered by the throttle plate at idle. not what one would consider ideal.

you remember correctly, jon. i've hopefully mended the traction problem - just installed konis and stiffer springs. no road test yet. intend to experiment with removing the rear sway, too, if you remember that. i agree that there's no need to upgrade the pump jet. fuel is not the problem, lack of air is. i assume your pilot jet is similar to our mains, and my current setup agrees with you: the car wants large mains and relatively small air correctors. when it's making power and all is happy, it wants more and more fuel. the head flows well, after all. living with it is what i intend to do. i do want to try smaller venturis to see about improving the driveability factor. it's really the only way i know of to mend my problem, assuming of course that my theory is correct. i'll have to do some research to see if 32mm is too small. how would you not feel it? you're right, it's still making some torque, so it doesn't faceplant like a lean engine does, but it doesn't pull smoothly, either. no popping, this is a well ignited engine with wonderful fuel. there's just no power, therefore no acceleration, and so it just lingers in this poor performance region. i'm not going to keep reposting pictures, but the accompanying torque and power curves show proportional dips as well. i promise that we're not making this up. you reference a stumble at 1500, and we're talking about a car struggling to idle at that speed. it's just not a fair comparison either way. you're welcome to come see for yourself. EDIT -- i think i might experiment with no air box. i remember when i first rebuilt the engine, the sound and responsiveness both changed noticeably (for the worse) when i put the air box back on. i took it for a drive around the block with no box and no hood. just had to do it, of course. point being, i think you might be right about it affecting low end performance. and yeah, no worries, this isn't personal or anything.

you can't assume that just because yours was lean that others' are also lean. ok, look. this isn't a pissing match, i've already conceded that a wideband is better than a narrow band. i'm pretty sure i'm allowed to have my dash the way i want it, but thanks for offering. i don't intend to insult you personally, but you do make it hard to refrain. your "experience" simply does not line up with the experience matt and i have had. even if you were 100% correct *for your application* but for ours, that is simply not true. i offer no evidence? once again, *IF* you would have read the thread, you no doubt would remember seeing that we both have offered emperical evidence SHOWING our rich condition, such as this A/F graph: weird. looks like the air / fuel ratio goes low, meaning not enough air, meaning rich. the end. matt's graphs, which you also have seen in this thread, show the same thing. care to take this any further, or are you good? perhaps you can tell us some more about widebands, do they work well? or, if you like, we can talk about how boosted applications such as yours aren't comparable to normally aspirated setups. oh, look, it seems you've acknowledged the issue, but it "blew" right over your head. weird. tell you what, you find an NA dyno graph with higher output than my 3.1, then i'd be happy to listen to the owner of that car. until then, i'll assume that any higher output is either boosted or fuel injected. in the meantime, i'll listen to the crickets...

really, dude? have you read the thread you're posting to? by increasing idle jet size you're suggesting to add more fuel to an already over-rich condition, and then you also want to richen the idle mixture?

also, matt, does your mallory distributor have a vacuum advance? if so, i'd say you have a pretty decent ignition setup and should be fine.

i absolutely agree that a wideband is essential. the narrow band is also a quite useable tool, but definitely more demanding. the [narrow-band] autometer gauge doesn't display a stoichiometric value, but rather an analog style LED throughout a range of lean, stoich., and rich. i have the car tuned to the point where at WOT above 4000 rpm (cam is at beginning of power band at this point) it reads on the leaner side of the stoich. range, just where the fuel manufacturer recommended. before 4000 rpm, i have to feather the throttle to achieve this display. it's not hard to learn what the engine wants. if i were to floor it at 2000 rpm, the car would fall flat and the display would go blank (in the rich direction). too much fuel, not enough airspeed through the venturis to atomize the huge drops of fuel into a fine mist. it doesn't fully fire, leaving the cylinder full of fuel until most of it clears out via the exhaust valve. but yes, i do desire a wideband. a blank display isn't very useful. autometer doesn't offer a wideband that matches my line of gauges, and i won't install one that doesn't match. oh, well. a wideband will simply show me how low my AFR goes, which really doesn't matter since i can't change it and will still have to avoid it via the pedal. it is easier to read, though. regarding the long air horn, that's the old style. aerodynamically, without an air box, it straightens the air out more than the shorter one, producing a more consistent airstream and ultimately a more even burn. i think you can still buy it, there just isn't quite room for it in our cars unless we don't put a filter on our carbs. not something i was ever willing to do. all the F1 cars had long horns. and smaller slugs.

by "pulse" i assume you mean the low pressure transient from the piston moving downward and pulling fresh air and fuel through the intake? then yes, i still agree with you that this is the problem. i'm still firm with my belief that my flat spot can't be fixed, which is actually a function of such a radical camshaft and overbored engine meeting a carburetor. a carburetor is a manual throttle in every sense. nothing is metered unless YOU (the tuner) made it that way. the only thing you can do is change the air (temperature, elevation, humidity, etc) and literally the accellerator pedal with your foot as you drive. those are your only inputs for the driver. in a normal street car with a carburetor of any kind, mashing more pedal produces more fuel in very carefully designed and metered proportions. it works quite well. in our high-performance 3.1s, everything is bigger. bigger pistons, bigger stroke, bigger cams, bigger valves, bigger venturis, bigger jets, bigger spark, better fuel. its all proportional, it *should* work, but it doesn't. i'm not saying carbs don't work on race cars. they do. just not a 1 carb per cyl setup AND big slugs. formula 1 cars used to use side drafts. i've seen a maserati F1 car in a museum with weber DCOEs, in fact. point being, it was a small displacement / many cylinder (usually 8) setup. big block chevys use common plenum intakes -- one massive carburetor in the middle of all 8 cyls. either way, fast flow through small holes. the reason i'm stymied is that when you widen everything for flow, the velocity of the fluid (air + fuel) decreases. period. now put in a cam that idles at about 1450 rpm, and the carburetor is experiencing a very rough pulse as it sucks in a large volume of air at a slow speed intermittently (giving it that rough, pissed off sound, because in reality it's running like $h!t). i think i might try dropping down my venturis again. i'm at 36mm at the moment. might try 32 even. real world, we all subscribe to this thread because in some aspect, we feel we should be able to floor the gas pedal at a certain rpm and the engine should not chug or fall flat on it's face, but smoothly sing through the power band. the carburetor works on pressure differences, ideally expecting smooth pressure transitions, and when the engine inputs aren't smooth in terms of rate of change of fuel mixture (ie pedal position), then the engine struggles. enter the driver. that's also what makes driving carbureted cars so fun: we, as drivers, have to know our car to get the most out of it. ideally it also helps you be a smooth driver, too. that said, sure, there's always something new that can be tried to lessen the dead spot. any reports on experimenting with the stacks, matt? let me know if you took your stacks off and had better throttle response in that dead range. i have air stacks installed as well (inside my cold air box). these pics are from my rebuild in '08: i'm schwagging this based solely off tinkering with webers and different engine setups over the years, but if i wanted to target the engine that might make the most of the webers without overdoing it, i'd think something like this: simple 2.8L block, oversize valves and port/polish on the head. don't get too crazy with the cam, but get a sporty one for sure. strong ignition is crucial. i recommend electromotive xdi or the equivalent. i probably won't upgrade to ITBs for another 1-3 years. at that time i'll probably sell my carbs, all my jets (over 120 jets in total), literature, and extra parts, everything sold as a set ideally. PM me if anyone wants to know more.

thanks! i've been working on some odds and ends that just seem to get deeper and deeper into the weeds, causing several delays in the process. i don't think i mentioned the problem i've been having with mounting the CF hood using the oem mounts up front. the problem is that the hinges expect spring tension to guide the track of the hinge to arc up and over the bumper over riders. without the torsion springs, the arc is not maintained, and the hood would contact the over riders if i didn't take your other hand and lift up to create the arc manually. the stock torsion springs are pretty thick, and are way too stiff to be twisting against my prized hood. i set out to duplicate the stock torsion springs so that the arc would be maintained with minimal twisting force. i ended up using 3/16" steel rods. i came to this magic thickness by hoping that this "skinny" diameter would suffice, and it does: i duplicated both oem hinges using a pair of vice grips and a brake line bending tool. a second pair of vice grips would have sufficed equally. on the rounded torsion spring in the picture, i heated the bends with a blow torch first. the neater one was done cold. i recommend doing it without the heat. i just copied the oem design. no need to reinvent the wheel here. i did have two slight problems. my crude bends, although good enough, weren't perfect, and as such the spring force isn't perfectly symmetrical between the two sides. also, my copies didn't have retaining tabs at the end that kept them attached to the hinges. last week i took some unbent rod and the stock torsion springs out to have them duplicated professionally. or so i hope. another problem is that since it is a smaller diameter, the springs are now "loose" in the holding grooves and have a desire to pop out. i used zip ties to keep it from going anywhere. the result is better than i had hoped. i'm not 100% done yet (i still have to finish messing with the hood pin hardware), but the opening/closing portion is as good as it can get for oem mounts and CF hood: i can open and close the hood from full down to full up with one finger, and if i pause at any mid position it will freeze in place. it's effectively at zero tension, meaning it doesn't really care where the hood is moved. i consider this ideal for a composite hood that i'd just assume be nice to, so i thought i would share my successful interim solution. i'll repost with final setup next week probably.

first wax. i have to say, it was a very enjoyable experience to wax my new paint for the first time. it was indoors, which i imagine was also a first for us both. i've definitely never waxed indoors before. i'll have to do it that way from now on! white objects seemed to reflect the best off of the freshly waxed surface: the next four images are uploaded in slightly higher resolution to show the detail of the reflections. i like the last one the best.

and today's episode is like stepping into a time machine. i set out to de-crud much of the fender wells from the caked body shop dust layers, especially all the crud collecting on the suspension components. i originally thought brushing/wiping off most of the crap would suffice. i ended up doing a lot of detail work (in the fenders!? who does that?). in then end, it seems like one of those infomercials where they wipe off some crappy paint and you're left with a beautiful antique underneath. without further ado, time for some pictures! i was only going to upload my top 3, but hey, it's the digital age, and i know when i'm looking at other projects, i always enjoy more pics! please allow me to introduce you to 240Z #11518, a total diva: if you were too look up spoiled in the dictionary, you might see an image along these lines. here are a few before detailing shots: evidently someone (maybe me in the 90s?) spray painted the rear fender wells at some point. this is just to show the working environment: i think i had rubbed a dry terry cloth across the fender wells at this point. a friend of mine always gets really nervous about the "race fuel bomb" in my garage. haha! the front had clearly NOT been painted at some point: in this shot, the crud has been lightly brushed off. it obviously needs to be wiped down with a terry towel or the like. but then i had this idea, what if i could restore the black fender? i don't even know if it was ever black. i remember a "back to black" rubber detailing product, but that wasn't really black, it was simply a colorless rubber conditioner. i went to a michael's arts and crafts store and literally bought a small bottle of black dye, and mixed it into some of this "back to black" conditioner. essentially, i just wanted a moist gel, designed to be absorbed, that would stain everything a common shade, wiping a wet rag across everything in the process and cleaning it up. this is again a "hey, even if it's hideous it will still be better than it was." boy, was i far off the mark. here is the dyed conditioner i mixed up: i elected to use a bug scrubbing sponge (soft sponge with durable fish-net exterior). half-way through application, still drying: it looks like its going to work out at this point. i came back after working on another fender well, and damn! at first i was like wow, that's looks sharp! great! but then i really started to look. i started to realize that this little princess is damn near 40 years old! this is something that i just had to share. clearly this car has led an incredibly privileged life for all of its days. i fell in love with this Z again, the same one I've had for 12 years now. i suppose you might say we "renewed our vows." i vowed to keep her shiny, performing like she's angry, and driven purposefully. she vowed to put out. she's high maintenance, but i love her. and it's GOOD, too! this was a deliberate shot (i staged the old and new shock absorbers and springs), experimenting with reflection using my camera and enjoying photography in general: and yes, i literally pulled just one corner of the cover off and did one corner at a time. (just don't ask me if i wiped it down before i buttoned it up!) the undercarriage as i was cleaning up: you can see a few obvious places where i didn't do a perfect job. to be honest, it was miserably hunched over work and i'm incredibly sore from it. a lift would have been so nice! very well worth it, though. overall, she's cleaner than she's been in many, many years.

i'm behind on a lot of things lately. updating this project thread is one of them. i've made other progress, but these three pics are all i have on my laptop right now. just two small tasks. the first was to fabricate spacers so that my new koni shock absorbers fit correctly in my shock tubes. essentially, if I tightened the gland nut, the absorber had approximately 1.5" of play in the front and about 3.3" of play in the rear. i went to a local machine shop with a drawing and came back to this: it never occurred to me how heavy duty this order would be... they definitely delivered! haha, talk about overkill! the damn things weigh a total of 5 lbs. (of unsprung weight, of course). dumbass. hopefully the effect will be negligible. it would be if it were sprung weight, but i'm not sure about unsprung. also, my strut brace that i had a new steel plate welded to wasn't made of stainless steel, so it was beginning to get rusty after about 1.5 yrs. i filed it down with a dremel and then spray painted it with a rustoleum primer: i figured even if i messed this up royally and it was hideous, it would still look better than rust! and for the final coat i used rustoleum "looks like metal" variety. it's obviously paint if you inspect it, but it's *less* of an eye-sore: with any luck, it may even survive the first time it's tightened down. once.

if i had it to do over again, i would have intentionally coincided it with my engine rebuild so that i could paint the engine bay as well...

sure, no problem. despite the delays, i feel like i'm the one who got the better end of the deal with the job. i paid $4500 flat to the shop and tipped the painter $1000 cash, as he clearly went above and beyond the budget of the commission in terms of hours of labor billed vs actual hours. he also told me to make a list of things that need attention and to bring it back "after enough time has passed that i don't get all annoyed just looking at your car again." they didn't touch the undersides, they didn't touch the engine bay. it was an agreed price for the job up front.

thanks guys! it's been awhile since i've reported anything. these are the only two pics that i've taken of the car since i've brought it home: i was looking at the sun blinging off of the surface of the car, and i snapped these two angles. (i still find it amusing that no one noticed the hood was missing the emblem, including me!) these were taken the next day to work on it outside, but the pollen (a very serious, disgusting buildup this time of year here in virginia) seemed to be statically attracted to it (and i mean *fast!*) so i put it back in the garage and buttoned it up. there were about 20 big old bumble bees that day, too, and they were really curious about this shiny red thing. first, the sharpened rear quarters are very subtle, so the fact that you aren't 100% sure i take as a compliment. post #15 of this thread shows three subsequent angles that showcase that the viewing angle has to be just right to even see what was done at all. physically, what was done is he had a roll of painters tape, and he used the long edge of it to trace down the rear quarter fender's oem lines. he would put the tape so that it perfectly outlined one half of the line. then he took a sanding block and, by hand, lightly sanded the surface such that it was essentially sharpening the one half of the line. then he peeled the tape off, and reapplied new tape to the other half of the same line, then sanded down the other half, effectively sharpening the other side of the line. this was not aggressive sanding... he barely touched them to the point that you could tell it had been sharpened IF you were looking for it. the end result, ideally, would be that it simply showcases/highlights the original datsun lines that naturally catch the eye, but is subtle and casual enough that a passerby wouldn't stop to think about why they're admiring it. the cut fender lips are in the same spirit, but in my opinion, stand out a lot more and would be immediately noticed by most gearhead types. good thought about preventing a scratched lexan window. i'll have to look into that before hitting the pavement! under the hood? unfortunately, the engine was quite installed during the body repaint, and i wasn't interested in gutting the engine bay. the firewall is very dingy, sporadically oily, and shows the original gold at a few rub points. when the body was wet sanded and rinsed with no weatherproofing, all of the fine, colored sediment made lovely waterfall effects all over my engine bay. sucks. i have a ton of detailing to do inside and out, not to mention body fitting stuff with the hood/hatch (and my new set of stainless hood pins, these chrome ones are complete crap). i also need to experiment with an alternative to the oem hinges (the front latches have the ability to travel about 10-15 degrees if there is no tension from the spring). the oem springs are steel, and are much too stiff for a composite hood. probably going to end up duplicating them with thinner steel. if that wasn't enough going on, my front axles and coilovers are torn apart and in pieces wherever they could fit in my 1-car garage. i really don't want to work in there, but i'm really paranoid about the paint simply because it hasn't been waxed yet. i can control the environment in the garage. i'm being a real tool... i'm working on the car with the flannel car cover 3/4 on! haha! [i'm installing new coilovers that john set me up with. koni 2-ways and stiffer springs.] been busy with the engine. i set all the valve clearances again, indexed new plugs, drained the old race fuel, put new fuel in, topped off fluids and fired her up. god, that fuel... the hell with priming and all those finicky starting carb starting tricks, the engine roared alive almost as instantaneously as the starter engaged. i really think its that fuel. it doesn't necessarily "add" more power directly, but it sure as hell just burns no matter what! i have other to-dos as well. i bought a braille battery after my battery (not a braille) crapped out on me, and i need to install it solidly (and cosmetically), which will probably take a lot more time than it should. maybe i'll snap a few pics today. hope everyone else is out enjoying their z with some spring air!