Mikelly

2 years? Is that all that's eating you? I bought Chris Cloud's car in 2001. It's still a "roller" chassis. Put it aside, get distracted with other things (like I did) and come back to it as money, time and enthusiasm allow. The standing joke for a long time with me was "Mike's selling his project...Again"... Glad I didn't. Mike

Congrats man! Mike

I'd caution you on looking at tire availability in the 15 & 16 for your "desired" application... Will you drag/autoX/HPDE the car? How much tire do you want to cram under those fenders? How sticky would you like your tire to be? How much sidewall would you think you will want??? Do you know what all the numbers on those tire codes mean? Do you want to? I'd go over to tirerack.com and get a little education on tires before deciding. Mike

Scott, I'd love to get your car in the tunnel... I'm guessing the numbers would show pretty well up front... Mike

You won't get a conversion done for under $5K. And if I were you, I'd go here: http://www.jagsthatrun.com and buy their 240-280Z install manual first, and then get their LT4 Install manual and read it. Don't spend a dime on anything else until you've bought and read those two books cover to cover 10 times. That's your "summer" project. Then come back with your list of questions... But remember, TEN TIMES cover to cover FIRST. Welcome, and good luck. Mike

Did the same thing to a guy I caught in the back of my Ram Charger, with his hands around my mountain bike while straddling the tailgate... it was lifted with 30.5X12 tires and the fall made him bounce twice when he hit the pavement, back first... I played kick ball with his body and then grabbed him by the hair and pulled him out from the back of my Ram Charger... Drove off, and felt damned good doing it... Scum sucking thieves... I'm old, But much more cranky these days. I pitty the fool who chooses me as his victim Mike

Lets all be polite and all continue posting pics. You guys know how Alan T. is about keeping his facts straight. Factor it in when reading his posts. And Alan, play nice, but keep playing. Your contributions in this thread are something even I appreciate, and given our stormy past, that's saying something. Maybe we break these two out into separate posts? One for FIA approved/period correct aeromods and one for "Pics of cool Zs with various unknown aeromods?" Keep it friendly gang. Mike

Same reason the Whaletail lifts at the front. Remember what I've been stressing? Total package. Doing something at one end of the car and NOT doing something of equal value at the other end really causes the aero to do screwy things... The Gnose w/ headlight covers and a front spoiler, along with the whaletail would be a nice combo in my estimate. Mike

Probably so, along with 9 quarts of oil in that dry sump system. Who knows. Mike

The whaletail produced 300 units of downforce. It's a tremendous device for generating rear downforce. The key is to couple it with the appropriate spoiler up front. We should have tested it with the MSA Type3 spoiler. That would have probably generated a combo similar to the APR rear wing data. Mike

Here's another thought... I spoke with the folks at Griffith and Ron Davis Radiators a while ago, and both said to get away from larger sized radiators, but to retain cooling capacity, go with larger diameter tubing (1-1.25 inch) throughout the core. So you'd make your radiator thicker, but take up less space, and retain much of the cooling capacity. And I'm with you on the "smaller intercooler" thing. My radiators on the 996TT are small in size, but I have two, and I have 8 GALLONS of coolant to help shed heat. My intercoolers are TINY and stuffed inside the rear hips of the car, behind the rear wheels. It's making 510WHP and 532#ft. of torque at the wheels and doesn't run hot... I'm thinking you're onto something John! Mike

...And since there will be an article that will be published, I'm going to hold off on further comment. That said, Nissan Sport will pay for this article. All monies received for the production of this article will go into the donations pot for the NEXT ROUND OF AERODYNAMIC TESTING!!! YUP, I'll set up another donations drive once I sort out the who/what/when/where of the next go around! Stay tuned!!! Mike

Pete, congrats on the purchase. Hang in there... You'll eventually be on the upside of down. Mike

So I’ve been asked a number of times what I’ll do to make my car handle better, since the outcome of the aerodynamic testing. First thing I’ll do, and have done is order some items… Canards to bolt to the front of the MSA Type 3 airdam on the car. Add Vortex generators to the roof. Add a rear pedistal mount rear wing that will be approximately 32 inches wide at the base mounts and 55 inches wide at the ends of the spoiler. Seal the radiator opening, along with closing off the radiator and lower chin openings on the MSA type 3 spoiler. Add ducting and collars to the inner fenders of the chassis, ala Roddy’s inner fender openings. Add lower rockers identical to Roddys. Add front quarter window deflectors that extend to the drip rail and flare outwar. Add rear quarter windows that allow for a rounded front edge. Add a front radiator encloser/box. This will seal the hood, and the radiator, along with the lower chassis area at the front crossmember. The front of the MSA Type 3 will have a splitter that will essentially be a a splitter that incorpotates the lower belly pan. I may box in the whole engine bay. Not 100% sure how I'll make this "removable" in case it bombs, but looking at creatve DZus fasteners. Mike

You know you're getting old when you start thinking about putting together pics of your kids when they were in the 10-18 year old range... congrats and keep us posted... To the other members who I may have missed in their recent times of joy, CONGRATS!!! Keep the little hybridZ'ers coming! Mike

The wife refused... We'll be flying the friendly skies... Mike

I'd recommend doing a comparison on the data on his car to the other mods, and then decide for yourself. Maybe we'll also get Mayolives' car in the tunnel next time. It has a rear difuser and other tips and tricks to test! Mike

This Saturday I'll be in Punta Gorda by the evening... Anyone in the area, send me an email offline and maybe during the coming week I'll be able to hook up with some fellow HybridZers! Mike

Here are more pics on Roddy Sugg's racecar... Mike

I won't speculate further. What I know is what a guy who does it every day for a living recommended to the 9 of us in the control room. Without testing the setup, we can mentally spar until we're tired. We can certainly add it to the list for next time, and do some myth busting. Mike

Ding ding ding! Now go down to runs 20-25 and take a peek... Frontal coverage helps those bigger tires/wheels considerably. Mike

Actually I was trying to explain that the next round may be a couple privateers pooling their funds. You may want to get in on that effort if you can afford to. My point was the total sum of users who donated would drive what we test next. It wasn't meant as a "you're not welcome". It was meant as a "Let's look at maximizing the time avaliable". And based on the advice from the expert on hand, a rear difuser would go against that. Also, in regards to mirrors, the Gnose equipped car didn't have mirrors or door handles, slicking the profile even more. I don't think it had vent emblems or an antenna either. Mike

My guess is it's exactly what I mentioned above, and what Bob Smith told all of us in the control room. You're gonna get LOTS of air stacked in at that firewall. Deal with it the same way you deal with having the windows down. Let it pack in and fill up, and the rest will spill out around and find the path of least resistance. I think a radiator box will do a lot to make the minimal opening more efficient for cooling, but don't know how much it will aid in fixing the other issue. You still have all that air trapped at the firewall. Mike

Uh, I don't think you understand. This wouldn't be a "donations" deal. This would be a "Pony up your 1/4 of the $3500 or more" kinda deal. Any donations driven testing would be hammered out by the admin staff and those doing the donating. I can also state that, it was expensive enough on all those who took time out of work and life to shack up in hotel rooms and gas getting cars to and from (All the cars had to be towed in from out of town) that the next effort with donations will likely be closer to $5000. It's simply to expensive on the players NOT to at least cover their expenses for gas/hotels/food, unless they wave that off. Mike

My recommendation (And what I'll do when I take my car there) would be to do pressure tests and smoke trails. This means we won'd be swapping a bunch of parts. The time it takes to set up the pressure tubes inbetween tests could eat up as much as an hour between sessions. What this also means is less data collected, but likely more finite data that would resolve issues like sealing off the radiator core support, and measuring under hood pressures. And yes, Bob Smith said rear difusers are a waste of time. Here's why I personally agree with him: On both my C5 Corvette, AND on my 996TT, the bottom of both cars is flat as a sheet of plywood. We don't have that with out Zcars. Further, cleaning up the underside of the car might impact a number of areas negatively. Impacting that is the simple fact that our Zcars have a lot of sharp and abrupt edges. Unless you completely redid the whole underside of the car, and then worked dogedly to do a widebody kit (Like Bob_H's) and covered all the other issues, doing a rear difuser would be a complete waste of time. We're dealing with 35 year old cars, and we're also trying to get the biggest bang for the buck in testing for ALL of our members. I suspect a sub-set of racers will probably go into the tunnel next to test things specific to their personal applications. Maybe you, Teamnissan could get on that band wagon and chip in for some rear difuser testing? You want to whip up a few ideas and make them for use in testing? Mike