pparaska

Nope. I don't but try Clark Z Cars of Arizona ClarkZCarsofAZ@webtv.net - he has good stuff and is honest and nice to deal with.

Guys, I know for sure the left (driver side for us with left hand drive cars) is shorter than the right shaft. The overall length is shorter, and the part that inserts into the diff is shorter on the left side as well. So you can't swap them side for side, without swapping the inner joints around. You could swap the inner joints and use the shorter shaft on the right (passenger) side, but the remaining shaft would be way too long for the left side of the car.

Agreed. With the Maxima bracket, I wouldn't want to see that thin step in AL.

I have a drawing, I'll email you a scan of it.

FWIW, the brackets on my rear Arizona Z car sourced Wilwood setup are Aluminum. They are just flat brackets. I'd use 6061 T6 stock as well. Build it beefy enough and the finite fatigue limit of the Aluminum should be many cycles away? But as I remember, that bracket is stepped, so there's you stress concentration.

Yeah, I saw that relay box. It has something mine doesn't - a splash cover! I may be buying a few and ganging them together...

I've heard it's usually the spider gears that go. And I've heard the early R-180s (open or LSD?) had 2 spider gears and went to 4 for strength. If it's not a high powered car, some prefer the R180 for gear choice, and weight reduction.

I've done it. But I also added stuff to make the height adjustable (and lockable other than just tightening the big through- bolt). The side-to-side position is also adjustable, and independent of the height adjustment. Unfortunately, that one is only locked down by tightening the through-bolt. I don't have any good pictures of this set up. I may have some drawings though. There's at least this thread on this subject: http://www.hybridz.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=000549 BTW, 14mm is 8.81/16ths of an inch. So 9/16" is pretty close!

I had a machinist buddy make that - took several months to get it back . TimZ, I would buy scca-Mike's stuff too, but I got the complete Wilwood setup with only a few thousand miles on it from Jim Biondo for half the price of new. Tough deal to beat. I think a flat bracket welded to the Arizona Z bracket like TimZ did is a better method. But I was REALLY lazy and didn't want to pull the halfshafts out and was looking for a bolt on solution. I am working on a design for a limiter for the cable - to keep it from rubbing on the frame rail. But the car is in paint jail, so I can't do much now.

That looks great! So at 25 psi inlet, you'll have, what, about a 1/10 psi pressure drop, and be 10 degrees above ambient ?

quote: Originally posted by BLKMGK: ...I'd like to know how you ran the cables into the tool compartment though. Did you sink your battery or drill holes etc.? I seem to recall you sank your box, I'm not doing this. I'm NOT running my cables under the car or through the sills, I'm running them from the battery box to the front under the carpet and through a grommet up front. Not perfect but so long as no fool wears golf shoes on the passenger side and gets stupid I should be fine! The seat sliders are nowhere near it BTW. Jim, my battery box is positioned with the length running from the front edge of the package shelf, with the back outside corner of it at the inside corner of the strut tower base - kind of on the passenger side, but near the center (looking for low polar moment of intertia advantages - check the archives ). So it's pretty much centered left/right over the tool box opening. I made up little plates to screw down to the left-over openings (left the tool box door off). The POS cable goes through a grommet down into the tool box, to the terminal on the switch. From the switch, the cable goes to the near the bottom of the tool box, next to the inner wheel house (damn, I need a pic!) through a gromment, and then along the same area the stock harness is, at the corner of the floor and the inner rocker box. Since I have that goofy under-dash A/C box (new with a R-134A evaporator core in it), the pos cable is nowhere anyone could put their foot on it. I just ran it through the same big grommet as the stock harness through the firewall (I took some of those wires out, and added others). quote Sure, that'll work too. I went over next to the wheel house instead. quote My solenoid is in the same area. I'd run another big cable for ground from the cutoff switch at the rear, all the way to some place on the engine near the starter. I've heard that the unibody is not a very good conductor, and you can lose cranking voltage not having a good ground cable. Welding cable is black, and cheap! I ran mine to the engine block at the bellhousing bolt near the starter. From there, the body harness, dedicated headlight/cooling fan ground, a body ground strap, and even a #8 wire going to the alternator mounting bolt is connected (the bracket was painted with POR-15, so I didn't trust it to break through and ground!). Both sides of the circuits need good current paths to not lose voltage along the way. Ground is just as important as POS, so make sure everything has a sufficient ground path so voltage drops are not induced. And nothing (except maybe a competition sound system 8-P) draws like a starter. BTW, I used 8 gage wire in a few places like the headlight/cooling fan dedicated wiring, the ALT to Solenoid (to provide battery charge and running voltage to the car). The result of all this wiring is about a 1/4 Volt drop from the output of the alternator (right around 14V at idle with the CS-130) versus testing the voltage at the battery terminals. If you don't have good paths on BOTH sides of the circuit (POS and gnd) then you can have a significant voltage drop and the battery (including other stuff) will never get a full charge. Alot of what I did was overkill, but I didn't want any of those problems causing my battery (or other stuff) to get too low a voltage. If the battery never gets enough voltage, it won't get recharged properly, and that hot start problem gets aggravated. Sorry for the preaching, but this stuff gets overlooked (sufficient grounding), so I thought I'd give my thoughts on it since that's where you are working right now. [ June 09, 2001: Message edited by: pparaska ]

I think the issue with racing belts is that they aren't tested like the auto manufacturers do. Also, I've heard that some racing belts are designed to give a bit in an accident, to lessen the impact on the body during a crash. The problem is that a crash only sometimes involves one impact onto the belts - sometimes you hit something else and the belts again. If the racing belt has stretched, it won't protect you well, if at all during the second impact and may let you get loose in the car. OG Racing has a picture on their wall with a helmet mark in the windshield to show customers why they won't sell a certain brand of belts for this reason. Of course, I forgot the name. As far as putting the hoop on that shelf, not that it's too far away from the side of the car (the vertical parts) to be NHRA compliant that way. I can't remember the dimension required, but I remember that it's less than you can get with the hoop mounted up on that shelf. Heck, I think the tracks I go to will be happy I have a bar at all, and won't worry about these little rule infractions. Just wanted to bring that up.

I mounted mine, using a flat bracket that I bolted to the Arizona Z brake kit bracket. Note that I'm not real happy with how the cable routes with this setup. The cable needs several ties, springs, etc. to keep it out of the way of the subframe, axle, etc. I remember Hoover put his at about 10 o'clock on the left side, 2 o'clock on the right side of the car. Not sure how the cable routing went for that. Pics of my setup are at: http://members.home.net/pparaska/brakemods.htm Hope that helps,

quote: Originally posted by dewzenol: First: Should I use the lap belt mounting 'pockets' to mount the base of the main hoop? If I do will that affect its street legality? (having no stock seat belts -- but having a harness) Otherwise the installer wants to bend the main hoop and mount it to the small shelf between the front of the wheel wells. I've heard that racing harnesses are illegal for street use. But even still, you could use a non-retractor universal seatbelt mounted elsewhere. I decided to mount the hoop on the short raised area of the floor just in front of the tool box area, between the inner wheel houses also. The installer sectioned, reinforced (internally) and welded back together the hoop in the center of the bar at the roof area. The hoop is about 3/4" in front of the header that the plastic trim goes around that's just forward of the hatch hinge area. It's also about 3/4" from the roof sheetmetal. quote I had mine mounted shoulder height, where the holes in the Corbeau A4 seats were in the seat back. The main hoop is mounted at an angle backwards bottom to top, and almost touches the package shelf leading corner at the top. With the seat almost all the way back (1/2" to go), the seat belt horizontal bar (which is straight across) is about 1/2" from the back of the seat with it in a comfortable position and angle. I have long legs (on a 6'2" frame) and this is just at the limit of comfort for me. quote: Third: The installer wants to run the rear tubes along the side of the strut towers and weld them to the strut towers midway down the tubes. Is this wise? Is there a better option for adding strength here? Sounds good. I had the installer just run short tubes from the top of the hoop to the forward top corner of the strut tower, and stopped there. I left the door bars out for seating comfort (didn't want that bar right next to my ribs) and for ingress/egress utility. Definitely a compromise I'm still not very comfortable with! HTH,

quote: Originally posted by needwaymorespeed: I found an old article about 5 yrs old that flowed all the mufflers and did a db comparison the hemi super turbos outflowed them all and were the quietest. there were spintech and flowmasters and borlas compared. all the other mufflers were very loud in comparison to the super turbos-same mufflers as pete has! Those tests and the opinions of those that had used them in even high horse power applications (although my engine is pretty mild) is why I went for the Hemi Super Turbo Dynomax. I'd heard two small turbo mufflers on a 2-1/4" system on a V8Z and I thougth they were too loud and looked restrictive. So I did a bit of surgery to the spare tire well to fit those Hemi muffs. Not hard, but I can't use a full size spare in there now . quote: Originally posted by needwaymorespeed: I went with the edelbrocks for lifetime warranty-stainless steel and improved flow over the super turbos as per dynomakxs web site the super turbos flow around 480 cfm and the edb flows 660 cfm. Edelbrock rates them at around 480 cfm though. Now theres mufflersd out ther thal flow 1000 cfm,but they are louder than I wanted. the old comparison had the superturbos with 2.5 pipe and a dr gas x geeting a .05 second in the quarter mile than open headers on a 455 pontiac that runs low 12s Ill let you know how i like them amd the sound. thanks How loud are those Edelbrock muffs? Are those the ones that have two curved pipes that branch and then join again inside the muff?

Yes, that 1/4 sounds about right. You should have a larger cross section at the center of the X. As for what was different in vs out, I think the divider was better centered if I looked in the "in" side - they probably just make them and then look and decide which end has the divider centered better .

If you put the battery farther away, you need larger battery cables. And don't depend on the shell of the Z to be a great conductor of electricity. Steel, even lots of it will drop considerable voltage. Starter heat soak is a problem, and as Dan said the remote solenoid helps. But getting a sheild between the hot stuff (headers and head pipe) and the starter helps too.

What intrigues me the most about the higher rod/stroke ratio is the purported better octane tolerance - in other words you can either run lower octane gas or hight compression on the same gas than a motor with a lower rod/stroke ratio.

Go with what floats your boat! But I don't think a 400-450 hp 355 HAS to be unstreetable, although that term is different for everyone. I've seen enough write-ups in the mags that show 355s in that range with great low end torque. With the heads and cams available these days, you should be able to go with a mildish cam (225@.050, .500 lift, 112 or 114 lobe separation) and have a fat torque curve and good throttle response. If your talking old style heads, etc. this is tougher.

Jim, I ran a dedicated 10 gage wire from the always-hot side of my cut off switch to the radio area. I connected it to the always-hot terminal on the switch using a 12 gage fusible link (always use a fusible link at least 4 numbers larger than the wire size).

I used the Autometer In-Dash tach. I put the stock 240Z bezel and lens on the front of it. In the sides of the bezel, in front of the stock lens, I drilled a hole and mounted a small green 12V incandescent indicator from Radio Shack. I'd use a 12V LED instead. Wired these to the wires for the OE bulb sockets.

If what you're asking is what the Dr. Gas pieces look like there, this is what I remember: The outside of the 90s had a cut out that did not extend to the full diameter of the pipe, maybe 7/8 of the diameter. The two elbows were butted together to align these cut-outs and welded from the outside all around. Then a flat sheet was welded to the top and bottom of the X to help hold it together. The nice thing was that when you looked straight through the inlet (it was marked inlet and outlet with arrows) you could see the divider created by the joining of the two 90s right in the center of the flow path. That's something I'd shoot for.

Night rider, that sounds like a sweet motor. I used to hear good things about the smaller journals having less bearing speed and better wear (smaller radius = shorter circumference, and less distance travelled by the bearing for each revolution) I believe the Chevy may have gone to the larger bearings to give the crank more meat. But the Small journal 327 crank is a pretty strong piece as it is. Kept below 6500 rpm, most stock crank/rod 327s stay together pretty well. I also think that the guy writing the stuff about rod angle is making a bunch of jumps in logic that I can't buy off on. There's alot of interesting stuff there, but I am having trouble going along with major parts of it. JMO, [ June 08, 2001: Message edited by: pparaska ]

I hate to be a party pooper. But NHRA (and probably SCCA) require the external switch to switch the POSITIVE wire. That's my beef with them - I think they should switch the negative. BTW, welding cable is much cheaper and easier to work with than battery cable.

Cool! Those stands look super sturdy/stable! I bet the front and rear pivots on the car need to go up at least 6 inches to get it from being "top heavy" as it is now. Nailing that place is key. I'd love to know where those are on the car so I can modify the ones I made (a buddy wants to use it on his V8 Fairlady (RHD) 76 Z).