zguitar71

Get some 15x7 wheels with a -12 offset (3.5" back space) from a company like Diamond they are heavy (steel, 21 LBS) but only cost $65 (4 for $260) or so, Goodyear G-19 cantilever slicks R250 compound ($750), some stiffer springs like the Arizona Zcar springs ($200) and some Tokico Illumina shocks ($375 on Ebay (new)). Do not touch the motor. Strip the interior/exterior and add a roll cage that will stiffen the chasis ($1500?) and get a good racing allignment ($85) and a good seat and harness($450). Get a LSD ($750) and a 3.9:1 rear end ($150). Try to get the car to the minimum weight (2100 LBS in Fprepared autox for a 2.8). Autox in Fprepared and I am not sure of the road racing class mabey EP, ITS? Drive the car for a couple of season and do not worry about winning. Get the feel of the car and get consistant and to the very limit of the car with that cheap set up. Then upgrade (suspension, $$$ light weight wheels, brakes, ect...) as money comes in. The motor will be the last thing to worry about for the car but when you get there most Fprepared car have 250HP+ to the rear wheels, require race fuel and rev to 8000+ RPM. You will not win with that super cheap set up but if you are a good driver you will not be last either and you will learn great things for not much money. I have watched people with under developed cars beat people with very developed cars for their class (autocross) over and over again because they are good drivers.

The transmission you have will make a difference too. I have a 3:90 R190 with a `83 5 sp (11.9 1st gear ratio), I like it, but I prefer to use a 4:11 (12.57:1 1st ratio) but I do not have a LSD for that diff. at the moment. I used it (3.9) with a `74 4 sp and the gearing was too low, 1st gear was in the basement (14.01:1 ratio), I prefered to use a 3.54 (12.7:1 1st gear ratio) with that trans. The close ratio trans starts out with higher gearing so the 3.9 compensates. The 3.9 with an older 5 sp is like the 4:11 with the close ratio.

Yes. with out flares you should use a 30mm spacer or very close to that.

He sounds like a moron, but remember a guy like that has tons of money. If you hit him he has the means to make your life hell and it sounds like he would take that route if he had half a chance. A guy like that could never take his own medicine, he would lawyer up in a heart beat. It would feel great to kick his a$$ but it is not worth the possibility of loosing your shirt. Get in touch with the board of the F. club and complain, get statements from the people you were there with and from the people that work there, it might not get him kicked out of the pres. possition but it might make life a little embarrasing for a while. People that own Ferrari's are usually very professional people, I bet most of the club members would not like to have there reputations tarnished by there president.

I have not ever measured for coilovers because I do not have them. I learned the hard way to measure offset and tire wheel combinations. I ordered race tires and wheels once with out measuring properly and ended up with 4 wheels with too much negative offset and they are not refundable, fortunatly they were cheep steel race wheels (Diamond).

Well I wish I had read this earlier, The wheels you bought will require flares. The rear wheels will be about 3/4" past the fender and the front will be about even or just past the fender. Those are the sizes ZG cars used when they came equipt with ZG flares. If you put on flares they will look awesome though. With out flares you have to stay with a 0, or close to that, offset on a 7"-8" (7.5 max on the front) wheel with 225/50's and no coil overs (all stock).

Stay with a 0 offset and do not go past a 7.5" wheel (4.25" BS) with stock strut tubes (not coilovers). Stay with 225 or smaller tire width. You might be able to get wider than those sizes but rubbing could be a problem, different brand tires verry in size. The 225 measurement is not the tread width but the over all carcass width. The lower the profile of the tire the wider the wheel should be for a given tire width. EX. (not sure it it is accurate) 225/60 on a 6.5" wheel; 225/50 on a 7" wheel; 225/40 on a 7.5" wheel; 225/35 on an 8" wheel. All of this onfo can be found by searching in the archives, hundreds of threads on this subjec have been posted over the years.

I just replaced my worn out SU's With Ztherapy stock SU's with SM needles and the difference is unbelevable. I drove over to Helena MT (125 miles away) (I live in Missoula MT) for an autox. I averaged 80 MPH with a couple of burst to 100, there and back and raced and went over a steep pass 2 times and I got 24 MPG. I went with a friend of mine who has a 71 240 with a 3.1 stroker with triple 45's and 12.5 compression and a stage 2 (MSA) cam. I Have an L28 with an E31 head with larger valves and the same cam. I can stay with the stroked car to about 60 then he leaves me. I start loosing ground in 3rd while he moves out like a freight train. Before the Ztherapy carbs I could not stay with him at all. I make power to 6000 with the SU's. I think they would be fine on a stroker or the big bore SU's. When I got the carbs I pulled the old ones and put the new ones on, tuned and sinked them in 1.5 hours and have not touched them since and all is well. I do not think I could install and tune tripples that fast. Although they would probably stay in tune as well as the SU's. For absolute power tripples are the way to go but you will probably have to do more than just put a set of tripples on. $600 for a set of Ztherapy's you cant go wrong.

I use 205/60/14's on the street, I like them for the ride. My suspension is stiff and the streets are potholed very bad in my home town of Missoula Montana, so I try to offset the patches and pot holes with taller sidewalls. For performance I agree the 225/50 is the way to go. If we had great pavement around here I would run that size or even a 45 series on a 16" wheel but I think the car and I would be shaken to peices here.

205/60/15 will fit with out rubbing and they are very close to the original tire diameter.

I have 186F and 200R Arizona Zcar springs and Illuminas. I use #1 on the street and at the last autocross I used #3 on the front and #4 on the back and the car was very balanced. This course has a driveway transition to navigate that launches the car. The Illuminas absorbed the launch very well with the spring rates I have. I had KYB's last year and the same dirveway was terrible, to the point I was going to avoid that course in the future. I am much happier with the suspension now and do not feel the need to change anything except the settings of the shocks depending on the track type and speed. I think the Illuminas and my spring rates are a good match, they do not overpower the shocks. The ride in town is much better now than the KYB's, I bought them for Autox but the improved street ride is and added bonus and was surprising to me.

They look like living cartoons. When I first saw pictures of cars in Japan like that I couldn't get used too it but now I like the weirdness of it all. I would not do that to my car though. It is like the saying I like to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.

There is a guy that autocrosses an MR2 with those tires in our club. He really likes them. I was impressed how well the car handeled and how quiet the tires were for street tires (not much squeel). He sais they are the best bang for the buck in low cost performance tires. I have not ridden in a car with them so I cannot comment on the road noise they make but as far as tread life, I never think about tread life when I look for performance tires. There really is not a long lasting performance tire out there. There are tires that look like performance tires and have a 40,000+ mile warrantee but the compound is hard and they will not handel well like performance tires. Performance tires are made to perform not last long. I had PZero's on a saab years ago that only lasted 12K miles but they stuck like glue. The Yoko's should last longer though their tread wear is 280 and the PZero's were 140.

Her sudden vision of a mistake is another mistake in my opinion. In `72 supporting the troops and the war in Veitnam was not all that popular so she felt free to make a publicity stunt and go to Hanio. Now in 2005 supporting the troops and the war is fairly popular so she is renouncing the Hanoi trip and moving toward what is popular today. Remember the world series when the tomohawk chop became contraversial (can't remember the year). Jane still made the motion of the chop only held her hand flat instead of inline like a tomohawk blade. She was tring to not upset the Native Americans but still support her Billionare Husband's baseball team. In the end she pissed off both the Native Americans and the baseball fans and probably her husband too. She acts as though she has compassion for those people in distress but in reality she is helping herself not those around her. To me her flipflop aditude involving current and past events and her fince riding nature on things like the tomohawk chop show a lack of constitution and a self serving nature, not the type of person I admire at all. I must say though, I enjoyed watching her in "Barberella," she was definatly a hottie back in the day. At our local VFW bar there are pictures of Jane Fonda's face in the toilets that say "piss on Hanoi Jane." It is pretty funny, they are positioned in the urinals so you can stand there and piss all over Hanoi Jane.

I have a Momo "Fighter" (leather) steering wheel and love it. All the materials are high quality but the price with adapter is high too, about $250 if I remember right. It is 13.75 (memory again) and round. I did not want the D shaped because I let the wheel slide through my hands when I am exiting a tight turn on the Autox course, the D shape would interfere with that. If it was for the street only I would go for the D to ease getting in and out of the car. There is a wood version of the wheel too, it looks great but is $100 more.

http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=99516&highlight=r190 Read these threads and your questions will be answered.

I always liked te stripes on the `66 GT 350 Mustangs. I think they might look good on a Z but they would have to be a little narrower to be in scale with the car size.

Interesting, It is like the old (`70's, `80's) Lowery organs I used to see in the mall on display. The organ would play a song at the touch of a key, If you touched other keys then some other type of melody would play over the first one. You could make a complete band by playing a few key together and all of the different melodies would harmonize, it was impossible to hit a wrong note. I prefer to play the real thing , but I did have fun messing around though.

If you have a stock suspension (no coilovers) you will need to have a max backspacing of 4.5 inches or less. So a 0 offset 8.5 would be too much back space, it might clear the springs but it would be very close. A 16x8.5 with a -12 to -19 offset will fill out the flares with 245/45/16. A lot of the old school Z use 16 or 15 x 9.5 with -19 offset but I think they stick out too far and I am not a big fan of the streached sidewall look.

Sounds like the deputy was friends with the hunters. The D.A. should be fired for persuing a case with such obvious evidence.

I wanted a GTV6 when I was 16, they were new then (1986). I would love to have one now but my hands are full with the Z.

R190 do exist I have a freind that uses one in his Autocross car. I am not sure about the parts availablility though. They are stronger than the R180. He uses it in a 3.1 stroker in Emod. R180 LSD diffs are not rare, buy an R180 and put in a LSD and you'll have one. R190's are rare though, I am not sure what they came in either. The gearing for the one you are looking at on Ebay is very low, I have a 4.38 right now and I think it is too low for me. Low gears like that need high revving engins to work well or a very high geared transmission. I do not take my motor more that 6500 or so so I run out of room fast.

Thanks for all the advise. I am taking it to a shop to get the bearings replaced and the whole thing set up.

Thanks. I read the stuff from the web site you gave me and came up with the pinion gears but upon rereading it, the bearings are what he was talking about. I put more friction modifier in but still the same sound. I think your right about the bearings. I will have the diff set up and see if that helps.

I have an R200 4.38 clutch LSD from a late model skyline but I do not know the date or model. I think my pinion gears in the lsd are shot. It makes a whining niose from around 20mph on up no matter if I am accelerating decelerating or cruising. The LSD still hooks up well so I do not think it is the friction disks. I have been trying to find the parts for this differential but no one can seem to help me with out knowing the exact model it came from. So far the model HR32 and 33 have the 12mm LSD unite number 38420-rs660 according to Courtesy Nissan. That is the same as the 300zxt unite and the first ten numbers for the pinion gear part number are the same but the skyline part has 3 extra number added after the usual ten numbers. I asked Courtesy if the pinions were the same for all the 12mm clutch LSD R200 diffs but they did not know and are hesitant to sell me parts for an Unknown differential. Does anyone know if the parts from the 12m.m. Japanese R200 and the 12m.m. 300zxt are innerchangeable? This LSD uses the same axel stubs as the 300zxt too; it has the C clips for retaining the axel stubs. Please help. Thanks