johnc

I think you could have laid it on the pillow in front of his mouth...

I'm only posting about rear drums on the S30. A bug is a different story and converting from front drums to discs is always a good idea, IMHO.

FYI... I'm comparing the weight savings from an aluminum drum S30 rear brake setup. Some of the S30s had steel drums and there isn't any weight savings compared to a disk setup with those drums. I put a brake drum, backing plate, shoes, springs, spring pins, washers, wheel cylinder, wheel cylinder clips, adjuster bar, adjuster wheel, and rubber rear seal on a postal scale. 12 lbs 9.3 oz.

How could I forget? I just pulled off another set of drums from some struts I'm building for a customer. I ended up drilling one hole so I could pop the spring holding the shoes in place and get the drums off.

Drilling steel drum brakes is an old racer trick to lighten things up, not bleed off any brake shoe gas. Modern shoe (and pad materials) don't out gas enough to cause any issues like they did 35 years ago. Drilling the aluminum drums on the S30 is a waste of time except for: 240Z racers usually drill two 3/4" holes in the brake drum 180 degrees a part to make it easier and quicker to tighten the shoes up against the drum between race session. Mount the wheel correctly and you don't have to remove the wheel/tire to adjust the brake shoes. With proper (and constant) maintenance and upgraded shoe material the rear drum brakes on the S30 will perform as well as any disk brake setup and they are lighter. Look at lap times the ITS guys can run.

The differential experiences torque in three planes. The suspension experiences accelerations in three planes - the tires reacting through the suspension drive the car forward.

The inner part of the backing plate is a good base to build on for brake ducting.

Sign up for HPDE 2 and bring any event documentation from previous SCCA/Panoz/NASA events. Use John Williams as a reference. FYI... many open track organizers will not automatically bump up a participant unless asked.

1. Drain the tank. 2. Disconnect the fuel lines from the tank to the pump and the return. 3. Disconnect the electrical connections to the sender. 4. Remove the straps holding the tank in place. 5. The tank should sag down enough to get a screwdriver on the filler neck clamp. 6. Remove the clamp. 7. Pull the filler neck off the tank. 8. Pull the tank down some more and remove the evap hoses from the top. 9. Remove the tank. If you still can't get to the clamp in step 5 then use some side cutters to cut the two wires that make up the clamp. Replace it with a hose clamp.

We can't give you a specific number about how track width improves handling or gives you some percent increase in corner speed. Track width is one of the three variables the are part of the lateral load transfer equation. The other two are vehicle weight and center of gravity height. Increasing track width is a simple way to increase grip. There are negative affects, mostly related to steering (scrub radius, feedback) and you have to adjust other aspects of the suspension (spring, damping, alignment) to make full use of a track width change. On the S30 its better to have about a 1.5% wider front track then the rear. This helps the front stick better and helps turn in.