johnc

The most expensive part of most machines is the tooling needed to actually use the machine. This shouldn't surprise anyone. The TIG torches themselves are basically the same. The Econotig uses a very common air cooled Weldcraft WP17 torch which has a street price around $65 for a 25' cable and torch.

Race car exhausts don't last long. They tend to get ripped up with jumping curbs, going off track, scraping on trailers, and they spend a lot time being taken off and put back on. Stainless doesn't gain you anything over a coated mild steel exhaust on a race car except double or triple the material costs. There are exceptions - high power turbos and very high compression NA often require the additional heat resistance of stainless.

Probably because we're on the phone or texting when the car hits us in the driver's door...

The "Warped Rotor Myth" story came from Carroll Smith and was written in the context of racing open wheel cars. He later expanded it to include road cars. In my experience what he says is essentially true. I have measured excessive run out on a few rotors and careful cleaning with a garnet sandpaper disc showed, to me at least, that the run out was from metallic pad material. I have also physically warped rotors when the pad material was gone and the backing plate became the pad.

From: http://www.howwedrive.com/2008/09/16/all-over-in-the-blink-of-an-eye-but-not-the-minds-eye/ The reason why I post this here is to highlight a couple items that need to be thought of when reinforcing the S30 chassis for racing. This is the whole point of a roll cage/bar structure - to transfer load from one part of the chassis to another, spreading the load out and adding extending the amount if time before the force of the impact gets transmitted to the driver. Seat mounting is critical. The seat mounting system must be able to control and move the seat and driver inward during a side impact while handling a load of up to 4,000 lbs. Ideally the seat mount SHOULD deform the transmission tunnel on a hard side impact to move away from the hit. This deformation must be controlled and kept to a few inches at most. At this point all the energy has been absorbed into the chassis, but its still deforming from inertia. A key point, the driver, safely strapped into the seat and securely mounting into the chassis, is moving with the deforming side structure. Building the seat mounting so that it resists any movement will make the driver and seat part of the impact structure.

The hydraulic brake fitting drawer on the pro team's pit cart had a 18 of these as spares. The car itself had 9 fittings.

For a street car: Stahl 1 5/8" primary header coated with JetHot 2000. 2 into 1 304 stainless merge collector with a 2 1/4" throat, 7 degree cone, and 2 1/2" outlet. 2 1/2" 304 stainless exhaust all mandrel bends. Borla S-Type Resonator. Borla XL Turbo muffler. For a race car: Stahl 1 3/4" primary header coated with JetHot 2000. 2 into 1 mild steel merge collector with a 2 1/2" throat, 7 degree cone, and 3" outlet - JetHot 2000 coated. 3" mild steel exhaust all mandrel bends - JetHot 2000 coated. Borla XR-1 Raceline muffler.

I've been a pit crew grunt on a pro car running the Staubli SPH connectors for the brake lines. Never had a problem and never got air int he lines when properly setup and pre-bled. http://www.staubli.com/en/connectors/your-market/motorsports/

Yes.

FYI... the most powerful normally aspirated L6 engines ever built are still the racing GT2 L24s - at least here in the USA.

What's funny is that before I started autocrossing and road racing I would drive "fast" on canyon roads and the car would be out of shape in a lot of spots and I would be working hard to go "fast." After a few years of autox and road racing I've driven the same canyon roads, more comfortably and with the car in shape on its side of the road, and I cover the same distance in much less time. Smooth is fast and a lot of that comes from knowing when to go fast and when to go slow.

Tonner Canyon Road is in Whittier off the 605/60 fwys. Its a good but short road and I've wrecked there before. Motorcycles race on it Sunday nights. Carbon Canyon Road is the road you're thinking of and its too crowded with traffic 90% of the time to be of any fun. Locally in SoCal there's too much traffic to really enjoy any of the good mountain roads (Angeles Crest, Ortega Hwy, Glendora Mountain Road). Central California has some good roads that are relatively free of traffic. Hwy 58 between Atascadero and Taft. Foxen Canyon Road near Los Olivos. A number of farm roads near Shandon.

Shocks first, then springs. Also, make sure you buy and install new bump stops when you get your shocks.

Mandatory for proper downshifting while braking before a turn. For your next event, forget about trailbraking or anything new. Here are soem basic tips: 1. After the start, get the car into second gear and leave it there for the entire run unless you have to upshift at redline. Don't worry about downshifting into first. 2. Look up, look ahead. Although you don't fixate one something, you should be looking at the second corner coming up most of the time. 3. Brake hard in a straight line before you get to the corner and if you left foot brake then trail up off the brake as you start to turn into the corner. If you don't left foot brake, don't learn on the course. Practice left foot braking in your daily driver car. 4. As you approach the corner apex start squeezing on the gas. As you start to unwind the steering wheel add more throttle. Be careful because a stock suspension Z can push under power in a corner. In a RWD car you can and should get on the gas sooner in a corner then in a FWD car. The big difference in cornering between FWD and RWD is that in a RWD car you go into the corner a bit slower and get on the gas sooner.

That would be impressive. Best I've measured is 53% on the rear with an SR20DET swap. Regarding tire size, the 285/35-18 is where the tire manufacturers are spending their development time. Originally Hoosier built the 275-15 by adding a strip to the middle of their 225. That carcass wasn't designed from the start to be a 275 but they may have redone the tire to be a dedicated 275. If you're really thinking out of the box, I suggest you consider a Powerglide for the transmission behind your SR. With a good torque converter and rear gears in the 4.88 / 5.12 range you should be able to build a top gear range of 30 to 80 mph while still being on boost.

Where to begin... Look for the alignment settings sticky in this forum. The autocross/road race alignment numbers are what you need to hit to get the 240Z to turn-in better and stay neutral in a corner. The expense is making the suspension and chassis modifications to allow enough adjustment to get to those numbers. At a minimum you'll need: Stiffer springs Better shocks Camber plates One point - driving style has a lot do with how the car behaves in a corner. This sentence: ...leads me to believe you're throwing in too much steering on corner entry and the tires can't keep up. Its made even worse if you're entering the corner too fast, and being on the brakes when you turn-in gives the front tires an impossible task.

Maybe. Look at the top of the differential housing and see if there's a large K on it. That denotes the later, larger ID ring gear.

At least here in the US its an unknown. It requires the 115mm ID ring gear which is fairly easy to find in automatic 280Zs, auto 280ZXs, the front diffs on 720 pickups, early Maximas, etc. That size ring gear is also still available in very limited ratios from Nissan Motorsports.

The combined weight of the SR, the turbo, the intercooler, and associated plumbing make the SR swap very close to the weight of a NA L6. And you can move the L6 back in the engine compartment and get the weight distribution close to the same as an SR swap. There's a thread here that compares the NA L6 I built for myself with a SR20DET swap I did for a customer. Overall weights were within 10 lbs and the weight distribution was within 1%. The SR swapped car made 100 more hp then my NA L6. I was originally building my 240Z for SM2 back when Dennis Grant and others had just created SM. Talking with Howard Duncan convinced him that a two seater sports car version of SM would be a good idea. Unfortunately, SCCA got some bad information about potential participants and started messing with the weight/displacement/aspiration formula before any car had made a run. The original specs made a NA 240Z at 3L run at 2,100 lbs. My car came in at 2,150 lbs. in SM2 legal trim and made 320hp. I think a 400 to 450 hp 240Z running 285/30-18 V710s and some triple adjustable Penske's or Ohlins would win SM2 with a good shoe.

Why don't you contact the person you bought the shocks from for answers to these questions? I don't mind helping but since I sell these parts too, I get irritated sometimes when people buy parts from someone else and then expect me to provide product support.

Tokico includes new gland nuts, a spacer, and a new nylock shock nut with each shock. If you're kit did not come with those parts the seller didn't include them for whatever reason. FYI... Tokico does not sell directly, you bought the shocks from a Tokico Warehouse Distributor and some of those guys skim parts out of the package and sell them separately. You can seal any gland nut with what I posted above.

FYI... a SR20DET swap is not any lighter then a NA L6 install. The added weight of the turbo, intercooler, and intercooler plumbing pretty much negates the weight advantage of an SR20DET swap over a NA L6. The SR20DET does save weight over an L28T swap.

Happy birthday Ron.

The OEM gland nuts had an o-ring seal. Aftermarket gland nuts from Tokico and Koni are not completely oil tight and you can get some weeping if you get the oil fill level too high. If its a concern, you can use teflon tape on the gland nut threads and a very, very small bead of silicon sealer on the underside of the gland nut where is touches the top of the shock.

A SR20DET 240Z can win SM2 nationally, but it has to be built as a pure autocross car. Compromises for the street (like rubber/oil filled engine mounts) will reduce its capabilities.