johnc

Deisgning the part and testing it are the most time consuming aspects of product development. Actually amking the part is reasonably inexpensive if there's enough volume to make a production run. A vendor (like me) needs to recoup his design and development costs over the expected sale slife of the product. In the S30 world, most production runs are for 10 to 25 items so development costs are a pretty high percentage of the cost of each part sold. In most other (profitable) automotive markets, development costs are a very small percentage of the thousands of parts produced. From research I've done, the entire Datsun and Nissan aftermarket is smaller then the market for any one of these three brands of cars: Civic, Mustang, and Camaro. The fact that any vendors tries to service this market is suprising. I question my market choice every day...

$200 for all 4 struts. Typical junkyard/parts house complete strut corners are $30 to $60.

Bullshit! Or that was to loosest tech I've ever heard of.

Geez! C'mon guys! This isn't rocket science. Find some round aluminum tube that has about a 2.175" ID to fit over the 280Z struts. Maybe a 2.5" OD tube that has a .157 wall thickness?

I sell "plug and play" strut kits for 240Zs: http://www.betamotorsports.com/products/240StrutKit.html

Ick! Buy the right CLR bend.

There are camber plates that don't require any cutting or welding: http://www.betamotorsports.com/products/EMIPlates.html To keep from having to weld the threaded collar perch on the strut tube for your coilover installation, you can take some 2" ID aluminum tubing and cut it to the proper length so that the tube rests on the hub casting at the bottom of the strut.

Why would you be making an angle cut on round tubing? Shouldn't all cuts be perpendicular to the tubing centerline?

What you're looking for here in the US is a N42 block out of a 1975 280Z. Those had the highest nickel content of any L6 block sold here in the states.

Have at it: http://www.delwestusa.com/news/DelWestCatalog-12-04.pdf

Hoosier makes a 275/45-16 in A6 and R6. Section width is almost 12". Here's a picture of those on the same 16 x 10 rims.

Kumho V700s 265/45-16 on 16 x 10 Kodiaks. They are not stretched because the V700s have an 11" section width. Don't always believe the numbers on the sidewall.

Absolutely. Turbulent flow is less efficient then laminar flow. Anything you can do to reduce turbulence in the intake tract will increase flow, regardless of pressure. Taken to extremes, a good flowing intake will make more horsepower with less boost then a poor flowing intake at higher boost numbers.

Labor is the best place to spend your time and dollars on when trying to build horsepower into a NA L6. Well built L24 engines can make 200+ crank horsepower on stock internals with SUs. With very careful assembly, some good head work, thoughtful parts selection, and proper tuning you should be able to exceed your goal with an L28. $5,000 is a good budget for a proper bottom end and head build.

That's not true. Pressurized air is still a fliud and the physics are still the same regarding fluid flow.

Ideally your velocity stack design should provide a constant radius entrance that lets air perpendicular to the flow smoothly transition into the stack. A sharp edge at the open end of the velocity stack causes turbulence as air from the sides flows into the opening. Once the air flows past that transition, that actual inner curvature of the stack can be fairly tight (more like a short/fat bell then a long tapered cone) without experiencing flow separation. The TWM carb intakes work very well and I've seen the results in dyno tests on NA L6s. http://www.twminduction.com/AirHorn/AirHorn.html

This isn't rocket science and it isn't difficult or expensive. If you had searched this site you would have found at least three posts by me listing various spanner wrenches needed to remove Koni style gland nuts (which is what you have on your front struts). Worst case you'll need a $17.95 adjustable spanner wrench. This part number from McMaster-Carr will get you what you want: 5472A1 (http://www.mcmaster.com.) If you actually measure the distance between the holes in the gland nut you can get by with a $7.95 fixed spanner wrench.

Odd criteria for making a tire selection: which tire will give me the least amount of traction. Myself, I would pick the tire that would get me the best ET.

Actually, my V8 vs. Inline 4 suggestion was made tongue in cheek because that's a topic here that quickly degenerates into name calling. Don't use it for your article.

There this misconception on the Internet that having good low and mid range torque will make your car faster around a road race track. It does not work out that way very often in the real world. Corner exit speed has everything to do with handling and how soon you can get on the throttle and very little to do with horsepower or torque. 140hp Spec Miatas and 110hp Spec Racer Fords have amazingly fast corner exit speeds, they just don't have the horsepower to build on those exit speeds down the next straight. On most road race tracks you are using about a 2,000 rpm range in each gear from 3rd through 5th, except for maybe one corner where you might need a 2,500 rpm range. If you gear the car correctly it really doesn't matter where that 2,000 rpm range is in the engine's rpm curve. That's why Honda S2Ks are so fast around a race track with only 164 ft. lb. of torque at 6,000+ rpms.

Hah! A cage can be done, start to finish, in less then a week (in the real world outside of Jon's garage ). There's no car on the planet that gets pained in less then a week, even at One Day... So if we extrapolate out the space time continium in Jon's garage with us out here, it looks like Jon's paint job will take at least 8 years to complete... ...look harder for the finger emoticon Jon...

Every single top level SCCA ITS racing NA 2.4L 240Z over at least the last 20 years ran a 3" exhaust. 2.5" might be "good enough" for some folks, but not for guys that are winning races.

13.6 to 1 CR on my old race car and you won't get that with flat tops. I ran Sunoco 112 leaded and O2 sensors are fine in a leaded environment if you don't idle the car a lot. I ran a Bosch 4 wire for 25 hours of racing without a problem. We also found that the car made more horsepower running in closed loop using a Motec M48 EMS. A good EMS and lots of cam duration are your keys to power and longevity with the kind of CR you're thinking about.

Watch out for the spiders... Good luck and thanks for serving.

http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=84203