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johnc

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Everything posted by johnc

  1. Looks like Cactus at Whiting.
  2. UNREAL AUTOSPORTS PO BOX 356 EASTWOOD NSW 2122 +61 2 9801 0626 sales@unrealautosports.com http://www.unrealautosports.com
  3. Take it to a radiator shop and have them clean it out. As stated above its something that probably needs to be done anyway and you need to get rid of as much rust and dirt as possible inside the tank near the weld area. I've welded a bunch of 240Z fuel tanks and unless you clean out the inside of the tank near where you're welding the fitting there's a good change of contaminating the weld. That means leaks.
  4. At the crank you'll see anywhere from 150 to 200hp depending on the quality of the engine build. A good used engine with the mods you listed will typically make around 160hp.
  5. According to AWS there are 250,000 welding jobs in this country that are going unfilled. When I was at the Lincoln Electric Welding school in Cleveland there were outside companies there interviewing all the students for jobs across the country. A lot of the young kids doing the Pipe certifications were recruited to work in Alaska. I talked at lunch with one 18 year old who accepted a position working on the pipline. He starts at $6,500 per month plus bonus with all room and board paid while he is up there working. He signed a two year contract and pocketted a $5,000 signing bonus. WTF? When I was 18 I was making $3.25 an hour and paid for my own room and food.
  6. My wife lived in Okinawa for 7 years when her dad was stationed there. As a little kid her mom would give her an allowance. My wife would call a cab and go to town with her friends and watch movies all day. She looks back on that time as one of the best times in her life.
  7. Funny, I did lap after lap. I tend to prefer the MM brakes. They have a stock type parking brake setup and installation is simple.
  8. None suprisingly, but I had a set of brand new 280Z 27 spline stub axles that I had shot peened and polished. Never had a problem again. Ross' stub axles are impressive and if I was building a similar car again I would probably go with them if I couldn't find a nice set of the 27 spline stub axles and companion flanges. Shot peening and polishing cost me $150 for the pair and junkyard 280Z stubs and companion flanges are $25.
  9. Its not something to worry yourself about if you treat your car like a real race car (meaning regular monthly inspection of the chassis, driveline, and suspension). The typical road race stub axle failure is the wheel stud flange separating from the stub axle itself at the fusion weld. Its caused by the flange and the stub axle flexing at the fusion weld. Any imperfection (rust spot, small crack, scratch) will create a stress riser and, over time, a crack will propogate from that point. In 10 years of racing 240Zs (probably 60,000 track miles) I've had two fail. And that was with 225 width tires and 200 horsepower. Once I polished the fusion weld area, kept my stubbies clean, and inspected them every month (along with the rest of the car) I never had another failure - even with 275 width Hoosiers and 320 horsepower. EDIT: And I was (am) a curb hopping fool. The Penske's I ran had special blowoffs that allowed me to pound a curb and not upset the chassis at all. I was running the 280Z 27 spline 4 lug stub axles and a Quaife diff.
  10. The DOE has declassified, released, scanned, and made available via a web site some of the earliest research into welding stainless steel pipeing for nuclear reactors and nuclear material processing equipment. For a welder, its pretty fascinating to read about the early efforts at TIG welding stainless steels and the radioactivity/corrosion issues they faced. Most of the documents are from the Hanford facility. http://www2.hanford.gov/declass/ A simpler search using "welding" turns up a lot of cool documents.
  11. I took the ER120S-3 filler back this morning. I can't think of any alloy steel I'll ever weld that will need that kind of strength and I can really use the ER70S-2. If something does come a long, I know where to find the super strong stuff. The guys a the welding supply shop were thoroughly confused becasue they sold me a sealed 10 lb. box. Looks like Harris is screwing up at the plant.
  12. So, I've got this R180 moustache bar that I have to reinforce a bit and redrill for a R200. I plate the center area and proceed to fill the old holes in the bar prior to redrilling with what I thought was ER70S-2 filler. With the bar mounting in my mill I check up a .563" TIN HSS drill and start making a hole. It goes nowhere. Coolant, slow speed, lots of pressure, and its like I'm drilling hardened steel. It took 15 minutes to get one hole drilled and another 15 minutes (and a second bit) to drill the second hole. WTF? Sitting at my welding table, grumbling about the drilling hell I just went through and getting ready to start welding another project, I notice the stub end of the filler I used to fill the holes in the moustache bar. I look at the filler number coined in the end: ER120S-3! Holy crap! I look at the 10 lbs of filler I just bought. Its all ER120S-3 in a box labeled ER70S-2. Luckily this was my second job using this filler and the first was something that a super high strength (120,000 psi) filler won't affect. Now I've got 10 lbs of filler strong enough to weld a nuclear containment vessel. Luckily I only paid ER70 pricing for this stuff. But it did cost me $18.00 in drill bits and 30 minutes of confusion and frustration.
  13. If your goal is a good handling track car (Time Attack), you'll need to mount that VQ as far back and down in the chassis as possible. From my measurements the VQ is about 5" longer from the front pulley to the shifter position (assuming you're going to use the Nissan 6 speed). That will put the shifter 8 to 12" further behind the stock location in the 240Z. You'll also need to fabricate or find a rear sump oil pan (or go dry sump), fabricate the entire exhaust system, check on accessory drive clearance over the front crossmember, check hood clearance (the VQ is a tall engine), and do all the other chassis updates required for 450hp in the 240Z chassis. If you want something that drives under its own power, you can probably do this for about $20,000. If you truly want a track car, figure $32,000. Better start polishing up that check wrench.
  14. My first stepdad flew B24s in North Africa and Italy during WW2. He hated the flying characteristics of the plane but it saved his life a couple times. He later transferred to B26s with 320th and absolutely raved about that aircraft. His squadron would actually go looking to shoot down a few ME109s after they completed their bomb runs. His plane had 8 forward firing .50 cal machine guns in addition to 2 in the top turret and 2 in the tail.
  15. Schroth offers a number of DOT approved four point harnesses.
  16. An accident like that is a rare occurance, that's why it sticks in our minds. The majority of accidents involve the front and rear of the vehicle. I don't know what the percentages are but someone posted links to the government data somewhere above. A perfect 90 degree side impact that hits squarely in the door and misses the rear wheel well or the front firewall is also a very rare occurance. These rare occurances tend to focus our attention beyond any reasonable evaluation of the chance of it happening. Its like airliner crashes. They are horrific when they occur, but you have a better chance of dying from bee sting then getting killed in a plane crash. Time and effort to improve the safety in a 240Z would be better spent on a properly mounted FIA approved race seat and a DOT approved 4 point harness system. That would do far more then adding door bars, subframe connectors, or rocker bars because the seat and harness will help protect you in ALL accidents, not the rare freak ones.
  17. This thread is turing into an internet engineering masterbation exercise. Its next to impossible to get OEM crash data and the data for the 240Z is long gone. Our only real source of safety modification data for our 35 year old cars are the racing sanctioning bodies. Look to their rule requirements for side impact protection. Welding a bar into the door that's not design to handle the additional load is foolish. Welding a bar into a rocker panel that's below standard bumper height just adds weight to the car. Adding a door bar to a roll bar (6 point setup) without additional floor pan reinforcement or a knee bar is a leg crusher. SCCA has this stuff figured out. GCR section 18.
  18. At the track you really don't have time to setup strings so I use toe plates. In your example, measuring at the rim, you're toe number will be greater if you use toe plates because the angle is extended out past the edge of the tire using plates. My guess is that if I put toe plates on your car I would measure about 5/16 to 3/8" of total toe out. Strings are really good for squaring the car and getting the thrust angle correct. When I string a car I: 1. Set the ride height. 2. Set the center of each hub square to the strings. 3. Set the front and rear wheels square to the strings at zero camber. 4. Set the thrust angle. 5. Set camber. 6. Remove the strings and use toe plates to set toe. I usually end up going through steps 2 through 4 a few times until everything measures right. Sometimes it takes 6 hours to get through steps 2 through 4...
  19. When we talk about toe we are generally refering to total toe. Meaning 1/4" of toe out is 1/8" of toe out on one wheel. In your example above you've got 1/4" of toe out which is a whole bunch. Probably OK for autocross but too much for the track, especially a high speed track. Over time I tended to settle on 3/16" toe out for autocross and 1/8" toe out for track use - measured using Longacre toe plates. That's with 6 to 7 degrees of caster and 3 to 3.5 degrees of front camber. YMMV
  20. I hate drilling holes in stainless. Slow with a LOT of coolant is the only way.
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