johnc

Rockets are typically used behind 4 cylinder cars and are limited to about 250 ft. lbs. of torque with dog engagement. Quaife Sierras are good to 300 ft. lbs. and 350 ft. lbs. with dog engagement.

Friday April 27th through Sunday April 29th, 2007. If you're going to show your car, you must pre-register. No more drive-ups. I'll be an instructor at the autocross and I'll be walking around during the show.

$4,800 including a spare tire back in 1999. A couple things to keep in mind, Featherlite trailer really hold their value. Last weekend at Cal Speedway I had someone, right out of the blue, offer me $3,500 for the trailer. They are also pretty big theft targets - aluminum scrap is around $1.50 a pound right now. Twice I've had someone try and steal the trailer and both times the 3/8" hardened steel chain I wrap through the wheels on both sides stopped them. The trailer tongue locks didn't slow them down at all but they obviously got tired of dragging the trailer with four wheels skidding across the pavement.

I spent the money back in 1999 and bought a Featherlite open trailer and it's been the best motorsports related puchase I made. I added a big tool box and a tire rack, all out of aluminum. I've neve rbeen happier and the trailer pulls like a dream. I made the mistake of letting friends borrow it and in three cases (twice with one person) the trailer came back damaged. Think twice about loaning your trailer out. Also, for a winch, I mounted a car battery in the tool box and I use a cheap Northern Tool 2,000 lb winch that clips to a chain I string between the front two tie downs. Just clip the power leads on the winch to the battery and I can pull up a Z very easily.

Regarding tie down: I do not tie a car down by just the wheels. Letting the sprung weight move aorund freely can result in sympathetic bouncing on a rough road and severly damage the suspension on the trailered car. I was following an ITS E36 BMW to Pahrump heading north from Baker. There's a series of bumps/whoops along that road and that BMW bounced and crashed hard on its bump stops. When we got to the track its two rear shocks were blown and there was shock fluid everywhere under the car and on the trailer. One shock had busted through its top mount into the car's interior.

IMHO... 1. Buy the newest trailer you can afford. Most steel open wheel trailers are good for 10 years and then they are junk. 2. Torsion axles are nice riding, maintenance free, and let the trailer ride lower then a leaf spring setup. 3. Buy as long a trailer (18 ft. deck the best) as you can. It leaves room from tool boxes, a tire rack, and room for good, straight pulls with the tie downs. 4. Removable fenders are nice and make it much easier getting in and out of the car. 5. Check the wiring and see if its run inside tubing or just left hanging under the trailer. Protected wiring lasts far longer then bare wires. 6. Dovetails help with loading but the breakover can cause its own problems. 7. An open center on the trailer helps with undercar maintenance and tie down but its a leg breaker and sometimes makes the trailer heavier, depending on the construction. Its also a good place for things to fall which makes crawling under the trailer a more frequent occurrance. 8. Look for nice ramp stowage and get 8' foot ramps if possible. The lighter the better. 9. Look for some protection around the lights. 10. Inspect the brakes and wheels bearings before buying.

Just gut the interior, add a roll cage, window net, race seat, fuel cell, kill switch - SCCA ITR Baby! Funny how warped my thinking is...

Glad to hear you've making minimum wage now. Ever heard of the term, "Starving artist?" As part of getting ready for tax time, I ran a report in Quickbooks that calculates a person's effective hourly rate over some time period. I, stupidly, did it from the inception of BetaMotorsports. I have yet to reach the hourly wage I was earning back in 1978 when I pumped fuel, cleaned bathrooms, and emptied trash at a marina in Lake Tahoe.

http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=116319

Sorry to hear about your loss.

Now that you have a plan to build a real FP car, my answer to this question is, No. Focus on the easily replaceable parts and save your money for the FP car. Rear Aluminum offset inner LCA bushings. OEM rubber or poly outer LCA bushings. 280Z rear LCAs (if you want to strengthen things a bit). ST rear anti-roll bar (19mm). 250 lb. in rear springs. Camber plate. Front Aluminum offset inner LCA bushing. Aluminum/delrin TC rod bushing or stock rubber. Polyurethane steering rack bushings. Solid steering shaft coupler. Bumpsteer spacers (can't relocate the inner LCA mount up in SM2). ST front anti-roll bar (25mm) 225 lb. in. front springs. Camber plate.

I couldn't imagine seam welding a car with a TIG. That would be like running a marathon on your knees. One huge help with seam welding the car is to get the chassis media blasted and tell the blaster the car is going to be seam welded. Ask them to try their best to clean out the seam sealer without overheating or damaging the chassis. Unfortunately, a lot of the blasting media is now trapped under the seams, but putting an air hammer with a brass tip on a a strong part of the crossmember and hammering away will vibrate a lot of that media back out. Wear ear plugs (its amazing how the bare chassis acts as a huge speaker for the air hammer) and rotate the car on the rotissierre while hammering.

If you want a set of hood pins that are a work of art: http://www.hoodpins.com/index.html

Glad you got it! Yes, you have to drill the holes yourself and use nuts/ bolts to fasten the hood to the front hinges. The positioning of those holes is critical to proper alignment for each individual car. That flat area is reinforced but don't torque the nuts and bolts down too much. You can also use Click Bond or other types of bondable composite inserts/studs but they are around $10 each. If getting to the holes to install the nuts is a pain, try cutting a small slot on the outboard vertical side of the frame so you can get your fingers or a box end wrench in there. When cutting the holes, use a Unibit on a slow/medium speed. Don't use a regular drill bit. Also, be sure to remove ALL the hinge springs.

Are running the stock 240Z rear drum brakes or a rear disk conversion?

Enough to sell me your nice car for $100 and solve your little self-esteem issue? Stop beating yourself up with hindsight. You built your car way back when to meet some goals, and now those goals have changed based on experience and knowledge you didn't have way back when. Get over it. Sit down, write up your goals, and start working on a plan to get there.

Bryan and were able to fit the 23.5 x 9 x 15 slicks under the stock sheetmetal on his ITS 240Z and they worked very well on the track. So well we had to bump up the spring rates to keep the car from falling over on the outside tires under turn-in and acceleration. The above picture shows the car at the legal 5" ITS ride height. We dropped the car another 1.5" from this picture after the first test session. Unfortunately Zredbaron has to run 16" wheels to clear his brakes, otherwise these slicks in an R25 compund would be the answer.

Don't look at a limited prep road race EP car for an example of the best way of doing things. SCCA severly limits the preparation allowed for 240Zs in EP. They run 15 x 7 wheels because they have to and Goodyear/Hoosier make special bias ply cantaliever slicks that give 9" of tread width on a 7" rim. They work for road race, but unless you can get a super soft qualifying compound (R25 or softer) they are useless for autocross. We ran these slicks on Bryan Lampe's ITS 240Z in the first OTC and they worked very well for 6 heat cycles. Less well after that. We also had to roll the front and rear fender lips and still had rubbing in the rear.

That's something you'll have to figure out for yourself after spending some time searching the vast amount of information here. Sometime using Google with the search terms: "hybridz" "N42" "P90" will give better results then our own internal search utility.

I thought this had something to do with Star Trek, "Captain! The Romulans are charging their Romulator and are ready to attack!"

And if you call the techs at Tokico, they say the BZ3099 and BZ3015 are good to 250 lb. in. I've broken BZ3015s with 300 lb. in. springs. I've had customers break BZ3099s with 275 lb. springs. There are probably some Tokico Illuminas that are good to a 500 lb. in. rate, but none of them fit in a 240Z strut tube.

OK, that limits everything. Your tire chocies are: Hoosier A6S06 225/50-16 Kumho V710 225/50-16 The Hoosier is arguably faster but has half the useful life. With either tire you'll want to run as much spring as your shocks will allow. Tokico Illuminas are limited to 250 lb. in, Koni 8610/8611 can go tot he high 300s, and custom valved Bilsteins can go anywhere you want with spring rates. More spring, less bar.