johnc

Search this site for recommended alignment settings.

With different brands of tires front and rear it will be hard to do any tuning. As suggested, try swapping tires front to rear and see what happens.

No, I think he admitted to being poultry progeny.

For stub axles that fit a 240/260/280Z the spline counts are 25 and 27. The 27 spline stub axles came in 280Zs with manual transmissions. 280ZX stub axles were all 25 spline if I'm not mistaken.

Anyone want a nice, strong harness to keep your head from bobbing forward from sleep on those long, lonely drives? BTW... the reason I didn't ever use my Hutchens device was that the helmet was connected by the straps to your crotch. I figured, in a wreck, your balls were sacrificed to save your neck.

We need more info to determine what's causing your understeer: 1. Is the understeer on corner entry, mid corner, or corner exit? 2. Does it understeer more under power? 3. How do you correct for the understeer? 4. How hard are you entering the corner under braking? 5. Are you trail braking? 6. How much racing experience do you have? 7. What size wheels and tires front and rear? 8. What air pressures are you running? 9. What are your alignment settings? 10. What kind of rear differential? Let's start with those questions. FYI... the problem is most likely NOT your front anti-roll bar.

I've had a Hutchens Device for sale for a while now: http://www.betamotorsports.com/products/hutchens.html I bought a HANS device. Seems that most sanctioning bodies are moving towards the HANS over all the others. I paid $825 for mine.

Actually, just post an English translation along with the original language text. And I was worried that I had drunk too much coffee.

No. I searched their site and didn't find it. The article uses one of their project Miatas (the white one) for the test.

Grassroots Motorsports did a test of this very subject a year or two ago. Search their web site for the article. On a race track you spend the most time: 1. Accelerating 2. Cornering 3. Braking So anything that helps acceleration is a good thing. What's funny though is that the best thing you can do to help acceleration is start accelerating from a higher speed. That helps much more then just adding horsepower. So, increasing corner exit speed is the best way to improve acceleration.

They should be OK, as long as they don't let Stirling Moss drive it.

Why not? The Chaprraral cars worked well. It was the other bozos that tried to copy what Jim Hall and Bill Milliken were doing that gave moveable aerodynaics a bad name.

I smell a troll.

If both wheels are spinning a differential is not doing much work. The rear end itself might be heating up from the work the ring and pinion is doing but the differential has got it fairly easy. Differentials work the hardest when a engine is at max torque, tires a gripping well, and the car is accelerating around a turn - the sharper the turn the more work the diff has to do. Autocross tends to be the hardest on diffs.

Koni also has a double adjsutable 8611 that works well in a 240Z strut. The only issue is that the compression adjuster is on the bottom of the shock. You can get to it fine in the rear if you drill a hole in the bottom of the strut. For the fronts, the ball joint is in the way, but jacking the car up and removing the two steering arm to strut bolts is not that big a deal. Again, you'll need a small hole in the bottom of the strut to get to the adjuster. And, your spacers need to have a small hole in them also. FYI... I need to update my web site. The Koni 8610-1149 I used in my strut package is NLA and the replacement 8610-1437 has too stiff compression damping for the 240Z. I can build the strut package with Tokicos or the Koni double and adjust the price accordingly.

Since the regular diff oil comes in contact with the sealed VLSD it does have a cooling affect. Keeping the diff oil as cool as possible will delay the problems with VLSDs discussed here.

http://www.engineering.com/content/ContentDisplay?contentId=41004012 You can do the math beforehand to save a lot of this trial and error effort. Aslo, remember one aspect of Pascal's Law is the distance traveled is porpotional too.

I just finished doing some welding for an industrial automation firm. They build a bunch of robots that take wheel castings off a converyor and load them into heat treating ovens. The wheels are 20 to 26" in diameter and the weights are from about 80 to about 180 pounds!

Cheap, soft organic pads as Jon recommended. You might also want to install a lever action bias adjuster (Tilton makes one) and put the bias all the way to the rear, apply the brakes, and then push the lever back to the middle (in case of an "issue" down track).

Over the years I've learned there are really no intermediate steps in track safety. You either go all the way or rely on the factory safety equipment. We've had a thread locally about a WRX STi driver who replaced his factory wheel (w/air bag) with a non-air bag Sparco wheel and replaced the factory harnesses with Schroth 4 point DOT harnesses. On the front straigh at the Streets of Willow he swerved to avoid a piece of debris on track and lost control of the car. He went off track and hit a concrete barrier (the ONLY one) at 70+mph. His girlfriend was riding as a passenger. Both were helicoptered out and both were in ICU for a while. She has since been released and he is still in from the last I heard. Lots of conjecture but the armchair engineering concensus is that the removal of the air bag was foolish and the installation of the Schroth harness contributed to the injuries because the shoulder harnesses were mounted to the rear lap belt mounting points. Too low - which allowed more forward movement then necessary. If your car is primarily a street car, rely on the factory safety equipment. Even a design as old as in a 240Z has sound engineering and testing behind it. If you want to improve things, you must get serious: 1. Properly mounted FIA approved racing seat. 2. Roll bar, roll cage, or very strong rear strut tower bar for harness mounting. 3. Properly mounted harnesses. And when you get on the track: 1. Snell approved SA helmet (no Ms anymore). 2. Fire extinguisher. 3. Gloves. 4. Nomex underwear (at a minimum). 5. Long cotton pants. 6. Long cotton shirt. 7. No nylon anywhere on your body including your shoes. 8. Window net or arm restraints.

Search. This has been covered here many times before. Andy Flagg holds a number of LSR records in his stock bodied 3L 260Z 2+2 at around 175mph.

Yeah, you could. I even researched all of that and had a design drawn up for installation in the "Science Experiment." But, the car was fast enough without all of the extra work. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Plus, in most of the racing classes where you would really benefit from this kind of engineering (ITS, EP), a modified crossmember is not allowed.

The 301s are discontinued and have been replaced with the 311s. The web site hasn't been updated in a while and Bill Baker (the new owner) is working to get things up to date.

Yes, I've done it at a race track. Use a brass punch or bar to carefully tap the old bearing out and clean inside the hub. You have to be very careful tapping the new bearing in place. Make absolutely sure its going in square to the hub. Try to find a short length of pipe that just fits the outside bearing race or very carefully use the brass punch.

I just bought a 71 240Z that has the Grant GT Challenger 440 wheel on it. I'll be removing that wheel soon for a Momo Airleather so if anyone wants the Grant, hit me an e-mail. Its in perfect shape. $50 which includes all the parts I remove (hub, nuts and bolts, etc.)