johnc

I got the Harwood Cobra R hood and here are some comparison shots with a stock 240Z hood. It looks like the stock 240Z hood bulge will have to go. The hood will look pretty much like the Cobra R hood except it will be a bit longer and fit the 240.

Well, then they don't know about mine: http://www.betamotorsports.com/products/index.html and if you need it to bolt onto the stock hood hinges and use the stock hood latch: And yes, PTM&W Aeropoxy, bagged, cooked, and with a Nomex honeycomb core.

I know its a long drive for you, but I recommend Superior Automotive Engineering in Anaheim, CA. I used them 3 different times for chassis dyno tuning on my L6 and, after environmental corrections, they were within .5% every time. http://www.superiorautomotive.com/

Yes, something like that but you need to do the rear wheel rate calculation to come out with the correct rate for the back. The ratio is NOT 2 to 1 (as I used in my example). BTW... to run spring rates in front like I've been talking about (350 lb. in.) you must have a full welded in roll cage and chassis reinforcement. To run 600 lb. in. front springs you will most likely need to replace the front sheet metal with a tube structure. Racing 240Zs with 8 point welded in roll cages are limited to about 350 lb. in. front spring rates. Anything over that and the front structure itself starts bending and becomes a spring.

I'll take a stab at it, but I have little experience with the semi-trailing arm rear suspensions on the ZXs. Ideally, for a true road race car (full cage, chassis reinforcement, sticky tires, etc.) then you're looking for wheel rates around 350 lb. in. as a starting point. For the strut front of your Maxima that means spring rates right at 350 lb. in. For the rear semi-trailing arm suspension you will have to calcualte the lever angle induced by the trailing arm to come up with the correct value for the actual spring rate. If you've got a 2 to 1 ratio (just a random ratio I threw out) your spring rate will need to be 700 lb. in. to hit a wheel rate of about 350 lb. in. You'll also need to find some serious adjustable race shocks to handle those rates. Koni, Tien, Penske, Ohlins are what you'll need to source and the installation and valving will be custom because I don't know of anyone making off the shelf stuff for the ZX anymore. Anti-roll bars will also probably be custom because the chassis mounting points are different from the Maxima to the ZX.

Regarding your first question: 1. What do you intend to do with your Maxima? Autocross, road race, drag, drive it on the street? BTW... this is probably the wrong board to be asking questions about that car. Try maxima.org. Regarding your second question: 1. No one makes adjustable arms for the ZX. 2. http://hybridz.org/nuke/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=search

Comparing dyno numbers from one dyno to the next is a fool's errand. You're just going to make your head hurt...

Regarding Charlie Booker's quote, it seems the Guardian deleted the original article and put this correction in its place: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/tvradio/story/0,14676,1335307,00.html I did find the last part of the original article here but it might be taken out of context and part of a larger, satirical piece:

The responses are pretty funny and the UK got a taste of the vast range of wacky folks here in the US. It appears that the majority are from people who were never contacted, just folks who heard about the story. I guess that most folks who received an e-mail probably deleted it as SPAM. From an "unsolicited e-mail" point of view, absolutely. From a media/entertainment point of view, no. But, what's really pissed off us here in the US is the comment by Charlie Booker in the Guardian advocating the assasination of our President. Regardless of your political leanings, that kind of "humor" doesn't go over very well on this side of the Atlantic.

Answers: 1. Werner von Braun, Henry Kissinger, and Edward Teller. There's also conjecture that the character Rotwang in Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS inspired the crazy mechnical arm. 2. "Merkwerdichliebe" which translates (syllabically) into: 3. "Strange love." But my German friends say that word wouldn't exist and should actually be "Merkwuerdigichliebe" which translates directly into "adored fate" or "beloved fate." http://www.krusch.com/kubrick/Q06.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove

Mine is pretty simple: An individual or group who intentionally targets civilians to achieve political, religion, or other ends. To a large degree that includes any military that intentionally targets civillian populations. That would also include ALL the major combatants in WW2. Yup. Good place for him. But he won't get the job unless Kerry gets elected.

Since you're obviously a fan, a Dr. Strangelove test (without Googling anything): 1. Who are the three men that are generally considered to be the basis for the character Dr. Strangeleove? 2. What was Dr. Strangelove's name before he changed it? 3. And what does that name mean translated into English?

Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenzo once said about war? No. I don't think I do sir, no. He said war was to important to be left to the Generals. When he said that, fifty years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

With a committee... http://www.un.org/terrorism/a57273.htm I feel safer now that the UN is using "norm setting" to "dissuade" terrorists from acting. Funny... how can you prevent or combat something if you won't even make an effort to define it? Yeah, the "international legitimacy" and Kofi Anon's "credibility" helped in Iraq when the terrorists blew up the head of the UN mission or in the Sudan when they are ignoring the UN completely as the Muslims murder tens of thousands of Christians. And, thier number 1, most important recommendation to fight terrorism: Get the UN member states to ratify conventions written 5 years ago! Please, someone, anyone explain to me why we should have waited for the UN's blessing before we made an effort to stop more of our citizens from being murdered? Anyone?

A nice historical comparision/analysis of the war in Iraq from: http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/10/war-plan-orange-in-retrospect-saddams.html War Plan Orange In retrospect Saddam's plan to defend Iraq may bear a resemblance to War Plan Orange's retreat into Bataan. Since reinforcements could not come to the aid of US divisions in the Philippine Islands in time to repel an anticipated Japanese invasion, the plan called for the abandonment of the capital and a concentration of forces and supplies into the Bataan peninsula, where MacArthur's forces could hope to hold out until relief eventually arrived. MacArthur attempted to change the plan at the last moment, attempting to fight near the beaches and was belatedly forced readopt the strategy of withdrawing into Bataan, a mistake which cost him thousands of tons in supplies. Still, by skillful rearguard actions at the Agno and Pampanga Rivers, MacArthur slipped 80,000 men into his defensive redoubt and held out for four months. Three years later, Tomoyuki Yamashita, facing the same strategic problem against superior forces, moved his 272,000 troops into the mountainous spine of Luzon where he held out for a little over eight months. Faced with an invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam carried out his own sideslip maneuver into a redoubt. The Duelfer report notes that Saddam may have begun moving his WMD materials into Syria as the US vainly attempted to get UN authorization to topple his regime. Duelfer agreed that a large amount of material had been transferred by Iraq to Syria before the March 2003 war. "A lot of materials left Iraq and went to Syria," Duelfer said. "There was certainly a lot of traffic across the border points. We've got a lot of data to support that, including people discussing it. But whether in fact in any of these trucks there was WMD-related materials, I cannot say." At least some of that was the key munition of modern terrorist warfare -- money. Syria has acknowledged that its banks have held funds for Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, reports Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service. But the regime of President Bashar Assad disputes U.S. officials who say Syria was harboring about $3 billion in Saddam funds. Instead, Syria maintains that its Iraqi assets have not exceeded $300 million. If MacArthur's delaying actions at the Agno and Pampanga Rivers enabled him to get his forces into Bataan intact, the successful campaign to prevent the US from pushing the 4ID down from Turkey gave Saddam the time and space to move assets into Syria and disperse munitions and men into the Sunni Triangle. About 600,000 tons of munitions were dispersed throughout the country of which 100,000 tons -- five Hiroshima bombs worth of explosive -- were taken to Anbar province in the Sunni Triangle alone. The ammunition is strewn all over Iraq, and provides insurgents with easily accessible free material to make bombs ... "Approximately 100,000 of the estimated 600,000 tons of explosives in the country are located in the Al Anbar Province, I MEF’s area of responsibility," said Army Capt. Elmer Bruner Jr., the officer in charge of the operation for the battalion. Nor was there any shortage of men to use these weapons. Former CPA Administrator Paul Bremer noted that 100,000 convicted criminals were released just before US forces overran the cities, ready to be officered, along with many Sunnis, by either the cadre of the former Ba'athist dominated armies or international terrorists flooding in from Iran and Syria. Conceptually, the defense plan was similar to Lieutenant- General Ushijima's scheme to hold Okinawa. He offered no resistance either on the beaches or in the northern part of the island, preferring to withdraw his men behind the Shuri Line, honeycombed with secret tunnels and caves. All the while American forces battered against prepared positions, the Kamikaze suicide corps would take its grim toll of the supply lines and support units offshore until the US population grew weary of war. It was a campaign where nearly 1,000 men could die in an afternoon as actually occurred when Kamikazes hit the Essex class carrier Franklin with heavy loss. The Americans lost 7,373 men killed and 32,056 wounded on land. At sea, the Americans lost 5,000 killed and 4,600 wounded. The Japanese lost 107,000 killed and 7,400 men taken prisoner. It is possible that the Japanese lost another 20,000 dead as a result of American tactics whereby Japanese troops were incinerated where they fought. The Americans also lost 36 ships. 368 ships were also damaged. 763 aircraft were destroyed. The Japanese lost 16 ships sunk and over 4,000 aircraft were lost. These casualties -- compressed into four months -- would be unbelievable by today's standards. They were barely supportable, even to the hard men of the Greatest Generation and were a major factor in the subsequent decisions to incinerate the Japanese cities and use the atomic bomb. But no one knew at the time that Okinawa was the latest major land engagement of the Pacific War. The major modern innovation of the Arab Way of War has been its radical new conception of defense in depth. The concept made its debut in Algeria; it was subsequently refined in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Checnya and the West Bank. Unlike Ushijima's Shuri Line with its tunnels in rock, the Arab redoubt was founded on establishing an underground of terror in the civilian populace. From the anonymity of crowds, they could emerge to attack the enemy from the rear as the Imperial Japanese Army once had done from tunnels. Faced with superior United States forces, this 21st century War Plan Orange was the natural choice of the Arab strategists. By denying the United States proof of its WMDs and grinding them down through occupation warfare -- the one mode of combat at which they excelled, they had a reasonable hope of holding America until a politician willing to treat with them was elected into office. There was no need for despair because, as James Lileks put it, "hope is on the way" -- a reference to the eventual actions of the antiwar Left. In Iraq the ultimate blitzkrieg force met the ultimate protracted war army and the protracted war army awaited events confidently. Shortly after declaring major combat operations over, the US must have realized, like Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner in Okinawa, that it had come up to the approaches of the Arab Shuri Line. Fortunately, not everything had gone according to the enemy's plan. Like MacArthur in Luzon, they had underestimated the speed of their opponent's advance. They enemy had probably not counted on OIF reaching Baghdad in 3 weeks. Their withdrawal into the redoubt, although substantial was still incomplete. But most importantly, they had not reckoned on the American ability to generate local forces against them, something the Israelis had never achieved. This took the shape of an interim Iraqi government in which Kurds and Shi'ites were major participants. They must have watched with mounting alarm as Iraqi security forces were raised against them. They had forgotten, too, that just as they had developed their tactics in Lebanon, the Americans were able to leverage Israeli tactics that were invented to counter them. The battle began to go against them from the start. In essence, Ba'athist-terrorist coalition was unable to inflict the losses necessary to disrupt the organizational learning curve of the American forces. Unlike the conscript Soviet Army, the American Armed Forces were a professional force that retained its core of officers, NCOs and to a large degree, even their enlisted men. Forces were rotated out of Iraq largely intact, where they incorporated lessons learned into the training cycle in CONUS; and relieving forces were improved accordingly. In 1980s, the Al Qaeda and not the Soviet Army had turned Afghanistan into a training ground but in 2003-2004, it was the US Armed Forces and not the terrorists that were coming away with organizational memory. Simply not enough of the enemy survived to pass on their experience and simply too many American lieutenants left Iraq to return as captains. The terrible enemy losses on the battlefield could not be wholly overcome by media plaudits which they received. At least 15,000 enemy cadres have been killed in the 17 months since OIF. Recently, the remains of a French jihadi were identified in Fallujah and his fate is probably a common one. While Afghanistan was once where the young fundamentalist fighter went to get experience, Iraq was now where the fundamentalist fighter went to die. One indication of the unfavorable trend faced by enemy forces face was the rapid transformation in US operations. It is interesting to compare Marine preparations to assault Fallujah in April 2004 with those apparently under way today, just months later. The Marine methods of April would have been instantly familiar to any military historian: hammer and anvil, seizure of key terrain; feint and attack. Today, many of the military objectives in the developing siege of the terrorist stronghold are abstract. They consist of developing a network of informers in the city; of setting up a functioning wireless network; of getting close enough for smaller US units to deploy their line-of-sight controlled UAV and UGV units to create a seamless operational and tactical environment to wage "swarm" warfare; of getting artillery and mortar units close enough to play hopscotch over everything the network decides to engage. To the traditional methods of warfare the Americans were adding a whole new plane which only they could inhabit. Faced with a force increasingly familiar with Arabia, with deep combat experience, nearly unlimited technical resources and growing lethality, the enemy, like Yamashita in the Cordilleras and Ushijima in Okinawa, can only hope to be saved by the bell. Objectively, there is little chance of that. But as Lileks said: "hope is on the way".

If Kerry would just keep his mouth shut... http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041025-020600-3030r.htm

And that's why I'm not afraid of the Patriot Act. Despite the Orwellian predictions many have made, we are not anywhere near what "1984" predicted and our system is working. Maybe not as well as some would like, but most of us can't even get our cars running as well as we would like...

And don't spend a lot of time trying to hit specific weight distribution numbers with these cars. They can be made to hnadle very well with the stock weight distribution spread. Changing the weight distribution and then adjusting the suspension for it is really only needed for dedicated road race or autocross Zs.

Absofrickinglutely! I even question the need for 1/8" anywhere. The thickest piece of steel I've used anywhere on any car I've done fab work on is .1196" (11 gauge) and that was for some roll cage mounting plate boxes on a 3,000lb car. Even then I felt kinda guilty about it...

And here's an article from today's WSJ that discusses taxes and labor markets: Why Do Americans Work More Than Europeans? By EDWARD C. PRESCOTT October 21, 2004; Page A18 Last week, The Wall Street Journal published a story describing a new method of measuring a nation's progress – "gross national happiness." Maybe it's because we're nearing the end of an election season, but one hopes that this indicator does not catch on. Of all the promises that candidates find themselves making, and of all the problems they pledge to fix, one shudders at the notion of pledges to make us happier. The mind reels at the thought of the ill-conceived policies that would be concocted if the stated goal were to increase gross national happiness. It's hard enough to make everybody more prosperous, educated and healthy, but imagine if the government was responsible for keeping you in a good mood. And just think about the data problems. I mention this not to poke fun at the idea of happiness. Indeed, our Constitution, in its elegant wisdom, allows for individuals to pursue happiness. But individual pursuit is far different from the aggregate management of happiness. This point is at the core of how we should think about many government policies, especially tax policy, which is the subject of this essay. * * * Let's begin by considering a commonly held view which says that labor supply is not affected by tax rates. This idea holds that labor participation would remain steady when tax rates are either raised or lowered. If you are a policy maker and you subscribe to this, then you can confidently increase marginal tax rates as high as you like to attain the revenues you desire. Not only that, but you can move those tax rates up and down whenever you like and blithely assume that this will have no effect on output. But economic theory and data have come together to prove this notion wrong, and we have many different laboratories -- or countries -- in which we can view live experiments. The most useful comparison is between the U.S. and the countries of Europe, because these economies share traits; but the data also hold when we consider other countries (more on those later). This issue is encapsulated in one question that is currently puzzling policy makers: Why do Americans work so much more than Europeans? The answer is important because it suggests policy proposals that will improve European standards of living (which should give a boost to its gross national happiness, by the way). However, an incorrect answer to that question will result in policies that will only exacerbate Europe's problems and could have implications for other countries that are looking for best practices. Here's a startling fact: Based on labor market statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Americans aged 15-64, on a per-person basis, work 50% more than the French. Comparisons between Americans and Germans or Italians are similar. What's going on here? What can possibly account for these large differences in labor supply? It turns out that the answer is not related to cultural differences or institutional factors like unemployment benefits, but that marginal tax rates explain virtually all of this difference. I admit that when I first conducted this analysis I was surprised by this finding, because I fully expected that institutional constraints are playing a bigger role. But this is not the case. (Citations and more complete data can be found in my paper, at http://www.minneapolisfed.org.) Let's take another look at the data. According to the OECD, from 1970-74 France's labor supply exceeded that of the U.S. Also, a review of other industrialized countries shows that their labor supplies either exceeded or were comparable to the U.S. during this period. Jump ahead two decades and you will find that France's labor supply dropped significantly (as did others), and that some countries improved and stayed in line with the U.S. Controlling for other factors, what stands out in these cross-country comparisons is that when European countries and U.S. tax rates are comparable, labor supplies are comparable. And this insight doesn't just apply to Western industrialized economies. A review of Japanese and Chilean data reveals the same result. This is an important point because some critics of this analysis have suggested that cultural differences explain the difference between European and American labor supplies. The French, for example, prefer leisure more than do Americans or, on the other side of the coin, that Americans like to work more. This is silliness. Again, I would point you to the data which show that when the French and others were taxed at rates similar to Americans, they supplied roughly the same amount of labor. Other research has shown that at the aggregate level, where idiosyncratic preference differences are averaged out, people are remarkably similar across countries. Further, a recent study has shown that Germans and Americans spend the same amount of time working, but the proportion of taxable market time vs. nontaxable home work time is different. In other words, Germans work just as much, but more of their work is not captured in the taxable market. I would add another data set for certain countries, especially Italy, and that is nontaxable market time or the underground economy. Many Italians, for example, aren't necessarily working any less than Americans -- they are simply not being taxed for some of their labor. Indeed, the Italian government increases its measured output by nearly 25% to capture the output of the underground sector. Change the tax laws and you will notice a change in behavior: These people won't start working more, they will simply engage in more taxable market labor, and will produce more per hour worked. This analysis has important implications for policy -- and not just for Europeans, but for the U.S. as well. For example, much has been made during this election season about whether the current administration's tax cuts were good or bad for the economy, but that is more a political question than a policy consideration and it misses the point. The real issue is about whether it is better to tweak the economy with short-lived stimulus plans or to establish an efficient tax system with low tax rates that do not change with the political climate. What does this mean for U.S. tax policy? It means that we should stop focusing our attention on the recent tax cuts and, instead, start thinking about tax rates. And that means that we should roll back the 1993 tax rate increases and re-establish those from the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Just as they did in the late 1980s, and just as they would in Europe, these lower rates would increase the labor supply, output would grow and tax revenues would increase. Now, might there be a small increase in debt as we move to a better tax system? Sure, but remember that the most important measure of debt is privately owned government debt as a percent of gross national income, which has been flat over the past three years. Also, there is a sure-fire way to handle this increase in debt, and that would be to cut expenditures. Actually, there is another way to handle it, and that would be to pray to the Gods for another high-tech boom and the debt would go "poof," and we'll praise whoever is president for being fiscally responsible. Some say that the 1993 tax-rate hike was responsible for erasing this country's debt problems because it increased government revenues. This is false. The ratio of U.S. debt to gross national income continued to increase in the years following those rate hikes and did not fall until the fortuitous boom that occurred in the late '90s. The high-tech boom meant that people worked more, output increased, incomes climbed and tax revenues followed suit. You cannot tax your way to that sort of prosperity. Imagine the outcome of the late-'90s boom if tax rates had been lower. And by the way, lower tax rates are good for all taxpayers. We're barking up the wrong tree if we think that "taxing the rich" will solve all our problems. You know who these rich people are? They're often families with two professional wage-earners. If you tax that family too much, one wage-earner will drop out, and that's not only bad for the income of that family but also for the output of the whole economy -- and will result in lower tax revenues. Also, we need to get away from thinking of the rich as some sort of permanent class. Many of the individuals who show up on annual millionaire lists, for example, are people who happened to have a good year and who may never appear on that list again. Consider people who worked hard for many years and built a successful business that finally goes public. The big capital gain they realize that year is really compensation for the uncompensated effort they put into building the business. They should not be penalized for their vision and tenacity. If we establish rules that punish the winners, entrepreneurs will take fewer risks and we will have less innovation, less output, less job growth. The whole economy suffers under such a scenario -- not just those few individuals who are taxed at a higher rate. And this doesn't just involve the Googles and Apples and Microsofts, but countless other companies that start small and end up making large contributions to the economy. The important thing to remember is that the labor supply is not fixed. People, be they European or American, respond to taxes on their income. Just one more example: In 1998, Spain flattened its tax rates in similar fashion to the U.S. rate cuts of 1986, and the Spanish labor supply increased by 12%. In addition, Spanish tax revenues also increased by a few percent. And that brings us back to our framing question about the labor supplies of the U.S. and Europe: The bottom line is that a thorough analysis of historical data in the U.S. and Europe indicates that, given similar incentives, people make similar choices about labor and leisure. Free European workers from their tax bondage and you will see an increase in gross domestic product (oh, and you might see a pretty significant increase in gross national happiness, too). The same holds true for Americans. Mr. Prescott is co-winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics, senior monetary adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and professor of economics at Arizona State University.

A few of the Democrats voting for Bush and why (I'll let someone else compile a list of Republicans voting for Kerry): http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1312869_1,00.html http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11686 http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/309nqnas.asp

I didn't really have a problem with Clinton, his policies (once he put a leash on Hillary's health car thing), or his actions until he got his cabinet (Albright, Gore, Ruben, etc.) to stand up and say that he didn't get a hummer from Monica. I remember all of them standing together in a group with Bill and Hillary at a press conference defending him against the accusation. He lied to them and set them up to look like fools. To me, that's inexcusable. If Bill had said, when the accusations first surfaced, "Yes, I got a hummer from Monica and I'm sorry." it would have become a tempest in a teapot. I would have shrugged my shoulders and said, "Power has its priviledges (sp)" and continued to like the man. He did a good job as president. In hindsight, he didn't pursue terrorists as hard as he should have, but neither did Bush, Sr., Carter, Reagan, or Bush, Jr. (until 9/11). Now, Gore scared the crap outta me!

Another strut brace building tip: If possible, use the strut tower itself to locate and brace the end brackets. In my 240Z example above the brackets were welded to the strut tower and in the example below that I built for an ITS BMW 325is, the 3.065" OD vertical tubes are an interference fit within the top hole of the strut tower. The loads go from the strut tower, through those tubes, to the strut tower brace. The strut studs are just used to hold the end brackets down onto the strut tower. That BMW previously had a Bimmerword strut tower brace that used the strut studs as the mount and load path. After installing the brace I made, the owner had to reduce the rear spring rate by 25 lb. in. because the front planted so much better.

That's great and the pictured strut tower bar looks cool. If the car's being built as a street car that type of strut tower bar works fine. I just wanted to point out that bending an aluminum tube severly weakens it. If you start with a 6061-T6 tube and put a bend in it, you've reduced that bar's material strength from 45ksi to, at best, its yield limit of 40ksi with less then 12% elongation. Conversly, if you take a 4130 tube and bend it the material strength goes from 80ksi down to, at best, its yield of 56ksi with 28% elongation, so you still end up with something that's stronger (at least in materials), and more ductile (meaning it can take some additional flexing before failure) then what you started with in 6061.

To change the subject a bit... Remeber this recent quote from John Kerry: Here's where it didn't work and why it won't work again: http://techcentralstation.com/102004B.html