johnc

I agree with everything you say Jon. I don't have the stock brakes on my car for the reasons you cite above. What I disagree with is the statement that "Datsun brakes suck." I also think (IMHO) that most HybridZ folks overbuild their brakes. None of us (including myself) run endurance events in our cars. At most, we'll run 10 laps as part of an open track/time trial session. In a 2,400 lb car running a 20 minute session you don't need brakes that are designed to stop a 3,000 lb car running a 3 hour enduro. That's extra capacity that will never get used, so its really just added unsprung weight. But I feel like Don Quixote waving my sword at the Brembo, Stop Tech, Wilwood, Baer, Porsche Big Red brakes marketing juggernaught.

You want the fronts to lock up just before the rears and you want both fronts to lock up at the same time if you're traveling straight on a smooth road. Sounds like you need and prop valve.

Keith Thomas (katman) had a great post about setting up stock Datsun brakes for road racing. I thought I had saved it somewhere but I can't find it! Anyway, I'll list what I know to setup the brakes for a road course: PADS PADS PADS Because the stock front rotor is unvented a lot of heat is transferred to the pads. More then, let's say, a Porsche 993. You need pad material that can stand operating temperatures around 1,200 degrees F. This basically precludes any pad that can run on the street. Why? Because pads that can still stay together and produce a good coefficient of friction at 1,200 degrees don't work worth squat when cold. The pads I would recommend (in order) are: Performance Friction 93 (or maybe the new 97 and 01 compounds) Hawk Blue Hawk Black Porterfield R4 (will only last one track day) SHOES Ferodo Green Stuff (sold by Nissan Motorsports and MSA) FLUID Due to all the heat being transferred to the pads, your brake fluid gets very hot. 99% of the brake problems (brakes "going away") you'll see in a Datsun on a road race track is fluid fade. The brake fluid has got so hot that localized boiling occurs which creates air in the lines. This happens to some degree almost every time you're out on the track and using the brakes the way you should. That's why you MUST bleed the brakes after every track session. The only fluids I recommend are: Motul 600 (what I run) ATE Super Blue Castrol SRF (the best but stupid expensive) Ford Truck Heavy Duty (don't buy from a Ford car dealer, buy it from a Ford commercial truck dealer) DRUMS You also need to keep the rear brakes in adjustment and this should be checked after every session. Jack the car up and spin the rear wheel. It should drag on the brake drum. Not a lot and not a little. A nice 3/4" hole drilled in the brake drum face makes brake adjustment easy. And, after you've got all the above right, you'll need to learn how to brake correctly. That's probably the hardest thing to learn about going fast around a road race track.

Here I go again... [soapbox] The stock Datsun brakes DON"T suck! They just take a lot of maintenance and attention to keep them in top shap. The stock brakes depend heavily on the correct pad choice, the correct brake fluid choice, and constant attention to brake bleeding and rear drum adjustment. You can ask the following ITS racers and crew chiefs who have and still do regularly win and beat cars with much better brakes on road racing tracks across the country: Chet Whittle Keith Thomas John Williams Bryan Lampe Erik Messley Doug Piner John Stewart Javier Guiterrez Jim Thompson Dave Rebello If you take your Datsun on a race track (for that matter, any car) you can't just bomb around and then not do any maintenace between sessions. 240Zs in particular needs their brakes bled after every track session. You also need to check the rear drum adjustment between session. This is a very basic level of maintenance. Everyone's got horror stories of braking problems in the 240Z and ALL of those problems are caused by poor maintenace or the wrong pad or brake fluid selection for the conditions. Again, the 240Zs brake DON"T suck. Its generally the driver who ignores the basic maintenece that these cars require when you put them on a race track. [/soapbox] Sorry for the rant.

What a wonderful place to have a shop! You can got out and do a few laps at lunch...

Absolutely. Its damn near impossible and insanely expensive to get military spec metric hardware so I've had to purchase AN/MS stuff and its all in inches. I don't trust any fasteners from hardware stores and will, if desperate, order from McMaster-Carr. I only use a pull motion when MIG welding if there's no other way. I also push my MIG gun because that's how I was taught at Lincoln Electric.

I don't care about mythical engines. I look at what I race against and what I see on racetracks here on the west coast and there aren't any fast RB, SR, 2J, or V8 Zs. There's one fast Skyline but it keeps blowing up. Amir's SR 260Z may be the first fast engine swapped Z I'll see on the track around here.

Get an air angle or die grinder and a 2" and a 3" 3M Roloc mandrel. Buy some 2 and 3" Scotch Brite medium (purple) and fine (blue) Roloc discs and use them to clean off paint, etc. Use Acetone or non-clorinated Brakleen to clean the parts just before welding. Don't use any clorinated cleaners or you'll be making chlorine gas when you're welding. To fix the broken off nut, drill and tap it to the next size SAE and use an SAE bolt on it. I use a mix of SAE and Metric on my car with no ill affects. You tend to remember which is which and you can always tell by the bolt heads or the marking on the nut.

Dodge proved their point and pulled out of factory support for ALMS and Le Mans. The ACO was going to really hit them hard with restrictors and weight penalties because it was obvious in the Viper's last factory season (2000) how much they had been sandbagging. Even without factory support, privateer Vipers were pretty successful in the FIA GT series over in Europe and they still place on the podium now and then. Chamberlain still runs a couple "pay to play" GTS-Rs if someone has the money and wants to run in ALMS, FIA GT, or Le Mans. Milka was the last one I heard that had bought a Viper ride. The Comp Coupe was built more for SCCA's Speed GT then ALMS or ACO. Remember, Mercedes wasn't too happy with the Viper when it was winning in Europe.

Uuuhhhh, bad analogy. You need to read the ACO rules. Last year the Chevy engine's air intake is regulated by two 35mm diameter orifices and I assume its the same this year (I don't have the 2004 rule book). It had to run restrictors where the Ferrari didn't. The ACO may have added restrictors to the Ferrari this year.

I'm kinda testing the waters for the idea right now. Not sure if I want to break the car up.

Electramotive never hit those numbers with their race engines. They could do it with their qualifying engines but it was only good for a few laps. One of the guys I race with occaisionally (Tom Smith) was an engineer at Electramotive in the early 1980s. Regarding the RB vs. L28 debate - I've got a NA L28 that I'll run against any RB equipped Z at Buttonwillow or Willow Springs. FYI... Sport Compact Car ran an event called something like "Time Attack" a month or two ago at Buttonwillow. The best time was done by a completely tricked out Skyline which ran a one lap high 54.x with the a couple more 56s. Then it blew up. My 240Z running the same config at Buttonwillow ran a 55.2, 55.2, 55.3. I think the RB and the SR have reputations that far exceed their actual performance.

Yes. You'll need the wire (304L, 321, or 347 .024" or .030") and straight Argon as a shielding gas. Depending on the welder, you might need a new liner and rollers. Cut up some lengths of tubing and practice, practice, practice.

SPD (Specialty Products Design) 11252 Sunco Dr. Ranch Cordova, CA 95742 (888) 778-3312

Amir (demon) mentioned this the other day and its got me thinking. Would anyone be interested in the Rusty Old Datsun as a roller? http://www.betamotorsports.com/products/rod4sale.html My thinking is that I pull the engine and related components (Motec, exhaust, clutch, coils, anything that's needed to make th engine run) and use it for another project I have in mind. The roller chassis would include the Quaife sequential trans, the rest of the driveline including the two Quife ATB R180s, the chassis, suspension, interior, gauges, fuel cell, radiator, wheels (2 sets), etc. It would be a great basis for an RB swap. I'm guessing about $18K. Good idea?

The correct solution is to change the offset on the brake hat and the caliper bracket. Everything needs to be moved outboard by .100" and there wouldn't be any more scraping. I'm not sure about grinding off the end of the lower control arm. I would want to take an arm, mount the inner side in a vice, put a big torque wrench on the end, pull to get .125" of deflection, and measure the torque. Then I would cut the end off per Dave's recommendation and repeat the test. If there's no change in the torque number then I would be OK with the modification.

Erik Messley, Bryan Lampe, Javier Guiterez, and Rich Maloney all raced ITS 240Zs here in the Cal Club region during the 1990s and early 2000s. Each tried the CF DF2 clutch/pressure plate and each found the clutch needed replacing after one, maybe two race weekends with the pressure plate going after three race weekends. All eventually switched to the Nissan Motorsports clutch and pressure plate and all would go at least 1 season before even needing to think about the clutch.

And most of the SoCal Z racers I run with think the CF stuff is junk. We even gave Motorsports back the free Centerforce T-shirts and hats they gave us for being instructors at their autocross.

Tim, That's 40+ miles of visibility. The air quality in the LA basic is orders of magnitude BETTER then it was when I was growing up in the 1960s. Air quality has been improving almost every year since then and the median air pollution levels have declined every year since the Clean Air Act in the early 1970s. There have been some recent spikes int he number of air quality alerts, but the median numbers still keep coming down. Some figure I read a while ago say that 85% of the air quaility improvements came from regulation of mobile sources (cars) and 15% from stationary sources. Seems that what we are paying for the SCAQMD is not coming back in returns.

5.5" with coilovers and 2.25" diameter springs.

I've got flares but I would never bakcsopace my car. Pictures at my for sale page: http://www.betamotorsports.com/products/rod4sale.html

I run 275s all the way around on my 240Z.

Keep in mind where your butt is in relation to the front and rear wheels. Its about 18" in front of the rear wheels and about 60" behind the front wheels. The shorter lever arm tot he rear wheels exaggerates the force of the rear wheel impacts in comparison to the front - probably by about 300%. Also, how low is your car? Are you hitting the bump stops when hitting large bumps?

I talked with Shiv at some length during OTC this year. He had entered an EVO8 in my class and had Ken Dobson (from Speed Touring BMW fame) driving it. Shiv was basically using the event as a test-n-tune for some EVO mods he plans to sell later. His EVO didn't blow (although the crank sensor mount and clutch failed) and he was running pretty fast. Gary Sheehan runs a WRX in USTCC and he raves about the work Vishnu does. I have heard a few complaints about Shiv's customer service, but maybe he's just tired of dealing with Wankers.

I've run them on my 240Z at autocrosses and they worked fine after the first corner.