johnc

Go buy yourself a MIG welder (Lincoln 135 or Miller 135) and related equipment. You should be able to pickup the welder everything else you'll need for less then $800. Take a class at the local ROP or community college. You should be able to do ALL the work on your car yourself and you'll develop a valuable skill that will stay with you the rest of your life and make your chosen hobby LOTS more enjoyable. That sense of frustration and failure will vanish!

I just can't see how someone can switch feet while threshold braking. I think to braking had for turn last (Sunset) onto Buttonwillow's front straight after a hard run out of the esses. That's a turn you need to get right for a fast lap and its where a lot of passing gets done. If someone can heel/toe down one or two gears, make a competitive pass, and switch feet on the brake pedal, then they have talent I will probably never posses.

Track events... On a corner where I need to downshift I will right foot brake and heel/toe. I use the clutch on downshifts. On corners where I don't need to downshift (or in a corner where I might need to tap the brakes for some odd reason) I will left foot brake. I'm not a good enough braker to transition braking feet as you mention. Autocross... Get the car into second and leave it there (most of the time) and left foot brake for corners and transitions. I will occaisionally right foot brake when I need to downshift for a slower corner.

As exepcted from SCC - more mis-information. They have a few smart guys working there so I wonder how BS like this gets out. Without getting into a deep discussion about tires here's some basic information. Proper tire pressures for a street car and street tires are different then for a race car on race tires. Street Car on Street Tires You need to be concerned about load capacity, impact resistance, and then handling. Assuming you are dirving a street Z including you, a passenger, full fuel, and the other crap that ends up in your car, you need to do some basic math. Gross weight: 3,000lbs Weight dist: 52/48 Tire size: 185/70-14 (tires on my 810 as an example) Tire max load: 1,235lbs @ 44psi. How much weight can each psi in the tire support? 1,235 / 44 = 28lbs How much weight on each front tire? (3,000 * .52) / 2 = 780lbs How much air pressure to support the 780lbs each front tire holds up? 780 / 28 = 28psi So, we know that the MINIMUM tire pressure for each front tire is 28 psi assuming a static weight distribution. Under hard braking we can see up to 70% of the weight on the front tires so that means each tire needs to be able to support 1050lbs, which requires 38 psi. That can now be our MAXIMUM tire pressure for the front tires (You guys do the match for the rear tires.) We now have a range of pressure to work with to adjust the handling of our car (28psi to 38psi). What you'll want to do is start at the high number and keep an eye on tire rollover. You want to see the tire scuffed to the top of the little wear triangles marked on the side of the tread. Don't scuff the tire any farther onto the sidewall. Lower the front tires pressures until you see the scuffing to the point mentioned above. In some extreme cases you may have to go above the high number of the range due to suspension issues or driver problems, but normally this shouldn't be the case.

I left foot brake all the time. It does get scary when you goof and put the clutch to the floor instead of the brake, but you learn to quickly use your right foot to save the day. I also heel and toe everywhere and sometimes double clutch if I just want to keep in practice. It does get confusing for me. My F350 and my 1964 Continental are automatics, my Datsun 810 is a 5 speed stick, and my 240Z is a sequential straight cut gear dog box.

Alex, What about "mid-engined"?

Pete, I've got the dimensions for the C&R I had built for my car. I you want them, let me know. C&R should also have them on file under my name.

I think there's some confusion regarding the "system pressure" (SP) in the cooling system and the force needed to move coolant through the radiator and engine. The SP in a cooling system is a result of heat, not any effort by the water pump to move coolant (although the work the water performs does add heat, but its insignificant). Adding flow length (and thus restriction) in the form of a double pass radiator does not affect SP. In fact, you can completely block off the radiator or add a dozen radiators in series and SP will still be unaffected, except for the amount of time it takes to reach the SP limit set by the radiator cap. A perfect example of this is when someone removes the thermostat. The SP still reaches whatever pressure limit is set by the radiator cap even with the reduced restriction. Put the thermostat back in and the SP still reaches the pressure limit set by the radiator cap.

> 1. turbos won't clear the side, too close to the frame rail Notch and reinforce the frame rail. > 2. oil pan sits too low for comfort Build a shield. > 3. difficult to line up transmission without lowering the motor > more than it's lowered now. Lower the motor. > 4. steering column routing? Put a hole through the mount. Alex, stop thinking "in the box." What if the front crossmember is repalced? What if the whole unit can move forward a few inches? What if the whole unit moved back a few inches? You're just talking about labor time if you've got a welder. It shouldn't be that expensive and you'll learn how to weld. Or you can bring it down to SoCal and I'll get the whole shebang installed - for a price.

Well... no. You're burning an air/fuel mixture and there is an ideal ratio that produces the most power. That ideal AFR is different for each cylinder and can be managed at that level if one of the higher end engine management systems is installed and tuned. But, most folks have to look at a summary number and adjust on the rich side to compensate for the one or two lean cylinders. 12 to 1 is "generally" considered too rich and the engine is not producing as much power as it could. Most folks tune to a summary 13 or 13.5 to 1 AFR which gives a little cushion. "Generally" cylinders make the most power at 14 to 1 AFR (.91 to .92 Lambda) but, unless you're doing individual cylinder tuning, that's a sharp knife edge to run on.

Restoring Order: For Iraqi Car Buff, That Means Pistons Mr. Saffar Struggled to Bring 1946 Ford Back to Life; Dreams of Hitting Road By YOCHI J. DREAZEN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL MOSUL, Iraq -- When Basman al Saffar finally bought the 1946 Ford he had lusted after since childhood, it had a rusty frame, a cracked windshield, and so many broken windows that leaves and garbage blew in. The engine looked as if it hadn't seen fuel or oil in decades. He wasn't deterred. Like many Iraqis, Mr. Saffar had learned how to scavenge for old car parts during the long years when United Nations sanctions on Iraq made it nearly impossible to find new ones. He found an original Ford battery in a junkyard in the Kurdish city of Kirkuk and door handles in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. An elderly man in Mosul who had once worked for a Ford dealership in Turkey sold him several boxes of pistons, crankshafts, gaskets and oil seals. After two years of scrounging, he managed to completely restore the car himself. Settling in behind the steering wheel recently, Mr. Saffar turned the key and listened to the old Ford's engine rumble to life. "Welcome to the past," he said. Mr. Saffar and his car have rolled their way through recent Iraqi history. He tried to enter the Ford in international antique-car competitions, but the Hussein government wouldn't let him. When the regime fell, he used the car to ferry books from a university library where they were in danger of being burned. As a young boy here, Mr. Saffar, who is now 36 years old and works in his brother's general contracting business, was told the old car at the end of a neighbor's driveway had been purchased in 1948 by the elder brother of Iraq's then-prime minister, Arshad al-Umari. But the car was in such bad shape, that was hard for him to imagine. Still, he wondered whether the car could be saved. Scouring old magazines in his school library, Mr. Saffar found a picture of a similar car and was struck by the gracefulness of its design. He spent nearly 15 years begging the owners to sell it to him so he could try his hand at restoring it, but they always refused. Mr. Saffar's neighbor said that his father had bought the car in the early 1950s, shortly before he died, and the family wanted to keep it as a remembrance. Finally, in September 2000, the family relented. The head of the household was a state-employed physician unable to support his family amid the continued drop in the value of the Iraqi dinar caused by the U.N. sanctions. Mr. Saffar's neighbors sold him the old car for $2,000. Mr. Saffar had the car towed to a warehouse in a seedy part of town and went to work crisscrossing the country looking for vintage Ford parts. Gradually, he began to find them. In Baghdad, his search for old valves brought him to Dosh Abbas, 56, who runs a large auto-parts store. In his youth, Mr. Abbas had apprenticed with an older brother who ran a Ford repair shop near a dealership that specialized in American cars. The car dealer did a lively business until it was shut down by force in 1963 when Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party took power and tried to rid the country of foreign influences. Mr. Abbas says that when he saw the valve Mr. Saffar was trying to replace, he assumed it was for a lawn mower or tractor. Mr. Abbas led Mr. Saffar up a short flight of stairs and then guided him through a labyrinth of shelves overflowing with old and new auto parts. The older man bent down, picked up a small dust-covered box and blew on it until the Ford logo was visible. Mr. Abbas told Mr. Saffar that no one had asked about such an old valve in almost 20 years -- and gave it to him free of charge. "He was showing that Iraqis were such good mechanics that they could even bring a dead car back to life," Mr. Abbas says. After another company put in a new leather interior that exactly matched the color and stitching of the original, Mr. Saffar's final decision was what color to paint the car. It was originally a light green, but that color had been banned when the government decided to reserve it for military vehicles. The car's previous owners had painted it white, but Mr. Saffar thought that made it look cheap. A religious man, he ultimately settled on dark green, the color of Islam. By late last year, the car was finally fully restored, at a cost of $4,000. Mr. Saffar celebrated by driving it from Mosul to Baghdad, a trip of about 250 miles. He tried to fulfill a lifelong dream by entering the car in international classic-car contests and races but couldn't get permission from the Hussein government to travel abroad. Some organizations, meanwhile, made clear to him that he wasn't welcome because he wanted to represent the pariah nation of Iraq. "One organization told me I was a spy and then hung up the phone," he recalls. All that changed when the Americans deposed Saddam Hussein. The old Ford had small rods on the side of its hood meant to hold flags, something the original owner had put on. The day the statue of Mr. Hussein was knocked down in Baghdad, Mr. Saffar says he attached Iraqi flags to the poles and drove through Mosul with his horn blaring. Several days later, Mr. Saffar noticed smoke rising from the grounds of Mosul's main university. He drove there in time to see small groups of young men, faces masked, roaming across the campus with cans of kerosene. Afraid that they would torch the library, he raced the Ford to a nearby mosque, enlisted three friends who owned trucks, and returned to the campus to load books from the library's reference section and Assyrian civilization collection. The men hid the books in three classrooms of a local high school and guarded them until the unrest in the city died down. A framed certificate in his office signed by the president of the school thanks him for his "good offices in protecting the central library's books at the University of Mosul." Mr. Saffar has sent photos of the car to several international vintage car organizations and hopes to enter the Ford in antique-car races next year in Italy, France or the U.S. He has also begun restoring the two other antique cars he owns but says it isn't as much fun as working on the old Ford. "That was love at first sight," he says. Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com Updated December 12, 2003

I was agreeing with Nic's statement that higher octane WILL let you run more boost but you'll also have to increase fuel deleivery to keep from running lean. More boost = more air, more air = more fuel. If your engine management system automatically increases fuel delivery as boost rises, then its probably not a concern. Nothing, toluene is used by many fuel manufacturers to increase octane. But I have seen people who've tried that and screwed up an nice engine. There are a lot of receipies on the Internet, some good and some bad. Personally, I would rather spend the extra $1 to $3 per gallon on a known fuel quality and work backwards to a good mix for the times I need to run more boost. Whatever method you choose, buy two or three 5 gallon fuel jugs and mix in them, not in your fuel tank. Mix accuracy is important and "guessing" how much fuel is left in your car's fuel tank as you're pouring in your additive is risky.

What Nic- Reb said... Why don't you just buy real race fuel and mix it with pump gas? VP Racing and Sunoco both sell various grades of DOT legal unleaded fuel up to (I think ) 104 octane. You can buy the stuff in 5, 10, 30, and 54 gallon drums at prices from $4 to $6 per gallon.

Mongoose? Isn't that a member of the Weasel family... I suggest: Rust. Then we can have Neil Young's "Rust Never Sleeps" as our official album. Remember, "Its better to burnout then it is to rust."

A live axle works well in drag racing. It works less well everywhere else when compared with IRS. Cost is the main reason live axles are still installed on some new production cars and load carrying capacity, strength, and cost are the reasons they are still installed on trucks.

Hot clearance Intake .010" or .25mm Exhaust .012" or .30mm Cold clearance Intake .008" or .20mm Exhaust .010" or .25mm I adjust when the engine is cold and then check again when its hot.

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As Clifton said above, simply increasing displacement does not increase horsepower from 150 to 300. SCCA GT2 Nissan's are limited to 2.4L, 2.6L, or 2.8L and they easily make over 325hp. The 3.1 and 3.2 stroker motors have gained an almost mythical status way out of porportion to the power gains the displacement increase enables. Basically, any modified L engine (whether 2.4, 2.6, 2.8, 3.0, 3.1, or 3.2) will make most of its power through head modifications, cam selection, compression ratio increases, and/or turbo selection. Displacement is only part of the equation and, in the tenths of a liter increases we're talking about, its a small part.

You're running a 3.1L stroker in BSP? Do your competitors know?

Intake valve seat for #4. Hot spot between 4 and 5 caused the seat to crack and then fall into the combustion chamber. I found most of it in the intake manifold when I tore the engine down. Coolant temps never got over 210 degrees but Jim said there was lots of evidence of localized boiling in the head. The head wasn't warped but the pistons in 3, 4, and 5 were ovalized due to excessive heat (detonation) even with 112 octane Sunoco. We're going to try some external coolant lines and a 25 psi radiator cap to see if that soves the problem.

I'm too busy overheating my engine and dropping valve seats into the combustion chamber at 7,000 rpm to think about a top speed run. I sure could use that dollar though...

2003 SCCA GT2 Carburation for the 240/260/280Z - 50mm with 46mm chokes.

I get this question all the time. The cowl area is a box structure shaped like a triangle with one base being the firewall area where the hood latch is located. If you build a mount that spans the top lip of the firewall and the bottom of the cowl junction (look at the line of spot welds about 4" down from the top lip of the firewall) you've spanned the base of a triangle. Those two side supports exist to reduce lateral twisting of the cowl box. They do little (and are not deisgned nor needed) to reduce longitudinal bending of the cowl box. S&P Engineering (Bill Savage of NPTI fame) actually did some numbers on the cowl box before deciding where to put the center mount for my triangulated front strut braces.

The issue with Tokico (and most other single adjsutable shocks) is that rebound and compression damping are tied together. Rebound damping controls spring rebound (spring extension) which is all the stored energy in the spring as a result of a hitting a bump. The Tokico engineer's figures are a bit conservative but they are essentially right, but remember, the Illumina application we use (for shortened struts) are Toyota MR2s in front and 240Z fronts in the rear. If you crank up the Tokicos to 5 to control rebound from 250 to 300 lb. in. springs the compression damping becomes stiff enough to reduce grip. The Tokico Illuminas have a real adjustment range on our cars of from 2 to 4. I have run 300 lb. in. rear springs with the Illuminas but that was only for a smooth surface autocross setup. I would not exceed 250lb. in. in spring rate for the Tokico Illuminas and would try to run a bit softer if I could. The Koni 8610s do fit in the 240Z strut tubes and I've done an installation recently for a customer. These are more track oriented shocks and require spring rates over 200 lb. in. depending on what valving you specify when ordering. For a compromise street/autox/track car I would run the Illuminas with 200 f and 225 r springs and a 1" (25mm) front and 3/4" rear anti-roll bar.

Yes, but I think the bars going from the strut tops to the firewall need to go to the center of the firewall where the hood latch is. Its a better angle to counter the twisting forces on the strut towers. But, you lose your hood latch and it requires some fabrication skills to make and install the firewall mount. THe PDK bar is a reasonable compromise for a street Z.