johnc

I smell a new Grassroots Motorsports Challenge! A $40,000 budget to build a car that beats a stock 2000 Dodge Viper GTS ACR on Hoosiers. That includes cornering, braking, acceleration and track times.

K&N filters are pretty good. Rpms don't hurt oil, heat and contaminates do. Street cars don't get their oil hot enough to worry about oil breaking down despite all the marketing stuff you see. Any oil should work fine on a street car if you change it every 3 or 5K miles.

I like the way the plenum was done. I am planning on building a new one for my car since it cracked at Thunderhill. Gives me some good ideas.

Betcha it can't be done for that amount of money, especially the new RT/10. I've got more then that in my 240Z and I can hang with stock previous gen GTS ACR Coupes. Mumford's or Schley's modified ACRs would kick my butt.

Ooops. Don't know where I pulled 600 degrees from. Maybe my a$$?

How come nobody has mentioned the 302 (except Pete in passing)? I've always thought the 240 merits a more rpm happy motor then a low rpm "truck" engine. A 302 at full song (7,000 rpm) is a better visceral fit to the 240Z concept then a 400 at 5,000 rpm. But, that's just one opinion. Hey, what about a 283?

Heh, heh, heh... Been done before by a cheating bastard drag racer I knew. He was able to run most of a season, winning every event in a Street Modified import class. What finally gave him away was an interior fire caused by the turbo melting the foam in the passenger seat. Yes, I typed that correctly.

On my 2000 Ford F350 with the 6.8L V10 I see a slight increase in oil consumption running Mobil 1 10W-30 over the dealer installed generic 10W-30. I've done back-to-back checks (dealer does free oil changes for life) for 5,000 miles intervals and noted about a 1/2 quart difference in usage. Regular oil requires adding 1/2 quart in that mileage period and Mobil 1 needs 1 quart. On a cold start I will see a puff of smoke when the truck is running Mobil 1 and I won't see it when using regular oil.

Keith Thomas (katman) is the one to ask about this. He tested a ported N42 exhaust manifold on Sunbelt's engine dyno a few years ago. Way back in the mid-1990s I watched various stock exhaust manifolds and headers tested on an ITS/BSP 2.8L engine but I don't remember any of the casting numbers. Headers worked better anyway and that was the point of the test way back then.

Motul 600.

Uuuuuhhhhhhh... its just an oil filter. Go find the Prozac bottle...

Works great. My NA 3.0L uses an N42 block.

Don't laugh at the Geo. There will be a Suzuki supported, Turbo Hayabusa powered 1996 Geo Metro cruising around Southern California sometime next year. Its not my car but I'm involved in its build up.

1961 Dodge Lancer or Plymouth Valiant with a Cross Ram 413 AMC Gremlin Citroen 2CV Any BMW or Messerschmidt bubble car 1963 Ford Falcon Sprint Geo Metro

I'm running the stock tie rods for now. I did install the 1" bumpsteer spacers until I figure out a new front crossmember.

The Bosch Porsche 911 pump. Run two.

Just because a car is "tube framed" doesn't mean its stiff torsionally. I've seen many very poorly designed "tube frame" cars that twist like noodles. A bad design is a bad design regardless of what its called. I'm running 305hp on a road racing 1970 240Z chassis with a welded in 4 point rollbar and I'm having no problems. Remember, suspension and braking torque loads are higher then most anything you can generate with a motor.

Its actually an impossible to answer question: "Can car A out handle car B?" Why? Its impossible to fairly compare two vehicle's handling capabilities until you eliminate the horsepower, tire, and track issues. Here's a some world examples: I was just watching a vintage race on Speed where a mildly modified Lotus Elan beat a heavily modified Jaguar XKE 3.8 around a tight race track. Later in the weekend series the Jaguar lapped the Lotus on a much more open, faster track. Which of those cars handled better? My argument is that the Lotus handled better on the small tight track but the Jaguar handled better on the big open track. My 240Z has a power to weight ratio of a previous generation Viper GTS ACR Coupe. Almost exactly the same but my car weighs about 800 lbs less then the Viper. Ron Wasserman and John Dearing drove a Viper GTS ACR Coupe in the 2003 OTC and I think Bryan Lampe and Dearing are of comparable driving skill and experience. Bryan, in my 240Z, beat Dearing in the Viper at every track. Why? Tires. We ran Hoosier R3S03s and Dearing ran some 140 treadwear Michelin Pilots. Did we "outhandle" the Wasserman/Dearing Viper? In that event, yes. Why? Dearing had trouble putting the power down exiting corners - had nothing to do with how fast each car was going around the corners. What would have happened if both cars were on the same tires? Don't know. What am I trying to say? That there are too many other variables to really ever come to a comclusion about which car handles better then another. And that's despite all the crapola you read in car magazines.

Checking in Sir! The only reason I can think of to use spring rate to control longitudinal weight transfer under braking is to maintain some bump travel in the front suspension. Certain race tracks may dictate this if the braking zone for the most important corners on the circuit are bumpy. That's probably why the East Coast ITS racers recommend an increased front spring rate for SOME tracks. Hard on the front bumps stops under braking makes hitting any kind of bump a guarantee of front wheel lockup and a pair of nice flat spots. Designing in some additional anti-dive into the 240Z suspension would be nice but as long as you're not shortening the effective TC rod length the built in anti-dive should be enough. I would focus more on transient response control (shocks) before I would start compromising the balance of the car to fix a braking issue. Another, simpler solution would be to adapt your driving style to the vehicle. I know a lot of experts (including Carrol Smith) recommend adjusting the vehicle to suit the driver, but most folks forget that their point of view is from Formula Ford where damn near everything on the vehicle is adjustable. Us sedan racers don't have half the adjustments the open wheel guys do. BTW... Did you folks know that Carroll Smith died of Pancreatic Cancer back on May 16th?

Forget the plumbing pipe and go to a steel yard. Buy DOM or ERW mild steel tubing 1/2 to 3/4" diameter and .095 (1/2") or .080 (3/4") wall thickness. You can also buy 4130 tubing at .065 wall thickness although it will cost about 3 times what the DOM or ERW stuff does.

Any of the performance replacement springs (Eibach, Suspension Techniques, MSA, etc.) would be fine. Run the Tokico Illumina 5 way adjustable shocks, 1" front and 3/4" rear anti-roll bars, replace all the bushings with polyurethane, run offset camber bushings front and rear, and 15 x 7 wide rims with 225/50-15 tires.

A lot depends on what goals the engine was built for. A person can build a peaky turbo engine that makes 300hp or a torquey NA engine that makes 300hp, both of which are generally counter to conventional wisdom. My NA 3.0L makes at least 200 ft. lbs. of torque from 3,600 to 7,200 rpm (IIRC - dyno sheet's not handy) with a peak of 257 around 5,600. Soft redline of 7,500 rpm and a hard redline of 8,000 rpm with 305hp at 6,500 rpm.

If taping up the headers helped that would indicate that your fuel delivery system in the engine compartment needs better insultation. Try wrapping the fuel lines with some type of heat wrap. If you've got any of the header wrap leftover, try that as an experiment. Also, do you have a heat shield between the carbs and the header? If not, make one. I would also upgrade the radiator, put in a new 180 degree thermostat, check hoses and belts, check the fan clutch and shroud, and/or replace the engine driven fan with a good puller electric fan (Ford Taurus fan coversion is popular and documented on this site).

Maybe this should be in the Troubleshooting Forum?

I wasn't trying to imply that my setup was better then the Arizona Z Car setup. I am able to fabricate parts so my cost was cheaper then what most others would have to pay. I'll probably offer for sale the fabricated parts... someday... when I feel like making more sets... one of these days when I'm not so busy. I'm not ducting any air to the fronts yet. I'm planning on building an air dam/splitter soon so that's when I'll build some ducting to the front rotors. And I do have something resembling a web site in progress on my laptop. Hopefully by the end of June I'll have it hosted somewhere.