johnc

Track, street, drag, autocross?

No, yes, maybe. Are you building the car to: 1. Compete on a race track? 2. Compete at a car show? 3. Impress your friends? 4. Improve your fabrication/engineering skills? 5. Do everything above?

No, I was not talking about weight distribution. I was talking about yaw inertia. Think of a dumbbell. It's has a 50/50 weight distribution but the weight is at the extreme ends of the barbell. It has a high yaw inertia. But moving weight to the center of the car you decrease the yaw inertia and make the car easier to spin.

Well... assuming you have an oil cooler, big filter, etc. the actually running oil level with be anywhere from 1/2 to 1 1/2 quarts below what is shown on the dipstick after the car sits for a few minutes. A lot depends on how quickly the oil drains back from the head while the engine is running. Floyd Link told me that at any given moment there's a quart of oil in the oil galleries, head, mains, bearings, pump, etc. while the engine is running.

There's a lot of labor involved with the shortening, cleaning, inspecting, and bearing replacement. That's the extra cost over the other vendors that just sell parts. If you can do the work yourself, you save a bunch of money.

Moving an engine back in a front engined sedan is done for two reasons: 1. Increase weight on the rear (drive) wheels. 2. Decrease chassis yaw inertia (MOI). Number 1 helps with putting power down and must be matched with wider rear tires and changes to spring, anti-roll bar, and shock damping rates. It also reduces forward weight transfer and helps with braking by keeping more weight on the rear wheels. Number 2 makes transitions (any time the car changes directions) quicker and generally makes the car more responsive. Both of the changes above, if done correctly, will reduce lap times and make the car more responsive to driver and track input. They also make the car more difficult to drive at the limit and over the limit behavior can be sudden and extreme if the driver is not skilled. This difficulty increases over the course of race as the tires lose grip. I'm not surprised at all to hear that such radically modified Supras and S14s were actually slower initially. That's to be expected until the car gets sorted and the drivers get better. But there's a huge Catch 22 in getting these cars sorted: Until the drivers get better the car cannot be driven consistently at the limit, lap after lap, to provide data to sort the car. The driver's start to distrust the car and drive slower. Any chassis/suspension changes made using the data from these slow lap times is useless and just works to make the car even slower. The crew chief starts losing his mind, the driver is scared, frustrated, and just wants to go home, and the car owner wonders why he bothers to read anything on the Internet.

True but there's more to it. There was a period when manufacturers made engines with separate CA and Fed emission packages but I think that ended in 1996 when OBD2 was implemented. I'm not a smog tech so I could be mistaken, but my understanding is that since 1996 all engines sold in the US complied with CA smog requirements as of the date of manufacture.

Currently made by Don Oldenburg at DP Racing. Capacity is 8 quarts.

Life of the Nissan transmissions is determined more by the driver then the power going through it. Redline MT90 is a good choice for these transmissions.

Per BAR changes effective 1/1/2013 its going to get much more difficult to get these non-compliant cars passed. Every smog station and technician will be monitored for "Enhanced Deviation Rate" covering seven major test areas and an additional "Follow-Up Pass/Fail Rate." If the stations and/or technicians numbers are +/-10% of the statewide averages on any of the measures they will get audited. BAR is even monitoring things like tests that are started then cancelled, tests that take took long or are not long enough, testing time of day, etc.

OK, I forgot about the LS1 swap and the stereo. For some reason i thought it was a track only car.

No. And no to any of your follow-up questions while still including the RB26, RB25, RB20, S20, SR20DET, etc.

Wheel wells are also low pressure areas. Try pulling in air from the rear 1/4 windows and exiting it behind the car.

Pretty balanced. But 2,765 without driver? What's in your car?

Settle down boys.

IMHO, the performance difference between the 2.6L engine you have and the 2.8L engine you're talking about has more to do with the condition of each engine then the displacement. If I was planning a RB25 swap I would not buy the 2.8L engine and save my money for the RB.

I think in Tony's pics above the car is set at tarmac ride height with tarmac suspension bits on it. I regularly sell 280Z front and rear LCAs, 280Z cross members and steering racks, composite hoods and hatches, and other US spec 280Z parts to a couple Z rally car builders in the UK. One of the cars (Geoff Bell and Tim Chale's 260Z) running some of my parts came in second overall in last year's East African Safari rally. Looking at the way the hood is lifting up in the above pic that 260Z is going at least 100 mph.

The air that's causing lift is actually the air under the car pushing up on the lower pressure air on top of the car. Air flows from high to low pressure. You will need to do something to make sure the hatch area (a traditionally low pressure point) has a higher pressure then you air exit behind the car. Also, the "Egg" has its radiators in the side of the car and pulls air from the traditionally high pressure car sides.

In most cases a "warped" rotor is still straight. What you may have is an uneven deposit of pad material on the rotors. The actually braking contact is pad to pad material not pad to bare metal rotor surface. Its very important to lay down a nice, even layer of pad material on the bare metal rotor surface. That's the whole point of the elaborate brake bedding process. The street/track pads like the Porterfield R4S are the worst as far as laying down an uneven layer. Because they are used on the street for miles and miles with cold rotors and light (relative to autocross/track use) application the pad layer on the rotor gets worn off. Then when you arrive at an autocross or track even and start hammering on the brakes the pad material gets deposited unevenly. Tale some garnet sandpaper (not aluminum oxide) and clean the rotors surfaces on both sides. Then do a proper brake bedding.

Measure on both sides from the door cut line, along the body line, to the front edge of the flare. Make sure the distance is the same on both sides.

Second that recommendation for Taylor.

You need at least 1 turn off full soft for rebound. More likely 1.5 with the spring rates you list.

Toe problem, tire pressures too low, too little rebound in the shocks.

Read this thread first: http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/50944-the-strut-thread-koni-illumina-tokico-carrera-bilstein-ground-control/ Then rear the other threads in the Suspension FAQ.

Read this thread first: http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/50944-the-strut-thread-koni-illumina-tokico-carrera-bilstein-ground-control/ Then read the other threads in the Suspension FAQ.