johnc

You can get detonation even with a rich mixture. Low fuel octane, hot spot in the combustion chamber, etc. Retarded ignition timing tends to heat up the combustion chamber.

Why would you think that? What benefit does he gain by lying? I can think of a lot of benefits to him from telling you the truth. After reading this I tend to believe what the dyno operator said. Sounds like your tune needs a lot of work.

Yes and no. All composite hoods will move a round a bit at speed. But the typical street oriented composite parts are designed for occasional use above 80mph. The S30 packs a lot of air into the engine compartment so these types of hoods tend to bow upwards at speeds above 80mph and move around on their mounts. The hood itself generally isn't stiff enough and flexes. With a lot of track use I've seen these street types of hoods actually blow off the car after they crack at the mounting points. Over 120 mph sustained requires some specific reinforcement to keep a composite on the car. Also, the hinges without the springs will allow the front of the hood to move up a bit which exacerbates the problem. You can use a hole saw and cut two 2.5" holes (one on each side) behind the strut towers into the wheel wells to help reduce the under hood pressures.

BTW... Congrats on the graduation. And Tony, pretend the ConEx box is a fort and you're defending it from a Zombie attack with whatever you have in the box. That will be good for a couple hours and will scare the crap out of anyone who comes and visits.

Hell... I worked Saturday and I'm in the shop working today. Sunday I did yardwork and watched racing in Monaco, Indy, and Boogity Boogity land. Below is a pic of today's problem to fix.

Its called breakaway torque. When you lock one wheel the LSD will let the other spin when the set breakaway torque is reached in the diff. That's the "Slip" part of a LSD.

Check for rust. If anything, stripping the car and selling the parts individually will probably triple your $500 investment.

The weld through primers usually leave some zinc behind in the HAZ. I would not worry about the lap itself. If you started with clean, rust free parts and then seal both sides of the lap with body seam sealer after welding you should be fine. BTW... after working on a couple S30s that had POR15 applied, I'm not a fan of that stuff. Good high zinc, rust inhibiting primer and paint on clean, rust free surfaces do a very good job.

Do not use POR15 in any area you plan to weld. It contaminates the weld and burns off so its basically useless. Use Wurth or 3M Zinc Weld Through Primer. Its also a good idea to drill a couple small drain holes in the rail and spray in some kind of cavity protection spray after you're all done.

No. A long time customer of mine raced a Spec 944 with all of 160whp and he went through rear diffs every couple years. The S2 and the turbo cars have the upgraded rear diff. The weak point is the ring gear. The other big issue is the driveshaft. The 944 uses a solid tube to connect the engine and transaxle keeping everything aligned properly and the driveshaft runs in that tube.

Its not an issue.

I don't understand what you mean by not working with the factory frame rails. Here's a before and after of a driver's side floor pan replacement I did on a 280Z using the parts from Zedd Findings. Yeah, its not an exact copy but it came out pretty nice.

Gotta have something to worry about...

There are a number of different ways of doing launch control. Wheel speed sensors and software, engine rpm and software, dirveshaft speed and software, accelerometer and software... All require a good ECU, good software, and a lot of testing and tuning. What's funny is during the testing and tuning phase you'll learn how to better launch the car and thus reduce your need for launch control. Maybe you should just practice launchs?