tube80z Posted July 9, 2007 Share Posted July 9, 2007 Checking ride height is gonna be expensive, because if we use a coilover car you have to unstrap the car, roll it off the floor, jack it up, take off the tires, make adjustments, put it back on the pads, ......., etc. You don't need a working suspension on these cars. Just modify a gland nut and use all thread that comes up through a camber plate. Use a speed wrench on top to do a number of turns to set the ride height. I don't know if this would require changing the straps or not but you shouldn't need to move the car. Cary Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikelly Posted July 9, 2007 Share Posted July 9, 2007 Cary, That's one hell of an idea. I've got a bunch of glan nuts laying around and we could run some 5/8th or 3/4 allthread to make this work... Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlderThanMe Posted July 9, 2007 Share Posted July 9, 2007 Checking ride height is gonna be expensive, because if we use a coilover car you have to unstrap the car, roll it off the floor, jack it up, take off the tires, make adjustments, put it back on the pads, ......., etc. All that eats up a lot of tunnel time, but I bet the results would be worthwhile. John That is why I was thinking removing the springs and threaded collars all-together. Just make a jig for each wheel and replace the spring with two threaded rods that sit on either side of the strut. Sort of like a spring compressor but used to old the suspension at one height. You could also install a big motor to the threaded rods and be able to change ride height remotely DURING a blow. Or just get a battery operated drill to shove under the fender and turn the threaded rod(s). No removing of wheels or even moving it out of the tunnel. My Z is set up with coilovers and if you wanted to use it as a pig to test the offer is there. OTM Just saw Cary's idea here on page 3... That would also work VERY well! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jt1 Posted July 9, 2007 Share Posted July 9, 2007 Those are excellent ideas!!!!! I've been trying to come up with something similar to the nascar bucket style weight jackers, and that will work like a charm. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl Beck Posted July 10, 2007 Author Share Posted July 10, 2007 ....but the Z airdams look to be 5-6 inches off the floor. ..snipped... My gut tells me that a deeper, better airdam could get our Z's down to the low 3's or high 2's. Hi John (everyone) Level pads or not ...your pretty close. I just measured two of my 72 240-Z's both equipped with the BRE Front Spook... both with more or less stock suspension/ride height. One is 7" off the floor and the other is 7.25" off the floor. "Plus-One" means that you increase the wheel diameter by 1" - but you also decrease the sidewall of the tire to offset that - resulting in the same, or very close to the same over-all diameter of the tire. So Plus-One setup's won't change the ride height very much if at all. Both of my 72's have 14" wheels with 195R70x14's - which are very close in overall diameter to the OEM 175R14's that came on the cars. According to the factory service manuals - the stock ride height on a US Spec. 240-Z was 6.3" measured from the front frame rail, where it meets the firewall/floorboards, to the ground. However after measuring about 50 different 240-Z's with stock springs and wheel/tire combinations - that measurement seems to be closer to 5.75". Measuring from the front and rear of the rocker panels - where the jacking points are indicated - Stock seems to be 8.5" That's to the bottom of the rocker panel - not the flange. As we have discussed before - installing the newer gas pressure shocks will raise the ride height of the 240-Z's between .75 and 1 inch. So you'll have to keep track of that... when you select the cars being brought into the tests. You would not want to change tunnels at this point. You would all but lose the baseline established during the first run. It's hard enough to normalize different runs on different days in the same tunnel - gets to be next to impossible if you are using different tunnels (from what I've been told). Just FYI... Carl B. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimZ Posted July 10, 2007 Share Posted July 10, 2007 Cary, That's one hell of an idea. I've got a bunch of glan nuts laying around and we could run some 5/8th or 3/4 allthread to make this work... Mike I agree - that's a good idea. One thing to consider, though - how are you transporting the cars to the test site? This method will increase the shock loads transferred to the shock towers tremendously, so I would only consider flatbedding the cars for transport, assuming that you don't want to disassemble/reassemble the suspensions once you get there. Maybe let some air out of the tires during transport to soften the ride a bit... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikelly Posted July 11, 2007 Share Posted July 11, 2007 Tim, You're correct... You'd never want to drive on all-threads... It's stating the obvious, but sometimes you gotta do that! All the cars we tested arrived on trailers. I suspect this will be the case for round #2! Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimZ Posted July 11, 2007 Share Posted July 11, 2007 Tim, You're correct... You'd never want to drive on all-threads... It's stating the obvious, but sometimes you gotta do that! All the cars we tested arrived on trailers. I suspect this will be the case for round #2! Mike I figured they wouldn't be driven this way, but just wanted to point out that you'll want to move them on a flatbed/full trailer (NO dollies), and preferably a flatbed/trailer with a decent suspension. I do know that some of the highest shock loads that production cars see occur when being shipped via rail with the suspension tied down... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
74_5.0L_Z Posted May 1, 2013 Share Posted May 1, 2013 (edited) Gollum (AKA Nathan) contacted me because he could not find the spreadsheet with all of the wind tunnel data that I put together way back when. The link to it is in post #14 of this thread. I tested the link to make sure it still works. I've duplicated the link below. http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php?app=core&module=attach§ion=attach&attach_id=2279 Edited May 1, 2013 by 74_5.0L_Z Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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