seattlejester's 1971 240Z

[seattlejester]

Everything helps, I have some ideas, but seeing some of the angles involved will be useful.

 

It is the one with the adapter plate, so I do have to use the custom flywheel, but it has replaceable friction surfaces which look awfully similar to the JZ ones.

[Geno750]

Yeah, that means you'll be stuck with single plate 350Z clutch discs. This would probably be the one I went with: NSK1000-SS-O. It's good for about 550ft/lb of torque.

[seattlejester]

That is funny, that is actually the one I am looking at. I have an ACT Extreme sprung 6 puck that came with the adapter plate, but I think the clamp force is more than I want. I've heard good things about south bend so I was looking at either that kit or the one step above with the endurance disc.

[Geno750]

I've driven a car with the endurance disc and unless you need the extra torque holding ability, I'd go for the full faced disc. It'll do better in traffic.

[seattlejester]

Only on this forum can you get such specific information. I'll take a look into the full faced normal disc, the description said the endurance disc (which was also full faced) was pretty street-able which is kind of what caught my fancy and that would support my absolute max on quite a bit of my setup so I wouldn't have to change again for quite a while.

 

Well onto something a bit interesting, at least to me. Given my car is almost done on this mechanical iteration, just needing everything touched up and all my half ass things done more completely, I've been really interested in the technical side of drifting.

 

While the whole drift scene can be seen as kind of seen as sketchy with some "ain't care" type attitude, the science behind some of the things are really quite interesting.

 

Angle is pretty important in drifting. While if you are skilled you can make do with lower or stock levels of angle, having more angle gives you more room to keep the car from spinning out or to make the car steer deeper into the corner sideways.

 

Luckily for me I have a friend who has a stock Z on jack stands. I wanted to find out the limits of the stock angle. Turns out pretty much from factory it is at the limit. It hits on the tension rod (I believe the knuckle to the bolts on the tension arm to LCA interface). Meaning you really can't get much more out of the stock Z setup.

 

According to Jmortenson's test of the steering rack the angle output is about 33* if my memory serves. We can play with some numbers here using the pivot point, the steering rack movement etc to get theoretical angles, but I'm not sure if that applies.

 

The S30 chassis has always been seen as a pretty poor drift car and a much better track car, the reason IMO is we have more steering input for a lower angle output. That means you can really dial in the direction you are pointing. In a drift spec car a little bit of steering input makes a really big change making it more of a game of constantly over compensating rather than dialing in a precise angle of attack.

 

Two people have fairly proven setups. Chris Forsberg is one, from youtube you can see he is running AZC 10mm shortened knuckles and the GTX-2 control arms. I talked to Gabe at TTT inquiring about some tie rod ends, and he said he can make things to pretty much any length, so you can get the typical longer LCA and longer tie rod straight from them, in fact if you look at their site you can see they are also offering shortened knuckles for a variety of cars so you can make conclusions there.

 

I already have the GTX-2 arms so I can move the tension rod further inboard on the LCA, lengthen the LCA by an inch if needed as well. That means I just need to address getting a knuckle. The GTX-2 kit already has RCA adjustment built in, so getting the AZC shortened knuckle would leave you with RCA adjustment on top of RCA adjustment. That means I was looking for something like a shortened stock knuckle. That leads us to the other experienced drifter.

 

I don't want to mention his name since I don't want him to remove good info from the internet, but he put in quite a bit of effort into figuring out how to get the stock Z suspension to drift. He managed to get what seems to be the max amount of 60+*. He has some really good posts on his blog, and was sharing measurements and setups, then suddenly he stopped sharing those intricate details. Turns out someone was asking him for the specifics of these measurements, and in what seemed an off hand comment mentioned on his own social posts he may be willing to make some extra sets and sell them. This was taken as an affront to the person who supplied the information, frankly rightly so. So he stopped sharing measurements. The last shared measurements and methods are for what he said is about 45* of angle, which compared to about 33* of stock is quite an improvement.

 

So using his measurements I shortened both spare knuckles. It is more than the AZC knuckles.

 

I started off by using a stock knuckle. I put some bolts through the mounting holes and spaced them so the bottom was flat and could be interchanged with washers (one side is lower than the other). Than I used a bolt and nut on the front and welded the nut to a separate square stock. That means I can slide the separate stock to shorten the knuckle to my desired length.

With that done I cut the knuckle with a band saw, than heavily beveled the both sides. Bolt the front knuckle onto the front, than slide it down to shorten and meat up with the body of the knuckle. Then with about 3-4 passes I welded them in their shortened orientation.

Not sure if I'll end up running these, definitely am planning another pass and some gusseting for sure, but decided to go ahead with one of my other projects. I need to get some different tie rod ends and maybe weld up a rear end I have and swap to some conventional axles instead of a VLSD if I was a bit more serious about this whole endeavor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Apiazza]

Do you remember what thread the wire how to was posted on?

[seattlejester]

Goodness, I clipped your quote as that is a bit ridiculous. 

 

If there is a certain section you would like to quote you can highlight it with your mouse and let go and after a second it should prompt you if you want to quote this.

 

3 hours ago, Apiazza said:

Do you remember what thread the wire how to was posted on

For example^

 

What wire how to are you referring to? The headlight relays? The sealed beam to H4 conversion? The LED housing?

[Apiazza]

2 hours ago, seattlejester said:

Goodness, I clipped your quote as that is a bit ridiculous. 

 

If there is a certain section you would like to quote you can highlight it with your mouse and let go and after a second it should prompt you if you want to quote this.

 

For example^

 

What wire how to are you referring to? The headlight relays? The sealed beam to H4 conversion? The LED housing?

Sorry, I was referring to the led headlights. 

Edited May 31, 2018 by Apiazza

[seattlejester]

I converted to H4 a while back so it was plug and play.

 

The conversion should be in the earlier section of this thread. You can also buy a generic conversion kit, older jeeps used to use the sealed beams as well, they just require you to run a new wire for power to the battery and take everything else off the sealed beam plug for one head light to trigger and out put to two new H4 plugs.

[seattlejester]

Started with ordering all the parts for this hopefully last overhaul for a while.

 

Looking for a shift knob made me realize, I have a printer? Why not make one?

 

Friend offered me his garage, so I went ahead and started with the swap. Unfortunately the trans is massive and my design goals is to always have the exhaust tucked up, it always surprises people when I drive right over speed bumps. So I just went big with making room. That meant moving my brake proportioning valve and remounting.  Figured while I was at it to just go for it. Overhauled my brake setup, no more brass hardware store fittings. Stainless steel elbows rated for higher pressure, and a high end swagelok 3000psi ball valve for parking brake. 

While I was at it I also changed my drift stick into a similar style as I had before for fitment. The one before wouldn't lock the brakes and barely held the car while also being sloppy. So hopefully my built setup succeeds in locking up the rear wheels, and when I need to I can set the ball valve to hold the car and keep it running.

 

Also made room for the massive behemoth of a CD009. I really like the placement. The shifter is not so far back it is uncomfortable (I was reaching with the R154 so this is still awkward, but not quite as much as the stock R154). I also got a chance to move the fuel lines over to the the driver side away from the exhaust. 

 

Not sure how exhaust is going to work here, I think I will have to give up my goal of getting it tucked in the trans tunnel and just have it hang a bit lower. Still probably higher than your average low car.

 

I did order a catalytic converter to try and muffle the shriek that comes from this engine. Getting to an age where that seems to have faded on me a bit. Kind of reminds me of a small dog, huge bark and no bite, more bite than most cars, but still a little too much sound for presence. Hopefully the cat serves to muffle a bit and should make it nicer for the environment to boot. If that fails I have some ideas on making a baffled tail pipe.

 

Drive shaft shop failed me so no driveshaft. Planning on buttoning up the trans install, maybe get a bit of the exhaust setup started and finish up the mounts and shortening of the intercooler and radiator pipes. 

 

Also struggling with some bolts on the trans side. I'm pretty sure I have an early plate which has a lot of faults, two of which are that the bottom two bolts are tapped for a massive m12x1.75, while there is almost no room for the head. Going to try and acquire some allen head socket bolts. The top two bolts seem like even more of an issue. I wasn't able to get the trans quite forward enough to make those easy access. So the question is do I use them. I know some people don't run the top bolts just for ease. Getting them in is going to require dropping the tail end of the trans enough to snake some extensions up there, same thing for getting them off. Thoughts?

 

[LLave]

11 hours ago, seattlejester said:

 

I did order a catalytic converter to try and muffle the shriek that comes from this engine. Getting to an age where that seems to have faded on me a bit. Kind of reminds me of a small dog, huge bark and no bite, more bite than most cars, but still a little too much sound for presence. Hopefully the cat serves to muffle a bit and should make it nicer for the environment to boot. If that fails I have some ideas on making a baffled tail pipe.

 

 

 

 

That's exactly how I have been feeling! Hah. If you are going to be loud, you had better be able to back it up. No reason for a 300hp car to sound like a top fuel. I mean to each their own, i suppose. 

[seattlejester]

2 hours ago, LLave said:

No reason for a 300hp car to sound like a top fuel

Yup someone commented on how good my car sounded, I was more than a couple blocks away from them.

 

If I was maxing out my turbo and putting down 5-600hp I may be more inclined to leave the exhaust uncorked, but this round of mods is all about drivability with power steering, smoother transmission. A quieter exhaust definitely has its place in the formula.

[seattlejester]

Couple of interesting problems that came up.

 

I couldn't figure out why my car was idling so high. From start up it just held really high RPM. Then I figured out that I moved the engine forward, which in turn shortens the throttle cable of course. Luckily when I installed the cable I added quite a bit of extra into the clevis point, so rolling out a bit more than an inch I have my idle again.

 

Couldn't bleed the clutch for the life of me. My master seemed fine, and I could see movement from the moment I started applying pressure to the pedal, but it moved half an inch or so. The 350z supposedly runs the same 5/8 master, but since I wasn't getting enough movement I stepped up to a 3/4. When even that didn't yield results I was really at a loss. I even took it out and bench bled the whole system. Then I looked under at the clutch pedal. Surprisingly, since our fulcrum is really high up the actuating rod moves almost less then an inch. Putting that together with the fact the slave is a fairly large 3/4 as well made me realize I needed more travel. I read an old post by miles I think that said he needed to cut the stop off the floor. So I started with that, then I rolled the slack stop (above the pedal) all the way in. With the additional travel I was getting the fork to fully cycle. It is an extra tough pressure plate, but it requires a fair amount of effort probably since I changed the master bore as well. Part of me is curious what would happen if I swapped back to the 5/8 with the extended travel. Annoyingly it seems that I went over kill on the travel as well, the engagement point sits about 1/2 an inch or so above where the stop was, so I'll have to add another one there. Although I may be tempted to move the slack stop a bit more since the clutch now sits higher than the brake pedal which may have put me into the clutch stop anyway.

 

Need to make some exhaust hangers, but I was able to salvage my old exhaust. I had some grand ideas, but maybe not for the time being. I'm tempted not to even install my cat, maybe have a shop take car of that for me as holding up and supporting exhaust is very tricky.

 

Engine mount may have to wait a bit as well.

 

New intercooler mounts are definitely on the menu.

 

Removable radiator support may have to wait.

 

I may attempt the power steering this weekend. A friend offered an alignment rack so I'll probably install my knuckles down there.

[Geno750]

Hey at least you can use your printer to make a pedal stop.

[seattlejester]

My friend is similar he suggests 3d printing for a lot of solutions, granted we both agree if the car sits out in the sun PLA won't last, and I haven't played around with ABS yet. I am planning on printing a pretty trick piece for welding the power steering shafts together. 17mm to 16mm adapter with a slot in the middle so I can weld while having the pieces in perfect alignment.

 

Given I have a welder handy and had some bolts and nuts I made an adjustable stop.

Unfortunately my first step was to take up the slack stop that I had maxed out earlier, so I made the clutch even with the brake again. It is surprising, given the arc the pedal travels you gain a lot more throw up top for small pedal movement. In other words your engagement point can shift what feels like almost an inch or more from moving adjusting the rod back 1/4 of an inch. 

That unfortunately meant I couldn't have the bolt and nut stack, so I cut the legs shorter and drilled through the wheel well. The engagement point is maybe an inch or so off of the stop now. The annoying part? Pretty much lines up almost perfect with where the stock one was.

 

 

[seattlejester]

Finally got her back home. Had a scare when I noticed the oil pressure gauge was reading 0. Pulled off the road to find the little plastic nut on the sender had worked its way off and the wire had slipped off. Going to have to find a nylock nut or something to secure it on there.

Looking a bit snazzier, added a plate to cover the trans and a little shifter extender with the benefit of also shifting the shifter forward about 2 inches. I also bought a weighted shifter, but with the extender and the leverage I was a bit concerned it would pull out of gear while braking or accelerating. I'm not married to the height, friend suggested it to see how I would like it being close to the shifter, but with it that tall the shift length is also quite long. Maybe when I drop it I'll throw the weighted knob back on to play with.

 

The ball valve is awesome. Quick flip and the car can be held pretty solidly. 

 

 I added some insulation, but goodness there is so much heat down there. I can't imagine it is all from the exhaust. I imagine the transmission itself puts out quite a bit of heat. Really wish I had put some reflective material up there before I put my transmission up, but I didn't think it would be that bad (R154 was fine after adding the insulation). Short of dropping the transmission anyone have any suggestions? Someone suggested a carpet kit might help. Definitely going to buy the aluminum silica mat thing for the underside the next time I do some major work, but something for the top side would be helpful.

[Zetsaz]

Your car is so cool, I'm jealous haha. Letting me try it briefly was a bad idea... just made me want to abandon the L28 completely. Would slow things down to getting it on the road but wouldn't do things twice I guess.

 

For insulation I'm gonna be using Lizard Skin, but I distinctly remember when I drove my car in the Cache Cruise-In last summer there was a TON of heat coming from near the shifter even through the shifter boot. This year after having a proper lower and upper shift boot to fully seal the cabin from the trans tunnel the heat was greatly reduced. It was 95 out and it was actually... bearable haha. Still not great without AC, but I'm sure if I wasn't driving so slow for the parade it would have been just fine. 

 

More to the point... just make sure the cabin is totally sealed. even with insulation and carpet like I had with the original stuff from the car it was getting really hot without the boot. 

Edited July 30, 2018 by Zetsaz

[seattlejester]

Join the darkside

 

I have the trans tunnel completely sealed with aluminum tape to the shifter stand and now the shift boot on top as well although it isn't secured. I'm gonna try another layer of the insulation over the top. If it is still too warm I'll order some of the reflective trans mat for the bottom and try and sneak it up there some day, I've been looking at z car depot and they have some cushioning for the carpet that seems like it would act as a pretty good barrier as well.

[Zetsaz]

I might just... Every single trans option I have for the L28 that'll hold reasonable power basically puts me in the same price range as doing a JZ swap, whether it's NA-T, or the 1jzgte options I like. I think even the W58 would hold the power I was looking for out of the the L series, so a JZ swap price might be a wash compared to what I have left for the L series I'd actually enjoy. 

 

We'll have to grab lunch and talk more about the whole process once I'm back up in Washington. 

[seattlejester]

Autocross was fun

Got to meet ben and check out his z

Had some problems with my car

Fittings seem to be leaking in the rear.

Intake fell off and will need replacement.

Intake also attacked the belt when it fell.

And definitely an active oil leak which is the bane of my existence. 

 

So had another fairly productive weekend.

 

After 200 miles my right leg was killing me. Part of it definitely is seat angle (being flat instead of angled), and the sport seats have a fairly short seat to start with, but the lack of support for your thigh in addition to holding your leg at a funny angle because of the roll bar meant I actually had to stop just to stretch.

Roll bar was a nice cosmetic touch, but truth be told, mine was probably never going to do anything unless I landed perfectly on my roof. Given how it was mounted a rear impact may even be more dangerous with the whole structure moving forward.

So out it came. I had some thoughts of modifying it to sit on the rear wheel well, but this one has been cut and welded to death, I think it can be retired. I counted and I get 3 additional clicks to slide back, now the inboard adjuster is rubbing the trans tunnel, I also get to recline the seat a good 3 clicks, so a bit better, not perfect, but much better.

 

Another point was my head was ringing, even with headphones in you could hear a drone like someone was yelling "DRA" in your ear. 

So I added a big ultra quiet resonator, and also threw in a cat while I was down there.

I had some temptation to modify it to bring it out the back, but too much work for the moment, and I don't want to bring the hot exhaust around the plastic fuel cell (maybe when I make an aluminum one). Now the exhaust is just loud, but a lot of the other odd tones are gone, and there is a nice toast smell instead of fuel. I think I'll be throwing in a muffler down the road, even this seems too loud for sustained usage, granted not as bad. 

 

I also tried to throw some shielding up in the trans tunnel, but man, the DEI floor shield stuff is super hard to work with, and their adhesive is really weak. They state that you don't need to clean before applying indicating how good the adhesive is, but it is barely on there. I think this will have to wait until the trans is out so I can wash the tunnel, maybe even just rivet this thing in place.

 

Replaced my accessory belt and did the first oil change, no metal or coolant in the oil which is good. There still is a small leak that appears to only manifest while driving on the driver side, I suspect from that oil level sender, but I'll have to investigate it at another time.