gramercyjam

I gave away a set of 14X8's just like those a couple months ago just to get them out of my garage after trying to sell them for months. Nobody wanted to give even $20 each for them.

As I recall, the guy you bought the tub from was asking $750 for it. Not a bad price, all said and done. When he offered it to me, if the tub was a few thousand miles closer to me, I would have picked it up myself, log book or not.

ha ha. I've got your wheels and sway bars on my car.

Zvoiture - whose car is that in your avatar?

I had some in very good shape with lugs and caps for about a year. Finally sold them for $150 plus shipping.

Possibly. But I didn't think triples were allowed in ITS, are they?

Here's my thoughts on it. It depends on what you are going to do with the car. Since Solo II rules for an FP 240Z limit carb size to 45mm, that's what you go with. If you are driving competitively and don't have that limit (such as some track cars and other non-stock Solo II classes), and you have the budget for the bigger carbs, bigger is better. If you are not driving competitively, and are just going for a quick street car with the triple bling factor and sound, 40's will do just fine. Quite a few "experts" say that triples aren't worth it if you don't have a hot cam and a lot of head porting, and of course all that helps, but just going to a 2 1/2" exhaust with a good flowing muffler will really bring the triples to life and you can notice a substantial increase in power over twin SU's throughout the RPM range.

Your right. There is no room to work. Every time I do it I wonder how I did it the last time cause it seems impossible. Take a couple of shots of burbon, relax and try again. you will figure it out.

Yeah. I'm originally from upstate NY. I remember when I went to buy my first car - my dad went with me. It was an Austin Healey 3000 rust bucket for $200. Dad said no - too rusty. Of course today, who could have known, you couldn't touch it for for 100 times that and it was worth fixing. But that 82 ain't no Austin Healey 3000.

Exactly. Unless you haven't got the time (like me). Back in my teen years I would have given $35 for something that rusty (and I did). Left it on the side of the road when it died and never looked back.

One mans junk ....

I owned an '83 Turbo for about 15 years and I loved the car so no snobbery here. That pic of the drivers floor - tells me that the car has terminal cancer, what you can see is the tip of the iceburg and usually the easiest to fix. What you can't see is the killer. Buyer should be prepared to drive it as is until the wheels fall off. To repair this would require way more work and materials cost to fix than the car would ever be worth.

I would pay $50 to have it hauled to the junk yard.

New gas shocks will raise the rear end. If you push the piston in, does it stay? On gas shocks the answer is no, it will come right back up, with a lot of force. That is why they will contribute to the spring rate too. Of course, worn out shocks won't do this.

With one of these Not the answer you are looking for I'm sure. New gas shocks in the rear can help raise it up a little, as will new springs.

The picture even appears to show the indentation where the nut was staked.

If you just want to replace valve stem seals, you don't need to remove the head or the manifolds. Just the valve cover needs to be removed. --John

I've seen this over on hybridz. Not a simple swap. Major fabrication required. On the plus side, I bet the diff gear ratio is better suited to the kind of power you get from a V8 swap than the Datsun diffs. --John B

$25 A TIRE????? Thats crazy. Don't you have tire shops up there in Dallas like we do down here in San Antone? You can go to one of those shops and they will jack the car up, take the tire off, dismount it, patch it, put it back on for $2. --John

Link to the Big Sam pages on ZHome.com. Big Sam Big Sam used to kick some Carrera butt. Fun reading. I don't think we have seen that BMW before at the Solo II nationals so maybe we just need to kick it up a notch to beat it, but I doubt it will be me. I've always said I'm a better mechanic than a driver and I don't think that will change any time soon. --John

Prepared autox Z cars compete in the same class as prepared 911's and prepared 914's. They are pretty well matched. --John B

Tumbler sounds like a good idea. I have a bead blasting cabinet and it is a pain to bead blast lots of little parts. Once the stuff is cleaned up, I pickle the parts in phosphoric acid to remove any residue that will inhibit the plating process. I plate with some electro less nickle plate like what is sold here . Otherwise the part will flash rust again in a few days. In addition to the plating solution, you will need a hotplate, candy thermometer and pyrex cup. Heat this solution up to about 195 degrees F, drop your stuff in for about 1/2 hour for a nice thick coat of nickle. If your hardware is too big to fully submerse if the cup, you can do one end, then turn it over and do the other end. New hardware is cheaper if you can find it, but some hardware is just not available anymore. --John B

That R190 5.88 on eBay would definitely not be fun on a street car that sees any substantial amount of driving on an Interstate. Your engine would need to rev quite high to keep up with traffic. But it would be extremely torquey, you could forget you even had a 1st gear and start off in second all the time. Yes, the 4.1 VLSD is perfect but was sold minutes after posting it's availability. To find out what your current diff setup is, check the charts on zhome.com in the link I provided. Otherwise, if you think your diff is not original, you will can compare it to pictures of R200's and R180's. Side by side it's easy to tell, but not so easy when they are not side by side. I don't have any links to pictures of these handy but you might be able to Google some up. Some people who have monkeyed with the diffs have gone to great extremes to put an LSD into Z cars for as little money as possible so it is hard to say what you have under there without seeing it. If you do have an R180 or R200, you can estimate the gear ratio by turning the driveshaft and seeing how many rotations the wheels make for 1 rotation of the driveshaft. You can determine the ratio exactly by removing the diff cover and reading the numbers off of the ring gear. The numbers on the ring gear will tell you how many teeth on the pinion and how many teeth on the ring gear. Divide to come up with the standard xx.x:1 ratio. Shipping a diff can cost from about $35 to $70 depending on how far, and who the shipper is. I have found that Fedex is about 1/2 the cost of UPS. I shipped an R180 from San Antonio to California for about $35 via Fedex.