jmortensen

It's been a while since I've been into the stock pedals, but there is a clevis that attaches to the pedal, and then there is a threaded adjustment between the clevis and the booster. That is one adjustment, and the pedal should move 1/8" before the brake booster part comes into contact. Then there is the pin inside the booster, which I think has an adjustment on it too. I have dual masters now so I'm going back 10 years or so to think of these details, so forgive me if I'm a bit fuzzy.

The port to the master cylinder reservoir isn't opening when you let off the brakes. This is either caused by the pedal adjustment being too tight (should be 1/8" or so free play in the pedal before the master cylinder starts to move), or the rod in the booster is too long. When the master cylinder port opens to the reservoir, it releases whatever pressure might be in the system. If it cannot open then as you drive the fluid gets hot and expands, this is like stepping on the brakes a little tiny bit. This causes the fluid to get hotter and it expands more which applies the brakes more and creates more heat etc and is a vicious cycle until you pull over with smoke coming out of the wheels. If you cracked a bleeder open at that point, it would squirt out like someone was standing on the pedal. Get some free play in there and you'll be good to go. BTW I had this same problem with a clutch. Went to the track and it would work fine, but at the end of the session it was slipping. Checked everything, no leaks. Bled the clutch, worked fine again. End of the session, it was slipping again. Same exact thing. I had taken out all the slack in the pedal adjustment (plus I guess an extra tiny little bit that closed the port to the reservoir).

Take off the front diff crossmember bolts that hold it to the frame. The front end of the diff will droop down, you can put the strap in and jack up the diff and put the bolts back in. The factory strap/mount setup really is about the worst designed part of the car, that RT mount (or the Scarab clamshell modification that Carl posted) is a big improvement.

DO use the strap, and DON'T use a metal mount. The strap is not a backup, it works with the stock mount. Metal mounts transfer lots of NVH into the chassis and if you drive hard you can tear the crossmember apart. Another option, since this part of the car is trouble prone, is to get a Ron Tyler mount and never worry about it again. Search and you'll find info on that. Might be RT mount or R/T mount.

Air dams are mainly built for style. It's a very safe bet that MSA didn't put their air dams in a wind tunnel until the Hybrid Z test was done. They loaned most of the aero parts to the testers, and it seems pretty obvious that they wouldn't have done so if they already had the results of the tests.

Looking at the wind tunnel results, the two weren't tested back to back so as to make a direct comparison, but if you look at the first test of both, in test #9 of the BRE spoiler you have 203 lbs of lift in the front, and in test number 16 the original test of the Type III you have 195 lbs of lift in front. Not a real significant difference. The real difference came when they blocked off the gigantic opening in the front of the grill and the Type III, and that's not exactly an apples to apples comparison. Based on the idea that blocking more of the air from going under the car is going to reduce lift, I would say that a solid airdam that comes closer to the ground and doesn't have a big hole in it would likely do better than the BRE (too high off the ground) or the Type III (big hole) before modifications.

I wouldn't use white lithium. It dries out and gets cakey. I'd use regular chassis grease. As to how much, just make it a part of the regular lube you do with every oil change. Just a couple pumps is fine, the grease doesn't escape and doesn't get used up.

Email me at Jon M AT m2differentials.com. I may be able to help you out and get rid of my installed but never run 4 lug 36 spline stub axle and companion flange MM setup and sell you a shorter CV shaft for the driver's side. More info on the shorter shaft here: http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/100094-cv-axle-discussion/

I was pointing out why the ballast resistor was there in the first place. If the points are gone and you're running the Blaster II, jumper wire across the ballast will give a hotter spark.

Like I said, I'm just speaking from experience. I haven't experienced everything so I'm not saying that there isn't some weird circumstance that I just don't know about, but I have aligned hundreds of cars with lots of neg camber and lots of toe in (all Porsches with semi-trailing arm run pretty heavy toe in), and I've never ever seen that wear pattern. If you had enough neg camber to keep the outside of the tire off the ground, IME you'd also have heavy wear on the inside of the tire. These tires look nice and square to the road, and I'm presuming that the car isn't partially jacked up or something weird like that. If the tire is square to the road and the middle of the tire is completely bald, I don't see how neg camber can be a contributing factor. If the outside isn't worn off, and it isn't, then I can't see how lots of toe is a contributing factor. We had a problem with our machine where we were getting a bad zero and I ended up aligning two cars and putting in over 1/2" toe in on the back. One was my Z. I ran about 1.75 degrees neg camber and probably over 1/2" toe in on it for about a week before the tires were COMPLETELY bald. All the way across. Not just in the middle. The other car was a customer's 928. Same thing. She didn't have nearly as much neg camber, probably under a degree, but the toe in was crazy, and she came in 2000 miles later with tires that were completely bald all the way across. I'm not saying with absolute positivity that you're wrong. I'm saying I don't think you're right.

Not buying it. 6mm is a lot of toe in. A lot. But you would have to have a huge amount of neg camber to wear the tires out without catching the outside of the tread. If the neg camber was sufficient to allow the toe to wear the tires in the middle but not on the edge, the the tires would be worn out on the inside, and they appear to be just fine. Something else is going on here.

You're bringing back high school memories for me. My high school autoshop teacher had a great story about this. There was a kid with a 500 hp hot rod with a big blower and the teacher raced him across the parking lot (probably 75 feet from one building to the next) on FOOT. The kid spun the tires, teacher ran like hell and beat him. Traction counts. The other great one we had was Tom Nelson (of Nelson Racing Engines-used to sit right behind me in Auto I) taking on another kid in a burnout distance bet. Longest burnout wins. The other kid had way more hp than Tom, but tom showed up with a space saver spare tire on. Needless to say, he won the bet. 300 something feet before he let off.

Sorry, missed this. You will increase the voltage to the coil without the ballast. The resistor is there to lower voltage so that the points last longer. You don't have to remove it, just run a jumper wire from one side to the other.

Doesn't jibe with my experience. I used to align Porsches for a living, they all have neg camber and toe in in the back, I can't say that I ever saw wear that pronounced in the middle of the tread only and a lot of them were stuffing tires that are wider than they should be on the rim too. Toe in will wear the outside of the tire unless the outside of the tire is off the ground due to a ridiculous amount of neg camber. Neg camber will always wear the inside of the tire, and not the middle. Those tires look square to the ground but the middle is worn. That indicates overinflation or way too wide a tire on the rim. That tire has a treadwear of 440. Something has to be really screwy for it to wear out the center in 7K. What size tires are on it? Stock rims?

Then your tires were overinflated or too large for the rims. If the tire is sitting flat on the ground, an incorrect toe setting will HAVE TO wear the inside or outside edge of the tire first.

Toe in wears the outside of the tire. Toe out wears the inside of the tire. Just think of how the tire rolls when the tires are toed in or out and this should be pretty intuitive. Pos camber wears the outside of the tire. Neg camber wears the inside of the tire. Same here, pretty intuitive. Underinflation wears both sides of the tire, but not the middle. Overinflation wears the middle of the tire, but not the sides. If the tire is overinflated it won't retain it's squared tread shape and the middle wears faster. If underinflated there may not be enough pressure to push the middle of the tread flat on the ground and the edges wear faster. http://www.procarcare.com/includes/content/resourcecenter/encyclopedia/ch25/25readtirewear.html If the tires were not overinflated, the next most likely thing I would say would be too wide a tire on the rim. If you force a 255 onto a 6 inch rim (gross exaggeration) the tire can't sit flat on the road and will drive on the center of the tread very similarly to an overinflated tire.

Your initial timing seems a bit light too. I'd put it in the 18 range + or - a few. You want mid to high 30's when it's all in, and depending on what ZX yours came out of, it will have 17 or 18 degrees mechanical. Zforce is right in that the ATF will lean your mixture on accel, so might try some heavier oil. I think recommended is 20 wt. My Z ran much better with ATF, I put it in a friends and it sputtered and popped and would barely run. There are variables there, needles and nozzle profile and condition, tolerances in the carbs themselves, etc.

There are two layers of metal: a thin sheet metal on top and a thicker (guess about .120) reinforcing plate underneath. If you weld plates in I would suggest doing whatever you have to in order to ensure you hit the bottom plate with your weld. It's really not hard to do, just turn the welder up to get proper penetration on the plate underneath and you'll burn right through the sheet metal. The other option is Ground Control's bolt in plates. I think they're the best out there for Z's at this point, because they don't have the weight of the car sitting on the 5/8" monoball, and the newer ones allow the spring to stay straight underneath the plate, so the spring doesn't get bent sideways and rub the threads on your coilovers as much.

Probably master cylinder leaking into the brake booster. You can pretty easily pull the master forward enough to see in the booster. If there is fluid in there drain it out, and it does sound like you're needing a master.

Those also look like DGV's. I don't think the roof is as big a deal as you're making it out to be. 2 solutions would be to cut the entire roof down to the 1/4 off of another car and weld it on--this would get you the map bar underneath without having to try and fix the old one, or just cutting the skin off of a roof and fixing the stuff underneath and welding it on and pulling the map light and all that back into shape. Someone here did a roof skin and posted pictures (Arne???). Lots of guys cut the roof off for building roll cages.

The carbs are Weber 32/36 DGVs. Decent carburetors, not very well suited to the L6 with the funky intake manifold though. Pretty common on 70's 4 cylinders. I bet that car could be fixed with a donor roof and hatch, and maybe a little beating on the 1/4 panel.

That might be a tough one then. I guess you'd have to find a used one. Zbarn might be a place to look, or put a parts wanted ad here and at hybridz, etc.

Tried Nissan?

It's a personal choice, but the difference in rpm from the 3.9 to the 4.11 is like 150 rpm at 70 mph. Depends on what tire size you use, but it's not going to be night and day. I personally would go for the 4.11, and if you have an LSD 4.11 already, that's even better.

I think it's Java. I was looking at making something similar for my differentials website. I have a calculator up and running, but in a non-graphical form. Having the graphics really helps to see that 2-3 shift gap, and the calculator that Leon suggested is really the best one I've seen. FWIW, I once GAVE my friend a close ratio transmission after we went to the track together, and I just walked away from him after shifting to 3rd. He had a wide ratio box and his L18 with Mikunis just fell on its face when he hit 3rd because the rpms dropped too low. We both thought we would be battling it out on the track, but due to the gear ratios it became no contest at all and wasn't nearly as much fun.