jmortensen

I had this happen and the issue in my case was the rubber bumper at the bottom of the door disintegrated and fell out. This allows the window to go down farther than it should, which basically lets the top of the glass fall under the top of the door frame. The quick fix is to roll the window regulator down all the way, stick anything (car keys work) between the glass and the fuzzy weather strip on the inside of the channel, and slide the keys or whatever back towards the back of the door. This pulls the top of the window out from underneath the top of the frame and then you can roll it back up. Then all you have to do is keep people from rolling the window all the way down until you can get a chance to replace the rubber bumper. There are probably a bunch of different things that can go wrong in the door, but that was my problem.

Those are cantilevered, right, so they fit on a 15x7 or a 15x8? Not interested, just trying to help.

If you buy the Suspension Techniques bar for a 240 it comes with the uprights that you're looking for. Summit Racing has the best price last time I checked. The bar is 3/4". If you get the Suspension Techniques bar for the 260/280, it mounts in front of the diff, because the later cars have a sway bar mount on the frame rails up front. Those bars are 7/8" but the arms are longer, so actual spring rate might be about the same, you'd have to measure it to figure it out for sure.

You mean small American engines don't you? Can't run a big V8 off of a puny 390. It's a popular spec carb for 2.3L Pintos in dirt track racing. I agree with 240ZMan as to the purpose of that conversion. If you've got a set of tired SU's and you've never heard of ZTherapy and don't know how to diagnose or fix SU's, a 4 barrel conversion can get the car running strong again. Probably not as strong as properly refurbished SU's, but well enough to make it seem like a big power increase over tired SU's.

Isn't this question akin to asking: "Do you think anyone ever farted in the driver's seat of my Z?" OF COURSE Zeppelin was played in your Z!!! For what it's worth, I'm partial to The Immigrant Song. Even though I haven't ever had a radio in my current Z (seriously), Zeppelin has been on in the shop when I was working on the car many many times.

It sounds like what we're disagreeing on is how effective a shear panel the floor and trans tunnel is. I would suggest that it isn't very effective, because it is so thin, and the trans tunnel part makes it a lot weaker in shear than if it were a solid floor all the way across. It's not a bead rolled in the floor for strength, it's a major curve in the very thin sheet metal. The seat mounts don't connect across the tunnel, if they did that would make the floor much stronger. After much hammering on my trans tunnel I can say with some amount of conviction that the tunnel is easy to flex and easy to bend. I would want a shear panel to be SPRUNG so that it could be effective in shear, and the tunnel just isn't very sprung in my estimation. Shear panels can't be effective if they're "loose", so far as I've experienced them. The subframe connectors, like the rockers, are primarily adding beam strength, not torsional strength. A small amount of one comes automatically with the other, but they are very different things and to get both you need to design for both in my opinion. You may ultimately be right that the weight might be better applied somewhere else. I am just saying that I would like to see it tested to know for sure. I've seen a procedural manual for torsional and beam testing, and it is not very easy to do, so I'm not holding my breath for someone to go out and test it. Instead I'm saying that in THEORY, the X should be very useful. I don't know what people are going to make the X from, but the one that I had planned was going to weigh about 7 lbs. You just can't get weight lower, and the 7 lbs would be quite a bit lighter than the strap that the guy is selling in this thread. Again, I don't think it will work as planned due to ground and exhaust clearance issues, but if I find that I can make it work I would definitely bolt it on and try it before poo poo-ing the idea.

Haven't worked on too many convertibles, so I can't really speak to this. I can say that the 944 convertibles have a double floor pan like a sandwich. I have also seen the bottom brace for Miatas which connects the frame rails underneath. My take is this: On the top side, any opening in the cage that is very large should have some sort of gussets. The larger the unreinforced hole, the more likely it is to flex. On the bottom of the car it should be no different. There is the vertical panel above the rear control arm mounts which is part of the torque box that is back there, and the rocker panels and that's pretty much it until you get to the front crossmember in the stock vehicle. The trans crossmember doesn't connect the subframes together. Even if you add the subframe connectors, there is still a very long span of unconnected frame members. I could go out and measure, but I'll guess 6' long and 3' wide with no cross braces or anything on the whole span. In Herb Adams's Chassis Engineering he shows how an X brace across a ladder frame improves torsional rigidity, and also shows how a NASCAR style roll cage on top does not necessarily add much torsional rigidity to a ladder frame. P89 fig 12-12 and p90 fig 12-15. This is all done with balsa wood modeling, but it proves the idea of the X on the bottom is sound.

I'm not sure I'm convinced by John's argument. Not sure if he's done any testing to prove his point, if he has I haven't heard about it. The problem that I've seen is ground clearance when you add a tubular X between subframe connectors. The strap steel X pictured above is just not going to cut it though.

Well you're going to weld it on the car, so that paint isn't going to last very long...

Bad Dog subframe connectors look much stronger in the rear section. The front also looks better on the Bad Dog parts, as it goes all the way up the sides of the frame rail instead of just overlapping the bottom inch. Also on the X, I really like that idea, but that looks like 1/8" x 2" strap bolted on in an X shape. I question it's ability to do much of anything productive in anything other than tension. A boxed structure would be much better, but I don't think there is a lot of room under the frame rails, especially if the car is lowered. The price is insanely high.

For the record, unless you get into fixing twisted throttle shafts, you only balance 3 throats on triples. So it's 2 vs 3, not 2 vs 6. Balancing triples is super easy. It's getting the jetting right that people have trouble with.

Could also be the blue tint at the top of the windshield.

All of this suddenly becomes this: Do you mean to say that if they worked at a Datsun dealership and a triple carbed Z rolled through the door that they would refuse to work on it? If that's your contention, why didn't they refuse to work on the dual SU's? Seems to me like a Mikuni is a lot more similar to your average 4V carb than an SU which has no jets to change and no accelerator pumps but instead has oil and springs and needles and nozzles and all the rest. I really don't see where you get off saying I'm the one who is twisting your words around and that I should be ashamed. I've reread the whole post and I just don't see this as a lack of comprehension or any sort of deception on my part. Look I think you're a really smart guy and I've come looking for your advice before and probably will again, but I think you need to perform a cranio-rectal extraction this time. The one thing I think we do agree on is that in the US it seems that some people with low IQ's get into wrenching on cars because it doesn't require a degree. That said, I've worked in seven shops in my earlier years (mostly just out of high school), and looking back on it I can say that there might only have been one shop that I worked in that just didn't have a guy smart enough to work on Mikunis. That is of course a subjective assessment, I won't label mine "factual" as your seemingly subjective assessments have been labeled. Also my high IQ didn't make me a good mechanic. In fact I wasn't a very good mechanic by ANY standard of measurement. I was slow. Very slow. And I made mistakes. It's a much better hobby for me than a profession. I don't claim this to mean anything more than that IQ tests probably have little to do with who will be a good mechanic.

As said above, no point in running chokes in Paso Robles. Just use the accelerator pumps.

Nah, then it would be "I want to see how F'd up it gets me."

Pretty much whenever you want I suppose. I think you'll probably remember that I work from home. PM me if you need directions again. Bring that LSD by too. I'd like to see just how F'ed up it is.

I've got a straight grill. Needs a repaint, but you're welcome to it. My old hood isn't going to be used again, but it's bowed and would probably be a real bitch to fix.

I don't have an opinion, but the question reminds me of the SNL bit: "Quien es mas macho? Lorezo Lamas o Ricardo Mantalban?"

That's not my point. My point is not to say that every 'Merican is a goddam genius. My point is to say that not all Americans are too damn stupid to work on sidedrafts, and if you assume that they are, then you're the one who is not the genius. Acceptance of Japanese vehicles seems to be the issue for you then I guess. You seem to automatically think this lack of prejudice against Japanese cars makes the people smarter somehow. That's the part I'm taking issue with. Midwesterners might not like Hondas and there are definitely some morons out that way, but they're also the guys pulling 275 whp out of a 2.3L Ford with a 390 Holley on it. They might not be using sidedrafts, but the fact that they can and do squeeze their preferred motors to a similar (if not higher) state of tune makes me think that maybe they're not as dumb as I once thought. I'm just making the point because I used to think all those backward hicks in the midwest were a bunch of idiots until my boss at a Porsche shop got a subscription to Circle Track magazine. When I asked him if he liked watching rednecks drive around in a fishbowl, he made me read an article on aerodynamics and took me out to the shop. Every modification listed in the article was present to one degree or another on a 944 Turbo which was fairly new and still pretty high tech at the time. I'm not a fan of drag racing either. Seems like a horribly expensive and destructive hobby to get 10 or 12 seconds of joy out of, but I've also come to realize that it isn't just building a huge engine and mashing the gas pedal. I guess I see just as much ignorance in people who hate pushrod V8's because they're "old technology" as you see in people who hate Japanese cars because they're built by (as my friend's immigrant dad says) "fuggin forners". Ignorance is ignorance. Assuming that 10's of millions of people that live in the center of the country are too dumb to work on a carburetor--that's ignorant. You're just calling it the way you see it. So am I. The thing on the metric system was a month ago, sorry for dredging up ancient history. ;-) http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=126831

Sorry Tony, I think we're still in disagreement here. Last week it was that the metric system is inherently more accurate than SAE measurements, this week it is that midwesterners are too stupid to deal with side drafts. As far as I can see, you're not the messenger, you're the one coming to the conclusions. There are stupid people everywhere and your straw man example of people covering up the third carb on their tri-power V8's doesn't prove that everyone in the midwest is a moron. What's more, finding a good mechanic ANYWHERE is a chore. My buddy (a very talented mechanic) used to say about some of his Californian co-workers "I don't know how to spell mokanic but I are one". Turns out California isn't stocked with geniuses either. Surprise, surprise.

It's been tried. Do a search over at hybridz.org and you'll see quite a few posts on it. It's a shitty idea, and as a wise man once told me "If you make ice cream with $^!# you get shitty tasting ice cream."

If Nissan felt that way they had their heads up their asses. If you agree... well you do the math. Aren't you the VW freak? How many sets of downdraft Webers would you estimate have been tuned in the rednecked US of A? I can tell you I used to see quite a few old Porsches running around on downdrafts. You're talking about an easier to tune version of the same basic carb just turned on its side. No big mystery. In fact I think they're a lot less mysterious to the average mechanic than an SU. Not sure where the self-loathing anti-Americanism comes from, but get over it. I think the reason for importing the SU's and not Mikunis was purely emissions. If I recall correctly Nissan (and many other makes) also kept using carbs on cars in other countries longer than they did here in the US for emissions reasons.

Crap. I think the name is appropriate. It "grips like a phantom".

I didn't think it was calling you out too much when you said you were going to vote for Kucinich and had "Biafra for President" under your screen name. So what about the flag thing, and the patriotism issue? Are you true to the egalite concept of the "universal human experience" where people shouldn't be separated by imaginary constructs such as nationality (amongst other things)? Just curious. For the record I'm a patriotic, agnostic, Libertarian, laissez-faire, if-you-want-it-****ed-up-get-the-government-involved kind of guy. I just don't say that in the little text under my screen name.

Most socialists see "patriotism" or "nationalism" as bad qualities that enable the empowered to rule over the working class. I don't think that most of your everyday Democrats really understand why they don't like the flag, and they'll blame it on Bush or whatever is convenient at the time, but when you go right to the source of the matter it boils down to another barrier to "egalite". Right Jason?