jmortensen

If you have to run the pilots 2 turns out then you need bigger pilots. I was taught to run the pilots out 1.25 to 1.5 turns, and if it was lean, run a bigger pilot. A bigger pilot will help with the hesitation IME as well. I went down this road and found that squirting more fuel in with the acc pump made it worse after a point. I would put the pump linkage back to the middle setting and then focus on the pilots. Smaller chokes will also help, but that will hurt top end, so you have to weigh the pros and cons. If you really want it gone, smaller chokes is probably the answer.

Yes, I think those are a big air restriction. I tried to Google to find a dyno plot with and without screens but couldn't find one. The best I could come up with is this: http://porsche356registry.org/resources/tech-articles/troubleshooting-and-repair/371-velocity-stacks--for-looks-for-power-or-both.html You could easily test my theory by pulling them off and seeing how it runs, but don't just sit in the driveway and rev it up. I bet it runs like crap with a load at higher rpms.

Screens are really restrictive. You should run an air filter, preferably one that has filter element all the way around like the ITG, but even the chrome capped K&N style filter is a big step up from screens. You might note that K&N's have screen on them too, but they have a lot more surface area and they're pleated to increase it a lot more than just the size of the filter would suggest. Increasing the surface area of the filter/screen reduces the restriction. I wouldn't use socks for the same reason. Steve, if you remove the screens and go with a filter you'll probably need to re-jet.

Gas is going to be pretty useless for car restoration IMO. Back in the day lots of bodywork was done with brazing because brass melts at a lower temp than steel, and if you get a panel hot enough to weld you'll warp the crap out of it. Using dissimilar metals for bodywork leaves you with the potential for galvanic corrosion, which means your painstakingly brazed panels are now more likely to rust. The real problem is that you can't localize the heat like you can with MIG or TIG. With a MIG or TIG you can take your patch panel, fit it, and then use 100s of small tack welds, allowing time in between so you never put so much heat in the panel so as to warp it. You can weld thicker stuff like exhaust systems with gas, but it takes forever compared to MIG, and it takes more skill. I've heard bad things about cheap torches, but haven't actually used them so can't speak to that directly.

blackgold man, that welder is gas CAPABLE, but I haven't yet seen a welder that comes with a tank. Jeff, no part of a Z roll cage should be thicker than .120. In fact SCCA recently said 1.5 x .095 was sufficient for a Z cage, and I think the min thickness for the plates to mount it is .100". A 110V Hobart should weld that with no problem whatsoever. There is no need to go to 220 to build a cage. I think if you're doing a drag cage the plates have to be 3/16". Either way, 220V is not necessary. For your average car guy, duty cycle is never going to factor in. You're not typically laying long beads for hours on end. Its a tack weld here, or an inch long bead there. If you weld for too long on the car, you're going to warp something. The longest bead I've done on a car was most of the way around a cage tube. Then you stop and reposition and by the time you get back into place to pull the trigger again, your duty cycle problems are gone. At least that's the way it has gone for me. YMMV.

The problem with going to Lowes is that they'll sell you a welder with no gas tank. You can plug it in and do some welding, but it's going to be flux core wire with no gas, which leaves lots of spatter and is not as good as gas shielded. So in order to really know what it's going to do when set up right you need a good regulator, gloves, mask, gas tank, and the right wire from your local welding store and then you can test it out. That's probably a couple hundred more bucks. If you get a quality welder (to me this means Lincoln or Miller) then you won't need to return it. Lowes does sell Lincoln, so it might not be a bad place to shop, but I wouldn't do it with the shady intention of flux core welding with no gas for a weekend and then returning it.

You don't need to "get away" with 110. 110 will EASILY do everything that you need to do to a Z car. A good one with infinitely adjustable heat and speed and gas like my Miller welds sheet metal beautifully. The issue here for me is that your insistence on 220 might mean that some people will think they shouldn't get a welder. I was in a garage that didn't have 220 when I bought the MM135, otherwise I would have bought a 180. I'm really glad that I didn't wait indefinitely until I moved to a house that had 220 to buy a welder though. A LOT of work got done with that 110; I built a rotisserie, stitch welded the entire chassis, built part of the roll cage, subframe connectors, strut tower bar brackets, seat brackets, sectioned struts, etc. Similar story with air compressors. My new house has 220 and I bought a relatively huge 60 gal 5hp 220V oiled compressor and I love it, and when I was in the old house I had a 20 gal 3 hp oilless 110V compressor. When you see threads on air compressors people likewise say: "DON'T buy anything less than an oiled 5hp compressor." The truth is that the 20 gallon was loud as hell and had to cycle on about every 2 minutes when I was using a die grinder or cutoff wheel, but again, you have to work with what you've got, and given the situation a lot of work was done with the small compressor that just could not have been done without it. Yes, bigger is better on welders and compressors, but smaller is better than nothing on compressors and smaller really isn't that much of a compromise on welders, at least when you're confining the welding to a Z car which just doesn't have any thick metal in it and shouldn't have any thick metal welded to it.

There are smaller 220V units like the Millermatic 180 which aren't much bigger than a 110V machine and have more capacity. I just think 220 isn't a prerequisite for welding on a Z.

Given the options of MIG and arc, MIG for sure. You can MIG weld up to about 3/16" thick metal on a single pass with a good 110V unit. If you have 220 available and don't mind the extra cash, a 220V unit is definitely better and has more capacity. You can weld together a car trailer with a 220 if you wanted, but the thickest metal in the Z chassis is probably .1" thick and you can easily weld that with 110V. I'd suggest Lincoln or Miller. Love my Millermatic 135. I've fabbed up a rotisserie, patched holes in sheet metal, done subframe connectors, made control arms, roll cage, etc with it.

Those are MSA's "IMSA" flares that are molded into stock fenders. I believe they are NLA.

Yes, that's what it means. Lightweight steel rims have spun shells which are usually .095" thick steel. The cast steel wheels have much thicker shells and can take a pothole hit without any trouble. Seems like I keep posting this vid, but I could watch metal spinning all day long.

The way backspace is measured is to lay a straightedge on the rim and then measure to the mounting flange. So if you have a 15 x 8 the actual rim edge to rim edge is probably 9 or 9.5 and that's why it doesn't work out like you might think. I think steel rims are particularly bad with that because they have the lip on the rim for weights.

The 300ZX NA shafts and 280ZXT shafts look very similar. The problem is that the 300ZX NA shafts are way too long to fit in the car. There is a guy on HybridZ who talked about cutting them down and resplining the shaft. I'm a bit wary of his measurements, but it would be something to look into if you were putting these in an S30. http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/100094-cv-axle-discussion/page__view__findpost__p__951914

http://www.bassettwheel.com/dhole_asphalt.html or www.diamondracingwheel.com. Bassett looks to be a better deal. Diamond has prices from the 90's on their site and when you actually order they will hit you with the new price. Can't help on the fitment question, but I'm sure that info is here or at hybridz.org.

Just on its face that number seems very very high. The 55-60% number suggests neutral handling or slight understeer. If the numbers or calculations are off to start, then that can dramatically effect the output of the calculations and it's better to use the numbers as a guideline than an absolute, but what you've suggested would predict lots of understeer. Here's a thread with more technical info: http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/63492-suspension-tech-motion-ratio-unsprung-weight/page__st__80 And here's one of Dan McGrath's posts on the subject:

I wasn't calculating it previously, and I really wish I knew WTF that meant before. I had a pretty unscientific method of doing what my friend who was faster than me told me to do until I got to be as fast as him, then I started talking to different people, taking tire temps, which led to running way more camber than he suggested, more caster, different toe settings, even engine mods like going bigger on the cam, etc. My plan next time around is to run somewhere between 55 and 60% front, now that I know what calculated front roll couple means.

I think if you have a REALLY high hp car or a car with more weight in the rear, then bigger rear tires makes sense. If you were drag racing, it also makes sense. For a road racer or autoxer I'd be more inclined to run bigger tires in the front on a fairly stock Z, since understeer seems to be a bigger problem in Z's (wider front track also helps drive off the corners). I believe some of the stock class 350Z guys were doing that a few years back, running the rear rims on the front. Stickier tires will help too, but really the solution to your problem is an LSD.

Rolling resistance is not much of a factor for your average Z that sees autox and track days. For autox especially, it is a non-issue. The largest tire allowed in SCCA F Prepared is 16x10. What does John Thomas run? 16x10. For track days it is probably also a non-issue as well, unless your track has very long straightaways and very few corners. If your track is typical and there are lots of corners, you'll do better going faster into the braking zones with more available traction to slow the car down, faster through the corners and exiting the corner with a higher speed than you by working out of the last corner with a slower exit speed and using the rolling resistance to eventually get an extra 2 mph at the end of a long straight, only to have to get on the brakes earlier. I speak from experience, having autoxed with 205/55/14 DOT's, then switched to a 250mm slick. The slick was much faster in both situations, even though I had them mounted on very heavy wheels (25 lbs each). My new build will have 15x14's front and rear with 13" wide slicks and the wheel/tire combo will be about the same in weight. Should be fun, but to be fair, I will have a V8 so less concern for rolling resistance.

More tire is better, and lighter weight is better, so there is a bit of a catch 22 there. If you don't have flares or coilovers then you're limited, but I believe you can go with a 15x8. I would put a 225/50/15 on a 15x8. That size tire is a very good option for a stock fendered Z. You will definitely notice the difference between a 205 and a 225. 205's fit 7" rims best, 225's fit better on 8" rims. I know people put 225's on 7's all the time, but when you're autoxing you'll notice the floppy feeling of a tire that is too wide for a rim in the transitions. If you're autoxing and don't have a lot of money to spend but want to run race tires, you might try getting a set of steel circle track wheels made, and then mount race tires on those. The spun steel rims are only a couple lbs heavier than an aluminum rim, and I can tell you from experience that if you remove the spare tire, you can get 3 15x8's in the hatch and then put another one in the passenger seat to get them to the track, and still have enough room for a jack, small toolbox and a milk crate with spares and rain gear, etc.

This is a big issue for some people. Everyone that I know who runs triples has these blocked off, but there are several threads on hybridz which talk about how your motor will instantly melt into an aluminum/steel puddle as soon as you fire it up with the lines capped. Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. Still, it hasn't been a problem in my experience with an L28 pushing out ~240ish whp, but it is an area of contention. I ran my fuel system dead-headed, with no return line. If you do this, make sure you CAP THE RETURN LINE. When I first put the triples on I forgot and went to the track and realized after the first session that there was a lot of gas in the engine compartment. Under braking the gas was just pouring out of the return. Not good.

Feeling lazy and don't want to type it out again: http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php/topic/103174-e31-head-on-l28-block/

With a 12 point wrench if you're in a tight spot, you need 30 degrees of rotation to get to the next point at which the wrench will fit onto the nut. If you have a 6 point wrench, that becomes 60 degrees. That said, I agree on the sockets, there is no advantage to a 12 point socket unless you're taking off a 12 point bolt or nut, but those are pretty rare.

Someone mentioned wrenches. How many WRENCHES are you guys breaking? I've worked as a mechanic and broken my share of sockets and ratchets, but wrenches I can count on one hand. So long as they aren't so weak as to spread the open end when you are using them, there is relatively little to be gained by buying the most expensive tools you can find (although I will admit that Snap-On has a knack for getting wrenches that fit into spots that most other wrenches don't fit into). Harbor Freight is great for stuff like extensions, wrenches, electric grinders, and cheap air tools and shop tools like hydraulic presses and vises. There are tools where quality counts: ratchets, screwdrivers, impact guns, sockets, and pliers for example, and for those that I use a lot I'll buy good tools. I do have a set of Snap-On 3/8" extensions that I cringe at every time I open my toolbox. What a waste of money, and I bought them at a time when I really didn't have any money to waste.

Cap the coolant line at the back of the block. Don't use the choke, just pump the gas until it warms up. I don't remember what I did to the coolant line going out of the thermostat housing, probably just found a pipe plug to fit that hole and capped it off too.

If you're looking for hydraulic, you can't get any better than Woodward. I've bought a rack but haven't installed it yet. I had it custom sized with 1/2" less stroke since my wheels were hitting the TC rods last time it was running, and I got the steering 75% faster than stock, so less hand over hand at autoxes. Requires much cutting of the crossmember to install, not for the faint of heart... http://www.woodwardsteering.com/