jmortensen

I already answered this for Troy elsewhere, but Toyota truck lug nuts have the same shank diameter and have a 1.5 thread pitch. They are a closed nut so he will have to cut the end off or cut down the studs. I used them on my car with 2nd gen RX7 studs and Nissan 6 spoke wheels for years.

I drove this car the other day. Somebody is going to get a nice car for a good price.

Don't post the same question in different forums. I answered in your other post.

Get the 280ZX Turbo nuts. They are the same thread and pitch but don't need to be peened so if you take them off again you don't have to grind on them.

Z rotors bolt to the back of the hub, they don't slide over the lug studs. The patterns are different.

Longer bolts.

Nevermind. I didn't read. You said "for the non-racer".

That doesn't make sense to me. Corner weights with a person in the car, or not? I would suggest that if you're corner weighting and still using bushings on the swaybar that you do it this way to eliminate preloading the bar: 1. Disconnect driver's side of swaybars and loosen the passengers side so that the bar just barely touches the bushing. 2. Set corner weights with driver in the car. 3. Have someone add spacers (washers) to the driver's side so that the bar rests on the bushing on the driver side the same as the passenger side with the driver in the car. 4. Tighten end links evenly. If you aren't doing the steps above, then you're leaving the links so loose that the bar is in a neutral position with nobody in the car. This basically means that you're setting the bar so that when you get in it's preloaded, which means the car will react differently in right/left turns. Really heims joints are better for reducing preload, because you can easily tell when the turnbuckle gets loose or when the bolt holding the bearing in isn't preloaded. Much harder to accurately eliminate preload when using bushings. Mark, all of this post is race stuff. Just ignore if you're putting sway bars on your street car.

How Epperly does will be interesting to see.

Hey watch it now! Fully restored, these cars have about the same value as a new Honda Civic Si.

-1.5 to -2 degrees for street if you drive hard in the corners. If you're just putting around town, -.5 to -1 degree neg is about right.

I'll go ahead and predict corded insides and nearly new outsides. 3 degrees is a lot of neg camber for the street. 5&Dime ought to slot his rear crossmember and dial some of that out.

That's not really a practical ride height. I've run my car about that low at autocrosses and track days, but I would then raise it back up about 3 inches from there to drive on the street. At that height in the video you will not be able to drive over a speedbump, and you'll have a very hard time getting in and out of driveways. I could not drive into my old driveway with the car any lower than I ran it on the street. Had to go in at an angle to avoid high centering (house was lower than the street level). That was with the car ~3" higher than what is in that video. For reference I'm using the height of the hub in comparison to the body line above the rockers. I had my hubs a bit above that line as well, my wheels and tires were 23" tall. Should be pretty close. Freeze my vid at 8 sec in, compare to your vid at 2:17. Looks like he is using a slightly taller tire, maybe a 16 or 17 inch rim and has the car a little lower. End result is nearly the same, and not practical IME. http://www.classiczcars.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=15578

Never had any trouble with cracking paint.

I prefer to roll them with a wood baseball bat. I'm sure if you search "rolling fenders" you'd find a how to. I think you'd be leaving a lot of raw metal exposed to start rusting with a bunch of cuts.

Best guess is that it cleans the plugs and helps more on an engine with leaky valve stem seals where oil is slowly leaking into the combustion chamber. At WOT you need a hotter spark to jump the gap. By sustaining a high rpm level you're going to work the plugs harder, and maybe that burns some of the crap off of the inuslator and electrodes. That's a guess. I don't think you're going to clean the valves in 5 minutes, although I will buy that ATF or seafoam or Techron over a longer period can clean valve desposits to some degree.

I have a bunch of Z owning friends, but I'll never forget when one took his Z to the other who is a mechanic because it was running a little rough. The mechanic friend asked: "When was the last time you really opened this thing up?" and the other guy said: "It's been a while." There were no cars in the parking lot, so the owner got in the passengers side and the mechanic drove, and they hauled arse around the parking lot like they were autocrossing for about 5 minutes. When they stopped the car purred like a kitten. I would guess that what happened to the engine had more to do with the spark plugs than any deposits on the valves, but it definitely ran better after a little "abuse". My brother used to put a little ATF down the carburetor on a used car after he bought it to clean out carbon in the combustion chamber and on the piston. That one also supposedly works. Makes a nice James Bond style smokescreen too. I believe seafoam does basically the same thing when added to the gas.

Do you think we're judging incorrectly, or without reason?

I bought factory weather strips for the doors probably 10 years ago for $180 per door if I recall. They were harder than the aftermarket stuff and really required me to slam the door. I think they had been sitting on a shelf for 20 years. One split almost immediately, the Nissan dealer warrantied it for me and the second one stayed on the car for a long time but it too was way too tight and started splitting before I took it off the road about 7 years ago. Not impressed with the Nissan parts at all especially for the price. I would go with one of the newer car weather strips that fits. I think there is a Kia right now that fits, a while back it was a Hyundai. Do a search and I think you'll likely find a better/cheaper alternative.

It looks cool. Or something.

You get the 2" threaded collar that is used for most S13 kits where the strut screws into the strut housing. Then you get a strut that is really short. That's it. Then you too can ruin your car.

I'm working on an XP Z with a 5.3L. That puts min weight at 2250 lbs which should be doable with the V8 and cage. Dave Kipperman (viperredls1z) has had an LS2 Z car and a KA24DET Z car both in XP. Steve Parmley (zlalomz) has an XP car in the works, as does Cary McCalister (tube80z). I'm sure there are others. Dave has put two of these cars into competition, the rest of us are taking our sweet time. I've been building mine since 2003. Time, parts, and $$$, you have got to have all 3, and I'm just hacking away bit by bit when all 3 of those come around simultaneously. In terms of pure speed, you might actually do better to do a SR20DET or KA24 turbo swap, because the weight can get down to 1800 lbs or so. If you really cut up a tub it's probably doable, and you can get 400 hp out of those motors pretty easily. Dave only ran his 4 cyl a couple times and then he got a Lotus 7 clone which in truth is probably the best platform for an autox car in XP. As John said, Hybrid Z is the place to be on this one for sure, much more geared to XP as a class, where swapping in parts from other manufacturers and cutting up the chassis is going to be considered a GOOD thing.

If you want cheap, Harbor Freight sells a regular timing light and one with advance: http://www.harborfreight.com/xenon-timing-light-3343.html http://www.harborfreight.com/timing-light-with-advance-40963.html

I agree with the above. Double check the timing at idle. If you are going to run without vacuum advance (which I suggest) then start with the timing at about 18 degrees BTDC and adjust a little back or forward from there as necessary. If you are going to run the vacuum advance I would guess that you will probably have too much total advance. Depending on which ZX distributor you have you will get 17 to 18 degrees of mechanical advance out of it by about 2500 rpm, plus whatever you get via the vacuum advance. Those vacuum units are almost always broken too.

He DEFINITELY has one. Probably 15 or 20.