jmortensen

I would suggest that it isn't worth the effort. Do a bigger cam, pay for the springs (seals are $20 if you use the Ford seals on hybridz) and you'll get a result that is actually worth the effort of installation. That's just one opinion...

Again disagree. The T5 has very similar ratios to the early 5 speeds. I think they're actually wider gear spacing, but don't have such a huge hole in the 2-3 shift area. For a light car you don't really need the extra torque to launch it. Much more beneficial to have the close gearing to keep the rpms up between shifts, again especially with a big camshaft.

Disagree. The late 5 speed is what you want. The early 5 has too tall 1st and 2nd and a big arse hole in the gearing between 2nd and 3rd. Later has closer gearing and is much better suited to a motor with a big cam.

I'm sure it does.

Yeah, me too. I took mine off and went to the track and was passing a friend coming onto the front straight, looked down and was up close to 8000 rpm, soon after the harmonic balancer went out and took out the front of the crank. It won't help if you find the wrong gear on a downshift, but it can prevent you from "getting excited" and not upshifting.

Can't spend money on a new ignition. How about a used MSD 6AL for $100? Or you could pay $135 for a Pertronix digital rev limiter that doesn't help with the spark. If you don't already have the ZX distributor I'll sell you my 6AL AND a ZX distributor that has the vacuum advance locked out for $150.

NTN makes some of the stock bearings for Nissan as I recall, so that one should be good quality. Not sure about the British bearing, but I can say that it probably has bad teeth.

I got Koyo bearings in a Federal/Mogul box last time I ordered them, and I think they are a proprietary bearing not commonly used in other applications. They are definitely not a throwout bearing, they're not designed for that kind of thrust. What is the name on the bearing itself? Made in Japan?

Depends on the height of the valves in the head, the depth of the seats, etc. but you usually run into issues around .470 or so. Easy fix with a much better seal detailed here: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=90825

Bingo.

CA vehicle code 24008 says that the lowest part of the body of the car has to be higher than the lowest part of the rim. This thing is clearly illegal by that standard. But let's face it, a lot of people drive technically illegal Z's, so that's not my main concern. My main concern is that it's so stupidly modified that it is dangerous. What I feel is really dangerous on this car is the bumpsteer. At the ends of the suspension's travel the stock bumpsteer curve gets pretty extreme. I had my Z lowered about as much as you can with stock length struts and I took it to Buttonwillow Raceway. There is a big bump in the track right off of a hill running clockwise, and when I would hit that rise at the top of 3rd gear the car was doing an emergency lane change style maneuver because of the bumpsteer. This stupid car on the other hand has much shorter struts in it to get it that low, so it is at a MUUUUUCH worse part of the already horrible bumpsteer curve, assuming bumpsteer hasn't been dealt with. I think this is a safe assumption because the article on the car in whatever magazine it was in didn't list anything about bumpsteer modifications. I honestly think this car would be safer with NO suspension (weld it solid and drive it like a gokart or something) than it would be to have ANY wheel travel at that ride height with stock bumpsteer. In addition to that issue, there is another problem I think is particularly dangerous, which is your floor pan is about 1" off the road. I don't know if any of you have had a compression fracture in a vertebra, but I have. It sucks. I would figure that hitting the part of the chassis that the seat is bolted to directly on the ground is probably a good way to get a compression fracture. I got mine as a passenger in a sand rail by bottoming out the suspension (which had bumpstops in it), so I can only assume that this would be potentially a lot worse.

Go look at some old pictures of the BRE cars again. Not nearly as low (even with shorter tires), because when you get that low all kinds of funky stuff starts happening with roll centers, bumpsteer, etc, which makes the car handle worse. BRE built race cars. This POS is not a race car, sorry. And why again do we HAVE to appreciate someone screwing up their car? I've been told I'm a "hater" on Hybrid Z because this car is dumb and I point that out when I see it posted. I guess I'll continue to post on half-baked implementation of stupid ideas and just deal with being called a hater when I do it...

Snowflake, I like the big arse blower idea because it would make the car faster. You should do that. And if it doesn't stick out of the hood or whine loud enough, then you can always strap a dead chicken on the hood so that people look at you. It's your car, your choice. If you want your car to be stupid, make it so. Just be prepared to take some flak for it.

Ah, the old refrain: "I want to be different, just like everybody else." Try strapping a dead chicken to the hood. I guarantee you won't see that anywhere else. It's much cheaper, and won't make your Z into an attention whoring POS that's not good for anything except impressing others who are trying to be different in precisely the same way you are. When the chicken thing catches on you can just switch to marmots or pigeons or squirrels, etc. Just remember Snowflake, in the immortal words of the Scorpions "There's no one like you!"

I'd suspect wheel bearings before diff bearings. If it is diff bearings, the diffs don't have serial numbers, so any 3.36:1 R180 out of a 240Z is going to be just like any other. Wheel bearings generally react to side to side thrust. So if you swerve back and forth you should hear the noise stop or change on a wheel bearing. The diff is in the center, so I doubt you'd be able to tell passenger's side carrier bearing from a driver's side carrier bearing.

Richard you are WAY too happy on the ZX. Curtis, you really want to ship your car 5 or 6000 miles for 3 minutes of seat time and a trophy IF you place?

Just for curiosity's sake, did you get any other pics of the structure under the skin? Interested in the area back by the hatch and C pillar...

Not sure what they offer, to be honest, but I know that they regrind them which is better than using the new softer cam blanks. I'd shoot for something in the .500 lift and 300 duration range, plus or minus a little bit if the engine is around 10 to 11 to 1 compression. If it's lower, go a bit smaller.

I'd be more interested in the stub axles John is selling which would allow you to run the WRX STi R180 LSD.

If you take the nut off without first removing the peened portion, you will take all the threads off with it. Then you can either spend hours with a thread file trying to get a semblance of threads back, or just grind them off. What this looks like to me is someone went to change the wheel bearings, didn't cut the peened part of the nuts off. One was so bad that they replaced the stub axle, the other wasn't as bad so they just ground off the damaged part of the threads. Is it usable? Well, the issue is how many threads are you going to have engaged when you put the new nuts on. I would suggest that it probably is, but if you wanted to swap out to another set of stub axles, they shouldn't be hard to find. The stub axle spline count on a 240 is 25, 280 is 27 and I think there is a weird 260 one too, but if you're in doubt just count the splines and that will tell you what you have.

Having run both SU's and Mikunis, but neither on a dyno, I can tell you that my butt-o-meter says that the Mikunis gave about a 40 whp increase, that's just putting them on, not tuning them. I think Dan Baldwin had dyno sheets posted here showing a bigger increase in his case. In mine, my wife went from pitching the car a little sideways on her favorite corner to literally being afraid to drive it. I'm sure you'll get Bruce Palmer in here touting the wonders of SU carbs and I have a lot of respect for what they can do and the job that Z Therapy does refurbing them, but you don't see any of the national level autocrossers running SU's, and I've never seen a picture of an old GT2 Z car running SU's. They're great carbs, but I think the Mikuni is the way to go for ultimate power output. If you're going with the Mikunis, I'd go bigger on the cam. Stage IV if you're going with Schneider would be my suggestion, but I'd also suggest you don't go with Schneider. Get a regrind from ISKY or some other cam grinder, or buy a cam from Rebello. The Schneider cams seem to be the ones that fail most.

Seems to me that the series one is significantly lighter than the later cars. One guy on Hybrid Z had his early F/Prepared Z hovering around the 1900 lb mark. I believe Steve Carlson in Fresno is under 1900 lbs also. I don't know the D/SP rules, it might not even be an issue if the min weight is 2200 lbs or something...

BZ3099 is the front strut to use if you're sectioning, use it with the stock 240 front strut in the rear. Personally I don't like the Illuminas for track work and was happy to get rid of them and switch out for something else. I would suggest Koni Sport or Bilsteins. Bilsteins are cheaper and with the stock valving I would think they'd be good for spring rates into the mid 300s. The revalve that everyone is doing is not very extreme. The Illuminas are good to mid 200's spring rates. I would go with camber plates, because that's what it takes to remove the deflection in the rubber isolator and also it lowers the car another inch or inch and a half without sacrificing bump travel. I also wouldn't bother with returning it to stock afterwards though, so it is one of those different strokes for different folks deals. The EMI camber plates would work in front and wouldn't require cutting, but I wouldn't put them in the back. I'd run the stock isolators and camber bushings. If you did that you might even consider sectioning the back shorter than normal and running the BZ3099's all the way around, since the isolator will add that inch or inch and a half of height in comparison to the front.

Why the 73 chassis out of curiosity? The series I would be lighter.

No, that's pretty much where I was going. I tend to be pretty Libertarian.