So here's what bothered me the most about the 2002 MSA West Coast Z Nationals: Too many cars with crappy suspension. It was everywhere. I can't believe people sometimes. There were HUNDREDS of beautiful and well-thought-out cars, many of them with hundreds of hours of time involved...Beautiful cars, unbelievable paimt jobs, screaming engines, hybrid engines with custom fabbed parts and machined billet stuff and crazy turbos and intercoolers and carbon-fibre stuff and polished EVERYTHING and wild body kits and sensible body accessories unbelievable exhaust systems and stereos and on and on and on......AND YET: Get down and look under the car and what do you suppost you found on about 85% of them?

Nasty, worn, stock-rubber ORIGINAL bushings. Mustache bushings with huge chunks out of them; diffy mounts with rubber pieces falling out; Disgusting oxidized and off-center control arm bushings; Sway bar end link bushings with giant cracks and squished to the point of being loose in the washers. Dirty, cracked strut boots(telling me the struts are not new); cars riding very low over standard-sized tires on obviously stock springs (Sagging springs. I asked several people where I noticed this, "Have you cut your springs?" "No.")

Unbelievable to me. How could you do everything in a car and 'forget' this? How can you drive around in something like this? How could you honestly call a car like this 'improved'? I saw this on cars with stock suspensions, lowering springs, and even on a few cars with coil-over systems.

I'm not talking about the cars that were stock. You know the "1974 260z with 56,000 original miles, always garaged"--and there were plenty of them there. I'm only looking modified stuff.

It was just appalling to me. I just can't imagine driving around in a 'performance' car with 25 year old bushings. Am I being unreasonable?

steve77

STEVE:

I suspect you were observing one end of the broad "spectrum" at the car show. The other end of the spectrum - the "racing crowd" - typically doesn't bring it's cars to the show (the cars that tend toward both running like hell and looking like hell?). It's probably a matter of personal preference and where one wants to begin spending their time and money - do you start with glitter or with guts?

I also suspect most of us are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum - never showed or raced our Zs but just love to drive them. My 240 needs more work (and probably always will) but has the polyethelene bushings, upgraded brakes, rebuilt SUs, etc. that make it a "driver", while patiently awaiting replacement of ragged seats, worn out hood and door rubber, and moderate body/paint work. Looks pretty good, runs pretty good, but doesn't fit at either end of the "spectrum", which is just fine with me.

To each his own.................