Greg Ira's E Prod 240Z New Look

[jmark]

I shot the National at RA this past weekend. There was a low turnout due to Easter & I only attended Sunday. Greg Ira debuted a new paint scheme & bodywork on his E Prod 240Z. He blew a motor in Sat. qualifying and had to run to Jacksonville FL to pick up a new one. Worked all night & made the race. Finished a strong 2nd place to a Lotus 7 even though he only got a few laps on Sat. Norton in the Lotus set a track record at 1:35.420. Greg ran a 1:35.733 with little track time. He should be strong at the VIR Double in April.

[xray]

I like it....I sorta followed the "weight-balancing" issues after last year's runoffs, and it looks like the changes have helped some. 3/10ths off a track record is pretty good for 35-year old technology. Guess we'll know more when some Mazdas show up, right?

I'm no expert on oranges, but the photos make it look similar to the Chrome Orange color for the Elise/Exige....Looks sharp!

[jmark]

I like it....I sorta followed the "weight-balancing" issues after last year's runoffs, and it looks like the changes have helped some. 3/10ths off a track record is pretty good for 35-year old technology. Guess we'll know more when some Mazdas show up, right?

I'm no expert on oranges, but the photos make it look similar to the Chrome Orange color for the Elise/Exige....Looks sharp!

It is VW Magma Orange. As far as performance, we'll see once Greg gets the Z sorted. I think he was encouraged considering the trials they went thru Saturday.

[ZWOLF]

A name change may be in order, I'm thinking Greg "Iron Man" Ira.

Love the new McLaren orange paint!

No Sleep, no track time, no tuning on a fresh engine, I'm impressed! I think the guy with the lotus had a lucky weekend.

[gira]

Mark,

Thanks for the great shots. Yeah, here's the story and thanks to my great crew for performing a CSI investigation on the car to keep us from cooking another engine. BTW, we've never broken one single LNA race engine.

The car has mostly new body panels. The hood weighs 10 lbs. and is not as stiff as the old hood. We determined the hood flexed up and down rapidly and hit the radiator cap just right to turn it to the stop. We can't run antifreeze. I smelled nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing. The water went out so fast that the water temp guage didn't even change while it read the steam, or air in the system, so I kept hauling butt. Bam, head gasket blown. BTW, this car won't even bring the water temp guage off the peg. On a non cross flow head, my engine guy likes to keep the hot sid hot and the cool side cool.

Spare engine 6.5 hours away. Gotta go! We never give up. My entrant/owner Guy Marvin took that chore and kicked butt and got back to the track at about 8PM. We had it in the car and running by about 10:30. Keep in mind this is a long block only, no exhaust, intake, dry sump pan, clutch, etc. It was after this when we discoverd the root cause of the melt down. We fixed the radiator cap deal by lowering the radiator and zipping off one ear of the cap. WE left the track at 1AM. Special thanks to Sam Neave, Guy Marvin, Lawrency Fort, Tom Horan, and the nice deaf Spanish guy who kept bringing me coffee!

Greg Ira

[Red-Eye]

Now that's dedication, great job, good luck this year!

BTW, New paint scheme looks sweet...Robert

[jmortensen]

Looks like you used a stiffer plastic skirt for the airdam. It doesn't appear to be flapping around like it used to. That should make a difference.

[gira]

Hey Jon,

Actually the plastic skirt is the same material, but shorter. The new fenders fit up differently and the end result was the air dam was about an inch lower to begin with. We also attached it better. It is pretty stiff.

Greg

[Streetstock72]

Nice car,too bad about the gremlim,I'm putting in a new Aluminum rad in my race truck so I will put this in my check file...

[CoastGuardZ]

LOVE the orange!!! ... of course I'm a bit partial ... Very sweet! Impressive outcome especially considering the engine failure and the subsequent loss of track time. Nice shots... thanks for sharing!

[preith]

Mark,

The car has mostly new body panels. The hood weighs 10 lbs. and is not as stiff as the old hood. We determined the hood flexed up and down rapidly and hit the radiator cap just right to turn it to the stop. We can't run antifreeze. I smelled nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing. The water went out so fast that the water temp guage didn't even change while it read the steam, or air in the system, so I kept hauling butt.

Greg, the car looks fabulous, and what dedication!

I had similar issues with the hood flexing. Originally had one with additional bracing underneath but decided to go with a skin only (10 lbs) and ended up purchasing a dzus fastener kit from Jegs, sharing the fender bolts as mounting points, worked very well:

http://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS/555/82270/10002/-1

I also had almost identical overheating issues when loosing a freeze plug at the drivers school in '04. Some water hit the windsheild, I wasn't sure if it was from the car ahead and pushed on, watching the temp gauge like a hawk the entire time, it didn't go up until it was too late... I never smelled anything in the car either even though the Waterwetter does give off a distintive scent when the car is hot.

[jmark]

Phillip,

That's pretty much what Greg & Guy did Sunday morning. You can barely see the 2 dzus fasters towards the front of the hood. Guy fabbed some bracing & the used the fasteners to keep the hood stable. When I first got to the track Sunday morning I watched the car go into turn 1 and the hood was flexing like crazy. The fix seemed to work for the race.