josh817

I guess no one will ever use the video record option on cameras when these cars are out on the track. I have yet to ever hear the sound of an IMSA/BRE Z or anything. This angers me.

And Zedyone_kenobi I agree with you immensely. If he doesn't feel the need to jump in a Z this very second what you can do is go out and rent a little Formula Vee. By doing so you will learn everything he listed and it should make a hell of a driver out of you. Those little buggers barely have any power to them and the only fast way around the track is to learn the track, and learn how to control the momentum of the car to your advantage. Fortunately for me I did karts back when I was 8 (now 17). I don't see it as being a big help but apparently I learned according to Dad.

Hey dude, go by the general rule my dad always tells me. Only race what you can afford to win. When he raced Spitfires and TR6's for the enduro/sprint races he had a choice to run the highest class or some middle class. Highest class being double and triple 50mm weber setups where the dudes have $50k into their... british car... He had to compete up against some rich kid whose father had tons of money (just shows for it because he owns AJ's last indy car). Dad chose the middle class and he ran twin SU's. Yes he was slower than the other class but he was 1st in the class he could afford to win in. Oh and with todays standards, unless if you have a bank account with a stockpile of money don't hope for anything big. Here in our club we have Porsche guys just kicking everybodies arse but they have $150k in their cars. Its just rediculous these days. Dad had $13k in his Spitfire and was fighting for 1st back in '92... I think you should go out there and have fun. Even if you are a grandma on the track, depending on how your club runs things, you will always have a lower class, slower car to race with until you can get better. Lastly, follow the rule book. As I said, in our club we have some stupid money flying around but you really have to question yourself how you can spend that much and still have a legal car. Thats just it though. You may see some dudes way up in the front of the pack, but at the end of the season they don't even place well because they had point deduction. Depending on the club again, you will have points taken off, maybe not even allowed to run. As I said, Dad was fighting for 1st. Thats because 1st place guy had small 13 inch slicks. Even though Dad made 2nd place, in the championship points he made first because he had an authentic car. Had an alternator, had the right (clunky) tires which were treaded. Things like that. To this very day there are guys in our club that constantly make last or close to it but will win 1st in the points because of a period correct car and attending all races. We're building a BMW 1602/2002 for the track, we were going to race with other 1602's but there will only be 2 people to race with, both of which have stupid money. Throw a 2 liter in there and now we're 2002 with 8 people to race with, and only 3 with stupid money (really really stupid, like keep up with Porsche stupid). By doing this we can not only avoid scca standard rules, but we can run hotter stuff because we will be doing 1968 trans am (can am? no idea) rules. This means double webers and 300lbs lighter, but Dad wants to be able to have it as a weekend car so the motor won't be a grenade and the cam will be mild. Get your suspension all worked out first rather than a hot motor. Then build a mild motor unless if you feel like you can support a hot one. Hot motor = big money, and not just initial fees but continuous fees since you will probably want to rebuild it frequently (however much that is for a datsun). Good luck and remember, Datsun was a factory team. Those awesome race results back in the day were backed by the company, not by a soldiers pocket.

If you need a new motor look on ebay. '72 is a "difficult" year to find because it only has... 5 prongs I think? Everything else past '72 has one more because of the added intermediate speed I think. Don't bother sending it in to be rebuilt because the ones that do pop up on ebay are for like $15. I paid $40 for mine but had been looking for 2 months while driving the car un-inspected and such... But yah I'd look for the nut that goes from the arms to the motor. It's probably just the rectangular shaft spinning and not catching the attach point. Buy that nut at the hardware store, forgot what size though.

It still makes me cry to think that v8's back then made 60hp... And the flathead 4, 35hp, you can get those numbers out of gocart engines now. x_x

I forgot the chassis but he bought it for $8000, came with 4 spare Ford Flathead 60's. The funny part is that the body is the easy stuff to work on, whats killing his pockets are the engine parts. Paying $1000 for a set of heads which are back ordered for a year, its hideous. He saw it on ebay and couldn't let it go... My grandpa use to race them and my dad thought it'd be cool to have one too. In fact I think he got lucky because he was looking back to all the documents on the car and I do believe it was one of the cars that raced with my grandpa too, so really he has a car from the same time. Pretty cool stuff I guess.. Only scary part is that he's keeping most of the stuff original other than the fuel pump. Still using the metal hand lever for the brakes and everything. The gas tank that was in the car looked like a propane tank, and it was the first time we sat in the car because our legs couldn't fit. Well its an original steering wheel too, so I guess he would get in and have me hand him the wheel with a quick disconnect hub, otherwise if he crashed or something he can't get out. >_>

You have a really nice looking Z. :0!

Well because you guys posted suggestions, and there is no real how to for the reinforcement and the mounting of the spoiler, I will post my pictures of today. Airdam: 1: Buy 1 1/2" X 1/8" flat iron 2: Measure the dimensions of the chassis so you have a piece that matches the hole you're bolting in, the distance between the chassis and the airdam, and how car of a piece you want to go over the airdam lip. This will give you a place to bend and drill your first hole to put a bolt through and into the chassis. 3: Bend the flat iron, this will be custom fit, there are no real angles you just make it work by bending and fitting to check. Its best to use a vice and place your marked spot on the edge of the vice, hammer/push close to the vice to, this will help you make a bend in the spot you want instead of higher up on the bar. 4: Fit your mount onto the chassis, don't drill the other hole just yet. 5: After the mount is in place, drill from the bottom of the fiberglass. As the drill bit comes through it will make a mark on your mount and you can drill the hole where the mark is. This will ensure that your holes line up. 6: Remount your bracket and you should be good to go. :] I haven't made a spoiler one yet because the foam we sprayed is still drying. We did in fact get the foam you use on outside outlets, its called Great Stuff, $6 at Home Depot. We cut some would to squish into the foam. What we plan on doing is getting threaded inserts, drill and thread a hole in the wood, put the inserts in, and then put bolts through the hatch and into the inserts rather than using wood screws. Now there won't be any pressure on the fiberglass, just the wood held in by the foam. I plan to glass on the spoiler to so it looks clean but you have to be careful because the resin will melt foam and you don't want all your foam inside to melt. :] Here are some pictures: http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/9098/cimg0072ne8.jpg http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6231/cimg0080wx2.jpg http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/8733/cimg0081wo0.jpg The last one is my dad in one of his toys... We finally got around to clearing out the cockpit and removing the steering wheel. Before neither of us could fit because of our knees. It was the first time we had a grown person sit in it (baby step brother has sat in it). Long story short, he got all excited.

No no no, you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. Examine my photobucket album of my spoiler: http://s14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/josh817/Fiberglass/ 1: There are no drill holes, a very crude spoiler without any prep basically 2: See how it is hollow, and as you get further to the ends it gets hollower 3: See how thin that lip is, how do you mount that without it breaking 4: On the hatch behind that panel, see how there are 2 layers, how do you put bolts or screws in with that first layer of metal an inch in front of the main hatch? Ok so now that I overcame the laziness and took pictures, what do you think? As for the reinforcement of the airdam, I think I'm going to go over to Home Depot and buy 2 1/8" iron bars which are flat like a bracket. Use a torch to heat and shape them, fiberglass or epoxy it to the airdam and then put the other end onto the front bumper mounts which aren't used because with the MSA Type III airdam it has a bumper profile already molded in. Or maybe I should sell this one and buy a BRE airdam because if I go into our club racing with the Z, MSA style will be point deduction since it wasn't used in 1972. Meh.

Well its only club racing. Most of us in the club don't have huge pockets and becaues of rule limitations you can't go way overboard without losing points. My dad made it clear to everyone he talked to that if you want to win the championship, you're going to go by the rules. His basic rule is win what you can afford. When he did his Spitfire racing he ran double SU's, why? Because going over to double Weber's would put him in Group 1 A rather than Group 1 B. The difference in those is that Group 1 had a $45k car and Group 2 had $15k cars. If you can't afford to race with the wealthy and actually place and have fun, then go to something where you can. What you're thinking is that they come back from a race and check out all this data and do engine tear downs and stuff. No, the most anyone has done was do quick fixes, there isn't that much time, and there isn't enough room within the rules to get into comprehensive equipment. When Dad raced he'd come in and just sit in his chair because he followed by the rules. All the other dudes who had mod'd like no other Spitfires were rushing around taking stuff apart. Dad was placing 2nd and the 1st place guy was running smaller slicks, against the rules, so in the long run Dad won the championship because of points that he wasn't deducted from. The gap is even bigger now. I hear that there are some dudes that are placing 2nd to last but they are constantly winning in points. With that said, I took the pictures before he went out on the track. The gap between him and the 3 guys ahead of him was like half a lap and that was a 2.8 mile track I think. And like I said before with the budget thing. He's a doctor but everyone has their prioirities. When I was talking with him he mentioned how, yah he got raped by the 2 Porsche's but they had so much money tied up in their cars it wasn't even funny. He didn't even want to bother spending enough to be up there with them and I bet they were having point deductions left and right. You can tell just by listening to them because the 2 Porsche's up front sound almost like F! cars and all the others sound like a 70's Porsche. The rules are very strict and when we're building the BMW we're trying to keep up with them because it really does come down to stupid stuff like having the standard dashboard, tires can only be 1 1/2 inch bigger than stock for that year etc. Thanks for the info on the cams. Thats one area I'm really lacking in and its a very important area. I was thinking the same thing about compression because 93 octane only goes to what? 10:1? Plus I'm going with the l24 in case if I want to switch it over into the club and I have Weber DGV's but I don't see why someone would pay the $800 for the setup when triples are around that price. I didn't even bother to think of engine life but yah a race cam for a race motor and race motors should be torn down every weekend. Also I don't know if vacuum will become a problem. If so than anything with vacuum has to go too I guess. That coil bing thing, I'd guess that it would be fixed by the valve setup it comes with. The site is Z Store I think and their package deal is with the performance valve kit with the springs, lash pads, rocker arms, etc. And as for what Sblake01 was saying, I'm 17 I could care less about fuel mileage, and driveability (unless it stalls out at frequent visits like a stop sign). After coming from this massive wiring mess of an l28 with a huge turbo on it, I am use to the thrown back in the seat and the arse of the car going all over the place. Its fun but oh so wrong. x_X Dad got into my Z with only 8psi, floored it to 4th gear (5th is for cruising) and when he got back he just shook his head and said "Why did I let you buy this, I went wrong in so many places.." Plus I hate turbo lag. That wraps up my huge quick reply, have some videos of the track, poor quality but you'll see what I'm talking about: http://s14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/josh817/Racing/?action=view&current=HPIM1752.flv http://s14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/josh817/Racing/?action=view&current=HPIM1753.flv You can hear my dad saying "Terry isn't doing well at all" No kidding, got me all pumped up about the BMW and we see that. >_> I know you can't tell who is who but the one that sounds different than everyone else is one of the Porsche's. Here's a picture of how obviously out of the budget those dudes are: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/josh817/Racing/HPIM1742.jpg See the tires laying there... Must be a big bill to get more tires... >_> I shouldn't be putting them down though, if you have the money, why not. The Clubs Datsuns: http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/5742/215eix7.jpg http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/7406/9c75ks2.jpg http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/5882/899fvg8.jpg http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/3023/19bcvp0.jpg http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/2889/983fqn6.jpg The track I was at that day: http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/2773/64d0jpggr4xmehbfjklq8.jpg

I'll give you guys some pictures. We originally went to the track to see the BMW 2002 guys. The big head honcho guy for the BMW group (he has all the fancy expensive parts) was there. He bragged about how he had the lightest BMW out of all of them etc. We watched him and he made like... 3rd to last. Yes ok, so he won't be competing with the Super 7's and the Porsches but the only thing he was struggling for a position for was the Cortina and the 2 Fiat's... Oh those Fiat's... Well I was like WTF because everyones first year on the track will be a learning sucky year. Ok well I'm a junior in highschool, I leave for college in a year AND Dad wants the BMW to be street legal and track legal. Now I'm going to have a heavy car with a somewhat restricted motor, and I'll be new. So that racing experience that we were hoping to bring back after my 8 year old karting days has gone poof, because in last place, there won't be any other slower groups behind you... Ok so thats that rant, I went over to the Z guy and I really liked how he had his car. I want something like it for mine even though its for the street because I recognize the fact that a Z isn't so convenient... Might as well strip it out and make it cool. I talked with him and he told me all the stuff, at the end of the race he was 4th, and the people who beat him were 2 Porsche's who had AMAZING setups and they RAPED everything, and a Super 7 who was up there fighting with the Porsche's. So it was the 3 of them, a huge gap, and then the Z, a decent gap, and the rest of the pack. He admitted that those Porsche's spend so much money he had to draw the line somewhere because its only club racing, don't take out another mortgage for it... Have some pics: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/josh817/Racing/HPIM1766.jpg The inside. http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/josh817/Racing/HPIM1763.jpg Its nice. http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/josh817/Racing/HPIM1743.jpg One of the very deep pocket Porsche guys, no wonder he couldn't keep up. http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/josh817/Racing/HPIM1740.jpg And the BMW guy with my dad... I have some video but it was very windy (enough to knock you down) so you can't hear the noises. :/ Anyways you don't see the problem with 6k-8k on the street?

Well they gave me instructions which say the basic things such as "measure, trim, mount" literally thats what it says with no actual instructions and it came with 8 long (but not long enough because if you look at the bottom of the hatch there is a piece of metal about an inch or 2 which sits between you and the actual hatch metal that the spoiler sits on) That lip that I showed in the picture is pretty much the only place to screw into and I don't want to brake the fiberglass. This is what I mean by hollow: http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/2016/fvcvnuw3.jpg Also, the length of the rear spoiler extends over the edge of the hatch to cover the full width of the car. Its not a 3 piece though. I'm worried if I fiberglass it on, the end pieces may collect crap all up inside of the thing and do whatever dirty things it may do to the body of the car that is covered. I guess I could just use that spray foam stuff that expands as soon as you spray it (my dad used it to seal up outside water outlets on the house) and turns into yellow cauliflower looking stuff. But I really want this spoiler to be structurally steady, no breaking off or wiggling so I don't think double sided tape will do the trick... And I'm avoiding bondo. How did everyone else mount theirs?

I see on the Z store the full valve setup for a set price, doesn't matter which cam you buy its all the same price. I am tempted to get a Stage 6 cam (although it'll be a street car and maybe an eventual race car) but I can't justify 6k-8k RPM on the road. But if I go into vintage SCCA racing with the Z and bail out on my BMW 2002 I'd feel like a fool to buy a whole new valve setup jsut for a a crazier cam... I want my car to be as race ready as a road car can get (minus the exception for dirty playing on the exhaust and going straight pipes no muffler (probably a bad idea)). My reason behind this is the Corinthian Vintage Racing club wants their cars to be period correct and original. This makes it manageable for a teenager like me so I don't have to get into some major stuff like a big fancy gear box; they wouldn't allow because it wasn't made in '72, we can only run the 4 speeds or if you find the rare BRE 5 speed. Thats ok though, from what I've seen, the one Z at the track only had triple Mikuni's, headers, MSD, and probably higher comp. for race fuel and kept up with the deep pockets of the Porsche owners which had the 5 speed. And the Z guy was even running the wrong gearing for the track, and stock cam. :0 Sexy!

So yesterday I went out to eat with my family. Took my Z because I was going to go over to my girlfriends house afterwards. Well we pull up and I pulled up a little to car and the airdam slid over the parking bump. Ok so I backed up gingerly because it didn't bang or anything when it went over. Well there was a piece of rebar sticking out a 1/2" and it caught the airdam and tore it out. Alright well I didn't like how it was mounted anyways and the airdam is fine it just tore out the holes the bolts went through. I saw on Hydridz a guy who had this idea: http://fototime.com/BF9ED8490F9AC1C/standard.jpg I want to do this but I'm not sure where to mount the struts to. Can't be fender or anything else like that. Second problem. My rear spoiler is hollow. I have no idea how to mount it onto my z unless if I fill it with some sort of strong foam, otherwise the screws/whatever holds it will go through the very thin part of the spoiler and I risk cracking the fiberglass. http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6997/dhdfgvt9.jpg ^ Thin part I'm talking about Those are my 2 problems. Next up is paint. Because I'm taking the airdam off anyways I might as well paint it. I don't know if I should buy cheap auto paint and just use my dads spray gun in a parking lot or what. I accidentally used the wrong cover paint on our SCCA BMW build. It was some cheap off brand paint, glossy black but damn it looks good for just one coat and cheap paint. As profane as it sounds I may just spray bomb the whole car. Not even the DIY Rustoleum, just spray it through like 50 cans with 3 coats. Being 17 years old, having an engine rebuild and then having to fix your car because the front end broke off is rough on the wallet. Besides if the spray paint sucks, then I can have some of my friends who make nifty drawing draw stuff on pieces of cardboard, cut them out to make stencils and make like an art car sort of thing. Stupid looking but doesn't take away from the fun. :] I try not to get to serious on the car otherwise I can forget about college and just use that money to make what... a perfect Z with no education? >_< No. The roof of the BMW in gloss black spray paint, one coat, off brand paint: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/josh817/BMW/HPIM1788.jpg http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/josh817/BMW/HPIM1790.jpg http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/josh817/BMW/HPIM1796.jpg Tell me how you mounted your rear spoiler and then give me ideas for airdam reinforcements. Those would be very appreciated. :]