gramercyjam

Make sure you have solid motor mounts if you are going to go ahead with solid tranny mounts.

You could try making a shorter rod that goes between the clutch fork and slave cylinder from a piece of bar stock.

Use your drill press and a bathroom scale to approximate maybe? On second thought, that's probably not going to work on anything but the most anemic springs, unless you have a monster drill press, but you get the idea.

Depends on the type of lowering springs. Progressive springs seem all the rage right now. Progressive refers to the spring rate that starts out soft and progressively gets stiffer as the spring is compressed for a more comfortable ride than out-and-out performance springs. These types of springs are a compromise of comfort and performance. Performance wise, lowering springs of a constant rate would be comparable to cut stock springs. You need to ask the spring mfgr what rate the springs are ( or measure them on a spring tester) to make the comparison.

Cutting springs is easy. You don't even have to take them off the car. Jack 'er up, cut the spring in 2 (maybe 3) places. Cutting does increase spring rate, but not by a whole lot. Spring rate is proportional to the number of coils in the spring. Take out 1/10 of the coils, springs will get 1/10 stiffer. After cutting springs, they won't fit right in the spring seats, but no biggie. FWIW, I tried various cut springs, the results were never what I was hoping for. Went to coil-overs pretty quickly after that and got the desired results. You have seen how much my car has been lowered. I still don't have a ton of neg. camber in the front. Probably about -1. I had to install camber plates in the rear to remove excessive negative camber and put it back to about -2 so I wouldn't need a new set of tires daily. -2.5 is a lot. Better get a tire sponsor. Bigger rims to fill up the wheel well is a cosmetic issue unrelated to increased performance. Bigger rims will make you slower unless you offset the increase in rotating mass (inertia) with performance gains elsewhere. IMO, there is no "cheap" route that will achieve your goals in a satisfactory manner.

Look on the bright side. At least his sponsors got some exposure before the black flag.

Jam a body pick into the seam to see _how_ solid. You might be shocked.

I'm confused. It's got the dreaded battery tray rust big time. That rust most likely has seriously affected the firewall seam and interior of the frame rail below but he claims the car is rust free.

My Z is looooowwwww too. Probably 3.25" to 3.5" at the rocker panel pinch welds. I don't drive it on the street anymore. It will bottom out on the slightest thing. Especially near intersections where there their are slight ruts from trucks and buses stopping and starting. Speed bumps might as well be the Alps. Heck, I won't take it down my driveway! Don't you have some old struts you can use to experiment with different ride heights? Start low, test and raise the spring seat (various ways to do this) until you don't bottom out anymore?

I get a lot of hardware from these guys. They seem to have everything. McMaster

FWIW, Styling preferences aside, Having had all of the US Z's - Early Z's (240's - 260's)are what I look for in a sports car. They are minimalist, stupid simple, tough as nails, dead reliable and performed well out of the box and can be made to perform even better with a little work. All the 240 models are easy updated or backdated to whatever you might consider acceptable levels of performance and reliability. ZX's were luxury touring sports cars. They are very different from 240's. Increases in complexity that comes with them brings a whole new set of maintenance issues. And they are not nearly as straight forward to modify for performance. Personally, my luxury touring sports car is a C4 Vette. My real sports car is a 240Z.

Thats what I keep hearing too. That isn't my experience.

After removing the clips (the come off easily) you CAN hammer or tap the caps out (and back in) without damaging anything. Once you have the shafts out it probably takes about an hour. You need to use a bushing a little smaller in diameter than the caps to hammer on so you won't damage anything with a misplaced blow. An old worn out set of sockets are perfect for bushings. You can also find a cheap set of bearing bushings at harbor freight tools for a few bucks. The thing you need to watch out for is the rollers in the caps. They tend to want to lay down in the bottom of the cap if your not careful. You will know this has happened if you suddenly meet strong resistance when tapping the new cap back down. If this happens, remove the cap and put the roller back in position, make sure there is plenty of heavy grease to hold the rollers in place before proceeding.

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!

I've got one of those 3 foot long crescent wrenches from Northern Tools that does the trick everytime. And it doesn't chew up the plug.

My 240Z was right around 48/52 in stock trim with a 220 lb driver. After some serious lightening and battery relo it is closer to 49/51. I know there are at least a few cars that are 50/50.