jmortensen

I thought you said that if the ends are rusty you want to replace the rocker. In reading it again, you said "If the ends are ALSO rusty". I wasn't saying I disagreed with your diagnosis, only that part. I thought you were making a blanket statement that if the ends are rusty just replace the whole thing. My bad. I can't see a situation where it's not a good idea to look inside the rocker, and since most of these cars need doglegs anyway you can just cut the dogleg off and then you'll have a better idea of what needs doing.

Not sure that I buy this argument. When I pulled my fenders there was literally a pile of sand on top of the rocker tips (used to live near the beach). The ends were rusty but then about 3 inches inside the rocker they were perfect. I replaced the doglegs in the back and did patch a little hole in the front, but the middle section was pretty damn clean. Pics on this thread over at hybridz: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=102470 I think in this case if the top is that rusty then it is likely that they need to be replaced, but I don't think that's a good rule of thumb either. The only way to know for sure is to actually look inside the rocker and inspect it.

I sold a set some years back for $275. Got another set right now that I sandblasted then lost interest in. Sitting in my garage taking up space as we speak...

If it isn't too bad then you might be able to adjust it out with a GMachine bushing so you still might want to take it in and have the alignment measured. Here's a link to the GMachine bushings: http://www.thezstore.com/page/TZS/CTGY/PSDC07A Easiest thing to do is get a new strut and control arm combo already hooked together. Disconnecting these two pieces requires removal of the spindle pin, which is a real PITA (search, you'll see what I mean). You'd be shocked at how easy it is to get the suspension off of the car if you don't disassemble everything. Where are you located? I think Mat_M my brother-in-law has a couple near Sacramento, CA.

Take it to an alignment shop and have them give you a printout of where the alignment is. If one rear wheel is toed in an inch, and the other is straight ahead, then I'm pretty sure I know what it is. You have to be a little careful, though, because the body kind of tapers at the back which adds to the toe in illusion. It is becoming fairly common to find one wheel really badly toed in, and the reason is usually a badly manufactured strut. What seems to be happening is that the hole for the spindle pin is bored at an angle. Seen it maybe 5 times over at hybridz.org in the last few years. Most guys just replace the bad strut, and that fixes the problem. Here are some examples: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=98898 http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=95947 http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=93486 http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=85701 http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=70723

Get a smog PRE-TEST!!! If you get a test and the car fails too badly or for the wrong reasons they can deem it a gross polluter, then you have to smog every year after that. If your header isn't approved for use in CA then you will fail regardless of what it blows out the tailpipe.

SR20DET is harder to install, more expensive, and makes less power (stock and modified). The iron V8 with aluminum head/water pump/intake and all that weighs 40 lbs more than the stock 6. Just don't get the iron block/head/intake and the weight isn't too much of an issue. The LS1 or LS2 is supposed to be 40 lbs lighter than the old version, so that puts it right about where the stock 6 is weight-wise. The trans is heavier, so there will still be a 50 or 75# weight gain with the LS. You'll also more than double the stock hp and torque, and guys are getting mileage in the high 20's due to the .5:1 super overdrive on the T56, cruising on the freeway at 1100 rpm. If you use the JTR (www.jagsthatrun.com) setup or the John's Cars LS1 setup, the weight is moved back and this results in losing a couple percent of weight off the front and gaining it in the rear, usually get something like 48/52 after a swap. Check www.hybridz.org for more swap info. Lots of guys with V8's and a couple with SR20DETs as well, as well as L28ET conversions, RBs, 1JZ's, all kinds of stuff. Just SEARCH before you start asking. I can recall at least 4 or 5 threads on which is better, SR20 or V8.

"Quiet valves burn" is the old saying. The valve heads transfer their heat into the valve seats. When they don't close tightly they can't transfer the heat and they literally burn. Adjust the valves first. Then worry about the timing.

Depends on what trans you have, but if its a ZX I'd say 3.90 or 4.11 diff. EI is a must IMO, ZX distributor is a good way to do it. Then maybe a cam. Reground cam is $65 from Delta Cams, + rockers resurfaced at $3 per and some fiddling with lash pads. Should be able to get all of that done for $500 if you're frugal. Will's list is pretty good if you're in need of a tune up, but I don't think that really gets you $500 in the hole unless you're buying cap and rotor and that kind of stuff from the dealer...

Apparently there is another group of guys who are going to build another one. Hopefully they'll represent Hybrid Z a little better.

Sounds like a bad rebuild. I had a bad rebuild experience myself just a couple years ago. Was on my Toyota 22RE engine. I didn't have time to do it myself, so I bought a remanned engine. After I got it installed I couldn't seem to get the valves to stop making noise. Kept messing with it for about a week, then finally got frustrated and dropped it off at a local shop. They pulled the head and called me. The valve seat AND the valve guide were LOOSE and the valve seat was following the valve up and down. No wonder it was so noisy!!! You could push the guide back and forth in and out of the head with your fingers. Took it back to the place that remanned it and they said "Oh no problem, give me a sec, we'll take it out back and stake those suckers back in tight." I told em "Uh, no you won't. You'll give me a head that was put together right." So they did. Crappy machinists are out there... beware.

I'm not a rally racer, so I have no experience with breaking rims on landings. Despite my lack of direct experience, I think that you wouldn't want to do the cutting that would be necessary to install camber plates on a car that you intend to jump. You'd have to remove about 60% of the strut top to install the plate, and that is a sacrifice in strength I wouldn't be willing to make. Certainly the strut tower of a rally car is going to be much more stressed vertically than a road going car. I imagine it might also be preferrable to have some sort of insulator between the strut and the tower for a rally car. Regardless, I still think that you'd be hard pressed to have the camber plate slip under any circumstance (including jumping). To beat the monoball out of the camber plate, especially one where the vertical loads are transferred to the monoball itself, or to crack the camber plate, or even to tweak the weakened structure of the strut top might be possible. These things I can see happening. Perhaps you think the Australian government knows best with regards to auto regulations. I sure don't feel that way about my government. BTW I used to do alignments for a living, particularly Porsches, which use cams in many different places for setting angles. That experience made me trust them less. I haven't aligned a 65 Plymouth, but unless there is some sort of fastening system that positively locks the adjuster down once it has been set, then I'd prefer plates on top for my own non-jumping uses. Not only are they less likely to move in my experience, they're also a hell of a lot easier to set.

I recall that #472 had no defroster, but 12xx did. Narrows the numbers down a bit.

Full Throttle... Yeah, let's make some automatic Z's go even slower. We're shooting for 16 second quarter miles, baby! Great idea...

Well put, exactly what I've been trying to say.

Yep. This is like retarded bracket racing IMO. Instead of stating what you'll run and running it, you state a gap you think you can cover (sandbagging) and then try to close the gap. I was surprised to see the Monte win by that much though. I was just chatting with Garrett, the driver of the Z, and he says he thought the Z was doing about 115 through the traps. He said the night before it did 124, but they had some ignition problem going on that was hurting the top end. That is pretty damn fast, a lot faster than my Z. So maybe it was the speed differential that made it look slow.

I thought that was the Z with the dead battery.

The group of guys at Hybrid Z that were in this group actively pursued getting on the show. Can't blame the show for them bringing a disappointing car - and it was IMO. How embarrasing to need a jumpstart between runs?!? However, you can blame the show for sucking, and that it does. Maybe I'm the one who has the wrong idea, but I'd rather get in the car and DRIVE than sit and bitch about the other guy sandbagging and try to figure out how much of a lead I'll need to win, and then try to convince him to give it to me. But then again, the kind of racing I do has set rules, and you build your car within the rule set. No whining, no drama (normally). Which is probably why you NEVER see autox on television. That and it's flat boring to watch.

There are many different types of adjustable coilover setups for Z's. Looks like that's what they were doing. www.betamotorsports.com, www.modern-motorsports.com, and www.arizonazcar.com all have them for sale. I got mine from www.ground-control.com.

Not my forte, but I always thought the fenders were painted off the car. The few that I've seen with the fenders painted on the car had paint welled up in the joint at the base of the A pillar where the fender meets the unibody. I took all the lead out of that area on my car, but I seem to remember it was red underneath the fender, indicating that the fender was off, at least during the period of time that the A pillar was painted.

The Ford HD fluid is available at Ford dealers. ATE Super Blue is another good choice, available at just about any European repair place or parts store. The Super Blue is quite a bit better than the Ford fluid. If the $150 FSBC keeps you from boiling the fluid than that's a heck of a lot cheaper than a big brake upgrade. Question is, will it do the job? I had drilled rotors with no backing plates for years. Had vents to the inside of the rotor for a couple years also. My vents were pretty crappy though, a good vent setup might have caused problems that mine did not. Never had any of the issues that you hear of, they never cracked and they never warped, and I boiled the front fluid probably 10+ times with them installed and even punched a hole through a front brake pad with them on. Slapped a new pad on (didn't turn the rotor because I was at the track) and the damage was so minimal that I drove for a couple more years before I took them off and went for something bigger. Here's a pic of my brake pad after the caliper went through it:

240 and 280 doors are different. I think the change happened mid way through the 260 production. They're pretty easy to tell apart. Look at the latch. The 240 has a round latch mechanism, the 280 has a wedge shaped slot in the back end. Also, the 240 door is about 20 lbs lighter than the 280 door. They are not interchangable without a pretty extensive rework on the latch at the very least. If you got the wrong thing I'd suggest you get the right thing rather than trying to make what you have work. I know my brother-in-law Mat_M has a bunch of 240 and 280 doors, but he's in CA, so you'd be looking at some pretty good shipping charges in any event. You might PM him if you can't find anything locally.

That's never ever been a problem on my car, and I've never ever heard any of the racers that I know complain that a camber plate moved. I have however heard of cam style adjusters moving, particularly the G Machine style for the 240Z rear suspension. Many racers use set screws to prevent them from twisting, as the clamps that hold the bushings apparently aren't enough. If you think about it, the control arm puts a hell of a lot of force directly on that eccentric when you're cornering at 1g for instance. How much of that lateral force is put into the camber plate, which is insulated by the spring and shock, and not directly in line? 510's usually have a larger plate because they have more room in the top of the strut tower to adjust. The 240 has a relatively tiny tower and so needs a much smaller plate to fit in there.

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Sounds like bump steer spacers with stock bolts. The bolts I'm running go all the way out the top of the holes. This is a very stressed area in the suspension, and correct length bolts are even more important here than other areas.