jmortensen

Gail sold out to a guy named Dave. Dave was a nice enough guy, but I guess he wasn't such a good businessman. I made one order with Dave for coilovers, springs, struts, camber plates, bushings, the whole suspension thing. Took about 10 weeks for him to round up all the stuff. It was pretty ridiculous. The shop kept the same location on Deering but soon became IPS (Import Performance Specialists) IIRC, and they were doing a lot of 1st gen RX7 stuff, he was big into drag racing and had some monster turbo rotary project. IPS folded after a year or two more.

The 240 and 280 hubs are different in the US. They have a 10mm different offset for the rotor. If you're talking about the 77, I think you would have the same hubs as the 280Z has in the US.

20 years ago those kids and young adults were driving/racing the 10 to 15 year old 510s. Why aren't they coming up on the block and commanding high prices now that those kids are 35-50? I don't think that there CAN'T be a Japanese collector car market, but its going to take more than people getting old to make it happen. The Japanese marques just don't get respect from the collector market. Maybe with more time as the old purist collectors die off...

Ron's just hoping that at some point he can expect some return on his investment, aren't you Ron. ;-) I personally want all of the Z's to stay cheap. The cheaper it is the more of them I can buy for parts. As a side note I would swear I saw an old CP car go thru BJ maybe 5 years ago and sell for ~17K. Also at this point I don't think you can argue too successfully about Japanese cars being a good collector car in general. A 1970 Mustang is a big bloated whale of a car but there is a hell of a lot more demand for it than there is for a Z, regardless of which is the better car.

The ZX strut has the spindle at a different angle. This means that when you install it on an S30 the camber will be way off. IIRC its gives you more positive camber. Not good. You can fix that if you have adjustable lower control arms and TC rods. I seem to recall that there is too much positive camber for even a camber plate to get rid of. If you don't have all adjustable suspension I wouldn't do it. If you're just looking for a thicker (heavier) strut housing for some reason, the 280Z has the heavier tube thickness that the ZX does. One more thing, the ZX brakes are smaller diameter than the S30. Vented yes, but also smaller.

The Tokico springs sold in the US have a progressive spring for the front and a linear spring for the rear. They lower the car a lot, and I for one question having progressives on one end and not the other. Not a big fan of progressive springs anyway, but it seems like the front end would be doing all sorts of weird undulations in a high speed bumpy corner. Sounds like a good way to swap ends to me. I think if I recall the spring rates on the Tokicos are 140/160 or thereabouts.

I put one of these pictures up as my wallpaper and it immediately became apparent that his air dam skirt is flapping at high speeds. I had this problem on my car too around 80 mph and only became aware when someone took a picture at the track and pointed it out to me. My solution was to replace the rubber skirt with black plastic lawn edging. Not exactly something you can really brag about, but the stiffer plastic works a lot better than the soft rubber.

I want to say 27. I think if it is 27 than 1 1/8" will work. Probably more likely to have that size.

I'd be curious to see what you think nightowlZ, but I swear last year was friggin cold all the way through. It didn't even warm up here until late May early June. I don't think the warmest day of summer last year topped 85º, then it got really cold again around Halloween. We did have a little "heat wave" there a couple weeks ago where we saw 60º for a couple days, now it's back to cold as a witch's titty! Definitely the coldest year I've spent in Seattle...

Three problems are common to these distributors IME. The vacuum advance dashpot cracks creating a vacuum leak and the vacuum advance stops working. Also the vacuum advance mechanism comes apart, this is the usual culprit that I have seen. This can cause damage to the stator and irratic timing. Finally the bushings wear out, not as common but yours has 275K on it so could be a combination of any of the above. I've only seen one ZX distributor where the vacuum advance mechanism hadn't come apart. It was cracked, but hadn't broken into pieces yet. I used this resource when I fixed mine (he sells bushings too): http://www.jrdemers.com/280ZX/distributor/distributor.html Later I came across this one which has a better tear down description but goes a little heavy on the grease IMO: http://www.atlanticz.ca/zclub/techtips/distributorrebuild/index.html If you're going for performance I would completely eliminate the vacuum advance. It is so prone to breakage that I wouldn't put it in my car. What happens is that when the little plastic disk piece that holds the ball bearings breaks and then the bearings can fall out. When the bearings come out than the stator can tilt with respect to the trigger wheel (reluctor). When this happens the two can hit each other and this can do all sorts of funky things to your timing, not to mention wearing a groove on the stator and/or wearing the teeth on the reluctor. The ZX distributor has a very good timing curve and only has 17 degrees of advance. This means that you can crank in a lot of initial advance; around 15 to 20 degrees BTDC works well and still does not go past the mid 30s at full advance. This works great for performance. Getting rid of the vacuum advance will hurt fuel mileage a bit if you run the stock advance settings, supposedly. With the timing cranked up I don't think there is a significant difference, though and performance is quite a bit better on the top end. I removed the vacuum advance parts entirely, then JB welded the breaker plate to the piece that holds the stator. This locked them together permanently. I also cut off the arm on the vacuum dashpot, and plugged the vacuum line that goes to the distributor.

That's the real reason right there. If you want to have 4 diffs with 4 different ratios and a LSD for all of them, you're going to spend a lot of money compared to welding them solid. There are cons to welded diffs as well though, most notably getting the car to turn in. As to the LSD heating up thing, I haven't experienced that personally but the longest I've been out is only a 30 min session. Might be different in an endurance race.

That wasn't addressed to me, but I might have some insight... When I first got the Mikunis I was playing with a bunch of stuff and then I drove to an autox about 2 hours away. When I got off the freeway the car idled at 3000 rpm for about 5 minutes, then went back to normal. Solution was to synch the carbs in my case.

The basic difference to me is tunability. The Webers are a LOT more tunable, but they seem to need to be tuned more often. Mikuni/Solex is a simpler setup and easier to get where you want them. Once you do, they tend not to need to be futzed with anymore. The Webers on the other hand seem to need a lot of tinkering to stay in tune. Mikunis are simpler: chokes main air main fuel pilot pump nozzle jet blocks That's pretty much it for Mikuni tuning. For whatever reason it seems unanimous that the OA blocks are the only ones worth using. So that leaves you with 5 parameters, and it seems that you can make a car with Mikunis run decent regardless of the choke size, although it might have more top end with a bigger choke, etc. Webers by contrast: Chokes venturi size main air main fuel air corrector jet emulsion tube (jet block) idle jet pump nozzle pump exhaust valve starter jet Not only are there more parameters to adjust, they're more adjustable. The jet blocks are an integral part of tuning Webers. My understanding is that properly tuned Webers will turn out a few hp more than properly tuned Mikunis. But you have to have a whole lot more parts and know a whole lot more about what the systems in the carbs do to get them in the zone, then you have much more maintenance keeping them there. FWIW I haven't had Webers on any of my cars, the idea that they are finicky and need tinkering comes from friends who have them and Z forums that I've been around.

Lots of racers use welded diffs. Lockers act much like a welded diff, in that as soon as you put power to the pinion they are locked solid. I had a friend with an R190 in his 510 that had a Detroit. It was VIOLENT. When the locker ratcheted it banged so loud I thought the diff literally fell out of the car. He eventually took it out and put an LSD in. The lockers are about as durable as you can get until you start talking about spools. They work OK in big heavy trucks, but in a lightweight car they're just brutal unless you're strictly road racing or drag racing.

So far it's worked well for me, but my car has been in a garage for the last two years. Here's a little bit on my cowl rust I just recently fixed: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=106849 This in particular was why I bought Picklex. My car has rust coming out of the seams, and the thicker rust treatment stuff won't get in there. Picklex is so thin that it got right into the seam and went straight through. I don't know if it completely killed all the rust. I don't even know how one would test or check that. But it did turn it black and chalky looking and I'm hoping between that and a top coat of Zero Rust I'll be good to go.

I'm not a Picklex20 expert, but I have used it a bit in my project. It seems to have the same active ingredient as Ospho, which is phosphoric acid. The difference is that it doesn't have to be rinsed off like Ospho because it isn't as concentrated. The downside is that it produces a surface coating that from what I've read isn't strong enough to face the elements. I think what you've read has been distorted a little. I believe they do advertise that you can coat metal with it and that coating will last a year if it's not subjected to the weather. It would work fine as a rust converter, but you'd want to put another layer of paint over it to seal it. I'm using the Picklex20 and then I'm going to go over that with Zero Rust, then whatever paint I decide to use will go over that.

I think 32mm/36mm are the sizes of the primary and secondary holes in the DGV's. Kind of like 44 Mikunis or 45 Webers. You'll have to take the question mark shaped Cannon manifold extension off of the stock manifold to bolt the SU's on, so no problem there. Any round top SU in good shape will perform better than DGV's IMO.

I think it will run smoothly. I'd bet that ball bearing needs replacing, and while you're in there you can inspect all the other bearings, so you'll have a pretty good idea once you get it apart. I don't know if you read that other thread or not, but I think about .016" worth of shim should get you to about 45 lbs breakaway. Gordon Glasgow and I both found that .020" shim gets ~100 lbs. I didn't respond to your other request for a shop that knows R diffs because they aren't local, but since nobody else has I suppose it's worth mentioning that John Coffey sends all of his stuff to Unitrax. http://www.gearedbyunitrax.com/main.html

Did you redrill the R180 mustache bar? Because if you used the R200 bar that in itself moves the diff back. If you're running CV's then you don't need to move it back at all. Take a look at any 911 and you'll see that CV's can handle the misalignment with no problem. I've only been around/driven 4 early 240's, 2 of them were daily drivers (one mine) and had the diff moved back and the other two were not, yet the ones with the diff in the original position experienced broken U-joints in the short time that I was around them. My opinion with my limited experience is that if you're going to drive your car hard, even on the street, its a good idea to move the diff back if you're using U-joints.

No, it's not possible to put it on wrong. Only possible to weld the U-joints onto the shaft in the wrong position. It could still be out of balance though. If it isn't then I'd suggest you start looking at the U-joint angles and see if you can find a problem there.

Jacks setup would work fine, but if you don't lengthen the masts then you can't spin the car all the way around because the roof would hit the floor. Its still much easier to work on the frame rails when the car is sideways, but might be easier yet if it could go all the way over. One thing I noticed is that the angle of the pivot on the engine stands is different. I had a 750 lb stand and the head angled up about 10º. It looks like Jack's stand did the same, so he took the front wheels off to level the head. The 1000 lb units I bought from Harbor freight had the head set straight on the mast, but had the bottom of the mast attached at an angle. What I did was cut the bottom of the mast off, then cut it square, then welded it back onto the base. Then to lengthen the mast I sectioned 10 or 12" out of a 3rd engine stand. I did also add some diagonal braces on the sides to reinforce the much taller mast. This allows the car to go all the way around.

That's right, because the diff was installed further back.

Some of the comments on that thread are pretty interesting. How dangerous is it really to have a ~350 lb shell supported by two engine stands (albeit modified) that were rated to 1000 lbs each. I can spin the whole car on my rotisserie with one hand. About the most disconcerting thing with mine is getting in the car and having it start to spin. The pin for the engine stand isn't tight enough in the hole so it allows the car to rotate 15º or so. Get in the passenger side then move to the driver side and it swings over to that side. That is a pretty freaky feeling.

I think you have it right ezzzzzzz. Beandip is thinking R180 to R200 conversion. The diffs are the same length so the strap should line up similarly. What he's missing is that you're moving the diff on an early Z to correct the driveshaft angles. Like I said before, I think the curved link behind the diff from a 72-78 is the way to cure your ills.

Yep, had it on the rotisserie for a couple weeks now. Sure made fixing the rust where the cowl meets the firewall easier...