John Coffey

$360 for the cage tubing, bent and notched, is pretty cheap. Make sure its DOM tubing (ERW is no longer allowed anywhere) and in the proper wall thickness for the the racing sanctioning body you plan to run with. For road racing (SCCA, NASA) the wall thickness should be .120". For NHRA it should be .134".

The above problem is more an issue with engine tuning then whether a cat is installed. My daily driver 240Z with SU carbs starts stinking at stoplights if I have not adjusted the carbs properly. Otherwise, the car is fine.

It wouldn't be very difficult to do. There's no need for a Lambda sensor and you would only need to put some sheet metal shielding to protect the underside of the car from the heat of the cat. I would mount a short converter similar to this one: http://tinyurl.com/ejufc in the transmission tunnel after the transmission mount. The more difficult part will be maintaining your air/fuel ratio near 14.7 to 1 to keep the converter happy.

True if you keep it within the wheelbase. If not, then that whole Yaw Inertia thing steps in.

You can also make a poor man's close ratio 5 speed by replacing the .745 5th gear in the NA 81-83 ZX tranny with the .86 5th gear set out of a truck transmission. Nissan part number 32310-58S54.

A diffuser isn't allowed in ITS either, but Keith Thomas built one pretty much the way I did with a 7 degree rise on the bottom of the fuel cell. I put the muffler on one side of the cell and a flat fuel pump/filter mounting plate on the other. Worked pretty well. The 7 degree rise on the fuel cell was to make sure it meet the SCCA 6" ground clearance rule.

Jeff Ireland of Ireland Engineering (The 2002 guy) just bought an old ITS 240Z and is building it for Vintage racing. He's been picking my brain a little bit regarding chassis setup and I'll be over at his shop tomorrow dropping off a fiberglass hood. From our discussions there are a lot similariies between a 240Z and a 2002 setup for racing. Both are nice cars and can be made into great race cars.

Think rear diffuser before moving anything else around back there.

Four Home Depot "C" clamps.

Triple SU installs on 6 cylinder engines have been done since at least the 1950s. On Zs I'm sure someone tried it by 1975. Its not "better" then a dual SU setup but its not really that bad. If I ever get time (which I never will) I would want to fool around and build a 6 SU setup. It would probably run like crap but it would generate a lot of laughs and perplex a few folks.

A race car is a car that every time you drive it, you wear a helmet. Anything else is a street car with pretentions. When building a race car, the general method is as follows: 1. Make it safe - chassis repair/strengthening, roll cage, racing seats, strong seat mounts, racing harness, fire system, brake lines, MC, rotors, calipers, throttle linkage, wheels, tires, etc. 2. Make it reliable - replace and/or repair all suspension, steering, driveline, engine, components including fasteners. Upgrade engine, transmission, and differential mounting and cooling. Add brake cooling. 3. Make it repeatable - test and tune the car to make sure it does the right thing at the right time, every time. Any suspension, engine, or driveline adjustability works as designed. 4. Make it fast - start upgrading to get more speed without affecting 1, 2, or 3 above. In your case, you are still at step 1 so the chassis and brakes need to be done before taking the car on the track.

Back when I was Category 4 (Crash 4) bicycle racer, it was always fun on training rides to pass riders on De Rosa's, Lightspeeds, Kestrel's, etc. while riding my ugly green and white Centurion Ironman. I would always say, "Nice bike!" as I went by. Same is true racing 240Zs. At the Z National track event at WSIR back in 2004 the Rusty Old Datsun was faster then the Grand Am 350Zs, even with Art Singer from Sport Z as a passenger. After one of the sessions the owner of the two 350Zs came over to look at the ROD and when he saw it was a NA L6 he said, "Man, I would have sworn you were running a turbo." There is some satisfaction to be gained by being succesful with equipment that everyone else says is junk.

The SCCA EP engines make from 225 to 250hp at the crank. The SCCA GT2 2.4L normally aspirated engines (15 or 16 to 1 CR) can make around 350hp at the crank and are spun to 8,500 rpm or more to get those numbers.

I'll be instructing at the autocross on Saturday and will wander around the show Sunday morning.

Rosemead Oil Products 12402 Los Nietos Rd. Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670 They sell a "Parts Cleaning Solvent" in bulk. Its Mineral Spirits but they will never say that and it quickly cleans grease and oil off of anything.

My recommendation to anyone buying an enclosed trailer is to buy at least a 24' one. Its the most common size so you have lots to choose from and it will hold its value much better then anything smaller. It can can towed by a half-ton pickup with an equalizing hitch and you have room inside for a worktable, compressor, toolbox, etc.

Yup. They suck below 200 degrees F and work well up to about 900. On a stock Z brake system they would get cooked on the track (like the Porterfield R4s) and not last more then an hour or two of hard use. But, on a vented rotor that has air going to it they last a long time. Good hard initial bite and they modulate well coming off the brakes. Not a street pad because of the things mentioned above.

I liked them on the Rusty Old Datsun. They are similar to Porterfield R4s but last longer.

The street 240Z I'm building for myself will have the following: EMI Racing camber plates with a 1/4" poly isolator. EMI Racing coil over kit. 175F/200R springs. ST 1" front and 3/4" rear ARBs. Tokico Illuminas BZ3099/BZ3015. I think it will be a good compromise for comfort and handling.

I heard of people doing this and it has to be one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard of. Have the switch trigger a big red light, not kill the engine. Imagine this: Turn 2 at the California Speedway road course, 145+ mph, and your engine shuts off. Off you go into the wall, backwards! But hey, your main and rod bearings will be OK.

One of the biggest causes of confusion regarding shocks, springs, anti-roll bars, wheels, tires, and pretty much anything else for a 240Z is when a person with a street 240Z calls or stops by a race shop and asks what parts he needs for his street car. For most 240Z racers the Tokico Illuminas are a bottom of the line, cheap shock and its what you run until you can afford something better. So, the comment above from the race shop is correct, in the context of road racing. Unfortunately, people who have street 240Zs think they need the race stuff to make a good handling street car. In reality, race parts on a street 240Z generally make the car handle poorly for the 99.9999% of the time on the street where the car is being driven at 6/10ths or less of its capability. For a street 240Z the Illuminas are top of the line.

I suggest you have a permanent roll bar installed, not a removable roll cage. A roll bar has a main hoop behind the seats with two rear braces going to the strut towers and a diagonal brace within the main hoop.

If you are running solid rotors then the Toyota brake upgrade doesn't get you much, as you're learned. What you most likely experienced was fluid fade. The brake fluid itself started to boil a little bit causing a spongy feel in the brake pedal which required more effort to get some braking. Gas fade is almost non-existent today so cross drilling and slotting are pretty much a waste of machining time. Solid rotor brake systems put a lot more heat into the caliper then vented rotors. Taking away mass from the rotors (by slotting and cross drilling) makes the rotors run even hotter and puts that much more heat into the calipers. You need to upgrade your brake system so it can tolerate higher temps. 1. Get rid of the slotted/cross drilled rotors and go back to the OEM style. You need all the mass in the rotors that you can get. 2. Upgrade the pads to a type that can tolerate higher sustained heat. Hawk Black, Porterfield R4S, and Carbotech Panther are all good upgrades. Be aware that these kinds of pads and less effective when cold. When you first start driving they won't bite as well until they get up to temp. 3. Upgrade your brake fluid to something that has a higher wet boilding point. Motul 600, ATE551, or Castrol SRF work very well. Compeltely drain all the old brake fluid out of your system and replace with one of these. Do this first before trying to get air to the front rotors. Dryer venting won't work (its too fragile) and with a solid rotor you need to make a special duct that routes air to both sides of the rotor surface.

Well... this might get me in trouble with the local Solo2 club, but I haven't run with them for a while so I guess its time the mystery is solved. For about two years a local competitor named Richard "Dikk" Weenis has sporadically shown up on the registration form and the worker signup sheets. He has often been paged over the loud speaker system to check in for his worker assignment and for a 4 hour period during the Night of the Living Dead event Dikk had the fastest time of the day. Dikk has also been called to the timing and scoring motorhome. He was even paged at the San Diego National Tour! Richard "Dikk" Weenis is a mythical member of Team Rusty Old Datsun. EDIT: This nasty word filter is stupid.

Actually Alan, I don't think you were getting "laid" in this thread. I think the proper American idiom is, "Getting bent over." :-)