2ManyZs

I don't know that I would use a welded rear in an auto-X car, unless you were to use adjustable sway bars. The welded rear will tend to push the front end of the car (the heavier you are on the throttle, the harder it will push) and without adjustable sways bars to bring the handling back more towards neutral you will end up hurting your times while trying to wrestle with the understeer. Slow speed with a welded rear is a real work out just trying to turn the wheel.... it will make the steering even heavier than normal.... Since most auto-X's are fairly low speed, at least compared to road racing, I'd stick with an open rear until you can get some type of LSD. I ran a welded rear in my road race 280 for 3 years and never got the handling right..... I think one of these Phantom Grips would be better than a welded rear for an auto-X car and I haven't heard too many good reports on the Phantom Grips....even a factory LSD is better than the Phantom Grips, of course, none of them would be as good as a Quaiffe...but even a Quaiffe would have it's drawbacks on an auto-X course where you go from off throttle to full throttle a lot.

As far as using fiberglass instead of metal, I wouldn't do it on a uni-body car as the entire uni-body is the structure of the car. There are really no areas of the uni-body that aren't a structural member of the car in one way or another. Every piece is tied into another to form the chassis as well as the outer body and with one are compromised it will end up putting more stress on the areas that haven't been patched. If these cars were like a Roadster with a body-on-frame design, there would be no real problem with using fiberglass, but on a Z, I wouldn't use fiberglass unless it's to blend in a set of flares or something like that.

Now, I wonder where they all are... Wasn't long ago we were just hitting 3,000.

First, turn the drum so the inspection hole is just about in the "7 o'clock" position. Then if you can, drill the hole out to 1/2 inch so you can see inside and get your screwdrivers in there to work the ratchet. Don't worry, drilling it out won't hurt the drum at all, and by the sounds of it, it may not be salvageable anyways if the shoes have been dragging for a long time the drum is probably cut so deep that it won't be able to be turned. Then, get your self a good little light and a couple straight screwdrivers, and with one, press down on the arm from the E-brake. If it will stay out of the way, that's good, if not, then using the second screwdriver you need to turn the adjusting wheel down to loosen the shoes. It's a good possibility that the wheel cylinder might even be froze up and that's why the e-brake cable is unhooked, or else the e-brake cable is froze.... hard to tell until you get it apart to inspect the wheel cylinder. If I'm not mistaken on the opposite side you need the drum in about the "5 o'clock" position to line up with the adjuster. Either side, you still need to turn the adjuster wheel downward to loosen as the arm works on the bottom of the wheel and swings outward when the e-brake is used to tighten the brake shoes.

Well, 450 is a bit steep, but.... it's brand new and compared to spending a couple hundred on one of unknown condition used, I'd go with new if possible. Another 100 or so for bearings and seals, and you'd have a brand new rebuilt rear good to go for as long as you own the car... Most of the R-180 3:90's you will find, have either been used in a race car which means you'd be rebuilding it anyways or at least changing out the center section if the spider gears are welded, or would be from a well used street car..... I know where you could probably find an R-180 with the 3:90's, but the rear is welded and you don't want that on the street, and the price is nearly the same as the new ring and pinion for the complete (but used) diff. Which means you'd end up pulling it apart to swap out the spider gears and then you'd want to change the bearings... yadda, yadda, yadda... see what I mean? Only other alternative is to find one in a junkyard from the front of the 720 4x4 truck, which might be in somewhat better condition as most probably weren't used that often in four wheel drive in your neck of the woods.

Bearing first, then lock ring.... if you looked at it and thought about it you'd see how they have to go... bearing has to be in the race to work...

Here's another good chart but it doesn't list the 4:11 http://www.geocities.com/zgarage2001/ratios.gif For a street car with the 77 5 speed, I'd be tempted to go with the 3.90 for the simple reason your overall gear ration will be nearly the same as what it was stock. In other words, you will turn basically the same RPM's as you would with the stock 4 speed and the 3:36 rear on the highway. If you are going to use it for mostly auto-X and don't care about a couple hundred more RPM's while cruising, go with the 4:11. It's all up to which gear ratio you can find... neither is a bad choice with the 77 5 speed. I just saw a brand new 3:90 ring and pinion on Ebay last week going for 450, or about half price of what it sold for new......wish I'd had the money or I would have bought it myself.

MSA has them still listed in their catalog for 140 each... although on a 73 you would need to use the 70-72 mounts. With these mounts they would fit nice and tight to the body whereas the 73 bumpers stuck out further and had the rubber "fillers" behind the bumper face bar. Dunno if MSA still has them or not....as hard as some of the fiberglass parts are to come by now, I kinda think they won't be available.

Bra's on a car have their drawbacks and their benefits... I have yet to see too many bra's that don't lift up or flap at highway speed... this will mess up the paint in a short time. Moisture or condensation trapped under it can ruin a paint job over time. Never had one on a Z, but the one's I have had always seem to flap in the wind and leave marks in the paint. They do protect from rock chips and make bug cleani-up a bit easier as you can use a protectant on the bra that will make the bug "remains" come off much easier than trying to scrub them off the paint. It all boils down to the quality of the bra and how tightly it fits and whether or not it stays put while driving.

FWIW, my car had a lot of "rattle-can" undercoating over the top of the original paint and undercoating in the fenderwells. I used a product called "Under-Gone" from Eastwoods, spray it on, let it sit, and just scrape it off with a scraper. They have another product to get all the tar residue off as well. Little messy, but not bad.

If you put 3 pints of lube in it, I'd say you are looking at a teardown soon. They only hold a little over 3 pints if I remember right. Which tells me the countershaft bearings have probably not been getting much if any lube to them in a while. How long was the trans run with the lube this low?

Steve, you should have taken a few extra ones along... you know, some people would like one similar to yours....:devious: Who's the guy on the left signing autographs? The face is familiar....but then, even John Morton doesn't look like he did when I shook his hand at the IMSA races many, many years ago.....yeesh, that was quite a while ago now that I think about it....

Cutting the valence is not required... but you'll have to leave the pipes hanging a bit low to clear the valence... My advice is don't do it... in 6 months or less, the packing will be burned out of the mufflers and the noise will drive you nuts. Not only that, but the cops will just love you too...... I had the twice pipes on one Z, and will never do it again, once the packing burns out, you'll effectively have a straight exhaust. Best thing I can say is get the 2 1/4 or 2 1/2 "Turbo" exhaust with a good turbo muffler. Even then it can be a bit noisy with headers, you might want to look through the archives a bit, I think you'll find quite a few people who put a small bullet style muffler in the tunnel to quiet it down even more and get rids of some of the resonation. Dump the cat since you aren't in CA and required to have one, it's probably half plugged up by now anyways.

The Pertronix system is just another way to get rid of the annoyance of adjusting points..... I didn't want to say this before but........ the only thing it could be besides the ignition is that when you installed the head and cam chain, you didn't get the cam timed correctly. If everything else is the same as it was before, perhaps when you were putting cam gear back on, maybe you bumped the cam or it wasn't at TDC when you installed the chain and it is now either retarded or advanced? It could be off only by one tooth on the cam gear and that could possibly cause the engine to be way off in its performance. I know you didn't want to hear that, but since you just had the head off there is always that possibility.......

Whew..... well, if it were me... I'd get rid of the dual point dizzy and go with either the ZX conversion or just a stock dizzy with the Pertronix system..... One set of points is a PITA, two is rubbing the pain with Ben Gay, if you catch my drift....... That's just my opinion..... Only thing I can think of is to check your points and see if you have any pitting on the points and re-check your timing. Could also be that CD ignition box too.....

Since only the front one is doing it, it sounds like it might be a "lean pop" caused by the float level being too low. Check and adjust the float level and see if that doesn't cure it.

Well, the brake cylinders could be the problem, but at the same time, there are quite a few things that would make the hand brake inoperative besides seized cylinders. Seized cables, stretched cables, or the arm could be off the ratchet assembly on the brake cylinder...... Before you do anything more, try bleeding the master cylinder a couple more times, you'd be surprised how many times it can be just trapped air in the master cylinder. If you don't get any fluid to the rear after another good bleeding, then take the hard lines apart and blow them out... it never hurts to do this once in a while anyways... The only way to check the brake cylinders would be to pull the drum and try to manually move the piston in the cylinder, that is unless you suddenly start getting fluid back there so you can visually see the piston moving. Then you can inspect the hand brake mechanism on the cylinder and see why that isn't working.... my guess would be the cables are either stretched or seized... there is an adjustment in the tunnel... but it's a PITA to get to unless you drop the driveshaft......:tapemouth

If the brake cylinders are seized, you wouldn't get any fluid out of the bleeders. The question I have is, does the parking brake work? If it does, then the cylinders can't be seized.... work the handle and see if the arm works correclty on the cylinders... if the hand brake doesn't work, then the cylinders definately could be siezed. What I would do is take the lines loose from the rear cylinders and blow them out with compressed air, just to see if there is something keeping the fluid from reaching the rear brakes. Then, if you get good pressure out of the hard lines, pull the cylinders and make sure they are in working order. Third, hook everything back up, and bleed the master cylinder first and repeatedly... it could be that there is air still trapped in the master at the end of the cylinder under the rear brake reservoir that is causing all the trouble to begin with. However, if you don't get any air out of the hard lines, take hard lines apart at the "T" fitting that is mounted on the floor pan just above and a little behind the diff and blow through the lines again, it could be something such as rust or sludge form moisture that is clogging up the T fitting. I'm also in agreement that if the brake pedal is very hard, it sounds like you might have a vacuum leak, stuck check valve( are you sure you mounted it in the line correctly with the arrow pointing to the Master Vac?), or a bad Master Vac.

With this recent rash of thefts and joy-rides... maybe it's time I dug into my closet and see if I still have the old Clifford alarm I cought back in the late 80's and never used and put it up for sale.:cross-eye That's the nice thing about living in a small town, back then I didn't need it cuz everyone knew better than to mess with my car....:devious: :bandit:

FWIW, I've read some horror stories about the ITG filters on a couple different racing sites.... seems if you ever have a carb backfire, they will melt and then you end up sucking chunks of semi-melted foam into the engine..... they don't stand up to high temps very well without breaking down/and or melting. Just something to think about.....

Another pic...

If you are interested I have a set of wheels that are made by American Racing and almost identical to these. They are 15x8 with a little too much backspacing for my taste. The have a very thick mounting flange and would need longer wheel studs. They have Pirrelli 196/65 tires on them with probably less than 2K miles on them. You wouldn't be able to use a wider tire unless you go to adjustable coil-overs though. The tires as they sit now only have about 3/8 clearance from the stock spring perch. They were on a car that I bought, and I am changin over to Panasports and would like to ge tthese out of my garage. Here's a couple pics of them, if you are interested, send me a PM and we can discuss a price.

I've always had the best luck with running a bead from the bottom up with both Mig and arc as well. It allows the metal to "pool" a little better and give a bit smoother resulting bead. I've always used the same gas pressure for all my welding... so as far as lowering the pressure when welding vertically, I dunno... if the bead is dripping off, it sounds like you might be too slow running your bead, or perhaps a little too fast with the wire speed... Best thing to do is practice, practice, practice.... Try it with a little slower wire speed and see how that turns out. Try it one way and then the other, (bottom to top and visa versa) and see which way you get the best bead... some people can do it one way and not the other, some can do it either way....

First thing I would do is drain the transmission lube in a large pan and check for any metal shavings.. if you find a lot of metal "dust" in the bottom of the pan, it could be either a bearing or synchronizers.... On the simpler side, it could be just a little low on lube or perhaps you ought to try a better lube.. I usually recommend Redline MTL (manual transmission lube), it is a bit expensive, but it's worth the piece of mind and slightly improved shifting performance.

Yup, it's a great site.. we didn't even get our hands dirty.... Seriously though, I'm glad it was something as simple as the timing being off a notch or two... not hard to do with the oil pump drive spindle.....you aren't the first, and probably not the last either.... they are always a pain to work on when the engine is still in the car.