Racing, are they any good?

[smg1404]

Yeah , I constantly watch Ebay for some one to lose their mind and let an old lotus to slip by too cheap... I would love to have a 700 kg or less car that could run with the big boys.... anyway so far there has not been enough insanity for me to find that car... I was thinking an early elan or something... But I am open.. Lotus built some of the lightest cars ever, and that really pays of at the track... As far as the Z goes they can run, but the rules are everything when deciding what to do to the car... for the drags or street the V8 mod is hard to beat. If ITS is your goal talk to some of the other guys on this site that have done it....

[Dunny]

umm.

excuse my ignorance,,

but whats ITS

[Rick]

The 240z was born to race.

I wanted a car that could be used for a Sunday run or be used to do sprints and hillclimbs.

I did not want to purchase a thrashed car so I bought a standard 1971 240Z and decided to work on handling before worrying about increasing horsepower.

Fitted progessive springs with Koni skocks, 26mm front sway bar and 14mm rear. Braced struts front and rear and fitted 16"x 7" wheels with good Falken road tyres, fitted better seats and 4 point harnesses. The car already had the big valved N42 head and extractors so a good tuning was carried out and I have since done 1 round the houses event, 1 track event and 1 hillclimb.

This car handles like it is on rails and I am not too far behind cars that have 3 litre motors and triple webers. The secret, get the handling right first and then boost horspower.

Car runs out of breath at about 6500 rpm but is a great all round fun toy. Next expense is all weather race tyres which should give me another 3 secs advantage before venturing into getting more "horsies" out of motor.

The 240 Z is a great first time racer capable of keeping up with modern cars 10 times the price.

[biker]

I will 2nd Rick's comments as well!!!

I have concentrated on the handling and can keep up with some of the big boys. Kill me in the straight but can catch them in the twisties.

I have put on better springs, bracing front and back, some decent shocks and away I go. I am now starting to look for some horses and have wacked in a cam and headers, lightened the flywheel and a heavier clutch. Motor is still a stock 2600.

After blowing up 2nd gear syncro (suprise suprise), have had that fixed, am now looking for mucking around with the camber and toe in to stop the oversteer. The car weighs 1046kgms but not sure how many horses its getting.

For the money that you can buy one of these, its hard to beat the value. I looked at MG, Alpha and a few others to run in historics.

I have great hope of going quicker (if i can lay my hands on some bucks) as a recent hill climb saw a couple of 240z's run 4th and 6th overall out of 140 cars which included F3000's WRx, EvoIV's, and so on and so on.