Zeddophile

Back ride height looks perfect to me, front I'd personally bring up about 10mm. Looking very tough all round this one.

As Lurch said, except I don't think (IIRC) Koni Reds actually 'click', they just turn. You should feel the two parts of the adjuster engage when you compress the shock and turn though. Make sure you hold compressing pressure on the shock as you turn to keep the adjuster engaged. With a Koni Red, even full hard is not THAT hard - I have them full hard in my Alfa, and they are fine for the road. Looking at the rate the back wheels drop after they leave the ground when its on a hoist, I'd say its still a bit softer than a Koni Yellow set to about 1/3 from soft (this is only eyeballing my car against racecars we set up). It is quite amusing when you lift a car up on a 2 post hoist and then look at the back wheels slowly lowering themselves down. As for which way is which, I THINK clockwise is firmer, but the easiest way to check is adjust fully one way, then pull the shock open, adjust fully the other way, and pull shock open again, see which way offers more resistance. Koni Reds (and yellows I think) only really adjust rebound, or the rate at which the shock extends. If you want to adjust bump seperately (compression speed), you need the racing inserts which are different again to Reds and Yellows. If you like to drive hard, I'd suggest with Reds set them close to or at maximum. Maybe start one turn back from full hard and see if you like it. Note to anyone else reading - DON'T do this with yellow Konis - maximum is rock hard. With those I'd start at about 1/4 and see how it goes.

the skyline looks kind of sportier with a sloping roof

My personal preference on this one, with any car that has a round wheelarch (ie not flat across the top), is that the gap between tyre and guard should be the same between top of wheel and guard as it is between front/back of wheel and guard. Exceptions come when the wheelarch is considerably bigger in diameter than the tyre, but doesn't seem to be the case here, looks like if you viewed it side on would be a bit over an inch gap all round - should look great.

Group S regs only state that the type, number and make of the carbies must remain as standard - the bore size is free, and the intake manifold only needs to be of a period type....

Just before you break out the spanners and start swearing - have you checked the battery charge? I've seen a lot of Rangies with flattish batteries make a machinegun style noise from the solenoid, charge them up and away it goes.

I came across one lying around in my toolbox yesterday, but I dunno which side it is.... if someone tells me which side is which in the top photo, I'll have a look.

Sounds about in the right region in terms of master sizings. Agreed on the fudging of calculations, my GTV ends up with a 5/8 for both front and rear, despite the difference in piston size. Would be interested on how the 3/4 goes with the wilwood 4 pots, as I'm looking at trying to jam some 4 pot brembos under my 15' wheels.....

Its a bit late to help you now, but one of the easiest ways to get any window with that style seal in: Fit the seal onto the window, then run a length of thin rope (like the cheap nylon crap you can buy anywhere) all the way around the channel in the seal (the part that goes either side of the body), and leave two ends hanging out next to each other. Then sit in place, starting at a point next to your rope ends, and start to pull one end of the rope out (at near right angles to the seal) while holding pressure on the window. In this way, the rope pulls the lip of the seal over where it has to go. And petrol is an excellent lubricant for fitting rubber anything - it makes the rubber slide over very easily, then evaporates and doesn't leave the rubber slippery, reducing the chance of the seal/grommet/hose popping off. As always, check that its not going to hurt the paint (won't hurt 2 pack, but acrylic may be a different matter)

My recommendation would be Rankins Restorations in Malvern St Bayswater. Can vouch for his work being top quality, and he has a zed in there at the moment undergoing a resto (and has done a few before), along with some other interesting and expensive classics.

Sounds like white sikaflex..... Were the little pieces that came off a bit rubbery, or rock hard. If rubbery, its probably sikaflex, if not is probably some kind of contact cement. If its sikaflex its probably worth trying to get some kind of solvent to run under it and soften it up, if contact coment I dunno..... At least the flamingo is gone though! Double sided tape residue is easily removed with prepwash, as I mentioned earlier. Good luck with the stripe!

With the alfettas we set up, as much castor as you can get before the shock scrapes on the upper control arm is the idea. The standard GTV that won the 6 hour a few years ago managed to pull 8 degrees (no idea why it managed so much), my car has about 3.8 degrees and could probably get more. Not sure if the same theory applies with a Zed. A - This may or may not help - I haven't had a look to see what temperature range other tyres are recommended to run at, but your temps do seem a little on the cold side for 5 laps of hard understeer? B - Its cheap to try, and definitely can't hurt, although I thought you'd tried this? Although it may bring back the body roll issue, but a hard front swaybar will definitely contribute to understeer. C - probably a good one to do in conjunction with B, as most of the Zed racers here suggest heavier springs. Will reduce the bodyroll issue that may arise from softening the swaybar. The actual spring rate recommended is probably a matter for a calculator and some corner scales though. D - Not sure? Alfettas run 1mm toe out, but completely different front suspension setup, and I think toe is much more linked to the vehicle type than any of the other settings. E - This would be my preferred starting point, going on the temperatures you were seeing across the tyre, and assuming you have standard camber now. Those figures I think should be an excellent start point for the tyres you use and the intended use of the car. F - Again, its free, and you will find out what pressures suit you best. This is actually something you should ideally play with every couple of meetings, or after any setup changes, as you will probably find that your preference will change as your driving develops, and also whenever an alignment setting is changed. G - I wouldn't bother with this - hard rear swaybars normally cause oversteer. Considering the rest of your setup, this would be my last area of development. So in summary, my thoughts would be do E. Then take it out again with new tyres (which you need anyway now!), and play with B,F and maybe castor and see what happens. If still having the same issue, continue to C and B. By this point, I think you'll have a pretty nicely handling car. Also, I have a suspicion that if you are getting the tyre more evenly on the road (with the camber adjustment), and able to utilise the lateral grip of the tyres better, you will likely generate enough heat to get the tyres into their recommended heat range.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me - my 2 litre Alfa with twin dellortos used to do the same figures, so you're going well I figure. Anyway, not many people are going to do worse than my 4.6v8 rangey - 22l/100km in the city

I found for the most part it was exactly like any other Australian car show - lacking in passion. For example, The Car Show on 9 - all the presenters talk in a bored monotone, and manage to make the few interesting cars they get on completely drab and boring. They could be telling me about a supercar with 850hp, getting 5l/100km, lapping the nurburgring in 4 minutes and costing $5,000, and I'd fall asleep and think the car was about as interesting as brown dirt. Top Gear UK however, has presenters that spend so much time jumping up and down and talking flat out that it somehow manages to make a review of a Ford Mondeo quite interesting, despite the fact its a pile of puss. If they wanted a decent Aussie motoring show, they should have started from scratch, and got some excitable, passionate car nuts to present it. Sure, take an element or segment idea here or there, but start it all as a new show. As they've gone about it, they've taken a show with a huge cult following and tried to carbon copy it - with the predictable result of being set an impossibly high level of expectations to live up to from day one. Fans of the original top gear were always going to be watching it at the start and noting all the ways its just not as interesting. And now there is a Holden v Ford in the second episode (I'm amazed they avoided the words 'Ford' and 'Holden' for a whole episode), that's likely to cull a large part of the audience who were tempted to see if it improves over time. As well it may do, with a couple more episodes under the belt, it might lose the sterilised feel and become enjoyable - but it will take some considerable time after that to draw those viewers back who watched the first one hoping for a true copy of the English top gear. I saw very few people in the studio audience laughing, most of the time they looked like they were waiting for a bus. All that aside, there were a few small things that amused me - the old guy jumping the softroader over the finish line, the little comment of "more like a Latvian thud than a Scandanavian flick", and the message on the board when underwater in the Moke "Bloody lucas electrics are useless in the wet." I wonder if they'll continue to get manufacturer or dealer support after starting the Lambo up and revving the crap out of it dead cold.

Possibly even a little bigger? I think 40mm Dellortos usually have either a 34 or a 36mm choke in them (can't remember which), so I'd guess at these being equivalent to the 50mm Weber at the conservative end of the scale? I'd be considering these myself if they weren't in DCOE pattern (won't work in the confines of my V6 engine bay), but I'll have to stick with my GSX-R 750 throttles. Definitely a good price.

Not intentional, just the quickest and easiest example to give! And before anyone jumps up and down, tyres was a probably fair enough suggestion of something to perhaps try at the time it was suggested, before the information was given as to how quick they are actually wearing. Agreed, but my view on this is that if it is a suggestion or theory, put a 'disclaimer' on it to effect that you don't know if it'll work, but maybe it might be worth a try. Or otherwise, try and phrase it in such a way that it becomes almost a question, to provoke a discussion on the pros/cons of that approach from someone who may have more experience or knowledge on the area. The outright statement of misinformation as fact, and its devout defence by the poster tends to drive some people who have knowledge in said area away from bothering to post what may actually be extremely useful information both now and in the future. Why? Because they just can't be bothered defending their information against people who decide to have a vendetta against them for daring to disagree with their post. I know its one of the reasons I often don't post on a thread - I usually get to a point about halfway through writing what I'm going to post, then think to myself "What's the point, this will just create a page worth of people tellling each other that what I've written is wrong because its not what their mates mate told them." Not a criticism of this forum specifically, its actually more of an issue on Land/Range Rover and Alfa forums - both of which cars I have worked extensively on for a living. Agreed. Perhaps we can leave it at enough said, but I somehow doubt that - although I'm amazed by the lack of flames occurring throughout the day today....

This is something that drifted across my mind yesterday, as I remember the original poster made a post a while ago trying to sort out his bodyroll. Did this issue ever get sorted to start with, or is this thread the extension (in a manner of speaking) of the previous one? Yes, it is true you can't give EXACT figures without knowing exact details, but what you can do is give a guideline of a ballpark figure for a starting point, and an idea of what areas to look at to start improving the issues being detected. You can do all the maths you like to work out the 'perfect' suspension setup, but ultimately the person behind the wheel may not like it, and want something different anyway. I was talking to a mate who races nationally (and competitively) in Formula Ford the other day, and he was talking about this exact fact - there are a small handful of people in the field who use 10psi more than the 'accepted' figure in their tyres, and it works for them to the point that they can post times in the top part of the field. Doesn't work for him though. That's just one example he gave, but there are apparently other people who run suspension settings that have the rest of the field scratching their heads and asking 'How the ___ does that work?', and again they make it work. At the end of the day though, they all started from a guideline figure of a REASONABLE handling car, and worked out from there what they needed to suit their strengths and weaknesses (including tyre management). Erm... sorry to everyone on here, but I actually agree with Lurch on this one, I feel the same way about it, and have the same problem on the Alfa club site. The easiest way to put this, is to use a Zed manual conversion for example. People will swear black and blue that you HAVE to change the whole pedal box. I know for a fact you can simply swap the pedals themselves over in a late car at least. Now, if you are paying a mechanic to do the conversion for you, and he isn't too bright at working things like this out, he's going to look around for how to do it. Whats he going to be told? Pull the whole pedal box out, and so away he goes. 3 hours of labour and a lot of swearing later, he's done. However, he could have done that part of the job in 30mins by swapping just the pedals, and guess who pays for the extra 2.5 hours of labour, at $90 an hour? Thats right - YOU do. Now thats only a couple of hundred, but imagine if you go and buy a reco gearbox from some other model car because someone tells you it will bolt straight in. A thousand or so later, you discover that there is no possible way to fit it. Or someone tells you that you need to buy extra special race tyres at $600 each and its guaranteed to fix your understeer, and you put them on to find these tyres are actually more sensitive to the pre-existing setup issue in your car..... The tyre temps definitely suggest more negative camber would be helpful, although I'd personally shy away from going towards 4 degrees you suggest for two reasons: 1. I suspect that to get that much you would require some fairly extensive mods to your front struts, meaning a lot of money, and I think it should be possible to get a well handling car which will be awesome fun on the track without needing to spend that much - someone mentioned slotting the holes where the strut tower bolts to the body, which is definitely a cheap place to start, although I don't know how much camber that will actually give. 2. If you use it on the road as well for a semi daily driver, it will probably be a pain to drive, and if you have normal road tyres for this use, they will be destroyed pretty quick with that much camber. The left tyre wearing considerably more is interesting, whether that could be attributed simply to a combination of bad setup and the fact that about 2/3rds of Wintons corners are right handers, or whether its a pointer to something else I don't know..... Finally, I know a group S alfetta which has been dual entered for 4 sprint days with Bridgestone RE55s on it, and those tyres are only just starting to lose their outer edges. I don't care how cheap and crappy your tyres are, if you can kill a brand new set of semi slicks in one track day, something is very wrong.

Which part of the tyre is scrubbing? The whole width of the tread, the inner, the outer? If its the outer half really wearing badly, as others have already said negative camber would be a good starting point. I found on my Alfa with 1.7 degrees of negative camber on road tyres, my front tyres wore very evenly around Sandown, despite the very standard suspension leaving lots of bodyroll and a touch of understeer to contend with. However, on cars we set up to run 'R compound' (road legal race rubber) tyres I think its more like 2.5-3 degrees. Then if running radial slicks, I believe the camber figure is somewhere between road tyres and 'R' tyres - not sure why that is. You will almost always get wear on the very outside edges of all tyres though, regardless of suspension settings. End of the day, its not that relevant to what you are doing other than as a guide figure - not sure what the standard Z front camber is, but I'm guessing not a lot. I would think that 1.5 degrees negative camber would be a minimum figure on your semi slicks, but thats just my thoughts on what I'd use as a starting point if I were doing it. Have you tried varying the tyre pressures in the front a few psi either way? It sounds like you are in the right range for those tyres, but some people/cars find 5 or even 10 psi one way or the other works better for them.... Another point is - have your roll centres been corrected for the lowering (and does it require that on a Z)? This makes a huge difference on an Alfa GTV - raising the front roll centre and lowering the rear one makes the handling improve vastly. The Alfa ones aren't well located at factory height, and once lowered, become much worse. Your best bet is probably to call Top Performance in Vermont (don't have the number to hand), I'm of the belief they have set up more than a couple of zeds for various event types, and will probably have much better idea of what are the important points to address with a zed, and more specifically to help iron out your problem. From dim memories of my chats with them, they commented about roll centres when lowering. Either way, they have set enough cars of all types up, their thoughts would be invaluable, and I've always found them helpful.

If its a sticker, that wheel will turn it to dust in a matter of seconds. If the sticker is really hard and baked on it may tend to leave smeary bits of sticker or gluey residue though, which you can get off with a bit of rubbing with wax and grease remover (Prepsol), and a bit more time on the caramel wheel. The effort is worth it in the end though, even if you end up having to cut and polish the whole car so the unfaded paint from underneath the sticker isn't noticeable. As far as the metal badges go, can you see any of the glue at all? If they've used sikaflex or araldyte you are in a bit of trouble to get it off... If its silicone based, you could try to carefully cut between the badge and the paint, which then gives you better access to the 'glue' itself, to try removing it. Petrol tends to argue with silicone, but I don't know how quickly it would work, and I'm also not sure on what effect it would have on acrylic paint if your car is painted in acrylic (strong possibility). Wax and grease remover definitely softens any sticker glues (the kind used on the back of factory Range Rover bonnet decals for example), and makes even the hardest glue soft enough to get off - just make sure you wipe a decent quantity onto the glue, and give it a minute or two to work depending on the glue. Incidentally my preferred method is to CAREFULLY use a razor blade in a trailing fashion (as in the sharp edge is angled AWAY from the direction of scraping), this gives you a big goobery ball of glue which you wipe off the razor blade and continue. If you don't wipe the blade the glue gets smeared everywhere, and it doesn't scrape as well. If carefull enough, you can do this without cutting or scratching the paint at all. If your Nissan280z badge was glued on with the same stuff, experiment - try soaking the glue on it with wax and grease remover, waiting 5 minutes or so and see if its going soft (unlikely if its silicon based, although I must admit I haven't tried it on silicone)

Here we go, buy one now! (ebay is a marvelous thing sometimes!) http://cgi.ebay.com.au/PINSTRIPE-REMOVAL-WHEEL-GREAT-LITTLE-TOOL-MUST-HAVE_W0QQitemZ220282537755QQihZ012QQcategoryZ43997QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262 And a picture for those too lazy to go to ebay and look! I also saw another type made by 3m which was white in colour, but the ones i used were exactly as in the picture above, and I can vouch they work well. Ultimately if you go to a GOOD paint supply shop (maybe ask a well recommended panelbeater who they use), and ask for a pinstripe removal wheel, they should be able to help you out.

Catchcan is a much better solution, as you don't end up with all that carbony gunge going into your motor... If you've ever looked inside an intake manifold or on some cars around the throttle butterfly, and seen black sticky crud everywhere, thats where it comes from. Much healthier for the engine not to be breathing that.

Steve, there is a thing you can buy to put on a drill which will remove stickers without harming the paint at all. I call it a caramel wheel, because it smells like caramel, and basically it is a rubber disc about 2.5 inch in diameter which is designed for exactly this purpose (removing pinstriping etc). I have used one on a number of cars with suspect paint, and other than sometimes a bit of unfaded paint being uncovered under the sticker, the paint itself is undamaged. I'll try and find one on the net so that you can see what I mean.

A lot of 4wd guys who actually use their 4wds in serious offroad work pull the ABS fuse for that exact reason - so that they can actually lock the wheels on the dirt and build up the all important 'gravel wedge' in front of the wheel.

http://www.redcentretogoldcoasttrial.com.au/rctgct/results/default.asp?showMenu= There are also a couple of 260Zs running. This rally started with 66 competitors, about 40 are still going! This rally finishes tomorrow (saturday), and started Wednesday last week.

That's brilliant! I always thought the only way to get the ADRs was to pay, I could never find them any other way. Thanks heaps!