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Originally Posted by Hotrodz
You are going to always chasing something in the Z when it comes to balancing. All bets are off for those of us TT kits. I also added a larger bash bar to mount the splitter to. The biggest bang for the buck is a lightweight battery. You can gain more weight functional control by getting lighter rotors and wheels. If you are going for mostly racecar then get rid of creature comforts like the AC and condenser. You can go all out and remove the heater core and blowers. From there it is all about suspension up front. Get a good set of coilovers.
The rear you will want a wing and contrary to popular belief they do work at relatively slow speeds. Most the tracks I run on are less than 2 miles long and heavy car or not most everyone in a competitive series runs one if they are allowed. I was shocked how much the wing helped on the Miata! We took it off and she was ha handful on anything over 45 mph.
Also having spent some time with the crew from Nissan that has been to the last few ZDAYZ events and them providing us a tour of the Nissan Heritage Museum, which is not open to the public we talk about the need for better grip and rotation of the rear of the car. Jeremy promptly took me over to one of the 280z race cars and showed me their solution. There was a post welded on each side of the rear wheel well were they added weight directly over the wheel to gain additional mechanical grip. He said the additional weight was worth it in lap times. In fact the Nissan Pace Car they brought to ZDAYZ, a 300 Z, they added about 300 lbs to the trunk to make it behave on the track due to the power level of the car. It was essentially their Trans AM car. Anyway Jeremy suggested I do the same as they did with the 280z. We will see how well the wing does.
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Very interesting stuff. I've been curiously thinking that if my rear end is so darn light compared to my front, could this have a negative impact on my rear-end grip (and I think it does). I'm playing around with suspension setups, tire pressure, and no swaybar to see if that helps. Having a stock diff definitely doesn't help either lol As for your comment about aero, I'd love to run aero but at this time I'm planning on competing in Gridlife Street class which limits us to no aero at all unless stock USDM or JDM.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OptionZero
Is this balance due to the hatchback nature of the car, which basically has a bunch of empty space in the back?
a carbon hatch would have done wonders, huh?
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Carbon hatch would help, but not by much (by itself). The heaviness in the hatch actually comes from the glass. If I could replace my hatch with a CF one AND replace the glass with plexiglass, I'd be golden! But unfortunately, my class doesn't allow for plexiglass.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hotrodz
I think that is part of along with being rear wheel drive. This is not much of an issue with front wheel drive hatchbacks.
Austin Hurtel added a cf hatch a a 9 Lives wing to his racecar. He was fast before he gutted and detuned his car so he could race wheel to wheel. His initial results are promising.
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