Just remember that stiffest isn't always fastest. You have to match the damping to the tires and the track conditions. Some weight transition is useful, it just needs to be controlled.

For my setup I run full stiff on DOT-slicks, about 2/3rds for R-comp 100TW tires (NT01/RA-1) and about 1/2 for sticky street tires as the starting point. In the rain on R-comp wets I run about 1/3rd. Different coilovers though so your settings will be a little different. If I'm not happy with the traction balance of the car front to rear I will make small adjustments to try and get it dialed in.

Probably the most important thing is that you keep a log of everything. Weather, tire pressures, damper settings, what you had for breakfast, oil temps etc. It will all be useful when analyzing your performance at the end of the day or even in between sessions.

Car is looking great BTW and love the data logging setup.

Yeah a log of all the conditions and settings is starting to become a necessity. At least I only have one type of tire setup at the moment. I can only imagine how complicated it gets when you're switching.

The data logging is pretty amazing, but it will be a while until I get into the hang of really using it well. What you see in the Youtube videos is just basic video + gauge overlay, but their software actually does a lot more than that when I'm at my desk analyzing data in it. Again, logs to go with the data would help, so that I can see things like "Hey changing that swaybar setting gains me 5mph at the traction limit in corner X" or whatever the case may be.

You can see a little slideshow about their analysis software here: Race-Keeper Software | Race-Keeper . Basically, you get graph data for everything that's synced with the track map and video, and you can do side-by-side video + full-data comparisons of laps from different outings or whatever and it syncs those up as well.

Or here's a better example from their tutorial vids: Race-Keeper Comparo Instructional Screencasts | Race-Keeper

looks awesome, but whoever put on the numbers was dyslexic.

3rd pic looks like a new profile pic ;)

I use this one. Not as fancy as yours, you have to record the video separately and combine later, but the data analysis suite is very similar.

AiM Sports - Solo overview

So I started tearing things apart yesterday, and I'm just about done with destructo-mode and it's time for put-it-back-together mode. All in one go I'm upgrading basically all of my cooling components (radiator, oil/trans coolers, all the hoses, bypass heater, etc) and gutting the engine bay side of the HVAC, and doing the Z1 engine mounts while I'm in there (trans mount later, it's a separate simple project).

Anyways, thought I'd post an in-progress update. My engine is now Cylon-approved:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...gine-mount.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...gine-mount.jpg

With the radiator, AC compressor, and alternator out of the way, swapping engine mounts is really, really easy. The only tricky part (as Spohn mentioned) might be finding an appropriate point or two to jack the engine upwards from safely. In my case I happen to have that AM Perf baffled oil pan, which is machined from a solid aluminum block and really can't be bent, so I just put a 2x4 under the oil pan and lifted the engine up with a floor jack on that.

I was a little worried I bit off more upgrades than I could chew between track weekends this time around, but it looks like I made it, fingers crossed. Later this evening will be my first real street test-drive on all the new setup, it's all buttoned back up now and it's been through a little static stress-testing in-place on the lift. A few notes I can put out now without having really driven the car yet:

7AT Fluid Swap without Dealer, and to non-Nissan fluid

I had a dealership change my 7AT fluid last time, around 20K miles in, right after I added the small (series-1 and very short) trans cooler from Stillen's kit. Now that I'm just a hair under 40K and upgrading the cooler, I did another swap and did it myself this time.

The new cooler is a Setrab Series-6 19-row (the one used in the 19-row oil cooler kits commonly for this car - where mine came from). I've switched from Nissan's factory Matic-S to the Motul Multi-ATF that Z1's selling. It's one of the very very few aftermarket ATFs to claim Nissan Matic-S compatibility, their marketing materials on it talk specifically about being suitable for latest-generation semi-autos, and I trust their brand at this point, so I expect this to go well.

As for the whole dreaded issue with Consult-III temps for fluid change: through some mild experimentation I think I figured out this isn't as bad as it seems. To recap the service manual: you can only swap 3/9 quarts at a time via the drain/fill holes, and a "full change" in the SM is three of those swaps (which leaves 28% old fluid in the mix, that's ok). I'm probably more like 10 quarts with the add-on cooler/lines. After the final fill-to-overflow cold, you're supposed to fire it up, warm up to a Trans Temp of ~104F, roll through the gears in-place, raise the lift, and open up the overflow again to let it spill down and get the level set at that temp.

With an IR thermo, you can get close enough for government work. If you shoot the IR thermo at close range on the bottom pan metal near the overflow/refill port itself, you'll read ~5-10 degrees F lower than the actual fluid temp in the pan. So basically, warm it up until that spot on the pan reads around 95-100F. When you pull the plug and start draining if you carefully shoot the dropping fluid up-close, you'll see it around the 100-110 range, which is close enough (the SM allows for some variability there anyways). Keep in mind I was in a garage at reasonable ambient temps around 70-80F and little wind and the car was pretty cold having been on the lift for days and only fired up a few minutes at a time. YMMV in other conditions, esp if the pan/trans is already heat-soaked from previous driving.

Setrab 9-Series Oil Cooler fitment

Now I know why all the easy-install oil cooler kits use Setrab's 6-series coolers (in 19/25/34-row heights).... I went with a 25-row Series-9 which is considerably wider. It seems like a better airflow fit for our grill opening, since at 25-row you're not getting much more airflow height between the bottom edge and the crash bumper area. The reason most of the kits don't use a Series-9 is it really doesn't fit well at all with our stock radiator core support and that center strut that holds the ambient air temp sensor, etc. I had to do a ton of cutting and customization to make it work. I also added a top-mount by drilling holes in the backside of the crash bumper, so it's mounted (with anti-shock rubber) top and bottom for stability.

I suspect the Series-9 25-row is about as ideal as you can get, just be warned there's a reason the kits use the Series-6. Stock up on dremel cut-off wheels and be prepared to do major surgery and relocation of factory bits to fit the Series-9.

APRacing/Stillen brake kit notes

So far so good, I did ~200 miles of rotor break-in before the car went on the lift for other surgery a couple weeks ago. The one little note I wanted to add, since I discussed this stuff randomly both here and in other threads and never reported the final decisions: I've kept AP's pad clips in all 4 calipers in the end. Apparently it's functionally fine to leave them out for a track car, according to Stillen. I didn't think I'd care about NVH, so why not leave off an excess part that could cause a problem? Because the noise really is worrying. Without the clips the pads bonk around in the calipers a lot. I have a hard time telling whether that's just my clipless rear pads I'm hearing or maybe my suspension is falling apart in the rear because I forgot to torque down a bolt or something. At those kinds of ugly noise levels, IMHO the clips are worth it just to make it easier to diagnose other noises.

I didn't have to cut/fabricate anything for the 25 row Series 9 Setrab to fit well. My guess is that you installed it with the L bracket facing towards the radiator while I installed it facing outside like the way GTM installs it.
This is not mine but it is similar.
http://i313.photobucket.com/albums/l...0COOLERS/B.jpg

Mine is on the "outside" of the core like yours. The big differences between my setup and that picture are:

1) I have my trans cooler on the driver's side and oil cooler on the passenger side (opposite above). The lines are more natural that way (shorter runs).
2) I'm using the same bracket pictured (the one from Setrab themselves), but I used one on the bottom and one on the top (to the back of the alum crash bar, with an extra piece of angle aluminum to mate them up). This limits hose routing options to some degree, but prevents the cooler swaying back and forth on the bottom mount under accel/brake.
3) I had to move my cooler further inboard (towards center post laterally) than that, by about an inch or two, to get the lines to route past it out the same side (one behind, one over the top, and both stock PS cooler lines running behind), and as a result it sticks past the center post an extra inch or two. Thus, had to cut away a fair amount of the center post's depth, including the bracket for the air temp sensor.

I ended up putting the air temp sensor in the upper center area between the G3 intakes, so now it's a "that pocket of air up by my intakes" temp sensor, which I imagine will read a bit higher with all the hot air from the various radiators.

Between the 9-series 25-row oil cooler and the 6-series 19-row trans cooler, there's only a tiny tiny gap left between the two now. Almost all airflow has to go through those to reach the radiator (well, the trans cooler lets some pass beside/above, but not much). I don't think you could fit 2x 9-series very well at all.

I'm tempted to move my air temp sensor up to the intakes as well. I use that air temp versus the intake temp sensor to get an idea of how much heat soak I have and having the air temp sensor closer to the intake would give me a better indication.

Do you have a garage for the TMS event? I'll be in garage 44 and my dad is in garage 26 so I will likely be in one of those two areas. I've got new tires plus the bigger oil cooler so I am excited about this event.

No garage, just random paddock parking. I've never even looked into garage spaces at any of the TDE events, I guess I should find out about that someday. I'm excited too, but nervous about so many changes on the car all at once.

I couldn't wait for this evening, so I took it out for a stress-test drive over lunch. No leaks, and temp data looks pretty awesome so far. "Normal" street driving - cruising around 2.5Krpm in the mid-day heat, the car would settle at oil/water temps of 180 and 177. I found an empty back-road stretch and gave the car a close-to-track-conditions flogging for about 7 minutes straight and I was still at 200/194. A soon as I backed off the agression, the car cooled back down to its steady-state in a minute or two.

Only problem I noted during the test-drive was an oddly-specific transmission issue. In general the transmission is fine, but if I brake in 3rd gear down to fairly low revs (~3K) and then transition right back to hard gas, the transmission lockup slips, the engine revs up freely for half second, and then the trans finally locks up (and by then the engine's way past matching revs and the tires burn a little). I'll try it again this evening and see if I can characterize it better, maybe. My random diagnostic thoughts right now are:

1) That my filling procedure didn't really work for setting the fluid level correctly, and braking down in 3rd at low revs just happens to slosh the too-low fluid in a way that it can't get pressure to lock up 3rd gear when I nail the gas pedal again. I could break this down into two possible filling errors: (a) that with all the air I needed to work out of the lines/system, my fill just wasn't going to be accurate until I really drove the transmission on the street a bit, in which case going back through the final step would fix it, or (b) technically, I don't think the service manual says to stop the engine when doing the final at-temperature fill/bleed. My best judgement was that turning the engine back off was implicit in the instruction to lift the car, etc, but maybe I really do need the engine running to set the fill correctly.

2) That I've damaged some seal/valve/solenoid whatever from track abuse at the last event and this is the first time I've noticed since getting home and then having the car on the lift forever.

3) Could be with the free-er revving engine (no more AC), I've crossed some threshold where I need to up the line pressure a bit more to catch it? I may play with line pressure in general for debugging this later.

I'd think if it was just a fill problem, I'd be able to reproduce the same slip condition in 2nd or 4th, which I was unable to do with a few attempts earlier, just 3rd. Could be specific to odd gears though (many internal passages/components are odd/even-specific), and it would be hard to reproduce the same type of condition in 1st or 5th.

I really wish I could get on the Nissan Batphone and find out for sure whether the final level check on the transmission was meant to be with the car running. Maybe GTM would know...

Most likely a combination of 1 a) and b). The auto trans I've done this on required the engine to be running and transmission in N or P when you do the level check via drain plug. If the engine is off too much fluid comes out.

Ah! It seems so foreign to me to set a fill level while something's running, but I guess this is also the only transmission of this nature I've ever seen. Maybe I'll try that this evening. Thanks for the directional hint :)

Oh another random note from the test-drive: I don't have the Z1 trans mount on yet, just the engine mounts. You can definitely feel the difference. I wouldn't say it's annoying or adds a huge amount of body vibration to the car, but if you're paying attention you definitely "feel" the engine more through the seat of your pants. I'd say throttle response (as in "reaction time of feeling the engine respond to a sudden change") feels a little snappier with stiffer mounts, but I also deleted the AC compressor at the same time and that's probably helping on that front a little as well.

I've done drain/fills on several gm trans's. The procedure has always been to check the fluid level with the car running, otherwise the fluid is concentrated not where it should be. I'd try the procedure in the fsm verbatim and see what happens.

I'm in the midst of doing so now, thanks guys :) This is actually the first automatic trans car I've ever owned (and I'm getting old now), so I guess even if all auto trans are filled while running, I'd never have known it. I guess it's karma for second-guessing the service manual, too.

My initial check (fill to overflow) with it running at around the right ballpark temp, I ended up adding about 1.5 quarts to get it up from the "engine off" overflow level to the "engine on" overflow level. I have no doubt that's enough to cause problems.

It took me a while to swap bottles and whatnot and by then the temp was about 10 degrees past where it should be. So I capped it early while it was still flowing out a bit, and now I'm letting the car cool back off again so that I can do the final overflow level-setting at the right temp. Later tonight I'll go for a midnight test run to Denny's or something and see if it's still slipping in 3rd.

Also, I finally got the Z1 trans mount installed earlier while the car was cooling off the first time. Really, really easy to install, even on a stock car with everything attached. You just need a way to get the car up in the air (normal jackstands at a mid-high setting would work), and a bottle jack to hold, not truly lift the rear of the trans itself. The rest is just 8x fasteners to drop the crossmember, drop out the old mount, then reinstall it all, drop the bottle jack, drop the car. I'll see how that feels on my midnight run as well.

sub'd. :tup:

Operation: Denny's Run was a success. Trans is back to flawless now with the correct fill level (thanks guys!). Cooling data still looks awesome. I had to stay down a gear and keep the revs up around 4K cruising just to keep my oil at 170 now that we're in the cool night air. A few light moments harder on the car brought it to 180 but never past. If I had thought ahead / known, I would've blocked half the front grill with duct tape for the drive.

AP/Stillen BBK + CL RC6E is still feeling awesome. I don't think I've yet hit a street-test scenario that will really tell me whether I'm gonna hit any minor ice-mode-like issues with this setup or not. I'm sure I'll find out this weekend at TWS.

The trans mount made the drivetrain feel a little more connected to the body again, like the engine mounts. It might make a larger difference throttling on track-out at the limit, but on the street I'd say the change was "noticeable, but minimal". The engine mount change was more noticeable than the trans. This is the opposite of Spohn's impression of the two, but the difference is likely his 6MT setup versus my 7AT.

So I had a fun weekend at TWS. There were a number of minor issues with me and the car, and it certainly wasn't my best/fastest weekend, but I learned a lot. This weekend was the rare Clockwise direction there, totally new to me. The CCW direction I ran last time out there was much more of a "feeling" track where you could just traction-sense your way through it and rock around there in no time. This CW direction it seems a bit more technical and unforgiving, but it's still really fun to learn.

I left my USB stick at home and didn't realize it until I was ready to hit the Record button for the first session of the weekend. I picked one up Sat night locally and only got session data for Sunday. Had one true spin Saturday and an off-track excursion Sunday. Neither were particularly brutal, but I had to hop some tall kerbing getting back on the track from my Saturday spin, and I managed to bang up my FI mufflers a bit on the way over.

Tires / Camber

My tires are really hating my lack of camber still. They were already fairly worn down at the outsides when I started this weekend, and I finished them off this weekend. They could limp through another weak session or two, but no way I'm starting another whole weekend on them. It made the weekend interesting, because while I was learning the track better with every session, my front tire grip was also getting worse with each session. In the net, I think I peaked on the second session of the weekend and my times just went downhill from there.

On that second session I was probably running in the top 10% of the pack, and by the end of Sunday at least half the group was outpacing me while I adjusted down to the tires. About halfway through the weekend, I adjusted my rear sway and all 4 dampers to intentionally make the rear end slipperier (+1 stiff on rear sway, +1 stiff on rear damper, -2 stiff on front dampers), which helped balance the car back out to the front tires' pace somewhat. I didn't really like the very-understeery feel I was getting before that.

Really need adjustable front camber. I'd hate to tear up yet another set of fronts this way.

Transmission

No trans issues all weekend. Apparently the Motul Multi-ATF fluid works fine. If it didn't I'm sure the stress of the weekend would've made it apparent. The upsized cooler kept fluid temps in check and I never got into any hot/laggy shifts.

Brakes

Overall I was really impressed with the new brake setup (recap: CL RC6E front and rear, APRacing/Stillen BBK). I was peaking around 0.9g in the hardest braking zones without hitting any hint of ice-mode or engaging ABS. Zero issues with deposits/judder/etc. Modulation was even easier than the previous setup (CL pads + Stock calipers), which was already nice due to those CL pads.

My only minor complaint here is the design of the pad pins on those front calipers (CP7040 I think they are?). They only lock in via some dinky little snap rings. They're a pain in the *** to drive the lock ring into place (tapping in from the inside of the car), and they just don't hold very well even when they're pushed in correctly. I had both pins on the right front back out of the caliper on-track for me. They only backed out about half an inch, the outside pad moved a little out of position, and then everything kinda seized up in that configuration so the pin couldn't fall all the way out. I didn't even notice a feel change on track, but DR_ spotted it in the paddock afterwards.

Needs a better retention solution. Just letting the pins stick out the other side to install cotter pins like the stock caliper would probably fix it...

Cooling Changes

The new cooling config (25/9 oil, 19/6 trans, CSF rad w/o condenser, heater bypassed w/ 3/4" silicone, 80/20 mix + MoCool) definitely works as a configuration. My worst-case peaks all weekend were 225 oil and 221 water. More typical for most of the session time was about 220 and 216.

However, I still have a leak in the coolant system somewhere :shakes head:

The behavior over the weekend was that coming into the paddock after a run the overflow bottle would be fairly full of hot coolant, but after the car cooled down hardly any of it went back into the system. Then I'd open the rad cap and find a fairly large pocket of air in the system. Refilling that manually from the excess in the overflow tank got things back to a sane starting point for the next session, so I did that all weekend.

We're talking somewhere between 1-2 quarts of fluid displaced out to the tank and not recovering per session. Given that my water temps were reasonable during the session, I don't think the air bubble appeared until the system cools down and de-pressurizes, but it's drawing air from some minor leak at that time instead of drawing back fluid from the overflow. Preliminary diagnosis at the track (trying cold starts with hand-guestimate pressure-checking, smell, etc), it seems unlikely to be a combustion->water head gasket leak. There's no contamination to indicate oil<->water leak from the head gasket or water pump. Most likely I either still have a pinhole leak in the external hose connections and piping somewhere (perhaps a hose clamp that doesn't leak outwards at pressure, but does draw air back in during de-pressure?), or I have a head gasket leak at the edge from coolant to the outside world. I'm going to play with a pressure-test rig tomorrow and diagnose it.

Power stuff

The car definitely felt snappier on the the throttle all around. Engine/trans mounts, lack of AC compressor, and lower operating temps all contributed to that I'm sure. Taking a little weight out of the engine bay couldn't have hurt either. Hopefully I get time to gut the interior ac/heat stuff soon as well, and then start in on the cage/harness stuff.

Youtube of my fastest recorded lap at 2:10, which wasn't all that fast compared to what I should've been able to work up to, IMHO. I probably had a better time earlier in the weekend while I lacked a USB stick:

Yea those AP caliber pins suck. But I can live with it.

On the 09's the cap on the overflow doesn't seal properly. Not sure if that is 100% required in order to create the proper draw required (since the low pressure from the cooling system draws from the bottom of the container) but it made a mess. I used a little bit of RTV around the inside of the cap to create a better seal (let it dry on the cap before reinstalling).

I agree with you on the pins for the front calipers, they are a PITA. They should be like the rear caliper with the screw-in pin, one of the reasons that the CP5555 or similar caliper would have been better. I've never had the pin back out though, you can tell when it locks home since the sound and feel changes.

Yeah it's possible I didn't get them pushed in all the way, but it certainly seemed like I did at the time.

Yeah on this bit: I've seen the difference looking at a 12's engine bay in person before. They actually have what looks like a real pressure cap on the overflow bottle, and... something else where our pressure cap is. I think.

I wonder if our 09 system can be updated just by replacing the rad cap and the overflow bottle with the newer bits?

Yes I believe so if you get all the required pieces.

I've seen the differences but when I looked it up I wasn't seeing any new model parts, I know for a fact that the tank is different along with the 2 caps.
214 Radiator, Shroud & Fitting :: Exhaust & Cooling :: Genuine Nissan Parts :: 370Z Parts (Z34) 2009-2013 :: Nissan Parts, NISMO and Nissan Accessories - Courtesyparts.com

So I went by a dealership last week to order parts for that and see what happens. I have the caps and overflow tank now, and at least I mostly understand how the upgraded system works.

So in the new system, the plastic tank is actually part of the full-pressure system. The replacement cap (in our current cap location on the water outlet) is just a seal for the upper edge, it doesn't have a spring in it at all, meaning the little line to the "overflow" is full-time full-pressure. The bottle's obviously reinforced to handle it. It has a normal spring pressure cap and the outlet from there is what overflows to the little tube that runs down to ground. There's also a 3rd line on the bottle, coming off the bottom, that's meant to T into the heater line. The bottle still has min/max lines.

So I guess the basic idea here is: the whole system including the plastic bottle runs full pressure, but the bottle has a giant air bubble at the top of it (also at pressure!), and any air in the system ends up there because it's the highest point. When coolant needs to expand or contract, it does so through both the little line from the top of the water outlet to the top of the plastic tank, and the slightly larger line from the bottom of the plastic tank to the heater lines.

With the bottle itself and both new caps (the bottle doesn't come with the pressure cap btw, separate parts), the only thing that's really missing for doing the upgrade is that, on 2012+, there's an extra fork on that hard heater line coming out the side of the engine, specifically to go to the bottom of the plastic tank. It's where you see #22 in this pic (also note #21, which is for the factory oil cooler):

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...ling-stuff.png

You'll notice that new stubby bit on the heater is facing a certain direction, seems like perhaps so the normal flow of the heater line tends to draw from the tank rather than push liquid into it? I could hook up the system using the (#27) straight bit that went to the throttle bodies before. It's slightly smaller diameter and not angled-out like the other, but it might work. Either that or upgrade that whole heater-pipe section as well, but then I have to deal with capping off the new outlet for the factory oil cooler.

Had a good weekend at MSR-H, learned a lot :) They put me in Yellow Solo this time (so no assigned/required instructor), and it was nice to just be out there by myself and not feel like I have to explain things (you know like - hey I'm not being inconsistent here - I'm experimenting with different approaches to this corner on each lap!). No real mechanical issues or spins. Had one very minor off coming into S+S (started my braking a little too late for conditions, so I just continued off into the grass by a car-length or so and then rolled over into the hot-pit lane).

Apparently the USB stick for my RK data got corrupted somehow, which is annoying, so I only got data for the first two sessions of the weekend. I know I improved a lot from there, and my best time from the data I have (1:56.98) is on a lap where I can see tons of mistakes I wasn't making later in the weekend. Oh well :)

Aside from known front camber issues, known failing-VLSD issues, etc, the biggest weakness now is I waited a little too long to upgrade tire compounds. These Conti DW were great to learn on, but at this point (a) mastering traction on them while slipping through corners is just completely autopilot for me because it's easy and (b) they're way too slippery on hot days to keep up and I know they're holding me back at this point. All weekend I was holding back on straight speeds or braking more than I felt I should have needed to, all in the name of "let's stay down to corner speeds these tires can actually handle." The upside was I got a ton of car-control work in this weekend. Even if it's mostly on auto-pilot, driving through that excessive slip on just about every corner is still building up my brain's abilities.

So before the next event I'll probably bump up a notch to something like an NT-05 or RS3. At least for one tire change (2-3 events?) to ease my transition over to something like an NT-01 or straight up used slicks.

This was my last event for a while. Taking a 3-month break from track events (hottest months anyways) to do some more major surgery on the car (finally gut *all* the forward interior and switch to cage + harnesses, etc).

Anyways, the fastest lap of my first session of the weekened, FWIW:

So I've taken the plunge now. I've had the dash out before and even pulled out the main steering member (horizontal beam underneath), when I removed the interior HVAC stuff. But that time around, I put the dash (etc) back in place afterwards to keep the airbag system functional, since I'm still on stock seatbelts, etc.

This time around, we're going all in. Airbag stuff and all interior plastic crap being removed permanently (as well as other useless ancillary things like TPMS and Keyfob sensors, etc). There should be no wiring left that isn't strictly necessary for a track car, basically. After I've gutted most of the useless wiring and tidied things up, I'll need to remount the factory 3-gauge cluster on top of the beam somehow for now, and attach a metal plate there in the center for a new custom "dash" to mount various gauges and switches to (including factory start/stop button, and a couple of pushbuttons tied to the cruise control for UpRev map switching). Also, I need to remember to get someone with a Pro license to NATS-disable my ROM before I remove all those keyfob sensors.

Then it's seats/mounts, steering wheel, harnesses. I'll do all that I can myself and then take the car somewhere local to have the actual cage and harness mounts welded in to match the seat arrangement. Hopefully I can squeeze all this in before the next upcoming local Driver's Edge event at the end of September, but I'm willing to skip an event if I have to just to get through this phase of work once and for all.

For now, the ugly ugly pic of the front area with most of the gutting done, but none of the wiring cleanup yet:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...tted-front.jpg

Wow! Nice.

Why is the driver's carpet still in? Don't want to have to fill in the hole?

very nice! Are you still keeping those Bride seats? :D

cool... you're doing well behind the wheel

not disabling the nats finally caught up with me so you're right to get that squared away now. also will want to remember my big mistake back in '09, label the hell out of your factory wiring harness before you cut any wires... there are so MANY wires to sort through... you probably thought of all this but ---- you'll want to decide early whether to cut the wires out right down into the clips (prob so just be careful not to damage clips). also there you'll want to do a visual of each wire on the main hardness when done to ensure you haven't cut any wires unecesarily... you'll of course want to go one step at a time as you de and re-construct your dash and test that everything is working after each step... you don't want to get to the end and have a brick and then have to trace back through all the changes... might think about replacing the steering column with something lighter. we ended up mounting the triple gauge on the bracket that holds my steering column and it lifts up/down along with the column which is nice... you also do have the option to keep the factory dash - nothing wrong with it once you get rid of all the crap behind you don't need... it's light weight and you can construct a new alum plate to go behind center piece

remember, label and tape all those wires (esp the ones you want to keep) before you cut! replacing my harness took me out of commission for nearly 3 months

last piece of advice... consider weighing the factory wiring harness... it's not much. think about whether it's worth saving 1-2 pounds for the risk of cutting into it

good luck!

one more thought... now'd be the time to consider a polycarb windshield... get it thick enough so you don't need bracing (check latest scca/nasa safety rules)

You scared yet?

http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/...arness3001.jpg
http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/...arness3002.jpg
http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/...arness3005.jpg
http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/...arness3004.jpg

Finished. No issues.

http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/...eanWire001.jpg

http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/...eanWire003.jpg

http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/...eanWire002.jpg

good job ! :tup:

I'm not there yet as I still need my heater core for another year ;/

I'm scared to death of the wiring but I think that's the next step for me and my Z33 race car. :P

Do it. Do it. :bowrofl:

Yeah, the driver's carpet and the foam underneath seem to be sort of an integral part of the stock dead-pedal and maybe the accel pedal setup? It'll go eventually, but maybe not in this round of work. Depends how fast I get through all the other little fabrication jobs.

Thanks for all the advice, guys, it's appreciated. A lot of misc things won't be done at all on this round of work (like above), including stuff like the windshield and a final solution for the doors and door glass, etc. Mostly I'm just trying to get quickly done with the basics to gut the forward interior + airbags, put in the custom dash panel, and put in a cage + seats + harnesses and get back on-track. Then the other stuff can be done as smaller projects between events from there. The initial cage install could be rear-only as well, pending dealing with doors, doorglass, handles, etc...

Definitely with you on being afraid of the wiring and careful. The first plan is just to trim back to where all the excess harness is exclusively along the horizontal steering member and still attached to the major ECU/BCM/whatever modules (so killing all the small wiring going up the sides of the car and through the center console area, etc for simplification). I'll make the call on the final really tough bits at some later date.

Was going back and reviewing old data and logs and whatnot. It's really crazy to compare back to the last weekend before the coilover switch. Don't get me wrong, the coilovers feel awesome and are a big improvement, but driving this setup without the requisite front camber adjustment has really hurt in the overall. It just destroys the outside edges of front tires and the front doesn't grip like it should, forcing other setup changes and driving habits, etc. I really do have to fix that before my next time out. If SPL's arms aren't ready, I'll buy cheap ones and mod them to hold their settings or whatever.

For comparison to the recent video a few posts up, this video was from just before the coilovers went on, and it was my first weekend at this track, whereas the one above is one I'm very familiar with now. When I watch this video I see a much better version of my driving than the more recent runs, even though I've really picked up some raw skill in the interim. The car was just much more natural and easy to feel through things when I could use all the front tire:

Corvette = slow you down in the infield then vroooooom!

Seems to be a trend in our sport ;)

As I type, finally let's you by...

Your driving has improved a lot since your first vid. Getting set up well before, accelerating sooner out of turns, etc

I'm getting there, bit by bit. At this point I generally know what my mistakes are and what things are supposed to feel like and look like, it's just a matter of getting it done more consistently and building up the seat-time experience (and confidence in the case of some corners with scary setups) to do so.

With Driver's Edge (the group I usually run with) they do four rungroups: Green, Blue, Yellow, Red. There's a half-promotion during blue to "Blue Solo" where you run alternating sessions solo/instructor, and then Yellow starts out that way and progresses to Yellow Solo where you just run all day by yourself (although it's not uncommon to pick up a random instructor ride-along to work on stuff for a session). Passing in corners doesn't start until Red, but they give us a little more leeway on starting our straight-passes early and ending them late in Yellow. In practice it seems more like "final apex to first apex" :)

I've just made the transition over this summer from being a solid top car in Blue (e.g. that video with the Corvette pass above where I'm kinda owning the field) to moving into Yellow where I'm definitely down in the lower 1/3 of the field on skills and speed. I'm hoping that my car setup more-or-less stabilizes at a good point between now and the end of the year, and then I'm probably looking at another year or two of events on that relatively-stable setup to get to where I really feel like I can hang in the top-level run group and start trying to run with them. We'll see how those predictions pan out :)