Well, it's impolite to be detailed on pricing publicly, but I think it was a fair price, and it definitely wasn't as much as $5K either. You're free to build your own, it's your car :) I paid for expertise and a job well done, and I'm happy with my purchase.

Just got back from my "late night after all the drunks are off the road" test drive out in the sticks. You can definitely feel the added weight, but that's the price of admission, I'm ok with it. The change in the car's stiffness and predictability was *really* nice. I think this may have been more of a cornering upgrade for the car than all my suspension work so far combined. It's just so... solid and predictable. I don't know how else to describe it, but it's a nice change :) I'm sure some of that isn't just the cage itself, but the fact that I'm locked down in real harnesses and rigidly-mounted seats for the first time in this car.

^ you said it well... that feeling let's me focus 100% on what the tires are doing. and no question there's added stiffness with the cage.

Wow, that cage looks great. Good luck with the paint :)

Paint's done, coolant leak(s) fixed up. I got the layout/mechanical/attachment stuff done on the custom center-dash panel (actually, most of the hard part of that was done by my friend Wence, but I stood around and consulted!). I still need to finish up the wiring behind it, but here's the dash (and some peripheral views of the painted cage):

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...73655-dash.jpg
http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...73656-dash.jpg

The small phone there is one of my old Android phones, re-purposed as the display unit for my datalogger. It'll run their "Predictive iDash" ( Race-Keeper Predictive iDash In-Car Lap Timing Display | Race-Keeper ) app and give me realtime lap info mostly. The switches are for the data system, USB power sockets (one of which runs that phone), and the gauges+alarm system. The pair of black and green pushbuttons are UpRev map switching.

Finished up the dash wiring stuff. The important news is that the UpRev map-switch buttons work. Basic details for those looking for a similar solution lacking a stock steering wheel:

If you look in the 2009 Service Manual, section EC (Engine Control), the terminal pinouts for the 3 big connectors on the bottom of the main ECU starts on page EC-523. Way down that list on page EC-532, you'll see an entry for pins 101 (SB) and 108 (Y) as the "ASCD steering switch". These are the two wires that run to the cruise control button cluster on the stock steering wheel. SB is Sky Blue, and Y is Yellow. I didn't really try to map it from the pin numbers, I just looked for wires of the correct color in the correct sub-harness that were running over towards the steering wheel area and tried those and it worked, YMMV.

Once you have those two wires, the way it works is the ECU expects a resistor across those wires. The exact amount of the resistance changes depending on which cruise control buttons are currently pressed, which is how it tells them all apart with only two wires.

Back on page EC-437, you can see a diagnostic table of the expected resistance values when various cruise control buttons are pressed, which doesn't quite tell you everything you need to know, but it's part of the puzzle, and you can get the rest by using an ohm-meter to probe around on the stock cruise button cluster a bit.

The bottom line is this pic, which just might be the ugliest drawing ever (but hey it took 5 minutes):

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...urswitches.png

For those unfamiliar with basic circuit diagrams as drawn by 5-year-olds, the squiggly lines are resistors, and the two angly things crossing the center are the two pushbutton switches. The bottom switch is the one you hold down, and the upper one is the one you hit 1-5 times to select a map. If you can read my shitty diagram and assemble that correctly, it should give approx 3960 ohms with no buttons pressed, 250 ohms if the top button is pressed (or both), and 660 ohms with just the bottom button pressed.

You can order very close resistor values online at mouser.com, but honestly it'll probably work if you find something within 10-15% or so at RadioShack, too. It doesn't matter which way around you hook up the SkyBlue and Yellow wires, there's no polarity to this sort of thing. Obviously, the little arrows at the top of the diagram are where those hook up at.

Also, here's a pic of the back side of the center dash panel, which gives some idea how to construct one. Again, thanks to my friend Wence for doing most of the work there on all the plastic cutting and fitting. The main trick was the cotter pins through the holes in the little fins (originally for the vents), which holds the plate to the frame. The rest is just cutting the edges to lock around various other bits, and screw holes at the bottom to attach where the stock center console does.

If you squint, you can kinda see the resistors soldered to the pair of buttons as shown in the diagram above (except my "R3" is on the opposite leg from "R2", inside that red heat-shrink, which doesn't really change the circuit at all). The white junk is epoxy holding the wires to the back of the plate for strain relief (so that pulling on the wiring connector doesn't pull on my solder joints to the switches). The main panel material is part number 8650K12 at mcmaster.com (12x24 panel, 1/8" thick, "Formable Chemical-Resistant Kydex Acrylic/PVC")

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...-rear-view.jpg

I missed it, why the two maps?

You mean two buttons? You need to two buttons to switch maps :) If you mean why switch maps at all: to be able to experiment, mostly. e.g. having different throttle tables available that I've set up a few days before the track weekend. Eventually I may play with maps for race fuels and/or maps for different rev limits (if I beef up the engine, not the least part of which would be the oil pump).

Also, I use one of my maps as a 3mph security map so I can leave the car idling somewhere and it can't drive off faster than I can walk.

I made it to TWS this past weekend. It was cold and wet at the start Saturday and the end on Sunday, but we got in a few sessions of merely cold and dry runs in-between the rainy bits. I wasn't going for record times or anything. Mostly I was trying to avoid freezing to death :) It was a good shakedown on all the car's changes though.

I ended up setting the SPL front arms at roughly -2.5 Camber and +5 caster in the front (and slight toe-in), and I left my old Conti DW tire setup on the car (with plenty of tread) because it looked like the whole weekend would be wet, and I didn't want to try the brand-new RS3's for the first time in the wet. The first two sessions on Saturday were wet, then we had a mostly-dry and an even-more-dry session. Sunday started with two dry cold sessions, and then finished up with a ridiculously wet one as a storm system was moving in from the north. They cut the day short since a lot of instructors and drivers had to drive back in the direction the storm was coming from.

Anyways, a couple of video clips via RaceKeeper. I'll just re-paste the YouTube description instead of trying to re-describe them w/ the embeds:
-------------------------------------------------

Driver's Edge - Texas World Speedway - Sunday Nov 24, 2nd yellow Session.

Final two laps - one where I was following another 370Z and talking with my instructor about line differences, and then the final lap where I hit my best time for the weekend at 2:09.86. It was a cold wet miserable weekend in general, but the track was dry for the late Sat and early Sunday sessions, including this one. It was still fun though :)

-------------------------------------------------

Driver's Edge - Texas World Speedway - Clockwise, Sunday Nov 24, final yellow session - Wet, wet, wet.

A lot of us were tip-toeing around the track, rain was coming down at a decent rate, puddles all over the place. It was a lot of fun, but eventually Turn 6 got the best of me. I came in off-line after a pass, turned a little too sharp on the wrong patch of the track, and the rear came around too fast for my skills to catch it in these conditions. I did try to counter-steer a bit at first, but I think my reactions were too heavy for how delicate the track surface was and I gave up pretty quickly. Ended up spinning around and rolling backwards off the track on the inside, which killed the engine. The annoying buzzer in the final second or two is my low oil pressure alarm (because the ignition's still on but the motor isn't, so it's reading zero). No damage to the car, and I was able to restart and drive it back onto the track and into the hot pit afterwards without a tow.

bump, good read.

This car is setup very nicely! I enjoyed seeing it and thanks again for the hand-me-downs :D Hope to see it in action one day

Glad you're safe, could've been worse, but I'm sure the "oh shít" kicked in

No problem! You should hit up a TWS event next time you do one, I'm planning to hit that track a lot next year.

Thanks :) Really, going that slow, what the car was doing didn't feel all that scary. Mostly the pucker factor was whether the cars behind me would react to it ok. Another car had passed that black Porsche with me on the same straight just before the turn where I spun (I'm adding a rear-view cam before next time so this stuff is more obvious in the video). But lucky for me these guys are pretty good at training us up and putting us in run groups, so I can generally trust the people around me on the track to do the right thing :)

nice!

Ran into this video today while looking through other youtube coverage of the same event I was at, highlights of slip+recovery moments for one the 350z drivers w/ Driver's Edge who's about 10,000% better at car control than me. I need to aspire to this level somehow - maybe find a skidpad I can play on alone for days, or take up drifting or something. I think I'd feel much more confident pushing the limits if I knew my hands knew how to recover like this:

Oh I forgot to post this earlier too. A 'vette driver caught my wet spin in his youtube clip as well. It's so much easier to see what's going on from behind :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8aFVsGiOWw#t=227

Nice little slip.

I've diverted some funds from the never-ending black hole of modding the Z, to upgrade my towing situation over the past couple of weeks :)

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...g-solution.jpg

F-250 w/ 6.7L turbo diesel + Haulmark 8.5x24 trailer. No more towing a windowless car through the rain, and should make it a breeze to start going further to other tracks. Now it's time to go crazy at pitpal.com setting up the trailer interior to carry wheels and tools and everything else :)

The damn truck engine has 800 ft lbs of torque. If only it fit in the Z :)

got enough room in there for a miata or another Z? LOL Nice pickup!

i've always wanted to go up to MSRC, but never have because of the potential risk of breaking down 4 hours away from home. are you gonna try to make it up there this year?

Get some A/C on that trailer and you will have a hard time getting rid of me during the summer.

Also, for those that drive to the track I highly recommend AAA premier membership.

Hah, no, the front area's gonna be equipment storage and whatnot, although it's going to take a while to add things as I go and figure out where I want things. High on my list is a wall-mounted tire rack so I can carry separate wet+dry setups, and some kind of workbench up front and tool storage, etc.

Yeah hopefully this summer I'll start branching out a lot, at least to MSRC, and maybe try at least one long trip (maybe Road Atlanta or something) once I get comfortable with the tow setup.

Sorry, no A/C :) . I guess down the road I could add one, but no plans for it right now.

Nice.

Hell them things are cheap. Cut a hole in the roof and wire it up for a generator. Well worth it.

There's already a hole in the roof :) But it would need bracing, and if I bothered with the AC unit at all, I'd want to go ahead and wire 110V throughout and do the generator right and run the 12V from the gen as well and blah blah blah. It just gets complicated, and I don't have the time for it right now. Summer might end up being a good motivator though.

Nice trailer. :tup: If you're not putting an A/C on it. Use one of these. I have used these on my camper. They work great. Putting them on my motorhome in the spring.


MaxxFan Remote Control RV Ventilator System, White Lid - Maxxair 00-07000K - Vents - Camping World

very nice!

Sweet! Nice thing about having an AC/Generator is that you can camp comfortably at the track! That's the best part!

Several of the guys who I track with put in some awesome (and cheap) tire racks... They put two bars across the trailer sized for their wheels. Unfortunately I can't seem to find the pictures of them but I'll keep looking since I think I did a pretty poor job of describing. :)

Great guys. Your giving ideas for my trailer. The madness never stops. Lol

The tire racks I've been looking at are these style: Tire Rack - Deluxe - Flip Up | PitProducts

is cota your next event?

No, I'm hitting Driver's Edge @ TWS Jan 25/26, which is two weeks before the COTA thing. I figure that will be my shakedown trip for my basic trailer setup and the car to make sure I'm ready for COTA. Barring work-travel conflicts, I'm pretty much planning to make every MSR-H and TWS event that Driver's Edge is doing this year, and start hitting their Cresson ones starting in March or so. Since TWS is so close now, I may start picking up more TWS events too (e.g. PDS and PCA weekends).

I still haven't decided about how I'm going to do wheel storage. I'm not 100% comfortable about how much weight those tire racks I linked above hang off the side of the walls. Another option is E-track with shoring beams running across the trailer up high and storing the tires across the rear edge of the trailer way up at the top, but then access to them isn't great without removing the car first. My best plan right now (because it's a nice interim plan and doesn't preclude other options down the road) is putting a strip of E-track way down low along the left front wall (like 1 ft up), and just setting the tires against the wall on the floor in a row and running a tie-down strap through the center of them to the E-track.

Also, damn, you beat my MSR-CCW time on the list here :P Looks like I need to get back to MSR sometime and defend my honor :)

dude i ******* spit my coke out.... lol
yeah but u rape me going the other direction. i havent had a chance to push it going clockwise because of tires but i see i have work to do.
we need to get together soon.

Nismo Fiesta 2014 Tickets, San Marcos - Eventbrite

get h2r under your belt

Good call, just signed up. Probably some of the Houston Z-car crowd will be there to hang out with too :)

Neat! I didn't know there was a Z Fiesta in the states!

not sure if i mentioned this already, but i just stack my tires on the floor in front of my car and have never had an issue... i have an expensive tire rack in my trailer but it is never used... you'll see :)

You stack them 2-high and 2-wide and set them against the bumper basically, or? The e-track rail I'm planning to strap them to can be used for other stuff down the road, so I figure it's no harm installing it for now.

i throw them on the floor and then drive lol

i should mention that my floor is coated with a gravel/texture like surface... not this one exactly but similar FLOOR-TEX® | Textured Concrete Coating | Durable Non-Slip Coating | SEAL-KRETE®

:) Does your floor coating do ok with the hot car tires w/ rocks embedded in them? I was planning to put down a couple runners of tread plate where the car drives in, because I figured the tires would try to tear up the floor over time.

i'm not worried about messing up the floor... my trailer is for towing, not showing... i have 2x8 boards on each side for the front tires that helps me to jack up the front of the car so the doors clear the wheel wells and 100% easier to get to the tow hooks behind the front wheels... in fact i stack two of those boards on each side and just drive right up

the floor almost looks like crushed pebbles covered in paint... very abrasive surface that is great on a rainy day... no slipping of car, driver or contents