DAMN YOU! Now I got the wheels turning in my head. I gave up racing because of the costs. I just wanted the "need for speed" to be taken care of by doing trackdays (lower cost). I'm getting too close to retirement to jump back into this. That SRF I would do in a heart beat IF I was younger. You FCCKER, Now I'm going to be spending the rest of my shift googling SRF. :D

There's a fair number of retired guys racing in SRF. Once you get over the initial hump of getting a car and a towing setup*, it's a pretty cheap series to run :)

* - On towing - the car as-loaded is going to be in the ballpark of 1500 lbs. Some forums report guys squeezing them (just barely) into 7x14 trailers. Even if you went with an 8.5x18 to make it easy to load and have room for tires and tools, you're talking a grand total of about 5000lbs for the whole loaded rolling trailer, which makes even a 1/2-ton truck a reasonable towing option if you stick a Class IV hitch on it...

I could use my 41ft diesel pusher motorhome to pull it. :D

Ah. When I saw the picture I was thinking they were more like the size of a DSR. Those guys can be really hard to see and they come up on you FAST.

Which is why we don't run with Radical's, Wests and the like in Production SportsCars here in OZ ... with aero, they have higher mid-corner and brake substantially deeper and the thought of the consequences of a collison between a 600kg car and a Viper don't bear thinking about. This category suns in its own class for that reason and does not get mixed with produciton oriented sports cars.

Yeah, I hear ya. Even the SFR is a bit mismatched for sportscars at DEs and such too, but no more-so than running GT-Rs and Miatas on the same track.

My Z-vs-SFR comparison so far (which is very limited: just specs and seeing one on-track with me for 4x sessions, but no idea what kind of driver was at the wheel) is that the SFR has a lower top speed and doesn't accelerate nearly as well in a straight line, but would have higher min speeds in the corners and less aero drag (neither car has real downforce), and comparable braking (modulo differences in top speed to begin with). You probably end up on a little smoother line than the Z as a natural consequence (have to preserve momentum a little more, instead of making it up by braking very late and hard). I saw on-track that in fast sections the SFR takes a tighter line sometimes because they might as well shorten the distance when they're out of oomph to do anything with a wider track at that point.

It would probably be a big upgrade in tire-feel for me as a driver too, switching to an SFR being so low and rigid, kinda like what I experienced when I first put the cage + solid seat mounts in the Z. I think in slower and twistier sections of a track, I could easily be much faster in an SFR than the Z, but the Z's going to clock superior overall lap times just from the huge straight-line accel advantage. Going back to true-manual shifting will be annoying, but not annoying enough to care about. I'll have to learn to heel-toe decently. The bigger issue than that for transitioning is probably getting used to a brake system with no ABS at all that can easily lock up its tires before you completely get the pedal down.

check into the spec E30 also. A couple of my friends who had high dollar, high power sports cars switched to the E30 series and love it.

Had an incredibly fun weekend w/ Driver's Edge @ Texas World Speedway (a week ago; I finally got around to uploading video today!). I swapped back to the stock rear sway and tightened up my damper adjustments a bit. After a couple sessions re-adjusting dampers and tire pressures I found a setting I was happy with and then maintained for the weekend. I have some uprated springs (900 front 700 rear) to put on and try at the next track weekend, and I still feel like those are a good idea at this point.

Video of various stuff:



( Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6BJpqH1js8 )

How did it feel with the stock rear bar?

Moving that back to this thread where we talked about it before: http://www.the370z.com/track-autocro...ml#post2964499

nice run dude!! can wait to track my Z... hope to run in October:excited:

Holy lack of updates for 5 months or so :)

The TL;DR recap is: Back in late October I had a drivetrain failure on-track again. I knew the torque convertor was basically destroyed from how it felt/acted. My worst-case assumption was that the vibration from the incident had probably damaged my crank bearings (again), and that bits from the convertor had probably flowed into the main transmission and caused it to need a rebuild as well.

On top of that, both of my sets of tires were on their last legs and various maintenance was all due before the next event as well, and my wallet had already been screaming "Please, stop the hemorrhaging, it's just a hobby!" for months. Also, I was already kinda mentally preparing for possibly switching to an SRF car anyways, so I decided it was time to shut this hobby down for a bit and contemplate my situation thoroughly.

So I basically just left the car in the trailer broken down for a few months and focused on catching up on the rest of my life and finances for a while, and endlessly dithered back and forth in my head the whole time about whether to try to fix the car and drive it, or part it out and work on an SRF, or perhaps fix it, drive it a few times, sell it whole, then go for the SRF. I did show up for a local Z event at MSR-Houston to do some instructing stuff, but other than that I've been off-track the whole time.

Eventually, in early February I had still come to jack-all of a conclusion, and Guru happened to be getting some work done at JTran here in town at the time, so I dropped by their shop with him to check the place out. I ended up deciding to drop my car off with them and at least have them pull the trans out of the car and diagnose the drivetrain so I'd have more information to go on.

As it turns out (a) JTran is awesome to work with and (b) aside from the destroyed convertor, the rest of the drivetrain seems to have miraculously escaped with relatively-little damage. The car's still with them while they wait on the rebuilt convertor, and I'm having them take over and finish up a few of my other random projects on the car while it's there. I expect to have the car back on-track sometime in March at this point.

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

Suspension stuff:

Prior to the drivetrain incident on the same weekend, I did get to test the car with the new springs (900 front 700 rear on true-type JRZ RS1's). With that setup plus the stock rear sway, the car was too loose and tail-happy for me, so I pulled out the rear sway completely to cut rear springrate and get back to closer balance. With the rear sway gone, the car was still just a *little* more oversteery than I wanted, but was totally safe, driveable, and fun.

With stiffer springs the car was much happier and so was I. I expected to have traction issues in the bumpy spots on the track and/or when running my inside wheels over low kerbing from the stiffer springs, but I was completely wrong about that. With stiffer springs the car stays glued down even better in those situations, I suppose owing to the spring pushing the tire back into the pavement faster/harder.

I've ordered some 1100 lb front springs to try out when I get the car back, so that I kill more front body roll and get the car closer to neutral at the limit than it is now. I suspect with 1100/700 springs and no rear sway the car may actually understeer, but if so I can stick the stock rear sway back on to compensate and I bet it will work out fine that way.

Tires
I also have a couple sets of sticker slicks coming in. Track junkies take note of Hoosier's Winter Discontinued Stuff Sale: they have lots of sticker Conti GT-I slicks in 285/645R18 for $200/tire right now (second from the bottom of the page), which fit great on 18x10s! The meaning of the GT-x codes seems to evolve every year, but I think these will be a bit softer than the GT-O Oval compound I had last year, but may not be quite as soft as even an R6. Still will probably be a great tire for DE stuff.

Welcome back. :icon17: Thought you had done went with the SRF. Glad you didn't.

If you are going to upgrade the 7AT i would reccomend these guys

Level 10 Performance Transmission Systems Bulletproof Transmissions,Supercharger

I have a fully rebuilt TC and AT and its amazing. We have a great tune right now on the torque map using UpREV as the one everyone uses on the stock 7AT just doesn't work well with this trans upgrade.

How is the Z doing out there? I feel like it is being outclassed in most events.
I'm still trying to decide if I want to put some money into the Z and track it or just buy an S2000 and track it out. What do you guys think? :confused:

I'm just worried because any 370z (depending on mods) would be like TT/ST 1-3. Seems like it is falling behind and maybe needs a base class change lol.

We have some of the fastest TT3 (Mustang GT) and TTB (S2000) cars in the country here in NASA Texas. You will need aero and Hoosier A7 to be competitive with either. IMO the 370z is a tweener as it isn't fast enough for TT3 but gets to many points to fit into TTB with the needed aero and tires. Probably the best way to be competitive in the Z is to supercharge but detune to fit into TT3.

Yup! That is why I was considering an S2000. I just got back from NASA West Coast Nationals at Laguna Seca and one of your s2k guys was there and put down the same times as most of the TT1 guys. I was shocked. He is in TTB, still NA.

Valkyrie Autosport was also there with two of their ST/TT3 350Z cars which did pretty well but they also start in a lower class so they have more points! Not sure if they were supercharged or not.

TravisJB did what you said and built a detuned supercharged 370 to make like 380whp. I'm not sure what he was classed into though, if at all. Also...it was a custom supercharger hah.

Here is the TTB guy that ran a 1:39 that I think is from Texas. SIMPLE!

http://i.imgur.com/FqqD8JX.jpg

what is the fair price for this?

It looks like you've had the JRZ RS1's on for a while now - given that the rears are true type, have you had any issues / concerns with the rear shock tower - some people think it might need reinforcing if you go with true type coil overs.

Did you change any bushings when you installed the JRZ RS1's?

Thanks for all the info you've posted.

I also have JRZ RS1s on my 370 and haven't had a single issue. I do mostly street driving now but have a good 8-10 track days on them (probably 15-20 hours. Most with race tires). I don't believe there is a need to reinforce. YMMV!

Hi again! :)

Blast from the past time, logging in for the first time in a few years and re-upping my premium membership, also cleared out my overfilled PM inbox.

Since my last posts here back in ~2015 (!!), the car did see a few more minor updates (the transmission swap from JTran worked out fine, they also cut hood venting for me, and I upped the spring rates further) and made it through a few more track events, but my event pace really slowed to a crawl, and I'm pretty sure the last time the car was on-track anywhere was around late 2017. None of the final events ever made it into the forums or youtube (I pulled out the data system a while back and never replaced it with something better). Since then it's just been in maintenance mode sitting on the lift in my garage for the past ~2 years with the slicks stored indoors, and it gets fired up once in a while to do oil changes to keep everything a little fresh.

Life changed dramatically a few years back (TL;DR - I got married and gained a couple of kids!), and the racing hobby just wasn't a priority for my time or cash anymore, as much as I loved it while it lasted.

Now more changes are coming, as I'm about to sell my house out here and move a few miles, and the time has finally come to sell the Z itself (and all the random takeoffs and extra bits and the short-rise lift from the garage, etc). I took some recent pics of the thing and I'll make a for-sale post over in the appropriate classifieds in a little bit and cross-link it with this journal thread, probably sometime a little later today. I'd like to try to find it a good home here in the community if there's a quick easy sale, before I go posting it elsewhere on other track-specific forums and such.

Happy holidays everyone :)

Happy Holidays dude :hello: Good to see you posting again. Sounds like life is going full speed ahead :tup:


Short-rise lift? May I ask what you have? May be interested in other stuff, too, although my parts list is pretty well covered at this point.

Get his AP BBK!!!!

I was actually writing a reply right after wstar posted, but was logged out and too lazy to retype....and I mentioned you knowing you would be tempted to add more stuff to your list haha

Car sale thread posted (!!): http://www.the370z.com/370z-sale/132...370z-sale.html

Hi! It is very full speed ahead, sometimes at breakneck speed! :p

Yeah I'll post up sales for all the other stuff here, maybe after a bit of time to see if any of it goes with the car as part of some negotiation. The lift is a Bendpak low-rise scissor lift something similar in design to this: https://www.bendpak.com/car-lifts/lo...r-lifts/lr-60/, I'll have to dig up the details later.

Long time, no see. Sorry to see your car go. But life moves on. Wife and kids changes everything. Once the kids are gone. You'll be back into something gone.

Glad to hear life is going well for and I was sorry when disappeared from the forum. Yep if you live long enough you will go through several of these kind of chapters in your life. May they all have bright and sunny days. Good luck with the sale as someone is going to pickup a great track for a great price.

Cheers!!!
Bob