Yeah the metal pipe(s) have an upper and lower. One comes back from the heater core, the other is the bypass directly from the coolant manifold on the back of the engine.

Block those tubes off, there's no flow through the pump AT ALL until the t-stat opens. Which it really won't, before the engine fails.

(And yeah, I was PRETTY sure that coolant was ALWAYS going through the core, but thanks for confirming it.)

Got rid of all the deadening from the rear passenger bulkhead forward.

Not going to mess with the stuff rearward of that. Not worth the work.

Tested some paint on the driver's side. Going to pick up some more tomorrow to paint over the sections I removed the deadening from.

Got the paint laid down over the ruin that is my floorpans.

Removed a few pounds of deadening, made the car look more rugged... At least that's what I'm telling myself.

One day I may get a bug up my *** to clean it up, acetone takes paint and tar off easily, just requires patience, which I don't have time for ATM.

Anyway, pics attached. Tomorrow morning I put the crash bar back in, sort out the harnesses for the trip to the cage builder next weekend, then the two week wait.

Also took delivery of a few goodies, my 6pt Camlock harness and mounting hardware, as well as a set of race ramps to facilitate getting to the center-front jacking point more easily.

Rest of the seat brackets should come in this week as well... Man I'm worn out.. I think I mighta done some damage to my left hand holding the chisel yesterday.. it's all tingly and **** today. :(

Blame it on the chisel. :icon17:

All done... meeting with the builder tomorrow and dropping the car off this Saturday.

I trimmed a bunch of bracketry off of the crash bar. Probably not putting the dash back into the car...

thats an amazing built

Thanks! ;)

Freakin cage builder is being evasive... Wants me to just show up with the car and work out the details then, rather than nailing down the design and pricing before I bring the car.

I'll take 'Things that make me uncomfortable' for $1000, Alex.

That's to be expected though. There's different routes that can be taken.

I've printed off about 30 photos of the car as well as examples of other cages and the various other equipment involved (like the seat and mounting hardware).

I don't want to go through the hassle and expense of getting the car over there (Rent a trailer, borrow friend's truck) only for us to disagree on pricing or timeline and have to haul it back to the house.

We have a "ballpark" cost, but that's not going to cut it for the boss. (You can guess who that is from my sig, no doubt)

Basically I want to go over the options we have for construction (door bar design, for example) and the cost implications of those options and nail down a price, since I'm paying half up front and half upon completion.

I don't think that's unfair of me, given that he can't provide any examples of completed work and has never seen a 370 (or even a 350) in the flesh (naked, anyway) so can't really say FOR SURE what he will and won't be able to do for a given price.

Issues can crop up of course, and we'll handle those as they come, but better to start with a plan and have to adapt it than to start with nothing and wing the entire thing, wouldn't you agree?

Edit: To be fair, he is not a total unknown or anything. I trust his workmanship as he comes highly recommended by more than one acquaintance that has used him for custom chassis fabrication and cage/roll bar installation and custom work. It's just that he can't SHOW ME examples of his custom work, so I'm apprehensive, since if this thing goes south, it'll be months before I'm driving the car again rather than a couple weeks, and who knows what state the car will be in.

Yea I do. Being you've sent details already. It really is simple though. Shouldn't be any issues. Small things happen but that's there problem and should never be reflected to the customer.

Builder just cancelled another meeting and then told me it wasn't likely he could get to my car this month...

So I've called another respected builder and left a VM, we'll see where it goes... Kinda bummed.

that stinks. you could always tow it to Georgia and have the guys at Forged Performance do it. But, there has to be a decent builder somewhere in Dallas.

Yeah there is. Just gotta be patient.

Most of the quotes I've gotten from shops that cater to pro or semi-pro racers are obscene, that's why I've gotta deal with the headaches that come with dealing with smaller outfits.

Like one shop quoted me nearly $5000 for my cage. Which is absolutely insane.

What type of cage? Such as how many points and are you doing the doors?

Basic 6 point with simple X door bars + seat mount pedestal and brace mounting to the harness bar.

Real simple..

This is in 1.75" 0.120 DOM I should add..

Basically a NASA TT spec cage.

I don't know. 5K kind of sounds right. Maybe 4k at best

Crazy talk! All the other quotes are $2000 or less.

Spohn and Mine were more than that for 4 point.

:iagree:

Wow!

Well uh... move to Texas? lol

One was sky high, several are right at 2K and the ones I'm actually going with are considerably lower than that...

I'll stop bitching about pricing I guess!

Busy day today, but I finally got a chance to get the car up on my new jack stands (a lot higher) and get the front end torn apart.

Oh mercy. I can see her naughty bits. Nice work!

Those look like the same jack stands I have. I feel much safer under them than I did with my old ones that had a smaller base (from Sears) lol

I've got them about 6 inches higher than my old ones, and they have these cool rubber covers that grip the pinch welds really well.

That + them being so much wider at the base definitely makes them safer I would think.

Oh, and it's high enough to really use my creeper to work on it.

Oh that's perfect. The tops of my stands are big and flat so I had to saw some hockey pucks to accommodate the pinch welds.

http://i1238.photobucket.com/albums/...ps978c0bbc.jpg

Yeah, this is what it looks like

Wow. Damn. I am expecting around $2500 for mine as well. Fixxercask's super beautiful cage was around that.

Ordered a new crank pulley...

Pics once it's on.

Took me about an hour and a half to get this out of the car with the front all taken apart and no A/C compressor in the way. Woo.

Oh, and this is the driver's side, but that's probably obvious. :P


http://www.the370z.com/attachment.ph...1&d=1365650740

So what ate you doing exactly?

Planning on touching up the ceramic coating, then wrapping in a high quality wrap, finishing up with a silicon sealant coating over the wrap.

This is all in effort to bring my under-hood temps back down to something reasonable.

This is in prep for my new exhaust which will also be wrapped most of the way out of the car. Want that heat to stay in the exhaust gasses instead of radiating into the car.

Secretly, this is all so I can get the car to shoot fire out of the back... jk. Mostly.

I'm thinking of buying one of these and fabricating any necessary adapters or fittings to make it work in the Z.

Fluidyne High Performance Universal/Racing Radiators - UltraRev.com

It's over twice as thick as the CSF and costs half as much. Also doesn't come with a useless AC Condenser that I have to pay for.

Edit: And according to the Fluidyne catalog, the inlet and outlet are on the correct sides of the thing, unlike that photo on the website I linked. I'll be calling the company to confirm before ordering, if I decide to move forward with it.

Hah, that reminds me: So my setup is already the above-pictured 20% underdrive Stillen crank pulley, and NST's 10% overdrive alternator pulley. I've been trying to figure out what belt length to use with the AC deleted (which I haven't done yet, but I can test belts). I've been trying to do the approach (was it Forged or GTM? some builder did it in some past thread) where you delete the smoother idler pulley closest to the AC, and the one that's dead in the middle of all the other pulleys: Crank -> top-center idler -> steering -> alternator -> tensioner -> Crank. Whoever did it before mentioned Gates K60500, but it was too loose by a lot (probably due to the underdrive crank). I've now tried K60480, and it was too tight (couldn't even get it on). So next up, I guess is K60490 :)

Are you doing that same belt route? Of course your lengths may not match up with mine if you have the stock alternator pulley.

I can't account for the the under drive pullies or the alternator but with my AC delete the ''only'' belt that works is a Dayco part number 5070500. Will have to order from Advance auto or AutoZone. They don't stock this belt. Takes about a day or two to get. About $35

So I'm using the config that Spohn went with:

http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/.../ACBelt005.jpg

I might leave the idler that sits just above and to the right of the crank pulley to add a few more degrees of belt wrap to the crank.

I'm using Dayco part number 5070500 like Spohn, but he indicated that it was really tight, he had to tighten on one of the idlers to get the belt onto the thing... with the 20% underdrive, I think I'll have plenty of slack.

I'll post my findings once I get it on. If it's good for me, chances are your setup will be fine too. The 10% overdrive on the alternator will only increase the total belt path length by a couple percent, if that.

Damn, I was just about to paste this.lol

:P

Yeah, that's the same routing I was talking about, and have been testing (with the AC still on, just with the idlers out of the way). With my pulleys (NST+10 Alternator, Stillen-20 Crank), the 0500-series belt from Gates is waaaay too loose (like, not at all functional). And the 0480 was just impossibly short, unless I tried something like you mentioned with Spohn removing an idler to install the belt. There's marks on top of the tensioner to show the correction tension range, I think even if I forced the 0480 onto there somehow it'd be too tight on that gauge. 0490 has got to be close, or there's also an 0486 I think.

Edit: all my numbers above are Gates numbers, but I think they're roughly the same on length. I did try a random Dayco 0495 from Autozone at one point, and it was tighter than the gates 0500, but still way too loose to use.