370z hard to drive?

AlphaSnacks

^^^Yeah, slamming the clutch down too fast in 1st and even slower speeds in 2nd, makes this awful noise of the clutch and flywheel disengaging.

Face

There's a parking garage I exit often that is on a slope and terminates into traffic so the transmission is under stress as you slowly spiral up the slope and then you're forced to abruptly engage the clutch and brake to avoid a collision and then you're greeted with that "clackity clackity clack" sound.

I hate it.

shika805

^weird i've notice that to with my car?!? I dont know what the hell that is!

wow the small things that annoy us about our z's haha

kenchan

if you stall this car, you definitely suck at driving MT's... lol

blackcherry20

lol-I sucked before I left the lot-I no longer suck at driving a MT-Zzzzzz

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Grand Sport Corvette Arctic White

ecoplunge

I find that the combination of a hydraulic clutch, overly helpful helper spring, meager low end torque, a very short clutch engagement and a choppy 'digital' throttle make for a very difficult-to-drive-smooth car.

I'm surprised there's not more bitching on here about the hydraulic clutch. I've never driven one I like better than a cabled version. They just seem to remove all the feel. Not to mention the 'bounce' that hydraulic circuit can introduce. It's like a resonance wave in the hydraulic fluid - get the release wrong and it can induce crazy clutch chatter. I've never experienced clutch chatter on a healthy cabled clutch but find it to be pervasive on hydraulic clutches.

That being said almost all those issues become moot when driven aggressively. When I'm really getting on it I don't even for one second think about anything but how kick *** this car is - which is, of course, why I bought it!

blackcherry20

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Grand Sport Corvette Arctic White

Davey

Yeah, the heavy flywheel is not what I'd like to see in a sports car.

I'm OK with harder to drive if there is a reason for it. It's almost like SRM was an excuse to use an even heavier flywheel and have a laggy throttle response. Trying to heel-and-toe the Z without SRM is pretty frustrating.

shadoquad

Is it just me, or is the pedal position awkward for heel-toe as well?

Davey

Been a while since I tried since I got frustrated with its unwillingness to rev, but I want to say they're too far apart and the brake is too high to have it work unless you're on the brakes REALLY hard.

Shamu

I dont have any issue at all? Pedals are in great position for me. Its very easy car to drive on the street and heal toe is quite easy. However I grew up heal toeing old Porsches so my perspective may be warped. I have to admit though Im cheating on my feet and having an affair with SRM.

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Grant

JARblue

I tend to fat foot it more often than not... the gas pedal is definitely set back further from the brake pedal than any car I can remember driving more than once. Even when you're braking incredibly hard with the brake pedal mashed in, the pedal is still pretty far back. My knee ends up hitting steering wheel and/or column without some serious shift of my a$$ in the seat

I wouldn't know. Do you?

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Davey

Yes!

RC24

So after owning my Z for 5 days now, the clutch pedal has been the one thing that has been bugging the hell out of me. After searching the internet for the past couple days, I've found some information on how to adjust the engagement point, but nothing that made me feel confident in doing it. I saw B&W_Evader's post from a couple days ago that he had adjusted the engagement point, so I sent him a PM. His response is super simple, and doesn't need any pictures to figure it out.

B&W_Evader:
"Stick your nose under the dash and draw your attention up the pedal linkage. You will see a bar that goes into the floorboard. This is the bar that goes to the clutch master cylinder. You will see a clevis connecting it to the pedal and a lock nut that keeps the rod from turning. I just loosened the nut and screwed the rod in the whole way. You may not need to go that far but I had only about a turn of adjustment. I used a needle nose pliers on the nurled portion of the rod to turn it in. The posts I read said you need to watch that you don't take any of the switch positions out of place but I didn't have to do anything on mine."

In addition to the needle nose pliers, you will need a 12mm open ended wrench to loosen the jam nut.

Once I got under there and figured out how to work in the tight space, the mod took all of 3 minutes. From when I went out to the garage to when I was starting the engine to test drive it took about 5.

Huge difference, and now the clutch feels more "normal" to me (based off of the last 11 cars I've owned with manual transmissions) I took it around the block and didn't have any grinding issues or anything weird like that.

Just hoping this post will help some of you who are searching as to how to do this mod and haven't had any luck.

seungklee

First time trying to manually heel-and-toe will frustrate the hell out of you because it did for me...lol. I kept practicing until my foot became natural and my foot just does it automatically now. So it seems hard because of the pedal position is straight up, long, and you have to hit it up there to do it smoothly, but as everybody says, practice makes it perfect. However, mine is still not perfect though, but getting there almost!