Got the Z1 adjustable fucas installed yesterday. According to specs with spherical bearings and 1" drop I should be getting max 3.5 deg of camber. I installed them at max settings (all the way screwed in) and somehow ended up with over 5 deg of camber, at least according to my cheap camber gauge. Here's how they look, I'm pretty sure that's over 5 degrees. Probably too much, but I did a few sessions at Dominion today and the car feels great. There is a lot more front end grip. I'll need to adjust back based on tire wear, but overall I'm very happy with the results.





I also removed the rear sway bar, which did give me the rear grip I needed. The spoiler works great too, I noticed a lot more high speed stability.

Since these sessions were done under special circumstances (private track, no flaggers, no EMS or support of any kind) I wasn't pushing too hard. My best time was 1:36.6, which is still a second faster than my best lap in the Audi, so yup, happy with the results. Can't wait to do proper alignment. Here's the lap for your enjoyment

 

The tires are BFG R1 275 all around

 

To correct for excessive camber and so I can get proper alignment done I went ahead and ordered the Z1 adjustable rear camber arms, traction arms and toe arms as well as the eccentric bolt elimination kit. I also threw in a set of test pipes because why not.

 

Got the test pipes installed today. Definitely makes the exhaust louder, wonder if I'll be able to tell any performance different at the track. I also took 5 turns out of the front upper ball joints, that reduced the camber about 1-2 degrees, made them equal with the rear Probably still a bit too much, but at least it won't eat thru tires as quickly. Still waiting for the adjustable rear control arms to arrive so I can do proper alignment.

After one day at Dominion my brand new XP08 rear pads are about half way gone. They'll be completely gone after this Friday, I'll be going back to Dominion for another test and tune session. Not sure why the rears wear out so fast, besides that the pads are really small. I went from XP10s to XP08s, will be going back to XP10s or maybe even higher range next time in hopes of making them last longer.

 

Should be about 3 revolution for 0.5 degree camber, or at least it was on my car when I measured a while back. Similar setup.

Car looks great. Keep doing posts!

 

Thanks, my gauge is not that accurate so I'm guestimating. Not sure how much further I can go on the ball joint alone, is 10 turns safe? The instructions say 15mm,not sure how many turns that is. Adjusting the chassis side screws is such a pain, I'd need to remove the coilover top mounts so that the bolts can fully come out, which means also removing the strut bar. But it'll probably need to be done if I want to get closer to 3.5 degrees of camber.

 

Yeah, I used a crappy guage on first setup too. I ended up measureing at a few heim joint depths and then tried to set it at a target number. Then I went to Firestone and they did an alignment check on it and gave me a real number. They wont adjust anything aftermarket but I had a lifetime alignment plan on the car so they could at least give me numbers for what I had done to it. I adjusted the heim joint and repeated the Firestone "alignmnet" to get another set of measurements with a real tool and from that I got the 1degree=6revs rule of thumb.

Sorry, not sure if 10 turns is safe, or what the thread pitch is. I do know you should be able to get full range of desirable camber numbers w/o having to adjust the back end. I've gone from -2.5 to -3.9 on the front with these arms, without ever adjusting the back end. Typically the chassis side is inteded for caster adjustment, not camber. You'd have to be at a pretty far extreme to need to adjust those to get into reasonable track camber numbers. If you do end up pulling the arm, set it on the ground/bench and mark the center-center distance and compare to the OEM unit. THen you can bias out the arm to the ball end side a bit more to give yourself something to grow in negative. Not sure if that makes sense.

 

I thought that the back side was for caster adjustment, but in the instructions it specifically say to make sure both ends are adjusted the same number of turns else something something catastrophic failure :P So it doesn't sound like Z1 wants the back adjustments used for caster....

As I said before, unless my gauge is really way way off, I beleive I'm at about 5 degrees of camber now and fully turned in these arms were producing closer to 6 degrees. The front is fairly low, but nothing extreme, so I'm surprised by the amount of camber I got. I'm actually trying to dial it back some to a more reasonable 3-4 degrees. After a day at Dominion the front tire wear was more on the inside half, but not extreme either, it wasn't tearing up the inside edges or anything like that. I'll see again after Friday how the tires look.

 

5 degrees is a lot of camber. The Z definetely needs more than avg track car, but that's definetely going to eat up your inner shoulder. I'm really suprised you have that much from jsut these arms. You don't look slammed so that 1" drop 3.5* max should be showing up. My only guess is you have the chassis side ones set to deep in the arm on initial install.

I was suprised by your Z1 'catastrophic' note so I had to look it up...right there in the text, you are right, looks like they don't want people playing with caster. Not sure why, becasue that is definetely how it's adjusted.

 

I have been using G-LOC pads on my Z. R18s in the front and R10s in the rear. They are similar to Carbotechs and they have great support. If you want to discuss options, call them and Danny will talk things over with you.

 

I did install the arms with the inside mounts screwed all the way in, as far as I could go with the bearings still aligning properly anyways.. Since Z1 advertised max -3.5 deg, I figured I would shoot for that.

Actually, I keep calling them XP pads, but they are G-LOCs equivalents of Carbotechs. My buddy who runs a brake business turned me onto them. Having said that I've tried R10s and R8s in the back and they both wear down really quick. That's on base, non-brembo brakes mind you.

 

5 degrees is wayyy too much for R1's...Rob probably has better input than me on the R1 and it's camber needs, but I would imagine mid-high 3's would be a LOT happier overall and especially under braking.

Diagnosing video is always tough, but if you are pushing out in 10 at the speeds shown in the video (Summit Point) are you sure you sure something isn't bound up?

Here is a vid of more of a race pace lap (not a w2w car, however) for a decent idea of pace at similar power (say within 10-15%), but with aero and some carbon bits. It's done a 16.8 where min speed in 10 was around 93-94mph fwiw on fresher tires.

EXTREME AUDIO WARNING (LOUD)....and the video is somewhat washed out...

 

The Summit video was taken back when the car still had no front camber to speak of, so not really applicable anymore. Also aero provides a huge difference in grip, so not surprised he can carry 15 mph more thru that corner.

Just came back from another day at Dominion. Did a few sessions to try out the test pipes and the camber adjustments. The car is noticeably louder now and my butt dyno says it did pick up a few extra ponies as a result. I didn't notice much difference in front grip with 1 degree less camber, but need to look at tire wear to draw any further conclusions.

The rear controls arms arrived, need to install them and do proper race alignment afterwards.


My track day ended after 3 sessions when the rear pass caliper blew up and sprayed brake fluid all over the rotor. I was able to pump enough to slow the car down and get back to the pits, however the brake fluid caught on fire and had to be put out by the safety crew. So it's a bit of a mess now. I won't know how much damage there is until I pull the wheel...



Well, I wasn't happy with the pad wear in the rear to begin with, brand new pads wearing out in two days, but that's a mute point now, a brake upgrade will need to be done next. Any thoughts on reasonably priced BBKs? Not necessarily in terms of the price of the kit itself, more to the point one where race pads will be readily available and not prohibitively expensive.

 

I didn't realize that you were on the base brakes. I can only run the stock brembos so don't have a recommendation for a BBK other than to say that I am not a fan of Wilwoods. If you haven't replaced the lines, with SS, now is a good time to do that.

Regarding camber, you need to get a measurement of all of your alignment settings. For camber, a good starting point will be 3-4 degrees negative camber in the front and 0.5-1 degrees less in the rear. To optimize, you will want to bring the car into the pits hot and have a helper use a probe type tire pyrometer to measure temps across the face of each tire (outer, middle and inside). Ideally they would be equal, but in practice a progression across the face is often what you see, with the inside being the hottest. 20-25 degrees difference in temps across the face is ok,

 

Thoughts on this Akebono setup? It's fairly inexpensive for all 4 corners.

https://conceptzperformance.com/akeb...z33_p_3118.php

 

I looked at those when it came time to upgrade my brakes as well. The general consensus seems to be that they are heavy for what you get performance wise, plus with decent pads and rotors you'll end up around $2k anyways. While a heavier car, my previous Q50S with Akebonos worked great for street driving, but would fade badly within a couple of hot canyon runs with the rotors also warping to hell. Given that, I decided they weren't for my Z. I found my Wilwoods on here for about 20% more than used OEM Brembo or Akebono. I've seen similar deals pop up here and there. If I didn't get the Wilwoods, I would have went with a used set of OEM Brembos and rebuilt them.

So far I love the Wilwoods for street and canyons, but haven't had a chance to do a proper track day yet. The event that I had scheduled for 05/30 was cancelled.

 

My Z came with Brembo. I use Powerstop track day pads. I am starting out so I know I'm not driving as hard are you but I had 2.5 events on them. With what little experience I have I like them a lot. At VIR someone that was more experience said I was ballsy braking about marker 1.5 into turn 1. Whenever I'm able to get out there again I'll get a better feel.

 

Unless you are doing like 100mph or less....you must be talking to us as a ghost.

 

Between 100-120mph so I don't disagree with you. Turn 1 is just a field so that's a little reassuring being aggressive on braking.

 

Big difference between 100 and 120 mph, that's aprox twice braking distance required to get down to 50-60 mph entry speed.

That field is not as wide as you'd think. Used to be one could end up on the shooting range access road, nowadays there is a sand trap, two rows of tires, and a metal guardrail back there.If the grass is wet it's quite possible to see them up close. Not that I'm speaking from personal experience... :P