Sundown72

Yeah, I pulled the fuse on my first track day with the car way back in 2011 and promptly had a PuckerMoment5000(TM) at 180+kph at the end of the back straight at Shannonville when I heavily locked my rears due to the balance being all wacky and almost backed off the corner.
Also, there's a difference between TCS cars and VDC cars. TCS cars don't have the yaw sensor under the center console, so the defeat is more difficult to get right while maintaining the balance. With VDC, the process is pretty well documented. Like I said above, mine resets every time the car gets shut off, so I have factory VDC, factory VDC off, and my VDC really-actually-off (using the TCS button from a Maxima and a relay wired up as a stick circuit).

With regards to the Chase Bays kit. I was looking at that and got warned off by a bunch of track buddies. The reviews from them are that the MC sizing is all over the shop and the pedal gets very soft, or the total ratio is poor, either way it doesn't seem super sorted. Probably ok for the drift gang running at low speed and dragging the left foot brake to keep the front end gripped up while on the power, but I'm wary for a road-course car. I'm also wanting to have bias adjustment in the car, to help manage brake fade with this heavy chassis we drive, so the dual-cylinder with remote bias adjustment is likely the way I'll go.

Also, good on your for changing pads at the track, I'm a one-man-show so the less times the car has to go in the air the better it is for me!

Sundown72

It's actually not too bad. With where I finally got the seat the back of my helmet is even with the front of the bar and its 3-4 hes from the point-of-closest-approach between my helmet and the main hoop at the top. Side to side is probably closer to 6". I can move my head freely without fear of contacting the bar or padding.

With that said, I agree that the kirk bar puts you hella forward. I'm going to do a weld-in bar over the winter to move it back into the area of the speaker structure to sit me further back, to land the bar on more substantial chassis elements, and to remove the speaker tower assembly to lose some weight.

Sundown72

At this point of the build there's the transition to the running season. With that came a distinct drop off in photos as I was usually busy pouring in effort between events to get things done in time for the next one. My goal was to have the car effectively sorted from a reliability/strength standpoint by the end of the season and to have a good idea of where to go with setup. I'll do my best to describe the events and my progress and process while dropping in the photos I have and some video (if my GoPro wasn't doing GoPro things and being difficult). With that said...

Finally, it was time for shakedown.

This was going to be my first time on track in ~10years, in a car that hadn't really been run in 3 years, at a track I had never been do, that I was driving the car to.

At least the weather would be nice, right? HA! It was something like 18oC (68 Freedomheit? I still don't get that insane system) and it was POURING rain. This actually turned out to be a good thing as it kept the speeds down and allowed me to focus on feeling out the car and finding the bits that needed attention, as well as knocking the rust off my car control skills. The event was at Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, IL, running the south configuration. It was a shorter evening event hosted by the local SCCA chapter and after some lead-follow familiarization laps the track went green and I promptly spun the car up the hill on the exit of T3 as I crossed the dry line with some power on and some steering angle on. A small harmless off into the grass before continuing on. In total we ran 3 sessions.

I started with the car pretty neutral with both the front and the rear set to 11/24 clicks from soft. Tire pressures were way too high (32 cold, maybe? I wasn't taking good notes at the time), but that experimentation came later in the year. Between the cold and the wet the car wouldn't build any temperature in the tires or brakes, but even given that it seemed super unstable on turn in, and it felt like there was a 5 degree dead section in the steering . The car would track straight, but took more input than you would expect to initiate a response, and then it was as though that was instantly too much input.

I lowered tire pressures a bit, and softened the rear of the car to 7/24 clicks from soft. This improved rear grip for sure, and the car was biased to oversteer (my preferred balance), but was still diabolical with the steering.

Finally I softened the rear to full soft and closed out the day with a hilariously slow 2:34, but the goals for the day were achieved:
- The car performed.
- The immediate weaknesses/faults were found.
- The car and I got to and from safely.

Next up was finding out what on earth was going on with that steering...

Sundown72

At this point I was thinking I had a bad steering rack. I had replaced the rack with a remanufactured unit during the rebuild and this weird dead section was difficult to explain. with that I headed under the car to start checking things again. Upper to lower column union in the cabin? Tight, no play. Lower column to rack union? Tight, no play. Inner tie rods? No play. Outer tie rods? No play. Rack? No play relative to the housing. Housing...ah fk.

I replaced the rubber rack bushings with poly bushings, and some of the poly bushing lobe must have gotten on the threads of the rack bolts because they were indeed loose. Not hand-tight loose, but far-too-easy-to-turn-definitely-not-torqued loose. I pulled the bolts, cleaned the threads, and reinstalled them properly tight. The paint marker came out and all the suspension fasteners under the car got checked and then marked for a quick visual reference if anything was backing off. Makes bolt-checks a bit quicker when you're a one-man-show.

Tightened rack bolts makes for a tight steering feel...true wonders of science...

With that sorted it was back to Autobahn Country Club (ABCC) two weeks later for another evening event with SCCA, this time on the full 3.56 mile configuration. I love this configuration, it's a long lap and has a bit of everything in it. If you're in the Chicagoland area and you have the opportunity to run this track in the full configuration, do it. The full configuration is relatively rare (they often keep on side or the other open to club members while the other is used for events) so jump on it when it pops up! Fortunately for me this time it was DRY, but it was also 37oC (100-something F? I dunno, it was hot af).

I returned the car to a neutral starting point at 12/24 clicks from soft both front and rear and left it there for all three sessions. Tires were at 37psi hot - still astronomically high. I finally got racechrono to talk to my GoPro and my ODB bluetooth adapter so I have some test video of one of the sessions. My driving is still leaving a lot to be desired at this point, but we're headed in the right direction. I worked down from a 3:12 in session 1, to a 3:05 in session 2, to finally a 3:02 to end the day. Hardly anything to write home about, but with the car being stable for the day it shows some driver improvement.

Did I mention the factory VLSD isn't great? I mean...it's great for the street, but it's in way over its head on the track and overheats by the end of the warmup lap. This started to show up during this shakedown. You could feel the diff bite and then open up on corner exit with any sort of lateral load in the car. Once the load bled off the diff would re-lock and you would get some drive again. I had ordered an OS Giken Superlock 1.5 back in March of '21, but here we were in mid-June and there was still no info on when it would show up. OS had made an inventory error and sold the diff thinking it was on the shelf, and it wasn't. So I was left to wait for the next batch of Z33 manual-housing diffs to be made before I would be getting mine. In the meantime, I had some weird mechanical traction control...lol.

Even with the diff not being really up to the job, it was serviceable. The actual big concern of the day were BRAKES. This is the beginning of a season-long saga that I'm not sure if I've even gotten to the bottom of now that the season is over. The pedal was super inconsistent with it being very soft in some corners but super hard in others and not consistent on which corner that would happen. Having cooked the brakes on this thing once before in 2011, I figured it a combination of lack of cooling and the fluid. The car had Motul RBF660 in it, but it was a few years old and probably not in the best shape. I had bled them pre-season and flushed through a fresh 500ml bottle, but it didn't seem like it was going to be it. So it was back to the garage to work out a fix in the two weeks between this test and the first big event of the year, my first ever Gridlife.

Sundown72

In the intervening two weeks I jumped head-long into getting some brake cooling on the car. Fortunately there's a person in nearby Indiana that sells Z33 brake duct flanges on eBay. Pair that up with an order from Summit for some hose, and an aircraft builder supply for some flanges and we have the makings of a DIY brake duct kit. I decided to use grill block-off plates as inlets for the ducts. I may revise this in the future, but for now it worked well. It DID mean taking a hole saw to my brand new OE radiator air guides, but...racecar. All in all the system went together well and I was able to sneak the hose past the washer bottle on the passenger side. It's stayed put all year and seems to be helping, but like so many real problems in the world, I didn't have a brake problem, I had brake problemS, and this was only a part of the solution.






Once the brakes were sorted, the car was loaded up and it was back to ABCC for Gridlife Chicago for two days of running. Being local to the track I would be going to and from each day. With my 100% record of ABCC days being either sopping wet or as hot as the surface of the sun, it looked like we were in for both with a super wet Saturday forecast ahead of a more mild Sunday. Saturday rolled around and it was bone dry leaving Chicago. My car being loud, low, and carbon clad I tend to drive like a grandma on the street but I jumped on the tail of a ZR1 Camaro and a 6-series BMW that seemed to be headed my way as we headed out of town. About 15 miles south of the city the gentle dawn glow was wiped out by ominous black clouds that delivered on a promise of heavy rain. Speeds dropped to a crawl with visibility effectively nil the rain was so hard, and flash-flood rivulets causing aquaplaning at speeds as low as 50kph. Perfect track day weather, amirite?!

I got to the track and saw another Z33 parking up, I asked if he was saving the spot beside him and he said I was welcome to it. And just like that, that's how I met my buddy DK who lives less than a mile away and works in the same industry...small world. We were both running intermediate HPDE, ended up with sequential numbers - lol, and were doing our best poor-mans-track-day with tarps to cover our tools and everything we pulled out of the car, and trying to hide in the car between sessions from the rain. Fortunately we parked up beside three friends from the Detroit area that got to know each other through the Subie community there. Two of them still run Subarus - one in Time Attack (Street), and one in HPDE (for now) - and one is running an R-8X in Time Attack (Club TR). They invited us to take shelter under their canopy and have also become friends and paddock-mates. Gridlife...I tell ya, it's good stuff because its good people.




So how bad was the weather on Saturday? The time attack run group got one dry-er session and everything else was wet. So wet in fact that by the afternoon the back half of the day was scrubbed. My partner was texting me from Chicago about the tornado warnings around the track. Texts that I was reading as we were huddled in a field with 5 men and 4 tires attempting to holding down an easy-up with the rain just blasting past the canopy because it was falling horizontally. Great tornado shelter, that...

Things dried out on Sunday (it was absurdly hot and near 95% humidity - still maintaining my 100% wet/infernal record at ABCC) so we got some dry running in. But what about the driving man, the driving! Alright, alright...

The event was run on the south configuration only. Gridlife has run all three configurations over the course of an event here before, but I think logistically that's difficult and doesn't allow competitors unfamiliar with the track much time to get up to speed before a configuration change. I didn't record setup notes for Saturday, but I think I was 7/24 clicks from soft in the front, and 3-4/24 clicks from soft in the rear, if not full soft. Tire pressures were...doesn't matter there was no tire temperature to be had. Even with all of that I managed to do a 2:19 in the thirsd session of the day, 15s faster than my last time around ABCC south in the wet a month earlier. Improvement.


With the dry running on Sunday I was still running the car soft, with the front at 7/24 clicks from soft, and the rear at 12/24 clicks. This worked well but did produce some bouncing of the rear on corner exit combined with the locking/unlocking of the diff. The brakes were better, but still inconsistent. There was more reliable total torque available, leading me to believe the cooling was working, but the intermittent hard/soft pedal was still rearing its head. The car also started really pushing/scrubbing the left front. Hardly surprising with it being a clockwise track, but it was something to look into after the weekend. My best time in the dry was a 1:44 in the second session on Sunday. After that I packed up with some newly made friends and 7 solid sessions of seat time and headed home.


Brake and singular handling issue aside, the car largely performed well, but also did a few new and unpleasant things. First, it didn't want to crank after sitting unless the positive battery terminal was removed and replaced. Second, when I turned on the AC on my way home Sunday the coolant temp skyrocketed. The plan was to get the brakes and these other issues sorted in time to make the 6 hour drive into Ohio, for Gridlife Mid Summer at Mid-Ohio in August.

thekinn

iTrader: (18)

Do you think you are getting some pad knockback? Is it a little more squishy, consistently, going into certain brake zones? My StopTechs are notorious for knockback..

DarkZ03

iTrader: (11)

Knockback....yeah that's why I bought the Nismo calipers, I don't even track but have no desire to have weak points or flaws in my car.

RobPhoboS

I definitely have WAY less knockback with the Stoptech 2 piece Aerorotors.
​​​​​​​You can also reinforce the hub/knuckles (I've only seen 1 Japanese company making those), or use knockback springs.

2004Black350z

iTrader: (37)

cool thread

DarkZ03

iTrader: (11)

Yeah the 2pc rotors will help too, but relocating the calipers to 3 & 9 is by far the easiest IMO, and the calipers are an upgrade to the Brembos. Not too expensive either and uses a common pads size since it's a Stop Tech st43.

KaizerWilhelm

@Sundown72 Super cool thread and build you're doing. I'm also building a track dedicated 350 and will be taking a lot of your purchases and reviews into account while I build mine. Side note, I also drive a black Allroad as my daily. Cool car combo :-)

Sundown72

Knockback is a consideration, but it was less about the point of engagement than it was about the ability to apply pad pressure. There was a slew of reasons, something to consider when running 16 year-old braking systems. I'll get into it here in a sec. Thanks for the insight though, something to keep my eye on in the future.

Thanks!

Thanks!

#truerockersknow #wagonlife

Sundown72

I'm realizing that I haven't talked much about the crankcase ventilation frustration so far. So back on the SCCA night with the full configuration I blew all sorts of oil into my plug wells. I have new valve covers on the engine with less than 20 hours on them, how could I be blowing oil past the plug well seals?

Well trying to get a cammed VQ to generate plenum vacuum at 5000+rpm for 20mins at a time is apparently pretty hard, and the PCV couldn't keep up. So on the recommendation of some of the forum members I drilled that thing out, replaced my valve covers with new OE units (and the lightest dab of RTV) and my plugs with new NGK Iridiums. I also modified my catch can routing, having the now drilled PCV vent straight to the Mishimoto catch can and the recirculation line on the catch can replaced with a vent filter. The ports on the plenum, the rear of the diver-side (LHD) valve cover and associated intake port were capped. That's how I ran it at Gridlife Chicago and it ran fine on the short course. Success, one might think.

So coming out Gridlife Chicago 2021 it was clear a couple things needed some immediate attention:

1. The odd handling issue in the left front.
2. The brakes.

At this point I figured the temp spike post session with the AC on was a one-off, so that wasn't high on the priority list.

Starting with the handling issue: I put the car in the air to do a nut and bolt check, and was surprised to see my brand new poly compression arm bushing was torn. Not willing to go through that again, I made the jump to spherical and ordered a set of the GKTech compression rod bushings. The compression arms came out of the car and the new units were pressed in. No drama there. I am getting the expected clunk-clunk that, upon closer inspection, is due to the compression arm being free to pivot between the ball joint and the now-spherical compression arm mounting stud. The suspension is solid, this is more of an annoyance. Maybe I'll go to a one-piece lower in the future...who knows. I will say it was crazy how much the poly bushings were binding the suspension, though. Upon moving to the sphericals I lost 20mm of ride height in the front. Pretty wild. I left it there because...lazy curiosity.




Onto the brakes. So last I updated you, I think I had just re-bled with Motul RBF 660, and still had a super inconsistent pedal. I decided to take a flyer on some ProSpeed RS685 fluid (Torque 7 analog) based on solid reviews of a strong, tall, consistent, pedal. I put a few bottles of that through the system and set off to find a day to go testing.

I lucked into finding an open lapping day at ABCC running the full configuration. I invited my buddy Derek and we rocked up in our loud-***, raggedy, Z cars and promptly felt wayyyy out of place amongst what was a pile of McLaren 720Ss, Porsche GT2 and GT3 RSs, Z06 C7 and C8 vettes, a Lotus 311. One dude leaving in his helicopter at the end of the day was the kicker. Feeling super conspicuous being the only two doing poor-mans-track-day with our tools in a box under the spare tire beside our lawn chairs, we set out to do some running. Derek was testing a repair to his rear main seal, and I started evaluating suspension adjustments while keeping an eye on the braking performance and the handling with the new compression bushings. Did I mention it was about 1000oC out there and 90% humidity? 5/5 on ABCC manic weather.

First session out I set the car to 11/24 clicks from soft front, and 14/24 clicks from soft cold with the tires at 25psi cold. The improvement in steering response and feel inside the first 5 degrees of input with the spherical bearings was immediately noticeable. Right out of the box I pumped in a 2:57 (previous PB was a 3:02) but the brakes were still inconsistent...Oh, and during my 4th flying lap smoke started POURING out of the hood vents on the passenger side. I immediately dumped the car in the grass by a marshal station and grabbed the extinguisher in the cab, but stayed in the car because there were no flames. The session was red-flagged and the tow rig came out to check on me, we popped the hood and discovered my catch can had filled itself (for the first time ever) and puked a bit through the breather on the headers on the passenger (LHD) side. Fortunately the car ran so i drove it back to the pits off-line, there was no damage, just cleanup, and I didn't oil the track down. Wins all around.

Sidebar: The Mishimoto catch can setup isn't very good for the track. It doesn't do much separating of oil vapors despite its nice sintered internal screen...It's placement where it shares a bracket with the power steering resevoir leaves something to be desired in case of an overflow incident and potential header fire...It's probably fine as a "tuner" street+ modification, but I wouldn't put another one on a track car.



With a drained catch can, I headed out with the same setup and configuration. I was disappointed in the inconsistent brakes, but they were *less* inconsistent than before, but still not great. There also seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the inconsistency. It was never the same braking zone two laps in a row. Regardless I improved to a 2:55 in the second session as my GoPro overheated and took a nap.

Catch can got drained again (fool me twice, shame on me) and it was back out for Session 3 with the same setup. Dropped the time to 2:53 on a track that was not getting any faster as temperatures began to peak mid-day. Then it was time for lunch in the mercifully-air-conditioned clubhouse.

For session 4 I moved the front dampers to 14/24 clicks from soft - equal with the rear. This improved the front end to the point that it shot the battery out of the GoPro (Hero 8 with the dumb you-cant-keep-the-stock-door-on-and-a-power-cable-in setup. Since rectified with an aftermarket door) coming out of the pits. There was some traffic in this session, but I still managed to get a clean pair of laps in the middle and turned my best time of the day, a 2:52. That's 10-seconds faster than I was less than a month ago on the same configuration in similar weather. I was super pleased.

Session 5 I ran with the same setup as Session 4 and landed at a 2:53 before moving the front and rear both to 17/24 clicks from soft for the final two sessions of the day and running a 2:54 and a 2:56. Some of that is brain fade, for sure, but the front end was also less settled and occasionally required a few bites at the apple before it would respond to inputs. Something to consider going forward. Here's Session 5.


With that, I packed up and headed home after a really fun day. Open lapping is just the best. On the way home I was sitting in some traffic when my temps started climbing through the roof. I pulled off and shut the car down in a McD's parking lot to cool off and did an auto-active test and...yup, one of my fans wasn't working...Time to add that to the list along with more work on the brakes.

Sundown72

The open lapping testing did what it was supposed to do: It gave me some setup data, and more importantly exposed where the car was weak, Namely the catch can/crankcase ventilation setup, front ride height, the brakes, and the cooling package. Supplemental worries were the past intermittent no-start and some new intake air temp and driver's side (LHD) VVT solenoid codes.

I had two weeks between the open lapping day and the Gridlife Mid-Summer Meet at Mid-Ohio, here comes the thrash-fest.

First up, the easy stuff:
- I raised the front ride height back up the 20mm I had lost by swapping to spherical fronts. There was evidence of some rubbing during the test day and with a 6-hour drive to Mid-O ahead, I didn't want to chance it.
- I grabbed OEM relays to replace every relay in the IPDM. I figured I would start there to address the fan operation problem. All the contacts were cleaned, new relays went in...and the fans still failed to operate. Ok, I'll solve that in a minute.
- I replaced the harness leads for the MAF and the suspect VVT solenoid. They're right over the header and I figured they may have gotten a bit cooked. They also got some thermal protection.
- I added a ground to the block on that side as well, to help mitigate any grounding issues I maye been having due to materials heating up.
- The VVT the solenoid got disassembled and cleaned before being remounted with a new gasket.
- The catch can got its lid modified to be a top-breather, and the whole thing got relocated with some -6AN hose after nearly burning the damn thing to the ground during the open lapping day (I managed to get the bracket powdercoated before leaving as well, but not seen in this pic).



Next up, the cooling package:
Based on the fans still not operating properly after installing the relays, I ordered a Mishimoto shroud and fan combination. Spoiler: its trash. I re-wired it for dual-operation, with one fan coming on for the low speed and both fans coming on for the high-speed. No chance to test, so I would just have to see on track.
I figured the engine eating hot air was also not helping the situation, so I added a new Z1 cold air intake. While I was at it I threw in a spare MAF I had laying around to finally clear up the IAT code.



Last, the brakes:
Enough was enough with this inconsistent pedal. The calipers were coming off and getting a full rebuild. While I was at it, I was going to sandblast and Cerakote the calipers with one of their (two) heat transfer coatings to improve the cooling. The old EBC rotors I had been using got a bit warped during this last event and were starting to minor thermal cracks, so they became canopy hold downs and a new set of Centric high-carbon blanks went on.

I straight ran out of time with the brakes, blasting the old coating off took for-ever. Eventually I bit the bullet and grabbed some Rockauto replacements for the front to get me through the event. I rebuilt the rears with new hardware new Brembo seals and boots, and new bleeders, but no coating. I have the Cerakote, so that's been moved to the winter list.

With that, I pushed a whole load of fresh ProSpec fluid through the brake system. Loaded up the car with my overnight bag, new canopy, and all the usual track day stuff and headed east to the historic Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for Gridlife Mid-Summer Meet 2021.



​​​​​​​

Sundown72

Mid-Ohio is wild. I arrived at my lodging Thursday before the Gridlife event started on Friday. I set out to find some groceries and a bite to eat and suffice to say, the locals were less than appreciative of the 100dB Z car on track brakes screeching and screaming through their sleepy small town in search of a burger and a carwash. "You gotta fix those brakes!" "They're track brakes, that means they're working!" "What? I can't hear you." "I said...nevermind."

The Michigan boys saved me a spot to park up with them making our little ad-hoc team two GD Imprezas, an RX-8, and my Z. I got to tech as the sun was coming up and then tried to quickly review some onboards from other drivers before my first session. I had never been around Mid-O and had been thrashing so hard to get the car together that I didn't manage to do much homework before the 90 mins before my first session. Drivers meetings done and dusted it was time to head out for my first session. First impressions?

- This place is fast.
- This place is a freaking blast.
- They drive indy cars around this?!

For how much of a pro big kid track it is, it also feels super small. My only other "pro" track is the grand prix track at Mosport and it feels much bigger than Mid-O. It made the idea of flogging an indy car around there pretty wild to think about.




But, onto the actual driving. I set the car to 14 clicks from full soft both front and rear, and the tires to 25psi cold. Helmet on and out for Session 1 of Day 1 to start the process of building up over the course of the weekend started with...someone in my run group throwing it in the wall 2 laps in...oh boy...Once we restarted for I found a 1:54 in the two remaining laps. Enough to get acquainted with the place, for sure.

Sessions 2 and 3 were more representative and I was able to start to find time and get more comfortable. Both sessions produced 1:47s showing some big time improvement, but also a bit of a plateau, something to work on tomorrow. The boys and I hit the local burger joint for some dinner before heading our separate ways and grabbing some shut-eye before Day 2.

Conditions were excellent the morning of Day 2. I left the car where it was, knowing most of the time was in me and not the machine. Straight away I was into a 1:46, showing that I was both pretty onto the pace the previous day and that I was still finding time where I thought I could, mostly braking at the end of the back straight and some experiments to do with gear selection/choosing to avoid a downshift. Session 2 dropped me into the 1:45s before a very messy Session 3 with lots of traffic scrubbed the day with a 1:50.




But driving is only half the fun of a Gridlife event. Paddock-mate J was battling Evo Ben of Gears and Gasoline for the podium. Ben's Evo was doing Evo things and was puking fluid and parts all over the paddock. J was a 0.1s up going into the final day, despite being 120whp down on the Evo, and this of course makes a compelling story-line, so we all tried to keep our mouths shut while J was interviewed by Civic Ben for the show. The paddock vibe was awesome and friendly, as usual. ASM threw a party on Saturday night (Day 2) that was super fun and very laid back, and aptly celebrated their win in the GLTC race that afternoon during the only rain-effected session of the weekend.




Sunday, Day 3, was the final day of the event. I pumped in a 1:46 right out of the box, confirming my general pace for the weekend. As people pack up to go home, the sessions open up and although the track is a bit warmer later on in the day, its a good time to get some consistent practice in. I dipped into the 1:44s in Sessions 2 and 3, with a 1:44.8 in Session 2 and a 1:44.7 in Session 3, with my buddy riding shotgun (rewards ballast, you know). With that I packed up and got ready to head home the next day, but not before a small campfire to celebrate a good weekend at a new track with new friends.

Bak3rme

iTrader: (1)

Good stuff man! My friend was at the gridlife event you went to a while back. He was running TA, brickyard 350z with nismo front bumper. Good to see another Z being used for the track

for your cooling fans, the mishi ones are trash, you are correct about that. I bought OEM ones from a part out and bought new fan motors for them (~$30 bucks each on amazon). The new fan motors bake a nice difference. U can run the BCM test to see if you haven't yet to see which fans are not working or if they are working at all. I'd rec going back to OEM with the fans/shroud!

both my friend and I run this oil catch can called Saikou Michi and its held up pretty well after 3 years of track use. maybe you can check that out.

crazy how you are having so much issue with brakes. Either i'm not using them hard enough or I just lucked out! currently using akebonos with 2 piece rotors, carbotech xp10/8s, SS lines and RBF660 fluid. Only issue i've had was the outer boot seals disintegrating after a few track days. I've rebuilt them last winter to be safe (internal seals and dust boots).

I'm curious about the brake duct! can you link please!

Hopefully we will run into each other sometime! I'm in the NE region and usually do SCCA TA events during season!

Nice build thread! I come back on here to check out ur updates here and there, always nice to see another Z documented

Sundown72

Thanks! The cooling is a whole saga, I have a post coming about it. Long story short: The Mishi garbage eventually came out and I got fresh motors for my stock shroud and put that back in, along with some other modifications. The car is much much happier now.

As for the brakes, I think I've gotten most of the issues sorted now, but I'm contemplating going to a dual-master with bias bar just to get back to the manual brake feel I had in the formula car. It was more my style and allowed what I feel is a much more refined release. Given how underpowered I am, carrying big apex speed and being able to reliably release the brake is key to both rotation and laptime. A couple posts on brakes coming soon.

Sundown72

While Mid-O was awesome, it wasn't without its problems on the car side. The major things were related to cooling and brakes (still, yes).. I'll talk about cooling in a bit, but first the brakes. In fairness, this was the best pedal I had all year and it was pretty darn consistent for each corner, if that makes sense. So I would get the same T1 brake pedal every lap into T1, and the same T4 pedal every time I went through T4. Where the consistency was lacking was corner vs corner. Additionally, the initial bite and total torque seemed to be down. On that note I decided to both swap out the master cylinder (at this point, why not) and the pads, just to be safe. The MC swap was straightforward. So I'll just take this chance to give some info and an impression of the CL Brake RC6E pads I was running. For the record, I'm not affiliated with CL Brakes in any way.

Generally, I like this pad. Some of the total performance was undoubtedly masked by the other issues I was carrying in the braking system, but they were a strong dual-use pad.

The Good
- The wear is superlative. These are the longest lasting track pads I've ever used and they're super kind to rotors.
- Bite from cold. The bite from cold is nearly 100%, so they are absolutely a pad you can safely drive on the street.
- 0 bed in. The pads are sintered, so they don't deposit a friction layer on the rotor, meaning they're cross compatible with any other pad you're running and don't require any bedding in. The performance was sort of 5% marginal during the first big stop as the surfaces mated up, but after that performance was great.
- Value. These pads are pricey at around $650 spring 2021 USD for a Brembo-equipped Z33. That said, I probably could have run the whole season on one set vs 3-4 sets of other pads I have run in the past that carry $400/set-ish price tags.

The Bad
- Pad growth. These pads swell when hot due to the sintered construction. This can lead to some inconsistency in the initial bite point if they get excessively cooled on a long straight.
- Dust. They're a track pad, so yes, there is dust. That said this dust seems to be more ferrous than other track pads I've run, so it oxidizes pretty quick, especially when exposed to moisture. I consumed 3x bottles of Sonax over the course of the season keeping the wheels in decent shape.
- Initial bite. Compared to something like a DTC-60/70 it seems like the initial hit is not nearly as positive. That said, that could be some of my system problems.
- Noise. These are a track pad and they do sing on the street and on track when they're cold. That said it's more "musical" whistling than the intense metal on metal grinding you get out of an HP+ on the street, for example. It is loud, it is high-pitched, civilians will be confused, track rats will nod in approval.

My Verdict
For a dual-use vehicle these are a great choice. I think the balance of cold temp performance, ease of use/compatibility, and insane wear work well with the amount of performance available. The drawbacks are relatively minor for a dual-use vehicle. If I was moving to trailering the car everywhere, I would be moving to something more race-oriented to get that extra bit of performance at the cost of streetability and wear. As of now there is no plans to do that. I have a the set of pads I put on in late August 2021 and will probably run that set and what's left of my first 2021 set through 2022.

The Evidence
Below I have wear photos of my first used set of RC6E pads vs a new set. The used set has 30 sessions on them and maybe 1500 miles of street driving.

Here is the thickness of a new front pad, front pad backing plate, rear pad, and rear pad backing plate.






Here's what I had left on the front pads after the aforementioned 30 sessions.

Front left inner.


Front left outer.


Front right inner.


Front right outer.


And the rears after 30 sessions.

Rear left inner.


Rear left outer.


Rear right inner.


Rear right outer.

Sundown72

The other problem coming out of Mid-Ohio was engine temperature. If you remember, I had experienced a big temp spike at both Gridlife Chicago in the paddock, and during my last shakedown day before Mid-O on the way home. I had tried to remedy the problem with a Mishimoto fan and shroud combo, but didn't have time to test before heading to Mid-O. At Mid-O I finally clued into turning the engine temp channel on in Racechrono, and inital review of the data...wasn't great. Temps were climbing on the straights when they should have been going the other way. Also, the average temperatures were generally high. At the same time I was still running the factory oil warmer/cooler and some friends and I figured that the thermal crosstalk wasn't helpful to either system and was probably hurting the performance of both systems. So twin courses of action were planned.

1. Cut blow-by holes in the Mishimoto shroud and add blow-by flaps that will close during fan operation at low speed, but will open up at high speed to promote flow.
2. Install a 25-row oil cooler and thermostatic sandwich plate while simultaneously deleting the factory oil warmer.

I managed to find some shroud blow-through flaps of an appropriate size and set about getting slap happy with the angle grinder, dremel, drill, and some files. An hour later I was full of aluminum shavings, but the flaps were in.



The oil cooler was going to be a slightly more interesting exercise, the front of the car is super congested with the power steering cooler, horns, crash sensor, intake, AC condenser, brake ducts, and bumper bar,,,and this was only going to add to it. Finding a place to mount the damn thing was tough but I did manage to shoe-horn it in. To delete the factory system I picked up a 370Z oil filter stud as it doesn't have the extended shank to accommodate the 350Z oil warmer. I also picked up a 370Z thermostat housing to replace the 350Z unit as it doesn't have the provision for the coolant bypass for the oil warmer. Lastly I grabbed a silicone hose cap from HPS to cap the feed from the passenger (LHD) side water line.

For the cooler I went with a kit from Z1 with a Setrab cooler to match my power steering unit, a Mocal thermostatic sandwich plate and the Z1-built lines. I priced out building my own lines but this cam in much cheaper once you figure in the Setrab fittings to adapt from the cooler to AN. Other than finding space the install was straightforward. The car is down maybe 5-7psi of oil pressure at idle with the sandwich plate open, but still above the 15psi min safe level. Given the plate is thermostatic the volume of oil for an oil change is about the same unless you change what's in the cooler by dropping a line, and I can't really be bothered given this thing gets new oil every 500mi or less.



370Z thermostat housing and oil filter stud.



350Z thermostat housing.






Ok, time for a quick test before the next big event. Gridlife Midwest Fest.

Sundown72

Another thing that I did before my test day were to add GkTech front upper control arms. In reviewing photos, I wasn't happy with the amount of camber I was getting from my stock+lowering approach, so I added the GkTech arms with spherical bearings and cranked on an eye-ball calibrated 3.5 degrees of camber to the front, while also adding a degree of caster because #cambergainz. Gridlife Midwest Fest was fast approaching and I had both just got a ticket confirmed and had a vacation planned that would put me back in Chicago at 11:45pm the Wednesday before needing to leave on the Thursday for the event. With that it was back to ABCC for an SCCA night on the north configuration. The north configuration isn't much to write home about, but testing is testing, and for testing a cooling package I couldn't have asked for better conditions. The car was showing 39 degrees C (50,000 degrees Freedomheit or some nonsense) on the drive to the track and I was all exicited to see how well my shroud modifications and oil cooler would...wait...fk...overheating in traffic with the AC on?.. sigh...windows down it is.



With the fan shroud mods effectively confirmed as a bust before even getting to the track, I decided to send it anyways. I was here to check out the cooling on track at speed, not in stop and go traffic with the AC on and had new front end geometry to play with. I parked up by my buddy with the Hotwheels edition Camaro and set about getting the car ready to go out. I set the car at my now-standard 14-clicks from full soft front and rear and 25psi cold and headed out for the first session. The car was diabolical. It was so on the nose that any steering input with any amount of throttle or brake made it threaten to swap ends...until it did. The combo of manic handling, heat, annoyance, and fatigue added up to me spinning on the exit of one of the slower corners on the track and almost backing it into the wall. Prior to that I did manage a 1:16, but there was a ton of traffic which added some red mist to the poor mixture of ingredients that led to the spin. With that it was back to the pits to think about my life choices and what I was actually out there to do - notably not write off the car.



For the second session I softened the rear to 11/24 clicks from full soft and that brought the car back into balance. It was still eager to rotate, but in a way that allowed me to catch the car with the throttle and my hands. 1:16 was my best production from the session, but the times were much more consistent than the first session..

To close out the day I decided to leave the setup where it was and instead played with my braking into the first big stop of the lap in T2. This yielded a 1:15 and some nice pizza from the SCCA folks as part of an end-of-season celebration.


With regards to the front suspension, the test was a resounding success. With regards to the cooling, failure. Before leaving the track I ordered replacement motors for the stock shroud knowing I was going to pull the Mishimoto one and consign it to the pile of forgotten parts. I've pulled some data from various sessions that around the same ambient temperature so you folks can get an idea of what the impact to cooling is from each change. Ambient on each day peaked around 35oF, with the Setup 3 day being a bit of an outlier as it was a bit warmer. TLDR: Keep the stock shroud and fans, and delete the factory warmer.

SETUP 1:
Factory fans (failing)
Factory shroud
Factory oil warmer

Peak on-track coolant temp: 237oF

SETUP 2:
Mishimoto fans
Mishimoto shroud
Factory oil warmer

Peak on-track coolant temp: 241oF

SETUP 3:
Mishimoto fans
Mishimoto shroud (modified)
Setrab oil cooler (factory warmer deleted)

Peak on-track coolant temp: 242oF

SETUP 4 (Midwest Fest):
Factory fans
Factory shroud
Setrab oil cooler (factory warmer deleted)

Peak on-track coolant temp: 225oF

The car got a quick oil change the the new fan motors and the stock shroud installed before I was off on vacation. When I got back, Gridlife Midwest Fest would be waiting.