coming together nice. I have the front sway bar in the middle and rear to softest setting, seems to be perfect for my setup. Im now working on dialing in the fortune coils.

 

Pulled out my new bore scope to get a better view of the Konig Hypergram clearance in the front. I bought this scope for the Cayman--when I pull the plugs and oil pan next month (ish) I'll use it to look for cylinder bore scoring (and if it has any, I'll avoid the track even more with this car). This thing is fun to play with. The gap here is only a few mm. Trying to decide how much wheel spacer is needed. It doesn't rub but it will on hard cornering. 2.5mm or 5mm?




While under I snapped a couple of the caliper clearance too. Scale is hard to judge but there's about an inch.

 

Looks like the tight clearance is to the wheel not the tire, so there shouldn't be much deflection even at track cornering forces.

 

That's good! now that you mentioned it, it makes sense that the hub would not bend. duh... 😆

The tire mounted here is just a throw away that came with the wheels, a 245 with huge stretch. choosing between the two brands I'm familiar with already, at 275/35. I wanted to go 285 in the rear but neither offers them in that size. there is a HUGE amount of clearance in the rears that I would love to fill with a fatter tire.

speaking of, I took the car out to test the brakes today and they feel very strong. I also had enough trust in the car after 10 to 20 mi to start driving it hard, despite the poor alignment. hauling *** around a 90° turn onto a freeway the rear drifted perfectly and I accelerated into it, the car behaves. it wants to be driven so so much harder than this....

I have a VDC and Slip lights on the dash. I tried resetting the battery again but it came back. I might have to check the rear sensors. The car feels really fast but I believe it's limiting power with the slip error.

 

Ok, so you'd need to do a fitting with actual tires you'll run and see where the tire sidewall ends up, that'll tell you if you need spacers or not, keeping in mind that a 275 from one manufacturer will be quite different width than a 275 from another.

 

yep agreed

 

The Yoko Advan Apex 275/35 on my Cayman with the same size wheels have a minor stretch. I prefer a thicker sidewall but these aren't like NT01s. so I think the lip on that wheel will be the widest point.

that just made me think about the slip light. because the rear TPMS sensors aren't coming up on the multi-gauge. The fronts are reporting tire pressure but not the rears, and the slip condition is triggered by the speed sensors. maybe there are a pair of wires that I haven't reconnected after installing the subframe. which was a massive PITA at the time.

 

I believe on the Z cars the tpms sensors are in the wheels whereas the speed sensors are on the axle right outside the diff. If the rear speed sensors are not working right you'll get an ABS light.... and the brakes might lock up going 120mph into a braking zone... or so I heard

 

this is the wire harness I'm going to check. it could easily have come undone while installing the axles.

 

Yup, that's for the speed sensors. I'm pretty sure you'd get an ABS light if that wasn't plugged in.

 

100% speed sensors, check all your connections.

 

Found an awesome shop nearby that's doing a track alignment. he suggested -2.5 camber all around and I agreed for better tire wear. it was at -4.0/-3.3 F, -4.0/-2.5 R, with my eyeball alignment. and he found and fixed a problem with the rear subframe. feels good having this done by a pro.

 

Nuts. it's that three steps forward, two steps back thing again... at least it's consistent with this car...
now that the alignment is better, I was able to finally drive the car a little faster and discovered that the diff is toast...
it feels fine when accelerating, but if I let off the gas (coast) it pulls hard left. it makes me wonder if this is a 2.0 or a 1.5. If it was a 2.0 and it's failing, that follows these symptoms...

at 60 mph, it's also very unstable, like a hurricane wind blowing against the side of the car. scary as hell.
and frustrating, to say the least, given that I thought this car was almost done...
I'm going to put the original diff back on this car. it was working fine before I made the swap.
I'll drive it with the OEM diff for now and send the Nismo off to Z1 for a rebuild. when that gets back, then I'll swap them again.

any suggestions on which LSD to go with? Don't want to spend big bucks on this. I have other projects that at this point are more interesting than the Z which I'm kind of getting tired of dealing with right now and need a break from it...

 

that sucks man, how much does it cost to rebuild the Nismo one?

 

Z1 has a mail-in service for about $3,000. I need to figure out which LSD would be a good choice. don't want clutch so I'll go with a torsen style, Quaife or Wavetrac. they don't need to be rebuilt often and are more street friendly.

 

damn, I would just buy new right? that seems really high!

 

the Z1 diff service uses all new parts, you just send them your core. I don't even want to deal with trying to have it rebuilt by a local shop.

 

so I got the original diff put back into the car today and it was an ordeal like usual... I really hate installing a diff. damn I hate it so much. only dropped it once this time! lol. but I got it in and went for a drive. no drama. 15 mi and just smooth.the thing is, this is the first time I have literally driven the car properly since starting all the work a year ago. without the drama of that dying Nismo diff, I was able to properly feel how the car runs now..
first thing: the GK tech solid steering rack mounts has a dramatic impact on the steering!! I highly recommend it. there's absolutely no drift. I can let go of the wheel and it just stays put. you can still steer with one finger but you have to make an effort to steer. it doesn't just wander... I love it!!
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second, all of the solid mounts and various bushings have made it very high NVH and I love every bit of it... All of the noise and actually the ride is not that bad. I was expecting more of a harsh ride but with the fortune auto suspension, it handles really well without being too rough even with all of these upgrades.

holy **** the cornering is obscene... I can't even begin to test this thing on the street. there's a lot of swearing involved... but it's the good kind. it doesn't even flinch at Sharp turns. The rear wheels drift a little, that's all. and these are OEM wheels with what you guys would consider shitty tires. Continental ECS.
The Akebono brakes are #@$&*!? amazing. so glad I went through with the double upgrade over the Brembos which would have been good also but maintenance is difficult with those hard to find parts.

this car is like a go-kart now. it's like driving a Hummer on public streets. I feel like I'm surrounded by civilians when I'm in this car.

but now that it's somewhat done, and actually it's ready for the track now so I will try to get it out the summer but I've got a lot of **** going on. visiting my kids, etc. anyway, it's going out of the garage finally after a year and making room for other projects. I'm going to get the '03 put together and up for sale. I'm going to have to source a used diff from a wrecking yard.

 

oh yeah, the one issue that I had during my test trip today was the two dash lights are still on
VDC off and slip are both lit.
when I had the diff removed I carefully examined the speed sensors and put them in correctly thinking that would resolve the problem. so obviously that was not the issue. I'm going to have to look at something else. maybe a fuse or some damn thing.

 

awesome man, how difficult is the solid rack mount install? Thats definitely something I need to do soon.