Thanks to Raceboy's callout I signed up and had a blast racing at Willow Springs two weeks ago (8/2). The day was clear and 95 degrees. Heads up, during the last session of the afternoon my Z started overheating. I lost some coolant and after returning to the pits it cooled down within minutes.

I have my front license plate custom mounted within the grill area. I was running hard and the sessions were 1/2 hour long. I have not heard of problems on the street with license plate mounting locations but next time I will remove mine before having fun on the track.

 

It's possible. At Summit Point they required us to remove our front plates for the tow hook. It was about 95 that day as well. There was one Z that was running with his front plates on, but he didn't report any over heating in his car.

Probably that we're running a lot harder on the track then on the street so any and all air flow is needed for helping the engine stay cool.

 

I'm impressed with the cooling system on the Z. I ran similar 1/2 hour sessions in 110 heat and was very surprised that the temp needle didn't move at all. I certainly had expected the car to run hotter...I was thinking that the guage might not be working!!

Could be the plate blocking flow through the radiator. It would be interesting to see if your car runs cooler at the next track day (without front plate).

 

Well, with the front plate, you're normally not blocking that much airflow. But since you have a custom bracket that caused the plate to fit over the grill, that's blocking a good deal of the airflow. Take off the front plate and put your tow hook in at the track. I can't tell you how many times I've worked an event where a car goes off into the gravel trap and it takes 20 minutes to get the thing out since it wasn't already prepped for an easy tow.

 

Actually, the Z has a pathetic little radiator, but if it does get hot, it cools fast also. I was just giving it slow half laps and that brought everything right back in line.

 

Just to let you know most manufacturers no longer connect a direct water temp guage. It's more of a three stage indicator showing cold, operating temp and overheating. A lot of tuners have found that water temp can fluctuate up to 40 degrees without the needle moving anywhere. The only problem is when you look down and the needle is climbing it means you are already overheating. So you probably where running quite a bit hotter that weekend but the cooling was good enought to keep you out of dangerous range. Personaly I would have prefered Nissan to stick an actual water temp guage in place of the volt meter. Besides it'd look cooler with the oil and water guages jumping all over the place.