Well, 8/23 was a pretty great day for me in the Z. After finishishing second in class at the extremely tight Streets of Willow Springs course earlier in the month, it was finally my day! The Speedventures classes are grouped to try and get parity between the cars. So you have hp/weight ratios and what tires you are running deciding what class you are in. That is why a new M3 and Vette on Street tires runs in the same class as my Z on race rubber. Real slicks move you up another class again over D.O.T. race tires.

To get the results, just use the drop down meny and select 8/23:

Speedventures Results Page

I give a lot of credit to the Carbotech Panther XP pads front and rear. I followed the bed in procedure to a T including running a light first track session for heavier cars. I installed them on freshly turned rotors and they were just awesome!

There were some pretty amazing cars out there including 2 Viper Comp Coupes, 3 SCCA Renault Spec Racers and a Lotus Elise race car. They also ran a race so maybe I will be doing that next time out as well. Hope to see more of you guys out there soon. If we could just get at least 5 Z's showing up at every event, we could have our own series.

 

Congrats! Glad you had a good time.

It's amazing really. There are some people who have problems with our pads. Usually when asked if they followed the bedding directions, they generally reply "What's that??" Or their idea of bedding in our pads is to go out and catch them on fire.

 

I actually did the street bed in procedure twice with an hour cool down in between. I ran my first track session pretty light with two hard laps at the end.

 

Man, you guys are hard to please!! Not a single congrats for representing the entire 350Z community agains all those pesky S2000's (and M3's and Vettes) that you guys love to spend endless hours bench racing against?

I am giving you good, hard, undisputable #'s here!!!!!!!!! Y'all better recognize the mad skillz yo!!!!!!(Desperately fishing for approval as you can tell!)

 

Good Job bro. Did the go-kart thing really help you on the road course? no pics of your car? but beating a vette on slicks is sure something. DOCUMENTED proof for those non believers...

 

Yeah, I rarely take pics of my own car anymore. Here is a pic of it from the last event:



You can see the Enkei race wheels are in place. The Z has shown quite well in my last 3 events with a 1st, a 2nd(would have been a 1st if I had freakin' brakes!), and another 1st! Who says a 350Z isn't a sportscar?

As far as karting goes; HELL YEAH! I have quite a bit of experience in open wheel cars and yet none of them even compare to karting. Kart is so good because your reflexes get honed pretty sharp when doing 100mph on a 4.5ft wheelbase! Things just happen at lightning speed. Then you get back in a street car and no matter how fast it is, it feels like a boat.

 

Nice Job showing everyone what the Z can do in the right hands.

I can't wait to get back to Laguna again.

I am going to try and go to Thunderhill when speedventures goes there in Dec. Looking forward to that.

I went to a little cart track in Fremont, called LeMans Karting (I think it's a chain), and even on those 9HP toys it was totally fun (max speeds was probably 25MPH or so). Reminded me of being a kid again and driving around my neighborhood in a 5HP one. Like you say, the problem with the Karts is that afterwards, everything else feels like an SUV.

-D'oh!

 

Cool, I should be up there at Thunderhill with ya! By then I should have my roll bar, race seat, flywheel(for sure with the flywheel because it's goint in Thurs), Cusco LSD, and 350EVO anti roll bars. Should be nice and fast by then!!

 

Great job steve! You should think about that os giken diff that dwnshift is recommending.

 

Have you considered trying wider rubber? IIRC, you were thinking about trying 265F and 295R, right? Oh, and congrats of course...

 

I really don't know if going to much wider rubber would do much good. I have read a lot of articles that say that going beyond a certain ammount has no real gains and in fact can slow you down. I already feel like the 255F tires put a lot of strain on the power steering pump.

 

IMO you can definitely use more rubber. If you can get the tires hot enough that they get greasy, you can use more rubber. My car is near the weight of your car, and I run 275 front 315 rear, and I could use 305 front if I could find them. I think your car is heavy enough you're not going to find a DOT-R that's too wide for it

 

Congrats! I'll give you mad props for bustin out yo skillz on dem foos!

Seriously, I'm glad you did so well. I can't wait to see your reaction when you get the sway bars on the car, and you can make it turn nice and easy!

As for brakes...I think you know what you need to do...StopTech!

 

Well, there is also a budgetary constraint here for me as well. The wider wheels would have been outragous for me. I also never really felt the tires go off at the end of a session even in the desert heat. My car is heavy, but not extremely powerful (it's no Z06! ). In fact, the only thing I might end up doing is going to 275's up front next time. THe rear end of my car is absolutely planted. It's actually fairly easy to drive, but it's also slowing me down a lot. I need to get the car more neutral or to a slight oversteer tendency to make it really quick.


Luckily I have been getting some good behind the scenes tech support now. There are two things that will really help lower lap times. The first is a stronger LSD and that is coming soon, by next event for sure. The stock viscous LSD may as well not even be there with the R tires. The second is better roll control. Sure, as the front suspension compresses you gain negative camber, but not nearly as much as you are losing in body roll. That is why I am getting the 350EVO bars. They are the stiffest ARB's out right now for the Z and that should allow me to still run my street suspension (for now), but keep the front tires from rolling over and wearing in a very strange "outside more" pattern.

The 14lb (vs 28lb stock) JWT flyweel goes in on Thurs. Hopefully that will make heel/toe worthwile in this car. The revs drop/climb so slow right now that it's worthless to blip the throttle on downshifts and harsh on the tranny on upshifts.

Next will be the Moton Club Sport suspension package. I could go Moton full race right now, but I would like to keep my kidneys! I will more than like NOT be trailering this car to track days any time soon, so I need some civility.

Last will be the headers/high flow cats/and cams/raised rev limit(ECU re-flash?). Probably worth 15hp all told.

Of course I will have done my Kirk (if I ever see a pic of it with a driver in the car), my Sparco Evo 2 seat, and Willans/RaceTech/Sparco harness as well.

I should have most of this in place by October and since I already run against S2k's with many of those mods, I don't think I will have to move up in class. Should be a pretty competitive T5 machine, maybe even T4 with a bit of weight reduction.

Ultimately, the stopwatch will tell the true tale!

Actually, the stock Brembos with the right pads work flawless. That is the one part I haven't thought about having to upgrade. But, if I did have it to all do over again, I would have bought a base Z and modded the hell out of it. About the only thing I would miss would be the HID's.