Are you the girl that was with the Grand AM clan last year at milan?

That reminds me of a good stork, The kid working for milan at the tree flipped out on me "YOU CAN'T DRIVE THAT GIRLS CAR!!" At first I though he was calling the Z a girls car, then I realised he thought my car was that girls car. What?@#! You've never seen three Lemans 350's in one spot?


MySunset, What kind of custom work do you need? Godspeed is a good shop, it's in Novi. Hah! N2o-boy! I don't think the Z will be ready for the track on the 3rd I have been waiting on this adapter to pull some timing advance, then I need to tune the fuel computer. Mabye if I get the adapter I'll take it for a few runs. I really want to run the eclipse, It's been running great I drove it all winter. It's tuned for 22 psi.

 

that was pretty funny. cant blame them though. it was a pretty new color and the odds were pretty low of something like that happening. either way, the guy should of noticed the different interior colors.

i'll be at Godspeed saturday morning before i make my way to bw3. not for body work, but for a dyno/nitrous tune. they were able to squeeze me in. pretty nice of them too, at first the only opening they had was mid next week. i mentioned how i want to run my car this saturday and we were able to work something out for saturday morning at 10am. pretty good customer service so far. way too early for a saturday to be up, but i dont want to run the car without looking at my a/f and tweaking it. all i have to do now is actually finish setting up all the n2o stuff.

here's the list. no one new to add. waiting on 2 more g35's that were interested, but no final word on wheather or not they'll show. i wont add them until i get a final answer. hopefully the weather holds up long enough for a decent saturday.


4/3 (bw3 or track or both)
----------------------------
mzack(both)
thaddeus(bw3)
etx(both)
mysunset350z(both)
spartan1510(both)
+2 z-owners not on my350z.com(both)
motor city z (both)
+2 G35 owners (both)
+2 G35 owner (bw3 maybe both)
mdacko (both)
yancy (both)
mberthia (bw3, maybe both)
enzineer (bw3, maybe both)
z33fan (will try to make it)
mihalko1 (bw3)
dillandd (bw3)
rickburkart (bw3)

 

On the way home today on Michigan and Haggardy near 275 a 6.8 ltr Excursion decided he wanted to race. It just so happens that I was going to meet my buddy in Ypsi for a Beer (Ford Engineer Drives an Excursion, modified). Well, He took off when I wasn't even paying attention. So I walk passed him in 3rd at about 68mph. He was p*ssed off. He went flying by me and kept going as fast as that tank could go. Its so fun to ruin automotive engineers day!!!

Whay can't these idiots race cars in their class! So far I am stock and have no problem crushing them.

I washed the car right after I raced the guy and then the rain drops fall on me. Got it home and in the garage and dried and waxed for Saturday. All set. I think I will be the only Brick.

 

etx, ive never raced my car at milan, and probably havent ever hung out with grand ams.....no offence to them, just not into DSM groups. anyways see you all tomorrow, what time are we meeting at again? dont feel like scrolling through 16 pgs to find out!

 

DSM? Diamond star motors? As in 3kgt's and Eclipses? Grand ams are definately not DSM's.

Yeah MySunset350, Godspeed is a great shop. I try to send him as much bussiness as I can because thus far I have not found anyone in the metro area that knows their stuff like him. I don't think the Z is going to be ready for Milan tomarrow. But I am still coming out. What's the deal? BW3 or Milan?

 

MySunset350Z, I'll be at Godspeed between 10:30-11:00 on Saturday to get my oil changed and to check a few boost hose connections. Excited to see your beast get dynoed.

Also, I'll only be able to hang around at BW3's for an hour or two because I have some other engagements in the late afternoon. My Z's not ready to track yet anyway because I need to get a better clutch before it goes to the track.

 

BW3s at 12pm and then were going to Milan around 3 or 330pm

 

ill see you there yancy. lets hope nothing blows up.

damn. i was hoping we'd get a bigger show at the drapstrip. oh well, we'll have plenty of time to set up more meets. i got a few emails about setting up some sort of track meet. like a track course istead of a straight line dragstrip. some food for though for out next meet? we'll call this one the ice breaker meet. aaaaaaand speaking of ice, its going to be a bit nippy saturday. a high of 51 and cloudy. milan is supposed to be 51 and mostly sunny. keyword here is "supposed" to be. who knows with michigan weather.

i want to wash the car, but its COOOOOOLD!! hopefully it gets warm by the time i get home.

see you all tomorrow.

 

If people would be interested in going to Gingerman, I'm sure a bunch of us Westsiders would go. If you've never been there, it's really nice. There is tons of run off area which is nice for first timers since you don't have to worry about wrecking your car if you screw up.

 

I think I might bring both cars to milan. I don't want to drag the Z yet, it needs to be tuned. But I have a feeling I'm going to snap an axel in the eclipse so I will need a way to get home.

 

it doesnt look like ill be 100% finished with everything by tonight. the drag rims still need to be sanded. i only got around to sanding down the front of the rims last fall, and havent touched them since. the guy jspec350z and myself bought them from had painted them purple for some reason. oh and one of the drag tires is flat. ill find out tomorrow if its anything major. a few minor things left here and there, should be taken care of by the end of the month.

oh well. atleast the car is clean inside and out for the first time since november.

 

Sweet C!

I just finished installing the ignition harness to control my timing. I worked up a little fix for the problem people are having with the emanage blowing up the coil packs. So far it seems to be working great, but I have not tested it on the road yet. So I think I will run the Z a few times tomarrow. I just need to get to the shop to get some lug nuts and washers for my drag wheels. Anyone know off hand the lug nut size and thread pitch?

 

we know what you were up to last night. i feel better because i wasnt the only one. its way too early to be up on a saturday. BUT!!!, gotta do it. the dyno is calling. my bed is calling too.

good to hear everything is up and running. very good to hear your gonna run it at the track. make sure its all good man, its not worth the risk. i hate being in a rush. because of it, i messed up a few things last night. you'll see what i mean today. nothing major, just more work for me.

cant help you on the lug nut question. dont ur stocks fit? mine worked pretty good. wait, how big or those tires your putting on man!!??!


ok, im going to sleep for another 30mins. i can make it. right? sure.
peace

 

Great meet today guys, I hope we can do it again soon. I will keep you guys informed about my dented hood. (A huge WTF for me today)

Also, for Tad, here is the post regarding the tire feathering history. Hilarious.

Pasted from: http://www.zcar.com/forums/read.php?...08535&t=108535

----------------------
Tire Feathering History, An Antagonist's Interpretation
Author: mweber (---.73-24.tampabay.rr.com)
Date: Jan 15, 9:00pm

Well first came the realization by Nissan that they had a major problem in that the front tires on most, if not all Z's were cupping in a heel and toe pattern around the inside tread blocks at very low mileage and NTB03-006 was born. Nissan having concluded, with a little or no evidence, that this must be an alignment problem, directed that, not if your tires were cupped, but if your tires were noisy, that the alignment should checked. To that was added, probably by some rich pig capitalist executive type who didn't want any of his profit sharing wasted on tire purchases, that the tires should be swapped side to side which was a feeble remediation attempt at best.

Several months later after the same vehicles started coming back for more tire problems Nissan released NTB006a. Apparently, in spite of the fact that Nissan Japan had not been able to duplicate the problem, they had concluded that this issue could be resolved by setting the front toe to the maximum specified toe in of 2mm. Nissan did not, however, change the actual specifications. Only suggested that Dealers should set the toe at 2mm even though the specifications, even those in the TSB itself, still give 1mm as the nominal setting. The tire swapping garbage also remained unchanged in spite of the fact that Nissan had, by this time, replaced thousands of tires under warranty.

Several more months past and the feathered tires just kept on coming. Nissan, now under fire in the press and by disgruntled owners, did their best work on the project to date. They announced the infamous Japanese Engineer Tour and leaked to the press their new theory that Americans are simply incapable of operating alignment equipment. Soon after, NTB03-006b was born. Like its’ predecessor, NTB03-006a, it retained the 2mm toe in setting and the bogus tire swap, but it also included instructions on how to operate alignment equipment.

And there we stand folks. Nissan has managed to weather two years of this tire feathering storm without once admitting that there is any problem with the car or the tires other than a minor adjustment problem. There are several holes in their story however. They have publicly stated as recently as several months ago that "some" of the cars were shipped with improper alignment settings and the problem has been resolved. Unfortunately for Nissan, they kept pushing the production date forward on the affected vehicles. If their statement was true then it would have been easy enough to correct at the factory and there should have been no additional cases. But we all know there was and the affected dates in the TSB's kept right on rolling. Nissan's theory was also contradicted by the alignment data gathered during the TSB applications. Many of the affected cars were not out of spec in the first place. And then came the 2mm guidance document which contradicted everything that Nissan had previously stated. They were, in essence, changing the nominal toe setting. Unfortunately the cars were still eating tires so Nissan decided to blame it on the American's lack of appreciation for a finely tuned sports car and their inability to operate their own alignment equipment. Apparently the equipment works on less highly tuned vehicles like Porsches, BMW's and Mercedes but cannot meet the exacting demands of the 350Z without specialized instruction.

 

I downloaded the pictures from yesterday's meet. Let me know if the are problems with the link.

http://photos.yahoo.com/mzack@prodigy.net

 

Hi everyone !

I reduced the size of 2 of my pictures so that you could see them.
( from 11megs to ~300k).

http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/mar...=/499d&.src=ph

mzack,
Your picture link did not work. You have the click on share and send yourself an email to get the proper link. PS I decided to look into getting the Pop Charger. It looks like the price has increased recently. Most sites are asking $120.

Archman350Z,
I think that was you that well telling me about "drive to win". It's avaliable at Borders, i'll go check it out.
I also looked at the local Porsche club. Their event is Thursday May 13. They also have one in April. I guess i'll have to take a day off work.

Martin

 

thanks to everyone that showed up. it was fun, even though i got there 3 hours late. (nitrous issues) everbody there was cool, because thats just how z owners are. nothing like looking at all those z's and g's in a row. very nice. it should be more fun once the weather warms up a bit more. we'll do one of those sweet parking jobs with our cars that'll give it a nice touch. ill bring my buddies camera everytime we get something like this setup to record everything, then ill just have him edit it all out, add some nice backround music and burn us some dvd's. the dvd he made last summer turned out sweet.

man you guys missed out on some very exciting dragstrip racing, right etx? its a good thing only 2 of us went to the track, because the place closed when we got there from all the rain. i noticed we were getting a lot of looks from people on the way to the track. i caught myself starring in the rearview a few times looking at etx's sunset z. the man has good taste in cars, what can i say.

you know, i got lucky the track closed. i took apart the intake to get a closer look at the nitrous leak i was getting when spraying. i would of easily fried my plugs and heads because of too rich of a condition. all the extra fuel was making it into the engine, but only half of the nitrous IF that, was getting in. the rest was leaking into the engine bay because of the cracked fogger fitting. a $10 part could of done so much damage.

oh and thanks to all the people that signed up and didnt show..........i kid, i kid. lets get to talking about meet #2. monday the 5th of april sound good? right.

 

Damm i missed this meet by 1 day go figure i havent been on here since feb. I think i saw etx's lemans with the sweet intercooler today on plymouth rd by inkster. around 5:45pm. got me thinking figured id stop in here and see what i missed .. :-(

 

Yeah that was me. I was chasing that sweeeet red RX7!

 

I went to Tamaroff today at lunch. A tip from a guy I work with was to just be CALM and not get upset. Show them the problem and see how they handle it.

After some back and forth between the service advisor and the service manager (the advisor running back and forth into and out of the manager's office), and then the advisor driving the car into the garage (which took about 8 minutes so I bet the body shop guys examined it before it got to the garage)...

The end result was that they agreed that it appeared as though it happened while the car was under their control. They will strip and repaint the hood tomorrow, and of course repair the dent. (!) Fixing the spot without a repaint is out of the question, according to the service manager, as the surface paint is cracked, so he told me that the best way to fix it was to repaint it.

I explained that I was concerned a little about the match, he told me not to worry about it, it will match perfectly when I pick it up.

So that's +1 for Tamaroff. I was impressed.

I think a few things factor in:

1. I mentioned that the dent was noticed by Z Club members at a Club 'meet' on Saturday (told the whole story)
2. I was friendly and calm, we BSed a little about the Z Club and so forth
3. My service history shows that I have been there for all service thus far

I saw the kid who did the oil change get called over -- looked like he bitched him out a bit. They think it was the oil filler cap that was resting on the plenum, facing up. This is the reason for the oil spot.

So that's that. They'll have it tomorrow and probably Wednesday as well, they're going to swap the tires from left to right and perform the alignment. Not sure if it was the power of suggestion, but suddenly the tire noise is LOUD. Around 20-30 mph is where it's the worst. I was told that this would be taken care of at the same time.

Later guys,

--Bill