Yeah maybe if you roll the thing, but crumple zones are there for a reason... maybe not so much in a zed but most newer cars are built to crumple, not be super rigid. I always thought you could get cages engineer approved anyway? Obviously not to the extent of a full cage that goes across the doors,...
FOMO.com is now the company who sells it. ITW Foamseal apparently went out of business or somehow the business changed hands to FOMO. But they are the supplier of the product now. We use Grainger in the states to get it, but not sure about you Aussie boys. Look up the product line and find a dealer. BTW, love your project. I study your whole damn car probably for an hour once a week to try to get tips. Nice work. Any stateside ever talk to you about doing an article on the car? If not, would you be interested? I work for an auto magazine here in the states and would like to do something on it. And yeah, thanks for the tips on the traction.
We get away with a lot more here in the state, especially here in Texas. Texas is like it's own country in the US. The weight and reductions aren't even really an issue, honestly.
Here is the newest update I got. Haven't been up to much as I am getting Nismo Fiesta 2011 out of the way and dealing with a mold issue in my house. But anyways, enough about my problems. Here is an small update on what's going on with the project. Mostly I've just gotten a lot of oddball parts in. ********************************************************* Got some packages in from Simtec Motorsports. Wonder what it could be. The new Simtec Motorsports IMSA front diffuser. This diffuser is pretty amazing. It uses half of the stock bumper and is a pretty darn good fit after a bit of trimming. This will offer good amounts of downforce and dramatically increase airflow to where I want. Craig over at Simtec spent a lot time working with me on this as we have made some customizations to the standard unit they offer for sale. Turnaround was very good considering it's all done by hand. Simtec was gracious enough to become one of my few sponsors that we are putting together to make the project come alive. The underbelly is seemless. Note the sheetmetal edges are seamless to slice through the air. Great craftsmanship. Now to mount up the stock bumper. Here we've cut off the lip of a stock bumper to begin to mount up the stock USDM to the Simtec lower diffuser. And yes, I will paint the cover obviously. This is just a test fit. Bye bye. Mounted. The backside. These bad little MOFO's are called Airtabs. These are little vortex creators that work amazingly. We are going to be adding them to LOWFATZ's roof line to break up the topside air turbulence. I am playing with where they will be as putting them too forward can have downsides for a rear mounted wing. These will mostly likely end up on the high part of the glass in the end. An image of these same tabs used on SCC's Subaru WRX some years back. This is a quick release for the steering wheel from 9K Racing. It's basically a copy of a Lifeline version. I picked it up off a GB from Zilvia.net. Not bad but it looks to be a Lifeline or ETB ripoff. But still, a good item either way. Very light weight as well. Picked this up from a TT.net member. It's a true Bomex nose that will be thrown on LOWFATZ later on. Very nice item. Well built. I have to give props to Bomex for making a solid piece. A lot better than those flimsy crappy ebay knockoffs that i've had before. This is a Broadway mirror. These have been around forever. For a while they were kind of expensive but have take a dive in price recently. These are amazing mirrors for the price and highly recommend them. I have one of these on every car I own. For $20 on eBay, it can't be beat. I picked mine up at a Autobacs years ago and forgot I had them. Love them and recommend them. This one will end up riding in the cockpit with me in LOWFATZ. And lastly, the best purchase I made all month. Bought this as it was recommended from a TT.net member...and....I love this freaking movie. Probably my favorite car film other than Dust to Glory or Gone in 60 Seconds. This actually made me want to start working on my project again. Thanks Eric Bana. That's it for now. More to soon come on the engine pics.
Thanks for the updates That beast is going to look ammaazing when it's finished! Keep up the good work.. That movie is brilliant BTW! My Daughter and I love that movie (she's turning into a zed loving petrol head lol!) Cheers!
So what's the weight of the Low Fat Z now? Are you under a metric tonne yet? (2 204.62262 lb) Does this include all fluids, and if so, how much fuel? What would you think is an achievable weight for a zed, through easily removable weight (that is, not going as full-on as you have). Interior, and creature comforts are expendible. Im thinking along the lines of a light-weight drag car, so roadworthiness is not necessary, but track safety is.
Ben and I have been thinking about this a bit too, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that getting down to 1000kg without some really crazy stuff done will not happen. We've run out of big weight things to remove and just adding up teh weight of some of the stuff we've got rid of we don't think there is 400kg of stuff to get rid of (Assuming an NA manual slicktop is actually around 1400kg). Milo has probably been more scientific than us on this but here are some rough weights: Aircon is really heavy, should weigh that I guess, hatch and rear glass is only 34kg, a decent amount but I was expecting a lot more, if you go to town on the wiring there is about 15kg of that which can go, 15kg of sound deadening, the interior trim is pretty light but there is a little there, door cards including speakers are about 4kg each and the carpet has a bit of weight to it. Power steering stuff has a little bit of weight, mostly the pump. A few kg for AIV and EGR systems if they are still there, ABS actuator thing is 8kg if you don't want that, electric seats are damn heavy and even the normal seats are a fair bit more than a race seat. I've not worked out the difference in weight between the normal glass on the door windows and rear quarter windows, Milo probably knows though. I think to get down to 1000kg you'll need to start lopping off bits of metal all over the place. Soulds fun to be honest. I'm pretty much done with stripping bots off the car that come off without an angle grinder, once I've got to that point I'll try to bribe someone with corner scales to come over and weigh it and post up the results. Any Melbourne guys know what Robin Bailey's favourite drink is?
So, I got around to getting a little more done on the project. Finally had an opportunity to get the new subframe complete with the SPL subframe spacers installed. This was a huge fuss. My recommendations for anyone doing this is take the time to grind out the powdercoat inside the hole or have them pressed in with a huge press. It will make your life a little easier. But otherwise this came out great. While I was at it, I had another subframe recently finished for the daily. Came out good. We opted for longer 60mm Nismo studs a while back and got around to installing them along with whatever else we could loose to further cut weight. Note the difference in lengths. Huge difference. I also went through the process of removing the rear rotor dust shields as well. I did not just choose to cut these off, but instead went for the opportunity to fully remove them to get every little ounce I could of weight savings. The original shield in place. The now assembly with the removed dust shields. Took the opportunity to also get a little more clearance for the new rims we plan on stuffing under the quarters, with a fender roll. By fender rolling, we can allow ourselves to get more clearance as well as remove the possibility of sheet metal rubbing our precious new rubber. Since are getting ever so close to paint, we thought we would finalize the instillation of the glass. After everything, we opted to go with the stock quarter glass windows and rear back glass to not allow the possibility of water leaks. The weight was negligable on the quarters but sadly added a few pounds back to the car. But, it was over the rear where we were going to need a little anyways. Hopefully this balances out as we still begin to plan out corner balancing out the vehicle. Anyways, since we were installing the glass my good friend, Anthony from Glass Tint by Anthony, helped out the project by volunteering to tint the windows on the project for us. Here is Anthony prepping the tint for install on the quarter glass windows. Another picture of the man doing what he does. Here he is prepping the glass for install with a strong bead of adhesive/sealant. Notice how thick it needs to be to prep for install. We took great precaution to make sure we had no leaks in case we end up at a rainy track day. And here I am assisting in heating and getting the glass just right where I want it. We will have a few other updates here shortly. We will soon be prepping for final paint as we have already picked up our paint. Also, we have some new parts on order for the build at EP Racing so we will update shortly with that.
Nice, I'm finally getting around to doing something on my NA racecar project too, I've been distracted by house stuff for the last few months and am looking forward to getting back into it. Pulling out the brake rotor dust shields might be a nice start. Looking forward to seeing yours up and running soon!
FYO you should remove the two upper rear alloy cradle spacers. This slightly raises rear roll centre and improves squat angle of lower control arms.
Sorry, it's been a while. With me and my local team hosting another Nismo Fiesta, time is usually turned towards that. Now that I have some time, I am turning my time back to the project. ********************************************************* With any large project comes some bad news. My bad news was in the form of the rear subframe. The rear subframe that we purchased from a local club member turned out to be bent. Being bent, it would have thrown off all of the precise suspension angles we were hoping for. This was the powdercoated gold subframe, by the way. I had done up another subframe for another project car, but in red. So we ended up having to swap all the subframe bushings into the red subframe assembly, which was a pain. Our new subframe. Some SPL Version 1's that we had laying around. Later on, we will upgrade this and everything else to the V2's (aka, Version 2's from SPL Parts. I opted to have SPL Parts install their Monoball Bushings into our rear spindles. These bushings are the premier bushings available to the Z32 market. Although these can be on the pricey side, I feel as I always have, that you cannot beat quality and reliability like this. Note that these can translate a little more road noise to the vehicle, as well as vibration. But, for our purposes of an all out track car, this was the best option for us over any other aftermarket bushing. The stock spindle with the bushings installed. A closer look at the SPL bushings. So moving on to a little more weight savings..... Although the stock hood is made of aluminum for weight savings from the factory, some portion of the stock hood were obsolete thanks to the addition of the Aerocatch hood pins. Previously, we deleted the hood latch, cables and hardware. We recently also, opted to remove a few more pounds from the stock aluminum hood as well. Started with removing a few sections of the hood catch. The stock hood has a steel catch inside of it, sandwiched between the underside skeleton and the outer aluminum skin. My plan was to cut away as much as possible while still keeping a little strength left in the panel. We have to do this process on two different hood. We have a vented hood and a stock hood for the car, usage depends on weather conditions, of course. You can see the hood catch section we are opting to remove. A closer look. Notice the rivets. This made it "interesting" of a removal process. Another portion of the skeleton that we cut. And another. Our little pile of hood removal debris accumulated to another 3.1 lbs of saved weight per hood. We are still wondering if it was worth the extra 4 hours of cutting to get to this savings. And now, just doing a few more little trick things to make life easier on us when we are stuck out at those hot Texas track days. The stock Z32 for the US market is great for what it is. But one thing that I always hated about it was that if you were going to be constantly pulling plugs to swap them for any of a dozen good reasons, you had to pull the balance tube which just seemed.....well poorly thought out. Good but could have been a little better. The stock Z32 plenum. The J30 plenum was essentially our same plenum but evolved. It allowed for a balance tube that moved back the tube for a cleaner and easier access to the coilpacks. I always liked this idea, but one thing that sucks about the J30 is that it is riddled with brackets. From my experience with plenum polishing/porting/chroming, I had a lot of experience chopping off brackets and smoothing out plenums. So we applied that. Basically, our goal was to take the J30 plenum and use it on our project. Sadly we cannot just bolt up the balance tube, we have to use the plenum and hack away all the additional brackets and threaded bungs. A shot of the J30 plenum. A comparison shot. Notice the balance tube and then all the "extras" on the J30 plenum. The J30 balance tube by itself. The X's account for everything that I have to remove. The stock J30 plenum. Notice all the items that will need removal. The stock J30 plenum after a quick bracket removal section. We still have much more to go on the plenum. We have to smooth all both the plenum and balance tubes out. Send the plenum out to Extrude Hone for it to get honed. After that we will have EP Racing put a thermal coating on both item to help battle heat soak in aluminum/silica cast plenum. More to come on this part as we continue to move on. And on to the fun stuff. Mitch over at EP Racing has a full plate on some amazing builds right now but still managed to get a little work done for Project LOWFATZ. Our pistons were a set of custom one offs to generate the power we were looking for in an naturally aspirated VG30DE format. Something that has never been done to our knowledge. So, in a sense, we are writing the playbook. Compression is squishing at 12.5 to 1. A few comparision shots of another AM TT pistion vs our custom NA pistons. A new EP Racing twin piston squirter design that is finalized as of recent. Expect production soon. The design is set to allow maximum lubricity for both low and high points, hitting the underside of the piston as well. Previously the only cure for high hp TT motors looking for lubricity at the critical piston to rod point, was to utilize an NA squirter. Now with the new design, it improves upon this concern with one squirter aimed at this point and the other in the traditional TT positon. I recently picked up a set of new tranny gears to have both coated by EP Racing and installed. The coating will promote lubricity and anti-friction. These are our gears after a few sandblast sessions awaiting the coating. Now with the coating applied and freshly run through a few heat bonding cycle, the gears are cool to the touch and ready to go. Recently we picked up a few different clutches, trying to find the right combination for the anticipated power. We were donated a few different clutch setups by sponsors. A vendor was nice enough to donate us an OS Giken clutch assemby. We are still unsure if this will make it into our project or not as may be overkill, but none the less it is an impressive assembly and we appreciate all donations. Thanks to all for the patience. More updates coming soon.
