I want to start off by thanking everyone who showed up for the ZONC Z Car Corral on Saturday.  It was a pleasure to see all of you!!

The weather was perfect early on Saturday and I was pleased to see that we had 8 cars a the shop ready to join us on our caravan down to Laguna Seca to meat up with the rest of the group.   Unfortunately the most of the drive to the track takes place on Highway 101 so there isn’t much room for spirited driving, we still managed to get to the track in under an hour and a half.

Once arriving it seems like the rest of the car clubs enjoy getting up much earlier than ours did because all of the other corrals from Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, and others were already nearly at capacity.  Porsche had the most cars by far, easily understandable because they were the featured marque this year.  When will it be Nissan/Datsun’s time!?!?  Are you gonna show up when it happens?  I sure am.

While the practice sessions were underway in the morning hours we walked the paddock area in search for automotive gold.  There are amazing cars at every turn at this event, and you don’t even need your sense of sight to appreciate them.   I can’t even count the times that our group stopped by a running car just to listen to the engine note and to smell the burning race fuel.

After lunch we settled into our seats just outside of turn four to enjoy the racing.  While we appreciate the older racing cars that were up for the first few races, we were simply patiently waiting for the last two races of the day which were the 1964-1971 FIA Mfg. Championship cars (mainly Porsche 917s) and the 1981 -1990 FIA Mfg. Championship cars and the IMSA GTP cars.

You can imagine that when seriously priceless cars are raced that the track time is little more than glorified pace laps,  NOT TRUE!!!!  The cars were wheel to wheel in every sense and there was certainly rubbin and bumpin going on.  The drivers wanted to win, after all when would all of these cars ever be on track again together?  It was truly a sight to behold.

I have found a video of the winner of the IMSA GTP race and it can be viewed after the “read more”.  The video is taken from inside the pilot’s driver’s helmet.  I want one of these cars.  There is also a gallery of the photos that I took on Saturday (the only day I attended unfortuantely.)  I will try to find photos from Sunday from someone who attended.  Hopefully we can get our group numbers a little bit higher next year to show how much support is out there for Nissan/Datsun products.  See you there.

(the photo below was of a really clean 240z that was just sitting by itself in the vendor’s area, we had to check it out.  haha)

Complete gallery and video after the ‘read more’

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I have updated a few things that you might want to know about:

New Email Address!!  ZCarBlog@gmail.com

I just added this so that you could email me directly without going through Rob if you so wish.  Feel free to send me any of your thoughts or harassing emails.  I appreciate them all.

I have updated the “For Sale” page a little bit as well.

• The ZCG G35 Twin Turbo now has a new price of $26,000 (practically a steal for what was invested)

It has also received new Michelin PS2 tires in the rear, new brakes on all four corners, undergone the full 60K mile service, and been upgraded with an iPhone/iPod integration system in anticipation of a new owner.

• The White 1973 240z has gone on to a new home.  Congrats to the new owner.

• The Wide-body G35 Twin Turbo has been taken off the market, the owner was just too attached to let it go.

That’s all for now.  More updates later today and over the weekend.

Here is the next set of photos from last year’s Historics weekend.  These are most of the ’50s and newer cars.  I have two more sets coming of Trans-Am/Can-Am cars as well as some really cool vintage open-wheel cars.  I hope that a few more of you have signed up through the ZONC website.  We really want to represent the Z as much as possible so please get your tickets and meet us here!

We will also be planning some sort or cruise down to the track on Saturday for the corral.  I’ll have some more info on this soon.  Have a great weekend and make sure you see all of the photos after the ‘read more’.

Link:  Z Owners of Northern California (ZONC)

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On the 23rd of last month I put up a the most recent track video featuring our good friend Scott and his 350z.  The car had received the new MotorDyne Shockwave single exhaust the day before the track event so here are the dyno results, videos, and my impressions.

I normally shy away from favoring any sort of single exhaust on the 350z but this may be the system that has changes my mind.  From the moment it was unwrapped it was easy to notice that the quality was there, and then we came to the exhaust tip.   MEGAPHONE!!  Here at Z Car Garage we have a special place in our hearts for the megaphone tip, as they are currently installed on Rob’s 240z and 510 as well as Alvin’s Roadster.  The MotorDyne system comes with one from the factory, sweet.

The exhaust was installed without hassle thanks to the simplicity of the included V-band clamps.  As soon as the car fired up we were all impressed.  Rasp was virtually non-existent (this car still runs stock cats) and the sound was extremely crisp.  While it’s not overly-loud, and passed the decibel meter at Thunderhill, there may be a sound limit issue at some of the super-strict tracks like Laguna Seca.

On to the dyno!!

We made a few baseline runs just prior to the install and came out with a hair under 252 rear-wheel horsepower (rwhp.)  After the exhaust switch we made two more runs while carefully monitoring all critical temps as well as the air/fuel ration with an Innovate wide-band 02 sensor.  The number we came out with was sort of a let down: 251rwhp, a one hp loss.  Before simply marking it up as a loss we pulled out the laptop to check the timing in the U-tech piggyback computer.  After pulling a couple degrees of timing we were happy to see the number climb to 259rwhp, a very nice gain for a normally aspirated car.

Unfortunately this isn’t a true comparison because we can’t be sure of how the NISMO system would have performed with the reduced timing, on the sound alone I would recommend this exhaust.  Make sure you check out all the videos and photos after the ‘read more.’

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Here are a few photos taken by one of our friends who attended the show with us.  Thanks Jim.  Enjoy