The skies were cloudy for the Z Car Garage 6th Anniversary Dyno Day and ZONC General Meeting, but that didn’t stop Z fans from gathering to help celebrate.
I live a couple of hours away and this was my first trip to the shop.
This is one cool place. The waiting room has hundreds of car magazines, Datsun and Nissan motorsport posters, plaques with magazine articles about many of Rob’s cars, and plenty of Z car memorabilia. My favorite is an original 240Z race car model kit in the original shrink wrapped box. I assembled one of these very kits over 35 years ago at the start of my love affair with Z cars (I still have the model). The waiting area is completely open to the main shop area. Customers get to see and hear the work taking place. Beyond the main area behind large windows is the dynamometer bay.
The place is CLEAN. It’s one of the cleanest, tidiest shops I’ve ever seen. Even the bathroom is nice.
The ZCG technicians – Fred, Joshua, Vlad and CJ – spent much of the day jockeying cars in and out of the dyno bay and lying on the floor to strap them down. Despite having to work, the guys seemed to be enjoying themselves. Dyno runs were only $40 in honor of the Z car’s 40th anniversary.
The car show in the parking lot was great and kept changing during the day.
Enjoy the pictures!
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Monday the 1st of February was an amazing day for a couple of reasons. For one, Fred of the ZCG crew turned 40. And secondly, Fred gave me the day off to play with the shop 370Z. The day started off at ZCG in the early morning hours where I met the other two cars in the pack, Scott with his Z33 and Gia with his Nismo edition Z34. We drove down to Laguna Seca to start our track adventures for the day. Once we arrived at Laguna Seca we prepped our Z’s with numbers and a double check of our wheel torques. After a brief driver’s meeting, we were off to drive our first session. It’s been a while since I have been able to go to the track and hone my skill set. Years ago, before ZCG, going to the track was a regular event in my life. Driving on the track with Scott really made me appreciate the value of seat time. Scott’s many track days and autocrosses have paid off and he and his Z33 looked great out there. A few days prior to the event, we fitted Gia’s Nismo edition Z34 with a test ZCG oil cooler and some upgraded front brake pads. The oil temps were in range for moving forward with our next round of testing. The brakes, on the other hand, weren’t able to keep up with Gia’s driving style. I have shared my data with Stoptech and they say help is on the way in the form of a pad that should help us on the street and allow us to push the limits at the track. Once Gia’s Z34 brakes were unable to continue, we double teamed the ZCG Z34 with back to back sessions. During these sessions, we were able to keep our oil temperature under control with the help of the ZCG oil cooler. The highest oil temps were in the 250F range. For those of you just tuning in, this is the 3rd test version of our oil cooler. We feel after the next set of tests that we will be able to serve the Z community with a product that will allow you to keep your Z’s oil temps within reason and out of the famous limp mode. We will be returning to Laguna Seca on February 25th to complete the shake-down on our latest mods. The track organization we are running with is NCRC, nice guys with great organization which leads to lots of track time.
Turn in,
Rawb
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These days, it seems like everyone has a Facebook page. This amazing media allows us to catch up with old friends, keep current on new ones, and update the world on what we might be doing at the moment. ZCG wants to keep you in the loop on our status of helping spread the Z car gospel. Please click on the icon below to check out the Z Car Garage Facebook page.
The next part of our “two for” post comes from our friends at Auszcar.com. They did a nice write up on my 1970 240Z. The website is full of cool photos and write ups of various Z car projects. Bookmark them in your favorites and keep checking back on what’s happening in the land down under.
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One of ZCG’s oldest customers is back with a bang. This Nismo 370Z comes to us with 400 miles on the clock. During the next few days we will continue to finish the break-in miles. We are chomping at the bit to start modding this bad boy. The next few weeks will include installs of upgraded brake pads with fluid and version 2 of the ZCG oil cooler kit. We have a track day set up for February the 1st at Laguna Seca.We will see how the Nismo stacks up against the ZCG 370Z. Stay tuned…
Comments Off on Testing…Testing..1,2,1 Nismo 370Z
You all have seen this car here before and I’m sure you are aware of it’s on track antics, if not then see the links below for a refresh.
This car sees tons of track time. In fact it pretty much only sees track time, and like most track cars, after awhile things need to be refreshed. In this case the StopTech Big Brake Kit was in need of a few new parts to prepare it for the Norcal UFO trackday the following weekend.
As you can see from the pictures, the hats for the two-piece rotors have seen some massive heat. Enough in fact to destroy the original black anodizing. These parts, while discolored, are still perfectly functional. The rotors on the other hand had seen better days and were replaced with new ones.
The other part of this rebuild comes in the form of replacing the main seals for the four pistons in each caliper. From the pictures you can see that the old ones were covered in debris and brake dust and were starting to weep, not a good thing when a race car relies on repeatable pedal pressures for optimum performance.
The seals were replaced with the new gray pieces and the entire system was reassembled and given back to the owner just in time to thrash on it at the Thunderhill Raceway. Pics of the track event are still to come and are well worth the wait.
See all the photos of the entire rebuild after the read more (there are 30 or so)
Merry post-Christmas
ZCG
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