Chris Hammond
Sunday, January 22, 2012 11:59:54 PM
Alright the time has come to part with the parts. I took some time this evening to take photographs of what I have and what I am trying to sell. Right now I am trying to sell everything locally so prices don’t include any shipping. If I don’t have any interest locally I’m willing to ship the coilovers/springs/shocks but only as a package.
Sway bars and the exhaust are way too much of a hassle to try to ship, so those are local only. (Local in the San Francisco Bay Area, if you’re somewhere else in California and want to drive here, feel free).
Cash Only, no checks. Paypal acceptable for a hold, but cash must be delivered in full before handover of the parts. All parts located in Half Moon Bay, contact me at z – at – christoc.com for more info.
All parts are sold as is, with no warranty, and unknown mileage. I can tell you I put about 10k on each of them (except the control arms and the Cobb bar), but am not sure what they had prior to me.
Views: 670
Chris Hammond
Thursday, January 19, 2012 2:00:07 AM
So what did you do this weekend? Did you spend two days under your car? I basically did, well more like 1 day, but it was broken up over an afternoon/evening and then the following morning after I ran to get a new “nut” that I needed to finish things up.
Why was I under the 350z? Well, removing the fun parts of course. I planned to remove the front and rear Hotchkis sway bars, along with the TrueChoice Phase 4 Konis (front) and the off the shelf Koni Sports (rear) along with springs/perches. Though in order to deal with the rear sway bar I also ended up pulling the Injen Super SES exhaust system off the car as well and put the OEM exhaust back on.
Read the whole blog post for the time lapse video
Views: 516
Chris Hammond
Monday, May 16, 2011 3:04:29 AM
I realized recently that I didn’t have an ongoing list of modifications for the 350z. So I figured I should create one. The idea is that this will be continually updated, with the list of current parts. If I end up removing parts I’ll strike them through on the list.
Views: 1770
Chris Hammond
Friday, April 15, 2011 1:25:23 AM
So I finally heard back from SPL Pars regarding an email I sent a few weeks ago. I emailed them to ask if they could provide me the information on what the arms are configured for in terms of the heim joints.
In summary of the previous blog post, the heim joints aren’t legal in B Street Prepared (or any street prepared class in the SCCA). So these arms aren’t legal.
Views: 944
Chris Hammond
Tuesday, April 05, 2011 10:41:13 PM
Have you ever wanted to learn how to tune the suspension on a car?
Well, I haven’t really wanted to know that, until recently. Now I NEED to know. I took the Evo Advantage program this past weekend at the San Diego National Tour and felt like a total newb when the instructor kept telling me to do things to the car and I had no idea what he was talking about.
So now the question is, how best to learn the art of suspension tuning? Well, I started off on Amazon and picked up Tune to Win: The art and science of race car development and tuning
by Carroll Smith.
I’ve yet to crack it open, but I plan to start on it this evening. I’ll post more on the website later when I have a feeling for what it actually provides, and can talk about what I am learning (hopefully I’ll learn something!)
Views: 788
Chris Hammond
Tuesday, March 29, 2011 1:37:22 AM
So I didn’t figure I was going to have time to do the alignment on the 350z over the next couple of days, and I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to do an alignment myself after just lowering the car. I mean, I want to do it, but driving down to San Diego on Thursday isn’t the time I need to press my alignment skills.
So today I took the car to the local Firestone dealer to get an alignment done today. Here’s what I told them.
“I want to know what the specs are, and I want the toe to be within factory specifications.”
No problem they said, then they upsold me on the lifetime alignment. I told them, oh that won’t work for me, I’m gonna be making lots of changes, you guys won’t honor it. He assured me that they would, and even double checked with the manager. We’ll see how it works out, but I’m hoping they will honor it going forward! Really I will just want to use them here or there to verify that what I do when I make adjustments and try to align it myself.
Less than an hour later I got a phone call saying that the car was ready to go. Here are the specs that I came away with.
| | Left F/R (in degrees) | Right F/R(in degrees) |
| Camber | -2.3/-2.4 | -2.5/-2 |
| Toe | .05/.12 | .07/.09 |
Friday I plan to do some adjustment to the Toe, getting some toe out in front and toe in in the rear. We’ll see if I can get that adjustment squared away using my longacre toe plates.
If I come up with some additional settings for autocross alignment I’ll create a new blog post for the specs.
Views: 596
Chris Hammond
Monday, March 28, 2011 1:07:14 AM
So today I went back at the suspension of the car.
The problem with the video is that I did the time lapse in reverse! I mistakenly sorted the photos in descending order instead of ascending. You really can’t tell on the time lapse though, it just looks like another time lapse!
See the full post for more photos
Views: 964
Chris Hammond
Sunday, March 27, 2011 2:09:42 AM
So after a week of farting around with things the suspension is finally on the car!
I expected to see more drop out of the current settings, but I can always go lower if I want to later. Tomorrow I need to get the race tires on the car and see if I created any rubbing issues. I am also going to try my hand at aligning the car… Hopefully. We’ll see how that goes.
Read the full post for photos and video
Views: 652
Chris Hammond
Monday, March 21, 2011 1:57:49 AM
No, the suspension didn’t break, but man did murphy show up in full force today.
I’ll do a full write up with photos and what to do, where, etc, later this week, but for now let’s talk about what went wrong! Read the full blog post for photos and video.
Views: 1190
Chris Hammond
Thursday, March 10, 2011 2:18:56 AM
My birthday gift (early) from my wife showed up today (I have the best wife ever!), a new suspension (well new to me) for the 350z. There’s only one problem (and not her fault, as I ordered it) the control arms that came aren’t legal for the class the car is being built for.
The problem with them is that the arms use spherical bearings in place of bushings, and the BSP rules read (read the full blog post for all the details, and photos)
Views: 1782