ZZ4 86 Z28

iTrader: (1)

Alright heres the deal. I have a little cash to spend right now, and once i get out of school this semester ill be getting a summer job, so more money. Anywho, heres my setup as good as i can think of it right now:

Motor:
ZZ1 crate motor 350
Performer Rpm and Holley 700dp
MSD 6al and accel distributor with mallory cap and rotor

Drivetrain:
rebuilt 700r4 with mild shift kit and stock converter (only way to get warranty on rebuild)
stock 10 bolt with 3.73 gears
275/60/15 radials in the back

Suspension:
Crappy stock stuff. bought the car this way. no sfcs, lcarb, nothing. sensatrac struts and gas-a-matic shocks, stock springs.

So basically what do you guys think I can do now, and where should i spend my money. Right now i got about 300-400 dollars to blow, and wont have any more until summer. Then I might be able to drop a few hundred more. Suggestions? and i have a guy that can make me custom sfcs and weld them in for a grand total of 300, so i think im doing that first. The car is a street car and will be mostly street driven. maybe taken to the track 3-4 times a year. Just want the car to be more solid and of course, faster. thanks.

AlkyIROC

Other than put in a set of SFC, it's hard to suggest anything else. Since it's basically a street car you don't need a bunch of race parts on it.

ZZ4 86 Z28

iTrader: (1)

its a street car cause its my only car. ill get a dd in a couple years.

91greenbird

iTrader: (4)

more cam, 2800 vigilante 9" torque converter

ZZ4 86 Z28

iTrader: (1)

hm, i was thinking id wanna get some traction before i make more power or a harder launch (converter). i figured id be deciding betweens lca's and other parts versus a new rear to support the power. any advice is good advice though.

Larry Dunlap

the
I agree. I don't see where you say what tires you are running but if you want to run faster at the track, get a set of drag radials. You can run on the street in moderate rain with Nittos and you should hook up real good at the track. Ive got Hoosier drag radials but the car is not a everyday street car. Not recommend for anything above a zero % chance of rain for a week, but man do they hook hard. You could get a set of ET streets or the Hoosier drag radials and a cheap set of rims and change tires at the track. The drag radials are cool because you could leave them on the car for a night of tooling around the street.

jjlabinski

if it is your only car dont beat on it.

lose the double pumper carb.

you have a good rear ratio for off the line get up and go

stiffen the ride a little and you'll have a good blvd car

ZZ4 86 Z28

iTrader: (1)

i go to school though. everything is on campus. i never need it to get me anywhere cept the hour drive to school and back every 3-4 weeks. and i start it and ride it around campus a few times on weekends to keep it running and moving. the dp isnt a problem, i get use less than half a tank to drive the 110 miles to school. my tires are crappy bfgoodrich radial t/a's. size stated in first post. so chassis strength and tires should be up on my list instead of more power, right?

zz4monte

Tires,LCR,stall, take your pick. BMR makes really good parts at an affordable price and the ET Streets I have are awesome but the number 1 thing in my opinion is a stall, 2600-3000 vigalante or edge. I have all the suspension BMR,ET streets,all the goodies with a 1900 stall speed and I can't get lower then a 1.9 60ft no matter how hard I try.Stock stalls suck for track numbers but are fine on the street. If you can't do the stall do the suspension and tires. I am saving for a big block so I plan to redue the whole drivetran, so I stopped putting money in the zz4 mods and now my next step is a roll cage. When you realize your final goal in a car it seems silly to buy a bigger cam and 1200 heads to drop only 5-8 tenths and have a $hitty idle and low vaccum.Either way when you get that car all setup right (with a good stall) you should pull very low 13s-high 12s.I could not get any traction with stock LCA and BFG radial ta's and then I went to BMR upper and lowers and hotchkis sway bars back and front, bilstein shocks. I redid the whole suspension in the car. Now the main problem is that it grips to well and the car bogs of the line. I run a 255/60/15 ET streets on a stock monte ss 15X7, with a 3.42 gear and a 1900 stall. I need way more stall, aleast a 2600 and 3.73 wouldn't hurt me either with a 27.1 diameter tire.A 27in tire is fine for a 3.73 gear though.Traction and stall will give you alot.

ZZ4 86 Z28

iTrader: (1)

i have access to a really cheap deal. a dana 60 and a rebuilt th400 for next to nothing. just sitting around at my friends house. you think i should jump on either of those. the th400 has only a couple hundred miles since rebuilt with shift kit and might come with a converter. i think the dana 60 would need some modification to fit in though, so might not be worth it yet.
i was also thinking about maybe doing an s10 manual steering box. how much weight would i save, how much hp would be gained, and how hard of a swap would it be? thanks for the help guys. again the car barely gets driven except in the summer.

xpndbl3

iTrader: (5)

dana 60 is NOT worth it at all. The trans, for a cheap price sure, but will slow the car down as well due to more parasitic loss to spin that thing.

ZZ4 86 Z28

iTrader: (1)

would a th350 be better? he said he might have one of those too.

izcain

For a DD keep the overdrive. You can purchase SFC and trac bars for around 300 bucks for the set. That would be money well spent and will only improve things IMO.

83 Crossfire TA

iTrader: (2)

For a DD he _should_ have kept the TPI also.

So I take it that you decided that you’re keeping it, huh? Do you have any timeslips for it?

How about giving us some idea of direction here… so far everything appears to be going in the direction of screwing up streetablility and handling in exchange for straight line speed.

If you’re building a drag car then the TH350 or 400 would be a better choice then the 700, both are cheaper to keep running and more durable. I’d choose the 400 if your point is to go FAST reliably, the 350 if you’re interested in going as fast as possible and willing to work for it (the 350 will need more parts and rebuilds, but it’s much lighter with a MUCH lighter rotating assembly then the 400 or 700 so the car will be quicker).

The D60, same deal… It won’t just bolt in. Unless you’re able or know someone who can make brackets for it, it won’t bolt to the stock style suspension without major work/$$$, OTOH, if you put that effort in you will have a pretty much bullet proof, if not slightly heavy setup.

OTOH, if this is a drag car… well then just run one of the setups that gets rid of the TA, like the CE or Lakewood setup, then the brackets are fairly easy to weld/fabricate and it will hook and be bullet proof fairly cheap. If you want to take that approach but really do it right, just install some ladder bars. Of course, that will really kill the car’s handling, it will always feel too tight in the rear to handle right.

Traction… most people on here and on the ‘net in general are crack heads when it comes to traction. You can slap all sorts of things on your suspension in the quest for traction, spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars, or you can slap a set of real drag tires (for the sake of argument, because there is a middle ground, we’re talking real drag slicks) on a stock (in good repair) suspension and dead hook off the line till you need bigger tires or you’re running Stephen 87 IROC’s kind of times.

Without REAL sticky tires you cannot expect your car to just hook of the line (I know, you serious racers out there are going to say that even with real sticky tires you can do things to make them spin, but that’s not the point). Then you’re stuck with either really learning to drive or spending all sorts of money and time bitching on the boards and running slow 60’ times. To give you some idea, I’ve run cars as fast as mid 11’s on rock hard street tires (one set 17y/o and so hard I considered them unsafe on the car on the street), where I was able to nurse and drive them to the same 60’ and 1/4mile range as the car showed me it had the power to do on those real sticky tires dead hooking.

That being said, assuming the rear suspension parts are in good shape the only mods that I’d recommend in this range are:
- tires, life is always easier/more consistent at the track with some sticky tires
- panhard rod, you won’t see it in your 60’s but you will see it in the ¼ mile. The stock one has a tendancy to flex on the shifts causing the car to jump out sideways and loose traction
- air bags or a drag racing sway bar- not necessary but you can replace some of the “learning to drive” bit with preloading the passenger side.

I usually box the LCA’s, mostly because they’re there and it only takes me a few minutes/lets me play with the welder, and the car does feel better with stiffer LCA’s, but I haven’t been able to document any speed increase.

LCA brackets are a waste of time. They feel better on the street, they screw up your handling and at the track they’re worthless unless you’re running a softer, real sticky drag tire, and if you are you probably won’t see the big improvement with them anyway.

BTW, I’ve run high 1.7x 60’ times with 255/60/15 BFG radial TA’s with a pretty much stock suspension (lowered a lot with cut springs) and an open rear in my ’83 TA.

$300 +/- a little… if it was me with your car, it would depend on how sloppy it feels, if it’s moving around and I intended to go further with it in the future then it would be the SFCs, otherwise I’d probably lower it (cut the springs, $0) and get rid of your funky shocks/struts and replace them with something decent and make it handle. Alternatively, I’d probably look at t a cheapish converter in the 3K stall range or so.

ZZ4 86 Z28

iTrader: (1)

good stuff mark.
like i said the car is my only for right now, but i wouldnt call it a dd. also, i figured instead of making more power now while it is running right, ill build it up to handle power that i want to add to it later.
the tpi setup i had in there was complete junk, all the sensors were screwy, the injectors ware clogged, and i got my whole carb setup for next to nothing.
i found a 2 inch drop spring kit for 40 bucks locally, might do that or cut the springs. thanks for the good advice.

83 Crossfire TA

iTrader: (2)

You need to drag the thing out to the track this spring to see if what you're doing to it is actually doing any good or if you're just throwing money down a hole. I hope to get a pass or 2 in the TA I bought off Rob before I rip the drivetrain out of it, either way I'm hoping to make T&T nights at capitol a regular thing for me again this year...

from your response... do the SFC's. then if you have some more money you want to spend save it up to fix the shock/strut weirdness on that car, probably KYB's if you want to go cheap, tokico, bilstine or KYB AGX for middle of the road, or Koni if you're willing to spend the dough (the TA is getting Koni Yellows, if that gives you any indication where my thoughts really lie)

ZZ4 86 Z28

iTrader: (1)

ok thanks for the help. any by the way i got rid of that crap in the back. im just running regular shocks back there now without the springs around them. the shocks were shot so i had to get new ones the front is and has been a stock stlye setup.