V8 swaps in Zs?

"GhostZ" (GhostZ) 09/11/2013 at 13:29 • Filed to: None

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I just found this National Geographic video about Compton street racers who have a 240z... with... you guess it, a 575ish HP V8 with nitrous. Warning: it's about street racers who take their car to the track to go professional, so if you're squeamish, avoid.

It's a good video that gives a pretty impartial and direct view on what's going on. I love these NatGeo documentaries for that reason, and there's a surprising number of them about cars in general. It shows both the benefits and dangers of street racing, and it does the same with track racing.

One thing I do like is the really obvious illegitimacy of the street car at track races. It shows the dark and vapid side of track racing just as much as it shows the dangerous and stupid side of street racing. It's not exciting and dangerous and scary but it shows how legitimate street racers make money and spend their time when there is a safe and positive group supporting them. They're running roll cages, parachutes, etc. on the street and deliberately taking care of their machines. It's not like these are kids who are taking their mother's Saturn and pretending they're Brian O'Conner.

One other particularly interesting point is where the burnout goes wrong on the track later on. On the street there, you have plenty of room to slide before you'll hit a wall, and the surface is much different.

I don't advocate street racing, but I will share with you another high school anecdote. In my experience, power always costs money, but there are two things you must control to win no matter how much power you have: 1. weight, and 2. surface management. One thing we used to do back in high school was take some water and wash down the launch area, and then let it dry before meeting up when someone came to race. Dirt and dust would be cleaned off of our lane, giving a much better place to get grip. If they tried to wash their side right away instead of waiting like we did, the water would still float on top of the street before settling in and drying, and they'd actually lose grip. Meanwhile, the 'serious' racers had a 500 HP '06 GTO and relied entirely on their expensive parts and money to win races, leaving a lot of speed on the table by not taking careful consideration of their environments.

I would always run the car with about 1/4 tank of gas (sometimes I would refill 2-3 times a night with only a few gallons at a time) to save weight. It also helped that I weighed about 50lbs less than anyone else I raced against, and sometimes up to a 100lbs difference between drivers. Add that to the fact that I stripped everything out of the trunk, then my stock-appearing 1998 Mustang came in around 300-400lbs less than an actually stock one with a 200lb driver. Since I ran 15" wheels instead of 16" ones, I got more torque than usual off the line as well, at the sacrifice of about 5-10 mph top speed. This made for serious handling and acceleration improvements that cost virtually no money.

Either way, enjoy this video. Hopefully it hasn't been reposted too many times, but this is the first I've seen of it.

lone_liberal > GhostZ 09/11/2013 at 13:38

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One thing you forgot to mention is that on the street there is always a chance of an innocent driver dying because they unknowingly got caught up in somebody else's race. On the track the drivers assume the vast majority of the risk and at least the bystanders know there is a race going on and are aware of the possible risks. If street racers only killed themselves then there wouldn't be as much concern about it.

GhostZ > lone_liberal 09/11/2013 at 13:42

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I'll be completely honest... if you're driving down a relatively unused street at 3AM and you see a large group of cars blocking off a section and see obvious racing going on... and you still decide to force your way down that street around these people and get hit, you're an absolute idiot. That's like seeing a military convoy and watching them having a live-fire test, and deciding to walk out in there because its a free country and you have the right to walk in the middle of an obviously dangerous area.

We'd have spotters that would check a mile up or down the road for any cars coming (it was so flat you could see for a long distance if headlights were coming) so if someone wanted to drive on the same roads, we'd just hang out on the side of the road until they passed. The people who race through public roads without any backup, support, or control over the situation and don't know what they are doing are the ones who are really dangerous. That being said, they're not as bad as a drunk driver or someone driving while texting.

The media hears about street racers who get caught up and do something stupid. Most street racing wrecks happen because someone is driving normally and gets caught up in kiddy fights on the highway. Proper street racing that is organized and controlled by intelligent people is actually pretty safe, the worst that happens is you curb the car or blow an engine.

lone_liberal > GhostZ 09/11/2013 at 13:53

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Wrong. Simply wrong. When you are engaged in an illegal activity you can't expect somebody who is minding their own business trying to get home or to their shitty job that starts at 4 am to make allowances for you. I don't care how "organized" you are. Minimizing risk is not the same as eliminating it and why should some everyday Joe be exposed to risk just because you want to have some fun? Stop and think about the consequences of your actions on other people.

Casper > GhostZ 09/11/2013 at 13:56

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The interesting thing is racing like this has been a mainstay of American car culture for almost 100 years. In the 50's and 60's it exploded with all the wealth post WWII and the muscle car boom. It was extremely common to see events like this planned in advance with little concern from law enforcement as long as it was contained and done reasonably safely (read: safe from the 50s was different than the wimpy safe of today).

While I generally side with the "take it to the track" people, I can understand this happening when they continually close tracks and regulate them into the ground.

Casper > lone_liberal 09/11/2013 at 14:00

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I find these arguments funny from the grounds of logic. It's easy to point at something like organized street racing and say "this inconveniences people and adds hazard, it's bad" but most of the people saying this do FAR more dangerous things on their daily commute that are unnecessary. Heck, look at most bicyclists. They are inconveniencing everyone while also increasing the risk to nearly everyone involved at a much higher rate than isolated issues like organized street races or impromptu road closures, but they aren't vilified at nearly the same scale because more people participate in the activity.

By getting in a car you are assuming some risk, that's why you buy cars that are build like tanks with more safety features than any other device we make. You do not have any right to the expectation of risk reduction by other traffic on the road, that's the entire point behind defensive driving. If you aren't doing 100% of what you can do to reduce the risk to other drivers or yourself, you really shouldn't be throwing any proverbial stones.

Union of Smog Techs of CA > GhostZ 09/11/2013 at 14:00

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One thing you can count on in life is people being stupid, so even if the street racers think they have it perfectly safe, they cant guarantee it. If you have the mental capacity to understand the consequences of your actions then YOU have the responsibility to protect the people around you from your actions. That's how society works, someone has to be the adult and set a good example. Treat the streets as having a full course yellow, don't use what is there for all of us to use for your own gratification and disregard the potential needs of others, even at 3 am in the morning.

lone_liberal > Casper 09/11/2013 at 14:12

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Yes, you knowingly assume risk when you drive or ride a bike. You know of the various risks, but you can't go out and drive drunk and then say people who you killed should have known that was a possibility. It doesn't work that way. When you are doing something illegal you are the one at fault. Period. You are putting somebody else at risk because of your illegal actions. You are an ass if you do that and you deserve to go to jail.

Casper > lone_liberal 09/11/2013 at 14:17

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Driving drunk is different and you know it. Drunk driving is a loss of control. I am talking about the hypocrisy of doing things that are under control like those that do organized street racing. For instance, that bicyclist assumed responsibility for HIMSELF, but he did not care that his actions could put other motorists in danger or cause them inconvenience. The woman applying make that is traveling too slow in the middle lane of the freeway is putting everyone in front of her in danger while also inconveniencing those behind her... yet where is the moral outrage to match the statements of this topic?

You are hung up on the fact that the "illegal" portion is the important part. It's not. Legal or illegal are irrelevant from a moral or logical perspective as they are controlled by opinion and based on neither.

D > GhostZ 09/11/2013 at 14:24

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I do not race, but when I go recreational-driving on Fridays, it's in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. There's no other vaguely acceptable environment to engage in these kinds of activities (I can also fully understand no acceptable environment). Developed areas are people's lives, don't fuck around with that.

Sparf > GhostZ 09/11/2013 at 14:25

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Welp, you already know my position on V8 Zs so I'll move on to the other topic of this post: Street Racing.

I haven't done it, but the fact that there's no such thing as legal highway racing (I really like very long, wide straights with equally long sightlines, soft curves and smooth elevation changes) means I probably will some day. I just have to figure out the safest way to do it.

GhostZ > lone_liberal 09/11/2013 at 14:26

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Everyday Joe takes more damage from a track being built nearby than he does from street racers. "life" isn't the only measurement of cost, there's space, resources, energy, time, money, labor, etc. You can't say that the consequences of street racing are worse than the consequences of most other forms of recreation. You can say it is more 'risky' (once you've defined exactly what risk is) but you can't say it costs society more. You can't just say that legal forms of recreation are automatically better because the costs aren't immediately evident, you have to know the full situation.

I've actually done a lot of research into this subject over the years, but bear with me and let me explain my position.

Recreation, whether it is a movie theater, track, or street racing, comes at some cost of time, labor, resources, etc. The whole concept of economic utility is based around the principle that if you take away (or make more costly to get) something from someone who doesn't care much about it, and give it to someone who really cares about it, and do it enough times, you can find an equilibrium where the overall system gives the most usefulness to individuals.

While a street racer could potentially kill someone and end their life, the frequency of these deaths (a few 100 per year, and a very small percent of those were non-participants) and the loss of that one death is relatively negligible compared to the cost of land, environmental damage,

For example, if a drug dealer decides to street race instead, the cost to the system is one less drug dealer on the street, meaning many drug users may have to go farther and pay more to get the same recreation that they would get from that dealer's drugs. Will some of them go to less self-damaging but less exciting things? Of course, if and only if those people are risk-adverse. But most people get better use out of risky things (where losing money may still mean they gain, since the risk is the recreation as much as the product is) so if they are risk-loving, they will gladly pay the higher price for the drugs for the added risk.

The scenario works in the opposite way too.

Put simply, street racing seems really bad because it might hurt an individual by some chance, whereas the same amount of damage is done by street racing alternatives but spread out over a distance and at a long distance with far less risk (and thus more certainty of harm) to the surrounding area.

At the end of the day, forcing all street racers to find alternative recreation could make the area, on a whole, worse off. You'd be significantly hurting a group of people to significantly benefit the one or two people who would be directly affected by the racing. And then, even if you do break even on the overall benefits of recreation, there is cost of enforcement .

The world is an ugly place, but statistics, law, and policy creation let us make sense of it. There's a reason why street racing is not a capital crime, or why we (in terms of most laws) really only care about street racers who kill someone by being stupid. The fact that all street racers could kill someone is like saying that Nuclear, Solar, or Wind power is bad because despite the benefit it creates, it could have a meltdown, damage the environment during recycling, or break down and hurt someone who is nearby. Just like how coffee shops exist to provide a service and a benefit at a cost of labor, space, and resources, street racing is a market that exists provide recreation at a certain cost.

It has a highly volatile cost, usually costing very little and sometimes costing a lot and in a very localized area of hurt. But on average, I'd say that street racing's national cost is pretty low. It's a a whole hell of a lot lower than Drunk Driving, that's for sure. About 100,000 people die from drunk driving nationally, yet the laws are usually more relaxed than if you were street racing, because of that perceived volatility and localized damage it can cause makes it a much more politically-favorable condition to pursue .

To put it in summation, street racing takes advantage of a relatively unused resource (land, time, etc.) to provide a high, concentrated level of benefit to a small group. Under controlled circumstances, it provides an very low cost for that enjoyment to the society as a whole. Under uncontrolled circumstances, it can occassionally provide a small cost to the overall society, but it is a strong, localized peak in a normally very low level of cost.

I know quite a few friends that used Street racing to keep them away from drugs or more dangerous activities. They learned more about how to function in society than school would ever teach them, and they found a good community.

During my entire high school career, 1 wreck happened because of the races, and it wasn't with the controlled group that I raced with and it was done in an unsafe location by some punk. He got whiplash and that was it. But during those 4 years, about 10 people I knew at my school and adjacent schools died from drunk driving accidents.

That being said, street racing can be very bad if it is not done properly. I'm against idiots and people who can't control themselves, not legal or illegal activities. We're all humans seeking the same meaning out of life, it's not my place to demand things that would damage the society as a whole just because I am not informed enough to realize that what sounds nice on paper is not nice in real life.

lone_liberal > Casper 09/11/2013 at 14:29

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You are not in control. You are out on public roads that you in no way control and you are driving in a manner that precludes you from being in normal control of your vehicle. That's the difference between driving fast and racing. You are driving on the edge and sometimes over it. The speed that you are doing it at means that any other traffic has that much less time to react to you. Being illegal very much matters. If you hit me because you changed lanes without signalling you are at fault morally and legally. If you kill me because you felt the need for speed you are at fault, both morally and legally because you were the one doing something wrong. How do you think the street racers who have killed people doing it feel about it now?

GhostZ > Union of Smog Techs of CA 09/11/2013 at 14:33

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If you have the mental capacity to understand the consequences of your actions then YOU have the responsibility to protect the people around you from your actions.

I completely agree with this, and this is exactly the type of thing I am promoting. Likewise, it goes both ways. A driver on the road who stumbles onto street racers, is stopped and informed of what is going on and is asked to wait 15 seconds before the coast is clear for him to pass, and he insists and puts himself into harm and into the a position that would harm these racers that otherwise are safe then I can't guarantee his safety any more than he can protect himself.

It's like seeing a parade go by and being told to stop a second for it to pass so you don't hurt yourself and others, and yet you decide that you're going to just drive right through it because the road is "for everyone". The only difference is that street racers don't have badges that allow them to prosecute people for doing stupid things.

Casper > lone_liberal 09/11/2013 at 14:35

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I think you have some mental impingement preventing you from understanding emotional impact vs morality. Morality has nothing to do with how you feel after killing someone doing something legal vs illegal. If you change lanes and fail to signal and kill someone, you feel bad. If you change lanes while signaling, and kill someone, you feel bad. That feeling of empathy is what triggers both rationalization and irrational "what if" compensations. It doesn't change just because you are told it was legal or illegal. Just like shooting someone in the face can be completely legal or completely illegal with a slight change to circumstance, it doesn't change your empathetic reaction. It only changes the legal responsibility.

You are not thinking logically, you are irrationally grasping. How someone feels after they kill someone has no bearing on the irrationality of these hypocritical soap box topics.

lone_liberal > GhostZ 09/11/2013 at 14:38

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You are putting risk on people who don't want it and don't deserve it. You can risk your life if you want but you are imposing your will on other people. You can say that street racing is safer for the street racers. What you can't say is that when there is street racing the public is safer. Who's at risk if you sky dive? You. Who's at risk if you climb mountains? You. If you do need to be rescued it's done by people who can say no, it's too dangerous. You can try to justify and rationalize it to yourself all you want, but in the end you are putting innocent people at risk because you want to have fun. It's a self-centered, selfish activity and even the car community condemns it.

GhostZ > Sparf 09/11/2013 at 14:42

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Here in the US, weekday mornings are the best time for highways. There's practically no cars on the road. I used to go cruising around 90-100 in my Mustang when I had a day off from school or during the summer.

To do it properly safely I imagine you want a roll cage (rolls are a lot more common at higher speeds) sticky rubber, good steering feel, good braking technique (locked brakes at 80mph is about the scariest thing in the world) and possibly a decent LSD.

The trick is to maintain speed, don't increase your moment. Make every change in speed or direction very gradual and slow. The problem is that if you see a corner and you come too fast, you may be fucked by the time you even see that there is a turn. So always have either a navigation or great knowledge of the roads first. Never cross the lines unless you would otherwise die (which should never happen) and never drive at 100%. That's my advice.

GhostZ > lone_liberal 09/11/2013 at 14:52

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I don't think you read what I posted, because your reply isn't applicable to my post, I know what you are saying, but you're repeating something without supporting it that I already said was wrong.

I agree with you. Street racing puts risk on people who don't want it and don't "deserve" it (whatever that means). But I am also saying that all forms of business and recreation put risk (and sometimes not risk, but straight up damage and cost) on people who don't want it and don't deserve it. That's the way the world works, and you can't condemn street racing and ignore the costs of other forms of recreation at the same time.

If you sky dive, the risk falls on the cost of a plane, the resources to run it, the labor of operating the plane and the business, the land that it takes, the open area for you to land in, the cost and manufacturing the suit, etc. Imagine if all of those people were instead working on something that saved lives, instead of just supporting happy recreational skydiving.

I will grant you one thing though: mountain climbing is probably one of the least-externally damaging sports you can do. It's a very efficient way to get a thrill. That is a good example. However, this only applies to people who value rock climbing. If someone is afraid of heights, has little grip strength, or isn't in a location with any mountains, then the cost of recreation can be quite high to the individual, but generally it doesn't harm society that much.

I'm not saying that street racing is better than any form of recreation, but I am also not saying it is worse. There is an artificial condemnation against it because most people do not know anything, much less the facts, about it.

Stop being emotional about it and look at the facts and data. Going to a movie theater is about as self-centered as spending your day posting on a car forum arguing with someone, and it's just as self-centered at street racing. All three things are just ways for us to deal with our emotions and get our thrill out of life before we die. Those thrills always come at the expense of someone else.

Union of Smog Techs of CA > GhostZ 09/11/2013 at 14:55

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Yeah, stupid people are gonna find themselves in harms way no matter what. That's the secret to success in life, realizing that most people are stupid and exploiting that. That's why I never street raced like that, I have done some incredibly stupid things on the street for adrenaline, because I was drunk, or someone pissed me off though.

And we can always count on people breaking the laws too, I think a lot of the appeal of street racing is just the breaking of the laws. There's a certain mentality in some people that will never mesh with what the rest of society is trying to accomplish. If trolls exist on the internet, then surely they are doing the same stuff in real life. It's funny for them to get groups of people together doing something stupid and egg them on past the point of sanity.

Sideshows, street racing, looting etc, there's always someone in control in the group who knows better and who blatantly doesn't care about the consequences of the group as a whole.

Sparf > GhostZ 09/11/2013 at 14:56

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I've already been scouting out the highway stretches near my home (where I've lived all my life, so I know the roads very well from the passenger seat) a bit, but so far it seems like a stupid place to do it (albeit it has potential, I just have to check when the traffic's the lightest).

As for car prep, I'm not going to do it in my ST165 (mainly due to the steering feel being dismal for a sports car and that nobody has ever attempted to fix it AFAIK). Building something akin to a Wangan Racer (yes, I've watched too much Wangan Midnight) is on my bucket list ( *cough* RB-powered Z31 *cough* ), and until I can do that I'm taking it easy.

Good advice on maintaining speed and the like. I've already done a little light speeding just to check where my limits are, and so far my top speed has "just" been about 150 km/h / 93 mph (I've been trying it in 10 km/h / 6 mph intervals every now and then when I'm completely alone on certain stretches of highway that I know very well, with the first time topping out at about 130).

GhostZ > Union of Smog Techs of CA 09/11/2013 at 15:03

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I think the 'mentality' actually comes first, not second, to the social rules or laws.

I belive the social norms of what is "acceptable" are created because a certain number of people won't fit it. Just like how laws are written under the knowledge that some amount of crime is going to happen no matter what enforcement is chosen. I think the trend of 'going against the grain' of society is just part of society itself, and it's the rules and convention that comes after the animalistic need for individuality and survival.

I, unfortunately (because it often gets in the way of my work) am addicted to speed. I am smart about it and manage myself properly and I've never gotten a single ticket despite my street racing history, but from the first day I got behind the wheel of a $200 1990 Nissan Maxima, I knew that the only time I was ever going to content and happy in my life was when I had the fastest vehicle going the fastest speed possible. My life, so far and probably until its end, is going to be a safe, controlled, and focused attempt to achieve that. That's what lead me to learning how to operate safe street racing when the nearest track to me was six hours away .

Or, in other words, I hope I die at 105 years old inside a supersonic Bonneville Salt Flats rocket car that I built by hand.

GhostZ > Sparf 09/11/2013 at 15:08

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Z31 is a great place to start due to the low drag coefficient.

Not to make you jealous, but my top speed is about 150mph / 241kph in a friend's Pontiac Firebird WS6. My own personal car's top speed was 125mph, downhill, with a draft. I was amazed at how well the body could take the force.

Then again, I had access to "great" roads that had about 1 car every 5 miles or so on a busy day, and tons of visibility.

Union of Smog Techs of CA > GhostZ 09/11/2013 at 15:26

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Damned 4DSC leading you astray! I hope it had a VE.

I think the only solution to all this is some sort of completely lawless state where people who don't give a damn can go and do whatever. Super-Vegas.

GhostZ > Union of Smog Techs of CA 09/11/2013 at 15:34

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It had a VG30E making 160HP and computer-adjustable suspension. That being said... you had to open the driver's door to turn the key in the ignition and I had to replace fuses about once a month. The transmission died a year into ownership and I traded up for a Mustang.

Super-vegas sounds fun though.

Sparf > GhostZ 09/11/2013 at 15:44

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Ha, that's almost exactly my dad's top speed (done in a then-brand new RX-7 FD3S while he was working at Mazda Sweden)!

My personal goal is at least 200 and hopefully 250 mph at Bonneville. Gotta join the 200 club! All in due time, though, I've got my whole life ahead of me.

matthewklein220 > Sparf 09/12/2013 at 01:13

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There is a legal highway race, the Nevada Silver State Classic. My dad's friend ran it a few years back in a 4th gen Firebird with a supercharger and a cage (no suspension mods as far as I've been told) and he said the slowest "corner" was 90 mph and the fastest straights were well over 160.