| Guru's some years back when met up with them at an event at Willow Springs. Guys like Mike Kojima were in the discussion. The rest were the kind of guys that you let talk and listen to hopefully suck up as much knowledge as these guys simple expel through normal conversation. But, after bringing up the question of "how can you visually tell if you have actually added ridgity to a chassis or just simply overkilled the idea and just added weight for no reason?" I was met with answers like "you go with what works". From here we got into the point of always trying to use the hard top version of a vehicle when building a race car. Obviously for safety reasons, but more on the point that Bernie made. Your points of contact. The slicktop does offer a few more points of contact where sheetmetal will overlap ultimately adding ridgidity in itself. In a unibody platform (aka, overlapping sheetmetal that comes together as a whole to add collapsable safety, ease of assembly and ability to lighter materials) like ours, the most overlapping sheetmetal is ideal in stock form because you simply have a better springboard to begin with. With the slicktop you are starting off lighter than any other body available, the body is the stiffest platform ever offered in the 300zx and as a bonus you get an NA rear end that work well with a stock to moderately upgraded TT engine swap. BUT, the coupe design as a whole IS NOT the best application for a track setup. Ultimately you would want a 2+2 for the longer wheel base and a slicktop roof, which of course never came in the Z32. The IMSA used that same idea with the 2+2 and made the roof solid (of course a lot more was done the body than just that) to give you an idea of truly being "ideal". So you get into that whole argument of building for a purpose. Do you want a light nimble track/street machine? Then you go slicktop. Do you want the most ideal platform for a full out track application? Then you got 2+2 and either sheetmetal the roof or do like Project 300zx on MotoIQ and slicktop the roof. It's all about knowing what your end goal is. I personally love my slicktops. I love the T-tops for an all around fun car, but for an all purpose-no nonsense- 300zx.....slicktop all the way. But there is something about popping the tops when you are running through the hill country. To each their own.
 |
