lolwat?

:iagree:

My thoughts:
1) If you "under-engineer" a car to save money, you end up replacing a lot of parts on warranty, thereby paying for 2 or 3 of the original parts + labor for exchange, rather than a 20% premiun for an upgraded part from the begining that can tolerate the abuse. This gives a rationale to make the car durable in the first place.
2) As the end user, if you modify an under-engineered car and it breaks repeatedly, they say you broke it from abusing it, denying warranty and you have to pay for replacement parts repeatedly.
3) If you under-engineer a track oriented car and it breaks repeadedly, it gets a bad reputation and people stop buying it even after you fix the defective parts in upcoming model years because there are other cars on the market that are cheaper to purchase and maintain under race conditions.

I for one, am really going to track it. First oil temp issues and now differential issues? I GOTTA think Nissan is gonna make good on it in the not so distant future.

Coincidentally, the OTHER car I was interested in was the 135i, which also has cooling issues, and now brake issues? Perhaps I'll stick with my rock solid GTI for awhile longer...

I agree. I keep reading about new "sports cars" breaking at the track as well; I think I'll keep beating on my perfectly reliable Miata.

no car is perfect i mean take my evo for example, its a track oriented car and it,....uh.. it... humm.. well maybe there is a perfect car..

ooo just remembered the temp. knob for the a/c / heat breaks in the 03-04 models..:tup:

exact same reason y i'm waiting a year to have some bugs fixed. I know i want this car but just not now. I regularly track my s for the last 3 years and all i do is oil changes, replace brake pads, tires. Bulletproof. Too bad this car can't hang with the crowd anymore.

This should come as no surprise. The differential would fail without a cooler. Its all about airflow and diff location. The 350Z has this same problem as well. Look at the pre-production test cars we photographed and wrote up, they all had diff coolers.

The Nismo car doesn't really have a Nismo performance LSD, that is a Salisbury mechanical LSD. The Nismo 370Z has a viscous LSD, the same as the stock sports model.

Also note that the R200 diff in the 370Z is very strong and has a long history as being a durable piece that is exceedingly strong that can hold 1000 hp under racing conditions in the IMSA GTO Z and various racing GT-R's and Z's though history.

The issue is that in both the 370 and 350, there is no air circulation around the diff and it heats up. Generaly about 30 minutes of track time is about what it takes for the temp to start getting critical. GTA makes a diff cooler kit and we have all sorts of info and tips on the other site for what to do if you have a track driven car

Note that the reason the newer cars are having issues is that they are quite a bit faster. The horsepower wars have put cars into a category where a lot of other parts need to be upgraded. In addition to brakes and driveline parts, the high cornering speeds and sticky tires will also no doubt impact wheel bearings, bushings, etc.

Remember, these cars are seriously fast - as fast as the supercars of the early '80s - and they are darn sure more reliable than a Countach or a Testarossa. And race cars - designed from the ground up for use on the track - are not "reliable" in any sense. Colin Chapman, perhaps the best race car designer ever, pushed the idea that if things weren't breaking, they were over-engineered. I'm not saying I want a car that breaks, I'm just saying that we have to understand some of the difficulty involved.

People rail on Toyota and Honda for building boring cars, but they are the ones that really drove home the idea that a car would "just work". Now we're all used to it, and we're starting to take offense at the idea that a car will have problems, even when it is being used at 10/10ths at the track.

A track environment is, by definition, severe. We need to accept that driving hot sh!t cars there will be costly. The Miata is reknowned because it has been, and continues to be, the cheapest possible way to get track time. But when you double the horsepower and only add a few thousand dollars, and you can't expect the car to be bulletproof.

My $0.02 anyway...

The R200 is a very strong diff, there is no way the VQ37VHR is going to stress it out. This diff has been used on very high powered race cars under actual racing conditions with good reliabilty. It can withstand the stress of a turboed VQ motor no problem. The issue is purely temperature related and is solved with an oil cooler.

^^ Maybe true, but how come the 350z never had issues with their Diffs?

If you read my posts in this thread and places like my350Z you would know that the 350Z and 370Z have identical problems with heat build up.

350Z's in real racing conditions will start to fail their diffs at around the 30 minute mark. SCCA T2 Z's have to install dif coolers or the diffs will fail by locking up. A T2 car is like a street car full modded with bolt ons.

I have a bunch of experience with racing and tracking the 350 and carefully monitoring diff temp. If you are on the track for more than 30 minutes at a time, something will eventually happen in a 350 or 370. With a cooler you will be fine, even with a mechanical LSD, sticky tires and turbos.

Is the R200 refering to the ring gear or is this the same diff from the 280Z, etc?

+1, have seen it in happen twice in person at a track event and at a drag strip (guy was being stupid though at the strip)...after that i decided to stop 'racing' my 350 and just spectate lol

Also, it seems like a simple thing to resolve, if you are going to track the car, then add a diff cooler and oil cooler. Tracking cars requires some additional mods, it's really quite simple. If you don't take the precautions, then pay the price.