Three items had been sitting at the bottom of the Z's list for a while: the Z1 front subframe brace, the aluminum W-brace, and the high-clearance rear brace. A couple of evenings on the lift finally cleared all three.
I started at the front. The RZ34 is plenty stiff from the factory, but the front subframe is a wide span with a lot of leverage working against it, and the Z1 brace ties those mounting points together with a welded triangle. Nothing exotic - just geometry doing what geometry does.
The install itself was easy and went exactly the way the Z1 instructions said it would. The only real effort was dropping the exhaust out of the way, and with as few miles as this car has, every one of those bolts backed right out with no drama. Ask me how that goes on the 280z sometime.
The next evening I moved to the back half, starting with the aluminum W-brace. The bolts that came in the box didn't fit, so I reused four factory bolts in the forward mounting positions and moved on. Not sure why they shipped the larger hardware, but it went in the bin with everything else I'm sure I'll need someday.
Then the high-clearance rear brace went over the diff. The "high-clearance" name is about exhaust routing rather than ground clearance, since the brace is shaped to clear larger piping back there. That's a nice bonus with the Z1 exhaust, but the stiffening is what I was after.
The underside is getting to be a lot of red and titanium at this point. That was never really the plan, but I'm not complaining.
Pending list is empty for the first time since I brought the car home. Time to go find some corners!
