M.Bonanni

Sent!

Looking for the metal piece that connects to the coolant inlet/outlet hoses at the firewall. Car is a '78 280Z with factory A/C. Thanks!

PMed Thanks! I was looking at those as a fall-back option only because for that style of wheel I like the XXR or Rota versions a tad bit better on the spoke design, plus the Rewinds are a 16x7" and I would prefer an 8" wheel.

Finally time for wheels & tires on my 280Z project! Problem is finding what I want. Hopefully someone on here has a setup they're looking to get rid of! Criteria: - 15" or 16" - Silver, gunmetal, or bronze ONLY - Must fit a stock fendered 280Z. Don't mind rolling them though if necessary. - Not interested in overly stretched tires. - Looking for flush fitment on street camber settings. - Not looking to spend any more than $1000 on a complete setup - No extensive curb rash, no bent wheels, etc. - With or without tires, but if with tires more than 60% tread left on all 4. Car info: - '78 280Z - Stock fenders (no flares) - Lowered on BC coilovers If you can give a shipped price to Las Vegas (89129) that's even better!

Looking for a replacement hood for my '78 280Z. I don't have any preferences with color or condition of paint but I am looking for one without any dents/damage/rust. Preferably in or near Las Vegas, NV. If I have to ship it will have to be for a REALLY good price. Thanks! EDIT: Found one!

Camber wont have any effect on how hard it is to move or steer unless adjusting the camber also adjusts the caster. If the steering is really heavy it's almost certainly caster to blame and it's probably like that for a reason as it is set up to perform on the track. Higher caster and a heavier steering feel and self-centering effect are beneficial on track (to a certain extent) but make the car much harder to turn at low speeds like pushing it around a shop. If it's hard to move forward/backward in a straight line than that may be toe, but it would have to have a lot of toe out/in to cause that much effect, much more than a normal race car should have. Now this does nothing to answer your question on how to adjust the camber on your car but hopefully it sheds some light on the mobility issue. Other than that, as others have mentioned we would need to know what type of camber plates you have to help with that.

Thermostat housing and gasket look relatively new and in great condition. I don't see any signs of them leaking although I wish it were the culprit as it would have been an easy fix! Thanks! I will look into that.

Thanks for the help again NewZed! The piece you pictured doesn't appear to be an issue on my car. I am leaning more toward head gasket the more things I rule out. All the freeze plugs seem okay as well. Really, the entire engine is so filthy I should probably clean the hell out of it as best as possible and try and see if I can spot a more defined coolant trail before I jump to any conclusions.

It's the blue area that is saturated with coolant, the dark spots on the exhaust manifold are from some penetrating lube overspray. The passenger side is bone dry. I will get into photoshop and clarify on the photo.

Just picked up this '78 280Z as a new project and it has a cooling leak that I can't see the origin of so before I spend hours tearing into the top of the engine I was hoping you call could help narrow the focus of my search since I am new to this chassis and engine. The You can see in the photo where the leak, but not it's origin. It's at the back of the block on the left side and starts high up somewhere toward or at the head. I am hoping it isn't a head gasket, but I did check the oil and it isn't milky and looks in great shape. Is there something back there on that side of the engine that may be the source? It's not a terrible leak, but it looks like it's been going on for a long time. Where you see blue is the fluid. The dark spots on the exhaust manifold are not from the leak, they're from some penetrating lube I was using on the steering column nearby. Thanks in advance!

Today's progress... Got the power distribution block in the mail today but I am still waiting on the fuses to complete the Maxi fuse conversion. Mounted it to the "stock" location for now and in all likelihood will leave it there for a while until I get to the point where I am focusing on engine bay beautification. Only other thing I got to today was changing out the steering coupler to an Energy Suspension polyeurethane one. It didn't need it too badly which is surprising since every other bit of rubber on this car is toast, but I changed it anyway since it came with the master bushing kit I got as soon as I purchased the car. Stock on the left vs. new on the right. Installed Only other thing I did was adjust the door handles so they were back to working like new while the door panels are still off.

Got to spend the majority of the day in the garage today which is rare! First task was to get all of the wiring and everything prepped for the Maxi fuse conversion while I am waiting on parts to arrive. The stock configuration has a white power wire that mounts to the starter and then splits into 4 to go into the factory fusible links and they exit the fusible links as white/red wires and go their various places. The new setup uses a power distribution block which splits the power internally so there's only a need for one large input and has the 4 outputs I need for the white/red wires. So first step was to cut back the wiring harness tape and remove the white wire from the starter that is no longer needed. I replaced it with a 4 gauge battery cable as that's the size of the inlet on the distribution block and seems to be the size most people run for this conversion. I taped the harness back up, disconnected the old hard-wired links, and now all the wiring is ready to be hooked up once the block arrives. For now, I am just going to mount the block to the same spot on the relay housing that the factory fusible links were just for easy of install, but later I may move it when I get to the point where I am focusing on cleaning up the engine bay. So next step was to remove the relay housing and get it prepped for the new fuse block. While I was in there I also noticed a plug connection that went to nowhere so I consulted the wiring diagram and figured out that I am missing my air conditioner relay completely, which is another missing part of the A/C I can replace to rule out that possibility as to why it doesn't work. I cleaned up and painted the housing while it was out and soaked all the nasty bolts in apple cider vinegar to get them clean again. For now I will leave it all out so I can mount the new fuse block and also try and find a replacement relay. Fortunately once I find the relay it should just plug right back in. I also tried out some plastic paint on one of the old brown interior panels to change it to black and it worked great! Saves me a bunch of money on my interior color change. Next, I started preparing to put the missing components of the A/C back in while I am still looking for parts for that as well. I am missing the F.I.C.D. unit which controls vacuum for the air conditioning and I am missing the vacuum tank as well. I happened to still have an aftermarket vacuum tank from an old project in my garage that I think looks much better so I started trying to figure out a place to mount it as I don't much like the factory mounting location either aesthetically. I also still had an Odyssey PC-680 lightweight battery and mount from my old 370Z project so I came up with a solution that I am very happy with. Using the factory battery tray I can mount the new battery in a spot where the terminals are still accessible from the inspection door, and I still had room to mount the new vacuum canister as well for what I think is a much cleaner look. The battery that was in there was also missing all of the mounting hardware and held in by a bungee cord so this new solution saves me from having to buy all new battery hold down hardware! And while I was working, UPS showed up with my new reproduction door panels so I just had to hang them real quick! There's still work I need to do inside the doors so they won't go on for good just yet, but I still had to see. Aside from that, just took care of a few other small odds and ends and before I knew it the day was over. The rest of the parts for the Maxi fuse conversion are supposed to show up tomorrow!

Now onto the fusible link situation in detail... Upon my initial inspection of the car I noticed this wiring in the engine bay that was suspect looking as they were held together using those plastic twist-caps you would use for a ceiling install in your house, but are not my first choice for automotive wiring. Everything still ran and drove perfect so I wasn't too concerned with what was missing that those wires used to connect to. It was something I wanted to check into at a later date but since everything appeared to be working fine I just proceeded to fix the connections by getting rid of the twist-caps and soldering them together thinking I was making the situation better. Now I know that was not necessarily a good thing to do after figuring out what these wires are supposed to go to in the first place. Fortunately for me nothing was ever damaged as a result of not having these fusible links in the car. I am not sure how long the previous owner ran without them but it looked like it was done quite a while ago. Fortunately for him, and ultimately me nothing caught fire or was damaged as a result. Needless to say though I wont even be starting the car until this is fixed properly. Seeing as direct stock replacement parts are not readily available, and unless someone has a reason to talk me out of it, I will be doing a maxi fuse conversion instead. After researching all last night and most of today I have come to the conclusion that there are no downsides to doing this conversion and it seems like I can do it easier, cheaper, and with better results than sourcing and hunting down the stock replacement parts. The result will be something like this although I haven't fully committed to this particular mounting location...

No need to feel guilty and thanks for the photo! It certainly does help and I may have found another oddity with my setup thanks go this photo. My receiver dryer is on the other side of the engine bay. Maybe a difference between my '78 and your model year? Or maybe more work has been done to my A/C system than I thought.