naviathan

Ok I did it. I posted a couple weeks ago about a Fairlady 280Z that I found in a local Yard Sale website. Well I bought the car tonight for $3000 plus my rusty old Fairlady. Which works out fine for me. He's taking my rust bucket off my hands to part out and giving me a break on a nice semi clean Fairlady. The only thing that strikes me as odd on the car is the P90 head. I haven't looked much further into it though to see what block was in there, but it's got some pep, so I doubt it's a turbo engine sans the turbo. Big plus! CRACK FREE DASH!!! And no it's not a cover. Anyhow, I know we're all visually oriented so, on with the pictures. Anyone know what this says? Yeah this is really bad and it does transfer over...I'll deal with it later. And the wife is about to pop!

Thanks for the comments guys. Tonight is the flight, I'll be home sometime tomorrow if all goes well. Thank God too, I'm tired of Kuwait. The American dollar isn't worth jack here. The conversion rate I was given was, multiply by 4 and minus 10% which seems to figure out right. I bought a Jewelry set for the wife for $225 US and the Kuwait Dollar conversion was ~61KD. Sad and it keeps getting worse.

I can't stand spiders. We have what the locals call Tomato Spider or Writin' Spiders around my house. I've done my best to get rid of them, but they keep coming back. Very pretty spiders though to tell the truth. They're yellow/blue/red in color with black under bodies and they make this scribble pattern in their web that's really very neat to see. Not poisonous, but none the less if these guys are around then the more common Carolina spider is bound to be near by and that is the Black Widow. Pesticides work well on the ones near the ground, but only in large doses. I have yet to figure out what kills the ones that are under the eaves of the house and in the attic vents. I'm definitely calling an exterminator when I get home to get the house "sanitized" before the baby comes.

It's been 6 months and I'm on my way back to the US. Now with some extra cash in hand and some vacation time for the baby, I should have the time and money to fix my 81ZX again. Man it feels good just to be heading home, can't wait to actually get there. BRAAP - Still waiting on that PM! I know you're busy, but I could really use some advice on this. Thanks man!

Sure, who needs to test anything anymore? We'll just take a wild guess and hope we're right. Yes your VB is fried, but was it the settings or something else? Get a stim. Just to be safe. Wow...Yeah someone doesn't know how to clean the flux off after their done. I've built and troubleshot several boards. I could probably repair that. Question is, why don't you try to do it yourself and learn? I like to think Hybridz is all about learning new things and the MS projects on this board are great for just that.

Isn't the Flexalite the one from AutoZone? If so, yes I've used it on my Z and my Wrangler. Worked good on the Z. The Wrangler though, all that off-roading kept knocking the mounting straps loose

Nice, why can't I live in Cali? Oh yeah, IT"S EXPENSIVE!

True, I'm just a hobbyist so I went with the 175 as it does what I need which is mostly sheet metal work and some mild steel. If I could have afforded it though I would have bought a bigger MIG. Still trying to find a TIG for a decent price used.

I have AC and it works just fine. But I'm running R134a in mine.

Yeah I know what it is. I should have some on the parts car at home. Send me an email at naviathan at gmail dot com and I'll let you know when I get back home. I'll be there on the 30th.

I wouldn't say he was bsing, just maybe his opinion. Motor fans are great for cooling, but you do have some parasitic loss on the engine. Then again many will argue that you have the same loss from the extra draw on the alternator from an electric fan. From the butt dyno I can say that when I put an electric on my 77 I felt an increase in performance and the engine seemed to have more response. But there's also the problem with the electrical system in a Z. The alts don't put out enough power at idle to maintain all the system components with an electric fan. Say you're sitting at idle at a stop light at night and you fan kicks on. Your lights are going to dim and the engine is going to bog slightly from the power loss. There's pitfalls to everything. Personally I like the electric fan, but you'll need an alt upgrade at least.

This is why you need a stim. I would buy one just to be safe.

It's a site glass. Look it up. Basically it allows you to see your burn pattern in the cylinder. Blue is good.

I know exactly what you're talking about. However, I'm not sure you can get that piece. I need to tack mine back down because they've come loose, but I'm waiting to redo my weather stripping before tacking them back down. You may want to find the in a junkyard. Or wait until I get back to the states in about another week and I can try to pull the ones off my parts car for you.

Get a colortune. You can find them on eBay quite a bit and I believe MSA has them, or at least use to. The colortune is handy because not only can you tune your Z, but you can also tune just about anything with a spark plug by just buying the extra adapters. It's much cheaper than a wideband setup and more universal.

I have a Lincoln 175 that's been absolutely awesome. I don't think I've ever had a bad weld with this MIG. I connected a bottle of gas the day I got it and I've never looked back. It's 220V, but I'm working on an extension cord idea using some twist lock extension and some outlets built into the cart.

This car has become an ongoing project. It's become more than the simple head gasket change I intended it to be, but that seems to be the way things go in my garage. Things start out simple and end up a full on project. Some Background! My 81ZX DD has been down for going on 9 months now. It started after a trip to Myrtle Beach with wife to visit family. I got stuck in traffic and she over heated a bit. Never pegged the gauge, but came very close several times. Well drove it home thinking it was fine because it acted like normal. After every long trip I like to check and change the fluids. The oil was goop. I realized I was getting coolant in the block and I knew what had to be done. For me this was a blessing in disguise and I knew it. YAY! Upgrade time! If the car was going to be down it would be better than ever when it came back up. I immediately purchased an MSII kit online and put it together. Ok time for a new cam as well and I just happened to have one I was saving for a stroker project, but I figured it would serve well in my DD for now. After pulling the head I realized it was badly warped. Straight edge showed a huge gap and the cam was difficult to turn in the towers (required a large set of channel locks). Fine I have another head. An N42, I'll throw that in the machine shop and put the new springs, cam and rockers in it and go to town. And I couldn't be more wrong. At the time I didn't realize the N42 would up the compression. That wasn't the start of the problems though. First I ripped the nose off 5 of the cam lobes. So one performance cam down the drain. Turned out the valves that were in my N42 were too short....Yeah not sure how that happened. The engine I pulled the head from came off a 76 and the valve seats were steel, meaning someone had done some head work at one point. I'm not sure why they would have put shorter valves in, but it really screwed my engine up. So cleaned engine, replaced cam with stock and replaced the valves with some stainless ones I was saving. Up side is my machinist identified the valves and can get them for me for less than half what I paid from Arizona Z Car. Anyhow, put it back together, installed MSII and universal harness, locked distributor and cranked it up. Took a while to get the base timing set, but she eventually came to life. And ran like crap. The AFRs were all over the board and she had no power. Then she popped the head gasket. Pulled the head again and by this point I was 3 months into the project and leaving for Iraq. Welcome to today. I'm not home yet, but my 6 months in Iraq is almost done. I've realized my error with the head and now have a plan to throw in a 2mm MLS head gasket, some ARP head studs and get some good high octane gas in her so she can actually run with the high compression. Next up, getting home and starting over again...Wish me luck.

Sure it's that easy, just throw on some tripple carbs and a turbo and make massive power...HAHAHA I wish...

My brother had a gas Isuzu Trooper II from the 80s. That thing was fugly, but it was damned hard to beat off road. It didn't go fast, but it was a beast climbing dunes and rolling through rivers.

I was waiting for someone to say it...Makes sense yes? Do believe he's right. The head bolts that don't run through the cam towers might actually be a bit on the long side because of the shave. Not sure how deep those threads go into the block.

Thanks, I'm well aware of the electric swap. Would love to try that one day. The car I need would be good for long trips also. My current line up of vehicles includes the Z cars in my signature, a Harley Roadster and an 89 Ford Ranger. None of which are good gas or good travel vehicles. Especially with a kid.

You know what would be really neat to see? I remember when I was in school my mother had a nice Toyota luxury car (can't remember what model right off the top of my head) and it had a lift and release latch on the trunk. When you hit the release the whole latch would move up to relieve pressure then release. When you shut it you just push down until the latch clicked and the whole mechanism would draw down sealing the trunk. I think Cadillac had something like that too. Might want to look at one of those setups and see if it's doable. Hell I might even look at one now that I think about it.

You have to go to an automotive machine shop to have magnfluxing done. dr_hunt is right, I don't know why I was thinking a sonic test would show cracks, that's for lining up a large over bore.

I'm sorry, I have to ask the question that's just begging to be asked here...How did you hit a concrete wall?

Sounds to me like the latch has little too much grab to it. I would file down some of the hook to give it a smoother surface to slide across when the release is pressed. Keep it lubricated and despite the upward force the solenoid should be able to release the latch easily.