MusPuppis

Got some new shots of it today. Bryan buffed it out, but we're gonna go back over it again to kill all the swirl marks and get the clear good and shiny. Still no body kit.. Not till Monday. Trim is missing and a few other assorted odds and ends but you can get an idea what its gonna look like when its completely wrapped up.

Wow.. I would paint it.. Not a fan of chrome, but that thing is just amazing looking. IMO we shouldd take up a collection and buy it, lol.

Get it to Somerset Ky and buy the paint and materials and.. well, yeah. No labor charge or anything. I'd love to get a crack at a Z. I've approached the owner of every one of them I've seen while out and about but no one wanted theirs painted =[ My Z is months from work, I need to put together about 1300$ for materials, metal, primer and paint before I can start working on it again. God I miss it.

I hope its appropriate, a little off-topic. I havent been able to work on the Z due to complete lack of time and money, but its always on my mind. To tide me over I've been working on an 89 Mustang in school. My roommate and I bought the car to fix up and resell and its been a task and a half. I've enjoyed it though and its been a hell of a learning experience. We arent done yet, but we're really close. Still have to wet-sand and buff out the bodykit peices and finish buffing the car itself, pull and rebuild the transmission (bad 2nd gear synchro), clean the engine bay up and we should be ready to turn the car out. Sadly, we lost alot of the "during" pics of the body work and prep, so it goes from the "before" straight to paint masking, heh, but you can get an idea of what all we had to do. The Before shots. Dont have a good shot of the rear bumper but it had a hole in it and a crack or two. Masking the stripes/car. Shots of the stripes sprayed. Thats Donnie by the bumper, he's helped Bryan and I AALLOOTT. Great guy, very very meticulous, very good. Spraying. I'm the guy in the white suit. Soo.. dont spray without a mask. I wasnt paying attention when I went out on that one and of course, it was the only pic of me taken while spraying for hours and hours and I look like a moron.. I did put it on a second or two later when the fumes hit me. A couple shots of it after the spray, not wet-sanded or buffed, but it gives you an idea how it'll turn out. The guy in the blue shirt is Gary our instructor, the other guy is Bryan, my roommate. Most of these pics were taken during a two day, 27 hour-of-work marathon to get the car in paint and ready for wet-sand/buffing by Thursday. I spent Thursday painting the kit, and Bryan spent it.. well, doing nothing. In 8 hours he buffed half the hood and one fender. Go Bryan. This is my first start-to-finish other than a half-assed little S10 that was shitonashingle. I'm really happy with how it turned out. We had some problems with dirt in the paint on the first color coat and we had to bake it off and sand then re-spray color.. Thats why we ran so late on the second day. 12 hour then 15 hour spans, lol. I was a little worried until I saw how well it buffed out.. Its gonna look really good IMO. Two 8 inch stripes with a 5 inch gap done in Dark Pewter Metallic (PPG). 5 coats. 5 coats Dark Red (Omni.. Yeah, I know, its all we could budget in). 1 tack coat, 2 wet coats Omni clear (again.. all we could budget). Same on all the body kit peices. I'll add some more pics if anyone cares to see them of the finished and assembled project, hopefully by this coming Thursday. Still loving school and learning alot. I have about 10,000 miles to go before I'm "good" but I think I'm getting there slowly.. Learning from my mistakes and trying to do a good job. Been in school since this last January.

Silent.. Fantastic work in the BG.. Nice Z to, hehe. Where'd you find that mural?

They arent opening. I checked, as per your suggestion. I dont think that explains the WOT issue, but it does go a long way to explaining why the throttle seems so erratic. Sometimes it pulls, sometimes its dead past about 4k, which is when they open. My guess is the opening is erratic. I havent had a chance to figure out just whats causing them not to open though.. Their getting vacuum, they close on start-up (their naturally open.. so when the engine is started and they see vac they pop closed) so the vac is good. I suspect the sensor itself.

As a matter of fact, I thought about that.. Since I can pull em off my 5.0 so easily.. I found a method.. Thanks for reminding me, lol.

I hope its ok to post this here. I havent been able to find an SHO forum with the answer, or one that would allow me to post (moderate new members.. =/) Anyway, 93 SHO, I'll be putting it on a diagnostic tool ASAP, but want to get an idea what you all think. The car has nothing at WOT, literally. If you hold the gas just below WOT, about 75% it usually pulls pretty damn well. Strong and solid really but as soon as you fully depress the throttle all the way the engine goes limp. Its immediate and seems to happen pretty much at any RPM. WOT the engine hits a wall. Wont accell and will barely maintain speed. RPM's wont climb.. It just craps out. Now, again, accell in lower than WOT positions is good. Its a little erratic though.. Sometimes it pulls harder than other times, its weird. Also, if I rev the engine in nuetral its very slow to drop in revs. Kinda hangs and slowly backs back down to idle. I also have a small (300-400RPM) idle jump. Very rich on start-up, doesnt want to rev at all, sounds like its bogging. Does this sound like a potential TPS and/or IAC issue? Any input would be appreciated. Thanks guys.

Well.. I bit the bullet and traded in my truck. Alot of blood, sweat and memories in that vehicle and I think on one level or two I'll regret doing it for as long as I live. BUt I had to.. I couldnt afford to drive it and honestly have simply moved on. I need something I can take on highway drives between Somerset and Lexington fairly often (90ihs miles) and to and from school pretty much daily. I found a 93 Taurus SHO and worked out a trade thats somewhat fair to me. Anyone have experience with these cars? I'm trying to get registered on some SHO forums but the only one I've found that looks active so far is registration moderated - so heaven knows when/if they'll let me post and search, lol. Either way.. The car has 170k on the odo but the engine is pretty damn clean and runs pretty damn strong, leading me to beleive it was rebuilt or replaced somewhere along the line. The clutch is dieing, or if Im really lucky the cable is out of adjustment or borked. Either way I have money set aside to take care of it. It also has a weird dead spot in the throttle.. I'm gonna make a post about it in general tech and see if anyone can bounce some hypotheticals off me while I wait till this weekend when I can get it on a diagnostic machine and check the sensors. Here she be.. Decent shape IMO, drives really well, comfortable and pretty much everything works, lol. It needs to be cleaned up, but I cant do that until I take posession of the vehicle this weekend. I'd have it now but I had to apply for a new title for my truck, since I lost the old one. Cant do the deal till the truck is legal, lol. Oh, of course, the Z is still being worked on. Just waiting for my financial aid money to come through before I can risk spending the money I have no on the steel for the floors and rails, with luck the project will be back in gear by the middle/end of February.

Kentucky, heh. 300k willl buy you a damn nice spread outside Lexington or Louiville. My aunt is also based here in Richmond (25min. from Lex.) so who knows, maybe a job for your wife with her? You said your wife's a dietician, so she probably knows who Caroline Breeding is - good work to be had around here in that field.

Got out of school the other day and on my way home I drove past one of those little do-it-yourself carwash deals and saw a really nice looking, orange 240 (pretty sure it was a 240). Great shape, didnt get a look at the rims but they looked to be wire wheels maybe? aftermarket front air dam, didnt see the back of the car. I would have stopped but I was already running behindd. Just curious if the owner is a poster or lurker here - was a damn good lookin car. I'd like to know what was under the hood =]

41mpg highway 36-ish city bone stock 290,000mile 1989 Honda Civic w, busted front bumper, tractor headlight (literally), no radia, no cruise, manual and annoying exhuast. DD. approx. 22mpg highway approx. 15mpg city 92 5.0 HO swapped (some work) 94 F-150. Leaking off pressure at the TC and pump which is killing my mileage. Id assume around 25/18 running properly. We'll know for sure come mid February. and the Z.. Is still a shell. So, really, it gets great gas mileage, cause its driven about 200miles since December and hasnt used a drop. Hell, it doesnt even have a gas tank.

I bought a spot weld drill bit from O'Reilleys that I've had great success with so far. It can be ornery, but its not bad. What I do, is use a strong (chisel like) putty scraper to lightly seperate the panels at the weld, then a center punch in the middle of the spot weld, then the bit. Using the chisel to raise the metal a little helps keep the bit from bouncing or jarring loose and prevents accidentally cutting through the layer you dont want to destroy. I also use cutting lube to preserve bit life. Then just hit th area with a flap disk or grinder disc to cut it down flush and smooth it all out. We pulled about 180 spot welds out of a 67 Mustang upper and lower cowl recently and it did it in about 2 hours with a 50$ variable speed drill from Lowes. Bit was 16$, extra "sleeves" for the bit were 16$.

Sorry guys, I just started my auto body semester and moved. I dont have a dime to my name or the time to build the blaster. I did give the plans to my auto body teacher who's gonna build the blaster for class use though. He's a mad scientist and looked em over and was practically salivating, lol. I'll give you guys an update as soon as I'm able.

Lookin good, glad to see you got it worked out. Ive been without internet and will remain so for some time, so I wasnt able to reply earlier with any advice. You basicly did just what I would have. Only your welds look better than mine would have ended up.

I downloaded a demo of GPL. Bloody hell its fun. Scary real to. I wish i had a FF wheel though. I wanna buy this game ASAP but I just shelled out my last couple of bucks to rent a u-haul, trailer for the Z, put gas in two F-150's, a Civic, a Cav, a Taurus, the U-Haul and a little POS Ranger.. Not to mention having to feed the crew of 11million Ive rounded up to help myself and my roommate move. BAH!

I dont see how it wouldnt fit. He had a long career spanning many many years. He is considered one of the greatest comedians of all-time and I have to agree. Look past the movies he did (some were funny as hell) to his stand-up stuff and you'll see the "legend" in him. Drugs cant write someone off as a legend IMO. Where would we be if we did that? lol. Hendrix = gone. Hunter S. Thompson (R.I.P) = gone. EveryMusicianFromThe60'sand70'sThatWasWorthADamn = gone. R.I.P Richy!

Very nice. Who was in the white Z? That guy was kinda scary, hehe.

I think what he was meaning is TIG is very unforgiving when it comes to out-of-position welding. It can sure be done, but its alot harder than pointing a MIG gun and pulling the trigger, hehe.

Quick update, I got my hands on a copy of GT Legends. I have to say, this game is pretty damn fun. They claim something like 95 cars, which I was excited about (Im a sucker for choice, heh) but from what I can tell, that number is somewhat padded. They offer several different team versions of the same cars. This is fine and all, but I was really hoping they meant 95 different year/models.. In a few cases this is true, the Vette being one of them but as far as different models, theres something like 25 or so. The Z is notably absent - which really pisses me off, I was hoping like hell to have one.. but oh well. I dont know though.. Maybe as I race I unlock new cars or something.. No idea. The game isnt easy or idiot proof, but nor is it needlessly difficult. They offer a number of driver assists to tone down the learning curve a little bit and kinda tailor the game to your hardware. I have a pretty simple wheel, Logitech Wingman GP (non FF) so I dont have a clutch, which would normall make things more difficult, but they have an "auto clutch" option that simulates the clutch when I shift - keeps me from over-revving and losing control when downshifting in corners, heh. I havent tried to play it with the keyboard (nor do I want to) but just for sits and giggles I may hook up one of my control pads and see how it plays with that. I think with constructive use of the assists you could get it very playable (and still be competitive) with a control pad. Which is nice since you can buy cheap pads for like 8$ vs the 25-35$ for a cheap wheel. You dont get to "upgrade" your cars, ala GT1-4 and many other games. When you own it, thats it. You do have a really indepth setup screen though to tweak and fiddle with options on the car. Everything from steering lock-out, camber, spring rates, brake bias/sensitivity, how much fuel you carry, tire pressure and type, etc. So you dont get to buy a "sports suspension" but you can tune the car to behave exacty as you want it to. Theres also a less indepth way to tune by way of a set of sliders where you can adjust the suspension between hard and soft, understeer or oversteer the gearing from low to high. So those of us who dont know how to make functional and educated changes to the suspension can cheap out and go it the easy way.. =] The graphics and sounds are top-notch and it doesnt need some massive, brand new computer to play. My comp is a home built, AMD2k+, 1gig 2700 DDR, Radeon 9k Pro, KT4V Mobo setup and I can play it on a pretty good detail level at 1152x864 res without any problems. So, in the end, I recommend the hell out of the game. I really enjoy it and anyone interested in vintage racing should get alot of enjoyment out of it.

Then 90% of them are wrong - heh. I think the "spirit" of the Z changed with the ZX but its certainlly still a Z. So are the 300's and 350. I prefer the 240-280's myself though.. The styling is sleeker and their lighter. The ZX followed a trend seen in many cars in the 80's that I just didnt like at all. Good cars sure, personally I think the 240 is the king of the hill =]

I saw a 66 or 67 Mustang with a 2JZ swapped in a while ago.. Great looking car and very nice swap. The guy that did it lived in Japan, so standard 302 and 289 parts were very hard to come by.. He wanted something that had a solid aftermarket and support structure locally - so he went with a 'Yota motor. IMO if its your car, do what ya wanna.

Wow.. Maybe I misunderstood the guy I talked to at Airgas but down here (ky) I called and to fill a 60cf it was like 35$ or something.

What did your bottles cost you and what size are they? Did you lease, buy or rent? I need an O/A rig.. and I need to learn to use it, lol. I've spent a disgusting amount of time researching the hell out of welding processes and equipment but the only thing I've had any experience with thus far (other than cutting a Civic into about 50 peices with an O/A) is my Lincoln and Miller 125.