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I'm always confused when someone asks me to turn the air conditioner down. Printed on the startup screen for Windows 2000 is says "Based on NT Technology." NT stands for Network Technology.

The glowplugs operate at 12v, not 6m unless your regular car battery is 6v. Check to make certain your battery is fully charged. If the light on the dash doesn't light up that means one or more of your glow plugs do not work or something is wrong with the relay system. Pull the wires off that power the plugs and measure each ones resistance. Bad ones will read high or infinite (open, no reading) ohms, or a perfect dead short (0 ohms). You can measure them on the engine by checking between a GOOD ground and the post the power wire connects to (cleaned) with the wire off. If there are any bad, replace them, then see where you strand. If they are all good, then there's a problem with a loose connection or the relay system. How long do you have to crank it before it'll start? Or will it not start at all? Generally, automotive diesel engines will start without glowplugs (in moderate to warm weather) once they've been cranked enough to build up decent oil pressure. Attn admin: Perhaps this should be moved to misc tech or trouble shooting/general?

So which transmission is in it now? Clifton got me all curious by mentioning that it's back up and running.

I've owned two diesel mercedes benz and worked on a lot of diesels such as suburbans and boats. On the ones I've encountered when the glow plugs are operating you'll see perhaps 7-8 volts across them, on the engine, generally more depending on how your electrical system is. If you disconnect the glowplugs you should get 12v at the wires that power each of them, and the plugs themselves should measure around 0.8 ohms. Again, this is from working on my mercedes and stuff, a mazda may be different, but if you have the service manual take a look at the engine schematic and you should be able to see if the glow plugs are powered off a heavy duty relay that's ties them straight to the battery through their own fuse. Something to take special note of is it can be very difficult to get a good contact between your multimeter probes and the glowplugs or wires under the hood. The odds are everything has a very slim coating of diesel and any dirt/grease sticking to it had formed a tough layer of insulation. So clean stuff with a wire brush then take measurements again. Also, if the car fires RIGHT up once the glowplugs have been allowed to stay on until the wait-to-start light goes out, then they aren't the problem. When does the car smoke and where do you smell the fuel coming from? -Eric

You should be able to screw your DB37 plug into the megasquirt. Your connector hood should have holes in the sides where you can add nice thumbscrews borrowed from an old serial computer mouse or some other computer cable. The holes on the sides of the DB37 on the megasquirt itself should be threaded to accept studs (borrow them from an old serial port, parallel port, etc). If not, then you can get slightly longer studs that come with nuts. I know digikey sells all that dirt cheap if you can't find it in a local electronics store. If you like pictures, I can oblige. Jameco also sells them, and has an easier to use website http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&categoryId=302530

I'd agree with the tack weld analysis. I tack welded some cut up pipes to some flat scrap metal last July 4th in an attempt to make a nice roman candle holder. I carried it by one of the pipes to where I was going to test it, and the pipe I carried it by broke off when I put a roman candle in it. The thing weighed over 10lbs, and the roman candle maybe half a pound. I went back, and finished the welding I forgot about when I'd been interrupted, and all was good.

It IS a complete ripoff and scam. Plus, their 'science' is rather questionable. See http://www.dansdata.com for lots of (mostly archived, it's a decent sized site, check out the letters) stuff on audio-cabling scams.

Do you think this might end up becoming your daily driver? Or at least daily driver when you don't need to haul a bunch of stuff around?

No, a cat won't work right that far away from the engine. They have to get quite hot to work, I've seen many of them right on the engine off the manifold, rather than tucked under the body. Start out by checking over everything, and dropping a ton of timing, then see how it runs in the emissions test. If they have any of those pass-or-don't-pay places take it to them.

Have you calculated how much flow you're gaining over the stock head? My (most likely wrong) calculations put a stock head at 63 cfm/liter, and your head at maybe around 71 cfm/liter. I borrowed information from http://forums.hybridz.org/showpost.php?p=767706&postcount=6 and http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:s_50JvJgcVUJ:nissanpacific.com/forumz/lofiversion/index.php%3Ft769.html+%22ka24de+head+flow%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a

My 280zx only came with lots of golf tees and ball markers, some prescription sunglasses, and around 5$ in change. Although I managed to get a shirt and towel plus a Jimmy Buffet tape out of the Z31, along with the under-seat half an old car phone. I did get a full sized (8"x14"x24"!) radio phone in the trunk of my old benz, along with the handset and full instruction manual. A new fuse and I was hopping among (now) privately owned frequencies.

I'd stick with an idle timing closer to around 16-18, as that's a pretty high idle. Going a little richer than 14.7 at low RPMs generally helps the engine stay stable. Remember 14.7 is the theoretical ideal for perfect combustion/low emissions. That's again theoretical, different engines run better at different AFRs. As for idling up and down, that's generally a vac leak. Check ALL hoses for cracks, especially around where they connect. The only time your engine idle should change is when something changes. Namely, higher/lower load or more/less air/fuel. The fan-on could do it, as that's pulling more energy out of the alt, but at that rpm it shouldn't make much of a difference. It still sounds like something is wrong with your engine. Pull your sparkplugs and check them for fouling and fuel. Put a timing gun on ALL six wires (one at a time) to check for consistent spark, and that it isn't ever 'skipping'. You can't just slap on a new tune and make everything happy, this may take some work. Go ahead and check your valve clearance too. Just start trying things. If there's an emissions test place where it's pass or don't pay, take it there, and play with the timing and VE table between runs. But do that AFTER you do lots of work trying to find something that's wrong. When you swapped the engine did you replace ALL rubber and the cap/rotor/wires/plugs/etc? If you're still having trouble, you could pull the injector rail and have one injector at a time fire into a cup to see if any have a horrid spray pattern. We'll see if Ron pokes his head up again to agree with me, but I think there's something actually wrong with your engine. Most likely simple, such as vac line or valve adjustment, but there's gotta be something.

Drop some timing, you could have some pinging that's going on and blowing out the flame front causing unburned fuel to exit the engine. Also, what exactly are the requirements for passing an emissions test in BC? In california they check timing, all hose routing, emission control functionality, and tailpipe emissions. If you can, raise your idle speed to 100 or so above your alternator excite RPM, that should help eliminate the stumbling. My 82 N/A also has a valve that adds extra air when the A/C is on, if you have one of those you could use it to cut in extra air when the fan is on if it really draws enough power to slow the engine that much. Also, a catalytic converter helps reduce ALL three of those controlled emission substances, so with some tuning you can generally balance them to a point where all are low enough. Good luck.

First of all, if your hydrocarbons are that high (I'm assuming parts-per-million), then something is wrong with your engine. It could be a LOT of things, but the HC out the tailpipe is unburnt fuel, and that's coming from somewhere, and not getting burnt for some reason. There could be a miss-fire, incomplete combustion, a leaking injector, a whole bunch of things. Without knowing exactly how your car is configured, anything I say is just a wild guess. Presuming you're running a stock turbo engine, then your timing and AFRs are higher then what's considered (generally, I'm in CA and we all have CATs here) safe to run in the era of goosing for lower emissions. I would recommend changing your timing back to 17-18 BTDC at idle and get your AFRs aroubd 14.7-14.5, maybe even a bit richer. That mixture and timing should help with complete combustion. Also, doesn't your 78 have a place for a cat? You could have a muffler shop (or DIY, if you have the tools) weld in flanges for a bolt-in cat, and also keep a bolt-in straight pipe so you can change them easily. The cat isn't the fix-all end-all for emissions, but it can help for cars that are just over. Your wide band could also be lying to you, as a misfire can also introduce large amounts of oxygen into the exhaust, making the sensor read far leaner than you are. Remember, an O2 sensor measures O2 out, not fuel and air in. As is, it sounds like you have bigger problems, but I don't want to guess at anything else without knowing more. For instance, asside from what you've already mentioned and what's in your profile, some other needed details here would be: Dizzy setup (stock CAS, EDIS, N/A unit, etc) Other emissions readings (NOx, CO2%, CO%, O2%, etc. A high O2% with high HCs nearly always means a miss-fire) Engine compression readings (possible fault, have you adjusted your valves lately?) Stock engine, or odd parts? What injectors are you running? Any other details that come to mind, specifically anything that wouldn't be assumed in your swap. Edit: Brad posted while I was composing, but play with things. Try a timing light on all six plug wires to see if any of them ever 'skip', pull your plugs and check for signs of abnormalities, something just isn't right. There are HybridZ members in CA getting their non-cat cars to pass smog with results cleaner than catalyzed emission standards.

That's simply amazing. Is that temp gauge water temp or CHT? If it's CHT, where did you put the sensor?

Yes, I had to drive the races out and back in. The races were an interference fit. But as it turns out, the spindle is (long string of words I'm sure my neighbors loved hearing). After taking back apart the driver's side and cleaning the spindle and bearings, I slipped them back on without the hub. The outer bearing's inner race is a very tight fit. The inner bearing's inner race rotates on the spindle when I push upwards on the bearing and spin it. The entire spindle/strut tube/etc is (string of words that HybridZ's filter would catch). At this point I'm going to most likely also have to replace the shocks, as putting the old worn one into a new tube might not work so well, and then having new front shocks would most likely put emphasis on the rear ones... Anyone in the Bay Area want to sell me a good Z31 driver's side spindle? Or better yet, just buy the whole car. It has a new clutch, fuel pump, alternator, rear tires (5k miles, at the most), and an engine that passed smog like a new car.

Yes, I changed the races. Not hard to do on the 300, there are notches in the hub that helps get them out, and driving them back in is way easier than on my 280ZX. I've also carefully checked the brakes, the pads are wearing evenly, and I just don't think that's the problem since nothing changes whether I'm on them or off them. I think I'm going to pull both sides now (again, ug, messy) and measure stuff.

So I was driving my 88 5spd N/A 300ZX when it started making the horrid wheel bearing dying noise in the driver's side front. After I got home I pulled the hub off and found nice clean bearings. Whoever worked on the car before I got it had very sparingly filled the hub recess with grease, leaving the bearings completely dry! After inspecting the bearings for any rough spots or discoloration, I cleaned and properly (liberally) greased the bearings and re-assembled. Just for good measure, I regressed the passenger side as well, finding it in the same condition. After assembly, the noise stopped for a few days, but returned intermittently. I re-torqued the spindle nut and could not find detect any play in the hub, but the noise didn't go away. Now instead of a squeal at high speed and nothing at low speeds, it became a grinding noise at low speed. I decided to replace the wheel bearings with new SKF units, but there was absolutely no change in the horrid noise. Now I'm starting to think my spindle is bad, worn down enough to continue to cause problems. However, I'm not certain what the diameter of the spindle is supposed to be. I'm thinking that tomorrow I'll go ahead and take apart both sides (ug, so messy) and measure the spindles. I'm just not certain that the passanger side would still be in factory specs (despite not making noise), and I haven't managed to find the original specs in either the FSM of fiche. I'm also worried about how much wear a junk yard spindle would have on it. So, with that amazingly long (and hopefully detailed enough) post, does anyone have any ideas on what to do? I just hate throwing parts at something. Edit: Thanks Larry

To see such a beautiful head on the block with the intake/exhaust/turbos puts any previous ideas of how good it would look to shame. Are you planning on sharing what duration and lift you're going to be running? ps - it's good to see a hood budge that's actually there for a good reason.

I wanna see a scale turbo or super-charger too! Put THAT into a radio controlled Z and see if you can match the real thing in the 1/4 mile.

I've come across an 88 N/A 5spd for a song recently. Needed a clutch and fuel pump, and the interior works, but runs simply FABULOUS since I put those in. Everything works and the stock radio is surprisingly good. I'd rate the 88 as easier to drive in stop and go traffic and better for long distances with its higher gearing (and far better mileage), but I still like the way my 82 2+2 N/A drives in the twisties. If my 280ZX was a 6 speed, there would be no contest, but the 300ZX does rule for buzzing around town.

Wow, those are some beautiful pictures. I'm ending up having to make some new interior pieces for my ZX. Do you have any pictures laying around of the seats or perhaps under the hood?

The people here on HybridZ ARE amazingly wonderful and insightful. I just bought my dad a 1990 Lexus LS400 and can't believe what passes for useful posts. A discussion over octane requirements only had ONE mention of compression ratio in 17 posts, and they all swear that a higher octane rating is better. I for one am very happy to have found a forum with active, knowledgeable admins and members, as well as enforced rules about using proper English. Three cheers for HybridZ!

Drivetrain work! Big screen or billy-bad-a*s home theatre?

Wheel of Fortune! Futurama or Family Guy?