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The restrictor idea was only for people with very large cams, as well as irregular and low vacume at idle. The idea being smooth out the changes (and at the same time make the map sensor less responsive through the entire range, while tuning and AE enrichment can be used to make up for much of it, it's still not perfect) in manifold pressure, averaging them out a bit. Your bucking is most likely not caused by a poor (uneven, yet accurate) vacume signal going to the MAP sensor. You are most likely having a miss-fire, or megasquirt is missing an ignition event, and skipping injecting fuel once, or twice, or more. You didn't say how you were firing spark, or triggering megasquirt, so your exact set up may not be perfectly in line with what I said. An osciliscope on the post processed line (where the megasquirt cpu sees the trigger signal) should show you the even-ness of the ignition signal and if it's dropping any or seeing spikes. For the vast majority of people, an osciliscope is out of reach ($$$ and PITA technical know-how), so try other things first. Also, keep a close eye on how long your injectors are firing, and if anything else is going on, such as AE, warm up enrichment, etc. You may want to try setting all values to 100%, except for your VE table, and spark table (if using megasquirt for timing) and see if it's still happening. Setting your spark table to all 10s (again, if using megasquirt for timing) may help eliminate one possibility. If you can duplicate the problem while not moving, check the timing, fuel pressure, etc. If you have a wide-band O2, use that to log (at the highest sample rate) exactly what the fuel injectors are doing. Good luck! Intermittant problems are a major pain, but they teach you a LOT when you DIY.

I've been very happy with Rotella T in all my diesels (mercedes 300SDs, Diesel suburbans, 4.xL and 6.2L, mechanical and EFI) and if it isn't too thick for your gas engine I'd say go for it. You may (not really sure, but I feel I gained power when going to 15W-40 from 20W-50) loose some power if you were used to 10W-30 in your L6, but diesel engine oil is amazing in high wear applications. The ABSOLUTE best oil I've ever used is Archer Oil, nearly impossible to find except in the mid-west, almost always in 55gal drums only, and expensive to the point of 4$/quart, but it's amazing. I've seen great running diesels have only muddy oil changes with that stuff, not pitch black. I also over-hauled a truck engine that overheated and blew a head gasket that ran the stuff, and it had zero deposits and barely measureable wear. And this was on a wheat hauling truck in kansas, with one of the worst matience records I'd seen. From the diesels to the large gas V8s, 15W-40 diesel oil is my choice for longivity. Also, after that long rant, here's a question. Does anyone know anything about nitriding (sp?) cams? I get the basic idea, but don't know if it really would help in our Zs.

Sounds like you're out of hydrolic fluid (brake fluid/DOT3 in this case) or you have air in the lines or a major leak. Fix any leak you can find, fill and completely bleed your lines and master/slave cylinder. If there are any leaks in the line, just replace it. You may want to consider rebuilding the master/slave cylinder. You don't always have to replace them.

If you want simple extra air added for megasquirt, there's an auxillary air regulator on the ZX you could add that runs off the fuel pump relay. It has an element in it that closes a shutter as it heats up and stops the extra air flow, no control by megasquirt needed.

I'd perfer to go with a stiffer spring in oil pump over changing your low-pressure engine kill. You may also want to check the tolerences in your oil pump. My 83 SD gets no less then 12psi at idle with 20W-50, and my dad's 84 SD no less then 10psi with 15W-40. What pressures are you getting at higher RPMs under load? Edit: My ZX with 10W-40 Synthetic has 15psi hot at idle.

Don't bother tearing appart the collum, just check the various pins in the old stereo harness against ground, it's there somewhere. If you replace all the wires for the other three speakers and use the stock wires for the driver's side rear speaker, you can keep bitc*ing betty working. Why were you using any wires connected to the fog lights at all? Asside from the new wires you run, you should only need to tap in to wires in the stock radio harness.

Ahh yes, good point Paz8. I didn't think about it because mine had given up long before I got the car.

Yup, ignoring it will work fine, just don't go through any car washes.

The antanna turn-on wire is a major pain using the stock system. My solution was to run a new power wire and antanna-turn-on wire back to the antanna and use an aftermarket replacement power antanna unit.

Mike: Robbing a motor speed control from a cordless drill wouldn't work so well as they're not rated for continuous duty. A dc motor controlled by PWM (pulse width modulation) would work just fine, as long as it had a feedback sensor for rpm, or better yet coolent flow. That would eliminate the need for a control valve in the sytem too. I see the two main choices being the standard mechanical water pump, mechanical fan (I don't see much use running the fan without coolent flowing) upgraded radiator, no thermostat, valve of some sort, lots of sensors, and control circuitry as one route. The other route, which I like better, is electric pump, no thermostat, lots of sensors, electric fan, upgraded radiator, and controll circuitry. When using megasquirt, most of the sensors are already built in, so all that's needed for the control side is a high current PWM motor controller and either a rpm sensor or preferabally a flowmeter. veritech-z: We wouldn't be simply running the cooling system at max flow, which would overheat the engine, without the restriction of the thermostat. When coupled with a more efficent radiator and sensors to tell it the temp of the radiator, oil, coolent, transmission, engine load, etc...an adaptive cooling system could cool far better under greatly varried driving conditions. Such as go ahead and cool the radiator down to 160 keeping the engine at 180 with lower coolent flow to give a little extra head room and don't have the system playing catch-up when you really get your foot down or turn on the AC.

You can test to see which wire is for the power (stereo on/off, accessory wire) by using a multimeter (NOT a test light) and putting one lead to ground, and one to each wire in question. When the ignition is off, there will be zero volts, and when the ignition is in acc or run, but not start (disconnect the starter for this) you will see 12 volts on the wire. For the illumination wire, you'll have to tap into a wire used in some of the dash lighting. Find the one that goes to + when the parking lights/head lights are on, and shows no voltage (with the other lead of the meter to ground) otherwise. Just make sure your new stereo expects a + signal on the illumination wire. The antanna lead, for the signal, is big and fat, with a long tip sticking out of a long male connector and a heavily shielded wire, you can't miss it.

That's why a high-efficency (most likely aluminium) radiator would also most likely be used, the custom control would primarily provide adaptive cooling, not simply reactive cooling. In reguards to Phantom's last post: Point B, the mechanical pump could easily be used with flow controlled by a valve but this would eliminate point D, which I REALLY like, especially with the speed it could happen at. But that could also happen quickly and efficently with the engine running briefly and the valve fully open. Point 4, controlling full range non-stepper 12V motors is a pain. Everything else, Mike said it all.

My anal secutity system (a$$), nice black center console mounting for aftermarket radio, and my firm belife that T-tops should never be used, but only stored in the rear hatch (weather permitting, don't wanna mess up the interior). Oh and power locks in the driver's door, controls on the dash for lock/unlock and a trunk popper. All that also works from the 2-way remote for the alarm. That's it so far, but I'm working on a very strange engine dissabler tied in to the ECU and a few other things.

5 or 10 degrees F different in block and head temp dosen't make much of a difference for a daily driver, but it does make a good sized difference in how well the engine runs. Power, fuel economy, emissions, the first and second ones go down and the last one goes up if the engine isn't at the optimum temp it's tuned for. Granted, an engine operating at 500* F would be great if it were designed for that, go play with ideal heat pumps and the like, I'll stick with currently in use and easy to manage designs. A stepper motor dosen't sound bad, but you'd want a fairly powerful one to move such a large valve, and a backup to fully open the valve if the stepper were to fail. The megasquirt code wouldn't be hard to modify to contorl this, you can easily monitor engine load by looking at the manifold pressure, or use a manumatic system, one that ran off a PIC or similar microcontroller for normal operation and had the option for enhanced cooling under all circumstances. Perhaps placing the valve under the hood in the middle of the hose right after the water neck would work, after taking out the thermostat? I can think of one major feature of this system. After a hard drive, you could use a turbo timer, and cool the engine FAR more by leaving it running for 1min then just by letting the normal cooling system slowly bring it back to 180. Because we all know engines continue to get hot after you turn them off, this could be great in the hot summers we're having ALL over the country. Also, the quicker cooling with less after-run time would result in better engine life and less gas wasted trying to keep your engine happy. I know I live up a VERY steep hill and have to idle down my car at 1-2K for one min after a spirited drive up on a hot day. Okay, that's it for me tonight, I've got an early morning, and I'll sleep on it.

Alright, I've started a new threat under Misc Tech for this and suggest to an admin a new catagory for "Cooling Systems" under "Engine Components". Either that or a poll to see if people here want it. See the new thread (that means you Mike) at http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=112947

Alright, I'm transporting a hijacked thread here to try and make things right. Here's what we've got thus far.

Be VERY careful when upgrading the stereos in these cars!!! The existing speakers use common wires! This is NOT compatible with nearly every new car stereo on the market. The real only way to do it is at the VERY least run new speaker wire to either both front speakers or both rear speakers. The switched power from the acc line is the main one you need to hook up. I would highly recomend running a new main power wire directly from the battery using a 20+ amp fuse right next to the battery. The circuit that supplies constant power to the factory stereo is fused at 10amps, and is not dedicated to the stereo, any current model stereo will blow it as they pull most of their power through the constant-on connection, and a minimal amount (few mili-amps) through the switched circuit, just for turn-on. You can completely ignore the 5-pin connector, both of them. It connects to the dial under the radio labeled "Stereo" and "Wide", and to a module under the driver's seat. Just leave it, ignore it. For the power antanna, good luck. I ended up using an aftermarket antanna and running a new wire from the back of the radio for the switched circuit and pulled a little 5 amp fused connection from my amp wiring in the back to power it. Let me know if you have any specific questions, I've been through this on my 82 280zx 2+2, with the digital radio/tape deck. Edit: P.S. Use a new ground straight to the frame of the car and you can run new speaker wires under the center console, the carpet on the driveshaft hump, and the rear seat. If you haven't taken the seat out, do it anyways to clean under it. The only existing wires you should really be using are at most wires going to two speakers (most likely the front, as they're the hardest ones to replace) and the switched power so the stereo knows when to turn on/off. You could use the antanna switch, but that's only if you're in the mood to figure out the antanna relay and switch, and remount the switch as well. Last thing: The best way to mount a new stereo is to completely take appart the old stereo and use the gray plastic frame that held it to the center piece of the dash. Using the tool of your choice, cut out the center of it and glue a solid plastic panel over it, shaped correctly. Then out of the center of that, cut out a DIN hole to put the cage for the new stereo in. You can use the rear mounting hole in the back of the new stereo to attatch it, with a small easily made custom bracket, to the hole the rear mount for the ashtray and keep the stress off your new (and most likely thin) dash face and highly detur theft as removing the stereo would then require removing entire center of the dash, not just using those two little pins next to the radio to release it from it's cage.

Well, the point of the cooling system is two fold, keep the engine cool, and keep the engine at a stable temperature under all (ideally) driving conditions. That's why removing the thermostat causes issues. Newer cars rely on switched electric fans in addition to the thermostat. The main reasons old style thermostats are still around is their simple, reliable, and cheap to manufacture. For race engines, a thermostat that opens at a lower temperature is used, to give the cooling system a head-start. A more efficent radiator makes the engine cool better, requiring less coolent flow. The entire point of eliminating the thermostat would be to allow better coolent flow, resulting in a higher maximum colling effect, the same result as a better radiator, better airflow through the radiator, or any number of cooling system upgrades. Everything I've mentioned is simpler, reliable, tested, and most likely cheaper. That said, I really like the idea. Especially if you're already using a custom fuel injection controller that could handle the computing needed to adjust the extra cooling capacity to prevent overheating by precooling the engine and radiator slightly under high engine loads . I'm thinking along the lines of extra code in megasquirt, or a small pic microcontroller, with MAP and temp sensors. Of course, you could always use a small on dash controller to adjust the base cooling level and leave the temp vs cooling effect ratio stationary and not adaptive. I just like to see base designs where extra features possibal to go ahead and use them. The big question I see is how to modulate the amount of cooling effectively, accurately, and FAR MOST IMPORTANTLY reliabally. A mechanical valve might be nice, such as a stepper motor controlled 2-inch ball valve to limit flow predictabally but still allowing full flow. Or a modulator control for an electric fuel pump, which would require a flow sensor as a certain voltage/current/modulation provided wouldn't result in a consistant flow rate (experience with electric motors, loads, stall points, starting voltages, etc tells me this, I forget which textbook it was in). So there's a few ideas, got any of your own? And do you think we'll be chased by people trying to catch us with their hijacked thread?

I don't think that would work very well, as you'd need a closed-loop system to measure flow. 50% voltage on an electric pump won't equal 50% flow, and a lot of 12v pump motors won't run under load at less then 9 volts, and 70% flow or so, depending on pressure.

It sounds like the ECU may be getting thrown into POST (power on self test) mode. When you first turn on the car, before you start it, all those lights you mention should light up, to verify the bulbs are good. Stalling the car or bringing it below a certain rpm can do that in some cars, as can fluxuating voltage. Use a high quality volt meter with a fairly fast update rate and watch your electricle system's voltage while driving. It could be many, many things causing it, from shorted wires, alternator, battery, ignition, ECU, relays, ignition switch, who knows what all. Let me know if this helps. -Eric

You should seriously consider draining the gas tanks and cleaning them and the fuel lines if the car has been sitting long enough for the gas to go bad. Replacing any rubber under the hood that has any cracks would be a good idea too, namely old fuel hoses. A 40psi gas fed fire is a bad day. And the ECCS (turbo) may have some sort of limp mode if one or two sensors fail, but the ECU (non-turbo) does not. It's completely solid state. Open or shorted sensors simply default to their midrange, or the engine dosen't run at all.

I'm with naviathan. I see no reason why all F54 blocks would not be the same. I certainly have never heard of anything like that. The difference between turbo and N/A is the pistons, dished vs flat top.

Thanks, I'll mock it up as soon as I can and post the results.