Zmanco

There's probably no issue with retorquing, although I don't think modern head gaskets for Zs require it. The Felpro's I've used says "No Retorquing Necessary". Once, before I took the head off, just to see, I tried retorqing. I had to exceed the spec in order to get the bolts to turn at all, so I think you can take them at their word. From everything I've read, your best chance to seat the rings is in the first 50 miles or so after a rebuild. From you description I can't tell how you've been driving it, but to Jon's point earlier, you need to get on it, not WOT, but accelerate hard, and then decel, over and over again. Idling is not good at this stage. Before I broke my last rebuild in, I did a lot of research about how to break in motors. I must have received more than 40 replies from a bunch of different sources, including HybridZ. The general concensus was: - Start it up and keep the revs above 2500 for at least 10 minutes to get everything up to temp and check for leaks. - Then go out and drive it hard, but not abusively, and with constant acceleration and deceleration. Avoid steady light throttle driving - that's the worst at this point. - Change oil after 50 miles (some said after 10 minutes) - Continue to drive it as above as much as you can through 500 miles and avoid steady light throttle driving as much as possible. - There's no problem with using revs, just don't go to redline at WOT. - Don't lug the engine. There were a few times in the first 100 miles or so where I saw smoke out the back when accelerating hard. It wasn't as much as you are describing, and only occasionally. Now that it's broken in there's no smoke at all. I understand your concern about driving it while it's smoking, but I think you either need to find a source of the smoke without running the engine, or follow a proper break in procedure. It sounds like you're kind of in the middle right now, and that's not a good thing.

After idling for a few minutes, what is the color of the spark plug on cylinder #4? Is it black, or wet? You might try moving the idle jet from #4 to another cylinder to see if the problem follows it. Make sure to pull the jets out of the holders when you're checking for debris. I found a very small piece of paper towel in one after I rebuilt mine, and I thought I had been very careful about keeping everything clean during the rebuild. If you take the carb off again, I'd also check to make sure that the throttle plate for #4 is aligned properly. If it's too far off, I suspect you'll have too much air flow in that cylinder and be so lean that turning the mixture screw will make very little difference. Pulling the plug wire wouldn't make a difference either.

How did you break in the engine? What did you do for the first few minutes and miles after you first started it?

Why do you suspect it? What are the symptoms? This jet bleeds some of the fuel from the accelerator pump back into the resevoir. It should not have any effect on idle.

I went by the local Z Guru today and looked at the later 280Z tachs and compared them to my '73. Turns out they mount differently, so in the end, I just picked up another stock 73 unit. $100 hurts (doesn't make me faster ), but messing with trying to fit a later one in to save a few bucks just didn't seem like the smart thing to do. Thanks to John and Ben for their inputs, and especially to Cold Fusion and his generous offer.

Cold Fusion, I'm sending you a PM.

The stock tach in my '73 has gone south, and a used one is at least $100. I'm thinking I might swap to an Autometer 3990 which will be about the same price and not 30+ years old. Plus I can pull out the MSD tach adapter and sell it. So my question is if anyone has done this on an S30 and how you installed it. I'm not worried about the electrical connections, rather how you physically mounted it. Were you able to keep the back light bulbs for night driving? Did it fit well? My interior is pretty nice so I'd like it to look as stock as possible. I haven't pulled the instrument cluster out yet, nor do I have one of the Autometers to test fit. I'm hoping I can research this in advance so I can do the whole swap all at once - if it's a reasonable swap that is:) Edit: just found the install sheet for the Autometer and it looks like it has its own lights built in. How did they look compared to the stock green lighting?

One more thing, what size fuel inlet needle/seat did you put in? I ask because when I rebuilt mine, I paid no attention. Turned out that the stock seats were 200 and the kit came with 150. The result was power dropping off at high revs. It was real pain to trouble shoot ... I looked in a lot of other places before it finally dawned on me to check.

A few thoughts/questions: - The stock cam's power peaks around 5k, so the power falling off could be normal. - The 30 mm chokes will give you good driveability, but at the expense of top end. If you had accesss to a set of 32 chokes, it would be an interesting experiment to swap. You might find the trade-off worth it. - I would be surprised if you needed to go bigger than 50F9 idle jets, although three turns out and white plugs sure sounds like it. - Are you failing emissions at idle or high speed? If it's high speed, you might try going to a 50F12 or 50F6 even. That will lean out the higher revs (while you're still operating on idle circuit) w/o leaning out at idle. - You wrote: " Stumbles on throttle tip-in at speed." At what rpm and gear? You may need to go larger on the mains, or perhaps smaller on the air correctors. Or maybe you need to go smaller on the accel pump drain back jet. What size are you running right now? BTW, if you're going to try a different set of chokes, do that first. Although I haven't done that myself, I've been told that if you do change chokes, expect to change everything else No sense in buying any more jets until you know if you're going to keep your chokes.

Paul, what is the advantage of this approach to setting the valve lash?

http://www.pdkfabrication.bravepages.com/240%20front.htm I saw a car with this installed the other day and it was very well made.

You may have already considered what I'm about to suggest, but since you didn't mention it in your first post, I'll bring it up: 1) How wide are your front tires? Wider tires will track ruts and depressions in the road more than narrow. 2) What is the offset of your rims? On a stock 240 it was 0". If your's is something else, a rut in the road can cause the pulling you describe. 3) The play in your steering along with the sounds you describe do sound like the rack. Have you checked the preload? To do this, you need to remove the large hex head near where the steering linkage goes into the rack. I forget the details of how to set it, but you might get lucky and find that it's loose and tightening it might remove some of your slop. Doubt it would get rid of all of it though. Let us know what you find out.

http://forums.hybridz.org/search.php?&do=getdaily I use this link as a bookmark to get to the last 24 hours of posts. It works even though the link on the home page is missing.

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Did you mean 94-98? I don't think the 240SX was available before 89.

To Jon's point, I think you'd find the 82 5 speed coupled with either a 3.7 or 3.9 diffy to be pretty close to what you say you want. And you lose that big chasm when you shift from 2nd to 3rd. I went with a 4.11 and the 82 5 speed because mine is not a daily driver.

I shot a lot of pictures, but haven't uploaded them yet. I'll send you a few of the better ones this week.

It was an MSD ignition box he listed in the For Sale section on this site. I opened a dispute on Paypal and I guess I'll see how it goes. I did use a credit card so hopefully that will help. It's just such a waste of time for both us. I want to believe that he didn't initially set out to scam whoever sent him money, but nonetheless, after almost a month, it's really hard to come up with a good excuses for why it hasn't been shipped. Especially since he already told me he shipped it via FedEx, but hasn't sent me a tracking number. I don't like it when people take my money, and I especially don't like being lied to.

After a month of waiting for datsun327 to send the item, I'm going to have to go to Paypal for some help (wish me luck!). Since there's no formal feedback mechanism in the "For Sale" section, just wanted to suggest others beware. Question to anyone who needed help from Paypal for a non-ebay transaction: How did it go? Any suggestions? Note to moderators: I read the FAQ on posting and hope this is ok - I don't want to see anyone else get taken.

Like I said before, I would check that my rears weren't too tight, and I'd make sure I had no air in the front lines. After that suspicion moves to the proportioning valve. I don't believe there is any way to adjust it: it either works properly or it doesn't. I haven't had issues with mine so I can't give you advice from my own experience, but you could either replace it with another from a JY, or replace it with an adjustable unit. Given you've changed the braking power of the fronts, I think the adjustable would be a good idea anyway. That's the direction I'm headed.

Not true: you need less VOLUME for 2 pistons vs. 4. For a given level of pressure, the 4 piston caliper with its greater piston area will exert MORE force on the pads/rotor than the 2 piston caliper. FWIW, I have the same combo on my 73 and my fronts lock first everytime. Perhaps the proportioning valve has failed and is not reducing pressure to the rear anymore?

That sure sounds like your rear brakes locked before your fronts. Not sure why that would be when you put more powerful brakes up front. Still, I'd focus on my rear drums being too tight, or perhaps a problem with the front brake installation such as air still in the lines.

I too had done everything mentioned here (except BRAAP's) and still had fumes. I was especially frustrated that after the expense of changing the hatch seal that it was no better. In my case, sometimes things were great, and other times eye watering. After a lot of noodling, I came up with the theory that over bumps the chasis was flexing and the rear hatch was moving around on the seal and at times, allowing gaps to form. This of course would allow the poor aerodynamics to vent fumes into the cabin. I got in the back with the hatch closed and took a small piece of paper and tried to push it between the hatch and seal. Where there was a good fit the paper would just buckle, but there were a lot places where it slid right in with almost no resistance. That confirmed that even with the car standing still on my flat garage floor, the hatch didn't fit the seal very well. I'm sure some of that was due my not being sensitive to this issue when I glued the seal down, but since it was already done, I needed to try something else. I did notice that I had more "gaps" on one side than the other, so I opened the hatch, and grasping the corners, "tweaked" it to get it closer. I then tried moving the latch mechanisms up and down (and forward and backward) and eventually found a combination that allowed the hatch to close rather easily, and where the paper buckled almost everywhere. This is how I have it now, and the fumes rarely come in. My conclusion is that after you have done all the fixes, there is still some trial and error involved to get the hatch set "just right" to maximize how well the seal fits. I'll add that I still need to add a rear strut bar, and am hoping that will stiffen things up in the rear to help even more. Note: if you think about it, the hatch is only held in 3 places: at the top left and right corners (by the hinges) and in the center of the bottom by the latch. That leaves a lot of room for it to move around, expecially when you consider how "flexy" the rear of the Z is.