HowlerMonkey

I used to rebuild them at Z shop of miami. They are pretty wierd inside but you will hate it when you see that the pistons are pitted and could cause leakage at certain pad thicknesses and then hate it more when you price a new piston. The rebuild kits used to be cheap as hell but haven't bought one in years. If the car is already off the road, unscrew the piston and try to not kill the seals. I've done it a few times on my maxima but I had 4 from which to pick the best seal and piston.

When you pump a shock or strut insert upside down, you are trading fluid for air. No shock will operate properly if the valving is full of air. When I sold shocks at electrodyne in the mid 80s, I had people trying to return expensive bilstein, boge, koni...etc shocks because they didn't purge the air from the shock. I would cycle them a few times, hear the gurgling, and hand them back a perfectly operating shock. Remember that the top is sharp and anybody fooling around with a shock will naturally rather push on the smooth bottom than the sharp top. Also....shocks are stored horizontally so purging is necessary as your car might not fully exercise the shock to the point or purging all air. Here's the factory recommendation. Now this is for a Z31 but shocks are the same. Also....not all shocks require you to put it upside down for the compression of the routine......most important is to have it right side up while the shock extends. Most can be purged by cycling them right side up.

One possibility is that the adjustment is not letting the master retract all of the way.

That name "cone killer" sounds like somebody who has been posting in forums since 1995 or so.

It bolts to a larger bracket that is about a foot long that has 4 holes (square pattern) that attaches the bracket to the car. It bends about 30 degrees near where it bolts to the car. The airflow meter is bolted to that bracket as well and sits on the opposite side of the bracket placing it slightly lower than the air flow meter and toward the center of the car. If you've done a non-turbo to turbo swap, your car will be missing the proper place for the that bracket to bolt but I believe it bolts either to the frame rail or low on the inner fender pretty close to it.

Also remember that most (not all) manufacturers use a different set of wires for the scan tool interface than are used for communication between modules. Also.....as mentioned above some manufacturers require a body control module to be there for the ecu to communicate with other modules since BCM's are deemed the master in many communication schemes. In chryslers, they went from CCD communication that had all modules in a sort of peer to peer arrangement but they later went to PCI communication which had the BCM as the master and it was required to a certain extent. Beating the anti-theft with the current products out there now usually requires you to have most, if not, all of the stock modules operating. If you cannot do that, then a "calibration file" would have to be modified to convince the ecu that it doesn't have to wait for the anti-theft hardware to send a "yes you can start" signal. It is much easier to fool the module that handles anti-theft into thinking it sees the proper key and let it send the "ok to fuel" signal to the ecu.

Anything that pressurizes the crankcase can possibly influence the turbo to pass oil. Blowby is one. Driving hard is another since pcv valves don't scavenge the crankcase when under boost. If you drive under boost more than the manufacturers expect when they designed the engine, you can end up with crankcase pressure. I'm wondering if adding one that uses the venturi effect to scavenge crankcase used in addition to the stock setup could keep the pressure down even with hard driving. Does your car have a crankcase vent that goes into the tube before the turbo inlet as in most stock setups? If so, the oil could be coming from that tube while looking like the turbo is passing oil.

I use a cutting torch to make a hole slightly small and then a die grinder to size and shape it. Sure...you end up with super sharp splinters of metal all over your clothing but it can be done quickly with only three tools (vise or vise grips, torch, and die grinder) Paying 15 to 25 bucks for one already made saves you the hassle of pulling metal splinters from your socks a month later.

A perfectly straight 2.5 inch pipe won't diminish performance from that turbo but, once you add the bends required to fit a car, you end up with some restriction. I'm sure somebody could spend a ton of time making a perfect bends to a 2.5 inch exhaust but a 3 inch would be much more tolerant to an awkward bend that might be dictated by the layout of the car itself.

Try turning on the key for 2 minutes before trying to start the car. If this allows the car to start on the first try on the first start of the day, then I would suspect the caps in the ecu to be going. First, I would try wiggling the connectors on the ecu while cranking it.

4th gear usually is straight through on most manuals and doesn't involve the countershaft so you get less drivetrain loss.

That numeric keypad is an old 80s alarm that is either called a "clifford" or "ungo box" though it could be one of these. That car really is a treasure trove of early 80s state of the art. You will earn huge hero points of bringing it back to life.

The 280zx turbo distributor (or crank sensor) makes 180 pulse peaks per crankshaft revolution and 3 120 degree pulses per crank revolution. The non-turbo distributor makes only the 3 120 degree pulses per revolution. If you got the engine only and plan to run it on the 1979 ecu and harness, you can do that by swapping the distributor and injectors over but you will run a bit lean at stock boost. If you keep the turbo injectors on and run the 1979 engine management system, you will pull your hair out trying to get it to run lean enough to not foul the plugs anywhere except under boost. The best solution is to run it on the stock 280zx turbo harness, distributor, airflow meter, and ecu.....if you have them.

I take it he's posted his request on the RX-7 boards as well?

Since the maxima diesel comes with a LD28 with a FS5W71B tranny, it should serve you fine but with the same troubles that the maxima diesel guys see. The input shaft bearing gets beat up from the pulses of running them at low rpms.

That's really really really nice.

It's all up to motor technology. It was touched upon in this thread but was taken to an extreme. http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=147040

That's amazing......I've never seen anybody actually get out that "reducer" from any nissan turbo elbow. That must have been a horrible pain. You owe him a six pack of tasty beer.

You would be amazed at what JB weld can do. It should work ok but I would line up the cover and see if the hole will work in it's current location before finalizing with with JBweld. I'm not sure how the jbweld will grab the bolt so you might want to dip it in wax or something in case you ever want to remove it. I wouldn't use oil since it could interfere with the hardening of the jbweld.

LOL.......you must also be an A&P. OK.....I'll bite..... How about when you chance upon a friend in the paddock at palm beach international raceway who's trying to get his SCCA improved touring 240z started after swapping in an engine someone else built because he popped his the day before.......and he only has 15 minutes to go until he has to be on the track? That engine the rest of the season that way at the front of the pack and it took me all of 8 minutes to do it. There's a time and a place to exercise options like that but you have to know of the options available in order to exercise them. I was just adding an option to the thread.

I guess you missed the part of my mentioning that it would be a solution ONLY if the cam/crank relationship was exactly 180 degrees out. First thing to do is loosen greatly and/or pop out the rockers so that any movement of either cam or crank does not result in pistons hitting valves. The second part of fixing this is identifying how far off the timing is and remembering whether the engine was turned while in this state of cam/crank index because you may have already experienced damage that needs to be addressed.

Does it act exactly the same with the airflow meter disconnected?

If it's not stuck internally, you can usually move that lever a few times and it will adjust up. If it doesn't, check whether the cable is allowing the arm to release far enough. I've seen a few people adjust the cable tight enough that it did not allow the calipers to adjust up when working the parking brake handle.

LOL daeron......there must be 10 of those in west palm alone.

I'm sure anybody who would be doing the splicing could be coerced to extend the very few wires necessary to put the connector somewhere that it can be used. I usually (not VQ but in my job as an ecu tester/rebuilder of all makes) just snip one off at the junkyard and run wires to the proper terminals.