Tony D

It's a ZX Parking Brake Cable.

The AFM is out of the photo altogether by 3500 rpms, the 'tuning' of it generally makes that number higher or lower by tighter or looser. After it's wide open (3500 stock) the ECU is on a purely programmed fuel curve of RPM and wether or not the WOT switch is closed or not. Red Herring there. This is purely electrical. Clean your connections on the EFI system completely and include the ones on the ECU and ECU plug.

Cutting the glovebox is pretty easy, it lets you get to the lock mechanisim. Other than that...'picking the lock' is not as easy as it sounds. I'd weigh the cost of the locksmith call out against that of the repop cardboard glove box.

Anybody who has seen my wallet knows it's a "Seinfeld Special"...really thick looking. Most of it is receipts, very little of it is money as these guys found out! But if they spied it when I was paying for Mc DO & Mc Spaghetti...that may have been all they needed. When the 'cops' ask you to come outside to clear it all up, you generally take them at their word. It was all very low-key to start with, like I said, hindsight is 20/20. I have been walking the area today and don't see hide nor hair of them, and the local Mobils have Mossberg 500's, the Doublestacked 9's in holsters, and one had an AR doing traffic stops. All much different than what I saw. But the uniform top they had IS an official uniform for this area. I have seen at least four different uniforms now that I'm looking. I think it was just one of those 'big wallet, big payoff' kind of targeting. That's all I can figure. The most I did between the hotel and the McD's was laugh at various nightlife scenes and decline numerous 'independent salesmen' along the way. I swear to christ the English Language Instruction here must start with rote: Rolex? Cialis, Viagra? RayBan? Cialis, Viagra? TOOTHBRUSH? Cialis, Viagra? Save for the Toothbrush, which likely was just generic, I'm suuuure all the rest are 'the genuine article' for sure!

More harm than good has been done by well-intentioned people being convinced that taking something apart is 'good for it and needs to be done'. Given the quality of parts available today, including (and specifically)rings, the chances are good you will end up worse off after fiddling with the interior of the engine than had you left well enough alone and simply followed John C's advice. Also, as for jargon, please understand vague terms don't do anything towards helping get an understanding of your real situation. You say the car 'burns through oil like water'... From that statement, I'm now making the assumption that you have a massive fog of oil smoke billowing blue-white out the exhaust pipe and have to put in a quart each day to get back and forth to school 10 minutes up the road. Is that correct? Then maybe you do need to do some work. Or is it a quart every 500 miles? 1000? The WAY you drive will GREATLY determine how much oil it consumes. I have an 80ZX engine that has well over 225,000 miles on it now. I can go through a quart of oil in an afternoon of autocrossing, but normally will go 1500+ miles before needing a top up. To me, a proper overhaul will cost FAR more than simply putting oil into it. Oil is cheap, GOOD engine parts are not. Cost justification for an overhaul will likely NEVER be achieved on the cost of oil consumption alone. Something else will have to go bad unless it's really burning it 'like water'... The driving style will dictate consumption. A quart in 1000 miles, or not even 1/2 a quart in 3300 miles (my 260Z). Neither indicates a need for overhaul. Be specific, not vague, and you will get better advice. Be vague and you will get bad advice. To many people excessive oil consumption will always mean 'overhaul it, change the rings' and this has been drummed in their heads from years of urban legend and poor practice without regard for actually looking at the financials involved. Sure, you say it's going through it like water (whatever that means) and you will get the advice "change the rings, overhaul it"---as you make it sound extreme. An overhaul is an EXTREME measure for fixing ANYTHING (especially one item in particular when all else seems to be fine...) Like John said, there are plenty of us out here with 200 and 300+ thousand mile cars running just fine on the stock bottom end. Hell, I still have 185psig compression in all six! Why on earth mess with an engine just coming into peak efficiency and minimal friction just because it's consuming a little oil (key italics). Meaning, how do you know it's burning it, do you really have that constant plume of smoke behind you all the time? These cars consume oil to some extent, it's unavoidable.

What's wrong with that? Just buy a sea container. I did.

BAH! Internet ate my response to that... In any case, I know now these guys were likely not 'on duty' at least. They were not in posession of proper service weapons. The guys here have a double-stacked magazine auto pistol, and these were definately a single-row mag variety. There was a chance at the top of the stairs in McD's where they separated and got out of line/line site where Villian #2 could have went down. Then I could have waited for #1 to reascent the stairs to 'christen him' with his mate's pistol... or I could have come downstairs and dispatched with Villian #1. Nobody would likely notice, the fryer was apparently in flames downstairs, as the place was filled with smoke and everybody was busy with counter-immolation procedures. But hesitation over that badge and uniform top (belt was wrong, pants were wrong, looking closely yesterday) was what stopped my counteractions. Beating up local cops is not a good policy and leads to problems... Hindsight is 20/20 at this point. And now to return to the scene of the crime and get some more Mc DO & Mc Spaghetti. Hell, in the 80's I spirited SSGT (Name Witheld) back to the front gate of Clark AFB after he almost tore the male parts off a 'girl' he was snogging in the Nipa Hut. At least he got the satisfaction of inflicting great bodily pain and injury before his shakedown (where everydoby kicked in their remaining drinking money and ended up near $400) to pay off any 'imperial entanglements' for the noob. As an A1C you would think an E5 would know better, but only having been stationed at Wright-Patterson, he was unskilled and innocent in the ways of the world.

Denver has those machine shops! For gawds sake it's an OIL PATCH! Any competent machine shop dealing in oil and gas production repairs will have all of these items. Failing that, call your local Ingersoll-Rand Master Distributor (in your local Yellow Pages), ask for the service manager, and ask them what shop they use to do the grinding on their Centac Bearing Shims. They have to be surface ground to a size determined after setup of axial clearance on the impellers. They come 1/2" thick, and must be ground to size---same scenario as Datsun Lash Pads!. They use a magnetic chuck surface grinder, blanchard grinder, Bridgeport Mill, or at last resort a Lathe. This is basic 1800's machinist stuff, there is nothing special about this! ANY industrial machine shop will have this. Hell, I almost bought a small surface grinder for my own use when I worked for I-R. Our guy (laid off) in Oregon has one in his shop for that purpose. Come to think of it, he had a 240 at one time... Maybe Gary wants to do some lash pad grinding? Who knows. But there is no reason you can't get thick pads ground down in Denver. I would lay money were I to fly in I could find a shop 'cold turkey' in less than 15 minutes of looking. I do it for a living, and I've yet not been able to find a place to surface grind shims for a Centac. (And that means not speaking the language, drawing pictures, and doing this work on 6 continents. I will admit to some trepidation upon having difficulty in Antartica if I ever have to go, but feel confident that they would be provisioned with a surface grinder for repairs in one of the scientific stations scattered about...) As for a 50 mile drive one way.... If you want it in your back yard, buy it. Otherwise no matter where you are you will have to deliver the parts. All my places in LA are IN LA. I don't live there, I'm 120KM inland. ANY job requires me to go to places in the south bay and means at least a 120 ir not 140 MILE round trip. Yeah, I got access to everything, and I have no issue DRIVING to get to them. Sounds like your flywheel machine shop is closer than mine! Come to think of it, your machine shop is closer to me than MSA is... And I go there on a regular basis without giving it a second thought! Apparently the bay area is closer and more convienient than LA or Denver. But I refuse to live in the middle of an industrial area simply because my wife would make my life an undending hell. Don't make it sound like I just walk down the street to get my stuff done, nor that I have some easy time of it because it's "LA"---yeah, we got stuff everywhere, but I don't live near ANY of it. That's a choice I made, as did you. WE live with our choices. Complaining about it won't change it, and is really counterproductive. "Get busy livin, or get busy dyin" was how someone put it.

I'd consider that detonation concerns are more aptly due to a 17psi boost level and incomplete fuel/timing map only going to 10psi. It's unclear if the setup in question ever really ran on a dished top configuration at all without detonation... Going after the compression ratio is merely a band=aid to an untuned EMS and a wastegate with no possibility of controlling boost to 10psi in the first place. This sounds like an old Turbo Corvair with an opened up intake: keep your foot in it and boot kept rising, and about 17psi that thing would rattle itself to death! Put the stock carb back on (the 60's Wastegate, via inlet and exhaust restriction) and everything was fine again. I'd worry more about getting proper boost control FIRST, before tuning OR thinking about head gasket issues. It does not sound like boost control is functional on this machine AT ALL right now, and no matter WHAT head gasket you have on it, or what EMS tune you have, if the boost is unrestricted, IT WILL BLOW!

To put it succintly, and to cut down all the trees in the way of you seeing the forest you are looking for: THAT IS NOT 'BOOST CREEP' THAT IS A 17PSI SPRING ACTING LIKE IT SHOULD! (this is exactly what I said in my first post about 'someone having a 17psig spring but giving up tuning at 10psi'---what you have is a 17psi setup time bomb of an untuned machine above 10psi set to run at 17psi. If you keep your foot in it, what happens? If the answer is not 'stays at 10psi and then sloooowly rises a bit near redline' you don't have Boost Creep, you have a wastegate set at 17psi! This is what TimZ, as well as I, and several others have mentioned FROM THE START. The answers are there, but if you won't read them or take the time to comprehend what is being said to you, and hold fast to what you were 'told' then help will not 'help' at all!

That was my parts list of the car, on my notepad, In stead of editing it, since I do not have much time on the computer always I just copy and paste it. I know half that suff has nothing to do with the tune. Im not an idiot. Nobody said you were, leave that out. You're becoming defensive and it's counterproductive. This is in your head, and temper the response to leave out your perception of what someone is saying. I didn't take that from the post---that you did is an indicator of your exasperation and admitted inexperience with the situation at hand. Nobody likes not knowing, but it takes someone willing to be humble and keep quiet during the indignity of saying 'I don't know, help me please'---in this regard, 'Im not an idiot' comments are a fail. My wastegate has a 17lb spring. I was planning on buying a 10lb spring. then tuning the car.. is that not possible? From what TimZ said, the 17 psig spring/10psi run is not possible. This is a VERY strang contention to make. Normally the wastegate spring is the LOWEST pressure you can run, and (like Tim Z said) there are devices to let it run HIGHER. Not the other way around. INVESTIGATION ON THIS is required. My suspicion is that you already have a 10 psig spring in there, FOOLED to run 17psi, but only set to run at 10, and the EMS tuned to that level. When I bought the car, the guy said the car is at 10psi and has a 17lb spring for when its ready to be tuned to 20psi like he planned. That is what I am telling you, what I know. Then you need to know more. This was addressed above several times, and is going round-and-round. Stop parroting the same stuff over and over and put some effort forth from someone who sold it to you as to what EXACTLY it is that you have. Failing that, YOU will have to tear into stuff and figure out what you have. Simply repeating it ad nauseaum will get us nowhere. As I said, I canot tune a haltech and never have gotten into that area of the car. As you can see I am still learning. And this is why Carjay's suggestion to take it somewhere and have it tuned likely is the QUICKEST, CHEAPEST, AND SAFEST alternative at this point. There is plenty of time to learn, but not while tuning an engine above 10psi of boost. Things go bang. Quickly. And now, I am not like that. Me and mostly by good friend rebuilt the engine. Now I need to do the timing and haltech. Thats all, and Im not worried about him blowing my engine, hes a good friend of my brothers I just havent worked with him on my car before wich is why I mentioned what he said including the GT30r being to big along with the 550cc injectors for a flat top n42 block. wich is why I was curious to ask people who to me are professionals with these cars. You SHOULD be worried about blowing the engine. It WILL happen if you get the parameters wrong. Not 'might', not 'could', WILL happen! Your dismissive comment of 'do the timing and haltech' belies a great dearth of respect for the immense task of knowledge needed to successfully accomplish this. Someone offering you a base map is worth HOURS if not DAYS of street driving, and at least 1 hour on the Dyno in time saved, not to mention the possibility of a blown engine at any point in the process. And ya Zmanco, Im just trying to do this the right way, and so I dont need to keep doing this over an over.. I am running a NA cam, with a regular fel pro head gasket, I wish I used a thicker head gasket.. Its a NA cam with n42 flat top, p90head, with arp hardware. If nothing is offered, the questions remain. We are a persistent bunch, but if someone asks you what time it is, and you say 'orange' as a response....did you really answer the question? I see this happening here.

"Exactly. Three of us have mentioned this so far, and the same answer keeps coming back. That's kind of where the sense of frustration is coming from." As now TimZ mentions, this is what I mean by 'parroting sales terms'---if you're going to choose to get upset, defensive, and argue with people trying to help you you're not going to get anywhere (look at this thread, and it's round in circles 'discussion'.) What I asked about FUEL versus BOOST was NOT clarified. Not until I asked it and you clarified it. Then you got defensive and argumentative. You have to understand that people will ask you questions because something you said is not clear. And IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO CLARIFY IT DON'T SIMPLY REPEAT WHAT YOU SAID PRIOR! (This is what I refer to as 'parroting'---you say "this is all I know") Well, if that is all you know, then you need to learn more in order to answer the question in a constructive manner, and move the process forward. This will take effort on your part. Nobody is trying to psss you off here, they're just trying to get to the root of what you are asking (or what they THINK you are trying to get answered.) In order to do this INFORMATION needs to be exchanged. Not rote recital of a littany of components and sales terms some fed to you when you bought the setup. That only goes so far towards diagnosis or tuning. I think the best suggestion so far has been made by Carjway: Take it to someone familiar with the capabilities of the EMS you are using, and have them tune it on a dyno. If your fuel and spark maps are only tuned to 10psi....it's a disaster waiting to happen. And like several people have mentioned, the confusion in terms was in need of clarification: FUEL AND SPARK have been tuned to 10psi, yet you are running a 17psi spring...I read this thread and see people concerned about the possibility that you will run BOOST to 17psi from what you have said, and the car will not handle it because there is no proper fuel/spark map to that pressure. This is a specific trade, and questions will have to be asked, and clear answers given. If you choose to be offended, then it will go nowhere. If you choose not to learn anything more about your system other than what someone else has told you at time of sale, then it will go nowhere. Being technical, and having experience, I can (as TimZ mentions) usually sense when someone is in over their heads. And in such cases usually steer them towards a more sedate tune to 'protect them from themselves'---unless you have money flowing on an open tap somewhere be open to the possibility that people will detune your expectations based on their sense of your understanding of what is going on within YOUR car. It's in the interest of keeping a car alive or at least not breaking it so severely that someone with limited abilities will give up on it in exasperation. The saddest part of the equation is seeing people new to the hobby saying people with 20+ years of experience who are giving free advice 'need to be humbled down to size'---I might suggest you not hold such a high standard for your own ego, and realize since you don't know this stuff that the people asking the questions might have a reason to do so and you should simply answer them. Repeating the same phrase over and over is not answering them, it's showing them you are unwilling to put forth the effort to truly learn anything new about your setup. There are posts that have said it before: "This will take effort on your part." If people see these efforts, help continues to flow. If they see someone getting all upset and combative... well 'poke poke' it is... But not answering legitimate questions in a detailed manner (or investigating them in order to give that answer) is a bigger 'poke poke', and one which is far more insulting as knowledgable people are taking their time to help you. They don't have to. Argue with them about it, and they won't. Read these as suggestions to be considered, not something to be counterpointed because your ego is fragile. Arguing or being non-responsive to questions stops the process. I don't think that is your aim, I know it's not the aim of anybody posting here thus far. But it WILL be the result eventually.

Wow, not in April Frank280ZX and I were in Isky and took delivery of a full cam setup from there complete with some 0.300" (or slightly thicker) lash pads. Don't get hung up on a specific size, as mentioned earlier in the thread: cutting down to correct thickness is very easy. Any machine shop with a magnetic deck and surface grinder can do this job a full set at a time...though facing them initially to get them close with a lathe or bridgeport would save time and stone face on the surface grinder. They all cost the same, to when in doubt buy thick and cut down to size.

That sounds more like Hikone (Japanese) Room Service, not Manila. Then I usually order in Japanese and we figure it out, my Japanglish is better than their Englapanese. Actually, the only thing I got which was laughable was I wanted to make a Long Distance call, but I already knew to tell the operador to connect me to a parparaway pon call to america... Right after jurjur and mas sarap bak bak... I feel better this morning, but the money still stings. I got three weeks left more or less and now have to figure out if my ATM will work here (regardless of what I told them last evening...) Oh to be able to freely travel with my mini .38, I could drop it in the river and never miss it.

Be honest, you thought I was an AH till he answered the phone, didn't you!

Sadly, I get to report that while sitting down at the Makati City Mc Donalds this evening, enjoying my Chicken McDO & Mc Spaghetti I was approached by a very polite gentleman who sparked up a conversation and then indicated that we needed to now go outside to talk some more. When I asked about what, he brushed back his right coat to show a badge of some sort. Whe I persisted and asked what this was all about, he brushed back the other side of his coat to reveal a semiauto... And his partner sitting two tables away also performed another discreet act showing that indeed he, too had a badge and a gun. So we went for a ride. To a dark place. Where they decided they needed my crisp $100 bills more than I did. But always polite and wanting to leave me with enough money to eat, they left me with my 700 Pesos, $15 Canadian, $7 Singapore, and 1000 Indonesian Rupiah. Along with my credit cards, my mobile phone, oh....and my life. How I lament not having my little .38 Derringer to kiss a forehead and chest of these two eminently polite, yet corrupt individuals. Damnit, I knew better. I knew to only bring local cash with me and leave my travel money in the safe in the room with my passport. This trumps the Moroccans stealing a dozen or so dirty socks and my MSA shirts. Then again, when the police (or someone who looks like the police) rolls you...it's not like you go to the police and report them: "Yeah Sgt. Brian over there, and Sgt. Jimmy, those are the guys who robbed me!" Well, until I get my ATM card turned on for Overseas Usage (hey, good thing I didn't do THAT beforehand...they wanted me to go to the ATM...) I guess I'll be living off plastic. The P.I. has changed a lot. The P.I. hasn't changed at all. "It's the same, but different!" They took all my beer money.

I know of a guy who chopped the roof off his VW Van, and then painted it chocolate brown trim and light tan WRINKLE PAINT back long ago. He used the van to move tourists through the national forest and it was the only paint he could put on it that didn't scratch going through the pine limbs all the time. Eventually someone gave him a Bullwinkle Doll, and at artistic type airbrushed a Bullwinkle on the side of the van (just Bullwinkle's Head). Even further on, a large set of plywood antlers got affixed across the header... You guys are gnashing at Rhino-Lining as an Exterior Treatment? Good Gawd Man! Where are the TEETH? The Antlers? The HOOVES? A little texture never hurt anybody! It's just that it's so incomplete of a treatment!

Leaving the Ann-Arbor/Detroit Junction on I94 my transmission which was making noise popped out of gear (5th). I used a bungee to keep it in gear for the next 3000 miles (which was about 36 elapsed driving hours from there to SoCal). For your short trip, I'd relax and figure it out later. Oh, bring duct tape and a bungee, just in case!

I may get pilloried for this suggestion, but.... You can try and call Ed Pink Racing Engines and ask him yourself, or have the machine shop call. It's not like he's dead and we all have to guess about this stuff! (Don't laugh at the outrageousness of this suggestion, there is a reason I'm saying it...)

$6 and heavy change at the 76 Station corner of Ramona Expressway and Harvill Ave in Perris. I guess you could call it $7 a gallon... I know it was cheaper than Frank was paying for regular in Europe, so he was filling the tank of the 260 with 100 Octane during the last MSA Event. Gotta love regional pricing on fuels eh? And even better when someone thinks "outrageous" is a bargain and fills up the car. Gotta love the smell of that fuel out the pipe... Right on the way to Lake Perris, lots of watercraft volume. It was actually cheaper than the 5 gallon pails of VP they are selling which were over $35 for the cheapest stuff they had... Lee's 76 up in Pasadena (actually Lee, not the Chevron any more...) will give you a great deal if you supply him with a 55 gallon drum to put the fuel into. He'll even deliver it!

Unfortunately I can not talk about anything more than I already have other than to say there are engines out there not in drag-racing service which rev FAR higher than this one and whi B)ch do not have the shaved crank for piloting of the flywheel. As for dowels, they are normally a shear item. They can also locate, usually in reference to balancing of the assembly. One can work as well as 8 in this instance with flanged cranks. No clutch cover and flywheel is balanced to bolt on, period. Not if you are serious about racing. Let me add this: You obsess about the shaved crank. Anybody got a photo of the flywheel's crankshaft side that mates with that modified crank? May want to take a look at that to understand what they are doing. The 'before' crank tells you a lot...

Similarly there are early V6 Ford Products with a very tasty cam position sensor which can be adapted to the drive of the distributor. The easiest place if you have a true crankfire capability off the crank someplace is to use the old distributor as mentioned with a single pulse to indicate TDC #1. The timing is really not all that critical, phasing angle is pretty wide---it's 'trigger return' usually so all it needs to do is be close on #1 and all events subsequent to it will fall into place nicely. I believe the Ford uses a large open gap so you have a rising and falling pulse as mentioned. Your ECU will determine what you need. As mentioned, an optical conversion like Lumenition with two of the slits taped over will likely give a perfect digital pulse if that is all the ECU requires, and it's a robust unit which should last a LONG time given the Opto now is seeing 1/3 the normal duty cycle!

Things have changed since 1980

I don't when the temperatures are reasonable. Like clockwork when there's an 80 degree day during the winter on winter fuel: PING PING PING PING. Same goes during the summer when it's hotter than blazes outside. It's pretty simple: the fuel is shite. It was NOT like this on the SAME car in 1989 when I moved here. My other car was marginal at that time on Premium. Now, the marginal car WILL NOT run on Premium, but works fine on VP100 Octane available at the pump. For $6 a gallon. It also works flawlessly on windshield washer fluid (50/50 meth and water) on 87 pump gas with a gallon tank lasting two tankfuls of gas and then some. My 260 will use 87 octane and takes 4, sometimes 5 tankfuls of gas to go through a $2 gallon jug of fluid. Or I can put in a $10 can of 104 or NOS octane booster every tankful when it's hot outside... During the winter it seems I can turn it back to almost nothing, but on those hot days just dial in some Meth when I hear the ping and drive on. BOTH of these rides have been dyno-tuned for most power under the curve with distributor advance set to achieve this, and not set to some artificial emissions retardation point. If you want the power, it comes at a cost. If you are willing to give it up, fine. But with as little as these cars have, I don't want to give up power needlessly over something as stupid as shite fuel being the only reason to curtail it! Like I said, try that with a head change!

Was it 0.125" or 0.080" (2mm)?