burninator

Is a wirebrush on an angle grinder too aggressive for this work? I had started using a roloc bristle disk on my air grinder in the spare tire well. But I don't even remember where I got it from and those things are pretty expensive for a consumable.

Just wanted to follow up with a bit of a progress update. I started stripping paint and bondo, used a head gun and a scrapper to get started, I guess I'll move on to a wire wheel at some point. The roof didn't look to bad, here is a wider view of the cracked area previously uncovered. I still can't figure out why it had any bondo at all there... The other side looks slightly worse, notably the seam, and then some rust on the inside the weatherstripping was covering... An example of some paint bubbling up with a bit of rust underneath at the rear of the hatch area that needs addressed... Spare tire well had a lot of rust, but still seems structurally sound... The fender that was the worst of my fears, not much more to say there that hasn't already been said... And the front part of the fender and rocker panel, this is the new area I'm most scared about. Looks like untreated rust just got covered in bondo and ignored...

Great tests! I particularly liked the first part where he tested all the lengths incrementally. For what it's worth, I tested my Z with SU carbs with the stock airbox backing plate that has short runners with bellmouths, and carbs only without the backing plate (no filter either way). Just wanted to see what difference it made, and to my surprise, it did slightly better without the backing plate installed. I don't know where I left the files. I intended to try to make something with longer runners to test, but never got that far. Maybe someday. I have access to a dyno whenever I want (I just don't have a running/driving Z at the moment).

I know I"m late to the party, but I had a similar issue when I got my first Z. It might be worth pulling off the distributor and making sure the shaft is clocked the right way, especially as it appears yours is mounted incorrectly anyway. As I recall the end of the shaft that drives the distributor has a small half and a big half divided by a slot, the small half should be on the left and the slot should be at the 11:25 position (you'll want to verify the accuracy of that with the service manual). I had to pull my oil pump (that drives the distributor) and re-clock it the correct way, it was non-running when I bought it and the person who worked on it before me got it wrong and it was 180 degrees out, sounded a lot like yours does.

Have you had the wheels and tires balanced?

Good luck on the project! I live in Belgrade and look forward to seeing you driving it drive around someday.

Thanks, yeah, the garage is dry, and I'd keep it out of the rain, for sure it would be nice to drive it, so thanks for the info!

So, I'm going to have to work on this bit by bit, and I can't really afford to get the car worked on by a body guy or painted any time soon. As I said earlier, I'm in a predicament with this. I felt like I couldn't drive the car with the cracking paint, and that was probably true, I didn't want rust developing under the paint/filler to eat the car. So I jumped into it and started chipping away. But now that I'm digging into it my concern is that the bare metal needs protection. It'll be garaged 100% of the time, but it could be a while (months... years?) before it gets finished. How long do I have before I need to be concerned about the bare metal? And is there something I can put on it to keep it protected that will be easy to remove for real body work? Somebody who does paint once told me that spray can primer can absorb moisture and doesn't do great for keeping metal from rusting underneath. Thanks, I'm super bummed I'm not gonna be able to drive my Z for a while, and I just found out my daily driver Subaru is gonna need a new engine which would cost more than the car is worth. So, yay! I'm having a moment.

Good point about saving money by doing the removal myself. I can probly handle that. Thanks for the link, that's not even too expensive. I will take a closer look at the roof. I definitely think your correct that this doesn't seem like the work of a craftsman, but I'm not an expert enough. I think you're right, that the whole car, or at least a lot of it, has a layer of filler on it, whether it needed it or not. The roof doesn't look bad from the inside, the headliner fell down, so I can't see the whole thing, but there is no obvious damage. And now that you point out out, is does look like the outer fender was cut away, but I could not tell anything from looking at it from under the wheel well.

I had some cracking paint on my fender and I was kinda hoping I could fill the crack and spray something over it so I could just drive the car for a while. But on inspection the crack had gotten worse, and seemed to be lifting and loosening up, so I decided to just knock the loose stuff off and see what it looked like underneath. What I found seemed odd to me. The body filler was pretty thick there, maybe 3/16ths of an inch near the bottom of the uncovered area, and it had these vertical welds you can see in the picture. In addition it had the bumps all over, maybe a dent puller was used there and left the marks, it's really uneven. I'm guessing it had some major damage in that area that was previously repaired. I guess I'm just in over my head and need to take it to a body shop. I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little depressed to find this. How bad is it? There was a little on the roof too, by the rear hatch, I'm assuming there is more rust in there too. Roof: Fender:

Good idea, that's an easy thing to try.

I feel the vibration and hear it. It's only at speeds above 60mph or so, and it happens all the time whether accelerating, maintaining speed, or decelerating. Even if I take it out of gear. The vibration seems to be coming from behind me. I've seen driveshafts with weights on them, they can be balanced at a shop right? Can half-shafts also be balanced, or would it need to be replaced? I swapped one half-shaft already to one I think is good. I could just swap the other and see if it changes. I also have a spare driveshaft and diff, I didn't want to just keep swapping parts to ones I only think are good without knowing what the issue is. I'll check all the mounts and bushings, just to be sure. But sounds like the driveshaft or half-shafts are probably the issue. Maybe I should grab some new u-joints for when I'm swapping parts.

Something in the rear of my 240 is vibrating like crazy at highway speeds. I checked the axels for play and changed out the one that felt marginal. I also swapped out the wheels and hubs to spares from my old car. It still makes the noise. Keep in mind, my old car was an autocross only car, so I never went that fast in it, not for any amount of time, and I was always racing, so I might not have noticed if it had a slight vibration at the higher speed sections. But I don't think it had a vibration. How likely is it the diff is causing the vibration? How can I tell? What else should I check? As a secondary issue, at low load like maintaining speed, or just when you stop accelerating and start to let off, but not decelerating, there is a whine from the transmission/clutch area of the car as near as I can guess. What should I look at there, is it something to worry about? *Edit - Meant to post this in the troubleshooting forum. Sorry.

OK, I take it back, I do see now how it changes the camber through travel. I also didn't think about it changing the roll center, and I don't remember seeing that on any of the threads about this. Like 260DET said, that's probly a bigger benefit than changing the camber curve.

If you haven't got an answer yet on this... The spring rates might be a bit high, but it depends on your tolerance for ride quality. They are probably too high for Tokico dampers, the Konis he suggested originally could handle them though. I don't know what other people run for a setup like yours, but for comparison, my autocross only race car ran 350's in the front and 300's in the rear with Koni 8610 dampers and it feels stiff on the street. I don't know why some people run stiffer springs in the rear, it never made sense to me, but with your staggered tire setup it might work out.