Swami

Wow, more cylinder head drama? Sorry to hear that, Leon. When you said the exhaust system was covered in oil, did you mean the exterior?

Well the wet season has had me laying low for a while on the Z project. Been saving my dimes for some wheels and coilovers for the daily driver in the mean time. Yeah my daily turned into a light project too, so now i'm spreading myself out kinda thin. However, when Xmas rolled around I caught wind of a group buy from skillard.com. Front bumper delete panels in black powder coat. I decided to get in on it, and they finally arrived today! Not too shabby! I had to elongate a few holes in the urethane air dam to get the fasteners to line up. Also, the turn signals overlap them just a little. Judging from the pics on the skillard site, it looks like they might fit a little better on the MSA air dams, but they're a little snug with the xenon vented air dam on mine. From what I understand, the Xenon air dams don't come with holes drilled, so it's likely just the lack of precision at that step that is causing the "snug-ness") Again, nothing to really complain about here. They are reminiscent of the Rocky Auto bumper delete panels i've seen, and the black finish compliments the urethane quite well. =) Not a huge update, but it's an update. Hopefully more to come in the spring =)

Wow i haven't posted an update in quite a bit here. For the past few months, I've been taking every opportunity to just drive the car. Finally got her sideways a few times and now i'm trying to cool it on that behavior so I can preserve the remaining tread on these tires. =) Anyway, this might be a boring post for some of you, but "story" is starting to become a focus for me with this particular Z, and these bits (while not technical in nature) are certainly part of it. So there I was, driving to a client meeting in Palo Alto, when I see this sign. Lo and behold, it's Gunn High School, where this car spent some time with the students of Gunn Auto Tech. I made a pit stop and talked to the folks at the front desk, who connected me with the auto shop teacher, "Mr C." We chatted via email and he filled me in on the back story of this car. It's so cool, and it gives the car just that much more character. It got me thinking how cool it would be to fill in ALL the blanks of this story. Crazy. my last orange 240 was an automatic that I converted to a 5 speed, as well. Some kind of weird "Car karma" at play here or something.=) A few days later, I meet up with a friend I haven't seen in many years. We both had orange 240Zs back in the 90s. Eventually he graduated to a 1990 twin turbo. Which he sold but somehow magically made it's way back into his possession. We ruminated about the impact these cars have had on our lives, over a few hundred beers. Several weeks later, I had a weekday off with nothing going on, So I drove up to Cameron Park and was treated to a little tour of Techno Toy Tuning by Gabriel, and we discussed future plans for my suspension. We looked at the GTX2 front lower control arms, and I actually brought up the point that Tube80z mentions in this thread, and he seemed to indicate that the "extra degree of freedom" mentioned here has been addressed. So that's interesting. Took a few snapshots too. Kind of hard not to drool over piles of suspension cores and stacks of mustache bars made for several rear ends. In the mean time, a few odds and ends have made their way to my bench; a Carter fuel pump, Mishimotor oil cooler + sandwich plate, and oil catch can, as well as a few assorted Aeroquip hose ends. When the weather cools, I plan to hit the fuel delivery first, then see if I can snag a turbo oil pump, and plumb the cooler. Just tonight though, I had something weird happen. After pulling out of a parking lot and gunning it up the overpass, I noticed my oil pressure gauge was spiked! I took my foot off the throttle and coasted to the next parking lot. By the time I was able to stop, the reading had returned to normal. This is the first time I've seen this happen, and it's a bit odd. Do oil pressure senders go out, intermittently? Did something clog up an oil passage and get blown out? What the heck. I'll be keeping an eye on that for a bit, I guess... O_o. Oh yeah, and I also changed the speedo cable drive gear seals, and picked up these slick little velocity stack screens from Pegasus Racing. Oh and these high fidelity earplugs. Initially I only picked them up to protect what little hearing i have left on long freeway drives, but these have an unexpected benefit. They drop the exhaust noise by 20db (advertised) but some of the highs are preserved. It's like having X-ray specs for your ears! I can hear little rattles in the passenger compartment and under the hood, over the deafening exhaust under full acceleration. The first time I heard it, I thought something was wrong with the car, but it's just the noises I don't normally get to hear. Some of the stage 8 fasteners jingle. There's are some rattles all through the center console and in the driver door. It's like having a stethoscope to look for loose screws. So that's it for this chapter. Hopefully I'll have some more upgrades to share in the next post.

Oh also, congrats! Can't wait to see this project evolve!

"i basically made a murder chamber, even creepier." so funny... Dexter paint booth.

This was really helpful. I was able to trace it back to the BW wire which had become disconnected within the harness. Thanks for the assist!

Car is no longer charging. Can anyone tell me what the role of the Black/Yellow wire is, going to the voltage regulator on a 260z? According to the factory wiring diagram it goes straight to the interlock relay. Is it supplying voltage TO the relay or is it receiving voltage FROM it? For context, here's the issue I'm having: I get 0v at the WB and Y connectors (these run to the F and N terminals on the alternator) There is 12v on the W wire at the regulator. The B wire is showing a strong ground. The BW wire runs inside the passenger compartment and becomes the green wires on the Tach, Amp/Fuel, and Temp/Oil gauges The BY wire connects to the interlock relay. Still trying to wrap my head around those last 2 bullet points. I have to admit, i don't understand why those any gauge besides the ammeter needs to be connected to the voltage regulator. Not sure if this is significant or not, but the BY wire reads .059 volts when the ignition switch is on. I am tempted to jump 12v to this wire, to see what happens, but i'm afraid of hurting the regulator, if it is isn't defective. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

I was having an intermittent battery drain myself. Was able to focus on it for a few hours last night, and traced it back to a loose connector on the interlock relay. Seems to have fixed it! And yes I hear you about how hard it is to fix dips and spikes in Afr on carbs.

Blackhawk Cars & Coffee in Danville. Sounds like it's a morning thing. Have you been before? Curious what is the best time to arrive.

I've never been! It would be fun to roll down there with you! I believe it's the 7th of next month.

Big update today! I can't remember ever saying this before, at any point in my life. This car is running SO GOOD that i'm stopping here for the rest of the summer. It tracks in a perfectly straight line.No wobbling steering wheel. No driveshaft vibration. Minimal valvetrain chatter. No sputtering. No backfiring. No dieseling. The only blip in performance is that off-throttle bogging of webers that is just part of owning webers. I've had my hands on every last last thing under the hood without actually blueprinting a new engine config (which i still plan to do in a year or two), and made it my own. Readjusted the valve timing, and did more tuning on the ignition map. My last motor (destroked with a stage 3 cam) was certainly faster, but I've NEVER owned a Datsun motor this healthy until now. On top of all that... you can eat off this thing. It's at that point now where your eyes are drawn to the outlying dirty components, like the timing chain inspection plate, the fuel & brake lines, the yellowed plastic on the master cylinder. We've reached the next phase! There was one big hurdle a few weeks ago, however. After the head gasket job, the valve timing was completely screwed... to the point that it was shooting fire from the carbs. I even called Leon at one point out of frustration because it seemed like no matter what i tried, it wouldn't go away. In a desperate moment, i considered that the timing chain might be off by a tooth, and I tried advancing and retarding +1, +2, -1, and -2 teeth. Still nothing. Played with the crank sensor position and the offset within the megajolt software. Nothing. Compression was great on all 6 cylinders. Was starting to pull my hair out. The experienced folks here probably already know the answer. Somehow (and i seriously have no idea when or how it happened) the firing order was wrong on the coil pack. It was running when i took it all apart, and i normally never take the plug wires off the coil pack. Usually i pull those off as one unit and set it to the side. I want to say a friend of mine did it when helping me clean the parts, but it was probably me. The only reason i didn't notice it earlier is because it's not the 1-5-3-6-2-4 i'm so accustomed to on a datsun distributor. As soon as I switched the wires back, it fired right up and instantly ran like a champ. On the bright side, I found issues inside the timing cover when i tore it all down. The curved timing chain guide was loose, and the chain had quite a bit of slop in it. This ended up being the source of the valvetrain noise I was hearing. Now, everything is running really quiet under the hood, and the timing is all centered. The slots on the crank wheel have the same amount of adjustment in either direction now, too. But I doubt I'll ever need to touch it again, because there is so much adjustability in the megajolt software. My good buddy who I worked with at ALLDATA for many years is an expert tuner (a turbo volvo guy) and came over to help me look at the timing map. He sat in the passenger seat with the laptop, while i went up and down the powerband on a straightaway, conveniently close to my house. Here is the "before": 10 degrees of starting advance (the big green number), 36 degrees under load from 3000 up... It felt really good at low rpm, but seemed a little "uninspired", under load. Now here's the after (blue outlines the changes. SHADED blue appears to be a mistake. Gotta bump those up a few degrees): Basically the car just kept taking everything we threw at it. If you look at each column, we tried making the curve more gradual. And across the board, everything got a good 2-5 degree bump. It feels GOOOOD, and we never even heard it ping. Could proabably benefit from a few more degrees, but I'm kind of thinking of getting a cheap standalone knock sensor (like KnockSense) to help find the safe edge. The only weird thing, is that when I apply gradual power, from a cruising speed, the wideband gauge drops somewhere between 10:1 and 11:1 AFR. My friend seems to think there's another 10-15 horsepower hiding in the midrange here, and that I should experiment with jetting, or add more advance in the midrange to start burning that fuel a split second earlier. Open to opinions here! Oh and that titanium colored exhaust coating? Loving it. The headers are GORGEOUS under the hood (the engine appears to be developing a "metal on metal" color scheme), The muffler almost matches the tail light panel color, and it's understated. No exhaust tip. just a 2.5" outlet with an even titanium color that should never rust or change color (much). Also used Mr Gasket copper collector gaskets on the final install. It sounds spectacular, and the ground clearance on the resonator is ideal. I've gone over some pretty tall speed bumps and it never scrapes! My god... I DO want to drop it another 0.5"-1.0" in the front, but DO I???? Come on now... this is almost too good. Here are a few more pics from the build phase: protecting the paint from overspray (cleaner and engine paint) Before scrubbing it down with a toothbrush. I was able to flush a whole bunch of chunks out of the water jackets. No more external oil leak! I suspect there may have been TINY bit of leakage between water and oil. The oil never got milky, but the radiator fluid felt a little funny to me. No matter. It's tight as a drum now. Terrorizing the neighborhood... ... while trying to maintain a philosophical high ground. When your wife does this, it's a telltale sign that you need to spend less time shopping for car stuff, and more time shopping for house stuff. That's it for now! Just retorqued all the bolts yesterday. Next stop... Cars & Coffee!

NICE! What a cool place for that signature! =D

Several things jump out at me here, as inspiration for the next phase of my own z. Your dash restoration is really intriguing. I've seen this done before on another forum, but with two examples on record here, I think I'm ready to take the plunge and try it myself. Also, thanks for the tip on that rubber restoration chemical. Very nice work, sir!

Xmas came early this year! Picked up my exhaust from Amerikote this afternoon. Tonight is going to be a BLAST! I spent the last few days changing the head gasket, cleaning the HECK out of the engine compartment, and getting ready for this badboy to go back in. Was going to wait til i had it out in the daylight before posting, but i'm like a kid on Xmas morning right now. Couldn't wait to start unwrapping my present!

Great meeting you yesterday, and thanks for the food and beverage! =) My wife and I have cars and coffee on the calendar now. Next month we'll be there!