juggernautjoee

Decided to take a gamble on an ebay header and an aluminum radiator. I was going to slap a header on this thing anyways, might as well do it now when everything is off. And the current rad has a ton of missing/bent fins. Got some header wrap too of course. We've got a few warm-ish days ahead, so hopefully I'll make some more progress.

Well, things snowballed today. Got the head on, torqued to spec. Put a new water pump on. Went to put the cam gear on, and it just would not give me enough slack to slide on. I tried prying up with a long screwdriver to get some leverage. Nope. So I look down the hole and see that the chain tensioner had popped out. Big oof. I tried my hardest to get it back in from the top, but just couldn't do it. Sigh So I had to take off the water pump, AC compressor & bracket, alternator (to get some room), distributor, oil pump and the radiator/condenser out (to get an impact on the crank bolt) But now I can just line up the timing chain and sprocket all in one go. Which is nice. What isn't nice is that I gotta make sure I get all the replacement gaskets for everything that was taken off.

Got all the lash set. Cleaned the new head. Started lubing up and putting all the new head bolts in. Missing 1 washer. Found a couple that could work if I stacked them, but they're cheap and will probably flex. I'll just head to the hardware store tomorrow to find something better. Maybe a couple grade 8's if I can't find the right thickness.

Swapped the cam over to the other head. Made sure to put the rockers in the same spot. Started setting the cold lash, but then got busy with something else. Hopefully I'll get some time this week to finish up and get this thing fired up.

I think I got a good deal on all these parts for $300 (Ignore the head at the top. That's the broken one) I wasn't planning on going turbo or fuel injection, but I couldn't pass up a deal on all of it. I'll probably keep those parts on the shelf until I can make a decision on what path I want to go. He also has a clean F54 block (dished pistons), and a nice zx hood. I'm gonna hold off on those for now. The N47 head is in much better shape, and cleaner than my N42. I need to look for some stamps or markings on the cams to compare them. Do the turbo cams out of the ZX's differ much than the earlier ones? I assume they have a shorter duration. I'll have to research that. EDIT: So the cam that is in the N42 has 3 markings. H and E30 in the cam itself, then an A on the back of the lobe on the rear. The cam in the N47 head has a B. I found http://xenonzcar.com/s30/cams.html - Which explains what the cams are. Looks like I'm going to need to swap the cam over for sure. The turbo cam has less duration and lift, which makes sense. But I need to get this thing running NA first.

Nice. Well that'll save me a couple hundred bucks. I assume this also applies to headers as well?

So here is the news. Cylinder 5 exhaust valve has a hole right on the edge of the valve seat. I would say it could be repairable, but that location doesn't seem like a great spot. The water jacket holes were pretty clogged up. But after popping out the freeze plugs and flushing it out with a hose, it's pretty clean now. The head gasket itself looked decent. I couldn't tell where it was torn, or had any soot build up where it could be leaking. So now I'm in the dilemma of finding a head for this thing. I know the shaved P90 is the best, but they're basically impossible to find. The guy I was talking to about one already sold it. I see plenty of P79 heads, and I've got a local N47 head near me. But those have the round exhaust ports, so I'd have to source some headers or a manifold. The guy with the local N47 head also has a dished piston F54 block, J tube, exhaust manifold for turbo, intake manifold, and a turbo. I could just slap those things on this and then figure out how to manage it via megasquirt or something like that. I'm at a crossroads and don't know what to do. I know I said an LS could happen, but all the mounts and crossmembers really add up. And I'm trying to get married this year lol. I think the best course of action is to grab that N47 head for ~$75. Take it to the machine shop to do a valve job on it and freshen it up. Hopefully ~$150. Then either try and find someone selling a round port manifold, or fork out the cash for some headers. If I decide to go LS or something else in the future, I can always sell the headers to recoup some money.

Thanks @A to Z. You're taking us to school with all this learning. Yeah I was planning on plugging up those ports for sure. My 83 S10 had these exact same things on the exhaust manifolds. We'll see if I get lucky and they come out with little work. If they don't, and the plan is still to keep this motor, I would also consider finding some headers. But that all depends on what I see once I get this head off. And when it comes to head work, I've got a message out to someone selling a P90 head. I'm 99% sure I have dished pistons, so I'd be taking that thing to a machine shop anyways to get it shaved down to up the CR. If that falls through, then yeah I'm going to just send this unit along to have it cleaned up for sure.

Well that was one of the easiest tear downs I've done. Took maybe 1.5hrs taking pictures along the way. Nothing really gave me any trouble. In fact, some of the intake and exhaust manifold bolts were finger tight. Even the nuts holding the exhaust pipe on were easy as pie. I've never had that happen before lol. There may have been 1 or 2 intake manifold fasteners missing. I guess it was a good thing I tore the down a bit. I did have to use an angled mirror to find a hidden intake manifold bolt back near cylinder #5. But after that, the rest was cake. Hopefully this doesn't mean someone already tore this down, found a big issue, then just slapped it all back together and crossed their fingers. I'm waiting on that timing belt holder tool before I pull the head off.

Thanks @Noll. I took a look at - I'll be setting the engine at TDC, marking chain and sprocket points. And taking pictures of where everything lines up. Already got a timing chain holding wedge coming, and a head gasket. I'm gonna hold off on some of the extra stuff like arp studs, intake/exhaust gaskets, etc... Until I get this thing torn down to inspect.

No need to do a compression test. I filled the radiator full of cheap coolant last night. Took the #5 spark plug out this afternoon and water was completely filled in the cylinder. Guess I get to tear down to the short block now. Crossing my fingers that it's just a bad head gasket. If it's a cracked head, then I guess I'll see what my options are there. Shaved P90, etc... If it's a cracked block, then it's time for an LS

I took each spark plug out with the wire attached, set it down where the threads could ground, and we got spark on all 6. It's a bit intermittent and weak. So I'll start with the cheap cap/rotor combo first. Even when I spray starting fluid down the carbs, it's not enough to get it running. It maybe tries to fire 1 cylinder every 3-4 seconds of cranking. One thing that may be opening a large can of worms is.. When I had cylinder 5 open and cranking, some water sprayed out. Not a huge amount, but enough for me to notice. I also saw a pool of water out the backside of the tailpipe after I'd been cranking on it for awhile. Now it has been fluctuating temperatures outside like crazy over the past few weeks, so I know there is going to be a bit of condensation in those exhaust pipes. But I don't want it to be a bad head gasket, or worse, a cracked head/block. I'll just do the right thing and ignore it for now, lol. If the new cap/rotor doesn't at least improve the chance of starting, I'm going to be looking at Pertronix ignition module and coil to get rid of this ballast resistor and old ignition module. Hopefully that kit works with my 280z dist.

Got the electric pump wired up. After finding multiple leaks and tightening them up, we've got fuel to the carbs now. My garage is gonna smell like gas for a month, but oh well. New spark plugs, egr deleted, capped off all the open vacuum ports I could find. New small fuel lines from bowl to jet. New filters in the banjo fittings in the float bowl. But now the car won't start. I know that's my own fault for changing a thousand things simultaneously. But the way the weather is around here, I have to cram in as much stuff as I can in one day. I can squeeze the float fuel line and see some fuel bubble up into the jet/carb inlet area. I believe I set the float correctly. I used a 9/16th spacer and blew into the needle valve. I adjusted the little metal bracket to just start closing the needle when it touched. I need to get some real starter fluid tomorrow to help me narrow down if it's fuel or spark related. I tried with some brake cleaner, and it barked off a couple times, but not enough to get it running. I do have the 280z distributor with the ignition control module in the passenger floorboard. I'll need to read the FSM on a 77-78 280 to see if it uses things like the coolant temp sensor (broken wires coming from that) or something like that. Or if it's simply just takes the signal from the magnetic pickup in the distributor and tells it when to spark.

Did a few things today before the weather turns. Changed the oil. I went with some 15w-40 rotella heavy duty diesel oil. I couldn't find any good high-zinc in a 10w. I know this oil has a good amount of zinc and other dinosaurs/vitamins that these flat tappet motors want. It might be a little thick, but it's not going to hurt anything right now. The old oil didn't smell like gas, so hopefully that's a good sign. Rebuilt the carbs. The carb closest to the firewall was very gummed up. The jet was completed clogged. After cleaning them both up, spraying out everything, the front carbs' piston drops a lot slower than the rear carb. That one drops in about 5 seconds, the other one is almost double that. Guess I'll have to see if I bent the needle or something later. I'm sure it'll at least run, which is all I'm trying to do right now. So then I tried to get the fuel pump relay situation started. I took off the oil pressure sending unit and tried my best to thread in a 1/8 FIP T fitting, but it just wouldn't go in. The female side of the fitting works fine. I can thread in the sending unit into the fitting perfectly. I'm going to try another one, as I'm suspecting I got a chinese defect. I also took the air pump off so I can clean things up a bit in the engine bay.

Wow, thanks a lot Noll. That diagram helps a ton. I'm going to eventually replace the external regulating alt for an internal one, so I might as well run a new harness/relay for the fuel pump. Once I remove that voltage regulator, I'll trace the wires back and remove the relays and such to clean things up. I'm going to loosely follow this - http://jarvas240z.blogspot.com/2013/01/electric-fuel-pump-installation.html I've done the same thing when I had to switch from a manual to electric fuel pump in my 83 S10 when I did a 2.8L -> 3.4L swap. It's a very similar process.

I guess my wording wasn't good. Both pumps test fine when hooked directly to the battery. I'm not getting 12v with a volt meter from the hot wire when cranking or running (I can get it running by filling the bowls manually for ~40 seconds). So something in the wiring/relays is bad. Thanks NewZed for that manual. That'll help me track it down. Looks like the 260 should be using the alternator RPM as the kill-switch. I wonder if my alt is bad, this would cause this issue.

Tank was flushed with acetone. New sending unit installed. New battery cables and spark plug wires. I threw some rust reformer on the tank and straps and then hit the tank with some gloss black. I threw in some new rubber lines back there. Then came the electric pump install. I'm not getting 12v when on or cranking. New pump works fine when tested. Even the old pump worked (but sounded terrible). I did some research and it looks like the 260z electric pump wiring goes through some relay and it either uses the oil pressure switch as a cutoff, or something else. I'm getting mixed answers on that. I'll try to figure it out later. Or maybe just give up and run some new wiring for it. I tried to run it just on the mechanical pump, but it doesn't seem to want to run for long. I don't want to go chasing that squirrel until I know I've got good fuel coming from a new electric pump.

Agreed. Getting the car on the road needs to happen first. I may discover some other issues that need to be addressed once I'm driving it.

Honestly not sure yet. I'm going to be pretty flexible on what my plans are. If I find a good deal on parts to slap on the L28 (p90 head, headers, megasquirt and triple webers) for cheap, I'll go that route. If I find a good deal on an LS near me, and the L28 is boring me, I'll do that. Most likely I'll just keep the L28 until I've at least got the interior in good shape, then I'll start looking for parts or an LS.

Thanks for the heads up. Since the inside looks pretty good to me, I might just flush it with some acetone and be done with it.

Pretty sure the whole issue was lack of fuel lol. I pulled the tank plug and maybe a cup or two of gas came out. No chunks luckily. Just dark, varnished gas. I went ahead and dropped the tank after seeing how brittle some of these lines were. The rubber was hard and I could easily break it in half with one hand. I also bent one of the contacts for the fuel sending unit, so I might have to get another one of those. The tank cleaned up pretty well with some purple power, brillo pad and a hose. I've got another electric fuel pump coming. Not the same unit as the stock one, but I think I can get it to work in that stock location with the stock wiring. I also blew the lines out with compressed air. Nothing significant came out. Just old dirty gas. My garage is going to smell like gas for a few days I'm sure. I'm thinking of at least painting the outside of the tank and the straps. But what is everyones' opinions on either sending the tank off to be sealed, or doing it yourself with a POR15 kit?

My orange 260z was delivered just before Christmas. It's an early model 74 (pre August). It has an L28/N24/N24 head. Round top carbs. Early magnetic pickup distributor. Factory AC with the old compressor. 5spd swap (I think lol). I need to take the shifter cover off to make sure I actually feel 5 forward gears, and it's not just sloppy linkage lol. Luckily the only rust I'm seeing is the drivers door. But it has a dent in the rear quarter, drivers side, around the taillight area. The car was sold as running, but I wouldn't say that is entirely true lol. There is a fuel delivery issue that I'm trying to track down. It will run if I manually fill the bowls, but that's it. Once the holiday season slows down, I'll throw an electric pump at it and see what that does. There are all kinds of vacuum lines broken, plugged, and dangling everywhere. So I'll need to track those down and may need some help identifying what goes where. There are also a few sensors that have broken wires coming out of them, but if the engine fires up without them, I'm assuming they aren't critical. The interior is pretty crusty. Dashboard has more cracks than Keith Richards. Wires hanging everywhere. But hey, the seats are in decent shape, except they are in permanent Tupac-mode and recline as soon as you sit in them. It has brand new rubber lines to all 4 brakes and the clutch. New master cylinder for brakes and clutch, and new slave for the clutch as well. My plans are to get this thing running and driving safely. Brakes, lights, fuel delivery issue first. Then it's gonna be tackling the interior, POR15 all over the place, etc... Because this isn't a numbers matching car, it opens a lot of options for a powerplant in the future. I'll take the L28 as far as I can, but if I get bored, I won't feel as bad throwing an LS in here.