....because it could have been ugly!

My daughter was home for the holidays and I try and take the oppurtunity to check on her 81 280zxt and make sure it's okay. I put some new speakers in the car for her Christmas present and I also had some maintenance items I wanted to take care of. Due to the extreme cold here in Indianapolis the 30 year old oil seals were starting to give out. The Crank pulley or front main seal started leaking and the power steering pump started spewing too. I happened to have an extra crank seal and I was actually able to order a shaft seal for the pump from Napa(6$). I never had messed with the PS pump before but thought it couldn't be too bad. I was actually guessing the seal was bad on the shaft since I hadn't taken it apart yet.

Both jobs went pretty well and I was bale to replace the crank seal without disconnecting my condenser and moving it. The hardest part was getting the keyway to line up when reinstalling the pulley-I couldn'y really see it and had to feel my way around. I was really nervous about dropping it into the timing cover. The PS pump was a learning curve but not too bad, but I did booger up the first seal when i tapped it into place, so I had to order another one from Napa(last one they had). I was doing this job without removing the PS pump, because I didn't have a wrench big enough to hold the HP line nut to get the line off. I got in a hurry the first time installing the seal but came up with a better paln of attack the second time.

Since I had to wait another day for the new PS pump seal I was putting my schedule in a bind. I told my daughter I would get the car to her that day that the seal came in, so I had to move effeciently to get everything done and checked out. The second seal went on great and I finished putting the car back together and test drove it-no noises, no leaks-i'm cool:cool:

Well I hop in the car and drive it 50 miles to her school and drop it off and everyone is happy:) A busy day and I was done Z-ing and I would clean up the garage tomorrow.

Tomorrow came and I cleaned up the aftermath on my work bench of the pile of tools rags and stuff. Then suddenly I locked up looking at my bench--------there sat a C-clip-a C-clip to hold the PS shaft in place--OH Sh%t, I said about a million times. I called my daughter right then and told her to not drive the car until I get down there. Then I had this scary image of being on the highway at 70mph when the shaft came out of the PS pump and how much damage that would have done:stupid:

I really got lucky this time-thankyou Z Gods

Several years ago, when i was a kid, I had an 81ZX, the pump was leaking, so I just didnt put any more fluid in it, untill about 9 months later when I found out it was just a line that was leaking. Fixed the line, serviced the fliud, and the pump worked good as new. The car was a daily driver.