Seattle Area Z Brunch Saturday

[S30Driver]

A beautiful morning for a nice 30 mile drive down to Emunclaw to meet Geoff & Mark for breakfast.  More great conversation, food, fun, & another big thanks to Mark's wife for more of the delicious jam.

Geoff brought down his restored intake for his carbs, a gleaming thing of beauty...

 

Headed to Seattle to get my valve seals squared away (heavy weekend traffic, took pix when stopped)

Had a little drama at the end of the job with my FI lines to the injectors, fortunately Geoff spotted it ... near disaster averted!

(I'll let him give more details of the problem)

 

 

 

[rossiz]

Yes, another successful meetup - and the wait staff was excellent (can't let these pics leak out or Mark's wife will cut off our supply of homemade jelly!) 

 

the feast:

 

the scenery:

 

car talk:

 

2 is a start - we need to get more zs in the lot!

 

 

 

 

[rossiz]

after breakfast we headed back up to seattle (glorious morning for a drive) to replace jim's aging valve guide seals. he had been noticing a puff of smoke on cold startup as well as some smoke during high vacuum driving conditions (long downhills under engine breaking) and we were hoping this was the culprit.

 

the project went smoothly and we didn't loose any valve keepers in the hole of doom... i had read a post about using vinyl tubing to hold the valves up in lieu of rope so i picked up $1 worth of the stuff at ACE and it worked a treat. much easier than stuffing wads of rope in the cylinders and much easier to get it out. the old seals were completely useless: rock hard and stretched out like an old sock - they practically fell off.

 

While we were at it, we did a compression test (170, 170, 170, 160, 170, 170) and used the little scope camera to peek in at the bores. the pistons were a little cruddy on top (no doubt from those old seals) but the bores looked great.

 

we finished, fired it up and were pleased that  she ran well and no puff of smoke at cold startup - mission accomplished!

 

we were about to close the hood i noticed what looked like a blonde hair waving in the air stream of the fan off of one of the injector hoses - i reached down to pull it off and realized HOLY SHITE: it was a fine stream of gas squirting onto the manifold! we shut it off immediately and saw that 4 of the 6 injector hoses were leaking and dripping right down onto the exhaust manifold which (thankfully) was not yet hot. seems they were old and cracked, and during the valve work we flexed his fuel rail around a little and the cracks opened up and started pissing fuel. pulled 'em all off and went straight to o'reilly's and picked up a couple of feet of new efi hose and had 'em all replaced in short order - no more leaks. really scary, as jim's getting ready to do a 2,400 mile cross-country drive and that would have been a very unsafe situation. shudder to think that a beautiful z could have gone up in flames for lack of $9 worth of hose - something to check regularly!!

 

all in all, a well spent sunday,

 

valve guide seals - which one would you rather have?

 

nice rockers - perfect wipe pattern, perfect finish (must be using the right oil...)

 

disaster narrowly averted:

 

old hose:

 

all done:

 

 

 

 

[Zed Head]

I had that same thin stream of fuel shoot out on to the sidewalk when mine finally let go.  Mine was squirting from the connections of the three piece rail though.

 

Note on the newer EFI hose.  It tends to creep or relax a little bit over time.  At least my Gates brand hose did.  I think the newer hose is designed for constant tension spring clamps, not the screw type clamps.  Might need to retighten the clamps occasionally until it settles in. 

 

That's VR-1 oil, right?

[S30Driver]

Thanks Geoff for all your help Saturday and being sharp eyed with the potential fuel disaster.

Will finish the hot lash tomorrow when I replace my aging crankcase vent hose.  Hose is NLA from MSA so will go to NAPA to match it up.

I replaced the inlet side of the fuel hose a couple of years ago, I think now I will also replace the return side.

(note to self .... even if the hoses under the hood appear to look good, replace them over time)

 

Zed, thanks for the clamp tip, will check on them when ever I am under the hood.

Have run either VR1 or Castrol GTX hi mi in the six years since I have owned the car.

[240260280z]

Great stuff!

 

FYI later 280zx's did away with the multi-part fuel rails. This removes the need for all those coupling hose weak links in the chain.

[Captain Obvious]

What he said. Looks like you guys had a great time. It's so nice to see the camaraderie.

 

One of the things I like about this place!
 

[240260280z]

These threads make me hungry for pub food.

[Mike]

Nice!!  Last weekend was a gorgeous day in the PacNW.  Here's to a sunny and warm spring/summer so we can have more of these...

[Chickenman]

Picture of fuel hoses reminded me to go buy a Fire extinguisher. Always handy to have around. My Injector hoses look like they have been previously replaced, but I think I'll give them a good hard inspection ASAP!!

 

I've replaced some of the Fuel regulator hoses already.

[240260280z]

Fire up the grill, I'll be in Seattle in June for 2 weeks.

[Mark Maras]

Cool, I'll come up from Portland for Z talk & food. Anyone else from the Portland metro area want to join in the fun?

Mark