zKars

While working on yet another Z, I discovered these "gems". Any one seen these before? They appear to made from machined originals, the casting of the front end is too close. There is a fair bit of corrosion and pitting on the end where the bushings go, not sure if I want to risk using them. Interesting concept at least. Stock mounting and bushings, but adjustable caster. Anybody wants these (reads brave enough to try them) let me know...

The stock battery is a 24F. Now let google be your friend. such as http://www.rtpnet.org/~teaa/bcigroup.html

The pitch of those nuts on the car are 10 x 1.25 without doubt, at least as it came from the factory. Go buy a Harbour freight tap set and clean them up. Nothing you can put on the bolts you have will clean out those threads without harming its threads.

Removing the distributor base at the 2 bolt location will require a new gasket for that connection unless this has been apart recently. The old one will separate. More trouble than its worth. Mark the plates (Sharpy!) where the 10mm headed timing adjustment bolt locks them together to note their alignment and take that one bolt out. Pull dizzy straight out, it can only go back in one way (tang at the end is offset, no 180 out is possible). Easy peasy.

Finally had a chance to remove the valves from the head. Enjoy the painfull art!

The only other challenge is the difference in how the two gauge housings mount to the dash. It's best to put the guts of the 280 gauge into your 240 housing then adapt the wiring to match the wiring in your car. Both have the same wires, just not the same plugs. Just a bit of cutting and adding new connectors, or splice the 280 gauge wires to the connectors on your 240 gauge. It certainly can be done. Good luck!

My understanding of oil pressure is that is caused by the balance of two controlling factors. One is the internal relief valve in the oil pump, and the other is main and rod bearing clearance. The pump relief is a spring pressure controlled device that just allows internal bypass at a certain max pressure, but the bearing clearance and pump volume determine the overall pressure over the range of normal operating conditions. I can't see one bad bearing causing high pressure. When the pump relief valve sticks, the pressure gauge becomes a tach, ie rpm determines pressure and it can quickly get WAY above 60 at as little as 3k. Doesn't sound like your case. Time to take it apart and diagnose. If its one bearing seized and the other have correct clearance and no sign of scoring and starvation, likely just a blocked passage to that bearing and bad luck...

Gordon Welcome to classiczcars.com. This site has a classified section, feel free to post it here. Look at the other similiar z cars for sale and decide what yours might be worth. There are many Z owners here that are in your area. As Wade says post a couple of pictures in this thread, and I'll bet you'll get some quick response. A well cared for one owner car is much sought after. Good luck with the sale. And as Wade says, cash or nothing.

i think Supertramp had it right when they wrote "Dreamer, you know you are a dreamer..."

you got it now. Start button is perfect.

Black yellow coming from the harness. No idea why you would have three wires there. There is a single 1/4" male spade terminal on the starter. The black /yellow wire from the harness should be the only thing attached to it. If there's more, then some one has added something... Pictures might help.

Do one test first. When you have the "click" no start condition, remove the small spade wire connector (BY wire) at the starter that is your key "start" +12 signal, and connect the spade terminal on the starter to the battery + terminal with a different wire. (make sure you are in neutral!!!). If the starter cranks strongly again, you have narrowed the problem to one of two common places that affect the ability of this connection to supply sufficient current to the solenoid to engage it. (And you know the starter solenoid is fine) 1. The key switch in the Start position is not able to supply enough current to the starter terminal due to a bad key switch. 2. The spade terminal on the end of the BY wire at the starter is not well connected to its wire. Cut it off and replace it after thoroughly cleaning the bare wire you will strip, to add the new 1/4 spade terminal to it. Solder this terminal to the wire if at all possible or make a very good crimp and insulate with heat shrink either way. Let us know what happens. PS. I f you haven't already done, thoroughly clean the heavy battery wires and their connections at either end, att the battery, at the starter and where the negative line is grounded (starter mounting bolt?). If the battery cable terminal ends are poorly connected to their wires, replace the cables.

zcarsource.com and arizonzcar.com are different businesses run by different individuals. I could be totally wrong here, but I suspect zcarsource offers the dash restoration service, but sends them out to one of the real dash restoration businesses, hence the $300 additional charge. Just my opinion.

As far as I know the only difference in AFM's from 75-78 is that the 78 AFM no longer has the fuel pmup switch contacts and corresponding pins. Other than that all are identical. Even the 79-83 NA afm's can be used, they just mount differently to the car. This can be overcome with a bit of creative bracketry.

I was working on a guys car and it had several extra wires running around the engine bay from various PO's attempts to run stereo's, fog lights, you know, the usual crap. My mission? To remove all traces of this stuff. I was literally pulling wires out left and right cleaning this mess up when I found about a long 14 gauge light blue wire on the drivers side coiled up nice and neat underneath the brake booster area. Followed it back to the firewall where it lead into the hood release bracket. Assuming it went through the firewall in there, I was tugging at it trying to pull it out. Not budging. Finally I noticed it was operating the hood latch! Some PO had looped it around the latch arm, then more or less horizontally over to the master cylinder body, then over and down behind it, leaving a nice rolled up couple of feet hanging just above the frame rail. Tug that from underneath and it opens the hood simple as anything. Not exactly a nice tucked job, but fully functional.

and here are some pics

More details now that I'm made some positive progress. The car is running and left for its new home last night. The original power-on ticking/clicking noise that caused the iniitial investigation is gone. Replace with much more satisfying and familiar cold clearance set valve train clatter. Blue/Jan, you guys are spot on about new chain being tight ie no slack. I installed the "new" (to him) head and a new chain and guide,s and as usual, the chain is a VERY tight fit. I got the chain on its correct clocking, then when re-installing the (curved) tensioner, I had to use a c clamp across the chainand guide in the center to lightly compress it to get the top bolt (slotted hole) in the tensioner. Same when re-installing the tensioner. Tight fit indeed. I took a picture of the old and new chain on the bench to show the length difference (sorry will post it later). The old is clearly stretched, but not quite to the extent I expected. The old head had shims under the towers as well which I removed for the near-stock thickness N42 that took its place (used his towers/cam/rockers/lashies). Would have been impossible to get that chain on with those shims in there. I looked at the valve cover and it looks exactly like the two shown above. Not a mark/gouge in the cover that I can feel with my nail or finger, just the cleaned paths made by fresh modern oil clearing away varnish. And in general, with more thought about what caused the tooth skip to start with, I'm more and more skeptical about the rag having anything to do with it. I just can't believe the texture and material strength (or lack of it) of it would be able to create a wad that would have had sufficient compressive strength to cause this. The rag was well distributed around the gear when I stopped dug it out. No concentration in one spot. I'm now inclined to believe its a combination of the herky/jerky motion of using the remote crank switch and the very loose chain with no tensioner pressure that ate my lunch. Beware! Another learning point to add to the conversation. When using the starter to rotate things, it's now very clear that it had no problem bending the valves as it rotated the engine without so much as a hiccup that might give you clue something bad was happening. At one point late in the process, (actually just before the realization of doom occured) I'de put a socket on the crank nut to move the engine to exact TDC to get things lined up for another timing check. The engine rotated smoothly then BANG, it stopped dead. When back the other way, smooth until, BANG, same thing. Dead stop. I put quite a bit of pull on the handle and couldn't budge it. So its clear that HAND rotation or maybe pushing the car in gear is the right technique, if you have ANY reason to suspect an old loose chain or you're working on a new motor and testing if you turns over. Sounds obvious now, doesn't it?

Looks good to me! One question or concern perhaps. Is that glass filter at the front of the rail rated for FI pressures? Might we worth a check.

Hardway, so from what your saying, it seems then that there was no actual touching of the chain to the valve cover. You can confirm that there is no marks in the aluminum? If thats the case, then the patterns we see are likely just "cleaning" of the previous dark varnish coating by oil spraying from the chain. Did you recently change to so some of that modern "detergent" oil?

The A11-600 000 ECM works from all 75-78 North American 280's. If that maximum ecu is working for you, relax. Drive it and forget it. It's tune is for a smaller engine, so your mixtures might not be "correct" but if your plugs look okay (brown, not white or black), your mileage is reasonable, and you've had it working fine for a couple of years, be happy. If you really want a A11-600 000, let me know. Some say I'm cheap, I call it affordable.

Wow that's hard to believe! Its scored all the way around! Its not clear just how close the chain must be to the cover until you see something like this. Does this mean it was loose enough to be "floating" off the teeth enough to be rubbing the cover over that much of its circumference? Hard to imagine how this looks running, but there's the proof. I haven't really looked under the cover of mine, other than to note how black and grundgy is looks.... I'll report back.

I agree. Chain tooth jumping was just a dirty rumor for me as well until now. Though it seems to take quite a combination of a loose chain and some "help" apparently. Thanks for the additional support to the "it ain't ALL my fault" threory as well....

Hi everybody! It's me, the "I can't believe I did that" guy..... :stupid: Well, believe it or not, I have another "learning experience" to share. So grab a coffee and get comfy. Working on a new friend's 78z over the last few days, trying to get it ready for an "out of province inspection". Your Canucks will know what I mean. When moving a car to new province, everything has to work, and no rust holes or no insurance. Quite a challenge for most Z's, this one is no different. While doing a million other things, we decided to investigate a small engine "rattle" that happens under any amount of power "on" application. Not good. Bad bearing, slap happy piston, loose valve train? Let’s find out. Started with a valve lash check and setting. Off comes the valve cover. Well, it came off but the gasket didn't so much, had to be scrapped off. Then there was some RTV stuff left over that was doing a great job of gasket sealing to peel off, and we all know how you don't want those little tendrils of that crap getting in the oil, so while I was peeling and digging it off, I stuffed a standard blue shop rag sheet in front of the timing gear to prevent RTV bits from going down there, cuz most of the RTV was on the front part. Finished the clean up and proceeded to start checking valve clearances. Right away I notice that #1 rocker is super loose. Have to jack up the adjuster about 6 feet (slight exaggeration) to get .010 clearance. Yeah, because the valve is stuck partly open, the spring pack is about 0.10 lower than its mate next to it. I can push it down and it pops back easy enough, but right to a nice stuck position. Alright, there’s the rattle source. Stuck/bent exhaust valve. Proceed to start spinning the engine with my remote start button and checking a few more looking for loosy gooseys . Just about then, the car's owner who's working with me tells me to hold it, that blue rag is caught up in the timing chain/gear. Sure enough, I'de left that thing down in the timing cover and it got dragged up and is now nicely distributed over the cam gear between it and the chain. We're talking a thin synthetic blue towellete here, we just grab its bits and spin the engine and get it clear. Its shredding into bits and pieces its so thin and weak. No biggy right? Read on.... Finish setting the valves, which are all somewhere from spec to spec x 3 too wide, slap the cover back on with a new gasket and try to start the car. It cracks but we're getting no fire. Nothing. Ok, what did we do? First I had just yanked the plug wires off, didn't check what order they were in, they were just zip tied together, not in nice ordered clips, so who knows how the PO had left the timing or drive spindle. Could be anywhere. So set the engine to TDC and the dizzy is pointing to one, so just put them back on again in stock order and position. Still no go. Check spark, good, all cylinders. Check each injector with noid light. Flashing. Check fuel pressure. Good. oh oh...... What the hell have I done. Swap ECM's. Nope, same. Threw timing light on #1 and check while cranking. Yup, right at 15' ish, good enough. Hmmmm, spark, fuel, timing, what else do you need? Compression???? Pull the plugs and stick the comp gauge on #1. I know its going to be 0 with that bent valve. Sure enough. Then I check #2. Its 0 as well..... ?????? And 3..... and 4 ...... oh no...... and 5, and 6, all = 0.000000000 How is this possible? To make a long story short, hour and half later, heads on the bench, all 6 exhaust valves are bent. Yup, all six. Nice nick in each piston, nice shiny spot on each valve face. The timing chain slipped on the cam gear by about 5-6 teeth when that thin, feather weight, POS blue paper towel got in between there, causing a not too surprising detrimental effect on piston/valve clearance. When you think about the force required to stretch the chain to make that happen, I initially dismissed it as impossible. No way that piece of fluff did anything bad. Yeah, right. What I hadn't considered was the incredibly loose stretched timing chain on this old well worn L28..... I can *almost* slip a tooth by hand it's so loose with no tensioner pressure. Just took a little old piece of near-nothing to bunch up "just so" and make it happen. I'll bet you couldn't do that again if you tried on purpose all night long. I had actually noticed that the cam seemed out of time earlier but didn't catch on. When I was setting TDC to check timing and dizzy alignment after it didn't start, I was peering in the oil filler hole for #1 bunny ears, and noticed that the centerline of them wasn't at 12:00 at crank TDC, more like 10:00.... So all you engine tinkerer's out there, beware! Even the slightest mis-step can lead to disaster without you even knowing you done it... Runs, set the valve, doesn't run. How do you get that wrong? Of course now I’m thinking about that initial stuck valve that I found before the engine turned with the rag in it. Just how did that happen? Maybe the chain had already slipped a couple of teeth before I got there due to that crazy loose chain, just enough to take out that one valve, and my rag trick just finished off the other 5 by slipping it a couple more. Let’s just say that’s true and not ALL my fault.. Yeah, that feels better. A little…. Well It’s a good thing I have all them old heads in the shed..... Eenie meenie minie moh...

Smooth beveled end (37 deg) is -4 AN fitting. Look in the hose and see its mating surface. The seal occurs where the male bevel meets the femal metal, not on the threads, hence teflon tape on those threads does nothing. The NPT threads rely on the tape to seal as the threads interference fit when tightened just right. Google -4 AN Fittings in Google images to see many many examples. Check out http://www.anplumbing.com as well to see what's available.