Bruce Palmer

Helpful (I hope) hint. One of the best tools you can have in your tool box is a pair of the small Vice Grips with fresh grippy pads. These work great judiciously applied to the hex fittings on brake lines and assembly screws on SUs (bowls and domes) to just break them loose. Standard wrenches will take it from there. It's called GET A GRIP ON THINGS!! I'm sure they'll work on other things where Magilla Gorilla at the plant was having a good day so ecperiment around your Z......

Impellor may have fallen off. Just another one of thos 40 something year old widgets that should have been renewed before you started relying on the vehicle for reliable transportation, even if it is just for fun...... These cars are just loaded with 40 year old three quarters worn out widgets, any of which can and will leave you standing along side the road talking to AAA, if you can gae a signal.

Is there something in the South African import reg's that would keep you from just buying a "done" car and bringing it into the country? By the time you finish fighting the "every part is a struggle" battle because of lack of availability, it sounds like it would be a better plan of attack to just buy a car. Just curious....

Again, make sure that choke cable on the front carb is relaxed in the off position. Any time I see this "I can't adjust it out" that would be the first place I'd look. Either that or you have a grossly worn needle and nozzle or the float is high enough as to allow gas to pool up on top of the nozzle. You can check that by removing the dome and pistoon and look down at the top of the nozzle for pooled gas. You can also do the needle nozzle wear exam then too.

Do you have an actual graduated gauge?

We sell 'em. 3 screw or 4 screw for a whopping $2 apiece..... All that part number stuff gives me a head ache.....

Yeh and it's too damned old to fix!! No parts and all the old mechanics are retired......

Here's where I'll draw the line..... I have no idea what effect carb cleaner will have on a douch bag. Probably something more serious than what our crappy gas will do to carb parts. And for those bothered by the douch reference, try substituting "flushing" to see what kind of "crap" is lodged in your needles and seats. Better word picture? You're welcome.

You know, one thing you can do is update your radiator cap with a new one. A weak radiator cap can and will bleed off pressure thus reducing the effective temperature of the coolant can take before boiling. Because of pressure and coolant the boiling temp in a good system will be raised to 240 degrees. On a Datsun I had from a PO, somewhere along the way an 8# cap had been installed. Went to a 13# cap and shazam!! the whole system performed better.

Carb'd 2.8.... No contest.

Doesn't sound to me like anything bad happened. Sounds like a normal cooling system doing what it's designed to do. A gentleman recently wrote up a piece on cooling system function on the Bluebird (510) list. I'll see if I can find it. It really spelled out how things a supposed to work and what not to get paranoid about.....

Well, maybe this'll help bury the concept.... Just repeat the saying "Step right up and get your handy dandy dash board douch bag, guaranteed not to rust, bust, corrode or beat your children". Or if things are backing up on you, try this one...... Thirty days has September, April, June and no wonder all the rest have peanut butter except Grandma she drives a Buick? That's all.......

Nozzles stuck in the up or down position wont keep an engine from starting. If there is fuel to the nozzles it'll process on through. Nozzles are just a hole in a brass tube the I.D. of which is half the metering equation. The above problem sounds more like needles and seats are goobered shut. I'd remove the float bowl lids and douch out the needles and seats with carb cleaner. If there is gas to the inlet side of the float bowl lids, yet nothing is getting into the carbs then it's one of two things. Needles and seats are stuck shut or the final filters are plugged. Once gas gets past those two things it's gravity from there on and it's hard to screw up gravity....

With a babyfood jar in hand pull the gas line off the float bowl or the nozzle. See what comes out, if anything, and what it looks like and work back from there. Everybody has babyfood jars right?

Time to check out your friendly neighborhood tranny shop.

Kg is a weight measure, right? Weight of what per hour are you measuring? Anyway, it's early and apparently I'm not fully tracking yet. Balancing the carbs is just that, getting them set so they open at the same rate. Beyond that, they are variable venturies and flow only what the engine (read air pump) will draw.

Again I harken back to a trip by Idaho Z several years ago where I was shown the inside of a cut open tank that had been coated with the POR stuff. The inlet sock was essentially blogged full of the sealer. This keeps coming up, I'll keep posting this..... Carry on

So you're going to subscribe to the ONE item at a time theory? That's okay, you were warned. Do 'em both, do it once, do one, do it twice......

That's too funny. Guy just asked me ealier this week if I'd like to trade jobs with him. That only tells me his job has turned into hammered dog meat.....

Okay, square one. In that reservoir on the firewall next to the brake master cylinder is there any fluid in there? If not, then you have either a master cylinder seal/seals gone TU or the seal in the clutch slave has gone TU. In either event having a new clutch in there it's time to pedal down to your favorite fill in the blanks parts jobber, buy one of each, put 'em in, bleed the system and wait for the next thing to go TU............. Any repair shop can do this standing on their head.

Dang it!! I did it again. After preaching that the first thing anyone needs to do is make sure the choke cable is slack in the off position so as to not be pulling the nozzle down, I told him the start cranking on the nozzle. I'd better get to work and find steve and Pam a decent sales person who has his **** together. Is dumbass one word, two words, hyphenated or what? Carry on..........

Yep, I guess the carb is contributing to the instant black on a new set of 3 plugs. Were it a bad set of rings in one hole, one plug would be black not all three. They call it super sleuthing..... nyuck nyuck

Do you have a graduated temp gauge telling you you're at 230? You are still below boiling with a sealed cooling system so don't fret. And L motors love to spin.

What exactly is breaking? If it is the driven gear that goes into the transmission tail shaft then you would be well advised to take the cable and housing out of the car, clean up the cable and relube with a graphite lube. Sounds like the cable is binding up. May not be but would be a good place to start looking. Every old Z out there needs the speedo cable cleaned and lubbed....... Along with the wiper mechanisms (pivots, etc.)

Ya know, this conversation baffles me. If one is morally and/or ethically opposed to standing along the side of the road with his 40 year old fill in the blanks car, why it wouldn't make sense to find a local electrical rebuilder and buy a unit or have yours gone through. Maybe we are spoiled here in Salem OR but we have an excellent rebuilder who builds top quality stuff and for $40 we can come up with starters and I think for not much more than that a 60 amp alternator..... Water pumps are the same thing. Put one in and you know the history. Don't put one in and be surprised when all of a sudden it tells you it's history. Belts, hoses, hydraulic cylinders and fluids all the same deal....... As further editorial comment I'll say I would not go to fill in the blanks parts chain and buy one of theirs 'cause those get "built" in some minimum wage sweat shop and any warranty failures are just a cost of doing business. Minimum product out the door for the maximum dollar..... and with an extra markup in the for the extra step in distribution..... Carry on.....