saridout

i'm reading along in my engine rebuild book, and it says that i should paint my gasket with aluminum paint if it hasn't been already. i got my gasket from MSA, and it seems to not have any coating on it. is painting necessary with newer gaskets? what do yall think?

ok will do!

hey motorman7, i'm doing an engine bay refresh right now too and thought i'd share my (lousy iphone) photos. for me, though the masking was tedious, the cleaning part was the worst. down on the insides of the rails was just impossible to get clean, even with a pressure washer. i sat on the crossmember for 8 hours i'm doing a color change to BRG, and i'm going to put on the first coat this weekend. very exciting! i hope it turns out half as well as yours is looking.

dunno about the reservoir, but i replaced my pump with one from Autozone, and it works great: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26373558@N08/3394023148/in/set-72157614845473644/

yep, that texture in the photo was just insulating stuff after all. whew. i guess i'll just ospho it and leave it for now, until i can drive it to a body shop. the engine's in pieces in my garage :3

i'm not certain, but i think that rough texture behind the headlight hole may just be that insulating stuff sprayed all over the underside of the fender. i'll check it when i get home tonight. i should probably also mention that though the rust is very near the hinges, it does actually seem to be affecting them. i've never had any body work done before... is this the kind of thing where i can drive up to a shop and say, 'hey, fix this hole,' and they'll just be able to take care of it? any idea what i can expect to pay for a repair like that?

should i be concerned about the surrounding steel warping if it's welded, or is this not much of an issue?

My dad thinks i should cut a piece of steel and rivet it over the affected area after putting a rust converter on the rust. That sounds pretty easy to me, but i wanted to make sure that's my best option before i start drilling holes. See the attached picture. The passengers side is not quite as bad; the rust doesn't go past where the headlight sits.

good point. i guess i'll get everything else pulled off of it and just take it over to the shop. at least now i have an idea now of what i'll need, i.e. oversize pistons instead of standard. thanks!

i apologize, i've been posting a lot here about my medley of problems, and basically the same people have been commenting, so i assumed that whoever would be seeing this post would be familiar with my situation. my z overheated and warped the head about 2 months ago. if you would like more background information, which i don't think pertains to the topic at hand, look at these links: http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34462 http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34581 http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34586 believe me, if this work wasn't absolutely necessary, i wouldn't be doing it. i don't actually enjoy tearing apart my car for kicks. i can't afford to have a professional do it all for me, and up to now my local z club, which is an hour away, hasn't been very helpful. the machine shop i've been working with told me that it would be better to bring in new pistons along with the block so that it could be bored exactly to the specs of the pistons. so at this point i'm trying to figure out what i need; whether i can use standard size pistons or i need to go up to the first oversize. i haven't just taken my head off, i've pulled the block and removed all the pistons, which were pretty scuffed up. the cylinders are scored vertically, and 4 of the pistons had broken rings. how reliable are datsun connecting rods? are they ever known to break?

phred- just to be sure, your advice would be to get it rebored to +.5 and get a new set of oversize pistons? back when i was driving the car, i was having a lot of trouble with it idling rough and seeming to run rich. could out-of-round cylinders have contributed to that?

that's not the part that i misunderstood. as i said above, i've looked in my fsm, and i'm trying to find out why some retailers say that 86.1 diameter is standard, when the fsm says that maximum standard is 86.050. the piston brand i'm looking at is ITM. i'm sorry if this seems like a stupid question, but i've never rebuilt an engine before and i don't know any better.

i'm sorry, i don't understand :/

i've been searching, actually, and i can't find what i'm looking for. if you search for "280z standard bore" only two results come up, and neither one are useful to me, etc.

i've miced my cylinders, and the bore on the whole block ranges from 3.3855" to 3.3895", with seemingly no pattern as to which diameter is where. i've never done this before, so please forgive me for asking: is this enough to determine whether i can use standard pistons or not? i'm going to scan the full list of readings and post it soon if more info is necessary. i've been finding some conflicting info about the L28 standard bore. my fsm says that standard is up to 86.050mm, but a piston source i'm looking to buy from says that their standard bore piston is 86.1mm in diameter. lastly, does anyone have any horror stories about black dragon pistons or ITM pistons, or should i not have any problem with either? edit: also, new photos in my flickr set. enjoy!

shoot, i forgot to mention it's an automatic.

what am i doing wrong here? the tranny is supported, i've got the hoist on the block (head and manifolds are already removed), and they come apart about half an inch, but then the flywheel tries to come out too. i can see the crankshaft there in the gap. do i have to put it in neutral? everything is definitely unbolted. we have tried pulling the block forward, aggressively, but it won't move past about 3/4"

see the attached photo. is this the egr switch? thanks!

it does indeed have the oil holes on the lobes. maybe i've avoided catastrophe... do you have any idea if the different setups correspond to when the car was produced? unrelated question: i've been refreshing my thermostat housing, and one of the thingies that screws into it (not the temp sensor or thermo time switch) has a wire coming out of it that's grounded back onto the body and another wire that ends in a bullet connector. any idea what this thing is? the ground has broken off.

ok, so i've found the first problem. the head got here without an oil line, and i assumed that that was typical, and that i would just put my old one on. i guess i should have thought about the fact that i never told him that i still have my old head. anyway, i took my oil line off the old head and walked over to put it on the new one, and lo: it has no holes in the bosses for the oil line. before i try to talk to him about this, can someone tell me which head's cam towers do NOT have these holes? i'd like to know what i'm dealing with. EDIT: did earlier 280z's have no oil line? mine was manufactured in October of '75.

i hope it works for you, for both our sakes :/ please do let me know how it goes

now before yall say anything, i'll tell you that i didn't think to search the forums for reviews of this guy before i bought from him. hindsight is 20/20, but i may not be screwed yet. the head just got here today. it's an N42, and by sight, it looks really good. there are one or two chinks here and there; one on the edge of a lobe, another on the edge of one of the exhaust ports. but overall, it looks good. it's got the double springs. my question is this: who has bought a head from this guy, and if you had problems with it, what were they? i'm going to have it checked out by the shop i go to, and i'd like to have something to tell them to look for.

if it comes to buying a new set of pistons, does anyone have any inexpensive recommendations?

after angsting over this for weeks, i've finally decided to just buy a well-rebuilt N42. no fuss, no muss, and i'll never have to worry about it again. thanks for all yall's input. i really appreciate it.

argh, why do people only take photos of the spark plug side of a head?... i'm trying to see if an E31 has rectangular exhaust ports. would i need to mod anything if i used an E31?