motorman7

Actually, I don't have a timing light. I have always done it by feel. I usually advance as much as I can until I get engine ping under load. Then I back off just a bit, so just a trace of ping under load. I plan on buying one some day soon here. The idle is about 800-900. Funny, last time I called Pep Boys for a timing light the youngster on the other end thought it was a device to turn your house lights off and on. We are dating ourselves here.

No change. I pulled off the hose, plugged it with a 1/4" bolt and that was it. No other changes.

OK, I am now running the 280ZX dizzy without the vacuum input. This is a good set-up. I get less or no ping under load than when I had the vacuum hooked up. Also, motor freely revs to 7K, which is great. No more 4K flat line. Afraid to take it over 7K as I think the tach has a slight lag and could be at 8K during a rev. So I am doing about 75 MPH at 3K RPM. Theoretically I could do over 150 MPH in this thing before redline now. May have to try that someday to see what it could really do.

Not sure what you mean by front and back seals, but I installed just about everything. The BD kit comes with Hood/cowl rubber, door lower rubber strip, single piece rubber for each door frame (Very thick, pain to install and hard to close door), front and rear windshield rubber, Quarter window rubber (2 pieces each), both seals for rear hatch,-inner and outer (use the masking tape on these). Good news is no exhaust or gas smell.( I still have the Trans oil smell from my speedo cable issue though).

I got the black dragon kit for my Modified Z. Only thing I wasn't happy with was the door seals. Very difficult to close the doors..but then again, no exhaust smell either. Oh, forgot to say I hate installing weatherstripping. Easiest thing to do was the front and rear glass. The rest was a pain. I will use the masking tape trick next time as mentioned on other thread.

I will give that a try. Right now I have the vacuum hooked up. It will be interesting to see how it does with the vacuum removed. Will try and set that up tonight when i get home. Thanks for the input. Rich

Wasn't sure whether to add this here or put it under the what I did this weekend thread. Seems it would be most appropriate here. This weekend I went to the pick your part place in Oceanside and snagged a 280ZX dizzy to replace my Petronix/standard dizzy. I too had the 4000 RPM stall and was hoping this would fix it. At 4K, it seemed like the ignition was cutting out and I could actually get a gas smell, so I was thinking it was an ignition issue. The change out was pretty easy since I already had the Petronix. I pulled the old dizzy and mount, noted the rotor location (cylinder 2) and installed the new 280zx dizzy and mount and started the cabling with rotor location being cylinder number 2. This worked great, started right up. Odd thing was the RPM's would go up much higher than my other dizzy. Had to break out the Unisyn and lower idle speed. The thing that is odd here is if my earlier dizzy was optimized, and I think it was, why would a new dizzy bring the RPM's higher? Anyway, I have the dizzy dialed in and I love how it runs. No more 4K stall and maybe just me, but car seems much smoother. I will keep the old dizzy just in case, but for now, it seems like a nice change. So for my Yellow '71 240 Z, I am now running a 280 alternator and 280 dizzy on a 260 motor. Talk about a hybrid.

Wow John, that is an impressive amount of work for a weekend. I'm jealous

It must be coming up the cable because I had it hanging in an upside down 'U' shape in the garage. Didn't lube it when I installed it. I'm guessing it must have been leaking when I didn't have the cable installed, I just didn't notice it. I will replace the o-rings Espirit mentioned and hopefully that fixes it. Looks like I will have to add trans fluid to

I guess I will check there first. Will have to order the kit from MSA. Thanks!

OK, still having a hard time beleiving this one. My speedo cable is leaking at the speedo...no lie. I thought I had a bad clutch master cylinder because every day for the last week I would get a small puddle of oil on the plastic part of the drivers floor mat. I checked the clutch master cylinder and brake master cylinder and did not see any loss in fluid during the week. I put the bottle of brake fluid in my car just in case. Anyway, finally put on my grubbies to check out the problem only to find the rods for the brake and clutch totally clean and dry and my speedo cable leaking. So, transmission fluid must be traveling up the cable from the trans up to the speedo where it drips. Am I missing an o-ring somewhere or something? The odd thing is I was running without the cable for a couple weeks as I was still assemling the car and never saw any drips out the trans when I ran this way. Tempted here just to take the cable out and run that way. Any thoughts?

That looks like a pretty sweet ride. Is the paint original? I like the side stripes. That engine bay looks like it will clean up pretty easy, as well. Congrats!

Of course, the problem you get with that is the wife asking, "Is that a rotor in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

How funny, I thought I was the only one who did that.

Hard to tell without pics, but from the description you give I would say it is worth less that $2000.

I just did this procedure yesterday to replace my oil pan gasket. I took out the two bolts for the motor mount by the oil filter. Put a jack under the mount and raised it about 1 inch. Slid a 3/4 inch board in the 1 inch gap then lowered the mount back down and removed the jack so it wasn't in my way. Undid the bolts and the pan dropped right off, no problem. This was actually pretty easy. You may need to remove the air filter cover so it doesnt contact the hose junction on the drivers side fender.

Some of my favorites from the show

The Palomar class is $78 plus $50 material fee, so $128 total. The morning class is Mon And Wed 9-12. Evening 6-9 Classes start Aug 23 thru Dec 16.

I will double check but I think it's $150 for the class and $50 for materials, so roughly 200 total. They also have a morning class but don't remember the time. I can give you all the information by tomorrow. Just got the Palomar CC catalogue yesterday.

I am planning on taking the welding class at Palomar CC this fall. Registration is July 6. 1 hour lecture, 2 hour lab, Monday and Wednesday evenings, 6-9PM. That's probably a 45 minute drive for you to get there.