FastWoman

Yeah, sounds like a bad alternator bearing. FAIW, I use Autozone's lifetime warranty parts if they're easy to replace (like the alternator). They're not the best parts in the world, but AZ is really good about replacements, and pricing isn't bad. Welcome to the forum!

That's great! I wish I had thought of that! :classic:

That's what I recall -- 3/8" for the intake, and 5/16" for the outlet (or whatever the metric equivalents are) -- 90% certain.

If the motor is tired, see if there's some way to spray some contact cleaner inside it in the vicinity of the brushes. That might bring it back to life.

Dave, your photo reminds me of when I would drive my older son to preschool everyday in my '75 Z that I had owned since well before he was born. He loved that car too and would always say "Z-car" with such an enthusiastic voice and often a little hop. He talked about my legendary car even years after my ex made me sell it. He was 5 years old at the time. Skipping ahead to a couple of years ago, I remember talking to a young man in college (my older son) about the purchase of my '78 Z. He said, "You got another Z-car? Cooool!" He had that same lilt in his voice when he said "Z-car." Very cute.

My Z is my daily driver. It gets a lot of short and medium trips many times per week.

Carl, what I mean by a logistics bottleneck is that the aid rarely provides more firsthand responders. Donated funds don't tend to hire more people to dig through rubble, looking for survivors. Donated funds also don't manage to find and distribute items that are being hoarded, like potassium iodide tablets. I remember when Hurricane Isabelle turned our area upside down. There were no national guard troops, and FEMA was MIA for a couple of weeks, until one of our neighbors committed suicide. The American Red Cross was there, and I admit it brought a tear to my eye just to see SOMEONE on the scene. However, they were there simply handing out hotdogs in the parking lot of our local country store. I don't want to diminish that they WERE there and that they were the only organization we saw. However, what we really needed was ice, emergency generators (on loan), chainsaws (on loan), wet vacs (on loan), transportation, clean laundry, strong young hands, and people going door to door to check on the elderly. Some of us whose homes were destroyed also needed trailers, but FEMA wasn't there to provide any. We provided all of these items ourselves, between neighbors, and we did a pretty bad job of it. The hot dogs would have never made it to our neighbor who committed suicide or to our elderly neighbors who were house-bound and without transportation. Those few people with working vehicles couldn't get past the fallen trees and power lines. And although the ARC hotdog stand did cheer us up, none of us were lacking for food. We were grilling the contents of our freezers as fast as we could. Isabelle was actually a pretty simple relief situation. It was a small hurricane that impacted a fairly small area. We had basic road access within several days, and we even had power restored within a couple of weeks. In Japan the issue is access. We can drop tons and tons of food at the airports, but getting it to people beyond miles and miles of rubble is the logistic problem I'm talking about. Also money won't hire people to clear rubble. Every able-bodied person who might clear rubble is already doing so, and money would make no difference. Money will not buy relief helecopters, as those are too expensive. Only the military has those, and they're already using them in the relief effort. As far as I'm aware, Japan has more help available from foreign militaries, just for the asking. We and other countries have offered, and they have but to accept. However, I think it becomes difficult, somehow, to coordinate too much relief. Japan has already accepted whatever relief they can coordinate. Perhaps they should be able to coordinate better, but this never seems to be the case in any country -- e.g. the US with Katrina.

Right now the ignition isn't nearly as good a theory as the coolant temp sensor. The fact that the engine died immediately when you tapped the thermo housing strongly suggests something in the vicinity of the thermo housing. Your ignition module is in the passenger firewall, and your coil is mounted on the driver fender. Neither of those would have felt your tap. So for now, I'd forget Test #2.

Well, despite the lack of choking and gagging, I'm still betting on either a bad coolant temp sensor (the one with two terminals) or the connection to that sensor. When that circuit opens, the ECU dumps enormous quantities of fuel. I bet it's related to thermal expansion; when your engine heats up to a certain point, connectivity is broken. The tap on the thermo housing is otherwise too much coincidence. A new sensor is maybe $15 from the nearest auto parts store, and you can clean out the connector with WD-40. Fold up some grocery bag paper into a little spade about the right size and thickness to slip into the contact. Soak it with WD-40, and push it in and out of each contact to clean the corrosion. I don't know what you mean about test #2. You mean testing the 2-conductor sensor? I think I'd just replace it because of its being suspect.

Hmmmmm... Tapping the thermo housing killed the motor? Maybe you've got a coolant temp sensor problem -- the one with the Bosch two-terminal connector that's part of the EFI system, not the one-terminal sender for the gauge. Maybe when it gets really hot, it goes open-circuit, and then your ECU dumps huge amounts of fuel, killing your engine. Just before the engine dies, does it gag and choke? Does it blow any black smoke? You obviously need to replace that thermostat and fix a coolant leak somewhere too!

I believe the 4-pin fuel pump and A/C relays are indeed interchangeable. I assume the inhibitor relay is interchangeable too, although I don't have direct experience with it.

Check the bottomside of the boot with a mirror. Stretch the folds gently apart to examine the creases. You'd check the fuel pressure with a fuel pressure gauge connected to a T-fitting inserted between the fuel filter and fuel rail. You can either buy a fancy one at your local auto parts store or cobble your own from cheap parts at your local hardware store (that probably won't be as accurate). As far as I'm aware, your fuel damper wouldn't do anything but dampen out noise. I imagine it would be rare for one to fail.

The beauty of these cars is that they ARE inexpensive. Of course that means that they're not a great investment to restore, but what classic car is?

Well, I think you need a more controlled test. Try this: Start your car, cold. Let it idle until it dies, and note how long that took. Then start your car, cold, at the same temperature (maybe the next day). Hold your foot on the accelerator and keep it it a very high idle, perhaps 2500 RPM. Does it die faster now? If it dies faster, it's nothing to do with the WOT. Rather, I bet it would have to do with the firing rate of the ignition system. The ignition is under higher load with higher engine RPMs. In that case I would suspect an ignition overheating problem. I'd first replace the coil. If that doesn't work, then replace the ignition module. But to be clear, when you say WOT, I'm thinking high revs.

Be careful! Your '75 air flow meter doesn't have a backfire relief valve, so you can actually bend the vane. The short answer is that you're probably running lean, although it could certainly be a timing issue. A couple of things to check: Is there a rip in the boot between your AFM and throttle body? if so, you won't meter air correctly and will be running too lean. Is your fuel pressure correct? Several of us have been kicking around ideas/approaches/experiences with our EFI systems. Cozye and I worked through the lean running issues in our '78 engines by fooling the ECU into enriching the mixture. We and others believe that the ECU has drifted in its calibration throughout the years, delivering progressively shorter pulses to the injectors. The solution we used is to install a variable resistor in series with the coolant temp sensor and to adjust the fuel/air ratio with it. If you do a search for my "purs like a kitten" thread, you'll see documentation of my own long saga.

If you want brand new, albeit not quick release and not quite as high quality, you can buy them very cheaply off of Ebay.

The OEM check valve is no longer available. Even the Volvo equivalent is no longer available. I had sourced that out and posted about it to this list, and SOMEBODY gobbled up an otherwise abundant supply of the things. I was lucky to buy even ONE of the things before the other anonymous, greedy @$#%ing SOB exploited all my hard work sourcing the part for others on this list. :pirate: So it's my hope that my fellow Z enthusiasts will try out this little generic, inline check valve, available on Ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/5-16-Check-Valve-Diesel-Gas-8mm-One-Way-Fuel-Flow-_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQhashZitem3cb5ed1823QQitemZ260750252067QQptZMotorsQ5fCarQ5fTruckQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories (Search Ebay for a 5/16" fuel check valve, carried by sam_the_diesel_man. I understand from him that this check valve is suitable for fuel injection pressures (and the Bosch L-Jetronic system isn't very high pressure anyway). You would insert this check valve inline between your fuel filter and your fuel rail. Optionally, you could also gut the check valve on your fuel pump and reinstall. If you do this, please report back as to how well it works. And I HOPE the bat rastard who cornered the market on the Volvo check valves for somewhere between $20 and $45 each can't sell them for more than the $16.50 (shipped) that these generic valves are available for on Ebay.

Honestly the best help can't be gotten by throwing money at the problem. It takes people on the ground (or in the air). Our military will hopefully be a great help. It will also take lots of potassium iodide tablets, and people throughout the world are hoarding those right now. I remember when the earthquake hit Haiti. I sent money to the American Red Cross and was disappointed to learn later that very little of donated funds were actually used -- by any relief charity. As I understand it, the logistic problems are generally the bottleneck in delivering aid.

I suspect it's electrical. I bet when you run the engine for 5 min, either the coil or the ignition module overheats and/or fails. The WOT thing might be related more to engine RPMs than throttle. For instance, if you were to climb a long hill slowly at WOT and a high gear (lugging the engine a bit), would it happen then? How about if you're sitting in the driveway and running the engine pretty fast at much less throttle. Would it happen then? I'm betting it's more RPM related than throttle related. Just a hunch. Oh, welcome!

Thermostatic switch for an aftermarket A/C?

Gary, you'd love a home renovation project we've just taken on. It's got 1930's 14 ga wiring made of a depression-era sort of anemic copper alloy such as I've never seen. It has 4 receptacle and lighting circuits fused at 15A (correct), 20A, 25A, and 30A. Yikes! Even more remarkably, the wiring was submerged in salt water in both 1933 and 2003. It's amazing the house is still standing. I've seen worse. I remember once taking on a 70's era Cutlass with aluminum foil stuffed in the fuse panel. The wiring harness was a melty mess. But yes, I agree. You don't get more ampacity with heavier fuses. You have to have the heavier wire to go with it. My main motivation for replacing the fusible links was corrosion and rot, combined with my inability to find replacement fusible link assemblies. (The mounts on mine were broken, and they were just hanging on the ends of the wires.) The ampacities remained the same, except for the alternator wiring, which I upgraded a couple of gauges.

Goodyear makes an EZ Coil. It's a stainless steel slinky thing that goes around the exterior of a hose and forms a kink-free bend up to 90 deg. I found that 90 deg was sufficient to make the required bends, so long as the hose wasn't strung too tightly. http://www.goodyearep.com/productsdetail.aspx?id=16154

^^^ I agree. Except that a fusable link can also corrode and arc.

The Speed Racer car won?! Geesh, it looks utterly stupid.

Any box will work. Some are more weather resistant than others.