FastWoman

Nice graphic! Actually the green lenses wouldn't knock down the light from green LEDs much at all. I'd just leave them in place if I were doing it. Also I don't think it matters how much light spread there is. The light is simply dumped into the can and bounces around from there. FAIW, I've read of others brightening their panels by painting the insides of their cans white. I suppose you could even nix the lenses and paint the can innards green.

high in ZDDP and high in detergent -- heavy duty stuff for trucks and racing. Some synthetic content is good too, as synthetic oils don't drain completely off of metal surfaces when the engine is stopped. However, I don't think a straight synthetic gets you much more than a blend.

The Nutz method sounds good, but I'll mention the best way to prepare a new stud isn't by grinding a flat spot, but rather by taking a pair of sharp vice grips and completely boogering up all the threading that will insert into the epoxy (suggest JB Weld). This will increase contact area, rather than decrease it.

Dunno.... It looks nice, but the green instrument panel glow has a familiar sort of vintage feel for me. I wouldn't have it any other color than green. FAIW, my 3.4W (?) original bulbs were getting pretty dim, and my 4W Eiko 72 (?) replacement bulbs made the panel much more readable. No problem with visibility. I wonder whether it would be possible to make replacement bulbs with green LEDs -- not white LEDs filtered green. Perhaps an electronic dimmer could be made from a chopper circuit. On the other hand, I sort of like the glowing filaments too. Some day, when instrument panels are all LED back-lit LCDs, there will be something very cool about a hot-filament backlit mechanical panel. It will have the same feel to it as a vacuum tube radio or even a vinyl record has today.

See if the shop is a member of the BBB. If they are, file a complaint. They'll work hard to get it resolved, so they may eat the $$$ for the replacement part. You can file a complaint even if they're not BBB members, but they might not do as much to resolve the complaint. FAIW, they might not see eye to eye with you about fault. Sometimes parts get destroyed upon removal in old/antique cars. I agree there's no way this should have happened, but they're probably going to argue they were doing the best they could do with a rusty old car. Any third party hearing the arguments might not know better. They certainly can't justify your actually paying them for this work, but you may be up a creek with regard to the replacement parts. I'd ask the shop to simply get the wheel back on the car, so that it can be towed away (to another shop). After you've retrieved the car (and not payed them anything!), then file your BBB complaint. You probably won't get satisfaction, but at least you will have warned others. I agree with others that I would not let this shop touch my car (any of my cars) ever again.

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?