FastWoman

I don't see anything that can't be fixed. Parts are available. Sorry it happened, but I don't think you have to ditch the car. (If you're intent on ditching it, I might be willing to buy it from you for cheap! )

Five year old gas should definitely be thrown out. See if your local waste facility can take it. Alternatively (and I know this is terrible), you can mix it in smallish quantities with fresh gas (perhaps 1:10) until you've used it up. All our old gas goes in the boat, maybe in a 1:3 mix. However, our old gas isn't as old as yours.

You might try getting a male/female 2-conductor Molex pair from Radio Shack. That wouldn't be an OEM solution, of course, but it would be functionally equivalent.

Sort of a minor factor in deciding where to spend the rest of one's life, but do check into the emissions requirements for your first-born child (your Z). Some of those states (including especially California) can be very strict.

Thanks, guys!

1) It comes out through the front of the dash. One screw in the top of the bezel, and one underneath and maybe 6 or 7 inches farther towards the front of the car. 4) You definitely should invest in a Nissan factory service manual. You can find one on Amazon or Ebay -- both used, of course.

Dumb question: Are the original parts such as brackets and tubing made of zinc plated steel, perhaps with a yellowish lacquer on top? They do rust, at least some of them, but most of them are extraordinarily rust free. On the other hand, they get quite crusty -- sort of a light gray crust. Can someone enlighten me as to what these things are generally made of? I'm guessing these things rust because the original zinc plate has lost its integrity, so that's why you're re-plating????

Those go to your thermal vacuum valve, which supplies vacuum to the EGR system when the engine warms up. (The small coolant lines are to sense the temperature.) I have generic hoses on my own car -- with the kinks too. It's a really hard area to work in, so I was happy just getting my leaky little lines replaced. I'll be doing my injectors very soon, so I'll have another shot at these little coolant lines. My plan is to make little 90 deg bend hoses by inserting copper tubing inside them.

Could be that the valves are gummy and sticking. No rods, no hydraulic lifters. Single overhead cam design.

What Al said! FAIW, California is EXPENSIVE. I do remember the cloudy skies of Portland the week I was there. You might not have gotten a fair glimpse of the state, though. It's hard to tell much about the weather from a few days. If you had been here in Coastal Virginia this past week, you'd be making tracks back inland. Ah, but it's beautiful here -- usually -- when we're not flooding because of some nor'easter. Anyway, good luck figuring out where you want to live. IMO, you're doing it right! Peace, Sarah

Thanks, Saridout! I really wish you owned a '78, though! I'm really suffering because the schematic foldout has been torn out of my '78 FSM, and the schematic I printed out from the downloadable '78 FSM is missing an important sliver and is otherwise quite illegible. If you do decide to sell the schematic, I can do high quality 17" wide roll printouts (i.e. "landscape" orientation -- 17" high by really, really wide) on my Epson SP4000 printer (sort of old, but a real trooper). The only caveat is that it is currently down, due to ink flow problems. I'm working on a modification to the printer that will fix this problem.

I was hoping more experienced hands would have a few ideas for you. I didn't really have a clue until you updated the thread with the mechanic's findings. As your engine warms up, there's differential expansion of the different types of materials. Aluminum expands more than steel. Parts expand and possibly twist or flex. This will especially be true if you have a blocked water passage somewhere, causing your engine block to cool unevenly. (I've had that happen.) Anyway, long story short, you could be developing a vacuum leak that occurs only when the engine is warm. What the mechanic was doing was spraying a fuel in small quantities to "sniff" for vacuum leaks. Wherever there's a vacuum leak, extra air is entering, so the fuel/air ratio is too lean. If a fuel is introduced through the leak, then the mixture is enriched, and a difference can be heard in the way the engine is running. For instance, if there's a vacuum leak early on that leans the mixture for all cylinders, introduction of a fuel through the leak will cause the RPMs to increase. In your case, there seems to be a vacuum leak feeding specific cylinders, so introduction of a fuel causes the engine to even out. I'd speculate your problem isn't an injector leak, but rather a leak between the intake manifold and cylinder head -- or possibly a crack or defect in the intake manifold itself. You might want to keep "sniffing" for leaks the way the mechanic was doing; however, you might try using an unlit propane torch instead. Whenever you hit a leaky spot with the propane, the engine should run differently. Good luck with it!

Congratulations on your big adventure, Frankie! I very much enjoyed reading about it. I hope you do well in your job search and enjoy your new home!

You can get fusible link material from an auto parts store, but you'll probably have to put the connectors on it yourself. It has special high-temp insulation that won't melt or burn (much).

Hi Julio, Today boats are proving to be a liability. Ours might be rising to the top of its pilings, smashing the dock lighting, getting gouges in its hull. That's all we have now at our house -- our boats and a couple of bicycles. All our vehicles have been evacuated to high ground for this wicked Nor'easter. Even my beloved Deere is on a trailer in a church parking lot! We're epecting about 20" of water in about 1600 sf total of garage space. Talk about a mess! The Chesapeake Bay is wonderful for boating, but it's awful when storms pile up water inside.

Inside our garage: -- piles of boxes, tools, and junk -- a 1972 John Deere 211 lawn tractor Outside of our garage: -- '78 Z -- '92 Saturn SL-2 16 valve 1.9L, bought new and promised to my son -- '09 Dodge Ram 2500 hemi (The Z3 and the Mustang are finally sold.) At our dock: -- '77 Broadwater 27' cabin cruiser (318 single prop inboard) -- '82 Allmand 31' sloop (wind, baby!)

Best drive in America? Quite possibly. There's also Hocking Hills (Ohio) in the fall, and parts of the Texas Hill Country in the early spring if it's the RIGHT spring (honest!). But yes, Highway 1 would still be my favorite. You'll live close by, so next time you can do it with a better camera -- probably with a mild wide to mild telephoto zoom. Did you visit Carmel by the Sea? It's a cute little town, albeit very touristy. I can't recommend the food there, though. I ate an an Italian restaurant there that was HORRIBLE. It takes a special "talent" to screw up Italian food as badly as that. If you like food, you have to eat in San Francisco. I think it's impossible to find a bad restaurant there at any budget range.

My Mustang PO had installed big exhaust tips. They made a lot of noise, if you like that sort of thing -- sort of a mellow note, but too loud for my taste. Anyway, per his account, they gave him a lot more noise. (I never altered the exhaust on that car, so I wouldn't know.) And yeah, headers make a HUGE, HUGE difference. I once bought a Suburban 4x4 with junky headers and replaced with OEM manifolds. That tamed the beast. The truck was instanty transformed from obnoxious to refined. Performance didn't really suffer much.

You're talking about the EGR? I suspect you'd have a very hard time cleaning up the mating surfaces without pulling the manifold completely. Besides that, you could easily have a stud snap on you, if your car is as crusty and rusty as you've suggested. In that case you'd probably need to pull off the manifold anyway to remove the stud and possibly helicoil. I could be wrong, of course. I've never pulled an exhaust manifold on a car. I've only done boats, which of course are crustier beasts anyway.

One thing I've learned (and others have verified) is that the ignition has a harder time sparking through higher fuel/air densities/pressures -- e.g. with an engine with a higher compression ratio or when a stock engine is under load. Your ignition might have gotten weak, e.g. with some shorting inside your coil. I've recently replaced a lot of my ignition and find the engine fires much better under load, particularly at low RPMs. (It used to miss quite a bit.) What does the spark look like, if you spark from a plug wire to ground? I assume you have a points system. You might swap out the points and condenser to see if that helps. Your coil might have gone bad. Check the resistance of your drop resistor and high tension wires. I'm not saying it's definitely ignition. It could be other things too, but ignition is an easy place to look.

Andy, the Blaster 2 coil is available in red, black, or chrome. I personally don't mind the color under the hood, but that's just me. FAIW, I've been through a couple of changes of alternator now. The one I replaced was a Japanese rebuild whose voltage regulator failed, giving me mild overvoltages. Output from that alternator would sag at idle. I replaced it with a Duralast (rebuilt in Mexico) that failed suddenly after a month (went dead). While it was working, its output would sag at idle. My most recent Duralast rebuild (rebuilt in the US) does NOT sag at idle unless it's under a bit of load (e.g. headlights). These have all been the 60A internally regulated alternators original to the 1978 year. So I guess it's luck of the draw.

There's no way it's fuel-starved. Check your ignition, for starters. It might be missing. Does it run quite roughly?

Many thanks, Steve!

Wow, a legible diagram! Is that from FAST? I'm downloading it now, BTW. Thanks for pointing me to it. I don't see an orifice washer in the diagram. It seems to be specific to the aftermarket part, for use in adapting it to many dozens of vehicles of different makes and models. The base is different on many of these models, but the valve would appear to be the same. Anyway, I have a bag of orifice washers with numbers stamped in them. It would appear I have the info and parts I need now. I'm guessing Nissan's "orifice" is a part I see screwed into the base of the valve -- not a cheap washer like in the aftermarket part. I appreciate the help. I swear I spent a very long time on my last attempt to try to find the @#$%ed EGR valve and couldn't seem to find it. Hopefully FAST is a lot simpler and faster!

Thanks! I'll search for Nissan Fast. Sounds very useful! Should the OEM EGR have an orifice washer too? Mine doesn't. I did find the orifice you referred to, and it seems to be associated with the BPT valve.