FastWoman

Hmmmm.... Copper alloy -- I hadn't heard of that! I assume it's immune to corrosion? Maybe I can/should just do this job myself. (If you want it done right...)

Chas, two hours total did seem a bit on the fast side to me, too. However, these guys have the lifts, the tools, and the occasional helping hands that make the job much faster. Personally I'd have guessed 3 hours. However, I think 5 is way too much for them. I suspect I could do it in an afternoon with the car on jack stands if my back were up to the job. The job might go even quicker with assemblages of pre-flared lines and double-flare unions. Then each section could be fished into place behind/around all the other bits and pieces.

That's just it, Blue. The entire brake line is rather rusty -- not as bad as the section that blew out, but rusty still. I have three fears: (1) The splice joint could back out or break, which I've read about happening. When the line ruptures on the Taurus, there's ABSOLUTELY ZERO pedal left. Shocking, but true! (There ought to be a regulation somewhere about that.) (2) The rusty line could rupture elsewhere, creating the same no-pedal, catastrophic failure. (3) My son could get in an accident and have a slick attorney make hay about the car not being compliant with DOT safety standards. None of this seems worth chancing to me. Some states won't pass a car with spliced brake lines, but unfortunately Virginia isn't among them. (I wish it were, because then I'd have the law backing me up.)

Hi there, I'm in a real pickle. I simultaneously have (1) a blown out back, (2) a blown out rear brake line in my '95 Ford Taurus wagon (3.0L Vulcan -- non-SHO), and (3) my son coming soon to collect the car and drive it out of state. Not being able to crawl under the car to make the needed repairs, I took it to Meineke to have what I thought was a simple job performed of replacing the two rusted rear brake lines, from the proportioning valve all the way back to the rear brake hoses. What they did, contrary to my very pointed and specific instructions, was to splice the brake lines with brass compression fittings. :mad: When discussing options, they said they could re-do the work, but that it would really cost some big bucks -- many hours of labor. (Color me surprised.) My question to you is, what is the fair number of hours, per "the book" that it would cost to replace these two brake lines? I was originally quoted approx. 1 hr per side for the complete brake line replacement. Now they're talking like 5, for no reason at all. Thanks! Sarah

Ouch! That happened to my cat (tail slammed in the door) when I was a kid, and her tail had a kink at the end for the rest of her long life.

De nada! There's a lot of power left in these old engines when the mix is right!

Honestly, the significance of the Rising Sun flag flew right by me, other than a recognition that it was Japanese. I still didn't like the design, although I heartily agree the sugar scoops are the coolest design feature of our Z's. Perhaps the reason I didn't like it was that it didn't appear glossy. Perhaps you could do a stylized sugar scoop, almost like a mirror-surfaced CAD rendering that reflects scenery flying by.

Engine machine work isn't my forte, but let's just think about this thing a second with some basic geometry in mind. Let's assume the cam towers ARE out of whack, and that the sleeve bearings for the cam are misaligned. Then let's assume you put a PERFECTLY STRAIGHT cam in that assembly, and it can spin with light pressure. Even with the misalignment in the towers, that PERFECTLY STRAIGHT cam shaft is going to spin under the same pressure throughout the full 360 degrees. Or if it binds just a bit, it's going to bind to the same extent throughout the full 360 deg. Geometrically it has to be that way. Now consider the opposite: Your cam shaft is a bit out of whack, but the cam towers are dead on. The result would be the same. The crooked cam would turn in the perfectly straight towers the same throughout the full 360 deg of rotation. My unavoidable conclusion is that BOTH your towers and your cam shaft are a bit out of align. Correct either one, and the shaft should turn uniformly throughout the full 360 deg. Maybe you just need a bit more play in the bearings. Maybe the tolerances are just a bit too tight.

Try a 20-turn potentiometer instead! It's designed for very fine adjustment with a screwdriver. You can order the things off of ebay. Here's a 5 kOhm one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/20-Turn-Potentiometer-450-20-5K-ohm-Precision-Pots-From-VRN-/270918474052?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f13ffd944 Oh, and the FPR does need vacuum. Otherwise the EFI will deliver a richer mixture on idle or deceleration and will deliver a leaner mixture on wide-open-throttle.

Thanks, 72, but we've had horrible experiences both with our local Firestone here in Virginia and the Firestone local to my son in Ohio! There are some very good locations, but these aren't two of them! I think it depends on the management. Anyone have any thoughts about NTB (National Tire and Battery)? I used to buy tires off of them when they were still NTW (National Tire Warehouse), and they were quite OK; however, they may be an entirely different company now, having merged (?) into the new company.

Hi all, I'm trying to finish up the rehabilitation of a '95 Taurus wagon for my son in Ohio. The vehicle and I are currently in Virginia. Before he comes to fetch the car, I want to have the front end aligned. I'm looking for a company that does good alignments and if possible has a lifetime alignment policy that would be honored in Ohio. Any recommendations? I guess a related question would be whether the lifetime alignments are really worth it. Is there a catch? Or does it simply create customer loyalty and therefore generate more tire sales? Thanks! Sarah

Oh yeah... Forgot about the odometer cable! So what happens if you park your car in the full sun to get the dash cap plastic pretty toasty? Then it might be more pliable when you try to shoe-horn the tach and speedo through the holes.

I agree with 72OJ! When a car gets too valuable and too expensive to repair, it's no fun to drive anymore. I made a good investment when I bought a '66 mustang. It appreciated over the years, even bringing me a profit in a down economy. It was a far better investment than any of my "responsible" investments (e.g. stocks). However, it was too pretty, perfect, and valuable to drive and enjoy. I hate to say our most fun car is probably the Miata. It's not nearly as sexy a car as the Z, but it's cheap and fun. If something breaks, a replacement part is as close as the nearest wrecking yard. It's not completely a "no worries" car, as convertibles are really awful in the rain. The Z is a much better all-around sports car, IMO, but only because parts can still be found, and it's not particularly valuable.

Mine too. It will idle just fine at the spec 800, but it drives so much nicer with the idle at 1000. Arrrrgh! Now don't you listen to them! There is no finer road car, IMO, than a 280Z. In my household, the little Miata is for short drives on the parkway with the top down. The Z is for longer drives whenever we hop the freeway to go see relatives in the next city. The marathon drives are admittedly with the truck, often with something in tow.

It's not hard, Jan, as long as you don't have a full dash cap. You can jiggle a speedo or tach past a half dash cap pretty easily. As I recall, your two choices are to disconnect the speedo cable by reaching up under the dash (How large are you? It's a pretty tight area.) or to remove the tach first.

Methinks the same thing, and there can indeed be many causes. I suspect the most common cause is a big vacuum leak (or many smaller leaks). I've coined the term "yogurt cup test," which you can search. It will allow you to verify whether your intake is tight -- all except for one item, which is the big rubber boot between the AFM and the throttle body. (You'll have to inspect that manually.) There's also an apparent issue common in the 1978 ECU, and I suspect also common in some 1977's as well (similar year). Our ECUs are open-loop (not self calibrating) and are of an analog design. Over the decades, in rather harsh conditions, the semiconductors drift in their responsiveness, and the predominant direction of drift seems to be towards shorter pulse widths, hence less fuel delivery and leaner. There are a few different fixes and theories to go with them. However, before you modify your ECU to deliver more fuel, you should first determine whether you have fixable problems that are causing you to run lean. That means going over your system with a fine-tooth comb, checking and verifying every single component. If all that is left is error in the ECU, that can be remedied. But first you must get there through a process of elimination!

I'm sorry to hear about your dog, NN. Cars can wait, but your four-legged friend can't. My son recently put down his childhood dog, but before doing so, he let her enjoy as much bacon as she wanted to eat. Losing an old friend is never easy.

Tomo, you'd have to spend quite a lot of the 450mil to bribe Congress to roll back the safety standards, so that you could go into production.

Do I understand that you connected the vacuum gauge with the vacuum hose disconnected from the FPR? If so, and if you got a reading of 18 or 19 by doing that, I would say that your engine is running lean. (Pulling the hose from the FPR causes fuel pressure to rise, which richens the mix.) On the other hand, if you took your reading with the vacuum hose properly connected to the FPR (or perhaps with a T fitting that let you tap the vacuum at that point while keeping the vacuum supplied to the FPR), then your engine is probably pretty close to the right mixture. FAIW, though, being at the right mixture doesn't necessarily mean your engine is right. You can have problems like vacuum leaks that result in a leaning of the mixture, combined with problems like a misadjusted throttle position switch that results in a richening of the mixture. If the errors in both directions are the same, then the engine will have the right mixture. However, it will still not respond correctly to changes from this operating condition. Just saying... Yes, you do need a seal on your dipstick. An O-ring may work. I don't know. If I were you, I would time the engine with a proper timing light. They're not particularly expensive. Depending on how your distributor is functioning, and depending on how the electronic ignition triggers with the magnetic pickup, timing by TDC could give you errors. With the timing light, there's no question that your timing is correct.

Zed has it right. Boost is simply positive pressure, and vacuum is negative pressure. I think the basic design is the same. Boost works to enhance spring pressure, and vacuum counteracts it. Spring pressure + boost (or - vacuum) = fuel pressure. I'm uncertain whether the FPR you reference is adjustable, but it looks like it probably has a large diaphragm. I also have no idea about leak-down, but probably (?) being the same basic design, I would guess (?) it holds pressure. You could always ask the Summit folks. All of that said, I have to echo what EuroDat has said. My conclusion was that changing the coolant temp sensor circuit's resistance was the least kludgy way to richen the mixture without altering/changing out expensive components. For only a few bucks, I could tune my mixture with a tiny screwdriver. I woudn't have to go with a leaky non-OEM FPR or change out for a noisy higher-pressure fuel pump. I did decide the AFM spring tension fix was probably not a good idea, because it would change the relative response properties throughout the air-flow range, causing the AFM to peg out at a lower draw, with no further enrichment beyond that. From what is described right in the FSM, the CTS circuit alters the pulse width the same way throughout all operating conditions (i.e. even enriching the mix with WOT and wide-open-AFM). What I may lose with this alteration is some accuracy in mixture during warm-up. However, my engine seems to run just fine when it's cold, even in the dead of winter (OK, a Virginia winter, but just the same...). Anyway, the alteration is very simple -- just a 20 turn variable resistor in series with the CTS wiring. I believe I used a 10 kOhm variable resistor.

Hi Cliff, I'll be interested to see how your project pans out. Obviously you're using a different approach to solving the ECU drift. I played around with that idea on my own Z, but I found that completely blocking the return line only gave me about 45 psi, which didn't get me quite to the right mixture. I was guesstimating I'd need maybe 50-55 psi. Higher flow injectors were another option, but I had already replaced mine. I don't think you would need higher fuel pressure because of a larger fuel rail, but I don't know what other things you did. Just keep in mind that higher pressure will richen your mixture. Having an adjustable pressure will magically give you the ability to tune your mixture. Just make certain your new FPR will regulate down to the stock 36.3 (?) psi. I suspect I bought (and promptly returned) the same Chinese Aeromotive look-alike FPR off of ebay. I found it did a very bad job of regulating pressure, I suspect because it had a small fuel orifice and diaphragm. The Nissan orifice is very large, I suspect, so quite a lot of fuel bleeds by without much spring compression. I've never seen an Aeromotive, but I suspect they're not that much different. I think the fundamental design is different from Nissan's. You shouldn't need a second check valve in the return line, and in fact that might just be an impediment to free fuel flow. Sadly, I don't think there's any reasonable way to bottle up pressure in your fuel rail if the FPR is going to let it go. If the pressure sags, then fuel will boil out of the injectors immediately after engine shut-off, and then the fuel vapor will have to be purged under pressure for a hot start. You can do this by installing a primer switch in the cockpit. It should be a momentary switch that will deliver +12 to the fuel pump relay. With that switch, you can re-pressurize your fuel rail and purge most of the air. Unfortunately that last bit of fuel vapor inside the injectors is a bear to work past, so you will probably have hard hot-restarts. I wish there were better answers for you. PS Another approach might be to build an adjustable FPR with parts from a Nissan FPR. If you know a good machine shop, maybe they could cut the working parts out of the can and build them into a new shell with an adjustable spring tension. Hmmmmm....

Oh! OK... Well, if your engine starts out with a slow idle, and then the idle increases as it warms up, you may still have a rich condition. You might also have a bad auxillary air regulator (AAR). Vacuum readings should tell us a lot more. BTW, the fellow who we helped called himself "argneist," not "angriest." He wasn't at all an angry fellow! :-) I wonder what's happened to him...

Whoa, there! It sounds like you're talking about removing the head! To adjust the valves, all you have to do is to remove the valve cover -- MUCH, MUCH, MUCH simpler!

I agree with EuroDat. Valve clearance is slightly tedious, but otherwise not particularly hard. In fact it's sort of fun in a weird sort of way. If you enjoy paste waxing your lovely car, adjusting valve clearance is the same sort of experience under the hood, albeit not as physically taxing. I did forget timing. If your timing is off, that could make a big difference in engine performance, and it would show up in your vacuum. Getting your car to pass California emissions is a big ball of wax with which most people on this list have very little familiarity. You probably need help (probably local help) from a fellow Californian Z enthusiast.

The most important tool I have is a cheap multimeter. At $3-5 each, I stash one on every car and boat. I seem use these more on other people's cars, boats, houses, electronic items than on my own cars/boats. I also stash an OBDII reader on our truck, which is our only remaining post-1996 vehicle. Important spare parts: Fuses and bulbs, belts. Important supplies: 1 quart of oil and one can of starter fluid (depending on the vehicle). In the desert, also take water. Single most indespensible item for anyone with an old car: AAA card.