Jennys280Z

Oh no. Another adventure! I don't even want to crawl on the floor under my car it gives me the creeps. Any work I do on my car it's so much better when I'm standing up and bending over. Which makes me wonder how people who get these coil-overs work on their car. I can barely get my floor jack to the right spot under my car now. It scrapes a little and my car has only been "lowered" by way of the new shocks which was probably only 1-2". A new clutch master cylinder, slave cylinder, and hose. Hmmmmmmmm... ALL my brake cylinders were shot after resurrecting my car. Not surprised if my clutch cylinders are on their last legs too. I'll have to look up some prices here soon.

If you're going to keep your Z and have the time and resources and attitude that you have here, you should sweat the To-Do list that the rest of us have done. A good and cheap place to start is to replace worn lines, and clean electrical connectors. I'm sure the MO for most people is to get their car running good ASAP. But if you don't mind some side projects... Compression in all cylinders at least 75% of one another is fine for a street car. You're over 90% yourself, and are just fine. It seems to me that your compression numbers seem too agreeable to have oil ring leakage that severe. Are the numbers you have before or after they inserted oil into the holes. You can "make" tight numbers like yours by doing stuff like that...maybe you can get a compression tester and test your compression yourself? I agree that changing your oil at this point would be a good idea. For a few other incentives: It would be good just for you to have a handle on exactly how much oil is in the car. I'd do a hot oil change and take your time. Let the oil drain awhile. Record how much comes out Inspect again for leaks. Observe how quickly the new oil fills the pan. How many miles are on the old oil? What color is it? How does the oil pan gasket look? Since you're identifying symptoms having to do with oil, it'd be a good idea to get yourself hands on with the oil maintenance for your car. Inspecting a lot of things at this point will be good for you to learn about your car. It's amazing what having things right in front of your eyes under a lit flashlight can do for your wisdom. :bulb: Presuming nothing major is wrong and just going by your compression numbers, if I had your car, and knew I was going to keep it, I'd be considering a rebuild somewhere down the road. 225-250k miles, perhaps.

cozye, there's a little circular filter that they sell for $3 that goes inside of our carbon canisters, isn't there? I wondered if anyone replaces that filter and how to do it.

In the picture of my master cylinder, does my clutch fluid look too dark?

No sealant, it is, then! Well if the Miata runs great that's what's most important I think (aside from the body being straight with nothing more than surface rust). The engine in that thing is interesting too. Something that will be fun for you to look at I think. The car is fun to drive so you couldn't have made a bad decision. Little update: My master cylinder is on yaaay I didn't put any paint on that framerail at all, just some industrial grade primer. I cleaned it with a rag and could see where patches of blue paint had come off. I put some sandpaper to it but wasn't lifting anything up off the metal surface. It looked pretty grey as opposed to looking rusty. No rust came off on the rag when I cleaned it, or on the sandpaper when I tried to sand it. So I just painted primer over it with a brush and called it good. Paint would have been more permanent but I want to find out more about how people restore these places on their cars. Obviously stripping everything off and giving it a proper paint job would be ideal, but I don't have the ducats for that.

In my opinion, a 1978 280Z car with 180,000 miles on it should be getting 125-135psi. You're fine and your compression numbers report that there's nothing wrong with your engine mechanically, aside from normal wear and tear. If you're ultimately going to build a fast Z or race your Z, you'll want cylinders all in perfect health and with compression numbers 95-99% within range of each other. That is, your lowest cylinder is 95% the compression of your highest. The oil outside your spark plug holes could be mess caused by the mechanic that they didn't clean up after doing your compression test, or doing your compression test incorrectly. It's common for mechanics to drop a little oil into the hole to determine if the now oil-sealed rings will create any additional compression in the cylinder. If so, then your rings are worn. If not, the reasons for low compression will be elsewhere. An L28 turbo wants to see 135-140psi. An L16 or L20 like are in other Datsuns want to see closer to 180psi. You have an L28 non-turbo, so might vary from the later model L28ET slightly but I'm not sure to add to those numbers or subtract.

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they do have that gorgeous red paint. I hope you're going to take it for a test drive, or at least a test ride. That car won't come to you, and you have to check it out first, so you're making it happen. Go, you!

Emailing this thread to the insurance company wouldn't be a bad idea either. When we pay for insurance, we in the marketplace would like to get something genuine in return for the genuine money we are paying. And no, "It's the law" doesn't give the insurance companies an excuse for crap coverage. If the repairs are estimated to be 99% of the value of the car they should give you that 99%. Common sense coverage like that should be expected of our insurance companies when insuring older vehicles like ours. Heck "middle retail" for my 280 is almost $7k. Your 240 pulls a LOT higher $$ than that. The pictures of it are gorgeous so the insurance company needs to understand it's a classic car and should be insured as such.

I'm wondering if using some slightly beefier springs in my Autozone distributor from the ones used by A1 Cardone would help "advance" the curve more to my liking? I wouldn't have to do this before installing it the first time just to get it working but something to consider for later... What do y'all think?

Thank you Zed Head! I wasn't aware of the wires I had to remove but I was questioning about this earlier in this thread in fact. Seeing the rebuilt distributors with wires sticking out confused me. I'll take a much closer look at it. That's a very interesting idea of servicing/rebuilding the distributor I have now Zed Head, and I see the worthwhile of attempting to. I can always buy a new one anyway. And put it in and tinker with adjusting it while I also have my old one in my hand and can leisurely tinker with it. Do people change their carbon canister filters? I suspect mine still works and doesn't leak but shouldn't I change the filter so it works better? My new brake booster is on. yaay! The satin black paint looks gorgeous! I could finish the job tonight but I am looking down at my frame rail (or whatever that is) and noticing that it's dirty and grimey and probably slathered multiple times with fluids of all kinds but especially brake fluid which has eaten away the paint in large spots. And where the paint has worn off there is rust begining to form on the surface. It's always stuff like this which sloooooowwwwsssss me down but one of the reasons why I do stuff myself is so I know it was done well. I'm going to clean the rail with soap, water and a rag and a good rubbing. Then dry it and see how bad it looks. If I see anything that's the color of rust I'm going to sand it off. Then I'm going to prime it. And if I'm feeling "spanky" I'm going to hand-paint it in the original blue color ie. my touch-up paint! Thinking out loud is so much fun! I included a few photos for posterity. Inside the front of the AFM, at the golden door to the throttle body, down at my new booster (notice no EGR on the intake), and straight down at the gnasty frame rail thingie. None of the fluid leaks and general nastiness are my fault. All that mess has been made by professionals, ie other people. It's cold outside and I don't want to clean it now! Since I'm going to put this off till tomorrow....how should I seal the plate that attaches between the master cylinder and the booster? I have some high temp RTV silicone gasket sealer (dark gray) should I just use that?

Hmmm...any other options? 280ZX distributor?

AFM is back on the car. Yaay. I have to say that was harder than taking it off due to having to put that metal clip on the connector backwards. *shakes fist* I bent the end of one of my Gs on that G-clip trying to get it on, but whatever, it's on there at least. Whoever designed the AFM connector and made me put that metal clip on that connector the way I had to do it - is just evil. GRRRR Brake booster is primed and drying. I'll apply some Satin black paint in an hour, for a topcoat to match the original and with the other black parts under the hood. Hopefully will have the brake booster installed by tomorrow night. And I hope I only have to bleed the system at the master cylinder, and I will be so happy to have great brakes again.

Awww have some fun while you're traveling. Don't let all that red eye candy make you too impulsive in your purchase. A car is more than its paint but you know that better than I. Now that I've printed everything about AFMs off of AtlanticZ I feel like I understand them so much better than before. Oh, like the two black wires to the thermal sensor...the ones right in front of my nose I got 2.109 kOhms on my original AFM and 2.385 kOhms on the one I bought. The article on AtlanticZ reported a resistance closer to 2.5kOhms if I remember right. I'll do whatever Zed Head says, then. You know I'm easy like that. NOT I hadn't even thought about the curves on these distributors. But other than A1 Cardone, I don't know of any other distributor that can be had for these cars for under $150. If I could pay $50 more for something way better, I would.

Does O'Reilly's have a different advance than Autozone? This is an A1 Cardone remanufactured distributor at Autozone btw. It seems like for many of these parts, Cardone is the only game in town for remanufactured parts. The A1 Cardone AFM for my Z is close to $500. Yikes.

I decided not to mess with the idle mixture screw on my AFM. It looks possible someone was in that messing with it too based on how the plug looks like it might have been off before. But, not knowing more about it, i'll leave it alone for now. But if that's something that (if molested) can be causing my cold idle problem, it's something that looks easily accessible even with the AFM installed so I can always look at it later if I want to.

Good luck hunni!!! Wow another super cute and fun car. I like Miatas and Minis a lot. Good luck on your trip. Let me know how everything turns out. I asked parts geek this question three times, the 3rd time was over an email and they ignored my question. So be it then, I masked the brake booster and just shot it with a thick coat of primer and it's drying now. It looks nice in this dark grey but I do have some nice looking satin black rustoleum paint that will look closer to the stock look. I was reading yall's thread "Purs like a kitten" a few times now and I still haven't gotten all the way through it yet. It's like a treasure trove of information though. Just hearing you guys pass your thinking back and forth is really informative whether I actually do what y'all are doing or not.

Well I don't know as much about plugs as you do, but only know a few specific details about the plugs I'm using. My idle seemed happier at 13.5-14 as well. Revs sounded healthier than before too, and my vacuum needle was going deep into the green after those revs...I remember before I changed my thermostat I couldn't get to the high upper values like that at all. I might eyeball it to the midway point between 10 and 15 and call it good for now.

Thanks for the info. here. Some very interesting thinking/ideas you've considered that I hadn't thought of. Yes I'm running half a tank of 93 octane gas with a can of fuel injector cleaner in it at the moment. No knocking or pinging at 14 that I could tell. From what I remember I might be closer to 13.5 but I rounded up. Still I could eyeball it back to 12.5 easy enough and keep it there. I like where it is a little better than how it ran at 10 but I do have plans to replace my distributor per the post # you referenced. I didn't know at the time if I was going to choose Autozone. I want to meet or exceed stock performance. I'll sacrifice a little idle for a smooth power curve up through the RPM ranges. I'd like a quick, responsive car, though I'm not that aggressive of a driver and not going to race it. My motor's run very strong before, so I suspect it can do it again as it's had lots of hibernation and little exercise since 2001. (Yes I acid-cleaned the fuel tank, blew out the fuel lines and changed the fuel filter before starting it). I see new performance distributors cost $500 and up so I'm not particularly interested in that. I might even keep the distributor I've got. If vacuum advance doesn't matter past 1500 RPMs then maybe I won't even sweat the fact that I don't any Does it the static advance plus 20 equal the maximum total advance from my distributor, or is it not a static value of 20 plus?

Awesome advice as always FastWoman. I think that thanks to you, I do better work (know what to watch out for -- so many helpful tips!) I pulled all those bullet connectors off and cleaned them if that's where the inline resistor would go. There were no resistors on any of them but there was some corrosion. I'm suspecting that maybe these problems with my car may have been brought to the surface by all of the electrical connectors I was cleaning. I found that my car was tuned up the wrong way (through the AFM wheel). I believe this was done because my mechanic (at that time) was fixing a rich running condition, and leaned it out by adjusting the wheel and installing hotter plugs. When I cleaned all of these connectors (water temp, thermotime, ECU, CSV, TPS, etc) I believe I removed the actual cause of the rich condition and thus, inadvertently made my car run too lean. Logically it would seem to me, if unplugging the water temp sensor makes a car run very rich, then an oxidized connector would have higher resistance and logically create a slightly rich condition. While a fully-cleaned water temp sensor would be the leanest running case. NGK GR5 plugs are not only hotter than OEM, but they have highly projected tips. Bigger tips than my BPR7ES's that are also projected (the P means a projected tip). This long nose is another way to get a little bit of additional spark advance. But perhaps these plugs would also be ideal to install to deal with a carbon fouled and rich running motor. Because they put the spark even closer to the piston head they might be effectively even "hotter" on the piston than a 5-heat rated plug without the long projection. GR5s are also a "V-power" plug with the V shaped tip which is alleged to deliver a better spark. My water temp sensor and thermotime were the dirtiest connectors yet seen on my car. Fuel injector #1 which lives in the same neighborhood as those was pretty nasty and green also. I agree with the conservative school of thought that says "don't mess with these AFMS". As owners we have time on our hands to be meticulous about the details, like keeping our electrics clean and our parts that wear out, fresh. If I was far more skilled and experienced with working on multiple Zs before, I might be proficient enough to do a little AFM tuning. But at my skill level, I think I'm best to just return it to its factory settings and just concentrate on the real problem that's somewhere else under the hood.

I *MAYBE* could get 17-18 out of mine too. I'm not sure that it's as far as it will go. I didn't try to force it as far as it could go but it *looks* as if it's out of room to move or very nearly so.

Hi Zedhead! Not getting any vacuum advance from this distributor but the centrifugal advance works fine. But, if (either) advance mechanisms are stuck, wouldn't I compensate for that by increasing the advance? The car idled better at 14 degrees advanced than 10 degrees where it was, but this is the case with the slightly lean condition I seem to be running at. I was intending to retard it back to ~12.5 after the next startup, or even perhaps back to 10, depending on how my clean and re-adjusted AFM has helped how it runs. Revved smoothly at 14 advance too. I didn't take it for a test drive though I wanted to. On cleaning the fuel injector connectors, advancing the static timing from 10, and replacing the PCV valve, I took my manifold vacuum from 14.0-14.9"Hg to 14.9-15.3"Hg. What pieces of that improvement those changes individually made I don't know. My old PCV valve wasn't malfunctioning yet, though on shaking it, it felt a lot "heavier" than the new one which rattled willingly. AFM is adjusted from ~2.5 teeth lean to ~0.5 teeth rich. Did some cleaning of the metal "tray" where the AFM bolts to, a single little rust spot got sanded cleaned and painted. o/w I'd have had my AFM on tonight sans the drying touchup paint. There's a photo of my distributor's position at 10deg BTDC, I think on page #1 of this thread. I wondered if that looks in-line with what others have seen on their distributors.

Would you guys prime/paint my remanufactured brake booster? It looks like I got a rebuilt booster that was rusted on the surface before they remanufactured it because it has some "speck" marks on the metal surface under the paint which looks suspiciously (exactly) like rust damage. I don't want to happen to the booster on the left what happened to the one on the right. Ewww

cozye: Thank you for your offer! You guys are helping my car run better and that means a lot. FastWoman: On your yogurt cup test results I should add, that when i inflated the manifold it felt pressurized. Then, the hose became exceedingly difficult to blow air into it and it stayed that way for as long as I continued to blow. This further indicated a tight setup to me. It was very uncomfortable to keep trying Remember I am your first data point for your experiment other than yourself! General to all about the car: In limbo right now...AFM is fully cleaned, tested and adjusted and ready to install. But I'm puttering around in my off time retesting connectors a 3rd time after spraying them a final time with Dexoit, giving the outside of my AFM to TB boot (mine turned out to be in excellent condition) a nice dose of armor all, cleaning the innards to the throttle body door. There is still a ring of soot around the edges of the round flap though I've gotten all of it shiny clean save the rim of the circle. I might try a tiny screwdriver covered by a plush rag to finish the job. I used a few q-tips doused in carb cleaner but I don't want to get cotton in there by accident by rubbing too hard on the edges so it's stuff like this that slows me down. In response to my problem in reply #12 of not being able to find 3/16" vacuum hose is because parts auto parts stores here don't have 3/16" vacuum hoses. The sizes are 5/32" and 7/32" which I used both to replace my vacuum lines. They were very tight but the fresh rubber was soft enough to stretch with no problem. The 7/32" is the purge line from the canister. Does anyone change their carbon canister filter? They have these for sale for a few bucks...is it worth doing? Replacing my vacuum lines was easy and worth it, especially after i install my new distributor (vac advance again? yaay!). My motor was 14 deg advance on the last tests I ran...I should have noted that. I'm going to fine tune it to 12.5 next time I start it up. Also it looks like this is about as far as I can rotate the distributor to advance it. This is kinda worrisome to me for some reason....is this normal (ie. can a normal distributor advance itself only about 15 degrees?)

hi Sarah, well a couple times already I've shot carb cleaner all over the top of the intake manifold gasket. The bottom side of that gasket is a different story. Learning that you were leaking vacuum down there too has me concerned now. I did the Yogurt cup test but remember I don't have an EGR. So my own version of it at least. I pressurized the manifold with my breath, then plugged the line with my thumb. 15 seconds later I could release my thumb from the end of the line and still hear the air blowing out of the line. 25-30 seconds later I could not hear the air escaping. I was impressed by this that everything is okay, and this is just valves and rings (and a slight leak where I was accessing the manifold's vac (at the brake booster to intake pipe). I really need to do a compression test which is coming soon, unless I'm lucky enough to have my car running really good and am happy enough that I don't hurry in doing it. Not sure if I'll do this before or after adjusting my valves. Maybe it'd be good to have that as a reference point so I don't go too far out of my way bandaiding a mechanically-troubled engine. Yes my '76 intake has that heat shield webbing also. GRRRR No progress reports on my car at this time because Parts Geek are being geeks about giving me an RMA number to return my core, but more time-important than that is whether or not they will void my warranty if I paint/prime my brake booster. It seems to be covered with a dark silver protective coating already so maybe I can just install it as-is. It'd be installed already if I knew what to do. But they don't answer their phones. I am going to send an email tonight. They don't answer their phones. Sarah you were right... At this point I'm going to get my distributor at Autozone. The extra $15-20 it costs to have the convenience of a place that's open 24 hours a day and with helpful people behind a desk to return my core to, answer my questions, and honor their warranty - looks worth it. xox