mjr45

Bart, I just sold my 75 280 to soem guy in the South of France for $10000, not a con cours resto, but pretty good, probably somewhere between a 2 and 3 closer to a2 on the Hagerty scale.

Sorry for not having been around for a while. Well my beloved 75 Z is sold and on her way to the South of France. A collector saw her for sale on E-Bay and we came to a satisfactory deal. I hated to see her go after all the blood(literally) sweat and tears plus a few screams of frustration that was put into her over the past 3 years. I have to thank lots of people on this site for assisting me in the rebuild, I could not have done it without your kind assistance all the responses to me sometimes repeated questions. Thank you all again and who knows, I may be back with another one in the future. Mike

I just read thru this thread and it is amazing. Keep up the excellent work there JDM, you'll have a truly rare specimen of the Z car.

Wish I had a spare 5K, that would be in my garage instead of my 280.

Got to love the finger swipe of the dirt on the speedo to see the mileage. 4K is a bit to high IMO, looks like there may be a lot more tin worm disease as well as Bondo work. I would have to give it a real real close look see before making any offer. Just my 2¢.

Thanks Pat, I'll give those places a shout and see what happens.

I used a Grant steering wheel with their adaptor and had no issues with it being moved forward. The adaptor moves the wheel maybe 1/2 to 3/4" forward, the only issue I had was the tapered bushing from the old wheel was in 2 pieces, but using a small amount of lithium grease to hold it in place made it all work well.

Its been a bit, but I put on the new dash cap, fit was/is really bad looks OK from about 10', it'll be easier to remove since there is very little silcon that makes contact with the dash. I'm still looking for a dash I can restore and replace the current one.

As soon as it quits snowing I'll take a look in my stash of parts and see what I have, I'll let you know.

I decided to put on a full dash cap and I'm going to source another dash in better shape than mine, restore that dash and then replace mine with the cap. Thanks for all the replies. Mike

I tried several of the methods to get my tach out and never could get it to go. I suspect that different caps have different thickness's which may make the difference in pulling both gauges. I had to rip my cap off which because of how it was put on and did a lot of damage to my dash, a new cap is going back on today.

Yup, a better dash would be a better starting point, after looking a lot more closely at mine, there is so much material missing that I fear it would next to impossible to actually repair, there are lots and lots of small pieces of the vinyl missing, cracked and broken that I would have to virtually cover the entire thing with the bumper repair stuff and then try to return it back to original form. I'm also not real sure that it wouldn't completely disintegrate when I took it out. Thanks. Mike

The more I look at my dash, the more I'm thinking I will just put a cap on. I'm not sure if I have the skill to redo all the gauge lips without using a ton of restorative material. In the long run a cap might be the easiest and least messy way to do things.

You guys are probably right, if I screw it up then I will just put on a cap. Here's some pics of the dash.

I've looked thru the archives and the cost to send it out is a little prohibitive.

Yesterday, I removed the dash cap to see if I could start on a restoration, I've read the restoration threads and felt it was doable. Now for the kicker whoever put the full dash cap on(not me) used about 100 tubes of latex caulk to hold it in place and/or fill gaps, the result when taken off was that about 50% of the orignal dash vinyl came off with the cap as well as a lot of the original foam padding. Question is do I try to restore or just put a new cap over it? I will have to glue the pieces of factory foam that came off, that I could save in chunks, into place but would still have lots of big gaps. I'll post a pic later today. Thanks for the advice. Mike

Len I would love to see you and talk for awhile, maybe we could meet uo somewhere that Pop's Z, you and I could meet up. Hows the HellFire coming? 71, I might make the switch, but I'm trying to keep it fairly original and right now don't have the $ to put in carbs.

Blue, it runs a little cool with outside temps in the mid 60's, but not overly cool at least I don't think it is. Len, when its gets a little warmer I'll go back and recheck all the things you listed. On the ignition stuff, I really need to replace some of the wiring at the coil which I think may be a little funky. Thanks Mike

Zed, I filled up today and got 12.3/mpg, but the car is running well so I think I'm just gonna live with that alesat for awhile. Mike

Zed, I'll get you some real milage figures soon, I'll fiil'er up again and get actual milage, can't for the next couple of days, it's SNOWING AGAIN and I don't drive her in the snow. I agree that by looking at all the #'s the plugs, etc. it looks like its running well and it does except for bad MPG. Where is Washington County? Our oldest son is moving to Astoria, leaving sunny Maui for the Oregon coast. You may right in that I have unreal expectations of MPG. Blue, check the pic in post #78. Thanks Mike

Captain, see the pic of the plugs in post #78. The last pressure test I did was 6 mos ago and I got #1-6 120, 125, 130, 118, 122, 121, I know that sounds low but when you use the 0.7860 as the compensation for 8000' (chart didn't go any higher) with 160PSI as good pressure at sea level, you get 125PSI (corrrection factor X 160) as good, so at 9000' I figured they were OK #'s except # 4. The valve lash was checked and adjusted cold then hot last summer and I really don't think they could have changed much if any with less than 1000mi on it since then, but I can always re-check(when it gets above 20° in my garage).

Captain, at this point all idea's are considered to be valid and worth some thought. To be honest this car has never been at anything lower than about 6000' so I couldn't tell you if run s better or not. rcb, there are 2 wires hanging by the ECU with no connections, I think they were for the altitude switch since they both disappear into the wiring harness and I haven't bothered to peel the harness ro see where they end up. Mike

Fastwoman, that might be worth a try. No, my wif'e Kia(blah) gets about 38MPG and my truck around 20. Blue, don't have an EGR. Mike

Haven't had any hot restarts so far this year, had an occasional problem in the past in the summer, it doesn't get real hot temp wise in the summer, just feels hotter cause we're closer to the sun, got to use SPF 5000. Captain, there is no altituce switch but there are 2 wires hanging by the ECU that I suspect is for this. After looking at the pic of my plugs, it looks like there is no consistency to the burn on all 6, #1 looks the best almost right on, but the rest look worse in terms of burn with #6 being the worst, so maybe its faulty or wrong injectors, don't know. Mike

I may opt for a new set of injectors some FJ707T, the $ amount to get new ones is about the same as getting the old stock ones cleaned and rebuilt. The driving I do is pretty much up and down hills on twisty roads so I expected the MPG to not be great, but it should be better than it is. Sarah, my house is almost twice as high up as Denver(a horrible place) and visitors from the flatlands often get short of breath walking 20' up to the door, "there's no air up here." I will pick up a pot next time I'm in town probabaly a day or two depending on weather and since it snowed AGAIN last nite, it won't be today, and wire it in just to see what it does per your recommendations. I don't think the BCDD has ever been messed with, but I'll see what happens when unplugged, who knows at this point. As I've said, the car runs well just has crappy MPG, I'm also thinking I'll replace the TPS because its NG @ WOT. I'm still on the fence about new injectors and maybe an adjustable FPR but I've read they are not all that great. Here are all 6 #1 on the right. #1 looks pretty good, #2 not as good, #3 a little worse, #4 worse about like #2, #5 bad, #6 a lot worse than the others. In person 4,5,6 look much worse, pic makes them look better. Thanks again to everybody. Mike