5thhorsemann

That seems reasonable, but I would think you should go slow with the drillling, no more than one or two wire sizes at a time. Just keep going till the problem eases, too fast and you might end up with too low a pressure which will agrivate the VL.

Keep in mind, the most important use for your car extinguisher is ESCAPE. If the car is burning with you in it, you need to suppress the flames enough to get out. Dry chem extinguishers will choak you out and likely blind you as well, in the confined space of the car cabin. Get a good halon or FM200 unit, they knock out the fire and are good for repeated discharges, also, they are good for as long as the pressure is in the good range. Keep in mind C02 units will suffocate you as well as the fire. Summit racing carries the good, but pricey units.

Neet widget, are you planning to sell them?

A backdated bill of sale could take care of all that, especially if it goes out of state, hint hint Sarah.

I think it may have something to do with the coolent flow through the flat top carbs, thats just a hunch. The hood vents on the 74 will ease the kind of issue I'm experiencing. The fuel boils off when the car is parked and it won't start without cooling the lines with water. Once I get it in motion the engine bay cools off and the car runs okay.

Take the alt to an auto parts store and have it tested, I wouldnt take it apart, just blow it out with high pressure air. As for the harness, I pull the gromets back into the cabin and bag and mask the harness and suspend the bag between the strut towers and paint around it, just my 2 cents.

It's a 73 with all the 72 intake stuff. I have the 73 recall manual for the VL mods, but aside from the pusher pump I've done all the recommended mod's. I won't have to worry about VL as it will be nice and cool by the time I can drive it again, thanks for the well wishes.

Congrats

mayia copia (spelling dosent count on this one)

Ive got plenty of time to get the parts together on this fix, just got a call from my doc, had the Xrays read and determined I have 4 broken ribs and 2 bruised in my left back. I put the car in the garage yesterday and had to get help to get out of it. Looks like at least 6 weeks before I'll be able to drive it without the use of an engine lift to remove my dead a$$ from the drivers seat. Sigh.............

The only problem with "investing" in cars (for me anyway) is 1)I can't just let it sit. And 2) I always feel sick for a period of time when I sell it. I am completly lost as to where to put my money these days, the only investment that I have that is actually growing faster than inflation is a Chinese power company that is building and opperating a fleet of coal fired electric plants, seeing about 18% on that one and hope against hope that it lasts.

I guess I am speaking out of my field here, I was thinking direct port injection, which 280Z's are not. So perhaps a damper or "hammer arester" would have some stabelizing effect afterall.

6 injectors firing every second rev @ 1000 rpm = 3000 injection pulses.

It's not exactly a river of oil, looks like a winter project to me.

I got two different versions off of ebay, and downloaded a third form links on this page, do a thread search.

In my years of buying and selling cars and bikes (Harley-Davidsons) I have never come across a car that has such ignorance as to it's value as the early Z's. Most bikers, when asked the value of a certin H-D model, will poll about the same, + or - 10%. Same with older Fords' GM's and Mopars, sellers seem to know what their car is worth, or at least what they are bringing. You shop the old Z's, and the prices seem to swing wildely. That is really true in the north east, perhaps because there are so few and the condition of the available stock is so varied, that making a comparason gets confusing and people scare themselves into strange valuations of what they see before them. I get asked the old "what did you pay?" question alot, and I get everything from the jaw droping "your kidding!" to the disbeleaving "your full of poop." (poop was for Arns benifit) People just don't have any idea, such was the case with my cars P.O. I'm sure I could sell it today and double my money, or better, but then what? Go out and buy someone elses headach, and have a car that is nowhere near as cool or fun as my Z, and end up spending all the profit on fixing up the next toy, regretting it all the way.

Do you really think a high frequency damper would do anything to improve fuel delivery at RPMS over 1000 to 1500? On a 6 cyl your lines see 3000 PPM or 50 pps at 1000 RPM. The gasoline is light enough alone, adding the ethanol makes it even lighter, I wonder where the pressure pulse would flatline, RPM wise. If you look at how a hydraulic system behaves (using hyd. fluid, or brake fluid, which are heavy and dense compared to gasoline) at low (pump) rpms the systems are slugish and you can feel the vibrations through the controlls, like peddal feedback on brakes. But if you rev the whole thing up it gets smooth as silk. I would think the gasoline would act as its own shock absorber at a very low rpm. Anyone running a mechanical fuel pressure gauge that can speak to that? Back to the VL. I'm using pheonalic washers on my fuel line at the head, same stuff the carb heat isolators are made of. The hard lines are wrapped in fiberglass and have a 3 mil. reflective aluminum shield tape (one layer thick) over the FG. The fuel filter is before the pump, and mounted at about the same height, thats how I came to the VL conclusion so quickly. I could see that the filter was empty, and when it did begin to fill the fuel was boiling within the filter itself. I think the pusher pump is going to be my savior on this one, and I also think I am just going to stick the Faucet pump back at the tank because the existing mounts and wiring will fit rite up, after all, it's cheep enough and they are very dependable from what I've heard and read.

You have a volt meter, if connected properly it should be reading the entire potential across the battery terminals, to include the charging circut. The battery should be around 12V, we know this to be true. the only other thing capable of creating electrical potential (voltage) in the car is the alternator, which is governed by the regulator. Therefor, since you are seeing a full field condition at the battery, via your new gauge, (and this has been verified with a meter) your problem is reg. wiring, or the reg. itself. Please excuse the scientific speak, just read the vaporlock thread front to back and it put me back in college mode. I need a beer.

Wow, I broke a few ribs falling down a flight of steps Tuesday night and have been laid up for a few days. I assure you it is painful, but not as painful as this thread has become. SUPERHEATING The state of pretty much any matter depends on two things, temperature and pressure. Molten rock, for instance, in a liquid state can be subjected to enough pressure as to freeze back into a solid state, regardless of temperature. Likewise, under the proper circumstances, solid rock can be subjected to a sufficient bombardment of thermal energy as to cause it to go directly from a solid state to a vapor state, as demonstrated in volcanic eruptions. Superheating is a term which describes the amount of thermal energy that a given form of matter needs to absorb in order to change from a solid state directly to a vapor state, thereby skipping its liquid state altogether. Super heating has no place in a vapor locking discussion. EFI As for the FI discussion, when the injector opens, the orifice opens into a VACUUM, thereby radically altering the boiling point of the pressurized fuel, which would be aggravated by, fuel that is many degrees above the boiling point (at atmospheric pressure), along with the hot environment of the combustion chamber. This causes a lean condition (which at some point will become too lean to burn), detonation and other problems associated with the IC engine. The delta T of the specific fuel blend, the amount of mass the liquid fuel comes into contact with (once the pressure is removed from the fuel), the thermal coefficient and temperature of that mass being encountered by the fuel (the ability of the various metals to transfer heat) all play a roll in these conditions (there are many other factors which also have effects on combustion). The fact of the matter is, that as long as your fuel pump has access to liquid fuel and is able pressurize a closed system with that liquid fuel, any vapor will be sufficiently compressed as to return to its liquid state in short order. SO NO, AN EFI CAR CAN NOT SUFFER FROM VAPOR LOCK. CARBURATION Carbureted engines are completely different in so much as the fuel must exist in within the bowl, in a liquid state, at atmospheric pressure, in sufficient quantities, as to feed the jets with enough liquid fuel, that can be atomized again in sufficient quantities as to sustain combustion. The inability of the delivery system to supply an adequate amount of fuel to the carburetor bowl, is defined as VAPOR LOCK. THE QUESTION IS (WAS) What crafty little tricks have you desert dwellers come up with to minimize the vapor locking issues inherent to early Z’s? Seriously, I wasn’t trying to revisit Physics 101, I was simply looking for elegant solutions to the problem, so the car runs well in hot weather, the engine compartment stays as uncluttered as possible, and I don’t drain my bank account. I did enjoy the thread though.

**** would be my guess This is what the late night / early morning will look like though http://www.wimp.com/barfingcup/ watch the hole thing and listen to the commentary. Fitting.

Its a hydraulic system, keep under 3 psi. The volume rises and falls with demand but pressure should remain constant from the fuel pump at the regulator output.

FSM has good instructions on the installation, just go by the numbers.

Also keep in mind, these are about the easiest cars to work on that were ever made. That, along with the wealth of knowledge and experience found here (not to mention the parts sources) make your old Z a worthy candidate for a restore or fix-(h)er-upper

I recently went through the entire fuel circut and cleaned and blew everything out, including the returne lines. I Insulated the the lines using fiberglass matt insulation and reflective foil tape. It seemed to help a little bit, but Sunday the vapor lock happened again after sitting in the sun for 15 min. or so. I guess I will have to put the electric pusher pump back on the car. When I went with the round top carbs, I was told by many that it wasnt necessary to prevent the VL problem, so it was omitted, one less thing to fail. I guess that was wrong. I know there is a company called Pegasus racing that has the replacement fuel pump that was installed on the 73 recall, anyone use this pump? http://www.pegasusautoracing.com/productdetails.asp?RecID=85 This is the exact pump that was removed from my car, it has been internally modified since the original install to use less power and pump more efficently, but it is the faucet replacement.

Sex-ie, you do nice work Blue.