Kennymonster

Bump revival on this thread; I've had a nagging oil leak (a big one) that's been pouring over my front sway bar as well as pooling over the alternator bracket and passenger side cross member, just did a timing cover job with all the proper gaskets/permatex seal, oil pump gaskets, etc., and it's definitely coming from above the oil pan somewhere, so I figured it's got to be the front main seal. I pull the crank pulley and find this, very close to Arne's post: This might not be good... As much as I'd like to blame the PO, it didn't look like that during the timing cover job, so I can only assume I didn't install the pulley properly upon reassembly of the front cover. I have an AutoX this Saturday that I've been putting off for 3 months in this car, so made a whole bunch of calls trying to see what's feasible on time. Despite the bad reviews, I had actually ordered the $89 MSA damper last night and said what the hell, I just need it for this weekend. Well they canceled my order and gave me a call today, apparently the quality control feedbacks really got to them (whether it was due to you guys, or may be whole lot more people who complained), apparently the fitment issue was bad enough they returned all their inventory to the supplier, and had them re fab the parts properly. From what I was told, ~5 weeks ago from today (August/2013) they received the improved prototype with better fitment/install specs. Although they were promised another batch, I guess it's still on 'back order' status until they actually come in, whenever that might be. This applies to both the 'Race' version that imploded in Steve's case, and the budget sub $100 damper as well. I'm not sure if they just addressed the fitment issue alone, or the build quality. I called BHJ but their pulleys were little bit out of my price range, and I really didn't want to junkyard this part since that'd be a bigger gamble pulling an unknown condition pulley. Oreilly's whom I usually get most of generic seals / parts for the Z, actually had this in stock for next day: Precision Parts Powerbond OEM PB1212N - Harmonic Balancer | O'Reilly Auto Parts Looks to be just a rebuilt or factory replacement unit at $224.. if it lasts even half the lifecycle of the stock one I'll be happy. Picking this up tomorrow and hopefully be running on Saturday, I'll definitely report back if there's an issue with any wobble or install.

Did Delta regrind the rockers also? I know that it's not popular subject or recommended by many on here, but when I consulted with the Schneider guys regarding the rockers, they recommended that I inspect and if 'smooth', reuse the stock rockers - to my surprise. He actually advised against resurfacing the rockers (due to the chance of whomever performing the task improperly), and also warned against lot of the 'new' rockers out there due to being inferior Chinese material. Just barely have few hundred miles (if that) on my setup, the 270/280 .460 Schneider regrind on stock cam with their springs. Used their rub on break in compound + fluid and seems to be ok so far, but hopefully I don't meet the same fate after 2k miles if the springs indeed ended up being at fault.

Yeah they do pretty well at AutoX, I usually race with the BMW CCA guys at Qualcomm and there's 2 or 3 that always come out, would love to see you out there!

Yeah I had to use a drive extension on the tap wrench for leverage, but got it done. Update: The timesert kit worked perfectly! thanks again to John C. for the suggestion. I put some red loctite on the outer part of the insert (probably not necessary) to make it ultra permanent. Only problem I encountered was the threaded hole itself being somewhat short, the insert did not seat fully to the counter sunken hole. So I just drilled out a ~1/8" on the diff mount bar, using the same timesert countersink tool, allowing the mount to seat flush to the body. Torqued to spec nicely.

Thanks John, ordered a kit from Torrance last night, should get here tomorrow. I watched their youtube vids and it does look pretty straight forward.

^Thanks for the tip, it doesn't seem like rocket science, and if I could do a timing chain/cam job going in blind, I think I should be able to do this. The new bolt had no luck, will be shopping for a redrill/tap kit tomorrow. Thanks again guys.

I checked that out, my only concern is holding a hand held drill perpendicularly since the problem lies underneath the chassis... I'm not sure what the tolerance would be for something like this, I could easily see myself drilling the hole slightly slanted or otherwise, and botching the whole operation. Being part of the chassis I can't otherwise 'remove and take' the problem to a machine shop and have them deal with it, and at $80 / kit, that 1 bolt seems like an expensive problem haha The good news is *possibly*, I just re-inspected the bolt which seems to be pretty stripped in itself of threads, I'd have to double check when I get home but there's a chance that the receiving end could be ok. In the meanwhile I bought couple of m10 x 1.25 that looks like the part, hopefully these will hold the torque. If not, the timesert seems to be my only realistic option, that or finding a shop to re-drill/tap properly underneath the car.

Thanks for the suggestions gents, sounds like tapping for a next size up would be the safest. I definitely don't want to mess with critical stress points, it's not like the rest of the car where it's held on by zip ties

Alright ever since the diff swap last week, subconsciously this thing has been nagging at me to a point where I'm reaching out for feedback. - I'm not 100% sure whether the bolt hole was stripped prior to removal, during removal, or during re-install. It may have well been in that condition for the 2 yrs I've been beating and autoX'ing the car, or it could have happened some point during the reassembly last week. - It's not completely jacked, and I can put maybe 15lb's of torque on it before it loosens again, for now the bolt is back in there at its tightest 10 - 15 lbs torque with a bit of blue loctite - but this is nowhere close to what it should be, or at least I feel that way. The problem in question is highlighted with the RED arrow, passenger side, outer. *this isn't my car , using a reference pic. * The other three bolts on the crossmember are in good condition, and are holding their torque specs nicely. The yellow dots, which includes the 2 on the lower control arm with total of 5, is my observation on supporting points for the pivot arm, when the control arm moves up and down. What would be the most reasonable fix for this? Leave it with lot of loctite and assume the 5/6 bolts will do their job? Heli Coil? Maybe drill the hole all the way through and put a big nut on the other side? Bigger bolt that'll bite harder? I don't foresee myself dropping that crossmember again anytime soon, but I'm sure at some point I need to access the part of the car again, where the crossmember does need to come back down.

It adjusts the ignition timing, just like the 10mm adjustment bolt you've been using, it's just another/secondary adjustment slot to play with. Unless that itself is maxed at one end, you should be easily able to get 4 degrees out of that one. You won't see it from the driver's side fender, but if you lean over the passenger side you'll see a smaller 8mm adjustment slot behind the dizzy. Loosen, rotate, just like the other one. *If you have a RHD then flip the driver/passenger reference. I guess I'm confused because you stated that in the past you removed the oil pump shaft to align the dizzy the correct way (which implies the tang being set to 11:25 position), yet you're not sure if the tang is currently at the 11:25 position? Hmm.. this isn't something you want to estimate. I measured with a piece of IKEA paper measuring tape to make an offset mark on the pulley, without having to remove anything, and even the slightest adjustment on the dizzy could bump the timing 5+ degrees each way, at least it seemed to be that way on mine. Do you not have a tach in the car altogether, or do you mean you couldn't see the tach as you were performing the adjustment by yourself? I stuck a piece of vacuum hose in my linkage to hold the throttle open, confirmed the 3k on the dash, went around the car and checked the full advance. If it runs ok then you're probably close, but I agree on making it 'right' as either end of the spectrum besides the optimal setting means less power, risk detonation, less efficiency, etc. It doesn't cost anything except maybe an hour of your time The JCCS has been my favorite event for the last couple years, hope to see you and others there!

+1 on verifying TDC. If you unbolt the dizzy and look at the angle of the spline, with all things TDC, there should be a clear answer on whether you need to realign the gear tooth or not. When you say 'can't', by that do you mean ran out of adjustment space on the main 10mm bolt? If so, have you messed with the smaller 8mm adjustment bolt behind the dizzy? I always thought the concept of base idle/timing is all iffy in regards to performance aspect, I would maybe try to check the full advance timing at 3k+, and then work backwards from there.

Yup, running the correct dizzy alignment did the trick. Ended up somewhere 35 - 36 degree full advance where it seemed to be most happy, 91 oct. Cam timing seems right as the torque feels good early on and still pulls to 6.7 - 7k. Also serviced my rear drums with new shoes and cylinders, I can lock up all 4 wheels now vs. just the fronts, awesome. For those of you searching distributor position posts and coming across this... my advice is don't even bother with moving spark wire orders to mask the real problem, with another helper up top, getting the gear alignment correct will take less than a minute. Quick video of an offramp pull, cam specs also listed on there: 2nd Gear - YouTube Can't wait to take her out at the next AutoX.. it's been couple months and I'm tired of driving my buddy's miata ;(

Vacuum advance plate fully works, but I have it plugged. I did see a chart that Vic put up, the emission ridden /'worst' one out of the group had something like 6 idle / 35 full so I'm thinking it might be that one.. however I did not have any complaints before on stock cam, pulled like a beast. I started from #2 so my thought was just leaving it the same, I supposed to really verify I can readjust to #1, but after that chain slack incident, even with the MSA wedge tool I just bought I'm a little gun shy about taking that sprocket off now To start with I'm going to attempt the correct adjustment on dizzy and go from there, I appreciate the help Steve.

Thanks for the feedback Steve, it's much appreciated. I don't post much on here and only lurk, but I have quite a bit of your posts bookmarked when referencing/diagnosing the mikuni's jet settings. Since this is mostly a weekend toy for autox and whatnot, I think I should just fix the root problem. Believe it or not it actually starts very easily, usually on the 2nd turn over. The base timing, difficult to get a reading being somewhat jumpy, seems to be between 10 - 15... at 900 rpm. I wonder if I have that 'bad version' of the zx dizzy with a huge gap in the curve. Here it is sitting at TDC, notice the vac diaphragm and the yellow dot. The shaft - definitely needs to be rotated clockwise. The CORRECT reference pic I'll be going by now: I just doubled checked to see if it's the cam timing that's killing my 3k+, it was at #2 slot before the cam on stock motor (it was bought that way) which still had a good powerband upto 6k with the triples. Even with the new 270/280 cam, I put it back to where it was at #2, since it was just the right amount of advance for my driving. The notch seems pretty close to other reference pics I found, as I understand it, at #1 should be slightly left of the mark, and the #2 slightly more being another 4 degrees of advance. Let me know if this looks out of wack:

First off, Happy Father's day to all. Recently I had just finished the daunting task of front timing cover removal / tensioner reset, following the all so common rookie mistake of letting the chain slack, during a cam install (stock regrind @ Schneider .460 270/280) Thanks to the abundance of information on here, I 'thought' I was being pretty meticulous on reassembly, verified the crank/cam timing/TDC to be correct, however the end result is the distributor/oil pump being off by a tooth or two: What happened: It's a '72 with a 280zx distributor, my mistake was interpreting one of the reference pictures where the rotor hat aligns with the vacuum diaphragm, not realizing the diaphragm on my dist. was actually one spot over (at #5 and not #1). It also had a nice yellow dot on there to seduce me into thinking it was #1.... I searched and few others seemed to had the same issue. It started/ran fine once I shifted all the plug wires one spot over, but at this time I've maxed out both adjustment screws and it's still way too advanced (40+ at 3k, trying to get it to 34, specs: l28/n47/44h mikunis). Pulls ok until 3k, does climb to 6.5k but very slowly. So as it stands, I'm assuming I have to clock the dizzy correctly in order to gain the adjustment needed to properly set the timing, couple of questions. - This may sound idiotic, but does the oil need to be fully drained in order to remove the oil pump? Or is the oil mostly in the pan and I have enough slack to remove and reinstall, with the car jacked up from the front leaning the fluids to the rear. - Even with the timing being way advanced, I'm not getting much pinging under load, the compression r is around 8.7:1 on n47 maxima head with n42 block, and the 44h triple mikunis are nice and throaty with 3psi fuel. Does overly being advanced 5 - 10 degrees result in actual power loss, as I'm witnessing, in addition to just detonation? I would think anything other than optimal combustion will lead to lack of power, I just wanted to confirm this fact to rule out other parts being an issue for poor performance. I appreciate any feedback, -Ken

It was great to see the different setups and ingenuity on what others were doing, but as far as the trophies and votes go, I didn't see too much substance in it and it was a joke (not meant to devalue anyone who actually got trophies, couple of my close friends placed 2nd places). I wish they would be more serious about it though, based on workmanship and taste, which is tough nonetheless and is very subjective. Still, as Z enthusiasts though, we should be able to draw a line somewhere and distinguish between: beater cars for humor vs. dumping money on a project just to show off vs. a real, built car that other project builders can understand (these would get my vote.) Not that it matters but my vote went to the black modified 240z with SCCA sticker, I know that car actually gets driven (not just driven), like mine.

The Z has come to my possession that way, and I have not messed with any of the wiring despite that's what I keep hearing. Fortunately my mech was competent enough to complete the diode method for me before I got there, and explained the possible consequences otherwise. Only other thing we did was to completely replace the battery terminal harnesses, since they were rotted to hell. I did try re clamping with a better part of the cable during my troubleshoot, but they seem to be too far gone. Coil doesn't seem to be getting the regulated voltage any longer. Thanks again for the past feedback guys.

Here are the updates for those who search similar problems in the future. Got the Z back today, here's the culprit and final verdict. Lack of spark issue: the MSD box was indeed shorted out, along with the voltage regulator on the alternator (280z type.) Apparently the current set up had an internal regulator inside the alternator AND an external regulator somewhere along the harness as well. One of them is now bypassed. What a pain in the arse, it runs good now though.

Ah, I saw pics of filters on the balance tube but not on the actual block vent. Thank you both for the feedback.

I couldn't find a straight answer in search, one poster implicitly recommended but I want to be sure. L28 in 240z, running SU carbs, the PCV connection on my balance tube is nonexistent (either filled in or came that way), and I just have the crankcase tube hanging out with no hose attached to it. I also have a hose connection not used on the SU air guide, on the inner side opposite the PCV, since no air pump is installed. Could/should I connect a hose from the crankcase vent to the air guide, without worrying about any pressure related issues?

Thanks for the information Steve. With MSD setup I believe a ballast resistor is not necessary, at least that's what I read. The 9.8 was measured when the new battery was first swapped in. I will go ahead and check the steering column before calling the tow on this bastard. The column plastic enclosure is really loose and I occasionally try to close it tighter, although it's unlikely that affected any of the wirings inside.

^That's correct, it would get overly hot without the ignition engaged. That is the reason why I left the neg battery terminal unhooked overnight, but to my surprised the battery was completely drained in the morning. If not the MSD, which worked perfect for 2 years according to the previous owner, would there be any obvious place for the short? I might've tried to crank it little too long while the first dying battery was going out, but have not made any wiring changes (that I know of.)

Update: I left the negative terminal unhooked overnight on my new battery (mainly because the coil gets superheated), after failing to find the culprit yesterday. Today I hook it back up, the battery is almost near dead. I've ran out of time officially since the week's started, I'm now looking into getting it towed to my knowledgeable z mechanic. I will update when the situation is resolved, thanks for all the feedback guys.

^Thanks for the feedback, expertise or not it makes lot more sense than what the diagrams told me That seems to be exactly what's happening, the replaced coil has also started leaking after I left the battery hooked up for couple of hours, unintentionally while I was out, started dripping oil. Something definitely is shorted or not making contact, probably during my first attempt when I was trying to force start it with a weak/almost dead battery. The problem is now finding exactly where the cause of the shortage is...

It currently has a MSD hook up, http://www.msdpowersports.com/pdf/frm22049_pn8920.pdf All the wiring seems connected, nothing's been changed since last operation except for the coil itself. On ignition, I'm only getting ~9.8 at (+) coil post though.... not 12. Hard to think it's battery related even though I haven't tested the new battery.