Captain Obvious

I always thought that spring was to prevent kinking. Why not just put on a ported boot and plug the hole. That's what I did. The OCD simply won't let you have that unused nipple sticking up in plain view?

Nice. So how did you account for the large initial squirm without slipping the top plate completely off the bottom plate? Did you lift by the control arms, or is it just not as severe as I'm picturing?

Thank you... Thank you very much. I also do Jive, and I'm studying Klingon. So let me see if I understand this pump thing. On some cars like Volvo, and VW, they don't use manifold vacuum for the brake booster, but instead us an electric pump to generate that vacuum? If that's the case... Why? Isn't it a lot cheaper to just use manifold vacuum?

I've seen that sheet metal plate idea used for people who are doing home alignments. I've not tried it, but it sounds simple enough. I would be a little concerned though that the suspension really develops a lot of positive camber when the wheels are completely off the ground. You'd have to be careful that the plates were large enough to insure you didn't completely slide one off the other. Maybe people jack up each corner using the control arm so you keep the suspension compressed and then slip the metal plate sandwich under the tire?

He shoots... He scores!!!! I've seen early couplers that are a hard plastic material. When did they change to the softer rubbery material? I've got poly in my car from my PO, but I'm just curious when the change occurred.

I think I have a translation: "I do molding of parts and I use a vacuum pump to degas my resin mix before I pour it into the mold. I tried one of those Hella pumps to degas my resin, but the pump was incompatible with the fumes that are come off the mix as you pull a vacuum."

The manual says the needle shoulder should be flush with the bottom face of the piston, not pushed up so that the shoulder is even with the bottom of the groove. I'm no carb expert, but here's some other stuff to consider: The round top nozzle adjusting nuts are M10 x 1.0. This results in .0394 inches drop for each turn. 2.5 turns down is .098 down the needle and at that location along the needle you're running between station 1 and station 2. This means that at 2.5 turns down, the SM needles will idle and no load leaner than stock. It's not until about six turns down that the SM's turn the corner and start running richer than stock. So if you're getting a transition lean pop from no pedal to much pedal, it might be because you're running lean at no load when you're high on the needle. Pushing the needle up so the shoulder is even with the bottom of the groove is about the same thing as turning the nozzle another turn down so that would help. I don't know where you would be on the needle at light cruise, but you might be leaner than stock there as well. Here's a chart I whipped up that illustrates the difference between the N-27 and the SM needles:

Yeah, sometimes everyone uses different terminology than what's in the manual and that can make stuff hard to find. It looks like you have successfully cross referenced the colloquial names to the official manual names. And I found a pic of the plank/dolly combo that I use when loading the suspension. These allows the suspension to find it's "at rest" position before tightening the suspension bits into place. I think this is better than ramps because the dollies can squirm around as you jounce the suspension: Just make sure you block the other end of the car from moving in some way when you do this so it doesn't roll around. And by no means ever try to do this on all four corners at the same time unless you've got a very level floor. DAMHIKT.

The ported version was introduced in 78 and they changed the tubing scheme to try to keep the AAR cleaner. I haven't investigated it, but I've heard that Nissan tried to update earlier years to the 78 style. Not sure if it was an official recall or just "while it was in here" kind of thing. They probably superseded the non-ported version with the ported one.

Gotcha. Stock rubber bushings. Then you do need to pay attention to the order of events. Here's the summary: First tighten up the eight small bolts (the ones you circled). Second, load the suspension. Third, tighten the four large bolts that thread into the control arms. As for loading the suspension, there are several options (ground, ramps, etc), but I do something a little different. I use a pair of small moving dollies with 2x10 planks across them. I lower the rear tires onto the planks/dolly combos and not only does this give me enough height to crawl under and tighten stuff, but the dollies allow the rear suspension to squirm around under load to equilibrium in a loaded position. Kinda like the alignment platters they use under your wheels on the alignment rack, only taller (and cheaper). JUST MAKE SURE YOU PUT THE FRONT END ON JACK STANDS OR AT LEAST CHOCK THE FRONT TIRES. You don't want your car rolling away on the dollies. Also, while you're under there, I'd take the time to loosen and retighten all four of your spindle pin nuts too. They need to be done with the suspension loaded as well, and you don't know what the previous owner did.

Gotcha. Maybe you could use a BMW steering rack instead to compensate?

Are you using stock style rubber bushings, or poly? Because (as Zed Head mentioned above) if you're using poly, then the sequence doesn't matter at all. Snug everything up and then do your final tightening in any order you want to. No difference.

Why were the crossmember mods garbage? What went wrong?

Can't do an episode without "BOFF!!!"

It should go into fifth just like any other gear. Wouldn't be the first time something like this happened... I went to look at a "five speed", and after trying unsuccessfully to get it into fifth, I had the difficult task of breaking the news to the guy trying to sell it. He (honestly I think) didn't know. Boy am I glad I checked!! (Sorry...)

Thanks for the laughs. That's funny stuff!

I realize I'm often the dissenting voice, but I don't like them. I think they look "kids smartphone". Too cartoonish. On the good side, the Kardashians will now be able to communicate using the new images.

Sounds like success! You are the man! I used to be able to do SMT without magnification, but not anymore <sigh>. When doing the small stuff now, I'm doing the same thing you are with a loupe, and it's a real pain. I should invest in one of those bench mounted magnifying loop lamps too.

So what's the other work in progress in the background with the MM wheels and the multi-color paint scheme?

Yeah, from your reminiscing in the injured and bored thread, we know what you mean.

If by unique you mean "there does not exist another one like it anywhere else on the face of the planet", then I suspect the answer is "No, it's not unique". It's not an OEM Z knob from any year... I second Dennis' belief that it's aftermarket.

But silly stupid dumb. Last edit... I'm putting it back in and if it's wrong, someone can prove it to me. I had what I thought was a continuation of that Laugh-In quote, but I just dug around a little online and I couldn't find corroboration. That was a recurring character for Arte, right? I'm only finding clips of one occurrence.

I do too, and I looked at using them for this project. They're very flexible and I think that kind of webbing would work fine, but the reason I didn't use them was because of the age. Most plastics deteriorate with time and I didn't want to use 40 year old plastic webbing. I wanted new. I wouldn't use the old stuff. Webbing is cheap.

I stitched that blue one myself on an old household strength Singer machine that came to us from my Mother-In-Law. Here's the whole story about the sewing process... I made that blue one as proof of concept. Easy peasy. As soon as proof of concept was a success, I pulled the trigger on the higher quality material from McMaster. The black webbing arrived and I started making a better strap to replace the blue one. First thing I did was doubled up the black webbing for additional strength. That worked fine, so I figured "If two layers was OK, then three would be even better." Well not so... I blowed up the sewing machine. Ripped the teeth off one of the plastic gears inside. I knew I was overtaxing the poor old girl, but I pushed ahead anyway and she made it clear that she just couldn't handle the strain. So since then I have learned more about sewing machine repair than I ever wanted to know, and I have purchased and installed a replacement gear as well as clean, adjust, and lube the whole thing. So at this point the machine is back to better than before I started, but I haven't gotten back to working on the final strap yet. I do know, however, that my household grade machine can deal with two layers of that black stuff, but not three. I really didn't need to triple it up anywhere, but it was the over-engineer in me. When I get back to it, I'll either farm out the final sewing, or I'll limit my layers to two.

Excellent. Another crises averted. Glad you figured it out!