Captain Obvious

Not any more I don't!! That was many moons ago when I was young and indestructible. At this point, if I got one of those "live or death" adrenaline rush events, I juuuuuussst might be able to roll it off my chest before I passed out from the pain.

You've clearly got a bad connection somewhere. Turn your lights on to create the problem, and then while it's screwed up, wiggle your largest fusible link. Should be the black one. Closest to the passenger strut tower. If that doesn't do anything, try wiggling the following next: Remainder of the fusible links. The wires that go to the starter. Any wire you can reach.

Exactly. I got a similar 3-4 boxes! Maybe what we need is a trading thread where I can trade some of my box contents for some of your box contents! The contents just can't be identical, can they? Maybe a thread where you just list what you have. Not a for sale thread, but a list of what you have surplus, and what you'd rather have?

Huh? Who said that?

I don't remember if that 15 emitter came from Superbright or ebay, but yes, that's the one. As for details on CANBus, I haven't looked into it.

I think it's because everyone all wants the same small set of difficult to find parts. Everyone wants five speeds, wood(ish) steering wheels, straight early bumpers, and SU carbs. Nobody wants four speeds, another squishy steering wheel, another set of ripped up seats, or a space saver spare. Sure there's always the little stuff that people are looking for, but it'll take a long time to make back $1500 with the little stuff.

Sloshing around dangerous chemicals while wearing masks. In the middle of summer. Sounds like a scene from Breaking Bad!

That's gonna make you go blind, you know.

I'll mess around with my camera settings and see what I can come up with. Maybe I could put the incandescents back in the tach and that could provide a common point of reference? Tach is pretty easy to get in and out.

I was going to mention the same thing about the seat belt anchor positions. On the original configuration, the seat rails and mounting locations don't have to handle much force in a front end collision. But if you move the belt anchor to the seat itself, you have changed all that. I'm sure the Z's are terrible in accidents by todays standards, but you could still make matters even worse.

Haha!! Chuck, you're right about that. That thing is so bad that the usual places no longer even exist! I'm not so sure about parting it out and making money... There's a guy here on the forum who recently bought a rusty car with the intention of rebuilding it, but everyone here convinced him it was too far gone to rebuild so he decided to part it out. Everyone talked about how much money he could make if he parted it out, but I think he's still sitting on almost all of it. He's posted a couple times trying to rouse interest and sell stuff, but people just aren't buying?

Haha! I've got the camera, but it's one of those new-fangled "cameras for dummies" where it takes care of pretty much everything for you. And one of the things it takes care of is the light sensitivity and shutter speed and all that crap. What this means is that when I try to take pics of the dash, it says to itself "Wow, it's really dark. I need to do whatever I can to make it brighter to compensate." And my dash lights have these big white halos around the outsides of the faces that really isn't there in real life. I probably have to spend some time RTFM and turning off some of the auto settings. I never was a photo bug kind of guy.

I see what you did there.

On the side that won't shut at all... I've seen an issue on car doors where the door won't close because the latch is already latched in the closed position and interferes with the catching portion of the mechanism as the door tries to swing shut. Happens sometimes when you're messing around with things and inadvertently move the latch to the closed position. So, sorry, but I it's my job to ask... Are you sure that the latch mechanism is in the OPEN position while the door is open? Maybe the latch is latched and wont catch?

Chuck, I was thinking the same thing. If it's that rusty in UNusual places, then just imagine how rusty it is in the USUAL places.

I was out last night with my Z for the longest dark drive yet since I did my PWM and LED install, and I love it. I wish I could figure out some way to take pictures that realistically convey how the dash looks now but I don't know enough about photography to accomplish such a feat. For your empty rheostat hole, you could put in a fuel pump prime button.

I saw that listing, and my first though was "Wow that's rusty. Give it another year and it'll melt completely back into the earth from whence it came". What's a parts car worth these days?

Right! Something like that! I've got a vacuum pump already. I could build that. I sure wish they had kept the camera rolling longer so you could see what happened when they pulled that thing out of the frame. Seems silly that they did a video of the process, but stopped without showing the finished product. I'm suspecting that a lot of the problems of working with that material is because of uneven stretching. I think a vacuum forming process would do a better job of applying even pressure where it's needed without the pinching and bunching that you're seeing doing it by hand. I bet the original plastic shell (before the foam) was made with a vacuum forming process. Either that. or it was sprayed into a mold before the foam.

charliekwin, I think it looks just fine. Seam doesn't bother me. If I bought you a plane ticket and had supplies on hand, you could fly to PA to do mine? Beer? All the spray adhesive you can sniff? What is your pleasure? Knock you around a little with a pair of flat tops? And that Tundra... I'm pissed with ya and I don't own one either!

Mixed up pins? That's what I found as well. The polarity changed at the connector. Map light? I'm using one of these in warm white and I really like it. Brighter than stock, great dispersion, and short enough to fit into the original housing without modification:

Ohhhhhhhh. When you said "hot", I thought you meant warm to the touch. "Hot" as in "voltage on both sides" is much easier. So the reason you're seeing some voltage on both sides of the bulbs is probably two things: 1) It's completely expected to have voltage drop across your rheostat, and in fact, that's the way it works. The rheostat divides the total voltage of the system to a smaller amount across the load and the remainder across the rheostat. The PWM does the same thing, but it does it as a "time average" pulse instead of a constant DC level. And the dimmer the bulbs, the more voltage across the rheostat to ground than across the load (the bulbs). And in fact, with the rheostat pulled completely out of the circuit, you'll measure the same voltage (12V) on both sides of the bulbs. 2) You're using a "buzzer" tester and who knows at what voltage that thing decides to buzz. It could be 11.5V, or it could be 1.5V. So, here's what I would do. First, trade out that buzzer tester for a voltmeter that actually gives you numbers, and measure both sides of the bulbs to a known ground. Second, I would take the LEDs that are giving you problems in the tach, and swap them for a known working pair from the speedo and vice-versa. See if you can quickly narrow the problem to an issue with the tach, or an issue with the bulbs.

I broke an EZ-out off in a drilled bolt a couple days ago. Spent about an hour getting that SOB hardened stub out of there so I could continue failing at getting the original bolt out. I feel your pain.

So the wires got hot with the LED installed, but were OK with an incandescent? Which LED were you using? Even though it really shouldn't get hot, it sounds like a polarity issue? One thing to check... You said that the GW went to the tip, and RL to the base, but that's not the whole story. Since the polarity didn't matter in the original configuration with incandescents, the people who slid the contacts into the plastic connector shells didn't pay attention to which went where. So just because the GW goes to the tip of the bulbs at the tach, it may have change polarity at the connector shell. You need to check the wire colors on both sides of the connector. (Or do your checking with a meter to a known ground source like a screw head.)

Haha! Maybe you can teach me a new word tomorrow. On second thought... That might not be the best idea.

Been there. Done that. Was wearing safety glasses and a groin cup, so it grew back.