Captain Obvious

https://www.classiczcars.com/articles/interior/a-pillar-cracked-plastic-trim-fix-r71/ I think I did two pairs... You want to buy my spare pair?

Cutting through the pins at the small gap between the control arm and the knuckle is SOP. Just make sure he has enough gap for the saw blade width and doesn't damage either the arm or the knuckle. Good luck. And remember that it's a rite of passage.

Beautiful work on the gaskets. Must be nice to have access to a laser cutter!!

Haha!!!

Yeah, it's just glued on from the heat and the petrified old gasoline. Razor knife works well since you don't have to worry about ruining the old diaphragm. Don't bend the disks. If you can't seem to get them apart and are worried about bending a disk, you can drop the whole thing into a sealed cup of carb cleaner. For a week.

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Yes you need that little metal disk. In fact, there are disks on both sides of the diaphragm. You are supposed to just pry the disks off your old diaphragms and move them over to the new ones. Are you saying that you don't have them at all? Or are you saying that your disks are glued onto your old diaphragms so tightly that you didn't know they came off?

So I'm still waiting for alignment dowels and head gasket to get here. In the meantime, I spent a little time cleaning up the header surfaces where they mate with the head. My PO put on a 6 to 2 header of unknown origin. No idea where he got it. So I'm looking it over and see huge welding goobers inside the tubes and pieces of MIG wire stuck in there from where the guy who welded it got the wire stuck and burned off pieces of it. Here's the worst. About an inch of wire stuck in there: I pried it up with a screwdriver: And pulled it out with a pair of pliers: And there are other testaments to the workmanship, like this huge goober. It was on the upper side, so I used a little mirror to get a good pic. I stuffed a paper towel down the pipe a little and tried to pry it loose. No joy. I'm leaving it in there: So today's question(s) is... What welder has so little pride in his work that he'll leave junk like that in there? Is it just me? Are my expectations too high?

The EFI system is supposed to run clean. Other than the plug color, do you have any reason to believe you're running too lean? Were you pinging? Is ten miles enough to really get a good plug read?

My understanding is that the PCV valve is a metering device. It's not a wide open leak. And if you're not running any sort of air flow meter and are getting all your loading info from a MAP sensor, then I'm not sure it matters.

Cool. As it should be. I wonder if he saw this thread? It's a nice car. It just isn't original paint.

So since you're running a throttle cable instead of the design, are you gonna knock off those two bearing towers for the original linkage rod?

Like this: Note that the square-ish wheel hub is hanging free between those two support bars. The axle is usually not in there real tight. Doesn't take a lot of force.

Woof. That's never fun. That's why I let Greg do the under dash investigation.

Actually I'm pretty sure those threads are stock from the factory. First off, they are straight and not at some screwed up angle, so I doubt that my PO did it. And second, that same hole is threaded on my F54 block, and I don't think that engine has ever been apart until I did it. And interestingly enough, the water jacket hole at the rear of both blocks on the same (left) side is threaded as well. That's exactly what I was thinking, and actually, why I asked. I've been looking into head gaskets and the 83 gasket uses a smaller hole there than the previous versions. I was thinking I could run a restrictor plug into that threaded hole.

Yeah, they all are. Good luck with that. Yes it's been repainted. With little regard to overspray.

So here's a question for today. If you look closely at this water jacket hole... Up by the timing chain and cylinder one, on the left side of the engine. It's threaded. The paper towel wad is stuffed into the head bolt hole, and the other hole just goes down into the water jacket. There's a corresponding hole in the gasket and the head. but question is... Why is it threaded? : I tried to measure the thread size and didn't come up with anything standard. It's a very loose fit on M10-1.5, but it's not big enough to be M12. So it's either a badly corroded out M10, or it's something unusual. Any ideas?

Yeah, I was planning to measure the projection once I got further along with the head reassembly. Based on the valve lift number you posted from the FSM, it's close either way. But with a closed clearance of approx. .380, I guess it's easier to believe that all my valves stopped in a position where there was no collision. Still thinking about that five mile drive home with only half the cam spinning!!

LOL. Well we have both been under your dash, so yes... We're even. Thanks again for checking so I didn't have to!

Yup!! There it is! Thanks much for the confirmation! So what you're saying is that I've got people who do that for me? Haha!!!

I also took some quick and dirty measurements on the distances between pistons and valves... The valves, when closed, are about .185 below the head bottom surface: And the dish depth on the pistons are about .115. Don't have a pic of that measurement, but it was like this with the caliper in the center of the piston: So... The bottom line is there is about .300 clearance plus the head gasket thickness between a closed valve and piston when the piston is at TDC. That distance may have saved me a whole lot of crunching. Also, assuming that valve opening distance is greater than .380-ish, I believe this confirms that the stock motor IS an interference design?

So I've started addressing the block. Cleaning things up in preparation for the head reinstall. I've got a hodge-podge of pistons in there. I've got four of these: One of these: And at cylinder #1, I've got one of these: No real surprises there, I guess. I know my PO had been in there, so I was kinda expecting some stuff like that. I did notice that the cylinder 1 marked "STD" does stick up out of the block by about fifteen thousandths at TDC, but the one marked 34 at position 6 sits flush. So I've got some mismatching on compressed volume there, but not enough that I'm going to do anything about it right now. I can't rotate the engine right now because I've got the timing chain wedged, but I suspect all of the pistons except the "STD" one do not protrude above the block deck at TDC. So anyone see anything "project stopping horribly wrong" with that combination of pistons? Is there any rhyme or reason to the "34" or "45" markings?

Well with the valves lapped into place, I know both the valve faces and the seats are consistent now. So even if the valves rotate, they should be fine. In fact, some cars, they try to rotate the valves on purpose. Is that not the case on the Z?

So what is it about those jets that makes them so magnificent? I've not looked into them at all.