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Prepare yourself, folks - say goodbye to E10, and hello to E15. It's sure to be only a matter of time before this is the closest thing to "real gas" you can get at a normal station... http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2010/10/epa-environmental-protection-agency-proposes-adding-more-ethanol-to-gasoline-blends-e15.html

FWIW when I pulled all my smog gear 6 or so years ago, I also took all the air injection ports out of the exhaust manifold. I ended up destroying a lot of the rusted male threads holding the injection ports in, so there was pretty much no turning back. I plugged the holes with some brass fittings, but IIRC, I had a pretty hard time finding something that would fit...

I'm certain I torqued everything down to factory specs, I'm pretty religious with the torque wrench. I don't think my problem is nearly as severe as what you're describing zKars. I can't say if I have a real 240 rack or if a PO had swapped it out for a 280 rack. Should the mounts on the crossmember be the same for the 240 and 280 (assuming someone swapped my rack...)? If so I could just get the 280 bushings, I suppose. I'll get down and take some measurements as soon as I can, the mosquitoes are out in full force around these parts, drives me crazy in the garage.

I hate to dig up such an old thread (I can already hear the collective groan of readers everywhere!), but I figured this was the best place to discuss my issue rather than start a new thread. I upgraded to poly bushings after I replaced my ball joints and outer tie rod ends, and when I installed them I prepped them in hot water first (as discussed here). I also added some multi-purpose chassis grease to get them into place correctly. They went in fine, and the gap where they were cut closed easily. However, now the steering actually feels slightly loose! Having my girlfriend turn the steering wheel while in the garage, I can see the steering rack actually moving back and forth in the mounts slightly, maybe several mm. This is apparent when I drive because there is a slight floaty feel in the steering, and I think this movement of the rack allows the front end to wander with the road more than usual when driving straight. Could this be because of the grease? How much movement should I expect with poly bushings?

Well, a lot of those views are probably from people like myself who are nowhere nearby, and can't really offer any help. You could try getting involved in your local Z club, a lot of nearby owners are probably members of your local club but never come on our site.

Some fun tests could be done by someone with the time and interest... You could mount something emitting a colored smoke in your exhaust pipe and drive along a track or something at various speeds while video taping the flow patterns. Could be interesting. We have a small scale wind tunnel in my building on campus. I wish I had been interested in this topic back then, I could have bought a 240Z model and done some testing for my undergraduate fluid mechanics lab. Would have been a fun project. Of course, testing this in a wind tunnel may not be accurate in two ways that immediately come to mind: 1) The air would be moving relative to any static "ground" you installed in the test section (unlike in real life, where it could just be sitting above the road on a windless day). This could be important because air flow under the car would be very different. 2) You couldn't effectively explore what happens when you slow down for a stop sign or stop light. The smoke-filled air lingering behind your car would have some forward momentum in the real world, which may carry it forward around your car as you slow down. This would not occur in a wind tunnel when you ramp the speed down. Anyway, I'm getting off track. The real world testing would be superior (and a lot more fun!). Caveat emptor: fluid mechanics is not my technical area

That's important, UV goes right through clouds, which is why you can still get sunburned on overcast days...

It's right here in the club store: https://www.classiczcars.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=33&osCsid=2jb0n98i83ju6gidardegmjtk4

Hmm, that makes sense. I guess I'll have to dig my snorkel out of the parts bin when I eventually re-do the entire climate control system

I just left the snorkel off, so the hole basically "vents" into the cabin. From taking the thing apart to paint the silver cover, I couldn't see any real purpose to the vent hole (the original motor in our Z's was similar in design, and did not have one), so I saw no point in mangling my fan box. So then I wonder: could it be somehow bad for the motor to not have the vent go back into the box? Well, it seems to be running fine so far after about 6-8 months, and if it breaks down as a result later, I can always find another one. I would think it would be a hell of a lot harder to find a new fan box.

I think you should be more worried about what kind of tires you're gonna use!

Rich1, I can tell you from my experience since I posted in the thread Zs-ondabrain linked that the Eiko bulbs discussed there work perfectly. They're cheap too! Be warned though, that one of the bulbs was DOA, so if you change them with the dash out of the car, try to figure out a way to test them before you reinstall the dash. The gauges are definitely brighter with the 4W bulbs vs. the 3.4W bulbs. I would probably not upgrade to the 4W bulbs without getting the parking light harness to take the load out of the fuse box. Higher wattage bulbs will just increase the current draw through that circuit, and the most people have so many issues with their fusebox already... It's definitely good that you intend to do all the fixes at once.

Looking good, can't wait to see it when it's done!

Not true, I replaced all the bulbs last spring without removing the gauges. Granted, you need to know what you're feeling around for, and you probably need to be pretty flexible, but it can be done. Taking the drivers seat and steering wheel out would probably have made things even easier. YMMV I guess.

No click? Next time you have the problem, disconnect the leads on the starter solenoid and check to see if your key turn to "start" in the ignition is giving any juice there (with a voltmeter). If the solenoid is getting power when you turn your key, but not clicking on and giving juice to the starter, then there's your likely problem... Replace the solenoid. I would definitely not do anything involving a blanket... First of all, a blanket keeps your body warm because YOU are producing thermal energy, and the blanket slows the heat flow into the environment. An engine that is not running will not benefit from a blanket because it is not producing any thermal energy.... Secondly, I envision someone forgetting/not knowing it's there, and you've got a whole other kind of disaster on your hands. My 2 cents, but that's what comes to mind every time I hear a "battery is fine, but there's no click or anything when I turn the key" story.

Like most people, I'm HIGHLY skeptical on the mileage, but I feel that way any time I see a car in that condition with such low cited mileage - I figure if someone has been maintaining it all that time, they must have at least driven it now and then. I only drive my car maybe once a week on average and I've still managed to rack up about 2,000 miles per year on it. ... And If I did that for 38 years, well, you know... I would be surprised if a car like that didn't have a glove box full of receipts, or at least a little notepad listing services performed and their associated mileages. I only did away with that practice recently after going digital. A picture of the fuse box would be interesting...

Is that a 280z three piece valence? Looking for a 240Z valence, and I'm asking on the off chance the previous owner was doing some 240z-look-alike front-end mod...

Nice video, Skyline Drive is pretty awesome. I drove a rental through there when I was working out there temporarily a while back, wish I had my Z with me at the time.

RockAuto had them up until a month or two ago. I priced it into a list of parts from them back in the spring, and left it off my order for later. Went back a few weeks ago and it was gone. The price wasn't as good as CarSteering anyway, I think I may go with them. Please let us know how your experience goes AW.

Nice picture. I used to live across the street from the local chapter of her sorority - it led to many days of frustration when trying to sleep in before and during rush week. I still have all their rush songs seared into my memory!

Nice, sounds like you did what my mechanic advised me to do during break-in. I know people come on here and argue about synthetic vs. regular oil all the time, but I'm definitely going back to regular 10W-30 when it's time to change. I went to synthetic right after 500 miles, and I started to get some small leaks above the oil filter at the head gasket, and around the front cover. It's not a fast leak, I've driven probably 1800 miles and the oil is still above the max line on the dipstick (and still looking clean). It just turned keeping the engine bay and garage floor clean into a losing battle. If your engine work is anything like the rest of your car I've seen on this forum, your build is hopefully a lot tighter and well executed than mine, so hopefully you won't have those problems if you decide on synthetic.

I never said I was offended, please don't put words into my mouth. All I was saying is that it's silly to feel hatred towards the seller just because he wasn't behaving in a way most of us would consider reasonable. What's mine is mine and what's his is his, and if I make him an offer, and he's not happy with it, well, that's too bad for me - he is not under any circumstances required to accept my offer, or even be "reasonable" in considering my offer. That is part of living in a free market society like ours, and thank goodness for that. I once related a story on these forums of unknowingly running into a certain Austin billionaire in a grocery store parking lot here in town - one of the 20 richest men on earth. He expressed his nostalgia for the early Z, having had one for a short time in his youth, and admired mine particularly. When he asked me "how much would you sell it for," I said "I wouldn't." I then told him what I thought a Z in my condition was worth, and that he should check online to find someone selling if he was truly interested. I didn't know who he was at the time (just knew he was rich based on his $500,000+ supercar parked next to my little Z, and the large car collection we discussed in our conversation), and a lot of my friends, given the facts learned afterward, said I was stupid. I disagree - my car has a certain nostalgic value to me. We've been through a lot, and while certainly a value could be placed on it, I certainly do not feel that way. Now true, I didn't offer my car up for sale and subsequently flip-flop on my asking price, but that is his right, as foolish as we may think it is. Aside from that, you don't know what's going on with this guy - maybe he's being pressured to sell by someone in his family, to clear out the driveway for a new minivan and Craigslist is just a way to show this person that "at least he is trying?" Maybe he's too busy to fix it now, but a part of him holds out hope of one day working on it? Who knows. Anyway, I'm done here.

Why hate him? He isn't stealing your money. If you don't like his price, don't buy - pretty simple. FWIW, you couldn't pay me to take that car for all the reasons stated by others. I've seen some pretty ambitious rust repairs on this forum, but none of them looked THAT bad before even being disassembled.

What happened to your Fiat after only having it for 5 years to necessitate being put in storage ever since?

I will agree that the new Challenger looks nice. However, I see it as just one of those "exceptions to prove the rule." The retrostyle trend is just extreme laziness - instead of coming up with fresh and inspiring eye catching contemporary designs from scratch, the offending design studios are just digitizing classic cars and massaging them some in a CAD program. On top of that, instead of making designs that stand out due to their own merits, the resulting cars are just a desperate appeal to the sense of nostalgia so many of us have. Whether this increasing lack of creativity and inspiration in design is due to reliance on focus groups, meddling by bean counters, or just a lack of creativity in the current generation of stylists is another issue entirely... At the end of the day, it's the product of sheer laziness. Also, my comment in my first post was not meant to deride the 370Z at all, by the way. I think it looks pretty good for what it is, and I'd definitely take one for a test drive if I were in the market, but I'm in the same boat with Walter - I don't need two sports cars to keep me occupied.