Wade Nelson

Anyone with some advice to offer on this job?

Couple possibilities. One is that your fan took a dump. Try hotwiring the fan connector and see if it'll spin. don't worry about polarity, it'll just spin the wrong way if you get it backwards. Second, do you have a 3/4-speed fan switch, or the fan switch that allows INFINITE speed control. The resistors on the resistor pack for the 3/4-speed fan can fry. The TRANSISTOR in the infinitely variable dial can blow. And dirty contacts can keep EITHER ONE from working. Take it out, clean the contacts, put it back in. Don't blame the freon system / over/under pressure valves until you diagnose if the fan switch is getting power, and if it's getting through the resistor pack TO the fan motor.

Alas one of my 30 year old heater hoses in FRONT of the firewall gave out this morning. It looked like a two-toothed critter may have taken a bite out of it. The rubber hose passing through the firewall was very soft and overdue for replacement. Fortunately I was able to cut off the (bit? bitter?) end and still have enough left to clamp onto the nipple and limp home. The heater hoses themselves appear to pass THROUGH the firewall instead of, as on many cars, having a metal tube pass-through integral to the firewall. Correct? I assume this means I have to pull the entire dash apart to get to the other ends, ends I ASSUME are clamped onto the heater core. Has anyone done this job? Any tips? As bad as it looks? Will I have to pull down the heater core too? Are these moulded hoses or will 3/4" heater hose work, any sharp bends? I'm not looking forward to this one...

Gatorade has TOO much salt (electrolytes) and sugar. Ideal would be about 50% gatorade, 50% water. Or alternate bottled water with Gatorade to stay hydrated. It's too "salty" even for an athlete sweating like a madman. And the truth is you WANT to be peeing. Frequently. The alternative (in the extreme) is kidney stones. Coffee, soda, Gatorade, beer, all of these lead to dehydration.

That's the camp I'm in, Carl. I used to believe in flushing with caustic chemicals, trying to dissolve out all the calcium & other minerals. What I experienced was LOTS of sticking thermostats days or weeks later. By the time I got to Nissan I became a "If it ain't broke, don't flush it" believer. Yes, perhaps the additives in antifreeze DO wear out, get consumed, whatever. The absolute MOST I would do would be to drain ONE gallon of old, and replace it with one gallon of fresh. No garden hose fresh water flushes, no chemical flushes, distilled water, nada. Flushing is usually a last, desperation step by people battling overheating, and indeed, it can reveal or expose pinholes in the heater core and elsewhere that can be VERY costly to fix. More importantly, I NEVER ONCE saw flushing CURE an overheating vehicle in my entire 30 years of messing with overheating cars, from the XKE's onward. The solution to curing overheating is, as with MOST auto problems, PROPERLY DIAGNOSING what the cause of the problem is. With overheating, the "universe" of possible causes includes; in ROUGH order of frequency: Loss of system pressure -- loose hose clamps, radiator Cap not holding pressure, weeping around water pump, ... Failing head gaskets Sticking thermostats Inoperative fans / fan clutches, missing fan shrouds, bugs covering the front of the radiator...(airflow related) Low coolant level Failing water pumps (blades eaten away by corrosion, etc) Incorrect temp gauge readings! and probably LAST on the list: old or plugged radiators, which are often the FIRST and COSTLIEST thing people replace when battling overheating. What are the tools of diagnosis: A radiator pressure tester is #1 A chemical tester to look for exhaust gases in the coolant #2 Test strips to check the coolant/water mix #3 Some items, like the radiator cap & thermostat you "check" simply by replacing them with a new one. Sight & sound --- a foggy windshield and cockpit smell --- leaking heater core Determining WHEN AND WHERE it overheats - high speed, in traffic, continuously, etc. If it doesn't do it ALL the time then why would you condemn a part whose failure WOULD cause it to occur all the time -- like a water pump? I'm ashamed to say "most" shops "diagnose" overheating simply by throwing parts at the vehicle until it quits overheating. For instance, the chemical you use to look for exhaust gas in the coolant --- quickly goes stale. A tech must "test" it for freshness by exhaling (C02 in your breath will trigger the color change) and throw out "old" chemical on the order of once a month. How many shops are willing to incur that expense --- or have that knowledge? Not many, in my experience. A quick side note: How do radiators / cooling systems GET plugged up? It's when they start losing coolant and the owner continually tops up with city water, laden with minerals. The whole overflow bottle was supposed to put an end to that practice, letting a system suck coolant back in after the engine cooled down. A head gasket just beginning to fail is probably the trickiest to diagnose. One way is to inspect the spark plugs. If coolant is getting sucked into the cylinder, that plug will be immaculately clean. But head gasket leaks can be two-way or just one-way, blowing exhaust gas out INTO the coolant but not sucking any in. I've gotten suckered by any # of Subaru's with early stages of head gasket failure, replacing every part of the cooling system before finally breaking down and doing the head gaskets. Before catalytic converters came along you could often SMELL coolant getting burned by the engine. Lastly, it's probably beneficial to DEFINE overheating. The temp gauge is in the red zone AND the radiator is spitting steam and/or coolant out the overflow. I've seen more than a few vehicles with temperature gauges that SUGGESTED they were overheating, and...the gauge was wrong! Check the actual temp with an IR thermometer pointed at the thermostat housing / water outlet. Summary: There are flushers and non-flushers, and I'm one of the latter. The solution to curing overheating is PROPERLY diagnosing it instead of throwing one after another part at it, especially the more expensive ones like radiators.

Driving the 280ZX today, here were the things I realized, compared to the Porsche. First of all, I just LOVE looking out over that long hoodline. It STILL reminds me of the XKE hood. Second, I like how the ZX squats under acceleration. Third, the ZX, at least mine, gives a greater PERCEPTION of speed. Perhaps that's because of my noisy window seals, buzzing shifter, etc, but it feels like I'm driving faster. I honestly believe the ZX is a tad more aerodynamic even than the Boxster. It's a joy to drive fast in a (relatively) straight line. Even with the windows down there's little or no buffeting. I'm going to continue to fix up my ZX. I'm torn between two lovers.

I cut my teeth curing overheating on a 1967 Jaguar XKE. I thought I could diagnose pretty much ANY overheating problem within an hour or so but a recent one took me awhile. The afflicted vehicle was a Toyota 20R equipped mini-motorhome, but... The lessons should help any Z owners battling overheating. Problems started when the water pump began making a racket. It wasn't leaking and the vehicle wasn't overheating at this point. The pulley was visibly moving in and out 1/4" or more meaning the water pump bearing had failed. Frankly it sounded like loose metal in the bottom end of the engine rattling around! I replaced the waterpump in a mini-market parking lot, filled the radiator, warmed the engine up to try and "burp" it, put the radiator cap back on and took off. Ran fine for several hundred miles. Then she started getting hot, going right up to the edge of the red zone on the gauge, then back down again, almost AS IF it had an air bubble or intermittent pressure leak. I noticed some slight seeping from the radiator cap, and sure enough, the rubber seal on the bottom of it was cracked. A loss of pressure could easily cause it to run hot; at the next O'Reilly's I bought and installed a new radiator cap thinking I was done. (I'm so proud of myself --- how did I get a radiator cap off an already overheating radiator without scalding myself? I pulled into a car wash and used the magic wand to spray down the radiator until it was cool...O'Reillys just happened to be right next door --- sometimes we get lucky) But it was still running hot... At a truck stop I tightened all of the hose clamps, all 16 or whatever of them, suspecting a pressure leak. Even a single dripping hose / hose clamp will cause a loss of pressure and the temperature will shoot up 20 degrees or so. On down the road I'm still having problems running hot, and I'm battling some humongous headwinds. If I pull over and stop for 5- 10 minutes then when I take off again it will stay in the normal region for 10-15 minutes before heading to the hot zone again. It's crazy! At this point I'm running the heater in the truck on FULL BLAST to try and dump excess heat out of the engine and make it to the next town. 90 degrees out and I've got the heat on...misery! As long as it's just on the EDGE of the hot zone I keep going... Do I have a head gasket starting to go out, one that is "injecting" air into the cooling system? Shutting it down causing it to heat soak and "burp" out a bubble, and then head out again? I'm at wits end. I finally call a better mechanic than myself and he sez, "If it's intermittent, it's probably either the fan clutch or the thermostat." If it's not running bad, it's probably not the head gasket. He asks if the fan clutch is freewheeling, or offers resistance. I tell him it's closer to freewheeling and not offering any REAL resistance. I replace the two items, warm the engine up without the cap off again to burp it, and....problem is cured. So was it the fan clutch, or was it a sticking t-stat? When a vehicle is going down the highway at 50mph+ it's generally getting enough airflow through the radiator not to NEED the fan, especially bucking a headwind. Overheating at highway speeds SUGGESTS that there isn't enough coolant flow. On the other hand, if a vehicle overheats mostly in town, in traffic, it suggests there isn't enough airflow. Yet this vehicle did just fine in town, it was when I was really pushing out on the highway it was getting hot. What I have found, as a mechanic, over years of time, is that often a thermostat will stick a few hours or a few days AFTER any new part is installed in the cooling system --- a new radiator, a new water pump, any fresh new metal that can cause some electrolysis to occur. Yet another mechanic I spoke with said "Oh, you just had an air bubble and got it out when you replaced the t-stat." He ascribes to the air bubble theory causing so many overheats AFTER work on a cooling system is done. One thing I did see was that I had too much antifreeze, and not enough water in my cooling system. It should be a 60/40, or 50/50 mix. Water can absorb and transport more heat than antifreeze can. It is weird, when a cooling system is working properly, it seems bulletproof. When it is not working, it seems so fragile. There's a simple explanation. When a cooling system can get rid of even 1% more heat than the engine is generating, then it can keep up. If it can get rid of 1% less heat, then heat is going to accumulate --- and the engine will rapidly overheat. Now consider this. If an engine is putting out 100 horsepower, it is putting out nearly 200 "horsepower" worth of waste heat. Internal combustion engines are very inefficient --- less than 20% of the energy in the gasoline is converted to actual WORK --- usable power at the driveshaft. The rest gets converted to heat. So which was it that was causing my overheating --- an air bubble, a sticking t-stat, or a failed fan clutch. (or too rich an anti-freeze blend) I still can't say for sure. Or perhaps it was a combination of all four. Remember, I only had to have 1% less cooling CAPACITY then I needed to suffer serious overheating! Here's another thing; a lot of do-it-yourselfers, when battling overheating, go into the auto parts store and buy a 170 or 180 degree thermostat instead of the 190 t-stat called for. In olden days they used to refer to these as "summer" and "winter" thermostats. The truth is putting a lower temp thermostat in your vehicle will almost NEVER make an overheating problem go away. What it WILL do is damage your fuel mileage. My engine had a 180 t-stat in it, after installing the factory spec'd 190, I notice I got 1-2mpg better fuel mileage even if the gauge sat a little higher. Engines ARE designed to run at a certain temperature, and below that they'lll use more fuel and create more pollution. Back in the Jaguar days I proclaimed that pressure testing the cooling system was ALWAYS the first step in diagnosing overheating. I'm gonna stick by that; its simply too easy to have a loose radiator or heater hose and lose pressure. Lose pressure, you overheat, period. At one point in this ordeal I was fairly certain there was some debris in the cooling system, perhaps blocking a passage or the thermostat itself. The blades off the old (oem) water pump were pretty chewed up, perhaps a piece of one was floating throughthe system. When I pulled over, perhaps it sank tothe bottom again. or perhaps shavings from the blades grinding against the housing had caused some electrolysis. I'll never know for sure. I'm sure some of you can add some stories, some lessons learned battling overheating to this.

I saw this ZX alongside the highway somewhere in Kansas. $3200 asking price. From a distance it looked quite nice. Up close, the right front fender looks like it slid into a phone pole. Rust underneath the driver door (dogleg). 279,000 miles, although the (redone) interior is almost perfect. I think his asking price is too high; at $1200-1500 an enthusiast might acquire a fun driving machine they could fix up. Then again, who knows what condition the engine, clutch and tranny are in with 300k miles, not to mention the almost-certainly worn out suspension components. I thought the white louvers were a real nice style touch. That's me in the Mini-Mirage, a knock-off of a Toyota Dolphin. I got to change the water pump on it in an Arkansas Mini-Mart parking lot and later the fan clutch and thermostat at a Motel 8 in Colorado. It has a 20R motor, predecessor of AND preferable TO Toyota's venerable 22R because it's got a bulletproof dual row metal timing CHAIN and metal chain GUIDES. The plastic guides in the 22R are infamous for getting brittle and shattering. The all-metal 20R is a 4 cylinder that'll last 300k miles, easily, with regular oil changes. Gutless up hills, these 4-cylinder mini-motorhomes get 15-18mpg's highway, truly outstanding for an RV. Perfect for going cross-country in search of Z cars, no?

Despite my love for Z's, I just put a mint condition 1997 Porsche Boxster in the garage. 46K miles, silver in color. The thing corners like it's on rails. And the mid-range power band is utterly stupendous. I love the ergonomics, and especially how the seat moves up and forward simultaneously, which, along with a telescoping steering wheel, makes finding a perfect driving position easy Probably my only "complaint" is the exhaust note is a bit tame. If anything this vehicle is a little TOO refined. The seller spent 30 minutes with me showing me how to put the softtop up/down, take on/off the hardtop, various controls, etc. That's something you never have to do with a Toyota or American car, give INSTRUCTION on it to a new buyer. This included a fuse-based wire doo-dad (built from plans downloaded from the Internet) that will conceivably allow me to open the front trunk should the battery ever go completely dead; a major oversight on Porsche's design, leaving an owner utterly UNABLE to access the trunk where the battery itself is located for purposes of charging and/or replacement. The engine is invisible; supposedly by removing the soft top I can see the TOP of the engine in order to change the air filter or add some obscure fluid (power steering? brake?) if ever necessary. Access to the (oil) dipstick and coolant reservoir is in the rear trunk, windshield washer fluid in the front. And not enough room in either for a set of golf clubs. Apparently this car is for driving, not for golfing or antique shopping. (Even my first generation MR-2 had a decent rear trunk; the only thing it couldn't haul was a medium-sized framed picture; yet I regularly hung my surfboard out the sunroof!) After a spirited drive home along La Posta road I gotta say, "Wow." This is some sports car." I love my 280ZX. It's fun and (mine in particular) truly has character. But the Boxster, 20 years newer, is in a whole different ballpark. It may not be a "supercar" along the lines of an NSX, but, wowzer, it's truly fun to drive.

Nope, those are for carbureted applications, 1-3 psi. Those are NOT designed for fuel injection pressures! Filters for fuel injected vehicles are almost invariably METAL CANS that can survive 20-50psi.

Sounds to me like the mechanical advance in the distributor is not working properly.

No, it is not. Again, sometime compare an OEM starter or alternator with an Autozone unit. It weighs less than half as much because it has far fewer copper windings in it. It is a cheaply made piece of junk. It will require MORE horsepower to put out the same amperage because, with less copper, it's less EFFICIENT than a properly made (or rebuilt) alternator.

When I worked at Nissan customers would balk at the price of a replacement alternator / starter ($300 or more) and ask if they could go buy a $99 one from Autozone and have us install it. We refused. We would only install: A) OEM Nissan NAPA, 2-3 year warranty C) original alternator or starter, rebuilt. It was a labor thing. The AZ alternator/starters typically lasted less than 90 days. They had less than half the copper (wiring, coils) in them of an OEM device. Of COURSE they were going to wear out faster, and it was OUR techs who would get to replace them over and over. As for Chinese tools, I have a hierarchy. My ratchets are Snap-On, my air tools are mostly Ingersoll/Rand. Lifetime Warranty. My Gear wrenches are either Snap-On, Mac, Gear-Wrench, or other WITH A WARRANTY. My sockets / wrenches are generally Craftsman. Again, WARRANTY. Pry bars, jack stands, creepers, stuff that doesn't matter is Chinese, comes from Harbor Freight. (Although now I'm wondering about the wisdom of trusting those jack stands...) The Chinese stuff simply uses inferior metal, that's been poorly machined. Look at the "Stainless Steel" BBQ grilles at Home Depot! They're all RUSTED!!!! They can't even put a reasonable amount of chrome and vanadium in their Stainless steel! Chinese light fixtures don't even use enough copper to make good electrical contact with fluorescent bulbs! Autozone, O'Reilly, Pep Boys, these folks sell cheap Chinese c.r.ap to consumers who don't know any better and whose time isn't worth anything. What's your time worth?

I can't imagine wanting to INSTALL power steering. If anything I'd be the guy taking it OUT! The road feel and fine control of a manual rack, a well designed one, is something of joy. If you don't like the manual steering in your Z --- consider, it might need a refresh. Worn ball joints made my ZX steer quite badly, requiring a lot of effort.

Bruce Plecan's Tuning Tips Yes, the 280Z/ZX has an ANALOG, not a digital fuel injection system. This is a great article on tuning / re-mapping DIGITAL fuel injection systems. The article is based/ oriented towards GM (General Motors) EFI. If you hope to understand ALL fuel injection, theory, etc. it makes a great backgrounder. Don't expect to understand all of it on your first pass. What did I learn re-reading this? That if you lean an engine out too much under "cruise" conditions it may "chug" if the vehicle encounters a slight hill or stumble upon re-application of the accelerator. In a modern car with digital cruise control, it would be simple enough to detect when the driver presses the accelerator pedal or if the vehicle speed began to slow down and prevent stumble with a tad of enrichment. That would enable you to program "super-cruise" with added MPG's. Personally I've never felt modern cars utilize the knock sensor enough to maximize economy. I know on mid '1990's Nissans we saw a lot of knock sensor failures with no significant impact on fuel economy; (Customers strongly resisted the $300 in labor charges to replace a $50 part and their fuel mileage didn't suffer sufficiently to convince them), however my OTHER experience, with my 1991 Four-Runner; it runs noticeably better on premium fuel I have to believe the Toyota EFI is using the knock sensor to aggressively advance the timing.

The rust on the hood and headlight buckets makes me doubt it was inside a covered garage... Garage find - 1975 Datsun 280Z It's hard to imagine the interior is in any better shape. Not really sure what you'd be buying here...

I'm gonna be the inconsiderate, unkind commenter here. If you don't know how to correctly wire up a coil / ignition circuit without even LOOKING at wiring diagram, or don't know how to READ a wiring diagram for your particular vehicle and figure it out... You have no business "re-wiring" your vehicle and "adding flip switches and that kind of stuff." Someone else is just going to have to clean up your mess. As far as "not buying" or not "USING" any of the original harness --why make it easy on yourself when you can build a new harness from scratch, wire by wire? I suggest you go find an AUTO ELECTRICIAN and pay them to wire up your basic ignition circuits for you and call it good.

I'm thinking you should swap cams with the guy here who's Z engine will ONLY run ABOVE 4000 rpm.... /snark

I don't think shooting the messenger is fair game, or particularly smart. If others get the same warning from AVAST!, a well respected piece of Antivirus software, the moderators of that site would do well to look into the problem rather than simply kicking a new member off. Even if it's a "false positive" the moderators of that site would do well to find out WHY their site is triggering AVAST. IMHO.

Also look inside the cockpit at the pivot point for the pedal. Look for excess wear, loose mounting, etc. Saw a lot of old Chevy's where the clutch pedal bracket fatigued and broke the firewall. Firewall moved instead of the pedal.

1980 Datsun 240 240 - Print Details - Vista BMW Of Pompano Beach I'd be concerned about an odometer rollback on this one.... want to check Carfax, etc.

You'd need an electrical engineer, or at least a really good tech to make the existing factory gauges more accurate. The way you'd do it is using 741 "Op Amps" to correct either the signal coming from the sensor, or the gauge display, or both. You'll start with what's ccalled a "unity gain amplifier" circuit and go from there. Consider a fuel gauge. Most of 'em either come off FULL waay too fast, and then take forever for the last 1/4 tank to disappear, OR the opposite. They sit on FULL forever then ZOOM to empty from 1/4 tank. So you're going to have to design and build circuits that CORRECT that non-linearity. That ALSO means that you're going to have to completely empty your tank, pour in 1/4 tankful, 1/2 tankful, 3/4....and measure the signal coming from the sender so you KNOW what the actual curve looks like. In theory it should be a straight line, linear, but it's probably not, which is why your gauge reads too fast on one end of the spectrum andn too slow on the other. It may be a curve, or have a slight knee in it, until you plot it out you don't know if the inaccuracy is in the sender or the gauge or a combination of the two. You'll ALSO need a calibrated, mechanical sender to measure oil pressure, temperature, etc. in order to correct THOSE gauges. So you're going to be drawing six sets of curves --- fuel, oil pressure, temperature --- both signal sent, and display shown And then you'er going to adjust the resistor values associated with the op amps to "straighten out" the curves into nice straight lines. Got it? Got an electrical engineer friend who's bored? Specifically, an ANALOG engineer? Your other choice is to buy some MORE accurate aftermarket gauges and either mount 'em on the dash or replace the existing ones. This would be approximately 100x faster than designing circuits. You can, once in a blue moon, get away with "correcting" a temperature sender, for instance, by adding a single resistor, either in-line, or pulled up to B+ or pulled down to ground. If the non-linearity in the sender's output is a simple curve that loses or gains steepness as temp goes up, sometimes this'll work. I had, for instance a Jeep Cherokee where the owner SWORE it was overheating. It wasn't. It never spat coolant, nothing. But his GAUGE read 20 degrees high. Adding a simple 60 ohm resistor (if my memory is correct) brought the gauge closer to where it should have read, AT LEAST AT ONE SINGLE OPERATING POINT. We tried 4-5 resistor values until the gauge APPROXIMATELY met what our IR thermometer gun told us the temperatuire was at the thermostat housing. There are also some "gauge correction" boxes out there on the Internet you can purchase, I remember seeing them for odd shaped fuel tanks to "correct" the readings. Probably want to google that.

The greatest benefit from an uncorrected dyno LIKE THIS is in doing before-and-after comparisons, to see if you changed the shape of the curve, moved the peak horsepower or torque, etc. So for instance, if I were to get my hands on one of those big-bore throttle bodies, I might make a before-and-after run to see if it actually boosted horsepower, and by how much. Why is correction needed? The engine is generally WARMER for the second run. It won't make as much power as when it is colder, and the charge is cooler. A lot of times a big electric fan will be placed in front of the radiator when making dyno runs to ATTEMPT to keep the coolant temperature more constant. Cooler fuel (first thing in the morning) will also create a cooler charge; a hot afternoon dyno session won't produce as much power... Altitude correction (part of standard temperature and pressure) is obvious; an engine will make about 20% less power at 6000' than it will at sea level. So depending on the barometric pressure the day you test, you could get different results tomorrow, unless you correct for temp & pressure. There are no labels on the x-axis of the chart so you don' tknow if your torque peak was at 3000 rpms or 4000 rpms, another "issue."

Sure. Put some fluorescent dye in (used to diagnose AC leaks). Drive it for two weeks. Pull into a darkened garage, at night, and use a black light to find your leak. If you don't find it, it's probably leaking into the power brake booster.

Don't run one second longer than you absolutely have to on old gas. It will varnish up an intake valve which will then stick in its guide and then the motor won't start, or will run VERY badly. I know this from working on lawnmowers. They'd start right up in the spring (after sitting all winter with stale fuel) and never restart. That's when the owners brought them to us..."but it started just FINE!" So we'd tear the engine down, pull the intake valve out, chuck it in a drill press and use emery cloth to remove all the varnish from the stem. (Repeatedly spraying it with carb cleaner only worked SOME of the time...) Pull a hose and use your fuel pump to pump all your old fuel out into several 5 gallon gas cans, whatever. Try not to ignite it. I also see Wal-Mart has a $29 "oil drain pump" that could probably be used to pump gasoline, provided you're damned careful about it....