djwarner

I admire your preservation efforts but I think there are a couple of issues here. First is the "collectability" of the car itself. I realize that most of our Z populations have been attrited through rust, driver error, other driver error, teenager mod hacking, race car modifications, and abandonment. But collectability is different than rarity. It is held in the mind of the collector - not the numbers crunchers. A few years ago my daughter bought a 10 year old Firebird convertible, thinking "it was the last year of production so it is going to be valuable someday." I think you can understand there is a difference in the collector value of a first year Firebird. Second is the utility you will get out of any modification. A major part of the Gestalt of a car is driving it from point A to point B. Restoring a car to concourse condition so it can sit a garage is less a car in my mind. Preserved, yes. An example of the automotive art, yes. But it is but a pale reflection of what it once was. So if a modification extends its life, increases your safety, gives you increased enjoyment, or leads you to drive the car more, I would lean towards doing it even if it may effect some future "collector's" opinion of desirability. As I watch my Australian Shepard puppy mature, I know after ten years with advancing arthritis, he would still prefer to be out, running the sheep and not lounging on the porch. When I replaced the original heater with a VintageAir AC, I did preserve the removed components for the sake of a future owner. I mounted the compressor in the old air pump location to preserve the original under the hood appearance. And I only hacked the center console for the new controller after I was assured that replacement OEM panels would be readily available. The utility of AC in Florida far outweighed the extra distance from concourse condition. If you are not in the business of concourse restorations, and your efforts at preservation are successful, you may well be selling to someone who IS in the business of restorations. It is almost guaranteed his estimate of the value of your preservation efforts will be less than yours. Yes, weight one factor against the other, decide and don't look back. Enjoy!

I would suggest the windshield was left in for the respray and when it was replaced later, they used a new rubber molding. Due to variations in the old shrunken rubber and the new one, the paint lines were covered on three sides and exposed on the top.

For those who don't know, Motoreum are the guys on the Chrome Underground TV show on the Discovery Channel.

Light aircraft engines do have an oil temperature gauge. In fact, managing heat shedding is a major design consideration. Most heat is expelled with the exhaust gases. The next most significant heat shedding comes from air passing over the cooling fins. However almost as much heat is carried away by the engine oil - something like 20% if I recall correctly. The oil heat dissipated through the oil sump but most heat is dissipated in an oil cooler. There is a thermostatic bypass valve at the inlet to the oil cooler called a vernatherm valve. Lycoming specifies that the valve should bypass the oil cooler for oil temps below 185 F. In fact Continental recent announced a warrantee service bulletin to replace vernatherm valves allowing any oil into the cooler at 160F or below. Why don't we have oil temp gauges in our cars? Costs I imagine?

After 36 years, the solder joints in the ECU can crystalize. When this happens the joint can go from very low to high resistance. You may want to examine the PC board and connector solder joints. A good solder joint will have a shine. A cold solder joint will be a dull gray. Crystalized joints may look like a hodgepodge of the these two, part shiny, part dull. Joints subject to vibration may also crystalize in a manner similar to work hardening. Whether you attempt a repair if you find one, will depend on your soldering skill set. Be sure to heat sink any leads to semiconductors. Other things to look for are burned components and leaky capacitors. Since we are on the subject of soldering, Edd China on Wheeler Dealers consistently shows improper soldering technique. He relies on the solder to make the mechanical connection between two wires. He simply lays the two bare wires along side each other and applies solder between them. Any mechanical vibration transmitted through one of his joints will work harden the solder and cause it to fail. The correct way to solder spice two wires is to tin both ends and then twist them together to form of a double helix. At this point the twists in the wires provide a mechanical bond. Solder is then applied to ensure a low resistance electrical connection.

Cold engines run rich and will build up a carbon coating quickly. Checking the plugs before you moved the car would tell us more, but that's in the past now. Does sound like a fouled gas filter though.

Part numbers don't help. Both the grill and radiator supports have different parts numbers.

The Series I oil pressure gauge read up to 140 psig. As Bart said, the steering wheel is also a Series I. The other significant interior change has to do with the jack and tool kit location. In a Series I these are located behind the seat and have a flimsy plastic cover. In the Series II and later, these are stored in pockets under the rear floor.

The 185 F temperature was found to work empirically many years ago. Water boils at the temperature it does due to surface tension and atmospheric pressure. Water molecules are slightly bi-polar, with the two hydrogen atoms on one side and the oxygen's fat a** sitting on the other. This make the hydrogen side more positively charged and the oxygen side more negatively charged. The static electrical charge tends to make informal chains of molecules, raising the surface tension. Oil has few, if any, bipolar sites to stick the water molecule to. Thus it takes less thermal energy to rip the water molecule from the oil surface.

SN 16512 would have been a 12/70 date of manufacture. All the other Series I identifiers show in your pictures. The Texas Tag on the B pillar apparently is used to correct the erroneous dash tag. Check with the Texas DMV. At any rate, what did your bill of sale or previous title say? If the previous owner wrote down the higher number, you may have a problem straightening it out. If it was the DMV clerk's fault, you should be able to get a corrected title. I bought my car in Ohio and had an odometer reading entered on the title as 65xxx miles when it should have been 62xxx (blame it on dyslexia). When the Florida clerk examined the car and found the odometer reading 64yyy, she said she couldn't enter a lower number than the previous title. After I explained it was really 164yyy miles, she just entered "unverified" on the title.

The best temperature thermostat for any car is at least 185 F(180 will do). This is not for the coolant - but rather for the oil. Oil will actually absorb a small amount of water - say 1% by volume. Heating the coolant to 185 F drives off any water leaving pure oil. Where does the water come from? The metal in the engine is a very efficient radiator of heat. In fact, overnight, the engine will actually cool below the ambient air temperature. If you live in an area that drops to near the dew point at night, water vapor will condense on the inside and outside of the engine much like moisture forming on the outside of a glass of iced tea. If the engine never reaches the 185 F point, water continues to accumulate and does bad things since it does not have the lubricity of oil. Devices without a circulation system, like the bearing boxes on industrial pumps, are carefully designed to reach 185 F in operation. Also this is why the second number in multi-weight oils are specified for viscosity at 185 F.

The dash has definitely been replaced at some time in the past. The oil pressure gauge is not a Series I gauge. The dash vin plate comes out with the dash. As for any legal problems, don't know how these things are handled in your state. But I would not wait to resolve it. You wouldn't want to ruin a future sale because someone caught it. OR... getting stopped by a nosey cop and getting your car impounded. Your situation in not "an oddity", it is a future legal problem you bought along with the Z. At the very least, I would be banging on the seller's door wanting some consideration for the troubles he has inflicted upon you.

Clicking on the above link only yields a very incomplete listing - or am I doing something wrong?

Get yourself some 1/4" tubing from Home Depot. Hold one end up to your ear and probe the various areas under the dash to isolate where the click is coming from.

The L20A was also used on the JDM Gloria and 2000 models. These units were offered with the single downdraft carb.

Since no one else has mentioned it, you might want to check out Carl Beck's website: the Z Car Home Page In particular, he has a history on the L series engine that makes for good reading.

I believe the white dots were a quality control mark indicating the bolts were properly torqued.

That is a drain for area below the wiper motor.

My car has dual down draft Webers and the rear carb idle mixture screws leans out over a period of about 1,000 miles. Last night I traced a stumble down to this mixture screw going from 1 1/2 turns down to 1/2 turn. This is the second time I've seen this on this carb. Does anyone have a fix?

Arne, Thanks for the info. From examining the photos on ebay, I believe these are 70 spoke cross well lace units. A fellow club member had wire wheels on a TR3. Said he needed to have the wheels trued about every 6K miles. Is this common?

Found a set of Appliance Wire Wheels on ebay and couldn't resist. Awaiting their arrival. The seller said the 14x6 wheels had a 4 x 112mm bolt pattern and included a picture of the roto-lugs in a box. I will probably replace the roto-lugs with eccentric washers made by Gorilla lugs, but I am curious about how roto-lugs were installed. Did they affect the wheel offset? BTW any hints and helps about the wire wheels would be appreciated.

Yes I observed this after stopping a fully warmed engine - with coolant temperature at 180 degrees - no pressure on the radiator cap. After shutdown, hot spots, around the exhaust manifold for example, are no longer having heat removed by the moving water. Listening, you can hear steam bubbling up through the coolant system. This is verified by using a rag and loosening the radiator cap and hearing the pressure escape. I have not heard this or observed pressure with the waterless coolant.

Pinging is actually a small form of detonation - fuel exploding rather than burning. Not quite sure how waterless coolant would inhibit detonation. I have been running waterless coolant for more than a year now. It does help to eliminate hot spots where water would flash to steam particularly after shut down.

Re-reading you first post, you said they usually hit your LEFT foot. Are we talking about your heater vent or fresh air vent? If it's the fresh air vent, I'd use a shop vac to clear it out, then if possible with your vac, blow back into the vent. If it's truly coming from the heater vent, all air comes from the fan and must pass the heater core which would filter out the larger pieces. The only way for large particles to get beyond the heater core would be if they entered through the defroster vents - as if done by a small child amazed by the car eating his Cheerios.