chaseincats

The PCV valve is only a couple years old but I can check tonight. My cap absolutely does not have an O ring...I'll go to oreillys tonight.

wtf mine didn't give access like that...maybe they're different per year?

Unfortunately that's correct

Hi gang, Got a weird one for you today. It seems oil is somehow sneaking out of my valve cover's oil cap even though it is VERY tightened down. There is definitely a thin oil trail coming out of it and running further back on the top of the valve cover. The outlet for the valve cover breather hose also seems to be moist around the base of that L-fitting. Any idea how this is even possible? My oil pressure gauge is showing maybe 2/3s of the way up while driving and sits at around 1/4 at a traffic light so the pressure in there isn't anything out of the ordinary. I didn't think the oil caps had gaskets on the top, did they?

I actually did on the one with the wobbly arm just for the hell of it since it was useless in its current state. Taking the back plate off surprisingly does nothing except give you access to the idle air mixture bypass passage to clean it if memory serves. I remember opening it and being really confused how the sweeper arm is actually removed since I was sure that's how the rebuilders do it but no dice.

Anyone? Maybe I'm not understanding this

To tune the car with the air fuel gauge I leaned the car out 3 teeth on the black gear. Adding the potentiometer, being a resistor, would only serve the purpose of richening the car, right? So in theory, to modify the curve with the potentiometer, I’d need to first lean the car out a few more teeth on the AFM before I could successfully get some wiggle room to richen it, right? As I understand it, plugging the potentiometer in and turning the dial to the smallest level of resistance would essentially be as lean as I could make the car without messing with the AFM, correct?

I messed with mine when tuning it with an air fuel gauge but marked all the original positions so I could reset it when I try this...

Why is this better than messing with the afm out of curiosity?

This can only be used to richen the mixture not lean it out though since it’s adding resistance to the temp sensor, correct?

Could you take a couple pictures of the installation instructions?

UPDATE: for all those having issues, give this test a shot: jack up a wheel and spin it - you may also have my issue which is the lugs not in the right way/wrong lugs/bad lug holes/out of round tires/etc because you can see in the below the video the tire not spinning uniformly. I did this for all 4 tires and swapped the best up front which helped my wobble by 80%. Going to try new lugs in a few weeks after travel though too video: https://youtube.com/shorts/OwrFAXh1hfY

UPDATE: I may be onto something here. I pulled one lug with the car on the ground (flat with washer style) and noticed even though the zx wheels are not acorn style, they were NOT keeping the hub stud centered in the wheel so even though the wheels/tires are balanced, they are not centered on the hub overall probably causing the shake. Thinking back, I tried my friends new wheels and tires with his acorn nuts years ago with no shake but tried my other friend's wheels a few weeks ago with my lugs and got a shake. I will get acorn style nuts within the next few weeks and see what happens, but I think we may be onto something here.

I've been trying to tune the car with an air fuel gauge for a while now. A few years ago my car held a steady temp and I got it to run perfect/consistent numbers but now that it heats up a bit in traffic and cools down on the highway those numbers are no longer so steady. I was looking into adding the temp resistor to keep the temp gauge in check but it looks like I misunderstood the premise as I thought it limited the resistance to 300 ohms (175 degrees) but instead it just adds resistance overall. So me adding it will put me in the same place I currently am, just with a richer running engine it seems...

So in that case, it sounds like you set the baseline with the potentiometer on the temp sensor and fine tune it with the afm?

what would the difference be then between adding this resistor vs messing with the AFM? Would it garner the same result then?

correct, sorry if it didnt read that way - this is tricking the ecu telling it that the car is running at 175 when it isnt to modify/stabilize the fuel mixture the ecu provides

Hi all I was doing some reading and found that a lot of folks have been adding a potentiometer in line with the temp sensor so the efi doesnt keep leaning out the mixture according to temperature. I was reading that the efi runs the most stable with the car at 175 which means keeping the resistor reading at around 300 ohms. If I were to add that and set the 1k resistor to about half, wouldn't that mean it is constantly richening the sensor's reading by 500 ohms? What I'm getting at is my car will run at around 185 idling but 170 on the highway. If I'm looking for the engine to be reading a constant 175, the potentiometer trick would just tell the computer it is constantly running cooler regardless of rpm and wouldn't really do what I'm looking for, correct? The best writeup I found at AtlanticZ here. Any ideas? -chase

same here

did those lugs cure the shake you had?

Let me know if they work in getting rid of the wobble

I'd be concerned some of the yellow stuff that leaked out would be the oil that's in the system for the compressor

Not sure since I don't have those wheels (I have 280zx 6-spoke ones).

Are you using the acorn lugs with beveled edges?

Update on this. I tried a friends' 280zx iron cross wheels yesterday which do not shake on his car but did shake on mine. The only difference is I used my lugs which have a straight shaft where as his have a beveled edge ("acorn" lug nuts) which might hold the wheels on better. Any thoughts?