LanceM

$30 dollars of wire a week??? What ya building a battleship???? Took me at least 6 months to go through a 10 lb spool, and I thought I did a lot of welding!!!

I would think that a non vented one may reduce the rain wetness compaired to stock slightly maybe, but that a vented one that had no duct work would be no worse than a stock vehical with no spook. It has been a while since I drove my Z in the rain, and don't plan on really doing it anymore but I don't recall having braking issues when wet out because of brakes, tires is another issue!

I've arc welded for a long time and can tell you it works great when dealing with 3/16" or thicker steel, sheet metal no way, you can't turn it down far enough to prevent burn through and hold an arc even with 1/16" rod. On a Z it can be a challenge to MIG and not burn through at times. My setup is a Hobart 140, I think it was around $450 or so, another $100 for tank rental and gas, bought a $160 Lincoln auto helmet (best money spent), and built my own cart with the welder and some old lawn mower wheels. I've a little over $700 invested and it has paid me back many times already. I've used it to redo the body on a 91 Jimmy, quarters on my son's 87 Ranger, doglegs and rockers on the Z and a million other projects that have cropped up since I got it. Used it to build a wood splitter this year that has split all of the wood to heat my shop and my parent's house, have $150 in the splitter, if I had bought one it would have cost $600, almost paid for the welder again! But back to your question, prep your metal with a grinder, no paint or rust allowed. Make sure your ground clamp is on clean metal as close as possible to your welding point. I usually tap the end of the rod against the floor a couple of times to clean the end, don't really know if it helps but old habits are hard to break Then with both hands on the rod holder drag the rod against the work at the weld point, too fast and all you'll get are sparks, too slow and the rod will stick to the work, if it sticks wiggle it back and forth quickly to break it free or release it from the holder before it glows and melts Once you are able to strike the arc you must pull the rod away from the work a bit to maintain the arc, pull back about 1/16", of course the whole time you are welding you must feed the rod in... Crazy stuff right I recommend you pick up some pieces of 1/4" steel plate and practice on them, the heavier the metal the easier it is to arc weld. Though the arc welder won't get you what you want on your Z it will have many uses in fabicating things like engine stands and lifts, metal tables and a score of other things. Look in your area for a dealer in used metal, I have one locally where I can get square and round tubing, angle iron, and plate for $.30 a pound, nothing like making you own engine stand for $10, see the payback is starting already!! Rod selection is important too, 6011 (around here it's called farmer rod) is good for rusty painted metal, probably my most used rod on tractors and implements, 6013 works well on new steel for me, though 6011 works there too. There are many others to select from but usually either of these will get you through any usual "home" project. One nice thing with arc that you can't easily do with MIG is weld cast iron, not that we all do a lot of that but it can be a handy option if you need it.

I used the maxima brakets on my conversion but I didn't want to pull the stubs, so I cut the brakets to make them 3 hole so that they would just slide on. Worked well and 3 bolts are plenty for the application as is seen with the aftermarket conversions.

Sounds typical, really walk through a JY sometime, really look at some of the cars.. Why are they there??? Many look much better than the car my wife drives When I was redoing my Blazer I went for some body parts, found one with less miles, less rust, and better interior than mine, had a sticker on the window, abandon vehical auction... Why couldn't they have abandoned it at my house???

That is a thought but all I have seen have a ground rubber mixed in which could make things tough for moving around. I have friends (I know, who would have thought) that complain about trying to slide things across the bed of the truck to get them out. Maybe a case of too good of a thing?

Don't want you to think nobody is helping but that is a weird one... You are for sure running on just battery. I would start with ground connections being that the alt is grounded to the engine make sure the ground wire connection is good and go from there. I'm not much of a regulator guy, replaced all of that with a ZX alt and some rewiring so I'm not sure if a bad regulator would give you those readings... I would think that the alt would be puttin out more even if the reg was bad. Can't polorize an alt just generators so don't think that is the problem.

Check my gallery, I think the only pics there are of my rear conversion, I can take more if you want.

15/16" is stock on 280ZX cars, at least 81's.

Bryan, I didn't think about the floors at work, you're right, at least what they use there holds up. I wonder what my chances are of getting a 40 year old floor clean enough?? Lots of oil has hit the floor here in the last 25 years....

The only problem for me with the lay down floor coverings is the expence, it is pretty costly, at least for me. Paint wouldn't hold up for me I don't think, with rolling the car around and sometimes pulling it around lifted on a floor jack... I was thinking about the old fashion use glue to stick them down floor tiles. I've seens some older comercial shops that have that down and it seems to work well, anyone think this wouldn't be a good idea besides the "wet" factor?

How did you determin TDC? If the mark really is off then the dampner may be failing or may have been changed with another year model, I understand that some years the pointer was moved but don't know when/which. If the cam had been installed using the mark as the reference then it would be advanced/retarded (too early in the morning to think which) which would cause some odd compression readings with the valves being out of time with the piston stroke. Valve lash pads will be loose by the amount of valve clearance set with the valve closed.

I'm with Arne, 12.5 isn't enough, I'd want at least 13 with the lights on otherwise the battery isn't being charged and you are running on an "even" type of voltage. If you start running the heater blower and the radio you might be on the - side of things. I'd pull it and have it checked, what the PO said and what the PO did may be two different things....

2. ground on frame or battery - terminal. That should check if the alt is working, but not really how "well" it is working. When I am in doubt about an alternator I remove it and take it to a shop that can spin it up and load check it to be sure it is putting out what it is suppose to be.

Had this happen to me a couple of times, but the car had been sitting for 20 years and I figured it was caused by a sticking valve, ran some Marvel Mystery oil and the problem went away. Car been sitting a while or is it a daily driver?

From the firewall all the way to the first link on the webber setup stock linkage is used. I have mine all apart otherwise I would take some pics for you.

If it has a points type dizzy .035", not sure about if it is an electronic dizzy most of them run .045"

You can bypass it just add some hose and a hunk of copper pipe to couple them. Do a search here, I think some time in the past somebody posted about using a valve from a Mack truck that was almost an exact replacement and cheaper to boot!

I don't have the bandwidth to listen so let's try to define better what you are hearing with works. You say knock, a knock in automotive terms usually means a sound like someone hitting the inside of the block with a hammer pretty hard, Knock knock knock. A tick is more like the sound of two spoons being struck together. Are you really hearing a knock? The reason I ask is to hear a knock in the center of the head would be very unusual, I have only seen this once and it was on a Ford 9N tractor, it wasn't until I pulled the head that I discovered a huge amount of carbon built up on the head in #4 cylinder, the piston was actually pounding the carbon every stroke sounding like a knock in the head. I would find it hard to belive that there could be that kind of build up on a Z engine, they tend to get blown out pretty regular

Ok, if they were pressed in I would drill them out, since they have a center hole it will be easy. Start with a drill just bigger than the center hole and work up one step at a time until it removed. If you are doing this on the car, which I hope you are not, pack the drill bit with heavy grease, it will help collect the shavings and keep them from going into the intake. Best thing would be to remove the manifold from the car to do the work. Another option would be to get some brass/steel/aluminum tubing from a hobby store that will just fit into the hole and JB weld them in, using them as the connectors. I wouldn't think the difference in size should make too much differance and may be an easier out to getting them drilling/replacing.

ezzzzzzz's test is the easiest and best, dark night hood open engine running, it's really something to see when you do have bad wires, looks like a mini thunderstorm is going on, hard to believe an engine can run if you have seen a bad one! Since the wires are new I would also check to make sure that the connectors are firmly seated in the cap, the best way to do that is pull them out one at a time and slide the boot up a bit, then seat the connector, it should give a little click, maybe more of a feel than a hear thing, then slide the boot down. I had this on a ZX I bought a couple of years ago, running bad and I thought bad wires, when I pulled one I found that the electrode in the cap was completely gone from the arcing because the wire wasn't fully seated but was held on securly by the boot.

I would start with the wiring that was connected to the stereo and make sure none of what is left is shorting, perhaps one of the stereo leads attached to the dash lights for dimming control of the stereo panel lamps and now it is shorted to ground.

Not familure with the N36 and these connectors, were they press in or screw in? Best way to get them out depends on how they were put in.

This place has all the linkage stuff and they also have a cable linkage. http://www.racetep.com/linkage.html

Since Webbers have been around forever on Z cars I would look into why your linkage is binding. It is probably just a simple alignment problem. I would disconnect one link at a time until the binding one is found and determin why it is binding and correct it, shouldn't be hard. I agree with Kenny on the white smoke = coolant, this is something that needs looked into ASAP before the engine is ruined.