RMin280

does this work?

I’m looking at cylinder 4 intake, second lobe back from the middle cam tower. It’s the same one y’all said might be the one falling off of the wear pad. What exactly do you want a picture of? I want to make sure to be able to show you want you need to see.

I was looking at that valve and noticed that lash pad seems a little displaced. Could this pad shifting cause the cam to fall off? It only seems to be off by a little bit.

Do I still need to remove the rockers or is looking at both sides good enough to now?

Here’s the other side. I just changed my oil recently but it’s been run pretty hard with it.

This is the best I can see. Not exactly sure what to look for or what it should look like. All the rockers look like they have similar wear although I didn’t measure anything, no damage that I noticed.

Interesting, I'll look and see the pad wear in a minute and if I can't see then I'll try what you said with the screwdriver.

Nevermind, I think I was able to find it. Is it a L series valve compressor? Would I also need to support the valve some way to prevent it from falling down or do the keepers stay in place?

What is the name of that tool?

Do I need to take everything apart to check the wear pattern or can I check with everything still together?

What should the wear pattern look like if it is correct?

My mistake, I have been so busy with schoolwork that I forgot to take a video of it running to show y’all. IMG_1257.MOV I’ll try some of the things y’all suggested this evening and see if I can figure something out to check cam and ignition timing.

I know most if not all of the modifications but didn’t figure it mattered here. I’ll find tdc and mark it on the damper and do a compression and leak down test but I’m not touching the distributor. The car was at Godzilla raceworks and got a new ecu since the old ms2 had an issue and was too old for them to work on. If I mess with the timing on the distributor I’ll need a new tune. What do you mean my doofer is miles away from the damper? As in it’s not as close to the damper as it would be for other L series? What else would I do with the car? I bought a modified 280z, fixed several issues, and now I’m driving the car and going through everything to make sure everything is in good working condition. Should I be doing something other than driving my car?

I turned the cam to see if there was any play and there isn’t any. I also turned the engine over by the crank bolt and that sound wasn’t there. I think it’s something different when it’s actually running.

@Reptoid Overlords Yes it does have a larger cam. To me it sounds almost separate from the valve train noise. @siteunseen I’ll have to try that.

I am nothing if not prepared lol. I have only ever heard referred to as a serpentine or accessory belt but that would be on my daily so could be different for the z's so I wanted to make sure. I'll pull the belt and run the car for a minute to see if that helps any. I think I can manage 1 bolt but I guess we'll see. I have looked at the timing through the software and if I remember correctly it is at 12 degrees at idle.

I don't mean to double down, it was just my understanding and what I've been told by several people who know a lot more than me. What do you mean by the fan belt? Is that the belt that spins the alternator and water pump?

Ohh yea I just mean in-line 6’s are naturally balanced so they don’t have as much harmonics as an i4 or v8. I don’t plan to daily drive the car, really just more of a fun weekend car and some autox or road course. The mega squirt has to use a zxt distributor for timing advance. I’m not sure exactly how it works. Again, new to engine stuff. I do know however that there are some odd things with the engine and car.

What do you mean by a serrated doofer? I’ve never heard that term before. Sorry I forgot about flat top carbs. It has flat top pistons instead of the dishes pistons that originally came in the engine. I’m a little confused, you and captain obvious have both said I need a damper, do I not have one? I don’t have much experience working on engines so I thought I did.

Sorry I didn’t know there was a difference. I have a 280z but it has a l28 from a s130, f54/n42 with flat tops. I could go back to the stock zx damper but I don’t have ac so I don’t really need the second belt. I don’t know much about the damper on the car right now but I think it’s fine 🤷. I don’t know why I didn’t think about this earlier but I have ms2 and I have the tuning software to monitor different sensors and such. One of the things I can see is timing. Could I potentially use a timing gun and see which mark is being used? This way I could also see if the damper has spun, if I don’t see any mark or if it’s at the wrong degree.

Here’s a better pic for you. As for why the po put it on, the car doesn’t have ac and was and will be raced somewhat frequently so having a harmonic damper helps. It doesn’t matter too much on an in-line 6 but still, and less rotational mass. I tried turning the damper by hand and it moved a little but the bolt was also moving so I think it’s tight but I could be wrong. I didn’t get around to checking for exhaust leaks so I’ll try and do that tomorrow if I have the time.

Here’s a pic of the dampener. As for exhaust leaks, I didn’t see any carbon around the manifold but I’ll use a hose to see in a little bit.

I’ll take a picture of the dampener tomorrow to show y’all. I’ll try the string method to find tdc. This is probably a dumb question but how would I determine if there was an exhaust leak?

@Reptoid Overlords The previous owner of my z put on an aftermarket harmonic dampener, so there are marks on it but not sure which one to use. It has 5 grooves I believe and two red paint marker marks. I can try and keep turning it over to see if it lines up but I was spinning it over quite a bit and couldn't get any of them to line up. The closest they got was the first mark or groove almost lined up with the bottom of the plate that has the degrees marked on it. I'll try and use a screw driver but how would I know if it's exactly tdc? If I'm a little off it can move the notch and not give a good representation of if I need to move my cam.

So I pulled the valve cover and all of the lash pads are in place, and I moved the camshaft both ways and there really wasn’t any play. As for the notch on the sprocket, I was looking at that but I’m having difficulty setting it to tdc. I can get both valves on cylinder 1 to be closed and have the bright link on #2, but I have an issue with my dampener. There are quite a few marks on the dampener and I can’t seem to get any of them set at 0° with the valves and bright link set correctly. Is there some other way to set tdc?