Jeff G 78

In order of likelihood, I'd say front diff mount, mustache bar bushings, driveshaft U joint, and then halfshaft U joint.

I tried to something similar based on what Bruce suggested, but I couldn't tell where the fuel was in the nozzle. I know my eyes aren't what they used to be, but this method didn't work for me. Bruce suggested that I tune the carbs as usual and then set the floats so the fuel level is 1/16" below the nozzle. Maybe the method you show would be easier since the fuel would be at the top of the nozzle rather than down in the tiny orifice.

Beautiful car Arne. Congrats.

Is that the Z's replacement?

I tried that once. It ripped the threads right off the pin. It wasn't pretty. The idea behind the puller is that the puller to pin joint is more or less rigid and the wear and tear happens within the threads of the puller itself. Plus, the puller's threads are much larger and stronger. To update the original thread, I will hopefully be moving forward soon. I still have many little projects to finish up before tackling the puller, but I'm hoping to get the order in within a few weeks. Stay tuned.

It could easily follow something across and leak down the driver's side. THE way to know is if the defroster blows coolant. It will smell sweet and make the windshield very streaky.

Load levelers are great, but they eat up a LOT of height. That's why I don't use one. I start with the boom right on top of the valve cover and it's still not real easy to clear the rad support. With the load leveler in place, you lose at least a foot of boom height. If the hoist has a very long boom, it will work, but most are barely adequate to start with. Good luck with the removal!

I've seen several 240's with dealer-installed vinyl tops. I've heard they can be a pain to remove due to the adhesive residue.

Hard to say from the pics and I HATE ads that don't give a price. You will likely either offer way too much or insult the seller. Take a weak refrigerator magnet and go over every square inch of the body. Anywhere it doesn't stick, is body filler. If the car is rust-free, it should be a great find if the price is right.

While you're at it, be careful not to break the hood prop rod clip on the rad support. The oil pan likes to catch it and break it off.

Before you pull everything, make sure it isn't just a leaky water valve. They go bad much more often than the core. If the valve is bad, the water will be leaking outside the case, but if the core is bad, the coolant will be coming from within the case and your windshield will get a streaky coating of coolant on it when you run the defroster. Basically, the windshield will fog over any time it's humid once the coolant is on it. If it is the valve, you might be able to replace just the valve and not disassemble half the car. I can't recal how much has to come apart for just the valve, but I don't believe it's too bad.

I have pulled dozens and dozens and I have found it to be way easier as a unit. I pulled the front U-joint from an old driveshaft to leave just the yoke and I use that to plug the trans to keep the oil in. I can have a carbed engine out in less than an hour and a FI engine out in 1.5 hours. It takes about the same amount of time to reinstall each of them. The key is to get an engine hoist with a long arm. The hook on the hoist arm must reach the breather port on the valve cover. If not, the engine will be very tough to line up on the motor mounts. I use two pairs of ratchet straps to lift the engine. By using two on each lifting eye, I can keep loosening the rear straps an inch at a time to angle the engine up and out. Just make sure the factory lifting eyes are still there and if they are not, make some from shop scraps. It is 1000x easier with the eyes in place.

My '78 never came out from under the cover this summer. I spent the year working on and racing the 260. Yesterday, I winterized the race car so the Z season is over for me as well. I'ts always sad to put the toys away and wait for 6 months to play again.

I will look into the Garolite Pete. It looks like the right stuff. Today, I washed the race grime off the Z, filled the tank with gas and Sta-Bil, and swapped the water for coolant in the radiator. I didn't diagnose the problem, but it sounds like I blew the manifold-to-downpipe gasket out. There is a new exhaust leak under the hood. Hopefully it's just a gasket and not a cracked manifold. I also checked the engine oil and it is not only still at the full mark, but it's barely dirty. Not bad for 1450 miles at WOT! I use nothing but Valvoline VR-1 40wt. As I ran the car to circulate the Sta-Bil and coolant, I realized that the car never warmed up. I have a feeling that the fail-safe thermostat might have failed. After 20 minutes in the driveway, the gauge barely made it to 120F. During the race, it was running around 130F according to the gauge.

Steve, The racing season is over for 2011, but the 2012 schedule should be out within a week or two. I'll send you the link when it comes out. If you are serious about getting into CCWS, I strongly suggest taking it slow and either joining an established team as either a crew member or rental driver for your first race or two. There are lots of established teams in Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan. You are more than welcome to crew with us to get a taste of CCWS racing. As of right now, I don't think we need any drivers, but that can always change. CCWS IS great racing! The series (as well as LeMons) is growing very rapidly since many people are tired of SCCA and how serious everybody takes it. CCWS is a blast and it's FUN! They go to some of the best tracks in the country (as well as Mexico). This year, they were at VIR, Infineon, Sebring, Road America, Laguna Seca, Charlotte, Iowa, Texas World Speedway and other great tracks. They ran around 40 races in 2011. Now the bad news... Even cheap racing isn't cheap, but it's a heck of a lot of fun and cheaper than most other forms of racing. I run a 5 driver team and we each spend about $800 - $1000 per race. If we weren't chasing issues and spending lots of money last-minute, that cost would drop slightly. Entry fees, tires, brakes, racecar fuel and tow rig fuel will set you back about $600 per race and the car will cost about $3000 to $5000 to buy and build including the cage, race seat, a HANS device and other safety equipment. Finally, each driver will need personal safety gear which can be had for as low as $350 and go way up from there. This is why it's a great idea to rent a seat the first time out. For about $600 you can usually find a seat and all you need is your personal safety gear. If you (or any other Classic Z Car Club members) want more info, feel free to contact me. BTW, my wife comes to my races and LOVES it. She has been BEGGING me to let her race with us. So far, I have kept her out of the car just because I can barely afford one share, let alone two shares. I'll get her in the car at a track day next year and we'll go from there.

With our Friday issues, we never mounted the video camera in the car, but one of the other racers says that he will soon be posting a montage of night racing clips with our car. To get a feel for what CCWS is all about, check out this video of a Ford LTD 5.0L and a Dodge Neon. They had a great battle.

I'm happy and sad for you Arne. Best of luck with your search.

http://plastics.dupont.com/plastics/pdflit/americas/delrin/230323c.pdf I'm no materials expert, but it looks like it might work. The only obstacle might be the melting point of Delrin.

The ONLY reason to keep the OE rail is because of the return system. The rail has a nice loop that would have to be replicated. We have run it both with and without the return and so far, it doesn't seem to really care one way or the other. I agree that with no return, we could reroute the supply hose and keep it completely away from the engine. As for the heat transfer through the mounts, I wouldn't have thought so either until I saw the exhaust manifold glowing red. That means the head is pretty damn hot as well so some of that heat will certainly transfer to the rail. Every little bit contributes. I will go through the McMaster Carr catalog and see what kind of insulators I can find. I'm thinking ceramic or fiber-plastic like the mechanical fuel pump uses.

Those look great! What tire size did you go with?

Bonzi Lon, all gas in this region has 10% ethanol, so yes, it will vaporize at a lower temp than pure gasoline. I do have a no-touch pyrometer, but we never checked to see just how hot the rail was getting. The tools were at the other end of the paddock and I forgot I had even brought it to the race. I think that with the right testing and countermeasures, I can eliminate all of the fuel heat issues. At that point, we can concentrate on the actual tuning.

Hey Bonzi, yes, the plan is to do exactly what you said. The plan is to remove the steel pads from the front rail mounts and replace them with some sort of insulators like the carb/fuel pump spacers. If I drill out the holes in the rail mounts and run the insulators on both sides of the rail brackets, I think the heat transfer through the bolts should be greatly reduced. There is no need to run all four mounts either. 2 or 3 should be plenty. I am still running the OE silver asbestos(?) wrap. I will replace it with a more modern heat wrap to improve the insulating properties. I am thinking about engineering a simple loop cooler and pump system that would run a water pipe along side the fuel pipes in the rail and under the heat wrap. I would make a loop in the airstream, install a small reservoir and use a tiny electric pump on a toggle switch. It could be switched on only at high ambient temps or during pit stops to keep the rail cool. Anybody ever tried this?

I should have been clearer when I said the problem was after right hand corners. Nelson Ledges is a VERY fast track and it flows very well turn-to-turn. The one RH turn is very tight and leads onto the front straight and the other is a 180° banked turn leading to the back straight. I'm not sure that the direction of the turns was a factor as much as the loading followed by a hard acceleration run. I did not try to open the enrichment (choke) THIS race, so I can't say if it would have helped. I have tried it in the past when the car wouldn't rev past 5k RPM and it did not help. I haven't gotten the fuel logs yet from my teammate, but when I do, I'll calculate the GPH (gallons per hour) and MPG. GPH is the standard race terminology since that's what matters to us. I'd say we are about 7 GPH which is in the ballpark for our car.

Yes, it acts up under hard throttle. The explanation I got is that the plugs get wet while leaned over hard and then it takes a few seconds for them to fire properly again. I would love to see us keep the L26 AND be competitive, but I'm not sure we can do that without spending big bucks on the engine which we won't do. I went through the lap report today and if I remove all the lost time stuck in the pits due to vapor lock alone, we'd gain over 100 laps. That would have moved us up from 30th place to around 13th place. Fix the other fuel delivery issues to make the car run better and we could have been a top 10 car without actually being much faster than we are now. We still would have been down close to 100 laps to the winner, but it would be a respectable finish.

After a few emails back and forth to my teammates, it sounds like in 2012, we will be sticking with the L26 and tuning it better after getting all of the fuel issues worked out. If it's still too slow, then we will upgrade next off-season. Any recommendations for a Wideband O2?