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So I happen to borrow a semi-professional steam cleaner machine from a car buddy in town to do a little carpet spot cleaning, and he happens to tell me how great it cleans car parts! So I have this 5 speed with a nice overall coating of 50 year old oil and crap all over it that I can just not “wait” to scrub manually, so I try it. This thing is magical! I knew steam is a common industrial cleaner, but never really considered it for home use. Well, my carpets are clean, and so is my transmission. The pics show one nice little area I cleaned with the rest of the dreary dirty stuff around it. This took about a minute. The cleaning end has a little stiff brass brush (SS also available) that you scrub lightly with. This thing is dangerous, 315F steam at high pressure. But man! Does it clean aluminum. And I don’t know where the grime goes, it just disappears…… Small puddle of water on the floor. Anyway, something to add to the tool arsenal. Ain’t cheap, glad to have a buddy to borrow from. I have a little one I bought for like $50 to steam my gas tank (remember that), that thing would be slow. And yes, it blew whatever the heck my grand daughter messed up the carpet with right outta there in about 20 seconds with no detergent,

It's nice to see that you can get good results without having to rely on toxic chemicals all the time, a small step in the right direction.

Great work on the side molding delete, the result looks awesome. I hope you didn't toss them, they can be re-purposed. Lol

I'm putting together an order from Eastern Beaver for some electrical terminals bits and pieces. Anyone interested in tagging along and putting stuff in on the order? I'll send you your parts once the order arrives on-shore. Domestic shipping should be cheaper than the shipping from Japan. Their shipping isn't fast, but some of the stuff they have is really hard to find elsewhere. https://easternbeaver.com/Main/Main.html Some examples:

Final update: Culprit found - case closed The weatherstrip (the rubber rectangular gasket that goes inside the efi connector) for cyl1 was working its way out of its mount when the car warmed up and prohibited cyl1's efi connector from fully seating. I noticed that today when I needed to pull over to the side of the road due to the engine (now I know as cyl1) running prohibitively lean on my air/fuel ratio gauge. I found I was unable to push cyl1's injector power cable fully in so I removed that piece of rubber, could plug the connector in firmly, and now the car runs awesome with power throughout the rev-range for the first time in a while. I originally noticed this issue when I pulled the fuel rail to run tests on injector flow and reseated the rubber piece back in the connector - but I guess it had other ideas. I have permanently removed that piece and may pull the others to prohibit this in the future. Thanks for all of your help with this -chase

Silvers are notoriously difficult to match. He has a good eye. It looks much better without the molding!

Near the end of my time in the garage today, I started to put the antenna on the car. I started by finding all the relevant parts from 240zrubberparts.com: After some trial and error, I got things assembled, but I do not know where this seal (first pic of three) from the antenna mount kit goes. It kind of fits inside the top, plastic part of the ball, but kind of doesn't either. It appears to have threads on the ID, but they don't match anything. Also, the ID is too large to make sense anywhere that I can see. I sent an email to Steve at 240zRubberParts to see if he knows. I ended up leaving it out for now. The antenna doesn't fit very well to be honest. Where the antenna goes through the body, it is very much an angle. As a result, the round metal concave/convex washer that seats on the grounding strap contacts the underside surface of the quarter panel before the nut on the outside is fully tightened. This causes the plate with the sharp points (other end of the grounding strap) to not seat properly on the underside surface of the quarter panel. Unless I am missing something, I will likely take it apart again and do some grinding on the concave/convex washer to create clearance where it is hitting the body. That will allow the stack to tighten properly, and should allow the plate with the sharp points to fit properly (flat against the underside surface of the quarter panel for its full circumference). For most of the day, I battled with the bumper and the bumper brackets. I had already put many hours into the front bumper because it had some damage. Here is one of the pictures from when it was on auction at Bring-a-Trailer: And here is one I found from the disassembly stage: The impact to the bar looks superficial at first glance, but in addition to the dent, the bar was pushed in a bit for a considerable portion on either side of the dent as well. So, in addition to straightening the dent, I had to pull the bar back forward. And some heat shrinking was necessary as well. Anyway, where I picked up today, the bumper was fitting snug on the right side of the car and too far out on the left side. Every time I bolted the bumper to the brackets on the car, the bumper was slightly offset to the left side of the car. I determine the cause to be that the slots in the front of the bumper brackets were limiting the side to side movement of the bumper. The bumper studs were ramming up against the sides of the slots. To correct, I had to remove the bumper brackets from the car and tweak them in my vice so that the slots "moved" toward the right side of the car. Shifting the slots to the right side allowed the bumper to shift to the right as well. I also used a hand held belt sander to improve the fit of the bumper uprights to the main bar. After several hours examining, bending, straightening, grinding, a little more hammer and dolly work on the bumper, etc. I got it to this point: Finally, the bumper is centered and I don't have to apply excessive pressure on the left side of the bumper to bring it to its proper mounting location. I have a bit more work to do on the rear bumper, and then I can package all of the bumper pieces up and send them off for re-chroming.

Jim, I'm sure I have new one kicking around here somewhere, send me a PM with your address and I'll shoot it off to you.

Rockauto has lots of those. Cheap. I've heard that it can be a problem dealing with them from Canada? If not, problem solved. https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=120105&cc=1209226&pt=5836 https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=477061&cc=1209226&pt=5836&jsn=433

Light rain (mostly) much of the day - even so I spent most of it outside, moving stuff around behind the garage. Just needed to make it a little more orderly than it has been the past couple months. Had to cut a bunch of 25'-30' bamboo in the far left corner, so I could relocate the truck bed liner & other bulky items out of sight. One of my neighbors likes to use the bamboo poles for his veggie garden, so I cut some down to about 10' After that I got some top coat on the shelving and upper sheathing Still had a little time, so I cleared the top shelf on the left & removed it, so I can move forwards

Dave stopped by this morning and we got the windshield in, I spent the rest of the day getting the dash in and connecting all the wires, with any luck I might get to trying to start the engine tomorrow😁

Chuck is amazing. This car now looks like new. Seeing Inline6’s silver Z pushed me over the top. Chuck has now done 3 of my Z’s and they are incredible! Add this to the Gold and Orange Z.

Cool. I'm thinking I'll place the order this coming Wednesday (3/13), so you've got a couple days to look through. Anybody else, same thing. Let me know,

Well that's weird. There should be no way for that thing to change length. There is no adjustment. And I'm surprised that you are able to push it in by hand. The gas shock inside should be stiffer than that. What is the measurement of the amount sticking out of both of your shocks? I'll compare them to my car. From the outer tube to the bumper mounting flange?

You're killing me! 😉

S30.World has steel tanks. The plastic tanks are sold by someone else.

Update: been busy to work on the car. Last two weeks did a few things: had the Carbs tuned. Unaware to me, rebellos are happiest at an idle of 1200rpm. While driving, it can creep up to 1600rpm, but overall the average is 12-1400 at stop signs. Mechanics say per rebello this is normal. it was discovered during time up there is now a fuel starvation issue, possibly with the pickup line in the gas tank. The gas tank was cleaned before I put it in, but it’s full of gunk (car sat for another 3 years before running fuel and starting up). I noticed it going on the highway, it bogs down in 5th going about 60mph. I have a spare gas tank that is currently being cleaned out, if that’s no good I’ll probably get one of those S30world plastic tanks.

Right now, I probably have too many electrical parts on hand.

Amazing. I wish I could find someone that good.

IF you want to learn about high temp gasket materials.... https://customgasketsltd.com/high-temperature-gasket-material/ and good ol' McMaster Carr

My '77 has those door guards and dealer chrome mud flaps. Hate them! Looks like a clown car at the Christmas parade.

It’s perfect! I can’t tell where he blended it. He spent hours mixing paint to match. I’m blown away. Helps that he buffed original paint out.

My 73 original paint Z had a stripe (body molding) on both sides. I just don’t like it ……breaks up the lines. Even though the car is all original paint, I said “What the heck…..lose it!” My painter is the best, so I gave it to Chuck to work his magic. Whatcha think? He buffed out the roof, tailgate and other original paint and the match was perfect. I love silver Z’s. IMG_7055.mov

That..is an enormous amount of sediment/dirt, etc. If the temp sensor wasn't brand new (I still do need to perform the test at the ECU though) and if the car didn't run and hold normal fuel pressure for the 20~ minutes I had it running when the fuel feed/return lines were connected to my red gas can I'd be more skeptical that it could be the temp sensor, or that the temp sensor might have something major to do with it. I do still plan on testing it though, just to be safe. But I'm hoping the major culprit was that the tank has some sort of blockage in it considering how my fuel pressure went right to normal levels and the engine ran mostly fine when I took the fuel tank out of the equation.

Please exchange email accounts and handle it privately.

This discussion might fit better in a different thread. Not the BAT one..