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It looks like Hitoshi Uemura?

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, will remove paint from the axle flange faces and spindle pin area. I saw that conversation on the Duffy thread (I think). I will however put a thin film of grease on the interface to help prevent rust on the mating surfaces. Interesting note: I worked space programs for 15 years and we used to use non-conductive thermal lube when mounting our electronic packages. It's sole purpose was to prevent corrosion set-up between the mating metal surfaces. The bolt torque was enough squeeze out the non-conductive lube between the metal surfaces so that you would get a good electrical connection, and the lube prevented corrosion. Go figure. I did not put in new wheel bearings. There was no play in the assembly and everything looked to be in good shape so I left it as is. And yes, it was great to meet and talk cars and flat tops in Atlanta! Hopefully we have many more opportunities in the future.

This past Tuesday, with friends - went thru an extensive and well organized collection of used parts that had been pulled from S30's, S130's, and Z31's. Purchased a lot of S30 stuff to eventually organize, checkout, and offer for sale to our community. Some very interesting treasures were in there. Impossible to estimate how many cars had been stripped to build this collection that was stored in a shipping container. That's my Xterra with the back seat down and the storage area filled to the roof. Yes - that's a pair of E31 heads.

Classic photo! Maybe my favorite.

Gaps look great, finish should be super smooth! Love the car porn! so jealous....

Yeah, those compression numbers aren't stellar. Did you have the throttle blocked to WOT while doing the compression test? I do not believe that running rich would make up for poor compression. If you're running all the original hoses and stuff, I wouldn't be surprised at all if you've got a whole bunch of little vacuum leaks. Little leaks like that are killer at idle. Much less of a contributor at higher throttle positions, but a real problem at idle. You want every molecule of air passing through the carbs, not around them. The extra hoses and connections and complexity make it more difficult to achieve that with the flat tops. Also remember than none of the carb systems work great until the engine is up to temp. If you're starting the engine cold and expecting to be able to immediately take the choke off, you're kidding yourself. You'll need some choke (and the associated idle boost it provides) until the engine warms up. Next, if I were doing this, I would try to simplify the system to get things tuned... Remove the air cleaner and plug the appropriate connections. You should be able to remove and cap the anti-backfire stuff, the idle compensator stuff, and the intake air damper control snout lines. You can temporarily live without any of that stuff and disabling them will remove a bunch of potential leak areas.

And I keep meaning to tell you... It was great meeting you at Zcon my friend! I really enjoyed our discussions and I hope we get another chance to get together in the future!

I worked on the inside of the rear hatch last night. It was a painted mess with old and new paint plus undercoating. The stripper cleaned it all up pretty good and revealed a lot of surface rust on the lower part of the hatch. But the bare factory metal.... gorgeous.

Did some more pre-assembly work on the undercarriage parts. Got the passenger side strut cleaned and painted last weekend along with the caps. Put the springs in both the rear struts. Also installed the motor mounts and did a little pre-assembly on the rear suspension parts. Pics are below.