Zedyone_kenobi

copy, that, I just read my new multimeter has a diode testor function. I will give it a go when I get home. Great Advice as usual SteveJ!

okay, there is a diode in there, now I need to see what it would mean if the diode was in fact bad, and what that failure would manifest it self as

interesting find. I checked the voltage regulator cap that you must install when you use an internally regulated Alternator. The 4 pins resistance was as follows. The two pins OL had a very dark patch on the back. I need to find out if there is a diode in there.

Now I have no idea what the test read, as it only comes back with a big green check. No voltage out put was displayed. According to the 72 Z wiring diagram the red/white wire runs back to the fusebox, so that seems like it should be supplying the car with power after the car starts. My problem is that the wiring diagram shows the voltage regulator and I am running an internally regulated alternator. So I have to figure our which wire it is that should be charging my battery and which is supplying the car with power (me thinks red'white)

The alternator tested a big green check at the parts store. However, I tried to test to find any out put from the T connector while the alternator was running well I got nothing, but it would see that it fried my volt meter LOL LOL. I am sure I should have measured the red/white wire from the back of the alternator instead. But now I have to get a fuse for my voltmeter or a brand new voltmeter... which would not be horrible.

Okay update All fuses are okay. One of the female spades in the "T" connector has 12.7 volts with the key off. The key in the Run position reads 11.8V but that also powering a electric fuel pump, so that is fine

Worry not my good man, your words of advice will not go unheeded. I will check out those parts this evening when I get home. A simple Alternator test is just one more part of the equation. It is simple and free.

I am currently running the MSA 60 amp alternator kit. It was purchased back in 2010. All my tests were at the battery. After I get the alternator tested, I will run the tests SteveJ mentioned. If the alternator comes back bad, then issue solved.

I pulled the alternator this morning (wearing my osha white safety socks - those who have followed my Z build will understand) and plan on taking it to get tested this afternoon. None of my connections were lose or corroded. No matter what I do the amperage never changes or moves with revs and the battery will NOT read more than 12.3 volts.

I will report back to what I am getting out of these wires later this evening. I will also double check the connections and clean all terminals carefully. I will inspect all wires for fraying and damage. I may have a spare MSA alternator in my parts bin. I could just swap that in to see if I get a different result. Car has never really had any real electrical issue since I purchased it in 2008. Had a light stalk issue once, but that turned out to be a bad connection that Dave helped me troubleshoot. Good times.

NO I have not done that yet. I will pull that plug and check the quality of those fittings this evening. Had to run to work this morning despite my need to fiddle with cars. What kinds of voltage signals should I be getting from those two wires?

yup, that is what I am thinking. 12.3 volts while running is telling me my alternator is clearly not working. Well that is what I am thinking.

Greetings friends!!! Been a while and I have been having lots of fun with kids and fishing and what not. But the Z car has been on a roll lately. I replaced the carbs with more carbs. and I finally have it back to running like a champ. In fact it is running and revving like it used to. Happy days! The peasants were happy! Having said that. I took her for a spin the other day to keep fresh fuel running through the system and just generally keeping it running. Old cars hate to sit. As you all know. Important factoid: I keep my cars on a battery tender any time they are not running to preserve the batteries. I pulled back into the drive way and light footed it and stalled it. After a bit of laughter, I tried to start it and had the annoying clicking of a dead battery. Which is strange as I keep the car on a battery tender all the time. I hooked up the charger for about 2 hours and then the car started fine and I Pulled it in. Now the plot thickens. So something was up. My thoughts are that the battery is about 5-6 years old and it is not unusual for a battery to be DOA after 5 years in the Houston heat. I left it on the battery tender all night and in the morning I disconnected it and it read 12.2 volts. Which seemed a tad low. But maybe not. So as I am oft to do, I started overthinking the issue and that leads to, (more times than not), spending money. Since I was using the original starter that came with the car still (it had never let me down), I talked myself into thinking that the solenoid may be going bad (even though those are usually working, or not, no clicking issue), so now would be a rather handy time to replace that old grimy and dirty Z starter for a shiny new gear reduction starter :) And since I bought a new starter I decided to go ahead and buy a new battery as well while I was at it. Surely that would solve the issue. Well a week later and both were procured and installed. First let me say the gear reduction starter is the coolest sounding starter EVER. Sounds like you are about to start a 1000HP Big block Chevy. LOVE it. Car ran beautifully and started each time. Fast forward to today. I was going to drive in to work in the old gal to bless those in the NASA area with something besides a black or grey SUV to look at. Again this morning I disconnected the batter tender and it started just peachy. But I started to think about many things. There was no reason for my battery to really die before. I had replaced everything BUT the alternator. So just to verify, with the car running, I whipped out my multimeter and checked the voltage of the battery. (I checked it by attaching the multimeter to the positive post and the negative post) With the car at a rock steady 900 rpm, the battery read 12.3 volts. When I revved the engine it read 12.3 volts. It would flicker to 12.4 volts. Now I am thinking my alternator may not be charging. It is my belief that a running car should put out north of 13 volts from the alternator. I am running an old MSA 60 amp alternator kit. My plans going forward are to start up the roadster and see what its alternator puts out while running as a sanity check. Any comments?

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Ever since I bought these new webers nothing has worked quite right. I am starting from scratch. Again. want to get my float squared away before I touch another dang think. Where are my Weber heads.

Long story which I will summarize later but does anybody have a Keith frank clear acrylic float adjuster rod with the markings on it. I have misplaced mine and my old eyes really needed that.

Yah, that is about 15 miles south of me. I may take my truck and fill up 3-4 5 gallon jugs. May be fine. But ethanol really wreaks havok. Could have bought a bunch of gas for how much 3 new webers and a sonic cleaner cost, LOL

unfortunately, all the fuel around here is ethanol based. Very difficult to find anything besides that crap.

I adore SUs. great carb. But I recall the performance bump with triples when I went from my New Z therapy SUs to webers. Cannot go back. these ran perfectly for 11 years with no adjustments. Only sitting still killed them I plan to clean them up again one more time if nothing else I have spare parts

Did you guys really just tell me how to burn 600 dollars!! Lolol my boys are 15 and 10 now. time Flies. I spent 2 hours today meticulously adjusting carbs. Linkages to jets. All my cylinders are flowing dead even right now. I finally have my idle R 13.0:1 and it’s smooth at 900 rpm. Throttle response is crisp. I am going to let it cool down over night and see how it cold starts. It fired up today at 41 degrees with zero choke. So I am close. I tried to order those brass shifter bushings. Motorsport auto was back ordered. So just put new clear OEM ones back in. Miss you guys. Z has been suffering from a lack of driving. These old cars do not like to sit

Hello my fellow Z friends. Boy it has been way too long since we have caught up. I was always getting updates on Zs on BAT, those were amusing for a while. However, I had step away from BAT as it was becoming real distraction at work! I still have my 71 Z and my 68 Roadster. We bought a lake house almost 2 years ago, and our time and money have gone into a couple of boats, a 4 wheeler, and furniture. It was awesome to be on the water and enjoying life at a slower pace for a while. I got a promotion at work (well I got a new job, with 4x the work, but unfortunately, not more money). They made the Subsystem Manager for Propulsiton on the Artemis Crew module. It is more responsibility than I have ever had but it is good to be part of putting American Boots on the Moon again! 🙂 Okay Z cars. My poor Z went months without being driven. It had this nagging problem with the Mallory fuel pump I installed. It would just stop working if I did not turn it on once a week. I would have to take the impeller off and un-seize it and put it back together. I even went as far as to buy a new one and replace it thinking some how I wore it out. Low and behold, that was not the case. It stuck again. Each time this would lead to weeks of down time as I could not find time to work on it (as we were at the lake). This long down time had horrible ramifications to the Z. Turns out the pre-filter was shedding something into the impeller. It felt like oxidation of bare aluminum, but it was not really visible to the eye. But you could feel it. I cut my filter apart and it was powerery to the touch. This was one of those 200 dollar Holley cartridge filters as well. I was VERY disappointed to say the least. So I replaced it with another standard inline filter from JEGS and it has not done anything since. Sadly the damage was done. My car started to be nearly impossible to start and had zero performance off idle. It was like the accelerator circuit was completely non functional. I had to main issues. The junk from the filter made its way into the carbs. The needle and seats would stick open or closed. One would cause two cylinders to be non operational and the other would cause gas to sill out over my headers. I go tinto the routine of getting the car started and having ot use a rubber mallet to tap over the filter cover on teh webers to help unstick it. But it progressively got worse until the back carb needle and seat was permanently seized shut. MY 11 year old webers had met their match. I know what you are thinking though! Hey just replace needle and seats and all is well. As Vicinni said in 'The Princess Bride', YOU WOULD LIKE TO THINK THAT WOULDNT YOU! All those times where the fuel pump would come on and the car would not run right or all the times I started the fuel pump just to keep it moving filling up the fuel bowls but never driving it, mean I had let the gas in the carb fill up and dry out about, oh 50 times. This had a devastating effect on my accelerator pump performance. As in it killed it. FEAR NOT though!!! This mean I got to completely take off my 11 year old Webers and finally rebuild them!! HUZZAH! What a great challenge. I took all three carbs apart. Down to the last screw. I scrubbed and cleaned. Everything was completely gunked up. Pistons in the accelerator pump were seized. Throttle shafts were slimy and would not fully return to closed. The crappy ethanol gas had done a number on these carbs. Fast forward 3 weeks. All the parts are separated and labeled into old fishing tackle bins. But scrubbing them was not going to be good enough to clean the bodies. Many many cans of carb cleaning spray later, parts still were not really clean. Internal passages were nearly impossible to get totally clean. So what else was there to do but buy a 2 gallon heated ultra sonic cleaner that I could fit an entire carb body into. I cleaned those first one by one. Then changed fluid to a brass cleaner and did all the internal bits one by one. Swapping fluid between each run. Things looks clean and felt clean. Okay lets get this done. NOT SO FAST said the carb gods. I did not want to ultra sonic clean carb with the throttle shaft bearings in place, so they had to come out. That meant I had to order new screws for the butterflies as those are peened when installed. Removing shafts from Webers is decidedly not a fun task. I ended up getting them all out after many many taps with a soft mallet and then escalating up to a very small sheet metal hammer. Two of the shafts were in fact bent. This may have been due to my tapping (Okay it probably was), and the threaded bit had mushroomed a tad from the tapping. New shafts were ordered and new screws to fit them. Now, getting butterflies reassembled back into a weber body perfectly is also NOT and easy task. IF they are even the tiniest bit off, they will not open or will be so tight you cannot acuate them. Worse yet, when you install them snug and tighten them a bit at a time, they can go from perfectly loose to frozen in a quarter turn. Long story not so long, I got the carbs back together after many volumes of foul language and adult beverages. Overall it took 3 months. When I put them back on the car and started it up it seemed okay. Idled fine. First drive and ALL the problems still persisted. Still no accelerator pump action (And I checked before I put them on that this was working). It was so bad, I could be driving at 30 mph in 3rd gear and floor it and the engine would go dead quiet and cease to run. You may think this is the end.... OH NO! In a fit of rage, I did what any rational Z person would do. I bought three BRAND NEW weber DCOE 40mm carbs and a new fancy inline filter to install AFTER my fuel pump. Yup, rage will make you spend money. I swapped out my chokes and my jets and low and behold the damn thing fired right up and ran like a champ. I removed my Hypojets from Keith Franke and installed regular weber jets as my transition from idle to mains was worse than it had been when things were running correctly. I think there is still some tiny passages clogged in there, so I am going to really clean the heck out of those in the sonic cleaner, that I had now bought for really no reason. May a well use it. (maybe cleaning gun brass or watches or something) So, after all that I had a Z that was running just about like I remember it should be running. Yeah! Except for one small thing. At idle I was at 11.5:1 AFR. It used to be 12.5:1 ish. Z's on triples like to run rich but not THAT rich. So about 2 weeks ago I decided to check all the tuning again and rebalance them taking my time. That has been interesting as a few more things have come up. Nothing major. I could very easily just stop messing around with it and drive it happily the way it is. But, what would be the fun in that 🙂 More to come....on the carb front. Humorous point. I also have had my Z long enough now to have worn out the clear plastic shifter bushings that I put in new back in 2012 when I installed my 5 speed. Seems like they should have lasted longer than that.

Remember, OSHA safety white socks... LOLOL...

Well done man! I have wanted to do make a return springs like this for a long time... Great job!

Here is my fuel rail. Man it has been a long time since I have revisited my favorite Z board. Miss you guys. Still have the Z and roadster. Z has been giving me grief, I need to write a whole new story on my self-inflicted wounds and catch up with you fine folks. SD

definitely a mopar. The Valve cover bolts are wrong for a chevy, as is the water pump location and bolt pattern.