Jehannum

I don't have to worry about it anymore. My setup will work just fine with a jump now.

The guy who jumped me couldn't stick around, so I didn't really have that many options. I did learn something, though: that the kill switch can't be counted on to fail safe when you overload it

The "not right with this" was the fact that the battery was completely drained, so the alternator was running at capacity for a period of time sufficient to overload the switch.

Did you miss the SPST relay in front of the 1N5402? Because it's like 4x as big in the diagram. And I think it is relevant to location, because there aren't any kill switches with alternator included that will handle more than 20A. I looked.

I balked some years ago at the cost of replacing the stamped metal tray for my battery and instead put a container in for moving it to the hatch. In doing so, I became subject to a number of rules regarding how the car must be prepared to run on the track, the most onerous of which is a kill switch on "the rear-most part" of the car. For reference, here's the ever-popular internally regulated 60/70A Hitachi from a 280ZX: I've had a Moroso 74102 for some time acting as a kill switch (mounted to the rear panel, through the license plate), installed per the directions but I'm gett

I'm pretty sure that the + on the coil isn't receiving any voltage on key to "start" when cold. I'm going to troubleshoot that.

The new belt seems to have answered the mail. However, now it won't start when the car's warm, in the cold (<40°F). If the car's cold, it'll start regardless of the temperature. It'll start just fine from a roll, though. Think I'm going to pin my engine harness up, denude it, and see what I can safely strip out (+/hi/lo for RH headlight can pretty surely go away with my relay harness), what I need to replace, and what's buggered.

We'll see how it all goes. I replaced the belt, as the original was almost at the end of its adjustment range. By eyeball, everything looks OK to me.

I followed the rebuild guide from How To Modify Your Nissan/Datsun Engine book, which told me to not bother putting the oil slinger back in when rebuilding. I wasn't actually rebuilding (just replacing the crank damper after my last one delaminated), and then a couple nights ago, I threw my fan belt. Are these instances related? Is the elimination of that one shim just enough to screw up pulley alignment?

I'm happy to help people, but I doubt I'd sell anything. Thanks!

First try. I'm pretty pleased. In deference to the fact that I bought the amplifier off a Canadian, I had to play Rush as its first song. At any rate, the switch hands off control perfectly. When the radio's on, it plays AM, when the radio's off and the car's on, it plays over bluetooth.

An aluminum plate sandwich with 3.5mm standoffs to mate the amp's heat spreader to the sheet seemed pretty ideal, honestly.

And from the "inviting the stereotype" department, this is straight out of the service manual for the Hitachi radio.

I smoke tested the radio after the modification, and it puts the antenna up just fine, and makes AM radio noises when its on, so I didn't screw it up

Final packaging. I changed the scheme because I realized that the amp/bt combo would be on whenever the radio's off, including when the car's off, so I added a 4th relay to switch power to the whole shebang. Mounting location, after pulling all the wires through, and testfitting the amp itself. The antenna harness now carries the radio switched and ignition switched triggers to the back of the car. In doing so, I can now run a modern antenna without modification. Blue wire is the traditional blue wire - switched on when the radio'