BTF/PTM

Thanks I need to order up a POR15 kit with the metal ready and such. For now I'll sand & paint the straps and later down the road I'll plan on POR15'ing all the suspension and under-car parts in one go like I've seen in other threads.

While the tank is out, I'm cleaning up the straps. I'm going to use gasket material for the padded side. For the adhesive, should I paint the padding side of the strap before gluing the gasket material into place, or leave it bare metal? I figure the 3M black adhesive will work well.

There's a bigger plug at the bottom, too. I shoulda seen that coming. I'll have to get a second fuel can n drain the rest of the tank so I can go plug hunting.

Here's a picture, the hole is at the lower left. The raised squares of metal are actually flat metal with raised insulation around them, that was my own faulty memory at work. I can touch the top of the gas tank through them.

Anyone got the size/thread of this lil guy handy? It doesn't seal well, and it looks like it should have a washer and/or crush gasket. The flatter, wider hex-head looking part below the plug head is part of the tank, not the plug.

My car is a '72, no bumper shocks. I'll get a picture tomorrow, if nothing else I can slap some gorilla tape over the holes.

Pieces of gasket material glued on with weather strip adhesive?

I don't have a picture just yet, but there are two circular holes, both in slightly raised squares of metal on either side of the spare tire bowl on the floor of the trunk. Do I need grommets for those holes? I dug through MSA trying to guess what they might be called but didn't find anything obvious.

I love this idea. The center console is out of my car anyway, so getting to the transmission plug won't be difficult.

Thanks, Bruce! Am I applying said carb spray with the engine running? Should I block the air way to amplify it? Am I watching for bubbles, or perhaps listening for a change in engine pitch? *edit* beandip beat me to my own question. Thanks guys!

^ thanks! On the same note, is filling the diff as simple as pulling the upper plug and using a manual pump to fill it until the fluid starts to dribble out the hole like with most Japanese gearboxes?

If you're planning to swap an N42 head, I'd say do it all at once. Have the head freshened up, locate your manifolds and carbs and install it all at once. My car has an L28 with an N42 head and the SU's are connected to E88 manifolds.

OK, here's one for Bruce and our other resident SU experts. First the preface; today I was finally able to take the z to meet a fellow forum member (Motorman7) for some carb tuning lessons. Well, the good news is we didn't find anything wrong with the float levels, didn't find any damage to needles or seats and we didn't have to do much adjusting at all to get both carbs idling smoothly. Bad news is, we found an air leak at the back carburetor that was audible when the Uni-Syn tool was on that carb. Now the problem; the back carb is running quite rich and is fouling the three back spark plugs in very short intervals. Now the hypothesis; it is supposed that, since the carb is leaking air, the slide isn't getting full vacuum and thus the slide/needle aren't rising fully for a given air flow and this is causing the carb to run rich due to reduced air flow. Now the question; is this a plausible theory? Are there ways of finding leaks on the carb bodies? I don't imagine soapy water would work well since it's a suck rather than a blow. Any ideas are welcome. Thanks, everyone.

I don't think mine even gets to 105 when I stand on it and let it pull. As a related side note, is it possible to pull the diff cover and replace its gasket with the car intact? Mine has a pretty good soggy spot that I should fix. I can look at the numbers on the gears that way, too. I can use the method of turning the axles and counting pinion rotations, but it'll be hard to tell between a 3.70 and a 3.90 just by eyeballing.

Agreed, I have a 5-speed on standby but I'm working on getting more of the exhaust fume issue taken care of before I get side-tracked. I should probably put fresh fluid in the R200 anyway, so I can get the ratio then.

205/60R14, probably an inch or two shorter than stock tires.

Just curious. What RPM is a 240z normally at cruising at 65ish on the highway in 4th gear? My z has an R200 in it with a standard 4-speed and I suspect it's a 3.90:1 as I'm screaming along at about 3,800rpm in 4th with the speedo indicating about 85mph just keeping up with traffic.

I'll throw another vote on the pile, $1,000 to repair a rear main seal is way too much. If that cost included a new clutch it would be more reasonable. The two jobs often go hand in hand as it makes sense to service the clutch while the system is removed anyway. Zero additional labor time save for surfacing the flywheel.

That's ezzakkly the protrusion I'm referring to, thanks! I wonder if that was part of the internal boring process that they later figured out could be done differently. I'd bet that there's a ball bearing plug at some point in that little hole; anyone know for sure? I can't smash my face down next to the carbs close enough to look.

I'll bite. I have a tired-but-working alternator and mechanical voltage regulator out of my 5/72 car. I'm sure the alternator could use a refresh, but it powered the car well enough to drive it before I swapped in a modern one. PM me if interested.

Locate your throttle butterfly, it will be at the front if your engine's air intake collector and will be the last part in line joined by the throttle linkage. The TPS will be screwed or riveted onto the side of that throttle butterfly housing, probably a lil black box and it will have a wire connection going from it. Look for puddled water in various parts of your car's engine bay and on/around the engine itself, and take care of them. Generally it's never a good idea to spray water directly into the engine bay becuz of sensitivity issues you're now dealing with. If you still have the problem, open the hood and get hte engine bay in the sun for a few hours to let everything dry out.

I've ordered Bruce's "Just SU's" DVD as well as the other tune-up DVD, I figure it's a really cheap way to educate myself before I dig into the carbs. Soon as I can fix (or replace) the severely warped tail light housing flanges I'm currently dealing with and get the car put back together I can finally visit a fellow forum member who has offered to help me tune things up with all the proper tooling.

Bonzi, What did you trim to get that cover off? That's exactly what I'm curious about. p.s. - contacting Ztherapy now to order that video =)

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. My main curiosity was just that key difference being the more difficult-to-access float bowl cover of the 3-screw float covers, I hadn't noticed that before. I don't intend to go tearing into a set of operational carburetors without help simply becuz I've found myself up shyte creek before just working on a Honda dirtbike carburetor and suddenly realizing I had no idea what I was doing and the FSM wasn't detailed enough to explain what I didn't get, so I think I'll wait till I've got a knowledgeable teacher on hand. I've tinkered with the idle screws and with the main mixture nuts below each carb after reading up a bit, and I've seen how the engine reacts, but as said before without a good understanding of how things *should* run that doesn't get me very far. The car really does seem like it runs well, it warms up into a nice steady (albeit a bit loping) ide, has great throttle response and pulls like a sono***un if I jump on it. I guess I'll not mess with it until I know how to mess with it properly, and it seems like there's no real reason to replace the 3-screw pair with my 4-screw pair based on everyone's responses

The yellow one is the most striking by far, I love it! Great work. Makes me want to tear mine apart and have it repainted an equally eye-grabbing color. Can't wait to see them all in person.