Captain Obvious

Hmmmm.... That car is a great example of one that I would need to see in person before I bought it.

Ooops. I said 1/16 above! Yup, that's a lot of extruded material. I wish I had written my results down somewhere. All I remember is that the sizes didn't make sense until I figured out what was going on.

Sorry, just a couple more and I'm done... The wheels are from a ZX, not some rare factory mag wheel option. And either the guy taking the pics got real real lucky and it IS actually 12:00, or the clock doesn't work. Haha!! OK, I'm done.

Haha! Yup. Metal smeared into the hole. I don't remember how much difference I found between front and back on mine, but a sixteenth sure sounds like a lot. And there's no way there is supposed to be taper in those holes. They were drilled after the casting was done and sized for different applications. Those holes should be the same diameter thru (plus/minus drill wander, etc). Anyway, hopefully that's what Matthew is dealing with as well.

Yes, that swivel one is one of the deburring tools I have. A couple different cutting blades for different applications. I just wonder if all these years I've been missing out on external deburring or something. And by the way... Not sure if you've ever been bit by one of those, but as innocent as they look at first glance, they can be nasty if you slip.

Uhhh.... About the A/C. That car left the factory without A/C. It's got the non-A/C climate control head unit. And there's a suspicious looking knob near the driver's right knee? I suspect that's the control for the (clearly aftermarket installed) A/C system: And something else that caught my eye... The tach says 1K, but the temp, oil pressure, and fuel are off scale to the left like the engine isn't running? Either the engine is stone cold, running on vapors from an empty tank and the mains are shot and can't generate any oil pressure, or... The tach is stuck: It may be a nice car, but I think the description is a little over the top. And all those pics and not one of the underside. I wouldn't ever ever ever buy a Z without seeing the underside first. Ever.

I've got a lot of tools (including some specific deburring tools), but I don't think I've ever had the need for that one pictured. Am I missing something? Are everyone's lug nuts boogered up at the tip or something?

When I was trying to find lug nuts for my old aluminum wheels, I had a little trouble getting an accurate measurement number for the hole diameter. Seemed the hole diameter as measured at the front face of the wheels was smaller than the hole diameter at the back side. But the holes were never meant to be tapered, so wtf? Under magnification, the issue became clear... All the years of lug nut tightening by previous owners had extruded the aluminum at the wheel face a little bit and actually squeezed a metal ridge into the lug hole. So when I measured that hole at the front, I was actually measuring the diameter inside that burr. But the diameter at the back side (with no burr) was the accurate measurement. So I'll second Zed Head's mention of a round file. On mine, some quick work with a fine round file to remove the burr and my lug choice went up dramatically. Hopefully that's what's going on with yours as it was an easy fix.

Cool pic! Even though it makes sense, I just never would have guessed it would affect a welding arc. Physics!! For the triangle shaped welding magnets, I'm wondering if they don't cause problems because they are either a) much less powerful/concentrated than what you were working with, or b) the steel shells on the outside corral the field and concentrate it between the two sides. In any event, thanks for posting about this. It's one mysterious issue that I hopefully won't ever have to figure out for myself!

Will do!! Thanks!!

I understand the issue. Give this a try... Take a front wheel off the car, snap the cap in, and then put the front wheel back on.

I've seen it work with two tricks... First is to flatten the top of the grease cap a little (as mentioned above), but in the case of @GGRIII, they still wouldn't fit. Hopefully he'll chime in with any details I miss, but I believe the solution was to snap the caps into the front wheels first before mounting the wheels on the car. Problem is that if you try to snap the caps in after the wheels are mounted, the little plastic retainer fingers have to move inward to get past the retaining ledge. But with the rotor casting in the way, there isn't enough room for the fingers to move in. But once the caps are fully installed, the fingers snap back out just a little and it's enough room to clear the rotor snout.

You got nothing to beat yourself up about! You will probably be the only person who would ever see those flaws! Looks great!

Cool! I never would have guessed that, but it does make sense. That's the same phenomenon that they use to make the old style (CRT) televisions work. They use magnetic fields to steer the electron beam. Was the field pulling the arc towards the magnet, or pushing it away? I would assume you should be able to reverse the direction by flipping the magnet over. Not that you're going to try that though.

What? You're not going to deburr those cut edges for me? Aren't you worried that I'll cut myself?

And be real real real careful with this... One snag and you could be in big trouble!

Well I don't know, but I'm gonna guess just so I can play the game. My guess is your wire was slipping in the feed wheel and burning back making a large sloppy intermittent arc.

Yeah, unfortunately I've confirmed that the Smyrna accordion and fan assy is for the 240 and is incompatible with the later 260/280 system. So this one from OB won't be free or personally hand delivered, but at least I'll have one! I'm not spoiled... Haha!!

Perfect! Thanks so much!

Those would be perfect. Only issue is I don't want the snow. I'll send PM for shipping details.

Seconded. Those wheels look great.

I believe that all the 2-seater 77-78 door cards are the same (2+2 is different). My 77 door locks are 8.5 inches from the back end of the cards (just like OB's pics), and I'm sure yours are too. I have very little doubt that the cards OB has would be fine for you.

Haha!! Good answer!

If you go fetch the door cards, how about you grab the heater blower box for me? Personal delivery would be fantastic!