Captain Obvious

Haha!! That's my "screen name" from back when I was working that video store job we talked about earlier!

Sorry for the lack of correspondence. I've been off-line for a couple days. Mostly working on my kids car. So that ding-dong is a two wire device. It "Dings" when you apply power to it, and it "Dongs" when you release the power. There's a little spring loaded clapper in there pulled to one side by an electromagnet, and pulled back the other way with a spring. Power on - Ding Power off - Dong The trick is... The original buzzer device is actually in two parts. Second part is a buzzer. All it does is buzz anytime it is powered. First part before the buzzer is a little timer module that intermittently applies power to the buzzer. The timer module creates a square wave output that makes the buzzer alternate ON and OFF. You leave the timer module in place and just run the output of that timer to the ding-dong and that way the square wave gets you both the ding and the dong. If you just put power on it and leave it on, you get one Ding and no Dong. And a Ding without a Ding is never a good thing. I've got pics and I promise to get them uploaded as soon as I get a chance!!

Nice work on the inserts. What are you planning to use to lock the inserts in place? I'm no expert in the field, but I've had (mostly) good luck with the Loctite Bearing and Sleeve (which is green). You mentioned Loctite green earlier. Is that the stuff you were referring to? I also don't know how large of a gap it will deal with, but I have had situations where it cured on me with a half installed bearing race. I was using it as belt and suspenders on a reasonably well fitting bearing and I got it half pressed on and it flash cured and wouldn't go no more. Happened to me twice with the same pair of parts. I found the solution was to make the fit sloppier. I bet if I would RTFM, I would figure out what I was doing was a problem. Point is... It would really suck for that to happen to you with a half-inserted spacer. Took me heat to get things apart again. Look into it maybe before you go for it? I don't think the bearing and sleeve retainer is intended to be wicking after assy. The green thread lock is, though. Also... WD-40 - Worlds best cutting fluid for aluminum! Sorry, I'm rambling.

Right. After seeing that the base of your shifter is that sliding ZX thang and not the simpler fixed bushing style I wholeheartedly agree!

Sounds great. I was asking about needing a compressor because I would like to lower mine a little but I don't like the idea of the commercially available lowering springs that are so short that they actually lose contact with the spring perches when unladen. I want something that is under compression even when the struts are assembled. Even if it's just a little. I ran the spring force calculations based on the info and pics you posted, but the results really aren't that close to the specs you quoted. How confident are you in your measurements?

Well my thoughts on the alignment and parallel-ness are described above. I would trust myself to do it, but I'm pretty good with a file. I don't know how hard it is to get the mating part with the ears off the tranny, but that would be a breeze for any machine shop to do if they had just the three parts involved (shaft, ears, and pin).

Yes, my son absolutely gave me that look. I'm consoled by the fact that I'm not the only one that gets it. I got that warning chime bell out of a 1990 Acura Integra. They used that chime on all the first and second gen Integras as well as the early 90's sedans. Part number 39760-SD2-A01 Used on 86-93 Integra and 90-93 Sedans I just like it better than the original harsh sounding buzzer/beeper. I find it much more "polite". "Excuse me sir, you left your keys in the ignition" instead of "NNNNNRRRNN!!, NNNNRRRRN!!, NRRRRRNNN!!"

Zed, Yeah, I figured it was some simple misunderstanding like that. Back to the OP... If you're sure there's enough meat in the shifter shaft to put a new hole without messing up the original one, then you should be good to go. I've never messed with one of the ZX shifters with the sliding bushing, so if that's what you've got there, then I'm out of my element. But if it's a fixed bushing style and you've got the meat, it should work. I'm no machinist or anything, but I would drill the holes in the ears first and make sure they are aligned well from one side to the other. And since you're probably doing this free-hand on the bench with a hand drill, I would drill the ear holes a little undersized and file them to a tight fit on the cross pin. Using a file, you can tweak the two holes into alignment so the pin slips properly into place. Then, once you have the ears drilled and aligned, I would put the shifter shaft into place and use the ear holes to mark the location of the hole in the shaft. You can do the same file trick to tweak the shaft hole as well. Short story... I would not do the shaft first. I would do that part last.

I've got all that info somewhere... I've also got lots of still pics. I'll post more details shortly. As a side note, completely unrelated to this thread... I don't have any idea what I'm doing on Youtube. Does my other video show up for you guys or do I have to explicitly send out a link? It's comparing my original stock beeper and my replacement pleasant sounding chime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6iRmpYgjI0 My son asked me about "My channel" and I said "My whaaaat?" He walked away shaking his head and wouldn't answer any of my questions after that .

There's some kind of misunderstanding here... His thought was to move both the hole in the shaft AND put new holes in the ears. This does two things: 1) Changing the position of the hole in the shifter shaft will change the ratio of lengths on each end (and hence the distances traveled) 2) Changing the position of the holes in the ears will keep the shaft tips in the same original "height" position (which should keep the original lower end engaged properly). Unless I'm really missing something, it should work just fine. It shouldn't matter where the fulcrum is located in space... If the ratio of lengths of the levers on the sides changes, so will the distances travelled. A seesaw with one side longer than the other will travel the same distances at the tips whether it's bolted to the ground in Michigan, or Nevada.

Cool! If it lapped in like all the rest, then I would assume nothing is bent. That relief doesn't look "too big" to me. It just looks a "little off" in position. In any event, sounds like it's all academic at this point!

I see... You just wanted a free ride on the cart, huh?

if you're really interested, you could calculate the change in throw. It's linear and straight up ratiometric. I would definitely drill a pilot hole first, for two reasons... First, just to ease the drilling process with the larger bits, but also to double check the concept and look for issues before it's too late. You could walk the small hole around a little with a file if necessary to tweak things into place before you finalize with a larger size. The size of the final hole is important though since it needs to be a good fit with the shifter bushings, right? If the new holes don't overlap with the old holes, then you could always just go back to the stock location without a problem. Call them lightening holes to decrease mass and increase shifting speed and gas mileage.

Looks great and hopefully it handles as good as it looks! I got some questions/comments... About your old Chevette springs - They will get stiffer each time you remove more material, so if they started already too stiff and you were trying to balance ride height by removing coils, they're going to get stiffer and stiffer as you cut coils. Looking at the pic where you have the CC223 installed as shipped - Those top three coils are already pretty much bound, and I'm sure that even with the resting weight of the car on the struts, those top three were completely bound. The point is... The only thing those top three coils were doing for you other is raising the ride height and cutting them off shouldn't do anything other than lower the car: I ran some quick and dirty spring force calculations with the numbers you provided above and came up with the following: Stock spring, assuming 9 active coils - 100 lb per inch CC223 uncut, assuming 8 active coils and no binding - 185 lb per inch CC223 cut, assuming 6 active coils - 250 lb per inch Ballpark based on rough measurements and metallurgical assumptions of the composition. How do you think ride height compares to stock? And even after you cut coils off the CC223, did you have to use a compressor to get them back together?

Dr. Dave, Thanks! I've got no green left though... My dash LED's look greenish in those pics simply because of my camera. In person they are white, not green. I really got to try to get some better shots... Hopefully nothing serious!

Nice. Was that valve dent caused during running, or during testing? And either way, I'd be worried about valve (lip or stem) might be bent after that... You sure that one was OK?

Looking great!!

Yes, it would shorten the throw above the pivot by increasing the throw below the pivot. If the change in pivot location is confined only to the locations you have shown, then I can't imagine any other problems that could cause. All the other geometry should be the same before and after. Looks like there is plenty of room on the ears, but is there really enough metal on the shift shaft to put a new hole?

So that's what was shaking the camera back then? That's why those lucky guys used "tripod mounts"? Well my phone has been dead silent on the order front, not ringing off the hook with orders as you would expect... I guess the multitude of people adding A/C to their Z's are happy adding the vacuum system. I'm clearly the outlier!

Excellent. Glad you got it together! Hope the scratches don't cause any problem.

My car came without A/C and I'm working on adding it. I had originally planned to use my manual control head to run the system, but this does not work. The manual cable driven control heads are completely incompatible with the A/C evaporator box as they both want to occupy the same space. I had to swap over to a control head designed for A/C. That itself is not a big deal. What IS a big deal is that the A/C control heads are vacuum driven instead of cable driven and I really really didn't want to plumb my car with all those vacuum lines. Check valves, that white tank in the engine compartment, solenoid valves, rats nest of vacuum tubing under the dash... I really, really, really didn't want to do that. So instead of installing all the vacuum parts and tubes, I put switches on the control head and converted over to an electric servo from a Honda/Acura HVAC system to control the air distribution instead of vacuum motors. Here's the end result. Works like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggrks_xJAB8 Note the crappy shaky camera work... My second video ever.

You're welcome. Now every time you're driving at night, all you're gonna see is that dead spot. Fix it... You know you want to!!

I've got a couple other camera options and when I get a chance, I'll snap some shots with other cameras. Right now my car is still in pieces. The good weather snuck up on me and I started too many off-season projects this time! About the brightness... Not only did I remove the top LED (which really helped combat hot-spots right next to the bulbs), but I also installed resistors to cut the brightness down even more. I doubt other people would go through that extra work of putting resistors in though. I do recommend removing the top emitter. I don't recommend going through all the effort of putting resistors inside unless you've got a screw loose. I found that installing LED's is easy. The majority of my effort wasn't putting LED's in... It was in getting LED's to look "right". And be brightness matched to each other. And have even light dispersion without hot-spots. And without a haloing ring around the entire gauge because they are so durn bright. Devil is in the details and that's where most of the difficult effort was.

I've tried and tried to get good pics of my dash lighting, but I've not had good luck. A variety of issues have prevented me from getting a good representative shot. My idiot-proof camera automatically compensates for the light changes, etc.. I think they look absolutely phenomenal in person, but "just OK" in the pics. I'll post the best I have. They look too dim in the pics. They're not. They look greenish in the pics. They're not. Everything is fuzzy in the pics and that's my camera adjusting for the lack of light. Here's the whole dash at the brightness at which I drive. Most people seem to want way brighter than stock retina burning brightness, but I just wanted "whiter at and a little brighter than stock". This is how I drive, which is about two-thirds brightness. Also note that I've still got a little bit of a hotspot at the bulb end of the HVAC controls: Here's a closeup of the three smaller gauges at my typical 2/3 brightness: Here's those same three gauges at full brightness: And here's the speedo and tach at full bright. Note the third LED in the speedo completely eliminates that 80-90 mph dark spot!!: I'd be happy to have someone who knows what they're really doing with a camera take better shots!!

Boy I would sure love to be there the day that thing hit the road for the very first time!!