Captain Obvious

Sorry for the stream of consciousness, but I've been thinking about this a little... I think that since you lowered your car, you should "re-neutralize" all of your control arm bushings. Both front and rear. All ten of them. Reason being, if your bushings were neutral before you lowered it, it's guaranteed that they aren't neutral anymore. Fronts are easy. Spindle pins are easy unless the bushings are rusted to the pin. Only difficult ones are the rear inners that you're already working on. Hope you didn't think you were done! :laugh:

If you're going to loosen the rear all back up again, I'd do this: Loosen (a couple turns) but don't remove the four big bolts that hold the inboard bushings to the control arms. Left side of this pic is a good view of the bolt I'm talking about. You can see it threaded a few turns into the control arm: Drop the hanger "U" clamps completely and let the inboard side of the control arm hang down a little. Grab the rubber portion of the bushing and make sure it isn't rusted tight to the control arm. It should spin about the cylinder that goes through the middle. If they're free, cool, if not, take the big bolts out completely, pull the bushings off the control arms and clean out the ID so they DO spin free. After you have verified that the bushings are free to rotate, position them so the rubber "wings" are horizontal and fitted into the non-round cavity formed by the "U" clamp and the undercarriage and once the "wings" are in the right position, reinstall the "u' clamps to hold the control arm back up against the underside. Not completely tight yet, but couple turns off fully bottomed out? Snug, but not completely tighten the four big bolts. This will make sure the bushings are properly located all the way home on the cylinder. Tighten the "U" band clamps locking the outside rubber to the undercarriage. Loosen the four big bolts a turn or so. Drop the car to load the suspension and while it's loaded, tighten those four big bolts till your eyeballs bug out. Since I don't have a pit or an alignment rack... When I lowered my car, I lowered it onto moving dollies with a couple pieces of wood stacked on top for some extra work height. The dollies allowed the suspension to squirm around to wherever it wanted to naturally go and didn't have to worry about friction of the tires stuck to the garage floor. The boards stacked on top gave me the extra inch or two I needed to reach under and tighten those bolts while the car was on the dollies. Don't drop the car on yourself or anyone else. I had my front end on jack stands at the time so the body was level. Rear on dollies, front on stands. In the end, the outer position of the bushings should have the wings locked into the corners where the clamps meet the underside, and the inner cylinder should have been able to find it's "natural happy spot" under load and then locked in place. Summarize the whole thing up like this... When the car is sitting neutral, you want the bushings to be neutral and not under any torque. Then when the suspensions moves up and down, you torque the bushings one direction or the other. But at rest, no torque.

There's also some discussion about how the rubber bushings work in this thread. It started about spindle pins and washers, but got to bushings in general at the end of the thread: http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/suspension-steering-s30/51681-spindle-pin-rubber-washers.html

Grease on the outside of those rear bushings isn't necessary, and might even be an issue. You see... There isn't supposed to be any movement of the outer rubber portion within those clamps. All the movement is supposed to be twisting the inner sleeve inside the outer rubber portion. You really don't want the rubber portion squirming around. Works like this... You clamp the rubber portion tightly in the strap clamps and do not allow it to move. Then you pinch down on the ends of the bushing with the big flat washer and bolt until you have compressed the rubber completely. You're not tight until you have actually tightened it so much that the inner sleeve (with the toothed serrations) is held tightly against the control arm. So tightly, in fact, that the inner toothed sleeve will always rotate with the arm as the arm moves up and down. There should be no movement of the inner sleeve with respect to the control arm. They should be locked together. There should be no movement of the outer rubber with respect to the undercarriage. They should be locked together. The bushing works by torqueing the rubber between the inner sleeve and the band clamps. And that's what sets the rubber bushings apart from the poly replacements. They operate differently. The right way to do it would be to clamp down hard with the strap clamps on the outside of the bushings, and then (with the suspension loaded) loosen and retighten the big (26mm?) bolts that go through the centers of the bushings. Problem is, if there's corrosion or anything on the inside of the bushings they still might not spin to their new "happy place". I'm not a suspension guy and I'm having troubles explaining this... Is any of this making any sense at all?

About the CSV, I'm not sure there could be anything wrong with the FI relay that would affect only the cold start valve. I'd have to take a refresher look at the schematics, but I suspect if there was something wrong there, you'd be having problems with other components as well. If you're convinced that your CSV should be firing, but isn't the next thing I would look at is the thermotime switch. BTW - What's the ambient temp where you are? I ask because the thermotime (and hence the CSV) stops actuating above 71-72 degrees F. So if you're above that temp when you go for your first cold start, the CSV wouldn't fire anyway (by design).

Wow, that's a lot of play. No wonder it didn't feel right! And just remember that play would only be worse when the wheels are on the ground and all the forces have to go up because you're fighting friction and the directional loads of steering. I bet you're really digging it now! So after all this suspension work, what are you going to do about alignment? We talked some about how I did my own, but we didn't really have the chance to get into details.

That's so bizarre. I've been thinking all along that they were not food, but were some sort of dried out foam bushing or washer from somewhere inside the HVAC system. I'm not so sure anymore... Are they crispy? All the way through? Have you cut or cracked one in half? Seen any fur coming out of the vents? Haha! :bulb:

Still trying to wear out those rear tires? :laugh:

The presenter's name is Jeremy Clarkson and the show is "Top Gear". I really like it because they are honestly true car guys, and it comes through. Couple that with tongue-in-cheek British humor, and it just gets better. Note that there is an American version of Top Gear and I don't like it. As for the Jag not starting... You'll have to guess like the rest of us.

Congrats! Those numbers look great! You have a cat on your car, right? Being from CA and all that... So is this with your other ECU back from Lenny, or is the only change the timing tweak?

And it's all true. Right up to the end.

Did anyone else see the Top Gear episode where they were praising the virtues of the E-type? The one with the band, the planes, the big flag over the side of the cliff? I thought that was awesome! And hot air balloons... Forgot the hot air balloons. And the wing walkers. You gotta watch the last minute or so to the very end: "The Maypole around which the people of this funny little rock in the north Atlantic can gather, to remind ourselves that once upon a time, we really were as great as we think we are now."

For things like sway bars and T/C rods, it never matters. Tighten them hanging or on the ground. No difference. The only ones that matter are the rubber style control arm bushings. One each side in the front inner, and eight in the back (fore and aft, inner and outer, each side). So, since you loosened the rear control arms to lean the struts out, you should tighten the four big inner bolts (like 26mm or something like that?) while the suspension is loaded. And if you loosened the spindle pin nuts (outboard) you should tighten those under load as well. And in the front, I couldn't tell if you had to loosen the front lower control arm pivot bolt to get the strut beyond the fender, but if so, then that one needs to be tightened under load. You might consider just giving it a few days of driving and "settling" and then loosening all ten pivot points while under load, letting the bushings relax, and then retightening them while still under load? Then get an alignment. If some time in the future you switch to poly control arm bushings, it won't matter anymore. The poly bushings are designed to pivot the inner sleeve inside the bushing instead of torqueing the rubber as the original design bushings do. And because of that, you can tighten the poly stuff while hanging or loaded. No difference. That rotating sleeve pivoting action of the poly bushings are what causes them to squeak if not greased properly. It's the inner sleeve turning inside the bushing material.

Uh-Oh. Look out... Blue's gettin' his geek on!! Getting the itch to blow the dust off the scope?

Just checked in with Lenny. Everyone is OK. The new family addition is just demanding attention. I'm sure he'll be here with an update shortly. Sheesh. Kids.

That's an interesting idea Blue. I wonder!

I've got his number. I'll give him a ring tomorrow.

It's not a big deal or anything. I'm just curious. I've had both projected and non-projected styles in my 77 and didn't notice any difference. It could be anything from slightly better emissions test numbers during those years to a typo in the manual.

Did your research turn up any info as to why Nissan moved away from the projected tips from 75 to 79 only to go back to them in 80? Any ideas? I've continued to wonder.

Oh and your car is gorgeous by the way. I wouldn't want to have to clean those wheels, but it's beautiful!

Hahahaha!! I get it. "shockingly affordable" :laugh: I bet you didn't even plan that! So you pulled inserts out? You were thinking that you might have the original factory strut guts, but apparently not. What brand did you pull out? I can't read it on the pic. After the work, it should feel just a little more solid than mine? I know it's hard to do the comparison without a side-by-side jump from one to the other, but what do you think? I'd love to have mine an inch lower at some point, but first I had to get a good baseline. Nice VOC in the crotch story! I'm not sure I would have admitted that one!

I've heard that reading plugs isn't what it used to be. From what I gather, it's OK for plugs to look leaner than they used to in the past. Ten years ago, the white insulators on 1,2,5, and 6 would be called lean. Some people have cited gas formulation changes that have "shifted" the norm? My highlander for example, the plugs come out looking scary lean, but everyone tells me they look perfect. Scary lean... BTW - Did you know you're running the "wrong" plugs for your year? http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/electrical-s30/47495-spark-plugs-projected-tips-vs-standard.html

I guess what I'm saying is that if you're dumping so much fuel that the mixture won't light and you're misfiring on all the cylinders 100% of the time, then wouldn't that feel like a switch was flipped? You could wire a small 12V bulb across one of your injectors and hang it out of the engine bay taped to the cowl or something. Drive with it attached and see what the bulb brightness does as you drive. If fuel is being cut, the bulb will go dark. If fuel is being poured in there at great volume, the bulb will glow bright.

My wife thinks that all male humor stagnates at 13 years old.

Thanks Arne. Cool. Next question... Anyone got a 4.5 inch steel wheel from a 70 or 71 Z available? I need just one for my spare.