Captain Obvious

Haha! And I thank you immensely! No hurry on sending a care package my way. I'm not taking my car down right now. With so few remaining Z days in my part of the country, I'm going to stall on any hard core work until the weather turns! And as for your back, I completely understand. You know I'm there with you bud!!

Progress looks great! I will post up details of the moustache bar bushing dies when I get a chance. Since the bushings are NLA and you likely have the last two remaining pieces in the world, I'm not sure how much use they would ever get, but I think details would still be fun to look at! (PS - The thing that puts threads on the outside of a male part is a "die". The thing that puts threads on the inside of a female part is a "tap". You bought and used a tap. Pedantic, I know. )

Zed Head, Thanks for the pics. They both look basically like mine, and either would work for what I want to do. Let's give it a couple days though... Maybe someone else wants to actually use it as an AFM, so give a little time for other requests to come in? It would be a shame to take one apart that someone else could actually use!

Right! Reminds me of something with Fed-Ex! I got the exact same price (quote) you did when I used their on-line estimator tool. Quote tool said $12.49, but my receipt says $15.71, and I'm not real happy about that. At least I think I figured out what happened... I've got a Fed-Ex account that I opened up a number of years ago because it's a little bit cheaper if you use an account. Saves them time because they don't have to go through all the hassle of dealing with payment at the store. They just charge it to the account number. And I also suspect they give you that little price break because it "keeps you coming back". In the past, I've saved like 5% on the on-line quoted prices using my account number as opposed to just some random guy walking in off the street. It also makes it easy for me to have stuff shipped TO me without sellers padding the amount. I just tell them to use Fed-Ex and give them my account number. Easier for the seller because they don't have to worry about any of those details, and also that way I'm charged actual shipping only. Well anyway, for reasons unknown (to me), this time it was actually MORE expensive when I used my account. Unfortunately I didn't figure that out at the time, and just paid it. The down side of using an account is that you walk in and they don't have to ask you anything. You hand them the package and they hand you a receipt. So you don't even know what the total is until it's over. You can ask ahead of time, but I usually don't even bother anymore because it's usually a trivial amount LESS than the quote. I should have told them to screw the acct and I'll just pay cash. I've opened up an incident ticket with them. I'm not real happy about it. My bad for not asking first, I guess. Or their bad for what I consider questionable business practices?

I just sent a package to someone. It was about 36 inches, by 7 by 5, and it weighted a little over nine pounds. It cost about sixteen bucks to ship at Fed-Ex. Hmmm. I wonder who I sent that to...... I wonder if they opened it..... YET!!!

I disagree. Not for something a pound or two but relatively large for it's size. The large flat rate box is currently 18.85. You could do a lot better than that if it doesn't weigh a lot.

Is that dimension supposed to be measured with the pressure plate bolted to a flywheel and a clutch disk in place? Or is it sitting free on the table (like the yellow one in TimZ's pic)? The reason I ask is...That dimension would be different if the pressure plate springs are compressed squeezing the clutch disk, right? I think that measurement would be greater laying loose as opposed to bolted in place. Not sure how much different it would be, but Diseazd's pic shows a measurement "as installed on a flywheel with a clutch in place."

I don't know anything about it, but would be happy to help someone who did! So if you've got an AFM suitable for dissection, that would be great. It doesn't have to work electrically since I'm just going to take it apart. I want to build an AFM adjustment tool (to take some of the tediousness out of it), and I just need some of the mechanicals. I suspect they used a screwdriver looking device tool to adjust them at the factory, and I'd like to make one. Picture a screwdriver with a small gear at the tip instead of a flat blade or Phillips. As far as shipping methods go, I'm not a big shipper either, but I can tell you that the flat rate boxes definitely work best for small heavy things. Larger lightweight things would be candidates for a different method. UPS or Fed-Ex or non-flat rate at USPS. USPS changed their pricing schedule a whole bunch maybe a year ago? They used to always have "Priority" and "Standard Ground". Well now for many packages, they've done away with the standard (cheaper) ground and only offer priority. I think they will still allow you to ship "standard", but they will charge you more for slower shipping, so standard ground may as well not exist. Anyway, when you get around to digging through the pile, PM me a pic of the candidate AFM so I can make sure the mechanicals look like mine inside? Or I can send you a pic of mine?

Zed Head, I'd love to have an AFM to dissect in my lab. For science. All of my needs are obscure.

"Seems everything I touch on this car is a project." Onions. They're like onions.

Nice! I think I still have a set of Z32 tension rods around here somewhere that I had planned to modify like that, but I ended up selling the car before I finished the project. I don't know what steel they used, but based on the finish, it doesn't look like a whole lot of fun to machine.

I believe there is another stumbling block with the round 280 headlight connectors. I do not think anyone has turned up a source for the larger brass contact that clips into the plastic connector shell. The smaller contacts are available, but I don't think anyone has found the larger ones. I know I looked some and didn't find anything suitable. Derek, Also I forgot to ask. How did you fare in the recent storm? Everything OK?

Derek, Details, details.. But it looks so easy on TV! Seriously though. Thanks for the details on the scanning process

Probably not. Don't know. And probably not unless it has a logo on it. Engineering Marvels is a good one too. I can't watch the news anymore, so I watch old episodes of How It's Made and SpongeBob. Actually, that's not true... I've discovered that I can watch the news as long as I turn the sound off. I can even watch any of the stations that way. The trick is the stuff they are actually willing to put into print is truly news, but all the talking heads are just opinion. If they aren't honestly willing to put it in writing, then I don't want to hear about it. I don't want opinion. I want news.

This morning, I was watching Season 25, Episode 9 of "How it's Made": Armored Vehicles Tension Fabric Buildings Rowers Sculpture Enlargements The last one... sculpture enlargements. They started with a small artist created sculpture (of a dog). They sent the small sculpture to a company that 3D computer scans it, and then blows up the size, and CNC router carves a larger version out of polystyrene foam. You got the scanner, and you got the CNC. How bout scanning and carving replacement dash foam pads? You don't have to enlarge it. You could create a 1:1 copy. I found that episode on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwNfx-YDzHc

Who lights who's in this competition??? That's love right there.

So all this talk about electrical problems and wiring diagrams and switch rebuilding... The problem was the check valve between the manifold and the vacuum bottle?? That's awesome!! Glad it was that easy!! (And cheap!) Awesome! I can picture you in your car in the garage tonight, moving your lever back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Go ahead...

Oh, and all this talk about the magnet valves and vacuum tubing makes me sooooooooo, soooooooo glad that I changed over to the electric servo control for the HVAC system! So glad!

I know, right? And just because I can post pictures WITHOUT photosuckit, here are some pics of the fan control switch. Might not even be the problem, but just because I can. Fan switch: Unbend the tabs to open up the switch. Green crusty grease and corroded copper contacts inside. The four nibs along the top are the four fan speeds. The solid bar (the OFF bar) at the bottom is the "switch is NOT in the OFF position". (for my nerd friends... Get it? "OFF bar"). Anyway: Cleaned up all the contacts with some scotch-brite or 800 grit sandpaper. I put some grease on after the pic: Rebend the tabs back over to hold the switch back together and you're done. What was intermittent, now works perfect:

Who's got the bigger garage? That's friends with benefits! Is that like "Send picture of boat and trailer?"

The magnet valves are just an electrically opened valve. With no power on them, they are closed, and with 12V on them, they should open. You should not be able to blow air through them with no power to them, and if you put power on them (and they click), you should be able to blow through them. Other thoughts? The magnet valve on the left (in the wiring diagram) only actuates when the compressor runs and it supplies vacuum to the FICD. So that one will never actuate if the wires are broken to the pressure switch. But that one has no effect on anything other than the FICD, so it shouldn't be affecting heat at all. The magnet valve on the right is the one that controls everything else, and it should be opening any time the key is in ACC or ON, and the fan is running. I'm not sure why they bothered to tie it into the ignition though. I'm guessing they didn't want you to drain all the vacuum out of the reservoir bottle while you were sitting with the engine off. Playing with the mode lever... Moving it around a bunch of times just to listen to the flapper doors move, until you had drained the vacuum bottle? Anyway, with that theory in mind, they cut off the vacuum to the system when the ignition is off. So, to test the rest of the heater system, you could completely bypass that magnet valve. Just jumper the vacuum tubing around it to test the rest of the system. You will be putting vacuum on the rest of the system all the time so you will probably drain your vacuum bottle overnight. But to test the heater, it should be fine. As a side note that might not really matter right now, but... There are two sections to the fan switch. One section is the 1 through 4 speed controls, and the other is an "fan is running" output. That "fan is running" output gets tied to ground whenever the lever is set to anything other than OFF and the "fan is running". The insides of my fan switch were green, crusty, and intermittent, and I'm wondering if maybe yours is as well. I took mine apart and cleaned it all up nice and put it back together. Works great now. I got pics if you're interested.

It's "Fronkenschteen". One piece at a time, my friend. One piece at a time!

Well if the underside looks as good as the top, you've got a real nice one there. I'm having trouble finding significant flaws or anomalies. GLWS! On a related note... So that's what the steering wheel is supposed to look like? Before they turned to cottage cheese?

Wow. That's very nice. It's not a one owner. It's a two owner, and soon to be a three owner. Regardless, that might be the best time capsule Z I've seen! Any idea why the original owner parked it in 1991? What's the underside look like?

I did my relay upgrade a little differently. I had the whole engine bay wiring harness out of the car and unwrapped apart on the bench. I rewired it to include relays for the headlights and the starter solenoid and then rewrapped it. And while I was in there, I also changed it to use the internally regulated alternator. It was definitely NOT plug-n-play. Mine was unwrap/cut/splice/crimp/wrap and play. I had a thread with a whole bunch of pics, but then photobucket turned sour and that thread is mostly useless.