Captain Obvious

Only thing I can think of is the horn relay clicking because of a grounding fault in something related to the wiper pickup on the back of the steering wheel. So...... Does your horn work normally, or has it been disconnected because it kept going off when the PO turned the steering wheel?

I went through something similar a couple years ago and I cut finger grip slots in the base material before the recovering. Even after the final wrap, you could still feel the dents. The point is... Have you considered putting finger grip dents in the base ring? Is there even enough material to consider doing that?

I've got the same wide ratio as well. The first four gears are identical to the four speeds, and even though fifth isn't a huge change from fourth, it's still way better than not having fifth at all.

Looks like my place. One misstep and you turn an ankle!

OK, I'll see what I can do. Give me a couple days to find someone else to move the wheel while I man the camera. As an alternative... Have you got any public domain video editing software that I can use to clip the unnecessary parts of a longer video off? I could brace the camera into position like you did and do the rest of it alone, but I'd need to clip that out of the video (again, like you did). I clearly don't do much of this kind of thing. I can already tell you from just casually viewing the system from topside while moving the steering wheel... I don't have anything near the amount of motion you do.

I've got poly bushings, so I'm not sure if it would add any useful data, but I can try to take a video off mine if that would help at all. LMK and I'll see if I can figure out how to use my camera for that.

Not that you're familiar with Two Hearted or anything...

Haha!! It's in his desk drawer with all mine as well! Good luck with the problem hunt. On that front, when the issue arises, do you think you're running rich or lean? Rich could be from percolating the fuel in the bowls and forcing additional fuel past the needle, and lean could be from boiling the fuel in the rail and pushing vapor pockets into float bowls expecting liquid. Any guesses as to which direction you are going? How do the plugs look?

You could also blast your carbs with the liquid from the upside down can of Perri-Air and see if that helps.

Zed, On a five speed OD trans, what's the difference between a "top gear switch" and an "OD gear switch"?

Yeah, that Vizcaya place looks pretty cool. I'd love to see that. If I get that far south, I'll try to check it out. II've never been to Miami, so I was thinking I could take this opportunity to at least drive through so I can say I've been there. This is the last time I'll have reliable internet access for a while! See you on the other side!

Dave, I'd love to drive up and see you again, but three hours is a little too far. I think I'm going to have to amuse myself a little further south this time. So I've got a couple Z related events and meetings on the docket so far. Anyone else in the area want to show off their car, or tell me to my face that I'm a menace to the Z community?

Wow. Not good. Don't know what's going on there, but I can tell you that mine (with poly bushings) doesn't do that. I assume you already saw this, but here's my experiences with the steering rack. Bunch of bushing info towards the beginning of the thread: http://www.classiczcars.com/topic/48621-steering-rack-disassembly-and-refurb/

Nice work. I recently went through a bunch of discussion with @Mike W about this exact topic of rack rebuilding, and one of the topics was the spacer to be used to take up the gaps created by the thinner bearings. One suggestion was to use a hardened spacer. The pinion is hard, the bearing races are hard, and I think the spacer(s) used between them should be hardened as well. Especially if you are using the way you did by spacing the inner race. And that brings me to a second suggestion... If it were me, I would do the spacing on the outer race instead of the inner race. My thinking is that there is a much greater load area and you can spread the forces across the whole spacer instead of just the end profile of the pinion teeth. Might not matter, but I would use the outer race. My thinking would be... Drop in a spacer of appropriate OD FIRST before you pressed the lower bearing back into place, and then place a second spacer similar on top of the upper bearing right before you screwed the retaining cap back onto the housing. Or, as an alternative, you could put both spacers on one end or the other, but if you wanted to keep the pinion gear in the same location on the rack, you need to put spacers on each side. I don't think I would go back in to change anything, but just some academic stuff to think about?

My interpretation of the problem is "I'm only running on one carb at idle. Above idle, everything seems to be OK, but at idle the rear carb doesn't do anything." Is that correct? What was the throttle position when you synced the carbs? Do you use one of the adjustment screws to raise the RPM's to something above normal idle while you are performing the sync procedure? If that's the case, then your carbs may be perfectly balanced at a higher RPM (wider butterfly opening), but at dead closed idle, your rear butterfly is too far closed for the carb to work. Did you manually open the butterfly on just the rear carb with your finger while at idle? What happened? Did the RPMs go up? Did you or someone mess with the "do not adjust this" stop screws on the carbs?

Well I'll be the dissenting voice and offer a completely different theory. I propose that you may be running on one carb only because the butterfly for the other carb is closed. In other words... It's getting fuel to the bowl, but the butterfly is slammed completely shut. If that's the case, you can lift the piston and nothing will happen. You could also adjust the nozzle mixtures and nothing will happen. You could hold your hand across the carb face and nothing would happen. A full bowl, and none of it will ever leave the bowl because there's no airflow to pull it out of the nozzle. Pulling the choke lever also opens the throttle plate a little and that would explain why yanking the choke makes it run OK while the choke is pulled. Did you do any rough sync of the carbs after you installed the carbs and linkage? What happens if you manually push the linkage for the rear carb open a little with your hand?

I've heard of them, but I've never looked into any details. What's the big deal about those Grose jets? What makes them so cool?

Thanks for the ideas guys! So why is it that most of the detailed info is coming from someone who lives thousands of miles away?? Dave, What's with the mercury vapor lights? Why shouldn't I stop? Are you implying some sort of health issue or are they just in a section of town that I shouldn't be in? Also, how long would it take to get from Boca to Orlando? If it's not too long, maybe I could stop in again.

I'm currently messing around with putting A/C into my 280 and I've got some HVAC parts on the bench. Here's some pics that might help you with your quest. This is a 260 faceplate from an A/C car: And this is a 77 280 faceplate from my non-A/C car: But what might help you with your quest is that the faceplate comes apart, and the only part unique to your car is the colored silk screened lens piece in the center. Here's the back of one of them with the light pipe removed. You're looking at the back of the silkscreened lens and the inside of the light pipe reflector assy: And here's the front side of the lens removed from the rest of the housing: The only unique part is the silk screened lens. Everything else is the same between a 260 (with AC) and a 77 280 without. I imagine if those two extremes are the same, then everything else from 74 to the end of 78 does too, regardless of the option set. They even all have the same part numbers molded into them. That should make finding a replacement a lot easier than struggling to find the exact replacement.

I'm going to be in the Boca Raton, FL area for a couple days next week. Getting to Boca on Sunday April 2nd, and will be there until Friday. Any tips and tricks and things I absolutely must do while I'm in the area?

Whaaaaaat?... I can't imagine a reason someone did that. I wonder if there was some weird HVAC customization planned that necessitated opening that slot. I cannot believe he simply didn't realize it was upside down!! As for replacing the label, don't forget that it's backlit. It's actually a piece of polyester on which they silk-screened the colors and text on the back side. Light shines through it. I doubt you could (ever) purchase just that label independently from other parts of the assy. I've had that part of the assy apart a couple times for my dash light LED conversion, but I can't put my fingers on any pics of that part of the process. I suspect I was in a hurry at that point and stopped taking pictures.

I've been thinking about the external adjustment concept a little more, and while I believe it's possible, I'm concerned about the amount of potential confusion and tuning issues it may CAUSE as opposed to fix. Just think about it... If you can externally adjust the height of the entire bowl assemble WRT to the nozzle, you can effectively get the fuel height correct even if the bowl level is in correct. Conversely... You can get the fuel level WRONG even if the bowl level is CORRECT. Can you just imagine the amount of documentation required to keep that situation under control? Haha!! Who want's to try to explain how to tune that to people who already don't really know what they're doing? I've got my nozzles six turns down and my plugs are black. Should I lower my bowls a little? Please advise!!!

I know you have already identified the car as a 72, but I wanted to point out (redundantly) that the carbs are the water heated 72 variety. Keep that in mind if you start mixing and matching carbs or intake manifolds. If you keep the same carbs with the same manifolds, you'll be fine. But if you start mixing and matching parts from other years, you'll need to take care of some other details.

From my brief experience with blasting, I found it was more than just from the car....

Crap. There they go again!!