Captain Obvious

Are you using stock style rubber bushings, or poly? Because (as Zed Head mentioned above) if you're using poly, then the sequence doesn't matter at all. Snug everything up and then do your final tightening in any order you want to. No difference.

Why were the crossmember mods garbage? What went wrong?

Can't do an episode without "BOFF!!!"

It should go into fifth just like any other gear. Wouldn't be the first time something like this happened... I went to look at a "five speed", and after trying unsuccessfully to get it into fifth, I had the difficult task of breaking the news to the guy trying to sell it. He (honestly I think) didn't know. Boy am I glad I checked!! (Sorry...)

Thanks for the laughs. That's funny stuff!

I realize I'm often the dissenting voice, but I don't like them. I think they look "kids smartphone". Too cartoonish. On the good side, the Kardashians will now be able to communicate using the new images.

Sounds like success! You are the man! I used to be able to do SMT without magnification, but not anymore <sigh>. When doing the small stuff now, I'm doing the same thing you are with a loupe, and it's a real pain. I should invest in one of those bench mounted magnifying loop lamps too.

So what's the other work in progress in the background with the MM wheels and the multi-color paint scheme?

Yeah, from your reminiscing in the injured and bored thread, we know what you mean.

If by unique you mean "there does not exist another one like it anywhere else on the face of the planet", then I suspect the answer is "No, it's not unique". It's not an OEM Z knob from any year... I second Dennis' belief that it's aftermarket.

But silly stupid dumb. Last edit... I'm putting it back in and if it's wrong, someone can prove it to me. I had what I thought was a continuation of that Laugh-In quote, but I just dug around a little online and I couldn't find corroboration. That was a recurring character for Arte, right? I'm only finding clips of one occurrence.

I do too, and I looked at using them for this project. They're very flexible and I think that kind of webbing would work fine, but the reason I didn't use them was because of the age. Most plastics deteriorate with time and I didn't want to use 40 year old plastic webbing. I wanted new. I wouldn't use the old stuff. Webbing is cheap.

I stitched that blue one myself on an old household strength Singer machine that came to us from my Mother-In-Law. Here's the whole story about the sewing process... I made that blue one as proof of concept. Easy peasy. As soon as proof of concept was a success, I pulled the trigger on the higher quality material from McMaster. The black webbing arrived and I started making a better strap to replace the blue one. First thing I did was doubled up the black webbing for additional strength. That worked fine, so I figured "If two layers was OK, then three would be even better." Well not so... I blowed up the sewing machine. Ripped the teeth off one of the plastic gears inside. I knew I was overtaxing the poor old girl, but I pushed ahead anyway and she made it clear that she just couldn't handle the strain. So since then I have learned more about sewing machine repair than I ever wanted to know, and I have purchased and installed a replacement gear as well as clean, adjust, and lube the whole thing. So at this point the machine is back to better than before I started, but I haven't gotten back to working on the final strap yet. I do know, however, that my household grade machine can deal with two layers of that black stuff, but not three. I really didn't need to triple it up anywhere, but it was the over-engineer in me. When I get back to it, I'll either farm out the final sewing, or I'll limit my layers to two.

Excellent. Another crises averted. Glad you figured it out!

Haha! Sorry. I had the work done before the prior weekend, but was too rushed leading up to Zcon to get something posted. File it away and if you're ever psychic enough to find yourself messing with that thing again, do the hardware switch then! And as for your posture working on yours... Pics or it didn't happen.

So... Who wants to send me an early current driven tach for some reverse engineering? Madkaw, the relay system for the auto trans was originally tied into the tach, but only because it shorted across the advanced points contacts until the temperature came up. You can just disconnect that stuff. And I made this up a little while ago for a different discussion. Doesn't add any new revelations here, but just in case:

Hi Mike, Got your PM and just replied. Thanks for getting in contact so quickly!

I probably won't make it to Austin because of the distance, but I do have a couple suggestions for improvement based on my two past convention experiences. If there is someone here on forum from the host club that would like to talk about them, send me a PM?

Mike, Very nice! And in fact, Cliff looks more like Chewie than Roger. It's the hair.

That's awesome!!

While messing around with the diff straps, I noticed what may be some obscure Z car trivia... Here are the two belts I have. Top is from my old 260 (stamped with P/N 55425-E4100), and the bottom is the one that I just took off my 280 (stamped with P/N 55425-N4300): I wanted to know the circumferences of the two, so I put some tape on the inside like this: And then peeled the tape off and measured the length like this. It's not an extremely accurate way to make this measurement, but was probably good enough. The measurements I got showed that the 260 belt was a little longer than 21 inches in circumference while the 280 belt was a little shorter than 21 inches circumference: But the neat potential trivia part is that there are numbers molded into the ID side of each belt. The 260 belt has a "537" molded in: And the 280 has a "529" molded into it: And if you interpret those molded numbers as millimeters, you'll find that the math works out almost perfect. So I don't know for sure if those molded-in numbers were in fact the circumference length from the factory, but it sure appears that way to me. It's also interesting to note that the 280 belt seems to be designed a little shorter than the earlier belts, even though it's for a R200 instead of a R180?:

Yup. That works. I considered doing the same thing as well, but decided that the SHCS option was easier and a little more forward compatible. I mean... I sure don't expect that I'll need to replace that mount again, but if I ever do, I won't have to grind clearance on each new one that goes in.

Haha!! Thanks! I may have won the "more free time than money award", but other than that, I'm not so sure. And I'm electrical, not chemical. But what's a discipline between friends?

Zed Head, I like your metal mount. And about that leather looking arrestor band... I don't think that's leather. I think that's Super-Grip Rubber Flat Belting from McMaster - "Commonly used for material handling and light to medium duty power transmission, this belting has a textured rubber cover on both sides for a better grip on material than urethane. Inner layers are cotton. Width tolerance is ±1/8". Color is tan." Something like McMaster P/N 5753K424. Three ply 1 1/2 inch wide: I looked at a lot of flat belting before I decided to try my web strap approach.