Captain Obvious

Sorry to hear about the continued troubles. Are you sure you're using appropriate injectors? And have you ever tried another ECU just to see what happens? Wish we were closer together, I'd be happy to do what I could to help.

Forgot to ask... Which ECU is running? Is it that newer one with the DIPs?

Excellent! So now it's on to the next hottest fire I assume. Liked the thumbs up BTW!

Here's a bunch of details of what I did: http://www.classiczcars.com/topic/48758-suspension-refresh/ http://www.classiczcars.com/topic/48621-steering-rack-disassembly-and-refurb/

I'll offer another perspective... I've seen several incorrectly fitting and incorrectly installed poly bushings in my travels. I know for a fact that on my car, my PO had installed poly bushings everywhere and the car felt horrible and handled like crap. I took most of the poly out and replaced with rubber, but during that process I found a long laundry list of issues with the whole job. Some bushings designed poorly and not fitting properly. Some bushings installed incorrectly. Some related suspension bits not put back together in the right order and/or orientation. I bet that if the bushings are designed properly, fit right, and are installed properly the car will feel very different than what happens on a lot of installs. In other words, I believe that some of the suspension issues that are attributed to poly bushings might not be the bushing's fault. The bottom line is that if you're going to compare a poly install with a rubber install, you better make sure both installs were done right or you might not be doing a fair evaluation.

I've not seen that phenomenon on the round top carbs, but I've seen it on the 280 throttle body as well as other throttle bodies from other unrelated cars as well. Perfectly smooth when off, but sticky with vacuum pulling against the butterfly plate with the engine running. I won't claim to fully understand exactly what's going on, but in my experience it's been caused by either worn throttle butterfly shafts as suggested above, or by dirty crud on the butterfly and/or throat walls where the butterfly meets the walls. So first suggestion would be to hold the carbs butterflies completely open and thoroughly clean the the interior walls of the carbs and the butterflies really well with a carb cleaner wetted rag. Might be tough with the carbs on the car, but you could remove the domes and suction pistons and that might allow enough room to get in there without taking the carbs completely off. If that doesn't help, then I suspect the chrome plating has worn off your throttle shafts exposing the brass underneath (very likely). You could put some lube on the shafts and work them around. That may help temporarily, but to really fix it, you'll need more dramatic measures.

Excellent. I love it when a plan comes together. Good thinking on the cable re-route to make future work easier. I should have done that too. This whole thing reminds me that I gotta pull my dash... I've got a leaking heater core and I also need to do some electrical work for a headlight relay upgrade. Easier if I just pull the whole dash. My car has been in hibernation, but Z season is fast approaching! If I remember, I'll reroute that cable while the dash is out.

They probably put that aluminum portion at the bottom of the cup to add additional material for threads. And they probably used aluminum because it's easier to machine than steel. It's clearly swaged/peened in place and I doubt you would be able to get it out in good enough shape to be able to bend it a third time back into place without cracking it. In fact, I doubt you'd even be able to get it out without cracking off the material that's been bent into retaining position. Hmmm... So ideas? 1) Drill it out, make a polished aluminum replacement with a few threads on the inside and use a nut to hold it in place. You got room for a nut on the inside? 2) Drill it out, make a steel replacement, silver braze it into place, and send the whole thing off for plating as a unit. 3) Carefully drill/grind off as little of the the peened material off the inside required to get it out and then JB weld it back into place after plating. It's gotta hold vacuum, right?

Wow! Shiny!! That's a great finish! PS - I see you!!

John, Thanks from me too.

Cool. I'm assuming this is one of those electronic flashers we were talking about near the top of the thread? Did your flashy bulb burn out already, or are you just planning ahead?

I believe the intuition is correct. The highest of the forces should be compression straight down the rod. And after all, one mm off the diameter is only a half mm off the radius (about 20 thousandths for us US folks). I'm no engine builder or materials science guy, but my seat of the pants engineering says I wouldn't be concerned about taking off .020 of material. Anyway, I know it's academic because you're not ready to try to tackle a job like this, but if you were, you juuuuuust might be able to get that on your lathe. The FSM says the rods are 5.13 inches "center distance", and I assume they're taking center to center between the two bearing surfaces. With the big end lower cap off, you just might be able to swing it. (Get it... Swing it?) Haha! I kill me.

Never heard anything about it, but wanted to ask... What's the swing of your new lathe? You might be able to do this yourself if you decide to go that route.

And later in the lube section it says that the pressure relief valve in the pump limits the pressure at 80psi. With those data points, I consider 70 psi at 3K warm to be just fine for an engine with a well done fresh bottom end. Now, if the pressure was like 90 psi at idle when warm, then I'd be a little more concerned about the bearing clearances, but this one sounds like a non-problem. Diseazd, I know you're not worried anymore, but if you do another turn around and decide you're worried about it again, I'd be happy to trade for my engine!

Well, considering the alternatives, that's awesome news! I am surprised that the failure was enough to actually stall the motor while it was running. I was figuring that it was straining and squealing, but finally locked up good while stationary. Also surprised there wasn't shrapnel. Anyway, awesome news. So I went back to the very beginning of the thread where you were questioning your oil pressure numbers: "My 71 240Z (L24engine) runs 75 lbs. of oil pressure at 3000 rpm." Don't know why I didn't mention it before, but I'm not sure I would have ever even called that a problem. You get 75 lbs at 3000 RPM (when hot, I assume)? So what? Sounds like a healthy bottom end to me. I assume it drops off at idle? I've seen the "10 psi for each 1000 RPM" tossed about, but my understanding was that was a minimum before you needed to do something about it. Not what you could expect on a new healthy motor. Frankly, if I had a freshly rebuilt bottom end and only got 30 psi at 3000 RPM, I'd be disappointed.

Haha! He said the motor is fine. There are clearly some clutch parts that are completely FUBAR, but the rest of the motor is fine. Frankly I'm surprised there wasn't a more spectacular failure with shrapnel. I'm guessing it was squealing like a pig and he shut the motor down. The front of the throw out bearing and a bunch of pressure plate fingers were all liquidy hit in spots from the friction and once it stopped turning, everything welded together before they cooled

Been a while since I messed with oil pumps, but IIRC, the turbo oil pump is longer to accommodate internally longer rotor gears. In other words, you might be able to tell that from the outside?

Wouldn't matter what gear the tranny was in. The fault was upstream from there. My interpretation is as follows... Throw out bearing was installed incorrectly, and as such, was always loaded. Problem is, they're not designed for that. They're designed for intermittent loading only (when you push the clutch pedal in). Throw out bearing worked for a while before seizing internally. Now the front part don't turn no more and the disk which is supposed to spin with the pressure plate is now sliding against the fingers. This caused the front part of the throw out bearing to get so hot that it welded to pressure plate fingers. Front part now stuck to what wants to rotate. Rear part never rotates. Something's gotta stop... Or give.

Good step forward. Now you'll have to crawl under the car. I can't stall you anymore. PS - Nice pics!

So on the good side, your motor is fine. On the bad side, you still have no explanation for your high oil pressure, right?

Whew. Good! I was hoping I was remembering that right. All I remember was that I was having a heck of a time measuring the ratio on a diff out of the car. Nothing was making any sense until I locked one of the axle flanges in place.

Glad to help and I hope it does in fact help! So one more detail about the JIS screws vs Phillips. I've not reviewed the mechanical specs for both, but I've found that it often helps to take a small amount of material off the very tip of your typical Phillips screwdriver in order to get a better bite on a JIS screw head. In other words... I've found that Phillips screwdrivers bottom out in JIS screws before they are fully engaged because the tips are "too pointy". With something that small, a couple passes of the screwdriver point across some sandpaper ought to take off enough material to allow deeper engagement. Couple strikes straight across some 320 grit? Thanks for the link back to that thread and the only other thing I could add is that I managed to get the air duct off and back on, so it's at least possible! So you can wrestle with the screw or you can wrestle with the duct.

If you've got both wheels off the ground, this might not work. I think you have to insure that only one wheel can spin or it doubles the ratio because of the differential function inside the gear case. You'll need to block the other wheel to prevent it from spinning in order to use this method. Either jack up just one side or use a wheel chock or something to block the other side wheel from turning?

Two things that might help... First is that the screw LOOKS like a Phillips head, but in reality it's not. It's a JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) screw that's very similar to Phillips, but slightly different. Most of the time they're close enough that you can use typical Phillips screwdrivers on them without incident, but there are times when a Phillips screwdriver will smear out the JIS screw head. Second thing? If you're just trying to replace the upper bulb and you've already got the tach out, can you reach in through the hole left by the missing tach to get to the top speedo bulb? You might not have to pull the speedo at all? (Also, can you post a link to that thread where I was talking about the cable before? I remember the thread, but can't find it.)

You always need an alignment after replacing bushings and the alignment guys are supposed to adjust things such that the steering wheel ends up at perfect 12:00 when the alignment is done. Problem is it's not always that easy to accomplish and they're in the business of making money. And important to note that pulling the steering wheel off the column and changing it's position is NOT the correct way to adjust to 12:00. The steering wheel 12:00 position is supposed to be accomplished by adjustment of the tie rod ends, not the steering wheel to column positioning. So, bottom line is that the alignment guys didn't get it quite right and if it bothers you enough, you should take it back to them and tell them about it. But be aware that it's not always easy for them to get the steering wheel perfect, and I would cite two possible reasons. 1) Accumulated looseness in the whole system from steering column bearings all the way to the wheel bearings and everything in between. 2) The sticky friction of the urethane bushings that you just installed. They're in the business of making money and probably won't want to spend four alignments worth of time getting your car hair splitting perfect.