Captain Obvious

Haha! This has been bugging you since we talked last, hasn't it? :classic: You are a fountain of information. If it's not already on your had disk, you seem to be able to dredge it up from somewhere. I can tell already that the schematic is very different in spots than the 280Z ECU, but I bet the basic concept is very similar. That's awesome! Merry Christmas to me! I am going to have fun with that!

This is a great thread. Koalia, Hope you don't mind all the plating discussion. Jerry, PM back to you.

Jerry, Glad you had enough moolah left after LaSalle to do the Z car parts. Thanks again for the details. Sounds just like what I usually hear. Want nice clean shiny smooth results out? Then provide nice clean shiny smooth results in. GIGO. OK, now for the (hopefully not) million dollar question... How much? What did you pay for that tangle of parts?

Thanks Jerry. I suspect my buddy is getting zinc and doesn't know it. How agressive was the wire brushing prep you had to do? Did you have to abrade off all the original plating, or just get the big chunks of grease and rust off?

I understand the out of the comfort zone comment. I'm a slow decision guy too and my recent snap purchase should be delivered today. Not as big or as expensive as a Z, but same sentiment. Here's to hoping that 2013 will be both of our years!

Thanks for the details Carl. I've got a buddy who does a lot with antique motorcycle stuff and he often gets parts "cad plated". At least that's what they're telling him... Next time he and I get together, I'll poke him a little and try to find out if it's truly cad or if it's really zinc. As you described, they come back dull silver, and not yellow. I've thought about including some parts with his orders, but the results don't look "right" for a Z car. Sounds like it may be a secondary process that could be split stream for his stuff and mine. At this point, my Z is pleasure drive only and shouldn't see any inclement weather. Corrosion resistance for things like hardware is still important, but not as important as it used to be. I had not previously been interested in zinc plating, but Jerry's parts look good enough for me and it sounds like the corrosion resistance would be good enough for my application as well.

So what's the little switch pod by your right knee? Is that an ejector seat? PS - Put a wood shift knob in that thing... :bulb:

If that's original, then I just say "wow". I thought they all turned yellow butterscotch by now! Hoe away!! That's awesome! Want to trade for black? :laugh:

So about the plating... What process was used for the original factory plating? I know pretty much nothing about the subject, but I've usually heard it referred to as "cad plating", and (because that's what I always heard), I propagated that term. Is it cadmium or zinc? Are those parts you just got back done with the same plating material and process as OEM? PS - Those parts are beautiful, regardless of the details!

Unless you have an electric pump, then no. With a mechanical pump only, there is really no good way to see that fuel is getting through the carbs and into the engine without cranking the car. I would suggest two options... Either 1) crank the car until the pump primes and starts supplying fuel, or 2) prefill the carb bowls with fuel using a funnel and short piece of tubing. The engine should run for way long enough for the fuel pump to start supplying fuel by the time the bowls are sucked dry. If as part of the carb rebuild process you didn't already verify the float bowl levels by filling up the carb bowls with fuel and looking at the level using a clear tube on the outlet nipple, then now is your chance and in this case, I would recommend option 2. If you already verified the level with the carbs off the car, then either option will work, however, if you choose option 1, then I recommend you pull the plugs and disconnect the primary side of the coil until you know the fuel system is working properly. That will ease the strain on the associated parts and allow you to crank longer and faster without damaging anything.

Yup. I'm stumped. Sorry. I've heard of a device in use a long time ago that separated a compressed air stream into a warm and cold stream*... Something on old trains maybe? Never studied it, but it always sounded like voodoo to me. Maybe that's what you've got going on? :classic: So do the floor flappies on the side of the air box open enough for you to stick a finger up in there and reach the heater core to see how it feels? I'm grasping at straws, but it might lend a clue. * - The Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube

Congrats! That can't be the original interior, can it? [ATTACH=CONFIG]59457[/ATTACH] Please tell me all the upholstery has been redone!

Yeah, pulling the heater core is no treat. I took my whole heater box out when I had the dashboard out of the car for other reasons, and getting to the heater core then is obviously cake. I took some pics of my box when I had mine completely apart, and I would be hard pressed to believe that the air blasting straight down on the bottom of the shell would split evenly as well. So, all that said, you've certainly got nothing to lose by flushing the heater core. I've got no other bright ideas. How hot is the hot side? The greater the contrast between the two sides, the harder it is to explain any of this. Another question... What do the defrost outlets do when you put it into defrost mode? Is one of them cold as well?

I'm no expert on the HVAC system, but I was deep into mine and I can't come up with any possible explanation for what you're seeing. As for your heater core theory... remember that the coolant runs from one side to the other, not between front and back. With that in mind, a partially clogged core does not support what you think you're seeing. If there were come clogged rods, it might be a little warmer in the front of the core when compared to the back, but not a differential between left and right. If you are truly getting cold air out of one floor vent while getting hot out of the other, then I'm stumped.

My first thought was AAR as well. I'm thinking that maybe it's gunked with sticky PCV system blowby and it still works, but it sticks in place. Theory being that the AAR is supposed to creep open as the engine cools off and by the time you start the cold engine next day, it has creeped open enough to cause a high "cold" idle. If the AAR is sticky, maybe it's not opening like it should, but the vibration and shock of starting the motor is enough to get it to move to the correct position? Then after the second start attempt, it will be OK. So the question would be... Once you have feathered the gas pedal for a few seconds, does the idle continue to struggle, or is it a nice smooth high idle like it's supposed to be? My second thought would be that you are always borderline lean and when the engine is stone cold it just can't handle it.

Thanks again guys. The car in question is a 77, and I'm pretty sure that I remember they were the self tapping variety. I've got the other two screws (the machine screw style) and I remember thinking to myself that it seemed really stupid (and expensive) for Datsun to have used three different styles of screws to hold that clamshell in place. I think I'm going to unscrew one or two of my door sill screws and see if I can't figure out if that's what happened. Thanks for the saucer pic Blue. I knew it...

And BTW, that's an awesome pic with your annotations on it. Very helpful!

Thanks much Mike. Now I've got some kind of idea what it is that I'm looking for. I was cleaning up a little in the workshop this afternoon (oh, the horror), and found a plastic baggie with seven screws. Thought I might be on to something, but there were too many of them, they were black plated, and a little too long. So they aren't the right ones, but they were important enough for me to put them in a baggie. Now if I could just remember what THEY were for. OK... Here's an idea. What do the screws that hold the aluminum dooe sill plates on look like? Maybe I got all the hardware, but in the wrong locations? Are the ones that hold the door sill plates flat heads, or pan heads? Are they supposed to be black plated? Darn aliens... Came down from Canada to escape the winter cold.

Thanks guys. I've been all over the shop looking for my clamshell screws. I think aliens took them. It bugs the crap out of me because I know how easy stuff like that is to misplace, so I'm pretty careful. I've got the other two machine screws in a little zip-top baggie just like they are supposed to be, but the other four longer ones are not with them. That's what makes this even more difficult... I know where they're SUPPOSED to be, and they're not there. Mike, If you get a chance to take a pic, I'd be much obliged. I'm not in any hurry so don't risk frostbite for the pics, but when you get a chance. Haha! I really don't want to have to hog those things out with a bench grinder! I've found people on ebay selling clamshells, but it seems really stupid to buy a whole clamshell just for the four screws. And beyond that, it's unclear if the screws are even included...

I took my steering wheel clamshell trim off a while ago, and now I can't find the four screws that hold the two halves of the clamshell together. The stupidest part is that I have the two machine screws that hold the lower clam to the underside of the ignition switch and steering column, but the four that hold the two plastic parts together are MIA. :mad: I've got a container of assorted Z hardware and might have something in there that might work, but I've tried a few and I'm worried about stripping out the weak plastic threads with too much trial and error. Anyone have a picture of the four screws in question so I at least know what I'm hunting for? Are the threads more like a machine screw, or a wood screw?

Haha!! I remember a really funny pic entitled "Beauty and It's Ugly Bitch" or something like that... I've got a copy of it here, but it's most certainly inappropriate. I'm sure there are others on this forum who remember that pic!

Don't get me wrong... My snake oil detector has a hair trigger, and I'm not calling snake oil on this one yet. I can't tell you why it wouldn't work. Haha! Of course, I can't tell you why it SHOULD work either, but that's the point. The best strike I can come up with AGAINST the concept is the lack of expert consensus and the slow adoption in the market. Theory being that when something really, truly, really proves itself to be a better mouse trap, then the hype factor kicks in and market adoption is strong and rapid. That has not happened in this case. Best strike I can come up with FOR it is that fact that the concept has been around for so long and nobody has been able to refute the claims. The "where there's smoke there's fire" defense.

I'm with you Mike. I find the claims and the theory intriguing. Enough so that I built a desulfator a few years ago to try to resurrect my "not yet internally shorted, but low capacity" cycle battery. I charged the battery to what it would accept. measured the capacity, alternated hanging my desulator on it for a few days and recharging, and then measured the capacity again. In the end, there was no capacity increase and I had to replace the battery. But... Before you go and throw in the towel on the technology, there are plenty of potential reasons why it did not work for me. Reasons ranging from the battery may have been too far gone to save, to I made some of my own theorized design improvements to the traditional desulfator design. :bulb: Haven't thought about it since, but it's still sitting in the corner of the workshop! Thanks for the reminder!

What is supposed to happen is that there simply isn't enough travel in the adjuster mechanism to "catch" a tooth on the adjuster star wheel. As you saw when someone else was pulling the handle, there is a small lever that catches on and turns the adjuster gear. But the arm is only able to turn the gear if it catches a tooth. When the brakes are fully adjusted, there is supposed to be such a small amount of travel in that arm that it never "retreats" far enough to get behind the next tooth. It goes like this... As the shoes wear, the shoe travel increases, and as the shoe travel increases so does the travel in the adjuster arm. The magic occurs when the arm travel is so great that it clicks behind a fresh tooth on the gear and when the lever is pulled the next time, it advances the gear by one tooth. In other words... What your are describing should not be able to happen. Not saying that it isn't... Just saying that it "should be" impossible.

That's great. Did you actually check that there is fuel getting into the bowl? You did the bench set-up, but you didn't verify that it worked. Sure you might have a faulty ballast resistor in addition to other problems, but a faulty ballast resistor isn't temporarily fixed by a blast of starter fluid. Start simple... Pull the hose off between the bowl and the nozzle and use a clear tube to measure the bowl level as described in the manual.