2ManyZs

Well, as far as the oil pressure problem. First thing to do is to change the oil pressure sending unit or verify the oil pressure with a mechanical gauge in place of the electric one. Doubt you would have heat if you hooked up the hoses wrong so that is probably not the problem. Since it is probably warming up (even in NY state), you might want to check or replace the thermostat just to be on the safe side. Of course a new sending unit there might be the culprit too, hard to tell how much corrosion is on it, or if it has ever been replaced. Best to start with the obvious, before we go to the other causes. It could also be your mixture of antifreeze and water, most of the time a 50/50 mix is recommended. It is possible to get too much antifreeze in it and it will not cool as effectively.

Good looking wheels, had a set similar but not exactly like them till last week, unloaded them on the guy that bought my 280. I think you would be a little happier if you go with the 60 series tires. A little less sidewall height, a little less sidewall flex and an overall better look on the car. I've run 205's, 215's, and also 225's with no problems.

Just about any of the Z parts suppliers can get an airdam like that. MSA, VB would be the first places to look to find one that is cloest to the same. MSA has a pretty good selection of styles. If you get one like this I would suggest getting one in urethane, a fiberglass air dam is not a good idea if you plan on lowering your car.

Not sure exactly, but all the ones I have messed with it almost seemed to be about the same as wheel bearing grease.

Looks pretty darn good to me, no obvious rust thru in the body. Looks better than the free 72 I got. Lots of work yes, but geez, it's a 72, could have been a lot worse.

Mike, sounds like you may get your hands dirty on this one. One possibility is that it dropped the valve seats, or maybe they were hardly there before. Another possibility is the valve guides have dropped or the valves have siezed in them. If the valves have hit the piston and bent there has to be a reason for it, that is what I'm wondering about. Guess the only way to find out is to get your helper and yank the head off to find out what has really happened. BTW, don't forget to use the block on the cam chain or you'll end up pulling the front cover too.

Well, that isn't good at all. Must have had a bad timing chain or tensioner and when you started it up it jumped the cam timing. If it is the valves being bent, you should be able to just get a rebuilt head or rebuild the one you have and I'd definately do a timing chain while you are at it. Of course if it has damaged the pistons, well, we know the rest of the story. In answering your other post, I ran an ATK crate long block in my 75 for a couple years on the street, then raced the car from 89-84 with absolutely no problems with the motor. IMO the ATK crate engine would be an excellent motor for a street car. They do quality work and the motors themselves are not too expensive. You might try to go to them directly instead of buying one from MSA, you might be able to save a few bucks.

Hmm, guess I started something didn't I? Seems they both have that "What do you want?" look on their faces. Mine does the same thing everytime I pick up the camera, she looks at me with that look that says "you are such a fool" that I quit taking her picture. Got about 200 to choose from anyway.:eek: If we are going to trade pics of our pets we should at least identify the breed for the rest. Mine is a Sussex Spaniel. Oldest and rarest of the Spaniel breed.

Hmm, this doesn't sound so good.:mad: Try this, pull the plugs and turn it over. Still making noise? Try turning it over by hand. I'm just grasping at straws here, but it might be the starter. Either it isn't engaging the flywheel completely or the flywheel is losing teeth. It will make an awful racket it it is skipping on the teeth, hard to tell without hearing it, but keep yer fingers crossed, maybe it won't be so bad after all. If you had it running before without any funny noises this would be my first guess. We'll keep our fingers crossed:rolleyes:

Sorry, guess I had a serious case of "cabin fever" last winter. Took me a while to find a good Z site and I guess I got carried away huh? You should be glad I can't type as many wpm as EScanlon, or I'd be up to double that number by now. Now that summer is finally here, my postings are going to be fewer, all this Z talk has me motivated once again. So my thanks goes out to everybody for giving me the desire to get my butt back out in the garage and get my 71 finished as soon a possible. And for everyone who has been answering the questions I wasn't sure about, keep it up, I still have more to learn. BTW guys, if so many of you didn't live on the "wrong" side of the country, I might have been able to turn my hobby into a business...

The calculator should be in the downloads section. That's where I got it from anyway. Lot of fun to play with when there's nuttin' else to do. BTW, I wouldn't think the 4 cylinder L series rods would be anywhere near strong enough to put in the L-24 thru L-28. Not only that but you would run into piston problems. Not sure if the wrist pin is the same on all L series or not.

I tried it in the calculator and got to 8.9 with an E-31 and dished pistons with a 1 mm head gasket. Could go a bit over 9 if you had to deck the head 10 thousandths to true it. I think the easiest bet will be the flat tops. Ought to be able to run 91 octane without too much trouble if you keep it close to 10:1. Most of the new cars on the road now are running near to 10:1, but with the old engines without the benefit of the new computer systems running the ignition, injection etc. I think I'd go to 93 octane if possible. There is always the idea of using a custom piston (pricey) with a lower pin height or a higher dome.

Well, Scott Bruning sold out ZTherapy not too long ago, so let's hope the new owners keep up with his quality of work. And yes, their SU's are probably the best and easiest thing to upgrade a Z. If their carbs can supply a 200+ hp race motor in a Z, why spend the extra money on triples and go through the hassles of tuning? Now if the motor is really wild, then the triples might make more sense, but how many people go that far on a street car when it boils down to the bottom line? BTW, MSA still sells the bare 4 barrel intake for those people who still want to go that route.

Congrats, sounds like you now have one less project to do. BTW, good thing you stated that that is you in the pic, some people might have mistook you for Bill Gates, not that you are a bit of a computer nerd, but you do look a bit alike in that shot. Too bad we all can't have his money if we looked like him. We would all go have our hair cut and be buying up glasses huh? Is it idling rough after a cold start? Did you check or replace the cold start valve (injector) in the front of the intake? It may be loaded up with the same junk as the rest of the injectors. It's basically your choke on the FI cars.

Hmm, good question. You could easily ring up a hundred bucks in parts if you are going to do a serious tune-up. Hard to tell what the labor rate is in your area, could easily end up being double the price of the parts. If you aren't sure about the carbs you could just have him do them and do the rest yourself. Adjusting the valves isn't too difficult, swapping out the tune-up parts is fairly easy and you would end up saving enough to take the family out on the town for a weekend get-away. Too bad you live just a little too far away, or I would volunteer to give you a hand doing it here. I'm pretty rusty on the carb tuning but with all the postings here I bet we could get it pretty close. I guess it boils down to what you are willing to pay. I'd say you would be looking at close to 300 bucks at least if he is any good and charges accordingly.

Oops, too late huh? Meant to remind ya in the first post, just got in a hurry. Hmm, my camera is charged, too bad I can't get the darn thing to take a pic in focus. Guess I need to play with it some more, without messing it up! :eek:

You can get the adjustable camber bushing for the rear control arms which will give you the means to adjust the toe setting on the rear. As far as the front end goes with the wandering problem, some of it will depend on the size and width of the tires you have on the car. You could try to run it a little closer to zero toe if you are running a fairly wide tire. Camber change after installing the lowering springs will also contribute to it. You didn't say anything how your camber was in the front so I'm just guessing here.

Just as a reminder Mike. When you take the clips off the plugs on the injectors don't pull on them, use a pick or small screwdriver to GENTLY pry them loose. They get very brittle, and if you try to force them they will break and then it's time to buy new ones. Luckily MSA has replacements if you need them, plus the clips if one "flies" away. There are two o-rings that go on the injector, the small one on the nozzle where it mounts into the intake, and a larger one where it mounts into the mounting block. Don't forget to check or replace the short lines on the rail at the same time, if you are going to the trouble of changing injectors you may as well replace these at the same time. Use fuel injection hose on them as they do have quite a bit of pressure in the rail. If they are bulging at all it's time to replace them.

Sounds to me more like it could be a problem in the cold start circuit. Water temp switch, thermo time switch or the cold start valve (injector), or it could be the air temp sensor in the AFM. It might be either only working intermittantly or it could be just that the one time it either over enriched the mixture or didn't richen it up at all. There is also a cylinder head temp sensor that's involved too. UGH. Lots of things to check. You didn't say what color the smoke was, I'm just arse-uming it was black? Just in those few things, between all of them it's about 300 bucks for new.:mad: I'd check the wire plugs to all of them first, then using the service manual as a guide (hopefully you have a factory manual) you can check all the switches operation in the plug to the ECU. I'm pretty sure it tells which pins or for which. Sorry, I sold the 280 the other day so I don't have the 75 service manual anymore to use as a reference.

Dave, are ya trying to say us "older gentleman" remember things that are only a picture in a magazine to some of the younger "Zedheads"? I remember the Libra wheels quite well, my 280 had a set on it when I bought it back in 87, then I used them on a 82 200sx for a while, since they were 5.5 inch they worked great and looked pretty darn good on the 200sx. BTW, I even now where the complete set is hiding, I have "horse traded" them back and forth two or three times to the same guy, (the same one bought the 280 from), in fact I think they were traded for the same part I had originally, then when I found out the part was NLA, I made sure I got it back. Guess that means if Royce was a tot, I must have been just a "little bigger tot". BTW, the AM wheel that is a close copy of this is the 200S, not available in 14 inch, and not available in 4 lug either. They do look good since they are a fully polished wheel, shame they don't have one that will fit a Z anymore, at least not the early cars.

100 sounds a lttle high to me, 75 sounds more like it. Did you price the replacement injectors at MSA? There old catalog lists them for 50 each, so I'm pretty sure they have gone up some but wonder how much. Never heard of that brand from NAPA. Wonder what brand Auto Zone or Pep Boys (or any other chain store) could get if they can get them at all. Just be sure they have the O-rings with them, or you'll have to buy them seperately! I seriously doubt the injectors will provide much performance upgrade at all, that would come from a big throat throttle body or ECU improvements. Course there are the injectors for the ZX Turbo but they are in excess of 150 each.:eek:

Wish I could remember where I saved the rest of them, but here's a good one.

As far as the calipers go it's an either/or on the model they come from. Seems to me I remember reading somewhere the 4 Runner caliper may have had a larger piston, but don't know for sure. I guess the shim could be a flat washer if you had too, not sure how thick it needs to be. I guess that's something you have to find out when you do the swap, since there probably is a little variation in the calipers etc.

I never said the gears were cheap did I? I know, I bought a set for an R-200 years ago and they were expensive even in 1990. That's why I suggested trying to find a complete diff out of an automatic. You may be able to find one from a 77-78 auto since I believe they may have had an R-180 in them, not sure if they used R-200's and R-180's in the later years of the 280 but I know for sure they had R-180's in some, if not all.

Well, you could check it out, you may be able to buy the ring and pinion for a 3.54 but right now I'm not sure. There used to be a big selection of ring and pinions (new) that you could purchase, but the supply seems to be drying up. Try www.nismoparts.com first then widen your search to include all the aftermarket parts suppliers. Then buy according to who is the cheapest.