KDMatt

beandip: I think Tomohawk was referring to the stance of his car, which is, as you know, related to springs/suspension components. So I believe he is sort of on the same page.

Hrm... Well I'm overdue for an oil change, and I've noticed that my oil is, sorta thin I guess. I mean, it's not ridiculously thin... It's still just as thick as the oil I keep pouring in there (Castrol High-Mileage formula). Maybe I should try some 20w in there for a while? ... Come October this car is going to be stored... and naturally, I plan to run it every now and again just to keep things from settling too much, but I have to know, is a heavier grade of oil more or less likely to make the engine seize from inactivity? EDIT: Is it also possible that the "High-Mileage" formula has a lot of detergents in it and is really thin because of that? ... I mean I'm no oil expert, but this 10w I keep putting in there seems a lot thinner than I remember most normal 10w oil being.

Well, I finally bit the bullet and decided to toy with the AFM spring tension today (even after cleaning out a very corroded temp sensor connection, which didn't make a difference). I rotated the gear about 8 teeth CW to try to lean things out. Smoking seems like it has been reduced a bit, but is still, very much, there. Also, I'm noticing little specs of liquid spewing out the exhaust too. 'Can't tell if it's just condensation (it IS getting below 60/50 here at night now), or if it's fuel or oil or what. All I know is that it's blackish and relatively thin. Any other EFI junkies wanna fire some ideas at me? I'm hoping to clear this up a lot before changing spark plugs again (and subsequently heading off to school in the next couple of days)... It's getting annoying to change plugs every two months... It's getting the point now where it's getting tougher to start, and that's how I know my plugs are about toast.

Welcome into the fold Marc... I am absolutely blown away at the price you payed for that gem! ... I thought I got a good deal...!!

Ahhh well, I had a feeling it might've been too good to be true... granted yes, I have heard there is a large surplus of nicely kept, oldschool Z's on the West Coast...

Vintagecarman (if you're still coming on here): Try not to take the subdued hostility displayed by some of the members here too badly. Please understand that some of the people here have been searching for years to find a rust-free Z worthy of their attention AND/OR are muddling their way through rust damage and doing serious body work to correct rust-damage. I make this point to offer the idea that perhaps some people are feeling a bit resentful when you say that you could almost, in a sense, snap your fingers and have "hundreds" of "rust-free" Z's at your disposal. After all, it took them a lot of time, effort, and possibly long-distance travel to arrive at this point in their resto. project, and to say that you could have delivered an awesome Z to them after hardly even lifting a finger to search, I can imagine, would make people feel rather upset... like "Jesus buddy, if that were true, how come it took me X amount of time to find mine?" Beautifully restored Z's don't hold a huge market value, so bringing a Z to life is, quite literally, a labor of love. Some people spend years of their spare-time fixing nothing but rust damage... and again, I'm sure we can agree that having someone tell you that this could have, effortlessly, been avoided... well... it's not fun. My two cents here. Welcome BTW.

Hrm, I've been tinkering this week, and here's what I've discovered. I swapped in the AFM from the 77, this made no difference. I'm beginning to feel that a faulty/messed-with AFM is not my problem. I did however notice an exposed, corroded green wire coming off of the coolant temperature switch. Hrm... Maybe the coolant temperature switch and/or sensor are not functioning properly? Does anyone have a test procedure for these things buried away? Other Thoughts?

Dude, the just for fun one... awesome. If you need someone to volunteer their Z so it can be built, I'm totally game!

The engine, for the most part, is idling pretty smoothly. There isn't much of a noticeable miss, I'm just pulling the plugs and noticing them all looking pretty blacked out. The deposits on the plugs are black, and bear a bit of an oily residue. There's only a very minimal amount of oil seapage on the floor at night, so yes, burning is the case. Recent compression test showed (from 1 to 6) 140 140 140 140 160 150 I would really like to address my rich-mixture issue first, since I believe that will be the easier issue to resolve, not to say I'm not eager to resolve burning oil either though.

Okay folks, the Z is still running rich, and stills appears to be burning oil. I'm going to list off some symptoms, and I would very much appreciate anyone who would like to give me some ideas. I'm finally getting to that point where I'm feeling comfortable working on my car by myself and replacing bad parts. Here's what I'ves got for yas: I recently discovered a discconnected PCV hose, I felt the hose, the vacuum here felt pretty weak. There was also no distinct "whistling" sound that gets spoken of often. Reconnected, better idle, 'can't tell if the exhaust is any more or less smokey though. I replaced a cracked hose atop the valve-cover. This is the breather hose that connects back into the throttle. I have the 75/76 pre voluntary recall setup with a t-junction. The old hose, I noticed, was covered in grease and oily scum (it was shiny when I pulled it actually). This hose had a crack in it, which I temporarily sealed off with some tape before replacing. I also seem to go through oil sporadically... I'm in the habit of checking the oil dipstick every other week. Sometimes it's still right where it's supposed to be, and sometimes it'll read that it's down by 2-quarts... strange to me. Plugs also get fouled very quickly. After only a few hundred miles of driving they come out black on every cylinder. I believe there is an 'over-rich' condition occuring right now. The smoke is faintly blue when the engine is cold, but dissipates as it heats up. When I juice the engine after everything is nice and warmed up, I still get traces of gray in the exhaust, which I'm told indicates a rich condition... This also has the effect of making the exhaust smell bad, which deters female passengers (bad news for me). There's also a crack in the header in the engine bay... which only adds to bad exhaust fumes at idle in the cabin. Also, I believe the AFM may have been tampered with at some point in the car's lifetime. I spent some time cleaning up electrical connections in the engine bay the other weekend, and everytime I'd pull one, I'd notice green corrosion from 30 years of having not been cleaned. This was not the case with the AFM connector, the connections all looked pretty clean which makes me think someone has pulled the AFM out and cleaned it up previously which also leaves room for tampering. Is the AFM from a '77 compatible with my '76? I went to the junkyard today and it was only $9.00 to pull an AFM off of a car there so I went for it. Any ideas people can put forward would be awesome.

Bringing this topic up again because I want to bring to the attention of others that I now have an extra 280 splash-pan I can part with. 'Went to the junkyward today to grab some stuff and I saw a splash pan sittin' underneath the '77 I was stripping. Any takers may contact via PM if they wish.

Yep. Hopefully you have a mild-mannered one. You sound like another young guy (like me), and if you're lucky your Z will realize this, and be thankful that someone who truly appreciates the Z-car spirit has inherited her. Enjoy the ride buddy.

Enigma, I think it's awesome. Don't let others crush your spirits. ... As for the plate? ... That's whacko... 'Gotta be a good reason for it though. Adding extra things, while still possibly dumbassery, could at least be dumbassery with a purpose. It takes tenacity to build something and add it... it only takes a bit of stupidity to remove something and forgot to reattach/put it back on.

What are you referring to in this picture?

Hey that happens too! I've had the car for over a year and I just noticed it today. ... even more, it completely slipped by the 4 or 5 Z-guys from ZOOM who've looked under my hood! ... Amazing. ... and I would be honored to have my phrase inducted into the master list of acronyms... should others deem it worthy. POD/COD ... both already exist though... POD is like a band or something... and COD is Cash on Delivery... could get confusing IMO.

Ron, Is your engine vacuum okay? I just recently noticed a pretty significant vacuum leakage in my 280 (See open discussion for details), and after remedying this, I noticed a significant difference in both power and idle. I mean, I figure since you're still fishing for ideas...

Oh, I forgot, check these out.

The ultimate display in PO (and CO) dumbassery my friends. I finally figured out why my car idles like crap. Today I went hunting for my PCV valve, I figured I should check to see if it was making good vacuum or not. On the course of this little expedition I discovered a hose that didn't really go anywhere... It was painted the same color as the body, which meant that it had probably just been resting against the sidewalls of the engine-bay (at least since the car was last repainted in the late 80's. And I thought "Gee, that's kinda funny, hoses coming off of the engine usually connect to things." So I followed it, and sure enough I discovered the PCV valve... I was in utter disbelief... what kind of dumbasses (referring to two previous owners) wouldn't notice a disconnected PCV valve? So I started up my car and felt the hose, and sure enough there was a bit of a vacuum, not a lot, but some. I covered up the hose with my thumb, and boom, my idle suddenly jumped from an unsteady 800 to a very strong 1200, instantly! ... So someone in the past noticed the low idle after the hose came loose, and instead of inspecting the PCV valve... simply twisted out the idle screw... great... So naturally, I reconnected the hose, screwed in the idle adjust to bring it back to 800... and I have never been more thrilled in my life. The engine actually idles without the tach bouncing! AMAZING! ... to say nothing about when I opened 'er up on the highway... heheh... I'm gonna shoot some carbie cleaner into the PCV valve later to see if I can make it "whistle" like I guess it ought to. I also can't wait to see the exhaust when I fire it up cold. My Z is a notorious smoker... she likes to smoke when she's cold (be it a hint of burning oil mixed with a slightly over-rich fuel mixture)... ... Anyone else care to relate their PO "horror stories?"

Okay folks, well I found the timing marks today. I took another peek under the hood and sure enough I saw this weird plate with little notches cut in it on the passenger side. I cleaned it up and, voila! Now I need to find the notch on the crankshaft pulley and I'm business. Thanks for the link Savannah... makes me think I should clean up my PCV valve too, haha.

I couldn't find any marks whatsoever when I looked... with the exception of what looked like some kind of writing ingraved on the inside of the crankshaft pulley. In answer to your question "Master," I have a dual-groove pulley (I believe): One, the narrower groove, goes off to the alternator, and the other would have connected to two other pulleys (one is the air conditioning compressor... and the other... I have no clue... it looks like it's where a power steering pump would have been on a ZX L28). This second belt is absent, undoubtedly removed by a PO in a desperate quest for horsepower... ... not to say I mind some of the things this PO did... he did some good stuff, like dropping in a 5-speed and what I believe could be an R200 diff (not sure, but records indicate the diff isn't stock). However, I'm worried he may have toyed with the fuel-mixture and ignition timing too much. ... anyway, err... where was I..? ... ah yes timing. I'm a total n00b when it comes to stuff like this... stuff that should be pretty basic. I understand the concept of ignition advance... it's just finding the damn notch and all that that's killing me. Also, I can't find any mention of "Harmonic Balancer" in the repair manual I've got in front of me... I may have to dig around in the many PDFs of the FSM. I'm also thinking about taking some time to adjust the valve lash... It's one of those tedious things I've been putting off because it scares me a little... From where I'm sitting it seems like it'd be pretty easy to screw something up on a project like that (i.e. damaging a cam lobe or valve spring... or making the valve fall into the cylinder... etc.). Also, on a slightly unrelated note, my car seems to be idling dangerously low when it's relatively cold... and by dangerously low I mean like 650 rpm... After it warms up it rests comfortably at 800rpm, but not until then...

I'm wondering how one checks the timing on these cars. I've searched the pulley/wheels on the front of my block from top to bottom, and I can't find so much as a hint of any kind of permanent mark on there. Even the local Z-guy was stumped (he couldn't find them either). As you know, mine's a '76... what you don't know is this "local Z-guy" has an '81 turbo (and I believe he said he had a '77 and a '78(?) prior?) ... Did the 76's leave the factory devoid of permanent timing marks... meaning... would I have to manually rotate the engine to TDC on #1 and use some chalk or something? Also (adding to a string of simply answered questions) how do I rotate the engine without cranking the starter? I've seen this mentioned time and time again in manuals and how-to's but they never seem dumbed-down enough for me to understand how that's achieved. The more dumbed down your answers can be, the better!

finding that in almost every case, someone has a car in worse shaop than yours, but is undaunted. It's one of the things I enjoy about the club, but it also looked a bit underrepresented, so I clicked it. (btw, I think someone meant "shape" there, as opposed to "shaop") I love that if anything ever goes wrong with my car, I can post in the "HELP" section, and within 12 hours there are at least 3 or 4 people have either had the exact some problem (and remember how it was rectified), or have some very good ideas on what the problem could be. It helps take the guess-work out of classic car ownership and it makes one feel very confident knowing that there is a sympathetic support system behind him/her. Honestly though, I selected the option in the poll I did because it's true for me. No matter how many little quirks my car develops, or no matter how many things stop working, it's always refreshing to know that there's some still guy who's Z is a work in progress: a chunk of metal on jack-stands, and his life is that much more empty for not being able to enjoy it as what a Z is, and what it represents: a car that's meant to be driven and the freedom go where you will... IN STYLE! I always feel thankful every time I go for a cruise: Mine runs and drives (and still gets looks sometimes!) That feeling never stops being awesome.

Er... yes, now that I think about it, it isn't so much corrosion as it is just a black build-up. I'd like to know what's causing it, and if replacing the battery will rectify it.

Nearly a month ago I replaced my battery cables. They were corroded, weak, and nearly black from bad corrosion. Recently I popped the hood and noticed that my positive battery terminal has begun to get chalked up with black corrosion. Can I "chalk this up" to an old battery?

Tomohawk- My '76 has a splash pan. I could send you some pics of it if you'd like... I still haven't put it back on after replacing the radiator back in April... I should get around to that... hrm... It might be hit or miss though seeing as Gary said the pans changed from 71 to 73... No reason to think it couldn't have changed from 76 to 78...