Update please.
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(page two )

Update, so I went on vacation and bought this...


...drank it on the beach and then had some crappy craft beer that looks better then it tasted....


...returned home to find some motorcycle parts waiting for me so I worked on it a bit....


...then I had yesterday off so I picked up my son from kindergarten in my datsun. It was running like poo, power was down, exhaust smelled worse then usual. So I pulled all the spark plugs and now I think I know why the car hates to start when its cold. Cylinders 1-2-3 looked like this...

...and 4-5-6 looked much better like this....


... so it seems that my carbs are not balanced. Guess the tuneup the previous owner did was not correct. Time to learn how to balance and tune the carbs. Oh yeah almost forgot, front air dam is on, just don't have any pictures, will soon after she gets a wash and wax.

How about some pictures, I took these a few days after going to the local track. I just happened to get Z envy there after looking at a fellow members orange 240z.

So now that winter is gone and spring is here I have started back on my z (when I'm not distracted by my s14 kouki). While it was winter there was this holiday called Christmas and I just happened to get a few things for my Z. I got some new skuff plates to replace my damaged ones that are covered in black duct tape for some reason, ztherapy tune up DVD, unisyn flow meter to help tune, heat wrap for my header and a few other things I can't remember. I also finally started to finish my coilovers. I decided I'm not taking it off storage insurance (means I can't drive it) until they are finished. I'll update with pictures tonight.

***UPDATE*** Now with crappy cell phone pictures because my wife loaned our DSLR out

This is my current slow process on the passengers side, tonight I should be able to get the strut out and get working on cutting the tube to make the coilover.


And here is a few of the parts, in order, the flow meter, one of the two Nissan skuff plates and the heat wrap that is going on the header to help the under hood temps.

Alright! Glad to see you back. Nice presents from Santa. Do you plan on doing any brake upgrades? Keep up the great work and updates

harlest wrote:Alright! Glad to see you back. Nice presents from Santa. Do you plan on doing any brake upgrades? Keep up the great work and updates

Brake upgrades are planned for the front. I'm going to go with the the Toyota S12 Calipers with 300zx Rotors. However at the pace I'm going I'm not sure when I will get to that. It doesn't help that I also am trying to fix up my Altima to sell and possibly my s14, then I've got a ka24et 5 years in the making to finish, a house with projects and the Honda motorcycle. Its a never ending list, but that's what makes it fun.

Looking forward to seeing how it develops. Subscribed.

Update time.

So I was making some beer this past Sunday and decided that it was time to work on my z since I had a couple of hours of waiting for the grain to mash and then for the wort to boil.

First off I completed the drivers strut a couple weeks ago (sorry no pictures) and took her out for a drive. I noticed immediately that the brakes are worse then before. Either the lines need bleed or I may be in the market for a new master cylinder, most likely a 280zx one. I did some simple things and took some before pictures of what I have planned to do in the near future.

The door skuff plates were in terrible condition, rusty, falling apart and covered with black tape. A few posts of mine earlier I mentioned I got brand new replacements from Nissan for Christmas. I started putting them on, amazingly even with the skuff plates rusty the seam underneath was in great shape (forgot to take a picture) with only some dirt that needed washed off.

Before picture of passengers side


Comparison of the old and new part


After picture of passengers side


In a future update I will post the drivers side as when I was in the middle of it my boiling wort decided to boil out of the pot and all over my driveway. Anyway onto more pictures.

The fuel lines are a mess, the proof is in the picture. When I attempt to tune the carburetors I plan on doing something about them. I will probably take everything off this side of the engine bay and give them a good clean and paint at the same time.


And finally a picture of a mysterious box in my engine bay, never seen this before, its some type of engine knock eliminator. I'm not sure if I can remove it since I don't know the history of the car other then the receipts for work done and they do not mention anything about it. Anyone got any ideas?

Interesting, I would imagine it has a knock sensor and wires to the distributor and retards the timing when knock is detected, I'd remove it, if you experience knock which is unlikely unless you're running 10:1 CR I'd run higher octane fuel.

So ever have one of those days where you all like lets work on the Z and everything going good until you go to try and start it. You go to crank it and it won't start, so you spray some starting fluid to give it some help. Then crank it and it starts, but dies soon after. You go through and try to diagnose everything, but still it will not stay running. Then you go from loving your car to hating it. This happened to me yesterday and since I haven't posted anything about my Z in a while I have been working on it. Now let me get started.

Before winter I drove the car one last time, just a nice little sprint on some country roads to try out my new master cylinder. That all went good, got back home and let her sit outside for a bit. Couple hours later went outside to pull her in the garage for winter, well that is where I all hell broke loose. Went to fire her up and BAM, backfire I guess it was loud my neighbor thought my garage blew up. I lol'd at the time and just cranked her back up and pulled into the garage.

Over winter I installed a new pertronix ignition with one of there coils and removed that knock eliminator. So come spring time I go to start and the car will fire, but just for a bit similar to what happened yesterday. At first I thought maybe the gas was old so I went and got some new 93, drained that tank and filled it with new gas. Now lets fast forward to yesterday and keep mind that the initial spring start was maybe a month ago (been busy working and coaching baseball). After my son's game I came home and decided to give the car another go. Won't start, spray starting fluid, starts and runs for 10 secs dies. The carb's were getting fuel, all six plugs had spark and other then mentioned items I changed nothing. I decided that before I go back to the points and old coil that I would check the compression and that is when things got real.

Cyl #1 - 165
Cyl #2 - 165
Cyl #3 - 170
Cyl #4 - 170
Cyl #5 - 170
Cyl #6 - 50

I was like then and finally very . Guess next is a leak down test, hoping its just a head gasket. Just looking to vent my frustration with this car. I just want to be able to go out to my garage, fire it up and take a nice drive. Still doesn't explain why it won't start, although it never started easy in the first place.

So what to do?

add a squirt of motor oil through the spark plug hole on #6 and see if the compression raises significantly, if it does it's a ring or ring land problem (unlikely on an n/a) if it does not it's the valves of HG. Pull the head invert it and fill the combustion chamber with gas, see if it comes leaking out the intake or exhaust runners, if so you have a bad valve or seat, off to the machine shop.

evildky wrote:add a squirt of motor oil through the spark plug hole on #6 and see if the compression raises significantly, if it does it's a ring or ring land problem (unlikely on an n/a) if it does not it's the valves of HG. Pull the head invert it and fill the combustion chamber with gas, see if it comes leaking out the intake or exhaust runners, if so you have a bad valve or seat, off to the machine shop.

Ahh I've heard of that not sure why I didn't think of it before. I just gave it a try and now it went up to 60 psi so I'm guessing its either a valve or head gasket. Looks like I've got a motor to dig into when I get back from vacation.

For some reason I cannot edit my post, but had a quick question. I feel like such a car noob asking this, but shouldn't that car have still ran with one cylinder bad? And if so is it worth it to go back to the points that were working beforehand after I fix whatever problem I have and then put the electronic ignition in after I get her back up and running? I also think at this time I'm going to rebuild the cars, should I replace the needles and get the kit from ztherapy? Any opinions out there?

Yes the car should still idle and run on 5 cylinders. With Su's the first thing to do is make sure everything still moves, the pistons stick sometimes just need broke loose. Second thing is to make sure fuel flows, pop the fuel line off the jet and see if fuel comes out, if nothing clean out the fuel bowl and line coming from the bowl to the jet, sometimes a little crud will plug the out hole or the line itself, also a good time to make sure the needle valve isn't stuck.. Third, spark, I'd upgrade to an electronic distributor or add a petronix or similar and convert to a 12 volt coil, I'm not a fan of a deteriorating spark also points has a hard time keeping up past 6k rpm.

Ok so I'm back from vacation and have verified that fuel is coming out of the line connected to the jet. I have upgraded to the Pertronix 1761 electronic ignition and used there flame thrower coil, 1.5 ohm retaining the ballast resistor. I'm not sure how to check the needle valves, but the pistion in both carbs moves up and down with some resistance due to the oil in the dashpot.

Basically I would like to get this car started before tearing into it, unless that is a bad idea.

Hi, i am new here. Have been thinking about your problem whit the engine. Have you got it sorted out yet?
As it is a really basic engine as long as you have fuel going in and spark at right timing it will start even with one bad cylinder i think.
Also i love the color on the car do you know what paint it is?

The needle is attached to the bottom of the piston in the carb, when you raise the piston it raises the needle out of the jet. If the fuel bowl is full of fuel, fuel should come out of the jet. if fuel is flowing and you have spark the engine should start.

What a father's day gift to myself, before I torn into the car to fix the low compression on cylinder 6 I wanted to get her running again. After getting some things to check from another site the z finally roared to life, a bit lumpy though. I found that the chokes where not actually moving, after a bit of moving them by hand I was able to get them to work fully and get the car started. Now it's time to dig in and fix the low compression that was probably caused by the backfire caused by the stuck chokes.

Low compression is either worn rings (add a squirt of motor oil through the spark plug hole and retest, if the compression raises up you have worn rings if not it's in the head) or a valve sealing issue meaning pull the head and take it to a machine shop.

Time to get caught up on photos, some of these are from last year and some are from this year.

To continue with the interior update just like I did the drivers side I replaced the passenger side skuff plate as well.

Here is a comparison of old vs new


And the new one in place


Now I had noticed that when I was driving the car the shifter was very loose, after some Google searching I found that the shifter bushings can go bad. So I pulled out the shifter and found that the were completely gone. A quick trip to the auto store and I had some Dodge door pin bushings that conveniently pressed right into the shifter and made shifting much more firm.




If you've been following my short, but long time frame build thread you may have read how I found some rust, well since I am pulling the head off I have decided to begin tackling it by fixing the engine bay first. The pictures are after I started knocking the scab and paint off. If I had known it was this bad I would have walked away from this car. At least I know that I can fix it as I have done this many times before at a former job.



At the same time I am cleaning the engine bay and repainting anything I can. I also am replacing some hoses and miscellaneous items that either need replaced or annoyed me by what the previous owner(s) had done. As you can see from the pictures the original paint is still on the firewall and I will repaint the car that one day, maybe when my kids have all grown up and moved out.



One thing I can say is I am very thankful that a previous owner invested in a plastic tray for the battery as this kept the underside relatively rust free. There is some, but its only surface and can easily be fixed.


And finally I finished a job that a previous owner did not since one bolt was stripped. I was able to get it off with a pair of vice grips, imagine that. The aftermarket AC is now fully removed from the car. Now I just have some holes to plug and cleaning to do. Is the blower fan really suppose to be right there, visible under the dash?


I'm hoping tonight that I can get a socket to remove the head bolts and see what the cause of my low compression on number six is. I'm also real interested in seeing if the L28 block has the N42 dished pistons or something else since there was the aftermarket knock eliminator on the car.

That's all for now.

That's the correct location for the blower motor.

I'm thinking you might want to get her up in the air, pull the suspension, and get up into those strut towers with some new metal. Also, inspect the tension rod mounts VERY well. If those are compromised at all, that should be Job One. When those fail under braking, bad, bad things happen.

AZhitman wrote:That's the correct location for the blower motor.

I'm thinking you might want to get her up in the air, pull the suspension, and get up into those strut towers with some new metal. Also, inspect the tension rod mounts VERY well. If those are compromised at all, that should be Job One. When those fail under braking, bad, bad things happen.

Checked the tension rod mounts and they are solid, as far as the strut towers what is rusted it getting fixed at the moment which you'll see in the update below, thanks for the advice as I never would have checked the tension rod mounts. Definitely would not want them fail when I hit the brakes. Onto my update for today....


Got the head off and after an inspection I noticed a mark on the exhaust valve of cylinder number six. So I screwed a spark in and then dumped some gas onto the valves and it all drained out the exhaust side. Looks like I found my low compression culprit and it after looking at the cylinder I'm guessing the backfire made the valve hit the piston somehow since it has a mark on it as well.



I also cut out all the bad metal on the drivers side strut tower and welded in patch number one, still got the engine bay patch to make.




That's all for now...

Between work and my son's baseball schedule I somehow found time in the last two weeks to continue repairing the rust on my Z.

To finish the strut tower repaired I started by making a repair panel, drilling holes to mimic the spot welds and finally spraying it with weld through primer.


Then I sprayed some weld through primer on the strut tower....


Welded it up and did some light grinding...

And finally primer with etch primer, filler primer and painted with what is suppose to be the color the car is painted, but as you can see it doesn't quite match....to be fixed later,


Now while I was doing this I noticed something that concerned me. The bottom of the front frame was not sitting straight when I compared it to the other side. I outlined the place in question in red.


So it was time to fix that, after some investigation I found that some idiot does not have a clue on how to repair rust. You do not use machine screws and a metal plate, this does nothing to fix the issue, I hope someone didn't call this 'Professionally' repaired. This has me concerned with the rest of the car's work, but so far this is the only incident of this crap I have found. So I cut out the crap workmanship along with some more rust to find the frame rail with some surface rust on the inside.


So I vacuumed it out after knocking all the scab off and then proceeded to convert the rust using rust converter and the paint with Eastwood's frame paint.


I made a patch plate out of 16 gauge metal to match the plate that was around the sub-frame mount and decided to just extend it the rest of the way to save time.


Finished it up.




Now there is only one more spot to fix on this side. That stupid metal plate/screw mess was covering a hole in the drivers side frame rail where the sway bar mount is. Of course I have to take care of it as well and at the same time I will be trying to rebuild the sway bar mounting bracket as most of it was either gone or cut out by yours truly.



Cut out the bad metal...


Picture of sway bar mount.

Nice job tackling the rust, . Looks like you had the same rust as me (big surprise) except I had more makes me want to get back at rust repair, just got a few other projects to clear off my plate first.

Just a little update of the past month of work.

I finished the drivers side rust, etched, primed, painted and sprayed it with some rubberized undercoat from Eastwood.







Also decided to pull the motor to not only give it a good clean and paint, but replace all the gaskets. This was a very good idea once I took the timing cover off and found that somehow one of the timing guide bolts was missing and was just sitting in one of the recessed areas. That could have been a lot worse if it somehow got into the timing chain or crank area.

Empty Engine Bay (I hate the multi colors, but it is staying for now)


Block Before removing timing cover, oil pan and giving it a good clean




Block after about three hours or cleaning, sanding and finally wiping with some mineral spirits thinner to give it a good clean (some of the spots are still wet from that)




And one final rust repair spot.....knocked the scab out


Cut out the rust metal and prepped for new metal




And Finally gave the battery tray a good scrub and sanding to prep for paint. Also hit it pretty hard with a screw driver to see if there was any holes, but there was not one

Just another end of the month update.


I got the engine block painted. I used DupliColor's Pontiac Blue engine paint, its a close match, just lighter and less green. I do like it, I also got most of the engine back together, but haven't took any pictures yet.




Also got the rest of the rust fixed and POR15'd my battery tray rust.








Still got a ways to go, hoping I can get it running again before the end of October, but with other more important things to do, its a long shot.

Two months later I've done a few things to my z. First I apologize for the lack of pictures, not that anyone cares, but its never been my forte and secondly for the potato quality as I took them with my cell phone. In early November I finally got the L28 back together and in the car, I've slowly be adding more things to in to make it whole again. I have replaced coolant hoses, clamps, cleaned up wiring and accessories.







The majority of my time has been spent working on the exhaust header, it leaked bad where the slip joints were located. I believe when the exhaust was built it was never properly installed since they leaked and the bottom was located one inch off the ground the way the car sat. This winter I decided I am rebuilding the exhaust from the front to the back. The exhaust was made of ten separate pieces varying from 2.5" to 1.75" diameter that where welded together. Step one was fixing the header, I welded the slip joints and put a flange on the end. I created what I believe is the longest one piece 240z header, its a tight fit getting it in place, but it does indeed fit (See above pictures for proof).This will be painted with VHT black flameproof paint and then wrapped in DEI black exhaust wrap.



The is what it looks like below the car, before you would have seen at least half a pipe, now you can only see the bottom of the flange. Look closely to the left of the red engine stand in the white box. This is with a 2.5" outlet and a finger width (approx 0.5") clearance between the pipe and trans mount. The plan is to run the muffler under the drive shaft where I have the most ground clearance and then 2.5" all the way back to finish with a 3" SS pipe. Like it was before.



I have also purchased some parts I will share in a future post when I have got them all.

Slick looking ride! Love the color