The timing kit and oil pump are acquired. w00t!

Yep you heard right. JG hooked me up with a timing kit and Turbo 280zx oil pump. Tomorrow we go out and timing chain, get the clutch slave cylinder on, flush out the fluids, bleed the brakes, and get her started (hopefully) and cruise around to see our hard work in action. Hopefully I can take her home tomorrow. I hate not being able to drive it yet lol. The more we're working on it, the more I can honestly say that the car is starting to get more and more attached to our hearts.

The wife and I are going to enter her in the San Diego Club Racing Series (racing series promoted to any individual that has 300+ treadwear tires and a mechanically sound car), so it's a race to get this thing road worthy and reliable. Since the event is also going to involve a drag race, I'm worried about breaking an (maybe both) axles. I do have a couple lying in wait just in case that were to happen though.

Quite Strange Findings....

So we're getting close to getting the Z up and drivin' around. Aside from the apparent home of black widows and a plethora of other spiders, she's been begging to get finished up. Justin wrapped up the driver side disc brake with the stainless steel line and we set forth on figuring out why the car's timing was insanely off. Popping the valve cover, removing the radiator and bringing the car up to top dead center showed interesting findings. For the sake of mechanical inaccuracy I won't go into to too much detail (as quite frankly my mechanics knowledge is limited at best) but I do remember him saying that the timing chain may have skipped a few teeth. Again if that doesn't make sense I do apologize.

What I do know is that the bolt that connects to the main water inlet to the timing chain was replaced with a longer one. This caused the bolt to push against the timing guides and have it rub against the timing chain. The result was a mostly eroded timing guide and a weakened chain. I talked with JG and told him to just get me a brand new timing kit so we replace this and get the car started.

To ensure that the motor was worthy of this task, we went ahead and a brief compression check across all 6 cylinders. Results are as follows: 150 145 130 140 120 130. These are not completely accurate, but it gave us a general idea for the L24's general health. An interesting note is that there is a oil sprayer rail for the camshaft in these engines. From what I understand that is a rarity considering a lot of cams are self-lubed, so seeing this actually made me kind of perk up. It's such a well thought out engine..well in theory.. THIS particular one however is a bit strange. Someone tell me HOW THE HELL YOU DO THIS??



Here are some others I took with my phone:




I gotta seriously question the mechanical aptitude of the guy that shoves in a bolt that's too long and thinks it's ok. I'm also not going to even START on the condition of the brakes before we swapped 'em out. Let's just say they if the Funk ever died, the existing rotors would've been able to re-ignite the groove. Lame I know lol.

In any case the timing kit is on it's way and after that we're going to hopefully get this car running :)

OT: What do you guys think of the new colour layout?

Too lazy to deal with the custom settings just now but what do you think of the new colours?

Labor Day Update :)

Well who said that Labor Day wouldn't constitute actual labor :p Taking some time to look at some personal stuff over the last few days and give the Mad Scientist a bit of a break, we all agreed to work on the car today. A lot got done thanks to my wife, Justin, and myself.

Quick recap -

• Rest of the fuel lines attached (there were only a few left but I had Kristen do the ones at the bottom of the gas tank since I just couldn't be bothered lol).
• Brake Booster replaced
• Brake Master Cylinder replaced
• Clutch Master Cylinder replaced
• 3 out of 4 brakes replaced (two drums and 1 disc) with a switch to the Stainless steel brake lines which look hot!! :)
  
• Radiator hoses attached
• Thermostat drilled for better flow
  
• Water-outlet swapped out for a better one from the Justin Parts Yard (JPY)
  
• Starter switched out to what amounted to a brand new one from the JPY :p
  
• Bought a bunch of flushing stuff for the engine/radiator aka Seafoam and Gunk Engine Flusher and Prestone Radiator flush.
  

I have to at this point definitely say that I am VERY impressed with my wife's ability with the wrench. You just tell her to get something done and she'll get it done. Not afraid to get her hands dirty and it's fun to work together. She did the remaining two fuel lines in the gas tank as well as the three of the engine fuel lines, helped with the brake master cylinder and brake booster as well. I love having a kickass wife :p

On a different note, we couldn't get the car to start after all that work. For some reason the timing seems to be severely off. Check on the distributor showed it was fine..the spark plugs were fine, the wiring order of the distributor was also correct. You know it's something strange when when the master mechanic and the guy that builds Z's all day long says "This no-makey-sensey." However, with that said Justin is confident that we can get the car roadworthy after one more trip out there.

Here's what's remaining to be done:

• Flush fluilds out, including gear oil.
• Bleed brakes
• Get it started
• Tune the carbs
  
• Cruise around!!

Very close now and I'm excited. Once I get a feel on how it behaves, I'll take it up and down Highland Valley (SLOWLY) and keep an eye on all the vitals. After that I'll have Justin take her for a spin and see what he thinks. I'll have to replace the motor and transmission mounts before I get all crazy though, but something tells me she'll do just fine after that :)

Yes folks, I DID take a few pictures, but was really busy working. Will post up later! Time to go to sleep!

No car work today unfortunately

Been working on a gigantic project at the office for the last couple of weeks and it's made it impossible to think of anything BUT code, so unfortunately I had to cancel the car work session for today. Considering it was still over 90 degrees in Ramona at around 5PM today, I think Justin was grateful lol.

However, the PCV hose came in from Motorsport, so so at least it'll idle correctly after it's done. I am worried about the state of the engine. With the sheer amount of corrosion that came off the water inlet upon removal of the radiator hose, we're worried that some of that crap is in the engine. Let's just hope for the best! I may need to place the order for the inlet from MSA again if I can't find it locally.

More soon I hope!