daeron

Werd, it got posted before I could plug it myself. (plug it, har har, bad pun)

heh, forgot to mention the most important part. If there is no clunk-clunk, things check out, you cant do anything to get it fixed.. you CAN drive it "safely" in a sense. The boot is there to keep the grease in; the grease is there to keep the thing working. Without grease it is a question of "when" it will break.. and starting at a point of no-clunk, it normally takes SEVERAL HUNDREDS, or thousands of miles to pop. My passenger side boot was torn when I got the car from my brother.. and it is JUST NOW (2/12 years of Florida rainy seasons and 40K miles after *I* got the car) starting to complain. Driving it with a torn boot is a sure fire way to failure.. but it almost certainly wont happen this week, probably wont happen this month.. might happen this year. No guarantees on this verdict... but that is life. Chances are, short term, you are fine.. when the axle starts making kah-lunka noises, THEN you know its on its way out. They rarely catastrophically fail without warning you. It is a minor risk, but pulling out onto the highway in a brand new car is a risk as well. Life is full of risks.

I am sorry, phiz... but I hate you. I want my Z back, DAMMIT! I am going to go sulk in a corner until I pass out now. (I mean it, this actually made me kinda depressed.. even though if I HAD gotten my issue fixed so quick, I never woulda been a Soob'er..)

okay now I am a spelling freak, one of those spelling bee kids who went to like, five county spelling bees in his day.. ..and a couple of recent new users have simple atrocious spelling.. ..so PLEASE dont get offended, but I am going to start correcting. call it OCD, I just can't take it anymore, heh.. Its Exoskeletons. Consider this post my blanket apology, for all future offenses incurred. A typo is one thing, but the way I see it if you get corrected and see the word, you stand a much better chance of getting it closer next time. We have A LOT of foreign members on this forum, and sometimes it is very easy to picture them getting totally lost by mistakes like this.. So please, don't take it the wrong way. I can only spell because my parents somehow got me indoctrinated into the habit of reading myself to sleep at a very young age, so I read books daily and have my whole life. I know its not a reflection of intelligence, I am not bashing anyone with my ninny headed corrections... just, correcting.

The IAC is simple to test with a battery and maybe some jumper wires to make the needed connections. I took a whole buttload of great photos when I did my head job.. I had planned on doing a detailed, step by step from soup to nuts to indicate exactly how easy it was, and demonstrate proper shop procedure in keeping lifters, rocker arms etc in order... ..but I forgot my camera on assembly day, Doh!!

Jack that corner of the car up. Grab the axle in the middle, and wiggle it around, rotate it... if it doesnt move much (it should have SOME in out play at the top and some front back play at the wheel side, but not a great deal and it should feel smooth) then drive around, turning sharply (but slowly) alot. if you hear no clunky clunky, then you are probably OK to just repack it with grease, and put a new boot on there. The question is, your clunking noise: Was it just the sound of the hold down trashing the boot, and getting flung around a bit.... or did it actually get into the DOJ (thats the CV joint at the top of the axle) and break stuff?? No clunking, clacking, or creaking, and not excessive play, means you are probably golden. Beyond that, without tools you are indeed out of luck... its NOT difficult to do with the proper tools, and it doesn't take much.. but you sound like you have the bare minimum, "college student trunk toolkit." Hope this helps, good luck.

you dirty son of a motherless goat... YOU WILL DIE LIKE DOGS!!!

yah well.. youve seen the rust on MY car (i assume?) and my fuel pump came out like it was made outta BUTTAH!!!! MY exhaust bolts arent quite BUTTAH, but they come out easily enough.. so.. Nyah, nyah!!

It isnt hurting anything. Its revving freely up into the range of operation they were designed for. My mom had an 87 E150 van that never had any troubles.. until we moved 1/2 mile from the place she worked. NEver got the car hot, so it never really brunt things off that it should have, the thing was immediately a bear to get thru emissions, and soon enough the headgaskets blew. One of my brothers had an 82 280ZX. He drove that thing balls to the wall 110% of the time, NEVER shifted before 6K. My old man said at one point, shortly after he got the car, that it wasnt gonna last another 20K. 180K later, the car was scrapped after running alot of local club autocrosses, being used as his "pickup truck" to tow his boat for some time, and about ten years of this treatment. Our good friend snapped up the motor in a heartbeat, because it was "the best running Z engine any of us had ever seen, bar none" and "us" was at that point, about 10 individuals from 3 different families/groups... I adopted the same policy as my brother in my 280Z when I got it, and an estimated 80K later (on an engine of unknown history, probably 120K+++ though) that thing was running smooth as could be, too. My subaru, when I determined it had a blown headgasket, was testing HIGHER than FSM spec for compression on all but one cylinder.. the "bad" cylinder on my motor had 150PSI!!!! I have been driving it like I stole it for 40K miles, and it had a total of 144K on the clock at the time I tested it... I will stand by that statement for a LONG Time: Japanese engines, LOVE banging off the rev limiter.

Any time I have to "read" spark plugs, I have to go hunting on the net for the image from the back page of a hayne's manual.... that page is one of the single most useful printed pages in automotive history.

that bill is talking about is exactly what is shown above.. just a single cup cupholder screwed on top of the little change slots, NEXT to the handbrake lever. Thats where my drink goes all the time anyhow, even WITH the cupholder... note: putting the cupholder underneath the stereo isnt ideal... then again, that one that hangs in front of the vent could be spiffy, or could be bad. hot cofffee +cold AC, or cold soda plus heater, would be bad.. cold soda, and AC, or hot coffee and heater, could be good.. hmmmm... And oddly enough, I had a cicada that looked identical to that fly into my face earlier this evening, while out on a dock fishing. weird timing, although I gues I should have seen it coming YEARS ago, har har...

the IAC (judging from what I am reading in the current "my xt6 wont run" thread) functions essentially the same on the loyale SPFI setup as it does on the XT6.. By that I simply mean, if its a problem that, on an XT6, would have you thinking IAC, then yes, its likely the same here. The IAC is mounted on the front side of the throttle body, the solenoid body that activates it is integral with the assembly and juts off to the left in this image, and the open tube pointing upwards just in front of the TB is the air inlet for the hose from the snorkel. the plug is laying on top of a vacuum hose below the manifold. No AAV on the SPFI.

I realize that what they are talking about can sound somewhat intimidating, but really an electric motor is an ABSURDLY simple apparatus to take apart, clean, and re assemble. It is one of the most common "first tinkerings" that we tweakfreaks venture forth upon as young lads (and lasses I suppose) Honestly, its one that I never got around to until about two years ago.. but, when my starter died and I had no money to replace it, I just disassembled it, cleaned it, and re assembled it within the space of an hour. That starter went on to see six months of pizza delivery service, about 20-30 starts a day. Go ahead, you can do it. It won't be as hard as say, changing out a radiator.

See, yah, THATS WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT!! Tinkerers and Tweak-Freaks of the world, Unite!

can you get to the injectors to touch them with a large screwdriver? (I don't know the engine bay, heh) If you can, try sticking a big screwdriver at the base of each injector with the engine running, and put your ear on the butt of the handle to listen for the clicking sound of the injector firing. Have you checked the quality of the spark at all yet? Another step you could take in troubleshooting is try removing one spark plug wire at a time, while the engine is running, to see if you make the engine stall. If the engine stalls or slows down, you know that with the wire connected that cylinder is firing as much as the others.. if any pulled wire results in NO change, you know that there is some sort of problem limited to one (or more?) cylinder. The way it failed says strange things.. it *might* just be a fuel pump that somehow got zappered, inscreased output for a moment, and is now barely functioning.. but that takes a fuel pressure gauge to test (or a known working fuel pump and pressure regulator) You said you have a FSM? if so I might run through the diagnostic procedures for the "airflow bypass valve" (is that the idle air controller? again, not a 6 person, heh) just to see if it is functioning as it should be. After that, check the MAF for sheets and giggles... after that I would throw spark plugs, cap, and rotor at it, maybe a fuel filter to rule all that junk out and then start getting rather puzzled.

I would highly recommend simply jumpering the plug for the thermoswitch rather than running the wire to a switch in your cabin. Feel the wire; if it is at all warm then you are losing fan speed due to excess resistance in your long wire to the fan. In any case, you should not be running as hot as you are; I would suspect radiator or water pump problems if you cannot keep the car below 1/2 on the gauge. Given that, I would never want the fan turning off, which is in my mind the single greatest argument for hardwiring it on with the key. You also might want to check that the fan is blowing the right way.. I know its a simple thing, but the wire for the fan that is normally switched is the ground wire, so it is easier than one might think to wire it backwards. If you cant keep the car below halfway with the fan on all the time, and cant get it below 3/4 after letting it get that high, then your cooling system is NOT up to par. Letting this issue slide is the first step on the road to a blown headgasket, so attention is more than warranted.

that space next to the radio is where the trip computer controls go in the GL-10 model, like so.. except, this is an aftermarket stereo install pod, WITH a cupholder that I retrofitted, with much much strange fabrication work needing doing using brackets out of another unidentified vehicle. The cupholder, and the metal ears that I used to integrate the stereo and cupholder into one unit, came from one car.. the brackets needed EXTENSIVE tricky modification, and that assembly rested on a bottom support that screwed into the backside of the faceplate, as well as hanging on by one top screw.

misledxcracker and I both want to do this, actually. It would make the perfect go-anywhere driftermobile.. a GREAT one or two person travel vehicle. Got the 4WD, enough power, enough economy... Strange, but I think it would be more enjoyable to work on than a toyota personally, and that is the next best commercially available option.

HAH, thats interesting timing. I was talking about my recent discovery of a DOJ failure on my car, and the discovery that I CAN disassemble and re assemble the thing.. and he told me the exact same thing when I said I didn't know you could take them apart and service them. Old VWs, you had to. Nice to have one of the common problems, that everyone else is having at the same time, for once. I normally have bizarre, strange problems I can't figure out, strange problems that are easy to figure out but require finesse, or absurdly simple problems that I just fix. Never the axle failure or bearing job.

Relax, grasshopper.. unless you are applying enough torque to be flexing the mounting plate that the bolt in question attaches to, you can always make more torque. Just get a six pointed socket on a breaker bar (not a ratchet) or a six pointed box wrench, put it on the bolt, and get the biggest longest pipe you can find. Fence rail, if needs be. Stand on it. If you have a standard type 1/2 inch impact gun, you are most likely not getting to 400 ft lbs of ultimate torque on that gun. You can get 400 ft-lbs by putting 100 pounds of force (REALLY tight lugnuts) on a four foot bar, or 40 pounds of force on a 10 foot bar. As I said, the limit to this is when the mounting point starts flexing.. but I used to repair air jacks (among other things) for a living and the only way to take apart a 10 ton hydraulic cylinder is with a HUGE vise mounted to a SOLID table, and a four foot long pipe wrench, with a ten foot long pipe on the end of it. And we regularly rebuilt air guns that maxed out over 1500 ft lbs of torque, but never tried using one of those. It takes a MASSIVE amount of air in addition to a MASSIVE gun to make power like that, though... Unless you have a very professional garage set up at your house you are not making more than 400 pounds with your gun, easy to match.

yes you need a neutral switch, and yes your car should already have one. There should be a lockout switch on the trans or clutch used to keep you from starting the engine in gear, you can just use that. Alternately, you could wire in a brake light switch onto the clutch pedal and use that to simulate neutral.

Took someone else all of a day to catch my subtlety. I decided not to ogle what may well be someones little sister in the first response to the original post

its the switch that turns on the dome light. Small rubber boot, about the size of a quarter at the base and the size of a dime at the top. Not a round boot, it has an oval base to it, but the plunger switch inside it (and the waffled "top" part of the boot) is round. Not incredibly easy to replace; (not DIFFICULT but I expected quick and simple which it wasnt) my car had just enough wire attached to the switch to barely remove it from the hole. I had to pull the interior trim piece off to expose enough wiring to replace the switch on my driver door. You can just use one from one of the back doors, or go to the boneyard for a replacement.

kickass, seabass. Thanks for the mini walk-thru, the rest oughta be a piece of cake.

about the only decent performance tire size available in 14s is the 215-60; if you are currently stuck with 14" rims that is the tire size I would go with, but thats just my rule-of-thumb for 14" rims on a sportscar.