daeron

wow!! congrats on the respondents! My parents still have a 1987 for Econoline-150 Conversion van that they bought new, just before my old man got the XT-6... that van was my taxi/bus while I was growing up. I have four brothers, and we were ALL soccer players gorwing up.. living 20 miles outside of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina (middle of nowhere, basically. but theres IS a NASCAR track there, woo.) The van blew a motor at about 60K (along with the XT-6 and a lawnmower.. bad case of oil, ) and its got blown headgaskets now.. i think.. the headgaskets were put on upside-down by the engine rebuilders, again, Honestly, new car purchase is almost alien to me.. it just doesn't make SENSE to me to take a hit like that, unless you KNOW you will drive the car for 10 years or more. If it isnt something like a Jeep Wrangler, or another model that has remained virtually unchanged for decades.. how can you know that? As for the "second owners" out there.. shaddap, you are the ones the rest of us envy. :-p You only paid $200, BUT its almost as good as having owned it the whole time yourself.

I still wonder how hard it would be to retrofit a second 2wd driveline into the trunk. can you say EA82T.. times Two??? O-ring the block(s) and do some sick boosting with some 280ZX injectors.... who needs a transfer case??? viscous coupling? diff lock?? PFFT!!!!! its funny, I was thinking about this thread earlier today.. I have been after my little brother to drop a soob driveline into his CRX... I had an even better idea!! one of my uncles datsun roadsters!!! full tank of gas, and a driver the thing tips the scale at like 2100 pounds. unfortunately, it would be REALLY hard to squeeze a pancake motor in between the frame rails on that car.... BUT... there IS always the idea to go rear engine... MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! :headbang: :headbang:

you know, its funny. I thought about making a comment that I was simply posting out of boredom on a night off.... and i get caught by a friggin flame. I intended no tone of condescension. go pass your judgment somewhere else, we dont want it here.

awesome, tell him I said congratulations. My dad would probably still have his '89 XT6, if the bank hadn't wanted it more. bad times. but who knows.

The bypass is nothing more than a signal being sent to the ECU from the ignition switch that the key is in "start" position. The ECU is what turns the fuel pump relay on and off. I have no idea what wire runs from keyswitch to ECU, then from ECU to fuel pump.. but I wanted to clarify that this "bypass" is not an entity unto itself, just a function of the ECU. In case anyone else has noticed, I have had the day off and am bored. I seem to be posting about once every twenty minutes here. now THATS what I call a friday night!!! What can I say, I and all my friends work for restaurants. What am I gonna do by myself but fiddle around on the internet?

I was browsing my Z-car forum (zcar.com) and noticed a guy posting who owns a 1979 280ZX, he is the original owner, and he has 400K miles on the car. I found that impressive on SO MANY levels... I am sure the car has seen alot of work (the thread I read was about oils and he mentioned "his last camshaft change") but the fact that he was the original owner was a point I was envious of... I dont like any vehicles that arent older than me (not a prejudice, more of a summary of fact) so I can never know that idea.. not for a few years yet. That led me to the question posted as my subject header. Is anyone here the original owner of their vehicle? I suppose loyale and older is all I am really asking. It just seems like it would be neat to buy a new car and NEVER get rid of it. That is wise purchasing there.. If you could go back in time and persuade yourself to buy any new car to keep for 500K miles... hmmm.

although it is irrelevant to your problem (i think) another old trick in tweaking door alignment is to put a penny or two under the hinge, where it bolts onto the doorjamb. This has the effect of moving the door closer to the rear of the car; if you only shim one hinge it can also rotate the door slightly. Putting a penny under the bottom hinge would tilt the back side of the door up slightly, the top hinge would have the opposite effect. Like I said, it may have no bearing on your adjustment.. but its another tip for door adjustment, in general. now anyone who finds this thread will read that, too.

Well, I was meaning a single intake for both cylinder banks. You more or less eliminated 90% of the difficulty in deciding upon standalone intake manifolds. the exhaust is much easier to build the plumbing to get them all firing out the same place. Although, you could set up some twice pipes, my understanding is that twice pipes without a collector provide horrible exhaust scavenging. Custom Y-pipe seems to me to be a no-brainer, seeing as it can't be that hard for you to put together. I may have some difficulties fabbing something like that up, but you have done much more fab work than I. I've been there, helped out, thought things through.. but not on my car, not doing my work. Im a wrench monkey when you get right down to it.. but I am an observant wrench monkey, who thinks WAY to much about things.

Any work you put into this engine, is not wasted. You can always yank this motor and keep it around longer than the rest of the car. If you have two loyales, and they are both non-turbo, SPFI (does the air intake look the same? is it at least close to the same? the differences are drastic) then.. its the same. You could get your new car going, blow the motor to smithereens, and just bolt the one from your old car in now, I have no idea if keeping an old engine, along with a pile of parts, is PRACTICAL for you at all.. BUT you know the history of your current engine. You have been taking meticulous care of it for thousands of miles. the new one is a question mark. Alot of us in your shoes, would reseal your current engine.. and then have to think long and hard about even BOTHERING with the engine in the new car. just my two bits.

Exhaust is easy, MUCH easier to fabricate than intake. All you need is the flanges from an old manifold, and you can have a muffler shop make you a new one from scratch.. OR just start out with the initial pipe and flange, and build your own Y pipe. aluminum intake manifolds are not as easy to build, for your average do-it-yourselfer. I don't believe I just referred to one of our Subaru Frankenstein Masters as a "do-it-yourselfer," but I meant someone without access to thousand and thousand of dollars worth of machine shop

Link, to some neat stuff.. ..but not about the bonneville justy!! I googled, and only found one page listing various Bonneville land speed records.. yah, Subaru Justy, Class I (capital i, not 1) 123.224 mph..... but photos, information, a page on the car? yah, i could search for another ten minutes, but the first ten minutes turned up nothing. well, not NOTHING.. http://www.drive.subaru.com/Sum03_SubaruHistory.htm

It sounds to me like what I call "magic wire syndrome." Somewhere, there is a wire being shorted out causing your problem. http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/search.php?searchid=375884 That is a link to a search on my user name, and the term "magic wire." It may not be of much help finding your specific magic wire, but most of the threads should provide some idea on how to trace them down. First off, try to find a Harbor Freight tools store near you. If you can, go there and buy a cheap multimeter. They cost as little as five bucks or less sometimes, rarely over ten. If there are no harbor freight stores near you, go to home depot or maybe a good parts store and see if they have any cheapies. A multimeter of SOME sort is a MUST HAVE tool for tracing something like this. These wires can be hard to find, and they can be easy. Usually they are obscure, BUT you already have a good idea what general area to be looking in. While you look through the threads that my (brief and lazy) search turned up, make sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page in each thread, and look at the "Similar Threads" feature. those threads often turn out to be more helpful than the ones the search shows up. Hopefully someone has had issues similar, and can chime in and help you. However, with all the wires on a car, the odds are fairly decent that you are the first person to experience this particular wire, going bad and being your problem. The GOOD news is, finding it is the hard part. replacing it is simple as pie. And I still want to get your godforsaken turn signals working. How big a guy are you?? you got any friends that are like, 5'8"??? I would suggest you buy them dinner or a six pack or something (cough cough, what are MY bad habits?) and see if you can enlist some smaller hands to help you with that one :- ) I swear, the blinker is up there. Go buy a new one so you have it in hand to give you an idea what the old one is shaped like, close your eyes and feel the new one. pretend you are blind and feel every detail you can feel. keep in mind the bottom will be attached to a plug, so it will feel different. Anyhow, good luck on the magic wire. Now your thread will pop up on the search, too! Oh, and edit your original post to fix the typo in the subject line. "starting and dieing?" will make more relevant threads appear, under "Similar Threads," on YOUR thread. People can recognize a typo like that, but computers won't.

bump, because some of these people CAN help you I am sure. not me :- )

I second the idea of checking the check valve first. The check valve is inserted to ensure two things: 1. No positive manifold pressure goes into the brake booster (bad for the booster) 2. no negative pressure escapes the brake booster, once past the check valve. The check valve is easy to identify, remove, and test. Its (usually) a small roundish thing in the rather large vacuum line going from the manifold to the brake booster. All you have to do is unclamp the line from either side, make sure you note the direction air flows through it, put your lips on the engine side, and suck. you should be able to pull air through it freely. then, with your lips still on the engine side, blow. you shouldn't be able to move any air. if it fails that test, replace it. I say usually because while I have been here, and done this, on a few cars.. the soob is NOT yet one of them. No brake issues yet, knock on wood. Well, pad replacement, rear shoe replacement, accompanying rear bearing catastrophic failure (thanks haynes!! the haynes book lists rear bearing nut torque at like 150 lb-ft in the chart.. then in the actual directions for the 2wd rear bearings, it tells you "oh yah, THESE only get re torqued to like, 35 lb-ft...") but I mean, what all THAT?? nothing!

rob: thanks for the story. As I said, this same idea has been occurring to me lately, as a thought exercise. I was briefly contemplating supercharging my Z, and started doing research.. and found that people often water-inject rather than intercool for practicality issues.. (dont ask me why, I couldn't figure out) Add to that the fact that it has been kinda rainy here in the last week or so, AND the intermittent misfire that my car has developed, and the whole "natural water injection" idea has been on my mind along with a host of other meterological phenomena. I've been wondering how much, and which, atmospheric changes actually made much of an impact on how my car was running at the time. your post was simply fortuitous and timely.

yah, my brain DID fart on one thing.. and I blame the two years I have been soobing instead of playing with datsuns. Two years ago, the phrase "R one-sixty" was weird to my ears.... nowadays, after all the soob research and reading I have done on this forum, the phrase "R one-eighty" sounds odd to my ears. The Zcars started out with a 180, not a 160. the 160 was for the four bangers. My entire posting was pointless, and the result of a long work week and short sleep hours. I got like 14 hours of sleep last night and I feel like a new man. My apologies, I figured since I got the BS card pulled out on my last post, I would just publish a new one with a recant, rather than edit that one and make posterity wonder why robm was "correcting" me on points that I wasn't wrong on... (the 160 vs 180 thing. as far as the r200s go, i know that. there are many different ratios, and a few LSDs out there in a few 280ZXs (83 turbo) and some 300ZXs (i still am not sure which ones) )

Lesson to be learned: snag a few spare harnesses (of various sorts) from the boneyard, so that next time you have a spare to look at (even if you dont want to install it) I had the same question when swapping the nissan maxima alternator into my car.. but then looked and saw each had a REALLY thick wire in the T, and a really small one. that made it easy.

No, the R200 was standard starting in 1975. I have one sitting in my driveway. had to be a troll about it, sorry.

I have wondered that.. I mean, theoretically its obvious. Practicality is another matter. Anyone else care to chime in and either back him up, or dispute this claim?? No offense intended robm, I simply have always been curious about this, and do NOT want to simply "take someone else's word for it." I just ask for confirmation of information, yanno? false knowledge sucks. These internet automotive forums have helped to disband more false info than they have spawned, I think.. but it goes both ways.

am I the ONLY one with the occasional need to go wiggle a fusible link?????? It hasn't happened in some time, but once in a while i put key in, turn over, radar detector beeps its awful thing.. go to start, and get Full Dead Battery symptoms. ALL of it dies. All I need to do is go out and wiggle the fusible link that is third from the front of the car, and its back in business for another month or six.. I have no real PROBLEM, I know what the issue is and its alot easier to cope on occasion than replace the fusible link block... ...BUT every time I read one of these threads I think "oh oh, its my fusible link problem, i get to help them out and show them how easy it is to bring the car back to life, rather than waiting three days!!" I scroll slowly through the thread, and its always battery cables. Just buy new battery cables, it shouldnt cost you twenty bucks. shouldn't cost you ten, you could make your own for under four if you have resources... BUT some stores, you never know... Anyhow, replacing the terminals is a band-aid. that copper (or Aluminum) in those wires is 20 years old now. send it to the melters, and get the car some fresh ones. It allows you to be SURE you have a good connection between battery and vehicle.

Well, its an r-160 differential. My experience is much more than 200 whp would be over the top... BUT don't forget that only half the power is going to the rear diff at ALL. Nissan put the EXACT SAME rear diff into the 240 and 260Z, but in 1975 when the 280Z came out they switched to the R200. Most of the Zcar guys will upgrade their diff to an r200 if they increase the power of the motor.. even if its just a cheap junkyard swap. The 240 started out weighing in at like 2100-2200 pounds, and by the time they reached '75 they were up to about 2450. the weight of the vehicle also plays a major role.. four wheel drive, divide that weight by two axles rather than by one on a 2wheeler. In other words, the r160 rear end should be able to take 2-4 times the engine output power as a rear diff in a 4wd car, than it could in a straight rear wheeler. You cut the power spinning the axle in half by going 4WD.. you cut the weight the axle has to move in half by going 4WD. I shall also add the caveat that NONE of this is through personal experience... just knowledge. I've never even OWNED an r-160. (except that time with the hydraulic press, but thats not what I meant by "owned" [pwned!!!])

I was suggesting a trip to the junkyard to look at all sorts of OTHER cars, that came with cupholders, and find one that is the same width as a standard DIN sized stereo.. then replace the hole your old CD player left with that cupholder.. and go ahead and wire an incognito amp with a line in to it, like you seem to be leaning towards. Just find a toyota or mazda or ford or whatever, and look for cupholders that are the same size as the stereo.. voila!!

Agreed. Simple emough, now that youve got it all figured out, right? that seems to be the case most of the time with these cars.. finding the failed component is the tricky part. Removing the thermoswitch will obviously drain your radiator, so you might want to buy some antifreeze while you are at the store and just change your coolant instead of catching it and re using it. Either way, make sure youve got a nice large drainpan handy when removing the old plug/switch. let us know how everything turns out, it sounds like you are on the road to a properly functioning fan.

if you already have a DIN kit in the car from your old CD player(s), then you might could easily find a cupholder in another car in the junkyard that would slip right into that slot. just a thought