PredatorZ

Ya, there might be some parts that work on both, I do have 2 sitting in my driveway, 84 and 86, I might just completely part out, just depends on time and money.

Donn144

TOM you old Z man!

You are in Hackensack right? I think we met at a Race track in J some years ago..I still had my 88 I met you with your girl friend I was with my son..who is now 6-3 or 6-4.

Maybe I should come out and see your stuff. I live in Caldwell about 20 mins away.

Donn

PredatorZ

I took apart the heater control valve, the part that leaks is a plastic plunger in a brass tube that's crimped to the main bracket for the control. Inside the plastic plunger is a shaft that has an O ring, it can leak at the O ring, or where the plastic plunger housing presses into the brass tube. You can partially disassemble the plunger to get to the O ring, the rings seat was dirty and gritty, but the little O ring seemed in good shape. After cleaning it and putting it back together, I used JB Weld around the edge where the plastic and brass seat/seal together, and most likely place to leak. I reassembled it all and it works great and does not leak.

I worked on the thermostat and the sensor housing below it, there was a broken bolt and it was a pain to fix. Tomorrow I am replacing all the manifold plumbing rubber, coolant and fuel lines. I have all new clamps to, so it should clean up the engine a lot.

The last 2 pictures show the plunger and the end cap that conceals the O-ring

I am also going to replace all the Fuel Injection connectors, TPS and MAF, all from a kit I got from Fricfrac.

PredatorZ

Worked on my EFI harness today, got all my connectors wired and shrink tubed, just need to cut out the old ones and start soldering under the hood, took me a couple hours to get them all made up.


These are from fricfracs kit. The rubber on my stock old connectors was dry and brittle, a lot of the connectors were cracked or broken, and a few were tie wrapped to hold in place, so for me this was an essential upgrade to just make sure I have solid engine electrical. I am going to do some extra grounds also.

PredatorZ

I replaced all the EFI and sensor connectors, still need to do the AFM connector, have it stripped back, but its time for march madness. The AFM is missing 2 wires on one end, I had already pinned them so I just cut it off flush with the connector. The cold start injector was a tight squeeze to get on, around the manifold coolant hose above it. I included a few pics to show the steps I used to finish them, lots of heat shrink.

PredatorZ

I found this stuff where I got my suspension bushings, it is designed for engine mounts, but basically will work in any situation where you can fill up a void previously occupied with rubber. There are 3 stiffness's, I chose the medium one.

dSt DIYMMI Do It Yourself Motor Mount Inserts - Liquid Urethane Made by dSt

Ill post some pics when I do it, maybe tomorrow.

PredatorZ

So I ordered a felpro valve cover gasket off amazon, check out this box, this could of held 500 gaskets easy

PredatorZ

New NKG Platinum plugs and NKG wires and some moroso wire loom kits help keep things in place and dresses up my piggie engine bay just a bit. This would be lipstick on my pig you might say. Runs a lot better with the new plugs, I still have not done a cylinder pressure test yet, but when I pulled the plugs they all looked good exactly alike,just like they should, which is always a good sign. Out of the box the plugs were gaped just a little to wide and the electrode on these is pretty small, took a bit of fiddling to get them all as close to exactly the same as I could. Wire loom kits might be over kill, I had extra pieces, so I just kept adding them on, hehe !

PredatorZ

I am sure this must be a common issue on a hi miles car, my ignition switch looks like someone used a screw driver to turn it, and sometimes turning it off it does not want to turn. But that's not my biggest problem, I have been troubleshooting why my fuel pump wasn't coming on when I turn the key to on, before I start I cannot hear the fuel pump priming, so it has been starting a bit hard. Messing around with the switch, if I slowly turn it I get the fuel pump to turn on, and just a bit after that the starter engages, so the internal contacts for the fuel pump must be worn out. So I am going to order a new switch, I really need a new door locks too, try and see if I can get a keyed set.

PredatorZ

I got all of the front bushings changed, with one wheel off it made it a tad more difficult because the side hanging down was putting a nice twist on the stabilizer bar, which I had to correct by jacking that lower arm up a bit to compress the spring. I got some spring compressors, but it seems like you can only get a hold of the bottom 1/2 of the spring at best because of the shock tower is pretty narrow inside. is there a trick I missed ? I didn't need to remove the springs, I don't have new ones yet, but it got me thinking about how to do it, I'll have to do some reading to figure it out. I made the mistake of putting one of the end links on the stabilizer upside down, with the nut facing down. bad idea, it will hit the tension Rod, or at least come really close, so I flipped it over, I have pics of it done both ways. The red looks nice. The grease supplied with the bushings is very sticky, almost like silicon RTV.
Napa has a nice sale, they were the only ones locally that had the inside seals for the front hubs, so I went there, if you buy a bucket, $3.50, everything you can fit inside is 20% off, it ends up being cheaper no matter what you get, the bucket really ends up being free plus you still get it a few bucks cheaper , Mine was ruffly $34 without , $27 with the bucket.

PredatorZ

Looking at the FSM, it recommends changing the locking nut on the stabilizer end links when ever it is disassembled, I did have them on and off twice, do I need to replace them, or maybe loc-tite them.

PredatorZ

Got my drivers side rotor back from the Brake shop, ended up getting new bearings. I used the old races to press the new ones in, I just reduced they're OD a bit on a bench grinder so that they wouldn't wedge in tight, worked perfect. Set the nut to about 7 ft/lbs, I will take a look at them after I have a few miles driving around and see if they need any adjusting. Need to get a new O-ring for the dust cap, old one is pretty shot. My new brake pads didn't have a bump on the back like the ones I took out(one side,the outside only had a bump, but they came with this weird spacer, so I put one where my bump was, have no idea what they are for, no instructions with the pads, just some random extra stuff. I can post some pictures of the spacers and the difference if anyone is interested.

zxguy1986

Re 5/17 question about re-using locking nuts. Nissan must believe they don't lock right after being removed. If new ones or equivalents are available, I would get them. Of course, FSM is 30+ years old. Maybe new FSMs have another solution. Great work BTW. Your thread is a keeper, a real plus for the site.

Lazlo

Nylocks are not intended for re-use. In a pinch you can do a couple of wraps of nylon fishing line. Just wrap it like you were going to hang it on a necklace.

PredatorZ

I pulled the brakes off the front of my 86 turbo donor car today, just for fun, I putt my old bearings for the 81 on the spindle of the 86, just as advertised, a perfect fit. I just had my front brakes turned and new pads, and now I think I am going to swap in the 5 bolt stuff and get it to work.

PredatorZ

had a busy day, got the entire suspension off the 86 Donor car I have. Cleaned up the steering it looks pretty good. Next step is to start swapping parts to the 81

zxguy1986

Have you thought about replacing those springs with new? My original '86na springs are a little tired at this point... I have looked into replacing them with new... Seems to me they sag a bit around sharp corners Not that I have stressed them out over the years. I'm a conservative driver. I think that they just get tired after a while... What are your options?

PredatorZ

Ya, all new springs with coil overs, I might try and build them from the 86 adjustable s , I am going to split the control and wiring out of the harness and make it stand alone harness for it. Would make a unique feature on an s130 if I pull it off. So far it's down to 2 kits Ground Control and Techno toys. rear coil overs seem to be the trickier piece, but doable.

PredatorZ

Found the shock control unit, now I need to separate out all the wires from the main harness and make a mini shock harness, nothing has been hacked up that I can find, so it should be fairly easy once I get the harness out, still need to remove front seats and carpet in the 86T. Tokico has its brand all over the Z's, the calipers are all Tokico on my z31's, and the control unit too.

PredatorZ

I used my liquid Polyurethane Kit today, to rebuild my rear Differential Insulator Bushing. It turned out pretty good, but it took almost 2 hours for it to start setting up, the instructions say it will start to harden in 4 minutes, not so, and confirmed by the guys at Aftermarket Suspension Parts - A Warehouse Distributor of Aftermarket Suspension Parts (Prothane, Energy, etc.), they did offer to send me a free replacement if it failed to harden. But eventually it set up. I will install it tomorrow.

I also installed my Poly Bushes in the rear sway bar / end links. I still have all the bushings for the control arms to do, but saving that for my coil-over install.

Also pulled the front and side aprons and radiator grill off, hammered on the aprons, and did some fiberglass work on the radiator grill, it had a few cracks.

Also found a nice crack about 6 inches long on the underside of my passenger side headlight bucket, opened up the crack so it wasn't binding and glassed it back in.

You can see in the second photo, some clear silicon on the sides, after wrapping it with a piece of cardboard and taping it, I had to seal up the edges with the silicon, or it would just run out. You can also see a bit of cardboard still stuck to the back.

PredatorZ

Got my custom poly rear insulator/Diff Bushing in, had to drop the gas tank about 4 inches to allow the retaining U Bolt to slide back into the Diff mounting bracket, was tons of fun, but I got it all back together.
After I hammered on the front lower fascia , I wiped it down with lacquer thinner, took all the old grime right off. The very bottom lip is thread bare in a few spots, haven't decided how to fix it yet.
Finish putting the front back together tomorrow. I am going to try and adapt a z31 inner bumper to fit my s130, maybe hack up one of the z31 bumpers for fun and see how it looks.
If I have time I am going to do a custom stereo install too, will need to customize my door panels a bit.
So far there is still very little interior in the car. I still need to get a bunch of dyna mat to line the complete interior of the car. Then I can drop in a carpet kit and begin the interior rebuild.

PredatorZ

Got her all back together, nice thing taking apart my 84 & 86 I have a lot of pristine hardware that was on the interior, I have been using them instead of any of the corroded gross looking screws and such.

The new bushings really have firmed everything back up, the rear end is solid, she just zips around corners np.

Had to make a temp turn signal bracket / license plate bracket. Painted the lower front sheet metal black, looks pretty good, at least its a lot closer to square up front.

And I picked some fresh strawberries out of my meager garden.

zxguy1986

Restore going great. Keep at it!

Those strawberries aren't ripe yet. My grandmother would put them in a paper bag and check back in a week...

PredatorZ

I started the stereo install on my car today, even though I worked on it all day, I only managed to get the front speaker holes cut out and one speaker installed. Granted a good share of my day was in planning and searching, I have parts in 3 diff places in tubs about the house garage and shed, so naturally everything wasn't together in one neat bundle, almost really, was just missing the power feed lines for my amps(still in 84) and the pigtails for my 4 speakers that goes from the cross over to the speaker, 2 still missing, not so easy to replace, one spade connector is really narrow. I did take my time and tried to do it properly.

PredatorZ

Nissan must have used a really nice grade of vinyl and cloth, my car has close to 360K on it, you would think they would be trashed by now, a lot of the plastic parts have suffered sun damage and rot, but not the door panels. They have cleaned up really nicely, although I did notice in my pictures above the red plastic insert in the window crank is dirty and needs to be cleaned up. I am trying to remove a lot of patina ! Sorry antiques road show