Faster Behr
Club Member
I’ve mentioned this car in a few posts now so I thought it was time to give it a thread of its own.
I’ve got my own Z which doesn’t need a lot doing (yep, the one on the left). My son thought that was a suitable excuse to buy a ’78 280Z in need of everything (yep, the one on the right). The car in question is a recent import. It was brought as a "running and driving" car. Well, yes it would idle but it wouldn’t drive very far for sure. Not without horrid death or a fireball happening. Thankfully the body is pretty good. There’s a 6”x4” hole in the right floor (looks like a heater leak) and a couple of patches here and there. Everything rubber is perished and the interior is completely sun bleached. The paint is poor - but - the key thing is rot. There just isn’t much. Every fixing and fastener on it comes undone like a 5 year old car.
The plan is to do a light restoration (read: stop it from crashing into a wall or bursting into flames) over the winter, jazz up the interior and get it on the road for the spring so he can get some use out of it and go to some shows (read: so I can work on my own bloody cars again). Then next autumn it will come off the road for RHD conversion and paint and we can get stuck in again.
My initial focus has been on getting it to run right. All the fuel injector plugs are rotten as are the HT leads and pretty much all of the vacuum hoses and rubber boots. The fuel pipes are rotten and the petrol was rancid. Like, stinking of fisherman's friends and thinners. The engine would run nice at idle but wasn’t good for much more. The fuel supply was erratic and the pump rumbly. A compression test gave me 5 good cylinders and very little happening on number 4. With all this in mind I really wanted to get it running and up to temperature to see what else might go bad and to see if I could free things up on number 4. For now I have settled for oiling the bore up whilst it sits.
Initially I looked at the fuel pressure. Hoping to see around 30psi (per the book) but only getting 6psi in fits and starts. After draining the tank and refilling it I started running through everything; fully suspecting a dodgy fuel pump. It turns out that the fuel pick pipe and the fuel return were both blocked solid at the tank. Even 10 bar of compressed air wouldn't shift either. I was considering breaking out the nitrogen to give it a proper send off but thought better of it. Despite the tank being so badly blocked the tiny fuel inlet strainer at the pump was totally immaculate. Odd. I had no choice but to drop the tank down and take a look inside.
The condition of the sender came as quite a surprise.
Outside the tank is minty mint and the tank straps are as new.
Inside the tank was a black soft coating like bitumen and a lot of caked dust and rust.
There was only one thing for it. I added a litre of Autosmart G101 caustic cleaner and swilled around, then hit it with the hot water pressure washer at 90°C for 20 minutes. It's a handy thing to have at home
The end result was quite impressive and well worth the effort.
And now for a blow dry then some heat. McGuyver style.
Once it was dry I got both flow and return pickups blown through. The flow pipe actually went with a bang but I can't see any remnants of a strainer or any new debris in the tank. I'll give the tank a final swill and flush before it's repainted and refitted anyway.
I ran out of time (Strictly was on at 7:15) so next weekend I will rig up a temporary fuel supply and try running the fuel pump again. If the pump does turn out to be faulty then I will look to change it and replace the fuel pressure regulator with something like a Bosch 044 and standalone regulator. Who knows, maybe I can save the sender unit. For now it's soaking in kerosene.
That's pretty much all for now. But best for last - the highlight of the whole operation today was finding a single American cent in the tank. I couldn't quite believe it. The edges are quite worn so it has been rattling around in there for years. I'm leaving it there.
The "finds haven't stopped there. We've also scored an Air Canada flight ticket from 1991, an emergency torch and some car wash tokens.
More next week..
I’ve got my own Z which doesn’t need a lot doing (yep, the one on the left). My son thought that was a suitable excuse to buy a ’78 280Z in need of everything (yep, the one on the right). The car in question is a recent import. It was brought as a "running and driving" car. Well, yes it would idle but it wouldn’t drive very far for sure. Not without horrid death or a fireball happening. Thankfully the body is pretty good. There’s a 6”x4” hole in the right floor (looks like a heater leak) and a couple of patches here and there. Everything rubber is perished and the interior is completely sun bleached. The paint is poor - but - the key thing is rot. There just isn’t much. Every fixing and fastener on it comes undone like a 5 year old car.
The plan is to do a light restoration (read: stop it from crashing into a wall or bursting into flames) over the winter, jazz up the interior and get it on the road for the spring so he can get some use out of it and go to some shows (read: so I can work on my own bloody cars again). Then next autumn it will come off the road for RHD conversion and paint and we can get stuck in again.
My initial focus has been on getting it to run right. All the fuel injector plugs are rotten as are the HT leads and pretty much all of the vacuum hoses and rubber boots. The fuel pipes are rotten and the petrol was rancid. Like, stinking of fisherman's friends and thinners. The engine would run nice at idle but wasn’t good for much more. The fuel supply was erratic and the pump rumbly. A compression test gave me 5 good cylinders and very little happening on number 4. With all this in mind I really wanted to get it running and up to temperature to see what else might go bad and to see if I could free things up on number 4. For now I have settled for oiling the bore up whilst it sits.
Initially I looked at the fuel pressure. Hoping to see around 30psi (per the book) but only getting 6psi in fits and starts. After draining the tank and refilling it I started running through everything; fully suspecting a dodgy fuel pump. It turns out that the fuel pick pipe and the fuel return were both blocked solid at the tank. Even 10 bar of compressed air wouldn't shift either. I was considering breaking out the nitrogen to give it a proper send off but thought better of it. Despite the tank being so badly blocked the tiny fuel inlet strainer at the pump was totally immaculate. Odd. I had no choice but to drop the tank down and take a look inside.
The condition of the sender came as quite a surprise.
Outside the tank is minty mint and the tank straps are as new.
Inside the tank was a black soft coating like bitumen and a lot of caked dust and rust.
There was only one thing for it. I added a litre of Autosmart G101 caustic cleaner and swilled around, then hit it with the hot water pressure washer at 90°C for 20 minutes. It's a handy thing to have at home
The end result was quite impressive and well worth the effort.
And now for a blow dry then some heat. McGuyver style.
Once it was dry I got both flow and return pickups blown through. The flow pipe actually went with a bang but I can't see any remnants of a strainer or any new debris in the tank. I'll give the tank a final swill and flush before it's repainted and refitted anyway.
I ran out of time (Strictly was on at 7:15) so next weekend I will rig up a temporary fuel supply and try running the fuel pump again. If the pump does turn out to be faulty then I will look to change it and replace the fuel pressure regulator with something like a Bosch 044 and standalone regulator. Who knows, maybe I can save the sender unit. For now it's soaking in kerosene.
That's pretty much all for now. But best for last - the highlight of the whole operation today was finding a single American cent in the tank. I couldn't quite believe it. The edges are quite worn so it has been rattling around in there for years. I'm leaving it there.
The "finds haven't stopped there. We've also scored an Air Canada flight ticket from 1991, an emergency torch and some car wash tokens.
More next week..
