DJZ's 280ZX

[Bartman]

I must be overdue to go for a ride in this machine mate.

[Datto_610]

Me too!

[DJZ]

So during the grasskhana this thing started smoking heaps when left idling for a while, I think I've smelt oil smoke a couple of times before while driving it (I only drive it one day a week usually). Since then I've been thinking and have been consulting the Anorak of Knowledge about what it could be, initial thoughts were the turbo or valve stem seals or guides.

When I got home the other day I disconnected the breather pipes from the rocker covers to see if it would still smoke, and it did. Today I removed the turbo from the manifold (but left everything else connected) and ran it till it was warm and there was no smoke coming out of the manifold and no visible oil in the turbo so I'm at a bit of a loss. A leak down and compression test are probably going to be the next things to do, but I need to buy/make a leak down tester.

While I had things in pieces I thought I'd reinstall the Mines rocker cover baffles that I used to have in the old black rocker covers, I wasn't planning on keeping the polished covers on the car for long so I never installed them in them, but I'm going to keep them on the car now. You can see in the picture below the factory baffle system and above that the Mines setup, it has some foam that gets stuffed into the cover then the aluminium plate gets bolted in.




You have to move the oil slinger thingies when doing this, I'm not really sure whether you are supposed to remove them completely but I moved them to the back of the head, usually they are covering the lobes for cylinders 2 & 3. They have special double threaded bolts for these so you have to move them too.




Also I bought this power steering reservoir from Aliexpress, the bracket it came with is really average so I'm going to make a new one but I thought while the air filter etc was out of the way I'd chuck it in. I think it's a copy of like a Billion reservoir, it looks to be made reasonably well and looks better than the white plastic one I had in there before and best of all it was cheap.

[DJZ]

99% sure I've popped the head gasket. When running from cold after a few minutes it starts to make a chuffing noise which some googling leads me to believe there is compression leaking into the exhaust, there is a tiny bit of white in the oil cap as well.

I've spent all day looking for the extra fittings for my compression tester and just can't find them so might just buy another one. It's one of those situations where I can picture where I saw them last but they aren't there any more haha.

[Bartman]

Stink buzz. That sounds like heaps of fun to fix. not.
Better than a cooked turbo though I suppose.

[DJZ]

Waup waup, definitely something wrong, compression test shows 165psi on cylinder 1 and 120psi on the other 5, leak down shows cylinder 4 is leaking into the exhaust. Very weird compression test results. Will pull the head off over the next couple of days. Time to put some cams in it!

[broke]

Oh dear. Warped head?

[DJZ]

Got the head off tonight, nothing immediately obvious, will have a better look tomorrow night.

[torqued]

Got the head off tonight, nothing immediately obvious, will have a better look tomorrow night.

On a school night,
Nothing moves as fast as a DJZ with a Datsun issue

[broke]

Got the head off tonight, nothing immediately obvious, will have a better look tomorrow night.

On a school night,
Nothing moves as fast as a DJZ with a Datsun issue

They need to bottle whatever he's on and sell it.