Asher's 280ZX

[DJZ]

[broke]

Pretty tight in there mate!

[DJZ]

Picture is a bit deceiving, I can fit my fingers between the caliper and wheel.

[DJZ]

Had a look through the Tridon fan switch catalogue and managed to find a couple of options that look like they'd work, the one I bought was actually listed for a couple of Nissan's but it was the cheapest and also had the smallest hex out of the three candidates. It's pretty close to the radius rod bracket but once it's tightened up it should be okay - the radiator shouldn't move much. I'm going to cut the plug off it and put another one on, then just have to wire up the relay(s).

You can also see the fan shroud that Asher got made through some guy on Facebook, really really nice work but the guy ran out of interest and didn't finish it which is a real pity.

[DJZ]

First weekend back from three weeks away for work, and I been sick for like a month now. Got quite a bit done on this thing with Asher's help.

Before I went away I swapped the engine mounts to the stainless ones that I made, took bloody ages to do the left hand one as I had to pull the turbo and intercooler piping off, I was hoping this was going to fix the issue with the gearbox being either rotated towards the driver or being offset on the mount which it didn't.

Fitted the switch for the fans and filled the cooling system back up
Wired up the electric fans and tested that they work
Removed the battery and ran the wiring loom behind it to give it some protection from the turbo
Refitted the drivers seat
Replaced the intercooler hose that I split when I dropped the intercooler and tightened all the clamps
Warmed the car up until the fans came on then checked the temp gauge which is reading only up to the first mark (need to investigate this)
Checked all the wheels were tight

Took it for it's first test drive around the block, the blow off valve is very noisy and the car was stalling under braking, I realised when I went to move it tonight that I never fitted a one way valve for the booster so I've done that now - hopefully that will help a bit.

I was mucking around in the boot before I went away and the tail lights were unplugged so I plugged them in, now I remember why I unplugged them as they are on all the time, the left one at full brightness and the right one at half brightness, need to have a look into this further. The Z's have a horrible plastic stopper for the brake light switch that crumbles eventually and you find little bits of it in the foot well and then you find the lights are on all the time, I don't know if this is the case with this thing as it wouldn't explain the brightness difference.

The list of things to do now is getting pretty small:

Fit a driveshaft hoop - Asher has bought a universal one which I think we can modify to work
Set the final suspension height
See if we can do anything about moving the gearbox over - might just loosen all the bolts and try and shove it over then do them up again
Get the temp gauge working properly
Get the tach working - I've soldered wires on to the tach adaptor, just have to install it
Put the front bumper and skirt back on
Adjust the bonnet so it actually closes full

That's all I can think of at the moment.

[Bartman]

I had the brake light switch stopper disintergrate on an old 1200 coupe. I taped an old 2c coin over the hole. (Doubled the value of the car in the process.....)

[DJZ]

Mostly fixed the brake lights, I forgot Asher had the booster out at some stage to paint it, the adjustment on the push rod must have changed as the stopper was no where near the switch, the factory paint on the switch and locking nut would lead me to believe it hasn't moved. One light keeps going dim, I think it's a loose wire, somebody has dicked with them and added a trailer plug and some other random wires.

Mucked around with the temp gauge again, I think I've figure that the gauge itself is getting low or inconsistent voltage, I used the power feed from the tach and all of a sudden it started working so will need to investigate that further.

I haven't managed to get the tach working, I've tried just about everything I can think of so I think there must be something wrong with the adaptor board.

Removed the gearbox crossmember and slotted the mounting hole to one side, the rubber mount is actually broken and I couldn't find a better one so I just refitted it, I shoved the gearbox over a bit, it looks a bit better but can't go much further over as it'll hit on the exhaust.

The universal drive shaft hoop kit isn't going to work due to the location of the muffler, it's in the way no matter where the hoop goes, I think we'll probably have to just use half of the hoop and run some flat bar across the bottom. Moving the gearbox over helped as well as the bolt heads were probably going to hit on the box.

Started putting the front bumper on last weekend, the bolt holes were all filled with paint which made it really difficult to get them in - I should have chased them first. It's not the original bumper as this car is a facelift and the bumper is a non facelift one, we spent a while today trying to get it to fit properly, it looks okay but it's not quite right - the guards are loose which isn't helping. One of the side mounting bolts is broken as well so I need to fix that.

Asher wants to take it away tomorrow so I've got a bit of checking and tidying to do.

[DJZ]

Spent this morning putting the interior back together, I've put the gauge cluster in without the tach in it. I haven't quite figured out what's wrong with the power supply to the temp gauge, there is a voltage regulator built into the cluster, this car is an NZ new car so only has a single dial fuel gauge, on the JDM cars this voltage reg is for the fuel gauge and temp gauge, on this it's built into the fuel gauge but doesn't connect to it.

I tried another regulator and it didn't fix it so I've just bypassed it for the moment, the temp gauge works but the needle moves a little bit as the revs go up and down and the voltage changes, I think removing the original reg and replacing it with a new solid state reg might fix the problem.






This thing should be out of my driveway tonight so that means I can carry on with all the other projects that I'm supposed to have done by now.

[datsunboy]

If you've got the whole tacho still can you give me the whole thing to take a look at?

Sent from my SM-G920I using Tapatalk

[DJZ]

If you've got the whole tacho still can you give me the whole thing to take a look at?

Sent from my SM-G920I using Tapatalk

Yup, I kept the whole thing, I'll get it to you when I can, I'm away in Taranaki for most of this week.