| Latest fun. Guy contacted me about his car not running right. He was thinking his hoses were not hooked up correctly and he had just installed a bunch of upgrades inc dps, Ash intake pipes and IC pipes, turbos, etc. His Z was not drivable so I met him to look over the car. It was a mess. Every vacuum hose I found was not connected correctly, and I mean every one :). I had my laptop with me and hooked it up to check sensors. I found his tps was way off, idle was about 3k and I couldnt adjust it, etc. We decided it would be better to tow the car to my shop so I could look into it better. The owner had a local guy/friend do most of the mod install. I dont know if he actually works for/owns a shop or not, I couldnt really get a direct answer. But one things for sure, he doesnt know what hes doing at all. I ended up pulling the engine due to some of the issues I found. Also he was in desperate need of a new efi harness so I talked him into getting one. While tearing it apart to get ready to pull the engine I saw an issue with his Ash intake pipe on the drivers side. Appears he couldnt clear the stock motor mount so he pounded in the pipe instead. Kinda defeats the purpose of the better flowing pipe doesn't it? 
He ended up getting some BDE motor mounts and a new Ash pipe for the one side. I also found they routed his dipstick tube wrong so I had to fix that. And most of this turbo coolant lines were ran wrong and/or dented and creased in spots. They also ran a single rubber hose along the back for the pcv line. Not really an issue except that the hose was too large and it actually just fell off when removing the engine. I redid the water lines replacing a lot of them and making up some hard lines for the coolant reroute and a hard line for the pcv. Also threw on some heat sheilds as his were missing. Good thing I have quite the collection of oem parts laying around because this Z needed a bunch of little things. 
Also found they used too long of a bolt on the intake pipe and it was actually pushing the flange adaptor off the turbo. I took it all the way off, resealed it and put it back on flush. Then made sure to use a shorter bolt :) 
This is better 
Fixed the dipstick tube 
His 2.5 ic piping was in pretty bad shape as well. He decided to keep his stock Stillens ICs for now (hes planning on getting Massives down the road). But there were no brackets or anything installed. Car had no bumper on it when he brought it over, but theres no way it would have bolted up anyway with the ICs handing down as low and crooked as they were. Found a few loose clamps and bolts. I raided my TT parts car and got some brackets and such. I also removed his carbon canister as well. All fixed now. 
Broken bolt. I was able to get it out with some vice grips. 
Removed his AIV stuff as well as it wasnt being used anymore.
 
His tps was reading way off. Lowest I could get it was around 1.66. I tried another good tps and it read the same. He had some Z1 tbs that he bought from SZ. I saw they were not sealing Like I had seen others post about so I removed them and readjusted the butterfly so they would shut all the way. Still couldnt get the tps right. I hit up SZ about it and Greg said he had to grind the slot in the tps before on the Z1 tbs to get the tps into spec. I did this and the lowest I could get it was .66. Greg said on 1 set they had to totally open the slot up. So thats what I did. I had to use a special bolt and grind the head down to clear the tps body itself. I also had to use a special washer that would clear the tps on the one side as well so it would turn far enough. Found an old injector cap washer worked great. Not pretty but it's in spec now. Deff something not right with the tbs though. 
I found this used for the fuel lines. I would think its pretty self explanitory why its wrong. I had to change it all out. 
When he dropped the car off he had the Ash planar installed. He had a dual pop chip and was still running a dummy maf and the old school low speed idle hose setup. He had a Selin unit in his box I parts. He said he couldnt get it to work. I asked him where the other maf was and he didnt have one. He said he was told you could use the Selin with only 1 maf and it would work fine. Ugh. I had him get another maf and ripped the low speed hose out. All is good now. 
Tight fit but everything is installed and working. Had to tighten down the adjustment on the bovs as it was way too loose and causing off rev issues. Way better now. 
With his Ash intake pipe set up I couldn't use the stock intake T to do the boost leak test. I used some extra couplers and pipes I had around from other projects to get the stock T to work. Makes it easier to do the test. 
Got everything back together. Car ran but had a terrible noise from the timing belt area and I couldnt get the timing into spec. It also was over heating. They put a new timing belt and such on so I never touched that area. I knew better not to check it while the engine was on the stand and of course it bit me in the ass. I tore the front end apart. Good thing I did. Clamp not seated right, small sign of things to come. 
Car is a Na-TT conversion. Still had the NA fan clutch on it and it was stuck on there pretty good. Had to pry it off the water pump. I had him get a new TT one. 
Hmm, think I found why it was over heating. They installed the thermostat crooked and then tightened down the coolant pipe. The thermostat was jammed against the rear of the housing and since it was not sitting straight it had no way to expand and open. He picked up a new oem one. 
And then the worse. He obviously didnt know how to do a timing belt right. Tensioner was not right, timing belt was off a tooth. Most likely jumped from being so loose, it was pretty much ready to fall off. I think if he would have drove it he would have toasted the engine for sure. Initial sign of something wrong 
You can see how loose it is on the gears. 
He had his old parts in a box. I found they broke the adjustment stop off the new tensioner and had to switch bases. Another sign he was new to this. 
Got it back together and everything ran great now. Then he mentioned he wanted the reverse lights to be fixed. This car was also an auto to 5sp conversion. I found Gold300zx's FAQ about the wiring that needs to be done to get them to work. Issue was that his pic was too small to see which 2 wires I needed to used off the old chassis harness. Bernie provided me a pic of when he did the conversion for a guy. But I found my wires didnt match his. For reference, here is the 2 wires I used with the zipties on them. They may be different for the different years. I dont know. I pretty much just had to start touching wires together to figure it out. 
The 2 green wires on the 5-speed harness were already cut and taped over as if someone tried to do this before and gave up. So it was easy to splice the 2 sets of wires together. Then of course I found one of the wires was broke off the sensor on the tranny itself. I was able to get a soldering iron up in the area and get the wire back on. Now the lights work. He was able to pick the car up yesterday and drive it home. There were lots and lots of other little things wrong that I had to fix along the way. Wrong spark plugs, bolts missing here, no clamp there, no brackets for this or that. He should have a pretty solid set up now and not have to worry about things being wrong anymore.
JackB nimble JackB quick JackB can suck my dick =P - james-lee 11/02/01
Arrogance is the #1 weapon against Supra Owners - MikeH 08/06/02
Dallas with a Z: I like the bulge dude 05/02/03
Bezbefootball: Does dick have anything for me? 10/21/03 |
It's that time again. More local mechanic "work"? - 
21:34:54 12/13/11
