| Combined with a laundry list of minor, but negative issues that were really putting a damper on the overall driving experience in the car. Over the past year I had slowly whittled away some of them and took the opportunity to do some needed maintenance (120k due to water pump bearing noise, EFI harness due to my hack job on splicing in 95+ injector connectors). After the 120k, it became apparent that to get proper base timing, the CAS had to be rotated a lot. So I did it and left it like that, and got a dyno tune. Later I read that if the CAS was rotated then something was not right. I felt confident the belt was installed right (verified it this week, months after the fact), so the CAS must need to be put in center. So I moved it and left it. car never ran "right". It started. It drove. No misfires. No hesitation. But damn sluggish. Boost would build quickly (which is what threw me off) but there was no kick in the pants to the acceleration at all. What finally got me really wanting answers was after I replaced the EFI harness, I did not reinstall the Racelogic TC. The car would boost but never break traction. Now I knew something was WAY off. I had light backfiring on sub-2k rpm deceleration (approaching stop signs, etc), extremely raspy sound to the motor in lower rpms, and my gas mileage was still absolute crap (14mpg tops). Now before, I could never get a reading with my timing light on the #1 coilpack wire (as instructed in Ash's "6 P's" post) so I believe I took it off the PTU loop. I read, that this was unreliable, so I figured I'd give it a shot on the new harness #1 coilpack wire. I got a reading (CAS still set back to the center of its adjustment range), and it was WAY retarded. it was completely off the timing teeth to the driver side, in the neighborhood of what had to be -10 degrees. I was pretty shocked. So I tried to adjust the CAS to get back to 15 degrees but with it turned all the way CCW, I could only get 10 degrees. I went and test drove it, and it was like a whole other car, naturally. Backfiring gone, raspy shitty sound gone, when boost built the car surged forward. Being worried about what the root issue was, I never went WOT nor up towards redline. But it was enough to tell me that something was up with the timing. So I dug around thru old TTnet posts and contacted some true gurus to draw on some experienced input. Had I known what I was looking at, I could have saved myself a lot of time by just pulling off and looking at the CAS (remembering Woody's post on the matter here [ http://www.twinturbo.net/nissan/300zx/forums/general/view/2533445/Doesnt-look-that-worn.html ] ), BUT I guess all I had in my memory of that post was the 1st pic and didnt remember that pic was of the drive key (which is REALLY worn down) and not the CAS, so I thought my CAS wasnt really very worn in comparison, not realizing I was not mentally comparing the same two pieces. I also had never seen a new CAS until I googled it and found this image here: [ http://www.twinturbo.net/nissan/300zx/forums/general/view/2538241/yes-it-was-not-obvious-to-me-until-I-saw.html ] Further leading me astray, was the impression I had that worn-out CAS splines result in a wandering base timing. To me this meant while under the light the reading would be moving back and forth. My car wasnt doing this. It was steady "full retard". So.....I carried on thinking the CAS wasnt be the root source of such a drastic change affecting timing, and I went ahead and disassembled the front of the motor to count belt teeth, where I found that everything was in order; 59-24-45-24....#1 TDC, configured as according to the FSM. Ultimately 75% of my problems with this car have come as the direct result of my handiwork. I have followed wrietups and instructions with a distinct level of paranoia, but in the end I do not possess the experience working on these cars, nor as an auto mechanic in general, to recognize issues, prevent future issues, or prevent myself from introducing a condition that can result in a future issue (case in point I can only guess that the misalignment of my CAS was as a result of either using a chromed CAS bracket, or from not installing it properly). There are certain things that need to be done "the right way" that aren't necessarily spelled out for the newby DIYer like myself. Not a big deal if you got a pro with you, but can be an issue if you are by yourself. If there is a lesson to be learned, IMHO, it is that we all like to encourage people to be self-reliant, self-confident, and DIY as much as possible, and I believe this is a good thing, it builds pride in the final outcome, enhances the ownership experience of the car greatly (if everything goes well, lol otherwise it enhances your cursing prowess exponentially).....but there are many tasks/projects that really should be left to an expert, or someone truly experienced. Like I said, had my car received all the work and modifications at the hands of a pro, I likely would have only suffered from a 1/4 of the issues I have had to deal with over the last 4 years. I have put less than 4k miles on the car here in Germany over the last 3.5 years. Had I known I would get to actually enjoy the car so little due to it being down for issues, I would have left it in the US and picked up something over here that I could have enjoyed a bit more fully. It would have been nice to tear up the autobahn and take some roadtrips thru the Alps in a TVR, rather than have this Z sit in the garage wasting away all this time. Woulda coulda shoulda, as they say.
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