Dealing with the Isolation

With the COVID-19 pandemic keeping us at home (and working from home) I find myself busier with work than when I was actually in the office.  To keep my sanity during this busy time I find myself retreating to the garage for brief periods of mechanical delight.  For tonight's installment I found myself rummaging through a box of parts I had acquired from ZCarDepot and found sets of hood and tailgate bumpers that I had never installed.  These made for perfect short distractions!

Removing the old bumpers was easy.  As you can see they were the original units and the rubber was hard and cracked.

Using stainless fasteners and a little 3M Dielectric Silicone Paste for protection and lubrication, I installed the new units.

 

While the replacement of these bumpers was not critical for the function of the car itself, they were critical in keeping my sanity...

No longer clicked off

I had previously converted all exterior lights on the 280z to LED.  When converting a classic car to LED lights, it is common to need to change the flasher(s) to an electronic unit due to the lower current draw (older flashers used a bi-metal that was heated from the flow of current to disrupt or flash the bulbs).  One thing that I also found common on this type of conversion is the fact that the flasher will sometimes click even then the blinkers were not engaged.  For me, this clicking was not a bother as it only occurred at higher RPMs (when the voltage was higher from a fast spinning alternator).  Recently, the clicking started at lower RPM's so I decided to do something about it.

First, I noticed that my voltage seemed higher than normal when the RPM's were above 2500 RPM.

When seeing the higher voltage my mind immediately thought of the voltage regulator.  When testing the voltage with a multimeter, I found that the voltage was reading as high as 15.6v when revving.  This is high by today's standards but for older cars this high of a voltage was not uncommon.  Even though I never took an official reading before, I decided to change the voltage regulator anyway since I already had a new one that I purchased when Black Dragon Auto was going out of business.  This unit was similar to the OE unit although it did seem to have a lesser build quality (OE on the right).

One thing I noticed right away is that one of the contacts was stuck closed on the Black Dragon unit; had I not taken the time to open the unit I would have never known this.

I also took the time to clean up all contacts at the alternator since they had years of corrosion built up.

After installing the Black Dragon unit into the car I noticed slightly lower voltage but it still bothered me that it would run in the 15v range.  I did some reading and found that this was common on the cheaper regulators and found that there was a particular regulator that seemed to be recommended from Intermotor.

Internally this regulator seemed to have an identical construction to the OE regulator I removed.  I installed the new regulator and also ran a ground wire from the chassis ground directly to the base of the regulator to ensure that the unit received a good ground.

In addition to the new regulator, I also read that the intermittent clicking from the electronic flasher relay can sometimes be caused by current leakage in the car wiring.  This minimal current would not be enough to generate the heat required to cause the disruption in the old bi-metal flasher.  While this clicking in the electronic units is common when searching for the problem, not many people have found a solution.  In my research I found one customer response from the manufacturer of my flasher on the Amazon Q&A section which  recommended a small resistor between the hot and the load terminals of the flasher.  No other details were given but this made sense for a solution since the units "detect" engagement of the flasher by sensing ground.  I tested this by creating a jumper harness with a resistor across the leads.  I used a 1k Ohm 1/4 watt resistor.

This harness eliminated the "ghost clicking" when the signals were not engaged and all lights worked perfectly except for the dash indicators which dimmed and brightened instead of flashing on and off.  I probably would have left it this way if I weren't already planning on making a more permanent solution.  I purchased a Dorman flasher socket pigtail with the intent of making this permanent solution.

I wanted to use a resistor with a higher resistance but still 1/4 watt of capacity.  The next resistance value I had on-hand was 4.1k ohms.  Since this was all trial and error, why not give this one a go.  I created a new harness using this resistor that would plug-in to the existing female spade connectors in the old harness.

While the electronic flasher I used would work even if the leads were swapped, I wanted to make sure the harness matched in the event that another flasher was used in the future.

I then removed the terminals from the old flasher socket and connected the new harness, using heat-shrink tubing over the connections.

So what was the result of all this work?  My voltage now stays very consistent at just over 14v no matter what the engine RPM and I have a flasher that no longer clicks when the turn signals are not engaged.  If I were to do it over again I would have used a resistor around 2k ohms as my flasher clicks one extra time after the turn signals are disengaged; this is still a very minor nuance that is still much better than previous behavior.

My floor is a peeling

When I built the detached garage about four years ago I knew I wanted something over the concrete floor.  After researching a few options I decided I would go with an epoxy covering from Epoxy Coat.  As I normally do with any project, I over-researched to ensure that I would apply the coating correctly.  In this case I used the acid etching process first.  Not being satisfied with the results I then rented a diamond floor grinder from Home Depot. 

After applying the epoxy coating in one afternoon and the clear-coat the following day, I had a beautiful covering over my garage floor.

After three years of this floor holding up very well to my abuse, I noticed that I had a section of floor that began to crack and peel.  I figured it must be an area that I had not properly treated and planned on purchasing a patch kit for the area.  I didn't apply any patch right away and the following year I noticed another section starting to peel...  and then a third.  

After pondering why this would be I realized that every time a new section appeared was after a drastic temperature swing in the winter.  Such temperature swings are not common but also not unheard of here in middle Tennessee, swings such as 30 degrees in the morning to 60 degrees in the afternoon.  Since my garage is unheated I thought these drastic temperature swings were likely causing these crack and peel sections.

If epoxy wasn't going to work for me in these conditions I felt confident that my second flooring choice would do: a floating floor from SnapLock industries (specifically GarageTrac and GarageDeck). While not much preparation is actually required to lay a floating floor I did use a floor scraper to remove as much loose epoxy coating as possible.

Laying the new floor was really easy.  Any difficulty I had was simply cutting around the posts for the lift.  While you can use a carpenter's knife for cutting the tiles I found that a Dremel with a large cutting wheel was much faster.  I heard someone describe the process of laying the tiles as "playing with adult Legos" and that's exactly what it felt like.

It took me a few days to lay the floor only because I don't have a lot of contiguous time to tackle the project in one day; the overall project took about 3 hours total.  The end result is a good looking floor that I feel confident can stand-up to the temperature changes as well as handle the occasional dropped tool much better than the epoxy coating.

 

Oil Change

Oil change for the 1996 D21 Pickup today.  142,238 miles.  Mobil 1 High Mileage 10w30. STP XL oil filter.  For some reason the M1-208 oil filters are impossible to find now.

The Rogue's FIrst Oil Change

This post serves nothing more than a record of an oil change for our 2019 Rogue.  5049 miles on 2/9/2020.  These aren't the droids you're looking for... move along...

Pure Energy

Wow, has it been a while since I've done any work on the 280z!  I was able to take advantage of a beautiful day today and spend an hour or so under the hood.

This time I installed a new coil.  Why? I have been chasing an irregular miss while the engine warms up.  Coils are cheap and the one on my car looked to be the original so why not give a new one a shot?  Yes, yes, I know what you are saying: don't just swap parts but rather diagnose the problem.  For me this is an easy way to see if the problem changes or best case goes away.  It also gives me a chance to clean up some crusty terminals and nasty looking brackets.

After removing the coil you can see just how green and crusty those terminals have become over 40 years.

After removing the ballast resistor I used an ohmmeter to verify that the resistance still met factory spec (which is conveniently stamped on the bottom of the bracket: .9 ohms between the + terminal and the center terminal, .4 ohms between the COM and center terminals).  This one was still in spec which is good because you can't buy them anymore!  I cleaned up all terminals as well as the bracket and ceramics.  The bracket received a fresh coat of paint along with the coil bracket.

I also created new jumper wires between the resistor and the coil since the older units looked pretty nasty. As usual for me the terminal rings were both crimped and soldered.

I chose a Pertronix Flamethrower coil (model 14001 - 1.5 ohms) after reading a few articles and experiences from those who had used one.  Apparently a factory-spec .9 ohm coil is very hard to come by but after some reading the Pertronix should work fine as long as the factory resistor is left in-place.  

Before installing the refreshed resistor and new coil I cleaned up the ring terminals from the factory harness and crimped new spade terminals since the old copper units looked pretty nasty.  

The end result was something that looked factory fresh but with the shiny copper should provide a clean path for that energy to get to the spark plugs.

So did it cure the intermittent miss at idle when warming up?  Maybe.  The test run went well but I want to give it a few runs before making a final verdict.

Goodbye old friend

Due to other options presented to me, I had gone over a year without driving my G37.  The G is a great driver's car and a superb balance of power, comfort and handling.  As hard as it was emotionally, it came time to part ways.  Goodbye, old friend; you're going to a good home.