Garage Babes

Here are some pics of my girls helping out in the garage...

New CV for Me

One of the issues I noticed after getting our Pulsar on the lift for the first time was that the passenger side CV axle needed to be replaced.  The boots were split wide open and there was CV grease coating much of the underbody.

Since I had no idea how long the axle had been open to the elements I decided to replace the axle.  I could not find a remanufactured unit, but I did happen to find a brand-new unit on Autozone.com for the same price as a remanufactured!  The new axle arrived just a few days after ordering.

Replacing the axle was surprisingly easier than I had anticipated.  After separating the steering knuckle from the strut and removing the axle nut with an impact wrench, I was able to work the spline shaft out of the hub assembly.  

I drained the transmission fluid first, then it was simply a matter of removing the carrier bearing bolts (see in the top photo above) and pulling the axle out from the transmission.  

I cleaned and greased the output shaft seal.  I had a new seal, but due to the room with which I had to work I decided it would be safer to leave the existing seal in place since there were no signs of leakage.  It's easy enough to pull the axle if the seal begins to leak.  Installation was as simple as reverse of assembly, although I did borrow some extra hands to ensure I could focus on re-inserting the axle into the transmission without damaging the seal.

In order to tighten the axle nut, I reinstalled the wheel and lowered the car; this allowed me to apply the 150 ft-lbs of torque without worrying about the car moving or falling off the jack stands.  I was able to do this due to the opening in the center of the aftermarket wheels on the car.  I have yet to test drive the car since this work has been completed, although I don't currently anticipate any issues.

Fade into Black

The wheels that are on the Pulsar (not factory) are a nice bronze color, but they don't match the rest of the car.  Amy asked if the color could be changed, and my first thought is that they might look good in black.  Since paint is such a commitment and we're not really certain that black is the way to go, why not experiment with Plasti Dip?

After removing the wheels and cleaning them thoroughly, I stuck a series of old business cards between the tire and the rim; this would eliminate any work of peeling the coating off the tires.

I then applied 5 or 6 very light coats of black Plasti Dip, allowing about 30 minutes between coats.

The wheels turned out great!  I've only treated one pair of wheels since I know I have to get new tires and the coating will likely need touching up after the tire mounting process.  This did give us an idea of how the car will look with the new color on the wheels.

I don't yet know how well the Plasti Dip coating will hold up to the rigors of the road, but I've read that the original (as compared to Rustoleum or other brands) holds up much better.  Time will tell!

Nice Rack

The steering rack in the Pulsar had seen better days by the time we purchased the car.  The boots were split and the rack itself was leaking fluid from the input shaft.

I searched for a replacement, which was considerably more difficult given the fact that our Pulsar is an SE which used a different steering rack than the more common XE.  I finally located a rebuilt unit through RockAuto.com and had the last unit available shipped to the house.

I had done some reading and thought that I might be able to loosen the unit and slide it through the opening in the driver's side wheel well.  This may work for the XE unit, but I sure couldn't get the rack through this opening.  At this realization I began removing anything that seemed to be in the way of dropping the rack straight down, including the exhaust midpipe, front sway bar, transmission cable, and rear engine mount brackets.  At this point I was able to remove the rack mounts, move the rack as far as I could to the driver's side, then drop the passenger side down and remove the unit.  There was much finagling, pausing, pondering, adjusting, and bleeding during this phase.

The rebuilt unit was mostly identical to the factory unit, although I did notice that the body of the rebuilt unit was slightly smaller.  This forced me to wrap the inside of one of the rack mounting bushings with a piece of rubber to ensure the mount was tight.

Now that I had figured out how to remove the old unit, the new one went in without much issue.

After the new rack was mounted, replaced all rubber hose on the low pressure lines as I suspected they had been leaking.  I also installed an in-line filter between the rack and the power steering cooler to ensure that the new rack was protected from any contaminants that might have gotten into the system.  I mounted the filter just behind the radiator on the passenger side box frame.

 

With the front of the car still on jack stands, I started the car and turned the wheels from side to side a few times to bleed the air from the system.  Another one of the big tasks that I wanted to complete to make the car road worthy is now behind me!

Steering into New Struts

The front struts on the Pulsar have now been replaced.  The front was no more difficult than the rear and the job was just as straightforward.  I ended up using the original strut bearings instead of the units that were supplied with the mounting kits; the original units just felt sturdier than the plastic bearings found in the kit.

Hatching a small plan

It's been a while since the 280z has seen some attention.  The deteriorated hatch stoppers had been an unsightly annoyance ever since I had purchased the car.  

I finally picked up some replacements, which are apparently still available from Nissan.

You can see that the old stoppers had severely deteriorated when comparing them side-by-side.

I used some new stainless bolts to fasten the new stoppers to the hatch frame.  Now I can smile as that eyesore has been addressed.

No more strutting around town

The struts on the Pulsar were completely shot; this was evident on the drive home after purchasing the car.  Today I replaced the rear struts.

The job wasn't hard at all.  After removing the rear wheel, brake line stay, and the upper and lower mounting bolts, the strut was easily removed.  

After removing the struts I dismantled the upper mount and removed the spring.  The springs on the rear weren't under a lot of tension and were easily removed.

I scrubbed all the parts with degreaser before assembling the new struts from Monroe.

Assembling the new stack was pretty straightforward.  I used new bellows, bumpers, and pillow mounts in the reassembly.

The new struts went back into the car as easily as they came out.  Now the rear end of the car won't strut about quite like it did on that drive home!

 

Let there be sound!

The Pulsar had the remnants of a high-end sound system in it when we purchased the car.  Large gauge power wire was routed from the firewall into the back of the car, along with a few line-level signal wires.

In addition to some interesting wiring, the speakers both front and rear were non-functional.  The rear speakers had completely deteriorated while some less than adequate wiring techniques caused the front to be non-functional.

The surrounds on the tiny rears had disentegrated

The front speaker wires were simply taped together

To get the tunes going again, I spliced a new radio harness as well as correcting the wiring issues to the speakers.  I also installed new JVC 6x9 speakers in the rear and Rockford Fosgate 5 1/4 speakers in the front, using Boom Mat sound speaker baffles on all speakers.

The reverse indicators are back up

With the interior out of the Pulsar I was able to catch a glimpse of the back up light assemblies.  I noticed that the lower mounting posts had broken, so once again the plastic welder saves the day!

Parts is parts!

There were some parts that I had trouble finding for the 280z, but that was a popular car with essentially the same chassis for almost 10 years so only the model year specific parts are difficult to locate.  The N13 Pulsar NX, however, was only made for four years, with the SE only being available for two of those four.  There are some parts we need for our Pulsar that I thought would be impossible to find.  Something hit me while I was on my search for a couple of interior parts: the Pulsar had few parts of its own; it actually used parts from several bins.  Two examples of this include the T-Top lock release button and the glove box lock.

After looking at several photos, I noticed that the T-Top lock release button was shared with the Z31 300zx.  After finding one on eBay all I had to do was paint it to match.

The glove box latch was a bit more challenging, but after scouring many images of glove boxes from various Nissan models of the late 80's and early 90's, I found that the latch from an early 90's Nissan Micra was a perfect fit.  After finding one on eBay I slipped it through the hole in the glove box lid with a click.

The point here and the lesson I learned is don't rely solely on the part numbers for a specific model of car; sometimes it is just the color that differs.  Manufacturers cut costs by reusing parts between models and sometimes it is a matter of finding which parts were shared when you can't find that specific part for your vehicle.