MDMetal

I hadnt counted on the various responses tbh its pretty interesting! Im still not sure whats more economical tbh but 4th definetly seems to be the common choice

Indeed hence the original post, less fuel used in town = more fun in the country!

Indeed this is what my recent ponderings led me to believe yes you can do 5th/6th but maybe its not getting you the best return.

Well this is the heart of the issue, for fuel consumption, lowest revs will always win, however your going to have to labour the engine for a tiny speed up or drop down then up for every minor adjustment, you can certainly coast at 30 in 6th but in terms of fuel consumption im wondering what the best RPM is.

Ive edited the poll so you can all subvert my question and tick 2nd

I was having a play round last night and something crossed my mind thats been playing on it awhile, from an economy POV* what gear is best at 30mph? I spend a fair amount of time urban driving and have been using 5th since I got the car but anicodatly 4th seems to return better results (unscientificly watching the estimated miles go up or down now I fixed my fuel tank issue!) At 5th is aprox 1,250 RPM so while it is lower RPM's all those little minor adjustments probably use a bit more fuel as the engine labours more, 4th is around 1,750 RPM but but is more available and the engine isnt so close to labouring. So what do people reckon is best? (pretending the traffic is fairly constant so you arent changing up or down but the usual slightly slower slightly faster sections) *This is not an economy car obviously, but no harm is saving some fuel to burn on the country roads instead

Cheers guys, id assumed as much but was wondering if there was a sneaky trick! Cool il be sure to post up pics, the alloys look gorgeous in anthrecite just got to sort those caps!

Hi guys, has anyone taken their badges off the alloy caps? I picked up some new ones from ALex and I want to respray the base plastic to match my new alloy colours, but dont want to spray the badge. Looking at the back it looks like the plastic pins are melted to seal them, am I being silly? anyone done this before? Cheers for any advice!

Silly question, how are they attached? Does it damage the underlying body work? ie once they're on, can they ever come off without filling in holes etc?

Soak it in wd40, push and pull the wiper towards and away from the window, you'll find that once you know how far towards and away it goes it you push/pull the wiper to the centre of that distance it will slide off, if you pull it back or push it forward all the way it will feel like its welded on and you need to pull, dont do it! Find that centre point and it'll pop off, I spend ages trying and tugging and what not, no luck, found the centre point, pops off in a few seconds.

Please leave some feedback and let me know how it goes! That a very kind offer sir! What I may do is buy the o-rings and have a look at removing the glove box and speaker to see how easy it is and then just go for it, the guide doesnt look too complex so may just give it a shot cheers for the offer il see how confident im feeling!

How tricky is releasing the fuel pressure? is it literally removing the fuse, stalling the engine and bingo your ready?

my car seems to have a few "loose conections" the fuel tank switch refused to work consitantly for awhile, after buying a new switch it turned out it was the contact in the conenctor that was iffy so lesson learnt, check all the conenctions before buying expensive items! Feeling more confident now, get some o-rings, burn some fuel off and go twiddle

That a very kind offer sir! What I may do is buy the o-rings and have a look at removing the glove box and speaker to see how easy it is and then just go for it, the guide doesnt look too complex so may just give it a shot cheers for the offer il see how confident im feeling!

Hi guys, since Ive had my Z its been plagued by the fuel gauge issue, it used to be only on a 1/2 empty tank but now seems to happen on a full tank, I get the typical dropping to empty then slowly going back up to the right value issue, its not like I cant use the car (just reset the trip counter and keep and eye on it) but its a niggle I want to fix. The real question is who to do the work though.... a) myself b)local garage c) useless dealership (the work in question im guessing is the usual cleaning of the floats) Im concerned with people removing the subwoofer and not reinstalling it correctly if they dont understand the car, Im tempted to try myself but never having worked with something as serious as a fuel tank before have my doubts. The locla garage sounds reasonably competatnt but Ive a feeling they scratched some trim panels removing them last time I had any work done so not overjoyed. The dealership should be a good bet but being in cambridge I have marshalls who arent well reknowned and have trouble return a phone call let alone doing some work. What are peoples views? Am I worrying to much and any monkey can do it? Any experiences from people who gave it a shot themselves? The work itself doesnt seem too hard and you can obviously do one float a time.

Thanks, the one I looked at had this actually! Didn't look to pretty. Not possible to just respray? When I said pain in the proverbial to get off, I didnt mean the rust I meant that the chances are the arms will be stuck onto the splines. The rest as already been said is simple to respray. again getting them off is fairly easy once they've soaked in some wd40 and you know the trick to getting them off!

Easy fix on the wiper arms tbh, obviously point it out and get as much knocked off as you can then just fix them up one weekend

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=59383 contrary to whats been posted the trick is to push and pull the wipers gently towards and away from the glass, once they do this and you can feel the spring resistance theres a mid point where you can just lever them off, just pulling without having them in the right position can cause damage.

New front and rear drop links in (guess who I bought them from... pssst Alex!) Definetly quieter and firmer on the corners, the fronts were a quick change the rears were a right pain, ended up taking them off the bar then taking the mounting plate off with the top link joint still on as they wouldnt budge! All done now though Shock wise I un-did it and gave it a little push, how stiff/resistant should a rear shock be? I can merrily move it one handed but its by no means loose and slack, what sort of resistance should stock rears be?

At the lower end of the market theres definetly cars which appeal stronger to one sex than the other but once your into performance cars I think that fades away. If I had to pick id say the Z is a girl, cus shes got nice curves hehehe

So paint wise I used the satin black hamerite, its not an exact match but its close, I sprayed the whole arm a few times to help blend in the finishes so they look identical. Obviously mask off the washer jets! Paint in those would not be good. I didnt prime it purely as it was hamerite but bare in mind it'll take a good 5 coats to full cover the metal solidly, then I gave it an additional 10 or so on top to really beef it up, remember lots of small quick coats will give you a superiour finish to a few heavy coats that are prone to running. Sanding wise I used some very very heavy paper to get the initial corrosion off, if yours are anything like mine youll need to remove 3-4 times the amount of paint compared to whats already come off. You can see in one of my images just how bad the bubbling under the paint work was, once the worst is off switch to a medium grade paper to tidy up the area, level out the metal and paint so it all sits flush, then get out your fine grade to really smooth off the area so its perfect. After that I washed each arm using washingup liquid to remove any hint of oil, gave that a good rinse and dry then time to spray! I spent pretty much the whole weekend on this, you could narrow it down to a day but its worth putting the time in, if you can put 10+ coats of paint on 15-20 min apart for each coat youll get a really hi quality finish. This is just my personal experience im sure others have their own methods Its a really nice thing to do to get your 350 looking tip top with mininal outlay (think i spent £9 on paint and paper tops) The wipers are one of those areas that point to the cars age get rid of those and nobody believes you when you say its 7 years old (in my case)

whatever it is its getting worse quickly, squeaked all the way to work sounded like front and rear :/

All done and re attached took some piccies, you can see in the pre pic theres a few deep scratches theres some severe bubbling near one of the elbows and in the bottom left how much I had to sand off to remove the paint flakes/corrosions. That said the post pic shows now nicely theyve come up, I spent the whole weekend on it so I was able to build up thin coats, sand down a few spots I hadnt got smooth on the first pass then build up more coats and leave to dry. Theyve come up a treat and Id recomend anyone thinking about it to just go for it, once they were off had zero issues!

Ok so Ive had a look now and have a few questions and piccies.. Firstly is this a leaky shock? the wet area is definetly oily (ran my finger over it) The other rear appears similar, the fronts are assembled in such a way its hard to tell but they look ok. Secondly the rear ARB, if you imagine reaching into the image and gripping the roll bar just beside the link and pulling the bar towards and pushing away from you, should there be any play? I can get it to move a couple of mm towards/away and can see the rubber around the arb bush move very slightly, up down wise the whole thing is completly rigid only movement towards away from the cameras view point Cheers for any help!

As I said. hehe indeed however pulling them back and pulling does nothing its the wiggling back and forth that works, small omitted detail hehe nevermind theyre off now, how did you split the upper and lower arms apart? I can see its easy enough to pull the spring back and off but how do i remove the centre pin?