HI All,

 

Just joined the forum and bought my first 300zx over the weekend and have a few silly questions that i'm hoping someone will answer.

 

It's a 1995 300zx fairlady Z with an Auto gearbox.

 

1- the Auto gearbox has a red plastic peice at the front? what's this for?

 

2- next to the gearbox is a button that says Power at the top and Hold at the bottom? What does this do? Bear in mind, i've just bought the car and didn't really want to press it not knowing what it did in case you have to do it at a certain time ie: before you engage gear.

 

Changing gears. In an auto normally you can change down gears manually to gain more power to overtake etc. With this car, the Overdrive button is located on the side of the gearstick and when you push it in a light appears saying "overdrive off". Is it ok in general to turn the O/D off to over take the press it to turn it back on when your done? (like changing from 4th to 3rd gear then back again)?

 

I realise these questions may be really silly to a bunch of hardened ZX owners lol.

 

Cheers

 

Peter

Back to the changing up and down from 4th to 3rd gear by relesing the Overdrive then applying it again. Taking into account what has been said in this thread, has anyone else had experience doing this that has caused there box to malfunction? Reason i ask is that i feel this is the best way to get extra overtaking accelration without the need to floor the car.

I think we probably have vastly different driving styles, but here's my 2p.

 

It won't cause any problem to the box, you'll simply be dropping out of overdrive then dropping back in. But a slightly stronger press of the pedal will do exactly the same thing. Third gear locks up at 50mph and overdrive locks up at 40mph (iirc - I don't use o/d except m-ways) so if you want to drop back out of lock up you can release the pedal slightly as if easing off, which will resume you back to non lock up as you re-apply power, then lock up again.

 

I noticed with my first Z that when pulling hard in 3rd gear and lock up (over 50mph) if you then press overdrive to ON that knocks you back out of 3rd gear lock up and pulls slightly stronger if you're running standard boost. On my next Z I ran 1 bar of boost so had the greatest power in lock up with the extra torque. Hope that makes sense!

Oh by the way, as you're an overdrive user, have you noticed that applying overdrive when in 3rd gear at over 50mph but driving sedately, makes the engine rev up momentarilly (about 250rpm) just as you press the o/d button, thens drops into o/d. That's normal, so I always ease off the pedal when pressing the o/d buton to get a smooth change without the rev-up. The rev-up is caused by 3rd jumping back out of lock up before entering o/d, and that's why it doesn't happen when applying o/d at under 50mph.

Cheers for the Advoice Trev :)

 

Peter