WillieO

If you have a bit of mechanical knowledge it helps too otherwise you'll be taken to the cleaners for the smallest problems that will become blown out of proportion. I've had 3 and a half years so far, no big problems other than 18mpg and decent high mileage well looked after car. Heck for the same cost I could not even have run a new vectra for 3 years and I know which I'd rather drive. A high fuel consumption less than £1000 per year depreciator work of art or a low fuel consumption prozacmobile that loses £3-4000 a year just parked outside your house - what would you rather have parked outside your house? No contest Anyway if you are really gentle with it it will do 26mpg or more but if you have blood in your veins you wont resist its charms - it'll make you smile tho.

For something like this its worth double checking with a micrometer. Better done right now for sure than find run bearings once its all back in the car.

That wire - its not rear plenum passenger side nearby the battery? Because it could be related to the Idle Air Valve. If thats not working anymore it could explain the lousy tickover. The ecu controls that valve to keep the tickover stable at 700 ish rpm if set up properly.

Think it would look good in the office as a zeccy toy

Also check that you didnt blow off one of the many small hoses and give yourself an air leak. Any hissing around the battery area when its trying to tickover. Sometimes these small hoses can even burst with boost pressure and old age. And for cleaning up connectors I found you had to use those tiny screwdrivers like in watchmakers stuff to scrape the oxide from the inside of female connectors and the outsides of the spade ends. Then a smear of vaseline to protect afterwards.

There's self diagnostics in the manual under br for brakes. Explains what the number of flashes relate to. ie which wheel sensor is duff and so on.

Need to do a small weld on the Z before the MOT. Should you always disconnect the battery or does it not matter?

Suppose a Brit working in Japan bought a UK spec car in Japan used it for a year then brought it back with him to avoid UK VAT etc. he would also have to be the first registered keeper in UK and keep it another year in UK to avoid the tax. Then it's be an imported UK spec car so should still be valued at the higher UK spec.

Loads of detail differences. Look for the diff oil cooler. offside rear between the diff and wheel high up. Only euro cars had this. But bumpers surely confirm it anyway with long numberplate on the rear. Nobody would go to the expense of changing this to just make an import look UK.

Does all the other directions still work? Mine had the recline up direction button start working intermittently and you would naturally try waggling the switch which put the backrest further and further back! Since I'm not into driving lying down it had to be fixed. The little joystick gizmo was the problem. You need to be ready able and willing to take it apart because its balls fall out. You should probably disconnect the fuse for the seats too but I didnt and put up with some sparks while I used wet n dry abrasive paper to clean up the burned contact surfaces. Putting it back together needs some vaseline to hold its balls in place while you get the parts together. Little springs as well. Fiddly job and needed splitting a couple of times before I got it right. Mine works fine now in all directions.

The ecu is always adjusting the fuel mixture its not something that only happens after disconnecting the battery. Just disconnecting the battery resets it to the default factory new setting and it then learns its way from there back to the optimum for that particular engine and tolerances for lowest emissions. So in that sense you might suddenly feel a difference - more likely richer mixture since with mileage on the clock comes some wear in injectors etc so that more fuel is injected per unit time. The self learning will sense its now running richer than it should and compensate it back to where it was after some miles of experience. For a short while you might find it more responsive meanwhile its not quite as clean on emissions as it should be. I think.

I just finished a set of Mintex on grooved 3g discs and they were fine as far as I could tell - got about 20K miles. Bilkys got me worried about these Lucas ones but so far so good. Some harrys ones on my other car stopped braking when cold and when I took em off they were crumbling away even tho there was loads of meat on em. Had given them a good roasting tho. But not into totally antisocial driving so not tested to extremes.

If you've every really cooked the pads at some time then they might be breaking up and the resin bonding agent all burned. Worth spending on new pads anyway. You can get normal road use pads from Lucas Girling for about £25. just done a set myself.

Manual calls it mixture ratio self learning control. Think it only puts a correction which adds or subtracts time on each fuel injector pulse length to richen or weaken as it sees fit. I thought it was only the knock sensor that had the ability to engage safety boost and retard the ignition timing until you re start the engine. The prime objective of mixture ratio self learning is to make the Cats work properly for minimum emissions under steady running, not to give max power. At least I think thats what the manual says - anorak off again.

You forgot to mention that at the time your foot was planted on the floor! as you do;) and you didnt think to lift it off when the world started going in another direction to the one you wanted!

If the car has only been idling loads of times and has never had a decent run the back boxes could be full of water. A decent drive should dry it out. Otherwise you need to check all the usual things. Run the diagnostics and also check the oxygen sensors - the diagnostics do it for you. Check the online manual. Electrical connectors filling with green oxide can cause misfires. They need to be carefully taken apart, cleaned and re fitted. The Z has loads. Check TPS,CAS, Temp, PTU for starters.

So if your car was running on 5 cylinders due to naff electrics would the ecu smell the unburnt fuel via o2 sensors and weaken off that bank? Then when you ve fixed the misfiring would it run too rich for a while till it learned it was running too rich on that bank of cylinders? So how many miles before it re adjusts itself - 5, 10, 50 or 100. I can understand that hard re setting getting you back to the default instantly gets a good result then but I dont see how it can improve things unless it was compensating for a problem before that was then fixed. Otherwise its being stupid with its learning if you see what I mean. Its only going to get back to its old setting eventually unless something had been fixed. Otherwise you need to disconnect your battery every night. Maybe it just feels suddenly different and fools you into believing its better. Running a little rich can improve response but as soon as the ecu senses it it will back it off again for correct emissions etc.

The Stillen mods chart claims that an intake kit and decent exhaust will already increase stock boost to 10.5 psi so maybe its that.

Nissan wants £107 each for O2 sensors. Being a good Scot I thought make damn sure first. Checked and cleaned all the connections to the suspect O2 sensor again and now it flashes as fast as the other on the diagnostics. Also got the LHS connector off the PTU and put it straight back on thinking it would freshen the connection - it really ran like crap after that just showing how sensitive these things are, especially the LHS one. Forced now to take the PTU off altogether to clean it properly and found the two lower screws wouldnt come out because the female part was rotating in the cam belt cover. Forced the blighters out and cleaned all the green off the connectors. Smeared em with vaseline before refitting. Decided to do the same with the CAS as well. All these connectors were thick with green. Today its been faultless and now pulls itself up the incline to my drive without any throttle. Over 30 miles or so I couldnt make it misfire. Smooth as silk. It might actually be cured. I've had my Z more than three years and just did not appreciate how bad these connections can get. Anyone with hesitations misfires and the like wants to pull apart and clean every connector to, PTU, O2 sensors, CAS, TPS, MAS and Temp sensors. Then maybe the plug and injector connectors. Beware brittle plastics and wires. Also getting these connectors apart I use a littly tiny screwdriver to pull up the wire locking thingys. Here maybe endeth the lesson otherwise its back to a new O2 sensor.

Should tickover around 700rpm

More like a candidate for a clean of the throttle bodies and give the idle valve a good squirt of carb cleaner as well then re set the idle speed correctly.

Thanks Jaffa Sounds exactly like it. Foot down it goes like a bat out of hell. Its just at light throttle its not right. O2 sensors are more than a hundred a piece arent they? Just dont want to blow that if its not that. The odds are the slow old dirty one is duff. I just couldnt figure out how it affects the engine - does it mean those 3 cylinders richen up too much under some conditions?

Got an irritating slight misfire most noticeable at 2000 or less rpm in top just when you accelerate gently. Check about everything I can think of. The engine has one shiny new looking O2 sensor that flashes really quick on the diagnostic. The other looks old and makes flashes very slowly but still manages 5 or whatever per 10 seconds. Is this the lazy O2 sensor causing the problem or is the problem somewhere else?

So a more than a bit of vibration throught the seat of your pants is your kind of buzz;)

I dont think you can configure HID for dim dip. They are either on or off. I think you'll still need separate sidelights. Even if you dont do HID I do not think the regulations allow dim dip only in place of sidelights as you would not be able to leave it parked with sidelights (dim dip) on without ignition on as well. Another possibility might be white leds inside the standard headlamp housing or a ring of them like a beemer! Someones bound to do that soon.