cb350

I haven't fixed it yet, but I'm pretty sure the linkage is worn out. It didn't look like something that is easily servicable, and I was planning on buying a new wiper assembly. Unfortunately, it's a bit expensive! I think these are the part numbers.. 2003-2005 28815-CD000 2006-2008 28800-CF40A You're looking at approx. £360. It's on my list of things to do, but currently my 350Z is SORN'd (lack of money due to COVID-19!) - and the last time I drove it, I had a weird complete power loss, so it dropped down my list of priorities a bit! If anyone knows of a cheaper alternative, I'd definitely be interested.

Just coming back to update with the latest - the long-and-short of it is, it seems to have been the PCV valve at fault! If anyone else has pinking with high oil consumption, please just replace your PCV valve *first*, as it's super easy to swap out and not very expensive. Everything else you can do is going to be harder to get to. Longer story: I took the car in to a local garage for a compression test, ended up going through the whole story of why I wanted a compression test, and the guy at the garage eventually decided (after I'd left the car there), that there was 'no point' doing a compression test - he said I was obviously burning oil, and this would make my compression read high (??), but that he had some magic fluid stuff we could try to get the oil burning under control. I just wanted a proper diagnosis, so this didn't really appeal to me. I took the car home, not too happy, but this conversation with the mechanic did get me thinking about the oil burning situation. Oil burning with the fuel is going to bring the octane rating down, so I guess if there's enough oil burning, it's going to get to a point where it starts to pink. So I started looking for excessive oil burning causes, and this led to the PCV valve. I replaced it at the weekend, and the pinking has *almost* stopped completely. I say *almost*, because if I accelerate fully WOT, there is a minor amount of pinking at 3000rpm in pretty much every gear. I'm hoping that I'm just burning off a bit more oil before things settle down, but I'm also wondering if the PCV valve is only one problem, and there is an impending bigger problem around the corner, possibly caused by me being unable to stop this pinking from happening for the past 10 months. I've been driving it incredibly carefully to avoid pinking, but some damage must have been done. For now I think I'm just going to drive it for a couple of months and monitor my oil and fuel usage closely to see how it all pans out. Fuel economy has been pretty bad for the past 2 - 3 months, so I'm hoping this might recover a bit, and obviously I'd like to see the oil consumption improve.

Also when pulling the fuses, check to make sure nothing's getting shorted out. I don't think this is an issue with the 350Z, but my brother had a car once where all the lights were stuck on, and it turned out there was moss in the fuse box! With the time of year, I wouldn't rule out some sort issue with damp?

Hi all, So to add to my woes with the engine pinking, when I was changing the injectors I noticed that the driver's side windscreen wiper rubs on the bonnet when you lift or shut the bonnet. To be fair, I've noticed the wipers squeaking for a while now when using them. Pressing down on the wiper arm shows a lot of play up and down, it's like the wiper arm should sit much lower against the windscreen, but the wiper itself is pushing it all up (and therefore making it hit the bonnet). I took both wipers off and removed the scuttle panel under the wipers - none of the bolts were loose. When I push on the spindle where the driver's wiper arm should sit, the whole thing moves around. I can't see anything to tighten up - does the shaft wear out or something? Do I need a new wiper assembly? Cheers, Chris.

Thanks Mark and Bry, this gives me a few other things to look into. I keep thinking about the fact that it was fine before I took it for an MOT, and pinking when I got it back. Usually I drive the car to the MOT station at the time of the test, and it goes straight on the ramp. Due to work commitments, last year I left the car at the garage overnight for them to test. I've always felt my oil usage was high (about a litre every 1000 miles), so I'm thinking, maybe they revved the hell out of the engine to get it up to temperature for the emissions test... if something was just on the cusp of wearing out, I wonder if that could've pushed it over the edge and started the pinking? Something else I just remembered - when I got it apart to change the injectors, one of the inlet ports was a bit oily. I wouldn't say it was really bad, but you could see the difference between the five shiny clean inlet ports, and the one with oil in it. I think compression test is probably a good idea next, I've booked it in at a local garage. Don't want to go down the rabbit hole of replacing even more sensors/components/etc if there's something more serious going on.

Thanks Bry, is that likely to lead to pinking, with no other symptoms? I keep wondering about low compression, but in all other respects, the car seems to be driving fine. It uses a lot of oil, but then it always has (I've had the car 10+ years).

Hi all, This is a bit of a resurrection of an old issue I reported last year, and I've never got to the bottom of it. Basically, around March 2019, I took my car for an MOT, left it there at the garage overnight, and when I got it back it was running bad and pinking. I haven't been able to get to the bottom of what's causing this pinking. Basic order of events is: - End of 2018, I changed the spark plugs and coil packs - all fine - March 2019, took the car for an MOT - Afterwards, when it was running rough, I found that two of the plugs to the coil packs had come loose. Reconnected them, rough running went away but the pinking remained - I've now also changed the injectors, the knock sensor and the ECT sensor - still it keeps pinking Have tried the usual things like attempting to reset the ECU, also I've always run the car on super unleaded. I've had just over 10 years, and never had any problems with pinking before this. There are no fault codes reported by the ECU. The pinking generally occurs between 2500 - 3250 RPM and if I drive *extremely* carefully in that range (coupled with changing gear at different times), I can basically keep it under control. My fuel economy has dropped off quite badly as well, but I don't know if that's a feature of my new 'engine protect' mode of driving! Could low compression cause pinking? Not sure what I should test/change next. MAF? Any help greatly appreciated. Cheers, Chris.

Thanks, yes I'm keeping my fingers crossed! It's still pinking a bit, but nowhere near as badly as it was, so I'm hoping the fuel map just needs to get back in tune. Will need to keep an eye on that coil pack plug.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and help. I was about to dive in and remove everything to get to the injectors, when I thought I should probably take one more look at the connectors to the coil packs that I could see. I had looked at them previously, but there's one which I was barely just able to get my hand on, and as I pulled on the wires, the connector came off the coil pack! I plugged it back in and drove it today - no misfire. The pinking was there initially, but as I drove, it started to die down. After about 30 minutes, it seemed to have gone completely. My only guess as to what was happening is that for some reason, the ECU wasn't recognising a randomly disconnected coil pack as a fault. Believing that the car was running fine, it would have possibly figured the car was running rich (or something like that), and then would have been compensating by adjusting the fuel map - eventually leading to it pinking like crazy(?). I'll see how it goes over the next day or two - I'm hoping I've got this figured out now. Thanks all, Chris.

Sadly, it ran OK for a day (although I did think it still felt a bit down on power), and then the misfire was back, coupled with what almost certainly sounds like really bad pinking under acceleration between 2000-3000rpm! A day later, it sounds really awful. Still no error codes, no engine warning light. A total mystery. I'm going to change the injectors and the knock sensor, and will take it from there. Did you get an engine warning light when the coil went down? I had two coils fail last year - both gave me warnings and I replaced all the spark plugs and coils at the time. It ran perfectly fine afterwards. I have wondered if maybe one of the new coils has failed, but surely I'd expect a P0350 error code?

Just to update this - the misfire got really bad, still no engine management light or error codes. Out of desperation I poured a bottle of Redex in the tank, and the misfire has magically gone away! My thoughts are either: 1. Blocked injector, fixed with Redex. 2. Redex was superfluous to proceedings and I had a dodgy tank of petrol? It still seems a bit lacking power, but I don't know if that's my imagination or not. Probably a good idea to replace the injectors? Chris.

So, the misfire is even worse this morning. I know from when I had the coil pack go down that I would expect to see the engine management light come on, and the VDC and SLIP warnings at this point, if it was an ignition problem. Does anyone know, could a faulty injector cause a misfire *without* illuminating the EML? Just trying to think of things I can try. Chris.

Definitely worse driving it today - and it seemed to turn into a full-on misfire at idle while waiting at a set of traffic lights. Pulling away, the misfire suddenly disappeared while accelerating. Again, the engine warning light didn't come on. Are there any known issues that sound like this? Chris.

Hi all, My '03 JDM 350Z has suddenly developed a strange issue, immediately after I took it in for an MOT. Under light acceleration, from about 1500 - 2500rpm in any gear, I can feel an occasional hesitation which appears to be getting worse. At first it seemed to do it just when cold, but after a week now it's doing it more consistently even when hot. I had a misfire last year which turned out to be a coil pack, so I replaced the spark plugs and coil packs. This problem almost feels like a similar misfire, but it's just not quite the same, and it's not causing the engine warning light to come on. At idle it seems fine, and so does under hard acceleration. One thing that's worrying me is my car has always used a lot of oil. I chuck in nearly a litre every 1000 miles and I have done for years. I've never seen any leak out under the engine (I've always done oil changes myself, so I've had a good look before now), I've never seen any blue smoke, and it's never got any worse, but these past few weeks I think the oil consumption is up a bit. I won't know for sure until I've done a few more miles. So, I'm worried that maybe low compression is causing something like a misfire.. and that, maybe my engine is getting somewhat worn out and somebody with a lead foot during the MOT test may have helped put a nail or two in the coffin while getting ready to run the emissions test? I usually hang around during the test but I couldn't this time due to work. Does that sound feasible, and does anyone have any other less expensive ideas on what might be the problem? Cheers, Chris.

Thanks for the replies! Finally back with an update So, here are the latest bits (apologies for the slightly bad picture quality): Assembled, it looks like this: The top section is designed to allow the screen to sit into place, and then it's all held together by being screwed into the the cubby using the mounting points already on the cubby. This is using the satnav cubby for the '03 - '06 350Z. I have a non satnav cubby in my car at present, so once I've finally swapped everything over for the screen, I'll be seeing if it fits into that cubby as well, and hopefully making modifications to support it if it turns out that it won't fit in exactly the same way. Here it is in the cubby: And here's the side, showing how it's screwed together: I've found a couple of final design points that could do with changing - it's a bit difficult to screw the case together at present, so I think I'll add some holes in the sides to aid with assembly, and I could do with modifying the base of the unit a bit to make it easy to fit the driver board for the screen. However, I can work with what I've got for this one, so now my focus will turn to fitting the Raspberry Pi and associated audio and power hardware. The plan is to allow it to power up when the ignition is switched on and gracefully shut down when switched off, plus I want to incorporate a fairly decent DAC to ensure the sound quality is good, and avoid some of the noise I'm undoubtedly going to get from using the Raspberry Pi's in-built sound along with the car's power supply. Next post will hopefully detail the hardware install, and then I can get to work on the software.