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cb350

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Everything posted by cb350

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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?
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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).
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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?
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. Hi all, Just thought I'd share something I've started here with my 350Z.. I've always fancied putting some sort of screen into the cubby of my car, but I wanted it to be something that didn't mean hacking up anything that was already in the car, and fitted in to look as OEM as possible. Earlier this year I finally found a decent open-frame 7" touchscreen that looked like it'd fit: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Monitor-Display-1024X600-Raspberry-Windows/dp/B076J8ZWFF/ Unfortunately it's not perfect - if you look at the photos on Amazon, you'll see the HDMI port is on the very edge of the board at the left, and this gets in the way of the cubby. Fortunately I found it's possible to pull the back PCB away from the display (it's glued in place), so I designed a kind of 'cradle' thing to fit it all together in a way that does work in the cubby. At the same time, I added in provision to fit both a Raspberry Pi and a Pi Zero within the cradle. The idea is that the whole thing will screw in place using mounting holes that are already in the cubby. I haven't taken a bunch of detailed photos for this one, because after getting this prototype made, I found I need to make a few improvements, so I'm going to be getting another one built (it's laser cut on a CNC machine) - then I can start showing the whole build process. It all fits OK but I need to move some of the mounting holes a bit. As for software, I'm going to start off by running Android Auto on the Raspberry Pi: https://github.com/f1xpl/openauto https://github.com/opencardev/crankshaft I've already tested OpenAuto and it works pretty well! Hopefully I can share more soon. Chris.
  17. Hi all, I know there have been similar questions on this in the past, but I haven't quite found exactly what I'm looking for... Basically I'm getting an engine error code P0350 (and only that code) - first off I was getting it with no apparent issues with drivability. I changed the leads and spark plugs, everything seemed fine for a while and then the error started to return again. Now I'm getting a misfire pretty much constantly (it's there at idle and under load). I know that P0350 code is coil circuit, so I'm guessing it's a coil pack that's gone down? If I had the money, I'd change all the coil packs but I'm sadly not quite rich enough at the moment :( So... 1. What's the best way to figure out which cylinder has gone down? Is there an easy method or should I pull the plugs and look for a spark on each one individually? 2. Could anything else be wrong? I read that I should check the earth cable at the front of the engine... I've checked it and can confirm it's there :D - how should I test for continuity, as it seems to disappear into a bigger loom? 3. It's a JDM '03 model. The coil packs all seem to be around £100 each. Are there any cheaper alternatives that actually work? Sorry if this is really basic and I've missed a post covering it. Any help greatly appreciated. Chris.
  18. Late to the party with this, but I bought one of these a few years ago. Still have it somewhere. I have a JDM 350Z and I think my research pointed to the same thing as Greg above. The UK cars don't have the CD port connection. The JDM did, but the thing steadfastly refused to work 9 times out of 10. Randomly it would decide to fire up and start playing from USB, but I could never work out any sort of chain of events as to why it would occasionally work. The manufacturer was really communicative with me and sent me several different firmware upgrades to try, unfortunately none of them made any difference. Eventually, one of the firmware upgrades bricked the device. My advice to anyone considering using this unit is: 1. Email the manufacturer directly (http://gromaudio.com/) and ask them if they've solved the issues with it. 2. Consider the tape aux-in hack instead. Chris.
  19. So, just an update on this... The noise only happens at start-up, and although it can be heard with or without the A/C switched on, having the A/C on makes it more likely to happen (and switching the A/C off is a good way to stop it). I already checked all pulleys, etc, but I decided to pull the A/C belt off again and dismantle the tensioner. Nothing wrong there, so far as I can see. Put it all back together, retensioned the belt again, and the squeal is now worse than ever before! I'm now thinking it has to be the A/C compressor. The pulley feels absolutely fine and turns without any play, but I've pretty much ruled everything else out. To test, I ran the car with the squeal happening, got underneath and fired WD40 directly into the centre of the compressor pulley (being VERY careful not to get any on the belt - not easy when you're being deafened). Conclusion: 1. Buy earplugs. 2. Squeal stopped immediately. Later when I restarted the car, the squeal was back. Does anybody know if it's possible to dismantle the pulley/clutch assembly on the compressor with it in-situ on the car? I'd really like to take a look behind that pulley without having disconnect the entire A/C circuit. Cheers, Chris.
  20. I do agree, but it's gone a bit past that point now, I've retightened several times.
  21. Thanks Alex. Do you think it's possible that the same sound could be heard if it was under-tensioned or over-tensioned? I'm just wondering if I've over tightened that AC belt now. Haven't tried taking each belt off in turn... the main problem is I don't have much space where I live, so I drive it to my dad's house (he has a pit in his garage).. and then of course it's warm and won't squeal. Even leaving it a couple of hours, I've never heard it while I'm there!
  22. Hi all, I've searched high and low about this but can't find anything definitive... Late last year (December) I replaced the two belts on my '03 350Z with the Gates aftermarket belts. The old ones weren't making any noise but were very highly cracked. Then at the end of January, the belts started squealing/screeching like crazy at start-up. Or at least, I thought the belts were making the noise - it sounds exactly as you would expect belt squeal to sound. So anyway, checked the tension of the belts again (assuming they have stretched a bit) - didn't seem to be any problem there. Thought maybe the old battery was dragging things down and maybe this was the source of the problem - changed that - no difference. Tightened the belts up a bit and this seemed to improve things for about 2-3 weeks, then the noise returned. I guess this was around March/April by this point. So, I took both belts off and tried all the pulleys to check for any play, resistance to movement or noise. Everything seems totally fine. Put it all back together, tension correctly, noise disappeared for a little while but soon came back again. I found if I select a high gear, bring the clutch up to try to stall it, let the engine revs drop sufficiently and then push the clutch back down, the belt noise goes away.. so I just started doing that in the mornings! (not ideal but I haven't burnt the clutch out yet ) Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I got really fed up of it, got back under the car and had another look. Belts still seemed in good condition but the AC belt looked a bit loose so I decided to tighten it up a further just to see what would happen. I didn't go nuts but I took a bit of slack out. If anything, it may actually be worse now. Having the AC switched on definitely makes it worse. Once the engine has warmed up, I can't get the noise to happen. Even starting it again an hour or two later, it won't squeal. I'm slightly stumped. I was thinking my next move would be to have a good look at the idler pulleys on the AC belt tensioner - probably remove it to get a close look? But what I don't understand is that it sounds exactly like belt squeal. Could the AC pump make a similar noise? Sorry for the long post, but does anyone have any idea? What would be the next best thing to look at? I bought another brand new set of belts but after inspecting the ones on the car, it just didn't seem worth replacing them again... although I probably will replace them anyway next time I pull the undertray off. By the way, it's really loud. You can hear it all the way down my road when I'm inside my house. At least I'll know if somebody is trying to nick it I suppose! Chris.
  23. Well, managed to cure the problem today - first time I tightened it all up, I tightened the centre section to the y-pipe first, and then connected it up to the silencer. There was a bit of an alignment issue at the back. This time, I untightened it all, and then ensured the silencer was aligned properly to the back first. Then tightened up the centre section to the y-pipe. I had to really twist the centre section to get it to sit nicely with the back box, so I think it's just a matter of the fitment not being too great. Once I'd tightened it all up, there was about a 5/6mm gap to the cross member, so I guess I'll have to see if it drops down again over time. Made sure to do it up really tightly. The fitment to the middle hanger isn't great either, I think most of the problem is caused by that. Interestingly, it really wasn't blowing - not noticeably anyway. Felt around the join with my hand with the engine running and also had a good look - the mating faces were tight up against each other. There obviously wasn't a very good seal though, the water was coming out under pressure when the engine was revved.
  24. I haven't touched the y-pipe, so I hope so! Has been on there a long time.
  25. Well, I could hear the old exhaust blowing - that was a small hole near the silencer. I would say this exhaust currently sounds very slightly louder than stock. I had it idling a long time after install, and again today before I got back underneath it. I'm inclined to agree it must be blowing as you say, because that's the only thing that makes sense, but it must be either an incredibly small amount, or the exhaust is going to get extremely quiet after I tighten it up! Will report back once I've checked it out and (hopefully) cured it simply by re-tightening all the bolts!
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