Japanese Nostalgic Car

SEMA has some magical vehicles on display. Even more magical are the clean, eat-off-the-floorpan quality restorations. I’d say most of us are not privy to that level of pristine. For most of us, we spend countless nights wrenching to get a JNC back up on its feet. But, sometimes, we have that one bolt, that one clip that is so easy to see, but impossible to reach. I want to know about your experience:

Tell us your story of a difficult reach while trying to repair or diagnose your JNC.

My own tale involves the same engine pictured above (but not my ride). It was my first engine swap. I just got the head back from the machine shop, put it back on and torqued all the head studs, just installed the headers and intake and finally the valve covers. But I had an extra water jacket in the corner of the shed. Oops. I spent three hours trying to tighten two 10 mm bolts on the back of the head. The gap between the head and the firewall was about half as thick as my flat hand. I had to make the “scissor” motion with my fingers while holding a wrench and only getting 1/32 of a turn at a time. To add more stress to the mix was a plastic vacuum sensor with 2 brittle nipples on the end. As I got one bolt secure enough to hopefully not leak, one of those vac nipples snapped when it got clocked by my thumb… Words were exchanged between me and that water jacket. Many words. On my fourth rebuild, I still have that same head minus all the vac lines and that water passage where the jacket would have bolted up to is now welded shut.

The most entertaining comment by next Monday will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “JNC Battle! NSX vs Supra” Continue reading →