October 2002
2002.10.05 - Going for a drive! (or 3...)
Finally, a weekend where I am free and it's not raining! I talked my girlfriend into following me to Meineke. I adjusted the timing on the 240Z back a bit and leaned the mixture some. The car started with very little effort (once I charged the battery, that is.) On the road it was hellaciously loud, especially when I needed any power for acceleration or going uphil. :-)
For the first mile, the engine lagged and made a popping sound if I pushed the accelerator more than 1/2 way down, so I avoiding doing that in case the timing was advanced too far... but suddenly the problem went away and the car had a lot more power! I think maybe something was clogged (from sitting for a year? naaaaa..) and eventually flushed itself out.
Whatever it was, by the time I completed the 6 mile drive the car was running great. The guys at Meineke were very nice, but I paid way too much ($200) for a chrome muffler designed for import cars. I was tempted to tell him just to put a turbo flowmaster on there, but the Meineke guy was convinced that it would give the car a "lawnmower" sound. At any rate, the final setup was this: 2 1/4" pipe from the header all the way back to the chrome muffler, via 2 90 degree turns. No resonator. I was afraid it would be too loud, but just as he assured me- it sounded very nice. The exhaust has a very warm, smooth sound to it and just enough rumble at idle to be proud of. Even my girlfriend likes the way it sounds! :-)
I drove all over east Atlanta after that trying to find a garage that does front-end alignments, but today apparently wasn't my day to have that done. The two places I knew of that do them were closed. By the time I finally got home and called a couple of places it was 3:00 and no one had time to get to it today. So, I'm going to drive the car to work Monday morning and have it done at a tire shop near the office.
The good news is that I was able to drive all over east Atlanta for an hour and the car performed excellently. More updates soon!