Rebuilding Brakes, Fuel System for Z600
Okay, well we made a fair bit of progress on the green Z600. We’ve refurbished all the brakes, rebuilt the fuel tank.
The fuel system was in pretty bad shape. The fuel tank itself was dry, but full of probably 8-10 cups of ‘crud/dirt’. We’ve done this before on the N600–and I remembered that leaning/repairing fuel tanks is a messy and time consuming task. This time I outsourced the cleaning of it to a local shop. We etched the tank and poured in the sealant, reinstalled in the car. When testing it we discovered that although the fuel pickup tube was clear, it wasn’t picking up fuel. We filled the tank and discovered that only the first 1 gallon would get picked up–our pickup tube was rusted right at the very top!
So we had to take the tank out again. We weren’t looking forward to redoing the sealant and were concerned about the safety welding the tank. So we fabricated a pickup tube / patch that could be riveted on with sealed blind rivets and epoxied in place. All we had to do was drill out and remove the old tube, and rivet/glue on the new patch. Fuel system works great now!
The brakes were in pretty bad shape, we ended up having to rebuild or refurbish essentially the entire system. Both the rear slave cylinders, both front cylinders and the master cylinder and the front brake lines (lines were seized when we rebuilt the MC), rotors, front pads, rear shoes all needed work or replacement.. Did not cost a who lot, but took a fair bit of time and some specialized tools.
After we got everything finished up and bled the brakes, we fired it up to take the car on it’s first drive in over 20 year. Went to pull the car out of the shop and it wouldn’t budge. I knew that the car was capable of self-propulsion, as we have moved it in and out of the shop on several occasions (with no brakes–interesting times). Initially, I figured we must have incorrectly adjusted the rear brakes.
Turned off car, started checking the brakes–all four wheels seemed to be freely movable. After a minute of head scratching, got back in the car and it wouldn’t move again. At this point we realized that it it only locks up the front brakes when the motor was running–had to be the vacuum operated booster. So we disconnected booster, plugged line from motor. Problem solved, car now freely moves (and stops!) under it’s own power.
Hopefully we can get the booster fixed, although a lot of folks drive the cars with the boosters bypassed or disabled. I’d prefer to get it working–or perhaps we’ll just have to retrofit a larger master cylinder.
On the way back from the test drive around the block, the car started to sputter and backfire. Naturally it wouldn’t start. We re-adjusted the points and it seemed to fire right back up and run properly.
Didn’t have time to do another full test drive, but pretty sure that was it. Think I’m going to that electrical/optical system and get rid of the points.
When we first got the car it seemed to have an exhaust system. That is if you look at the exhaust manifold it had a pipe going towards the back of the car. Further inspection revealed that the exhaust pipe only extended about 6 inches from the header and then simply ceased to exist.
So we’ve started fabricating a new custom exhaust system. Hopefully once we get it finished we’ll be able have a full system bent up for us (which we may be able to provide to other owners). Finding mufflers with 1.75″ inlets and outlets is actually kind of difficult. Frankly there isn’t a lot of space to put a muffler so it has to be rather small to begin with.
We’ve got collector plates already for the car, so hopefully after the exhaust system is complete, we’ll be able to drive it around town.
Next step is to fix the rust, prepare the car for a fresh coat of paint. We’ll simultaneously be working on restoring the interior–recovering the seats, replacing the headliner and fabricating a new carpet. The project continues.
Brake / Fuel System Rebuild Gallery
Tags: booster, brake, fuel tank, master cylinder, slave cylinder, Vintage, Z600
