Topics Last Week

I'm gonna guess 1.25 Don't recall any 1.0 while I've ben fooling with Zs.

I tried him 1st. He only offers a +11 offset for 225/50 x 16 tires and I don't want to go that wide.

The guys with the money, so funny. If they had their way people would have to pay to comment on the cars. The high end BaT car auctions are more like a big money poker game. Who's bluffing who. They don't want to know until the sale is over. https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1971-datsun-240z-345/

Body work is continuing on the car but at a slower pace than I was hoping. I wanted to get the body back from the shop before Christmas, but I now think it will not arrive until early next year. I will go to the body shop next week and see if I can get a good date on when the car body and paint is expected to be completed. I last went to the shop just before Thankgiving and Carlos was working on getting the door gaps aligned and correct. Still needs some work as the door gap is a bit wide on the drivers side while the passenger side has a mild taper. Latest body shop pictures of the doors is shown below. I looked into getting a local shop that did dash repair work to do the crack repair, but it didn't sound like they could produce what I wanted. Their price was around $400 and they mentioned that 'there would be some scarring left'. I didn't feel comfortable with that and the cost was a bit more than I wanted to pay, so I read up on the dash repair thread here and decided to do it myself. I am actually pretty happy with the final results. It is not perfect, but quite good even under my bright LED shop lighting. In natural light the dash looks perfect. I will try and sequence the process in the pictures below. I used the 'silly putty' technique to match the grain. There were also a couple of small hairline cracks, so I used the plastic epoxy to fill those while I was at it. I am cleaning up other parts as I continue to wait for the body. Below are some of the re-furb pics of the Windshield wiper motor, alternator, brake booster, steering rack and choke knob. All connector housings and most terminals were replaced where needed. FYI: I purchased the steering rack boots from 'Best Parts On-Line' for about $45 including shipping. These are the same ones that zcardepot sells for over $120. Very happy with the fit and feel. On the valve cover, the car arrived with the incorrect bolts that secure the spark plug wire supports. So I replicated the correct style bolts by filing off the top numbers on similar bolts and polishing the head. Thin clear coat on top to prevent rust. Cleaned up the distributor and installed the fuel pump. Not sure about the correct color of the distributor cap, but this green-gray cap was sitting in one of my boxes so I decided to use it. The distributor cap that was installed when car arrived had a cracked tab, so needed replacing. Also, input regarding the correctness of items is appreciated (though not always agreed upon). Items like the correct bolts for the valve cover plug wire supports were pointed out via PM and the item corrected. Thanks!

Oh, and this came today. PTunerz thermostat housing. Had to bolt up a Canadian part in honor of my Canuck brothers…

I believe the success rate here is pretty good with the past history mentioned in earlier posts presented. What puzzles me is the cost of the relay. I’m sure there are folks here on the forum including myself have a factory one available since I converted to OER Carbs.

I've had my 76 280Z for 25 years. Other than headers, it's basically stock. When I got the car, it came with 195 50R 15 tires. With those tires the car pretty much steered itself on the highway and was good on curves at higher speed. On the negative side, the tires seemed way too small in the wheel wells, the speedometer was off by 10% and trying to turn it into a parking space took way too much arm strength so early on I got a set of 14 inch Panasports and 195 70R14 Pirelli P6000's. I'm happy with this setup but find, sometimes in a sharp turn, I get a little sway. The 205 60R 15 setup is almost identical in height, diameter etc to the 195 70R 14. I see from this forum that a number of people use the 205 60R15's and was looking for your advice. I'm not racing or doing anything performance based but I do enjoy a lot of New England 45 mph country roads. Am I apt to see noticeable benefits to the slightly wider tire and reduced sidewall? I still have the 15 inch wheels the car came with so the investment would only be in a set of tires and, of course, I could always go back to the 14's. Your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks. Dave

That's a lot of money in tools!

It's unfortunate so many cool looking concept cars don't get built or the coolness gets lost in the transition to production line

5 days, that's pretty good

When I searched ebay for the iBooster, I actually looked more at the Hondas because I don't think they have the booster mounted at an angle like the Tesla. I'm still not sure about what reservoir would be best to use in this application.

An ammeter can fail, but that would also cause the car not to run. Bad wires at the ammeter would also cause the car not to run.

Thanks for everyone's input! I definitely will be using a respirator for all the body work. Melting back the filler seems like the way to go. I can hopefully get a better idea as to how it should all go back together and what metal needs to be welded in. More water must have pooled up on this side as the driver side is clean.

I'm happy I could gift you a copy of this manual, for all the effort you put into the whole Event. If you have the missing pages, you can maybe email them to me and I can try to complete the book with the missing pages for you and me. That would be great. Or to just have them digitally would be nice too. Thank you for your support too and for all the good memories made in Japan :-)

Poppin' back in for a bit, although @conedodger and @Yarb see me quite a bit in The Rusted Zed Pub section. 😎 🍻 It's been a few years since I've spoken with Gary Moisant but I'm pretty sure he's still around up in Oregon. Can't get him away from the race cars! The last time I spoke with Keith @2ManyZs (many, many years ago) he was having some health issues. I reached out once by email a few years ago but never heard back. Edit: I reached out again to Keith yesterday and he is still around, still has his Z but it is still unfinished. So, I popped back in here because I ran across something the other day that made me think of this thread. I saw my old Z for sale on Marketplace!!! She's about an hour's drive away and actually less than a mile from my mother-in-law's place! Paint still looks good (which I'm pretty proud of!) but that four-letter "R" word has started coming back with a vengeance! The guy who is currently selling, bought her not too long ago from the guy I sold her to. I stopped by yesterday on my way home from Austin, TX to see her, talk to her, and wish her well in the next part of her life. Still has good bones, but the level of repair is far more than I'm willing to tackle at this age and stage of my life. It was cool to see her again and I can't say I didn't shed a tear or two... We did go down the roadster route for a few years but not anything from Datsun. We did the Miata thing. Cool, fun little car that was a blast to drive. Helped that it was already set up for autocross which made street driving an absolute blast! Top down every single drive, even if we got caught in the rain (as long as you stay moving...)! But alas, as the wife and I both start looking toward retirement all of the toys have been traded up for a large center console boat for fishing down on the TX Coast! Grandkids are on the way and life's focus has just changed. The Z will always be a part of my life and I will die loving the sleek lines of the S30s, but I don't think there will ever be another one in our garage. Add it to the list of cars that "We should have never sold!" 😉 Y'all keep the rubber down and the RPMs up!

Probably need to put some thought into replacing the short lines. You need to do an evaluation of what condition of the parts you’re working with.

I was describing its function, not the actual material wire. The trigger wire for the new tach is its own independent circuit. I was also trying to tease out if you're replacing the stock tach or adding another tach. Are you sticking the new tach in the hole where the old one is? Your other basic question might be "how do I keep my ignition system functioning if I remove my factory tach?". Since they are tied together in the 240Z's. Just breaking the "how do I connect my new tach?" question in to its elements. Seems like you're on top of it. Good luck.

https://www.amazon.com/Zig-furniture-upholstery-tempered-sinuous/dp/B01FE3PSZE

I got the rotary replacement kit from the Z Store (ZStore.com) but not sure if they still have the kits.

Ah yes. The "right setup" would include proper harnessing (no cutting or splicing), relays to isolate the power, adequate drivers for the blubs, no flicker, and adequate cooling. Also my opinion of the right setup would make it look period-correct for the car. Overall, I believe the only real reason to consider LED is to provide more powerful light output for driving. There's no real power savings needed on a gas powered car unless maybe to support a lower rated alternator. In my case, I don't really need LED unless I just want to go down that path for fun. I also considered LED's for my Land Cruiser, because the light output is pretty weak. However, I also decided against it because I couldn't find many options that met my requirement above.

Also, Japanese market variants had the option of factory stereo from beginning of production, so there are speaker holes in both sides of the interior quarter panel trims and the sheetmetal underneath them was designed to accept speaker mounts on both sides.

Never seen the last type. Suspect it is a retro fit that someone did from some other car. The first one is 240, second is 280, though can’t nail down the change over date. Could be as early as the north american 260 in 74. The fiche might provide the date info

Contact Oliver at Zspecialties to see if he has any. https://zspecialties.com/ I suggest calling him at the number at that website. Over at zcar.com, his user name is zmanofwashington.

1977 280z AFM from an EFI engine. Car had been sitting, everything looks in working order. asking $150 obo. located in Gilbert AZ