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But it's so pleasant and complimentary...can we keep it? I promise to feed him and take him for walks. Can we, please? We'll call him Spot the Bot.

Half shafts across all years are the same replaceable snap ring retained ujoints.

OK, without the car actually being assembled for ready reference, I thought that might be a possibility.

I don't think that is going to work. None of the connections on the back of the alternator will do what you want. The connection that you are thinking of as "only having an output when the car is running" is connected to the battery. So regardless if the car is running or not, that wire will be at battery voltage.

Recently, I was able to obtain something rare, which I've been searching for five years, or so now. But let's start in the beginning. In 1937, Nissan registered a daughter-company called "Nissan Auto Sales Co. Ltd." as a sales division spin-off. In 1957, the same company registered the "NISSALCO" trademark, with the aim to develop and produce service tools for Nissan factories and workshops. They produced all kind of mechanical and electronic testers but also accessory parts for Nissan Car owners. Here is a picture from the Nissan Cherry assembly line, with a NISSALCO sign above every test bench: Today, the company is still existing, but under the "ALTIA" Name. In the early 70ies, they developed a Special service tool box for the Datsun 240Z sports. ST0929-0000. And yesterday, I finally got one, after many years of searching for it. The toolbox comes with a selection of Special tools for the 240Z. And this box came with a lot of extra tools inside. You can lift out the upper case, and then you have access to the lower level. Mine included also the Booklet that comes with it. So first, I had to get all the parts out and go through them. Luckily, i collected some of the Datsun / Nissan / Kent-Moore Special tools books over the years. And the box (even though without any part number or information) and some of the tools are also listed in the US-service manual: Sadly, I quickly realized that my purchase came with a lot of additional tools which do not exactly belong to the S30, but random Datsun's, and some original tools from the box are missing. It seems that the previous owner also recreated some missing tools. Overall, it's still a good starting point. After cleaning the box out, hammering the metal straight and fixing the locks. it started to look good. I wanted to keep the patina, but still clean up all the parts. so i gave them a quick wash in the parts cleaner: And then put the original parts back in: Assembled (some tools are not correct): And closed: The set also included this nice Nissan wooden tool box, with the lovely lock: I still have to figure out yet what this is used for, but i just love the looks of it: I'm also working on to restore the original manual that came with it: But it appears that the last few pages are missing and the back cover. But still better than nothing. It also has a very strange format, where each page is only printed on one side and then folded to have a print on both sides, which is a bit weird. That's it for now. I will try to keep finding the missing tools and pages. If you know something, I'm happy to hear from you. Expect some more tools related stuff in the coming days, but i also hope to work on the car itself again, in the next days. Stay tuned!

Pretty much rust free pieces from a 70 . Drivers side A pillar section and B pillar section . I won’t need these for my project . 250$ shipped for both

I just wanted to chime in, since I'm also a member of S30 World, a later edition, so not in the group photo with Takeo Miyazaki, which took place when the museum opened. However I am thrilled to have been asked to join in and represent the Australian part of the team, as mentioned Chris' goal is to ensure we have a global perspective on these cars and I've been the local train spotter in the Australian market for many years now, having got into my first S30Z back in the late 90s and joined this website in year 2000 I believe? I am also the owner of a couple of low vin # Australian delivered cars - which have their own unique differences. Even though I've been passionate about the S30Z for 25+ years, I still have things to learn, especially when it comes to cars delivered to markets outside Australia. I think we are all still learning, which is why the S30 world project and website is important, to help educate, discover and document. I'm also thrilled that through the restoration work Chris has spearheaded new parts have come to market to provide quality OEM-like reproduction bits and pieces (eg: fuel tanks and door seals just to name a couple). I was fortunate enough to see the quality of work first hand back in 2017, a local Australian had his car in display at the Nissan Datsun Nationals in Sydney. (attached photos). I've seen many 'restored' cars over the years and this was indeed top notch! Obviously not a 'factory style' restoration, but a superb finish none the less. The quality of finish achieved on cars completed since then has only improved! On a personal level, I feel the S30Z series have been greatly under appreciated for many years, however it would appear that more and more are starting to appreciate these cars these days and I'm very happy to see more cars getting quality restoration work performed at this level.

Are you going to ask these same questions to anyone else now?

Cats can stop up and restrict the exhaust

to be honest i havent even looked at the exhaust. Im assuming it does have cats. I did have a 10K potensiometer laying around and tested this hack from siteunseen and it did work when setting the ohms to ~1000. Car reved to 4500-5000 before shifting without any hesitations. im not planning on driving aggressive at all. but just trying to get the car running well.

This is the one I used with LED lights https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0811GTVH2?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2&th=1

Its a long shot, but putting a feeler out for a 3.364 R200. Looks like only the '79 4 seater manual transmission s130s had them stateside.

Does it have Cats?

Thanks for that. We set the plug #1 position by TDC and the rotor position. So we ended up with that L20 positioning through our methodology by accident

As I was working on the car today, it occurred to me that perhaps the best KEY-ON signal I could hope for in the engine bay would be one coming from the alternator. After all,it will only have an output when the car is running. I have an internally-regulated 70 amp, 280ZX alternator so I won't be using the 1972 OEM voltage regulator. In fact, that location on the inner fender is where I'm clustering all the relays for headlights, electric cooling fan, etc. What do you folks proficient in S30 electrics think of this as a possibility?

Cody figured out the turn signals today. The signal flasher is a thermal variety even though it looks like an electronic flasher it's not. If we add just one incandescent bulb it flashes as it should. So I ordered some that are electronic with an additional ground. We'll see how they do. He also replaced all the bulbs in the dash gauges with LED's

@Mike It's still a bot!!

Are you sure your exhaust can breathe properly? Possibly the exhaust system could be a variable.

searching for a potentiometer is not so easy now adays. i miss radio shack.

I don't know if this is accurate, but for the L20, this site says the distributor orientation is different than what I would expect. https://www.gtsparkplugs.com/firing-order-datsun-l-series.html

Thank you for that info, ill see what i can get done. i would like to see if this would be a main cause and a fix verse a bandage. In the long run im doing to be redoing most of this with more modern technology so it might be a moot point.

So status, we figured out how to hot wire the car since we don't have an engine bay harness currently @SteveJ :) We have spark and we have fuel but we couldn't get it to fire. Even with Ether... We have good compression and we have the dizzy on the car on the compression stroke. Although the timing isn't set yet. But rotating it while cranking, we didn't get anything. No bump, no belch, no nothing... Valve adjustment was done recently My only idea at this point is that we flooded the engine with all the cranking time to sort the spark and distributors. Any other ideas??

You should never disassemble both sides at the same time! That way you have an assembled one to look at. If you didn't keep the parts well sorted then the auto adjust might not work. The sides are handed I believe

It might be the front, AFM? It'll spit and sputter and buck under load. A lot of folks have done this tweak. I did mine when there was a Radio Shack in every mall. Cost me $5 and it runs like a top.

Is it popping out the tailpipe? If so you should read this. I've got one on my '77. https://atlanticz.ca/zclub/techtips/tempsensorpot/index.html