Livin' Z Life - Historical Archive

[Arne]

15 Apr 2007 - Prepping for the Road

I haven't driven the red car much since the trip to Wilsonville a couple weeks ago, but that will change later today. I've got a training class all next week in Beaverton, and I'm leaving later today in the Datsun. Not a big deal, just a little farther than the last trip.

I did spend a little time checking a few more things out prior to this trip, primarily the rear wheel bearings on both sides. I've been hearing a bit of noise from the back, and couldn't decide if it was bearings or just road noise. And apparently it is just road noise. Looks like the bearings on both sides have already been replaced before, and they feel very good, smooth and tight. So I'm going to try to stop worrying and accept that these old cars are not all that quiet inside.

Other than that, not much major to talk about. This past week I added some 'Z' emblems to the wheel center caps, replaced the lower door window glass bumper in the driver's door, and re-registered the car with a pair of vintage, period correct license plates. I'll post later as to how the trip this week went.

[Arne]

22 April 2007 - Random April Thoughts

Well, I'm back home again, after spending 5 days last week in Beaverton. It's good to be home, although I did enjoy dinner Wednesday evening with a couple of Z-friends from the Portland area.

With this last trip, I have recently had a fair bit of seat time in the red 240Z, two trips up North this month, plus a few days here in town. And I have come to a few conclusions about future changes to the car.

1. The Mulholland struts I put in a while ago in are going to have to go. They were the wrong choice for me, for this car. They would be really great struts for track or autocross use, especially if the rules require stock springs. They are really firm, and handle great. But they are just too firm for weekend touring, which is going to be the primary use of my car. So I will be installing KYBs sometime later this year, and I figure that I should be able to sell the Mulhollands to cut my losses there. Haven't decided whether to use the Euro springs or not. I drove a 240Z in Portland that does ride decently with that spring/strut combo. But I bought them with the yellow car in mind, whose stock springs were totally shot. Since the red car's springs are still good, there's less reason to use them.
2. I'm definitely going to need to replace all the rubber bushings in the rear suspension. (Front too, most likely. But that's less noticeable than the rear at this point.) There's a bit of clunk still from the rear, even after replacing all the u-joints. I've also noticed a slight bit of 'rear-steer' effect under acceleration and deceleration that makes me think the rear control arms are moving a bit. So new rubber bushings (no need for poly for my uses) are in the plan.
3. A front spoiler is necessary. At freeway speeds, crosswinds and such really blow the car around. Not really surprising to me, that has long been a complaint leveled at early 240Zs. Since I have the '70s-era sunroof and '70s-era mags, the obvious choice for me is the '70s style BRE front 'spook'. I'll probably get one from Classic Datsun Motorsports (made from the original BRE mould) rather than the repros sold on eBay or or other vendors. I'll either leave the finish as is, or maybe paint it black at first, and then paint it red to match the car someday when I get the car painted.

I'm still mulling over the fate of the yellow car. I think I'm going to do some talking to some body shops about it over the next few weeks. It's so close now, if the rust was handled and a decent coat of original yellow paint applied, it would be highly marketable. In fact, once the body was done, it wouldn't take much to finish it. Still a possibility...

[Arne]

29 Apr 2007 - More Miles

Another long day on the road for the red 240Z yesterday. Deanna had an event to attend in Portland, so I drove her up in the Datsun. After I dropped her off I drove to Beaverton and met Gary, and the two of us caravanned from there to Astoria, ostensibly to attend the Astoria Crab Festival.

We did attend the festival, and had some really good dungeness crab. But the highlight and primary reason for the trip was to drive our 240Zs. On the way to Astoria we took a back road that had very little traffic. It could have been better paved, however. Those really firm shocks I have handled great, good control and very little body roll. But they are still too firm for my tastes and the way I will normally drive the car.

On the return trip we stopped for a visit at the home of yet another 240Z enthusiast, had a good visit and took a few pictures, including the one below. After a short visit, I returned to Portland, picked up Deanna and we drove on home. A long day for me, about 400 miles on the car, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

The car did fine on the trip, other than the ride from the struts. I'm laying plans for their replacement now, and have a couple of people who are interested in the Mulhollands once I get them out. The other thing I've noticed is that the more I drive, the worse the suspension bushings seem to get. They are all original, so that's really no surprise. I'm planning to get all new rear suspension rubber soon, and will do the front later this summer.

Probably won't be much driving of the car going on for a while now, until early June and the Datsun meet in Canby. In the mean time, I plan to finish replacing the fuel vent hoses, and maybe get to some of the suspension refresh done. We were hoping to perhaps get the seats redone by then, but I think we're running out of time for that.

Today I began replacing springs for what I believe will be the last time. I'm pulling the set of (borrowed) springs out of the yellow car and replacing them with a set of used springs kindly donated by Gary. I got the rears done today, and will finish the fronts in a week or two. Also found a leaking wheel cylinder on the yellow car while doing the spring swap. I'll have to deal with that soon as well.

Last news for this month, the yellow car is no longer actively for sale. That doesn't mean that I won't sell it if someone were to make me a nice offer, but I'm not going to actively market it for a while as I continue to explore the possibilities for finishing it myself.

[Arne]

6 May 2007 - Cleaning and Maintenance

Picking up where I left off last week, I have finished the spring replacement on the yellow car. It now has a thoroughly usable set of springs, and the springs I borrowed from Bryan and Gail can now be returned. I should be done with changing springs now, with one set (the cut-down Euro springs) left over. I also (finally!) tidied up the fuel pump installation on the yellow car. Got some new fuel hose, mounted the pump properly and re-wired it properly. I took it for a short drive afterwards, and I'm pleased with the results. It still needs a real exhaust, the bad rear wheel cylinder repaired or replaced, and at a minimum some carb work. But all in all, it drives pretty nice at this point. If only it were prettier...

For the red car, I dropped the gas tank to complete the fuel hose replacement. Worked well, I filled the tank afterwards and neither the inside of the car nor the garage smell like gas anymore. I have ordered the replacement strut inserts, they should be delivered early this week, and I expect I'll have them installed before the weekend is over. I have also decided that my next replacement part will be the front differential mount, as I believe that is what is causing much of the clunking sounds from the rear. I plan to order that this week as well.

I've been slowly cleaning and detailing the exterior of the red car, bit by bit. I have ordered a can of custom paint to refinish the badly faded taillight trim, I figure that should arrive soon also. This cleaning and detailing will continue all month, as I try to clean it up prior to the gathering at Canby next month.

[Arne]

13 May 2007 - More of the Same

I continued on the same track this last week, working on the red car. The new KYB struts arrived, and were all four installed Thursday morning. The results are good, the car now rides fine. It still feels firm, like a sports car should, but it is no longer bouncy. I don't feel like I'm beating the car to death on a rough road now. Yes, I'm certain that I've lost some handling capability over what the Mulhollands delivered, but I'm willing to sacrifice that for the way I typically drive. And the ride height did increase by 1/4" to 3/8" both ends. But that will eventually self-correct as the gas pressure slowly bleeds off over the next few years. So yes, I'm very pleased with these now.

I also had picked up the new differential mount, and that was installed Thursday afternoon. The differential mount I took out did not look bad, and there was an old Nissan Parts label on it, so I'm sure that it had been replaced at some point in the past, but the new one definitely quieted a bunch of the clunking back there. Next step to tighten it all up will be to replace all the control arm bushings.

On Friday, I refinished the tail light trim panels. And that turned out pretty good also. The color of the special paint I ordered is very close, but it seems to be a bit too glossy. I may end up using a matte finish clear on them at some point, but for now I'm just going to let it be and see if I get used to it.

And the cleaning continues as well. I'm slowly working my way around the car, removing parts, cleaning, removing old dry wax, and generally just detailing things as I go. The driver's side is finished, more to come.

[Arne]

28 May 2007 - We Have Ignition...

The cleaning and detailing of the red car has continued, and is mostly complete. Although the old, dried wax from one of the previous owners is almost magical. I clean and remove the wax from a spot, and days or weeks later when I go back to look, more has appeared! I may be cleaning this stuff for the rest of my life. But all in all, the car is pretty presentable right now.

I did have some troubleshooting fun with it this weekend, though. Last Thursday I drove it to work. My drive in the morning was fine, but when I left for home that afternoon the car started cutting out intermittently. No hint of that in the morning, but it started before I got out of the parking lot that afternoon. Never felt like it was going to fail completely, but it did it at times the whole way home. From the symptoms, I was pretty certain that it was an ignition problem, not fuel-related.

It turns out that I'm well equipped to diagnose ignition issues, as I have lots of spare parts. The yellow car is running the same stock points-type ignition as the red car, plus I have a complete 280ZX electronic ignition system sitting on my workbench. So it's easy for me to start replacing parts one-by-one until the problem goes away.

I had already replaced the plugs and plug wires shortly after I bought the car, but nothing else. Most of the rest appeared to be 36 year old stock parts, other than the points set. Cap, rotor, coil, etc. So my first step was to do the quickest change, I installed a new coil. Drove it to work again on Friday, and it was quickly apparent that the coil was not the issue. This I considered to be both good and bad news. The bad news was that the engine still cut out, the new coil was not the solution. But the good news was that the engine still cut out - the problem was consistent enough that troubleshooting would be fairly easy.

Saturday morning I started with more easy parts. I swapped in a different rotor, no difference. Then I swapped the distributor cap from the yellow car. That fixed it. But I was a little puzzled by that, as although the 'bad' cap appeared to be original, there was no sign of carbon tracking, burned contacts, or the like. The symptoms didn't quite seem right for a bad cap, but with the other cap, it was fine.

After looking the rest of the ignition over briefly, I bought a new cap, rotor and good set of points for it. I could have installed the ZX electronic system instead, but it would have needed a few parts as well, and I really don't have any big aversion to points. And as I was installing the points, I found the real cause of the problem. The lead that runs from the distributor terminal to the points had a frayed spot in the insulation and was probably shorting out now and then. This lead runs along the outside edge of the distributor, and I probably moved it a bit when I changed the cap. I found that the lead in the yellow car's distributor was a fairly recent-looking replacement, so I used that one in the red car for now, and will get a new one soon so that both cars can have good leads.

That's about it for now. Did a few more tune-up type things while I was doing the points, and a bit more cleaning. Still need to do the rear suspension bushings, that should be the next task. But I probably won't get to that before the show at Canby in two weeks.

[Arne]

3 Jun 2007 - Let's Talk Yellow

Since I have the red car pretty much ready for the trip to Canby next weekend, I spent a little quality time with the yellow 240Z today - starting with getting it running again. I tried to start it yesterday, it fired briefly and then died. From there, nothing. So I checked one of the float bowls and found it totally dry. "Oops," I thought, "I've run it out of gas."

So today I poured a couple of gallons into the tank, cranked it over - and still got nothing. Now I'm starting to get suspicious. The gauge showed almost half a tank. (Didn't look at it yesterday.) But the float bowls are still dry. When I ran the electric fuel pump I could see it pushing air bubbles through the fuel in the filter. So I crawled under the back to look at the lines at the tank. And as I had suspected at this point, I found the fuel hose was rather loose, even though the clamp was bottomed out. After replacing the hose clamps with different ones that I could cinch down tightly, I got fuel to the carbs again.

Once that was handled, I tried to start it again. The results were better now that it had fuel, but still pretty poor. Since I had been fiddling with the ignition of this car last weekend (while troubleshooting the red car's ignition problem), I decided to check through that first. And sure enough, the point gap was almost none. After re-gapping the points, it fired right up. I warmed it up, and took it for a drive.

And again, the poor old car impressed me with how well it drives. Give it a decent exhaust and re-web the seats, and it'd be a pretty fair (albeit not pretty) driver. Runs nicely, feels fairly tight, pretty impressive, all things considered.

At that point, I finally got to real reason I wanted to get it running again, and started cleaning the engine compartment, tidying the wiring, and such. Still assessing what it's going to take to make it decent. Might get some more info on that later this week.

[Arne]

17 Jun 2007 - We're Back

Since the last update, I've done some checking on body and paint work for the yellow car, attended a Datsun show, and tested a different differential in the red car.

One of the main reasons to get the yellow Z running again was so that I could drive it across town to have it looked at by the body/paint shop. Which I did just prior to the show in Canby. We talked for a while about what I had in mind for it, and I was given a verbal quote that seems do-able. I haven't firmed any of this up yet, but I may finish the yellow car after all. More on this in coming weeks.

Last Sunday we spent the day at the meet in Canby. We had a good time, caught up with friends from prior get-togethers, and made a few new friends too. Saw lots of cars. I didn't take many pictures, was too busy gawking and visiting.

Yesterday I swapped the yellow Z's differential into the red Z in an effort to determine the source of the rear-end clunks I hear in the red car. While clunking noises are not uncommon in Zs, I know I can cure this as the yellow car has none. The differential swap did not change it, so I have ordered a full set of rear suspension bushings instead. As soon as the bushings get here, I'll swap the differentials back and replace all the red car's bushings. Maybe as soon as next week.

[Arne]

25 Jun 2007 - Bushings Changed

Yes, all the new rear suspension bushings arrived in time for me to install them this weekend, along with re-installing the original differential. And the results...

Well, again I have made it better, but it's still not gone. The inner front bushings were obviously bad, and showed evidence of moving. But that still isn't all of it. Whereas before I had a harsh clunk on both acceleration and deceleration, I now have a more subdued clunk on acceleration only. Nothing when I back off hard. And not as frequent on take-off either. So again, I made progress but didn't fix it entirely.

I'm not yet sure what my next move on this will be. I'm running out of things to check and replace. More thought is needed.

[Arne]

15 Jul 2007 - Still Clunking

I'm still trying to track down the source of the clunking sound from the rear. I've tried all the common things with little or no improvement. So after discussing it with some Z experts, the consensus is that one or both of my rear stub axles probably have worn splines. I haven't disassembled it yet to check this, but I'm laying plans to do so fairly soon as this is driving me nuts. I don't want to move on to other things on either car until I get this handled. So that will be the next thing I do, just not quite sure when.

[Arne]

19 Aug 2007 - I'm Back!

There hasn't been a lot Z-related going on around here for a while, what with vacation and trying to sell a Harley for an extended family member. But not a lot doesn't mean none, and I was back at it again this weekend. So here goes.

I got a pair of headlight buckets a few days ago. I wanted the left one to replace the one on the yellow car which had a big chunk missing. I installed that one today, and properly mounted the existing right side bucket as well. Both now fit pretty good, and will look fine once it is painted. $20 well spent.

And now for the part that you all have been waiting for...

The Latest Episode of "The 240Z Clunk that won't die!"

I have to admit, this problem has been bugging me a lot. After going through all the rest of the normal rear suspension and differential parts, I had recently focused on one or both of the stub axles, assuming them to possibly have bad splines. But since new stub axles are expensive, and also since I just happen to own a similar 240Z that does NOTclunk, I decided to make the effort to swap more parts from the yellow car prior to spending more money. Darn good thing.

Yesterday morning I pulled the right rear strut assembly out of the yellow car and installed it (as-is) in the red car. Drove it. No change, still clunked, getting worse as the car warms up. Put the right sides back to the way they were, and then did the same on the left side. And again, no change. So I put those back as well. Sigh...

Want the long version? Here's the list of parts that I have replaced with new:

• Rear transmission mount
• Front differential mount
• All six u-joints (professionally done, not a hammer and vice job)
• Driveshaft balanced
• Rear struts, with bump stops
• Inner rear control arm bushings

And here is the list of parts that have been tried out of other cars:

• Both halfshafts, several times (both from yellow and parts cars)
• Rear differential mounting bar (from parts car, which had fresh bushings)
• Differential (from parts car by way of yellow car, doesn't clunk in the yellow car)
• Both strut assemblies, including the bearings and stub axles

That pretty much covers it. By now I have touched, swapped and/or replaced everything in the rear suspension and rear drivetrain. And none of it has helped.

So where does this leave me? Looking farther forward. I spent more time today driving the car, and paying very close attention to when and why it clunks. From this I determined it is definitely drivetrain-related, not in the suspension. And it is very definitely temperature related. When the car is cold, it almost doesn't clunk at all. Very slight, and not very noticeable. As the car warms up, the clunk becomes more pronounced, more harsh, and easier to provoke. This leads me to believe that the cause is some part that builds heat with normal driving. And since everything in the drivetrain from the front u-joint back has been checked or replaced, that brings me to...

The transmission.

Arguments in favor - Well, it's part of the drivetrain, and it definitely gets hot after a few miles of driving.

Arguments in opposition - The clunk sounds like it is coming from farther to the rear of the car.

I do know that the transmission in the red car is not 100% healthy. It has a pretty pronounced whine in the lower three gears (probably layshaft or needle bearings), and the second gear synchro is weak and easy to beat, even in normal driving. And as for where the clunk is coming from, I do know that noises travel a lot. In fact I know that the whine in first through third gears is from the transmission, yet listening from inside the car you'd swear it was the differential. So why shouldn't the clunk sound like it is coming from farther to the rear as well?

Where to next? The obvious answer (although a fair amount of work) is to pull the known-good transmission from the yellow car and try it in the red car. If that does work, then a decision will need to be made about what transmission to use in the end. Too early to speculate on that now.

But if that doesn't fix it, I'm fresh out of ideas. Who knows, at that point maybe I give up, fix the yellow car and sell the red one. Probably not, but perhaps you can understand how discouraging this has been.

Going to try to start the transmission swapping next weekend...

[Arne]

26 Aug 2007 - Success!

Finally! After 10 months of ownership, and 5 months of concerted efforts, the clunk is gone!

As a final step prior to swapping transmissions, and since there was a heat-related aspect, earlier this past week I re-checked all the exhaust mounts, just in case the exhaust has been moving. And that made no difference at all.

So at 9:00 this morning, I went out and got to work. Dropped the transmission out of the yellow car, then dropped the original 'box from the red car and installed the yellow car's transmission into the red car. Rick (a Z friend from the Portland area) stopped by on his way home from Danny's Datsuns, got here at about 12:30, and the job had gone so smoothly that by the time he got here, I was almost done. We went for a test drive around 1:30, and finally the car drives like I knew it could. No noise, no slop, no clunks!

So for now, the yellow car's transmission will stay in the red car. I will probably disassemble the bad gearbox next weekend, so I can begin to decide where to go from here. The transmission now in the red car originally came out of the parts car, but since I sold the the other early transmission that I had, I am still one transmission short. Rick does have an early 4 speed in a parts car he is dismantling, so that may be an option.

I've also considered installing a 5 speed in one of my two cars. But there are drawbacks. Since both cars are pre-72, I'd either have to enlarge the hole in the tunnel (a bad option in my opinion, especially on the red car) or have some custom fabrication work done to build a shift lever that will work in my cars' bodyshells. The other thing is that if I buy a 5 speed out of a boneyard, how do I know that it's any good? After all, even the 280ZX gearboxes are at least 25 years old by now. There's a good chance that I'd have to rebuild one of those after I buy it.

Sure, a 5 speed would be nice on the freeway, but I hope not to have to drive a lot there. So it's not all that important to me. If I'm going to have to rebuild one anyway, I may just as well rebuild the original. At least that way I've still got the clean and pretty parts that the car came with.

Edited July 15, 2020 by Arne