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Well I’ll be dipped! Reach my hand up under the dash, feeling around for the turn signal flasher, and down dropped these wires, labeled and all! What a deal. I’ll buy a flasher unit and I think we’ll be in business. Thanks all, and hopefully my saga helps someone down the road.

I found a pic on the web. Should i consider prying the tabs to get inside the contact or should i perform any external tests before getting into this?

SteveJ and zKars, thanks for the input! Progress, good news! I went through the inspection points Steve mentioned. When I got to the hazard switch, I figured what the heck, I might as well open it up and clean it up. It honestly looked fine on the inside, but I cleaned it up anyways and lightly sanded the contacts inside. And good news, that brake lights are now working, woohoo! But still no turn signals, front or rear. While I was poking around, I came across two female bullet connectors that weren’t connected to anything. One black wire, the other is black with a white (I think) stripe. Any chance these are supposed to go to a turn signal flasher? Do I even have a turn signal flasher in the dash? Where is it typically located on a 72 Z?

This is perfect, thanks @Zed Head!

Rather than the high pressure pump why not go with a low pressure pump. I did this one back in 2017 and it's working fine with my SU's. Motorsport Auto - The Z Store - K&N Electric Fuel Pump for Carbureted Z/ZX It's not the quietest but once the car is started I can't hear it over the exhaust and my exhaust isn't that loud. I use a magnaflow 10426 resonator with a magnaflow 13216 muffler, ceramic coated 6 to 1 header w/2.5" pipe all the way back. SU reliability issues... All I can say is bunk.

And yet... Hard for me to believe that a broad-surface soldered joint like this one would offer structural flexibility sufficient to absorb the amount of distortion that would cause the windshield to pop out of its frame (which, we should remember, is lined with a compliant rubber seal). Not disputing Mr. Matsuo's claim, but I wonder whether the flexibility that he spoke of had more to do with positioning flexibility (compared to spot welding) for the two parts during and just after the joining process*, rather than after the car hit the road. Put another way, just how much would that joint need to 'give' in order to prevent the amount of windshield frame distortion needed to make the windshield pop out: 1/16"? Is that soldered joint really capable of absorbing 1/16" of relative shear without breaking?

They changed the name to Maintenance.

unfortunately it looks like there wasn't a tuneup chapter in the manual at all for an ZX year according to the table of contents. how are people going through a tuneup on these cars?

Fiat is now gone, making space for the pickup alongside the Z

Might be in the Turbo Supplement. Some of the turbo engines had hydraulic lash adjustment. No lash setting necessary. https://www.classiczcars.com/files/category/14-280zx/

Hey gang, I will be working on a friend's 1981 280zx over the weekend but after looking at a few FSMs for 208zxs (on nicoclub & xenonzcar) they don't seem to have the ET Engine Tuneup chapter that comes in my 1978 FSM. I know they're both L28 engines but are the tolerances, valve lash values, etc identical? Is there a different manual specifically that has the tuneup specs for the ZX cars or should I use the 1978 manual's ET chapter?

If it's a '75 it should have an n42 head with the pump hole already there, at least mine does.

No, the Eastwood powder is white.

Turn signal light issues, especially those that exist while the hazards work just fine, are often the fault of the hazard switch. Remove it and clean its internal contacts and check for solder problems where the wires attach. Also make sure the battery is fully charged or the car is running, or attach a charger to the battery while you do testing. Low voltage often causes older flasher units to not want to do their job well or at all making diagnosis of related problems difficult.

It looks great! Is the Eastwood polish sort of pink tan too?

This weekend, I disassembled the new Kanto Seiki ignition switch I got from Japan and changed out the wafers to work with the new, original keys that came with a new old stock hatch lock I bought off of eBay a while back. I found this link to Ratsun forums to be helpful with getting the key tumber out of the switch assembly. In order to get to the wafers, you have to remove the tumbler assembly which requires removing a small steel pin. I drilled as small hole in a spot that allowed me access to the backside of the pin. I was able to push it out and then pull out the tumbler assembly. After I got it out, I swapped a few wafers so I could use the keys with the black paint on them. The new ignition switch did not have these electrical wires. However, these were easily moved over to the new switch. All done: That was the light work for the weekend. Then I switched over to the hatch glass again. I have been dreading getting back to this, because I knew it would require many hours, and I was a afraid that even after investing many more, I would not achieve a satisfactory result. Last time, while I achieving success with removing the deep scratches that were in the glass, I was not having much success getting the glass shiny again. I picked back up with experimenting with the polishing compound that came with the kit. After repeatedly going over a relatively small area, I was unhappy to see I had made next to no progress. I just seemed to be going through polish with no real improvement. The manual said that if the polish wasn't working, I may need to got back to the previous grits. So, I decided to get my magnifying glass and have a closer look. Under magnification, I could see that the polish wasn't doing much even in the area I had concentrated on. I also saw, however, that there were some scratches left over from the first grit. Clearly, I would have to revisit use of some of the prior grits and rework. So, I used the magnifying glass and the green grit (second stage) until I had addressed everything I saw. Then I switched to the blue grit. I went over everywhere that I had used the green. I also went beyond where I had sanded with the green by a couple of inches. For the most part, the sanding scratches looked like )))))))))))). So, when using the blue grit, I went 90 degrees to that, so I could see when all the scratches from the green grit were gone. I used the magnifying glass to check progress. When I was done with the blue grit, I switched over to an Eastwood glass polishing kit I bought a long time ago to polish some wiper marks out of my BMW windshield. From memory, I recalled that the Eastwood kit was able to remove the wiper marks, but also polished that glass back to normal finish. So, rather than using the polish that came with the new kit, I decided to use the Eastwood kit instead. The Eastwood kit contains a powder. To that, you add water. Within a few minutes of polishing with this, I was able to see much better progress with the polishing stage. So, I kept going this route. I also utilized a laser thermometer to check heat, as polishing can heat the glass quite a bit. Polishing glass... is not easy. When I quit yesterday, I had worked on the hatch glass for 6 hours straight with just one 10 min break. And it wasn't done, but I no longer feared that I wouldn't be able to use the hatch glass. Today, I picked up where I left off with more polishing. After another two hours, I called it good enough. I put the factory original weather strip on the glass and proceeded to install it on the car. While that didn't go well, and I became highly irritated, I did eventually get it in. So, I have something like 14 hours of work in polishing the hatch glass. I have learned a ton about how to remove scratches. The kit I bought from Europe will remove deep scratches. But, it takes a lot of time and very careful work with the sander and the grits to get the glass back to a point where you can polish it. I think the polish that came with the kit is worthless. Perhaps it is ok on non-tempered glass. Instead, I recommend using the Eastwood product for the final polishing. Is it perfect? No. But, I got rid of a bunch of deep scratches and I learned a lot. If I had to do it again, I think I could get the time down to around 9 hours which is still crazy, but for what it is worth, I was able to save the original hatch glass:

And for comparison, here's the one bought on ebay by @inline6. Note that the "F" and "R" markings are cast into the cylinder body as opposed to mine which are stamped. Now, there's no telling where in the chronology this ebay body came off the assembly line, but it was clearly at some time after they decided where "F" and "R" should really be: I'm thinking that Datsun changed their minds very early on? And then there was a revision to the casting to cast the "correct" locations into the body without having to grind and stamp?

And while I'm posting pics.... Anyone have any info about the markings of "F" and "R"? I have high confidence that the master cylinder I have here is the original one that came from the factory mid-1970. Note that the "F" and "R" circuit markings are STAMPED into the cylinder body, NOT cast in. In fact, if you look close, you can see that there was some sort of grinding that took place before the "F" and "R" were stamped. Like they ground off the original marks and restamped the master with the front and rear as documented on the early cars. Here's what I'm talking about... If you look closely, you can see the grinding marks and the stamped "F" and "R":

I like to think I know about the differences in the years on the S30's but like you said sometimes you don't see the forest for the trees. I didn't note the later M/C either.

I'm looking for some of the guts from a master cylinder that looks like this. Note that it has the two output ports located between the two reservoir tanks: Hopefully one that comes apart without a permanently disfiguring fight because it doesn't look like this inside:

No, no. No apologies necessary! When you posted up a pic of that master cylinder, my immediate thought was "Weird... Why would someone switch the plastic reservoirs from F to R?" Well the answer is "They didn't. It's a new style master that has the "F" closer to the firewall. Duh." Couldn't see the forest through the trees! Oh. and the hardware arrived over the weekend. Looks great. I'm sure there will be something in there I can use for my starter. And the level of patina is perfect! Thanks again @Terrapin Z

Are you swapping in a 240Z or 260Z engine? If not, you have to open up the window in the head for the mechanical fuel pump, and you'll probably need to source and install the eccentric for the fuel pump. And let's not discuss the poor quality of aftermarket mechanical fuel pumps.