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Here are my photos of RedBird, at a park on the way back home. The one with the electrical plant, I am calling POWER! The last one is of her back home again, ready to snuggle back into her safe carport. I left her out for a bit so I could go feast my eyes on her a few times before it gets dark. Oh I love her so much, I'm very happy she is back in my arms. 💜 Jai 😇 🚘

My two cents: Hi Comet! I bought my 17 yo daughter a 2007 Mustang V6 for a grad present (in 2010). 5spd standard and rear wheel drive open diff... She loved it and learned to respect it. Didnt stop her from getting hit at least twice. Modern cars are so much safer than these classics. If I were you, look for a really nice 350Z for cheap that you can drive and maintain on a daily basis. If you can swing it, pick up the 280 as a project/toy for weekends. You sound like a great kid and I wish you the best of luck!

managed to have a productive long weekend in spite of the temptations (beer & brats, etc.) turned back the z technology clock a little: ripped out the efi and associated spaghetti/plumbing and installed the su's. the worst part of the whole process was installing the choke lever... i picked up one of those tunnel-mount plates in order to avoid breaking the underside of the console (the choke lever set came with the telltale chunk of broken plastic mounting post still attached to the mounting screw) and it was a bit of a pain to set the layout on the tunnel so the choke lever would line up in the console slot. every time i have to do work on the interior (especially under the dash) i wish to god i had a chevy van instead... contortions upside down, holding a flashlight in my teeth, having my glasses fog and dropping the fastener on my forehead for the 5th time... but eventually it worked out just fine. i had purchased a 240z choke cable fire wall grommet but it turns out i didn't need it. what i had assumed was a metal blank-off plate next to the throttle linkage turned out to be a dual-opening rubber blank. so i just drilled two holes in it and the choke cables go through with a nice airtight seal. getting the manifold off was cake thanks to the multiple head swaps i've done and i went ahead and pulled the afm, charcoal cannister and associated mounting brackets as well. i left the wire harness in for now, coiled up and tucked out of the way by the windshield washer bottle. i'm using the stock fuel filter & lines for now, but will revise when some parts come in. next was swapping out the efi fuel pump with a cute little airtex unit. mounted it up near the moustache bar and looped the fuel line over to the existing hardline. i left all the efi wiring/relays/etc. in place, so it all works exactly as previous - just a lot less pressure. the airtex pump is so quiet, i had to put my hand on it to make sure it was working - nice. i then got the carbs mounted up and checked the float levels. interesting side note: i had done this previously in my basement using water, with the fuel pump wired to a power supply and a juice glass as a see-thru bowl. even though i had both set dead-on to 23mm they were quite off when i put them on the car. not sure if it has to do with the density difference between gas and water, the tilt on the car or what, but i eventually got them both to 23mm (again). i used some clear vinyl tubing as a temporary sight glass which was quite helpful these first times around. she fired up quickly and after warm-up i synched them at idle and high-speed w/the old unisync that i've had for decades in my tool box. worked a treat. took her out for a test drive and was sorely disappointed... no power, burbled and popped horribly on decel, wouldn't rev, no fun. it sounded like the mixtures were way out of sync, and i couldn't get them to match up. decided to do another float level adjust, but this time i figured i'd go for the fuel in the jet nozzle rather than the height of the float bowl. read on one of the blogs out there that the recommended fuel level corresponds exactly to 1cm (10mm) below the bridge, which you can check by turning down the jet adjusters 10 full turns (1mm each) and fuel should be right at the top of the jet nozzle. turns out that i needed the rear bowl to be set about 5mm higher (18mm down, vs. the 23) in order for the nozzle to get its fuel at 1cm down. not sure why... she ran much better and is now quite driveable, although still not perfect - i ran out of daylight so will need to do more testing/tuning. next step will be setting up the dual-sensor afm so i can get a better idea of what's going on vs. just reading plugs. stay tuned... carbs on - ready to run temp sight glass setup

My Dear Friends, I received THE call just now. RedBird's repairs are Complete and I am leaving shortly to go get her. Hooray!!! I will have a complete set of photos of her journey back to Beautiful, and will be posting them Here when I get back. A great Big Yahoo, I can hardly wait to Drive Her Again!!! Later gang, Jai 😇 🚘

Let's all join together for a Coast to Coast, Border to Border chorus of "On The Road. Again!". And a one and a two... Dennis

Look into wiring upgrades before headlamp upgrades, Dave Irwin has what you need.

Looks great Jai.

Nice big wheels and tires too. Didn't notice before it had those. Looks very nice.

Nice looking repair. Thanks for posting and enjoy your beautiful Z.

Glad you are happy Jai. RB looks very nice!

Looks pretty good! Congrats I love happy endings ...

These are the photos taken at the body shop. She is so Shiney and Gorgeous, I took some photos on the way home, showing her in a different light. I will post them as soon as I can. Jai 😇 🚘

My 2 cents…. Earlier you asked a person on the forum whether he would let his daughter drive a car like the one you are thinking of buying. I am going to assume that what you mean by this question is whether he would let his daughter have an S30 as her daily driver. If I were your parent I would work very hard to find the right balance for you. I think it is super cool that you are interested in these cars, are mechanically minded, and want to work on, enjoy, and drive a 40 year old car. I would want to do everything possible to inspire your interest in and participate in it with you. At the same time, however, the world is different than it was in the 1970s. First, it is hard to argue that these cars are safe compared to modern cars (hard for me to argue at least). Additionally, there are almost no cars on the road today that are as light as an S30. Mass matters. Real world accidents involve colliding with other vehicles at odd angles and a 2,500 pound car simply loses badly against the preponderance of 5,000 pound SUVs. The height of vehicles is very different today than 40 years ago. 40 years ago there was a good chance that an S30 would collide with a sedan that really wasn’t that much higher off of the ground. Today, the big vehicles on the road are high off of the ground and, in my opinion, more likely to run over you (not a good thing) than into you. Add to all of this the distracted driver problem and, well, you see where I am headed. So, would I let my 17 year old daughter have an S30 as her only car? No way. I would want her to have a sizeable modern car to drive every day. If space and resources allowed, however, I would also find an S30 that would be hers and we would work on it together. I would absolutely let her drive it, more and more over time, but very limited for quite some time, and probably never as a daily driver (at least until she was on her own when it no longer would be my decision). I actually think the safest place you can drive these cars is out on the open road at speed. Where I really worry is in traffic where distracted drivers can rear end me or cross over the yellow line and hit me head on in a 1/3 front collision or run a red light and cause a big side impact. So this was probably not the answer you wanted but there really is nothing more important to you or your parents than your life and quality of life. I would love to daily drive one of my zcars. I have considered it. Every time I consider it though, I decide not to for two main reasons (and I am 49 and have never been in an accident). First, these cars just don’t hold up to recurring exposure to rain (something that is probably not an issue for you). Second, the safety risk is just not worth it…in my opinion. If you decide to buy the car, be very careful and make sure all of the systems are working as they should (the cost of which can be easy to underestimate). Something as simple as stalling while pulling out into traffic (something pretty rare in a modern car) can end very badly.

I use the Clevite 77 bearings also. I recommend that you inspect each bearing very closely for scratches though. The way they package the set by situating the bearing shells front to back in a row is problematic. It is possible for some of the shells to rotate such that the edge of one shell ends up scraping the bearing surface of a shell situated behind it. I ended up having to buy two sets in order to end up with a full unscratched set.

I'd look into getting a different car, but the guy selling me this Z is pretty much giving me the deal of a lifetime because he's part of my boyfriend's family. He's had the car since the 80s, and it runs and drives. He's only asking the price he'd get from the buy-back program, and is giving me a year to pay him in full. Plus,if I don't get it he'll sell it to scrap. So not only do I love this car, but it's a killer deal, and I'm saving it from the recycle program. So it means a lot.

Here is a good discussion regarding the steering rack bumper/bracket clamp, likely was not factory installed on your early car. My 7/70 car does have one, no idea if it was factory or dealer installed. Strangely I couldn't find any mention of it in either my 1970 or 1972 FSM. http://www.classiczcars.com/topic/48076-rack-and-pinion-u-bolt-clamp-71z/?hl=%2Bsteering+%2Brack+%2Bbumper#entry437353

You're welcome. I got switched on to Trimetal bearings when I ran Vandervell Bearings ( from the UK ) way back in the 1980's on my SBC Race engines. Very high quality bearing. Vandervell is now part of the Mahle group. http://www.vandervell.co.uk/ Clevite is also part of the Mahle group and is apparently using the Vandervell Trimetal design. http://catalog.mahle-aftermarket.com/na/home/index.xhtml

Can't wait to see the pics Jai.

I gotta admit... I was assuming from the very start that you had already looked at that vendor to see if they offered what you were looking for. I figured the reason that you were wondering if the one for the later years fit your car was because you checked into it and they did NOT offer one for your year. So problem solved, yes. But next time: Over by the auction seller's name, click on "See other items" You'll get 15,499 results. Enter "datsun console" into the search box to pare the results down. I get 11 results for different years and stitching colors. I should have asked at the beginning if you had checked to see if they offered what you were looking for. I think I might have to change my forum name...

Yeah, I was going to check out HF for big wrenches. It's not like the wrench needs to be high quality and it will get very little use. Powdercoating makes everything shiny though! I can easily powdercoat the pipe. I have access to the sandblast cabinet, powder gun and oven. The powder cost is near zero per tube. The process just adds a bit of extra labor.

If you are just talking about safety, In your parents eyes it all boils down to air bags vs no air bags. Guess which one wins. I do have to agree on that point. No matter what driving skills you have, It will always be the other guy that's going to do something stupid. In a car that small, think again which one will win. I think about that every time I get into mine. It's 1977 safe, not 2015 safe. You don't seem to be a "silly kid" so I'm not telling you not to get a Z but you have to realize most everybody that owns one has something else to drive. Do choose something worth driving every day and when it is feasible, get that Z and enjoy every minute of it. And When you do, A coupe would be my personal choice, but I've never driven a 2+2 so my opinion may be considered lopsided (also my daughter is about to turn 16 ).

Wow. $10.4K Woo Hoo!! Most of us must be sitting on a gold mines!!!

little bit more of a sneekitie peekitie with the carbs and manfold on. i painted the heatshield with high heat paint, and i found a half full can of cold galvanizing compound. I'm going to spray that on top of the high heat stuff and hope it doesn't come off when the engine is running. It's not that hard to remove and refinish anyways.