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No, it's not about driving up a steep hill at 20mph in 4th gear ... It's about replacement lug nuts for the authentic Libre wheels on Zup's immaculate silver 73 240z. In looking at his car, my eye was always drawn to the deteriorating condition lug nuts on the wheels. I became determined to find a quality set for him that would do justice to such a nice car. I quickly found that it is not so easy to source the correct lug nuts for those lug centric wheels. The standard M12 x 1.25 spec is no problem but in the correct shank & washer style with the all important shank length is difficult. I found a quality set of Mcgard tuff nuts that met all the specs except for the shank length being too long, they would bottom out against the hub before the wheel was seated and tightened. The solution it seemed, was to machine the shank length of the nuts down to the optimum length for the wheels. It then became obvious to me that the answer was to recruit the assistance of a highly skilled forum member ..... Captain Obvious. After discussing the details of the secret project with him, he very generously agreed to assist with machining the new Mcgard nuts to Libre specs. I ordered & shipped the new nuts to him and in the meantime, made careful measurements of Zup's Libre wheels to determine optimum length. The end result we agreed upon was .460 effective shank length after the washer is installed. The Captain completed one set & shipped it to me for test & verification of fitment. They were perfect and so was the quality of his lathe work! The final 4 completed sets were delivered Saturday, I drove up to his house & presented them to him, we did the final installation, and he was extremely happy with the results. A very big thanks thanks to you Bruce for making this Obvious / Driver joint project possible. He was very busy working on a complete top end job with his son's new Subaru but still took the time to work on the nuts. Nut in the chuck Original vs Machined End view Captain's lathe at work Zup's Ok Job done Inspector # K9 gives final approval ...

i've been collecting sources for parts, articles, good tech threads, websites, etc. over the past year or so and figured maybe they would be helpful for others. not sure if there's already a good "resource library" on the forum, but i thought i'd post what i've got and maybe others could do the same. Disclaimer: these are just links and sources i've come across - no endorsement or business connection whatsoever, just trying to pass on what i've found. ZResources.docx

Hey Chas, I replaced the shoes and the 2 master cylinders, they where old and tired anyway. It was € 120,- for everything parts... Now tuesday I am going back, and it should pass this time.I tested the brakes with a local garage here who has the same brake testing equipment as the RDW has, and it was okay. So it should be fine.

Exactly. That is the first thing to check before you do anything. If that is off you will be chasing your tail.

I want to say no, those valve covers came with the OIL cap. My cars have the OIL cap. Every photo reference I have shows the OIL cap.

Before you give up on any (frozen, rusty, crusty) fuel sender, soak it in 100% CLR for 24-36 hours. I've done two. One frozen, one just plain ugly. Both look good and are usable now.

Got a bit bored from all the reading an investigation in front of the computer, so decided for my own pleasure to test-assembly my rebuild steering colum together with the HKB Steering boss kit and the RS-watanabe falcon steering wheel (Horn button not installed). Nothing big, but enjoyed how it ended up. Now trying to figure out how i can clean the multifunctional steering wheel switches to get them back on the column

If you google those numbers you won't find much these days. A couple of ebay vendors still have some under the 280ZX nisan pn.17011-P7211. Funny thing is the photo's show a bosch pump in a nissan box. From what info I can find JECS stopped making them becauee demand was two low, but bosch made them for a couple of years longer because the L-Jetronic used them on all kinds of european cars in the seventies. Bosch now quotes the 0 580 254 044 as a replacement.

Well of course there's a little "blackmail" in the desire to get his car working. We bought it as a severely overheated, non-running derelict, last fall with the intention of repairing it for him to drive. And I made it clear to him that while I would eventually get around to working on it, things would definitely progress faster if HE were to take matters into his own hands to do some of the work. In other words, the more sweat equity he expressed, the faster the job would get done. Not only would it be more hands turning wrenches, but his interest sparks my interest. And working with him went really well. I don't know if he'll ever turn into a hard core gearhead, but his ability to pick up the concepts of this kind of work has been excellent. I can explain things to him with hand motions, analogies, some physics, and he gets it. We were pretty deep into this engine and when he turned the key for the first time after all the parts went back together and it actually started? He was a happy boy. Haha!! And remembering back, last fall, I used his car to help me get a couple things done on OTHER cars in the family. The family truckster needed front brakes, and my daily driver Civic needed an oil pan gasket (I'm really down on Felpro at this point). I told him we couldn't put his car into the garage bay until those other two things were done since they were higher priority. But this thread is about lug nuts... This is my favorite pic. If you look closely, you can see wispy smoke trails from hot chips and some cutting oil:

Im glad its your project. I think I would have freaked out about half way through all that blasting. Dedication for sure. That fuel pump cleaned up very well. Hard to believe thats the same pump. Its a Hitachi, looks like someone changed the bosch unit.

dedication... hats off to ya!

For the record--- Captain Obvious "Nut Cutter Nonpareil" Many thanks Bruce and Jim! You guys are the best!

End is in sight? Ummmm.... Not until the cloud clears!!

More treasure hunting! I picked up a new dash this afternoon from a guy who's doing a full build around an LS1 swap. It's heavily cracked, but the cluster above the console is in much better shape than mine, so it should be easier to rebuild. Plus, now I can work on this dash and keep the car on the road.

site has it - smoke check. with the original motor i was having issues with oil consumption and poor AFR due to the efi system. during troubleshooting i was checking to see how much carbon was blowing out during an "italian tune up" every so often. after 5,500 RPM i couldn't see much out of the rear view mirror. the balanced/lightened motor spins up to 7K quite quickly (and makes an awesome sound in the process). it's quite addictive ;} site has it again - w/the new motor, since there's no smoke at all, i find myself glancing nervously in the rear view looking for flashing lights...

You might check with Sean Dezart in the vender forum here and in HybridZ vender forum. He may be a bit pricey, but sells only stainless steel headers with square ports and a stainless steel 2 1/2 exhaust system. I ordered one complete system from him and it should be here any day now I'll be posting pix after get them. Stainless steel polishes up real shiny.