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Good detective work. I believe there is a valve in that hot water line that is supposed to stop the coolant flow after it reaches something near operating temp. Dollars to donuts its staying open the whole time.

My first comment since joining last April. I would like to share some of my experiences owning my Z if I may. I have owned Christine (her nickname) since 1978 and she currently has 176,898 miles under her hood. She is in better health than I am, however I'm pushing 85 1/2 years so she does have an advantage. During the 38 years I have owned her the only mechanical failure has been a water pump which I replaced about 25 years ago. In the process of removing the old pump one of the bolts snapped off inside the head. I installed the new pump minus that one bolt and the pump has never leaked. Within the last two years I had the brake system rebuilt as well as the A/C which still uses R=12 and works great. She still wears her original white paint job and red interior. I replaced the orighinal radio for a stereo/CD unit and recovered the seats. Everything else is original including the dashcover. She has never slept outside except on a trip to Canada. I have owned many automobiles in my lifetime, but never an automobile as reliable, beautiful and fun to drive as Christine. How she got her name? About 15 years ago (yeah its been that long) I took her in for a tuneup and valve adjustment. I was so impressed how she was running I couldn;t wait to get home so I could have my late wife drive her. I backed her in the garage and asked Shirley to come out for a test drive. She was never enamored of the car because she felt the Z was pretty fragile in the event of an accident. I finally got her to come out and the last thing she said before she got in the car was "i really don't want to drive your stupid car!" I half kiddingly told her to be careful with her language because car's have feelings too. Well, she proceeds to turn on the ignition and the car gives off the loudest backfire which just reverberated throughout the garage. Shirley had a white knuckle grip on the steering wheel. She finally let go and bolted out of the car. I got into no small amount of hot water laughing at what had just occurred. She never drove the car after that day and we never spoke of the incident after that day. Christine had never backfired before that day nor has she since. God's truth. From that day on we referred to her as Christine after Stephen King's novel of the same name. Like i am sure all of you, I love my Z. Not only for the precious memories but also because I think they are special automobiles from both a design and well as a mechanical aspect. Thanks for listening. John Petkovich

I've just never seen all the Datsun colors in one sheet before. I've seen tons of conversation about Z colors. I've been scrounging around on eBay and found some collections of chips for a lot of years. Ultimately it's just feeding a bad habit of being indecisive.

Try two blocks of hard wood cut to the length between the adapter plate and the bearing. Heat the bearing and use two jimmy bars of big screwdrivers on each side to pry it off. If you use some heat it should come off without too much force. You just need to break it loose and with heat it should come off.

I think that you can use a piece of appropriately sized pipe, diameter and length, to install the bearing. On pullers - I've had to use a clamp to hold the jaws of a two-jaw puller closed, on the CS bearing, when they kept slipping. Accidentally turned it into a bearing splitter. Just an anecdote.

If you have the fabrication skills, you could probably extend the jaws on a regular small bearing puller using steel strap or rod. Three long pieces of steel. Get some tension on it, then heat it, then tap it. Combine all of the tips and techniques.

I like it! DId you make that up? "Anchoritis" kinda flows too.

Interesting findings and I hope it's that simple, but call me skeptical. Wouldn't be the first time someone thought they had a problem licked only for it to return again in the future. To test your theory, get the car back to stock. Fuel rail back where it belongs, water passages as they were a couple days ago, etc. And then recreate your shake test. Shake the car as you did before at hot idle, and verify that fuel glurps out of the bowl vent tube like it did before. Has to be repeatable. Then once you are positive that you have the car in the state where the fuel overflow will occur, shut the motor off, give it ten seconds or so for pressures in the fuel lines to stabilize and then repeat the shake test. If the theory about flash boiling the fuel by contact with the coolant passage inside the carb is correct, you will get a glurp of fuel out the vent tube even with the engine not running. But if you do NOT get a glurp with the engine off, then you're chasing a red herring. Reason being, if the overflow is caused by flash boiling fuel that is coming in contact with that internal heated passage, it shouldn't matter whether the car is running or not. Ten seconds after you shut off the engine, that passage is still at the same temperature, and the fuel level in the bowl is still at the same level. Results shouldn't matter whether the engine is running or not. Does that make sense?

Has your friend looked at all of the "hidden" painted areas like under carpets, spare tire well, behind plastic panels? Those areas generally don't get repainted unless the entire car has been media blasted or chemically dipped and stripped and would still have original factory paint. Dennis

That 'manifold thermostat' valve is easy to test. Just pull it out of the coolant line, put a short length of hose on one end, then dunk it in a pot of boiling water for a minute or so. Then pull it out of the water and see if you can suck air through the hose. If you get no resistance, then the valve is stuck open. An overnight soak in 'CLR' or some other calcium/lime remover might free it up. A new valve is probably going to be unobtanium. If you can't free up your existing valve, don't just throw it out and re-connect the hose, as this will guarantee that hot coolant flows through the intake heating passages all the time. Instead, you'd need to block the line (e.g. put a solid plug in the hose before re-connecting). There's been some debate -- unresolved, IIRC -- about the wisdom of permanently blocking the line.

I think you guys are on the right track and you are not alone. In the Downloads section of this site under "S30 Manuals and Tuning Guides" there is this Technical Service Bulletin originally submitted by Jarvo2: Fuel-1973 240z 1974 260z fuel system modifications.pdf This is a comprehensive document that deals with many of the 73/74 flat top issues and gives a systematic, step by step approach to resolutions. It is not "big" on the why of the issues, but is pretty good on how to go about the modifications Nissan felt were necessary---it may be of some help to you. As the good Captain is aware, I too am smitten with a case of "boatanchoritis"---- currently hoarding 4 sets of said, as I attempt restoration to full functionality for my 73. Give it a read if you are not familiar with it.

Antenna possibly bad connection or trimmer adjustment needed. Hard to find schematic for the km-1520 below. keywords hitachi radio schematic km-1520zc schematic for future searches. km-1520 operation manual Hitachi KM-1520ZC Operation Guide.pdf schematic.pdf

Tackled the heater box the other day, the reek of mouse pee was overwhelming and you can see what it did to the metal. Re-purposed and old cooler that was large enough to fit the heater box into and got out the Muriatic acid. It can be a a bit nasty to work with but it sure gets the job done. Once clean of rust and rinsed I scrubbed everything with a lye based soap, rinse, dry, prime and paint. The smell of pee is gone.

You are not going to find a $30,000 Z for $1,500 I'm sure you know that. If it has sat under a tarp outside for 25 yrs then you should do some very through digging under the carpets and underneath the car, just be prepared to walk away. Any rust you see is only 20% of what is actually there.

That rear bearing is a bit of a challenge to get off. My standard bearing puller was also too short, so I made one from 10mm plate with two threaded bars to do it.

I appreciate having this available, but it seems a lot more convenient to have a real printed manual. Haven't tried to find one (I've got a 72 engine manual, falling apart) and expect one in good condition would be expensive. On the other hand, FWIW, it's no problem at all for my '63 Chevy truck. About 15 years ago I bought a new reproduction manual, about $20, 2 inches thick. Was curious if it's still available, so checked Amazon a few minutes ago. It's gone up, $40 for new official authorized reproduction manual. So I wonder why it's not available for the Z cars and other Nissan's.

I think all documents have been scanned. I seem to have digitized FSM's for every year. The problem is file size and the forum softwares' ability to load the big files. I plan to have a new tech tips site going soon! It will have a Z library Stand by

I appreciate anybody's efforts to keep these old FSM's available. They are the most important thing, I think, that keeps these old Z's alive. But is your copy different from the Xenons30, or nicoclub copies? 1972 is available there. 1971, though, seems to be unavailable anywhere. On the other hand, maybe we should get copies of all of the FSM's in case those other sites go under, like web sites tend to do. I will ship my paper 1976 original FSM to anybody who will copy it and make it available to classiczcars.com. I don't have that ability. Does anyone know if Kinko's will do that work and how much? Whatever it takes.

Yesh. Here's one that popped up a few years ago in an unexpected place. Full identity hidden to respect the privacy of the owner:

Roger, The only information I have came to me anecdotally, from people employed by Nissan in Japan at the time. One of my friends in Japan says he really wants to get a good UK-market 'RS30' model, to recreate one of Nissan's long lost phantom models: The Nissan 'Fairlady 260Z'. Apparently the problem was most serious on the aircon-equipped cars, and particularly when they were caught up in heavy stop-start traffic during hot weather. Cars were suffering serious fuel vapourisation issues, and dealers could not get a good balance between air-con off and air-con on settings ( the kind of problems that would soon to be eliminated with fuel injection ). They were being forced to make changes that would cause the cars to fail Japan's extremely strict emissions laws ( some of the strictest in the world at that point, I believe ) and a proper cure would have meant a complete re-design of the fuel system and maybe even different carbs. I'm told that Nissan decided to cut their losses, recall the problem cars ( buying them back from customers in some cases ) and fit them with L20A engines instead. The bulkhead VIN stamps were altered to suit, and new metal VIN plates attached to the inner wings ( fenders ). The L20A engine design already had a few years of development and production under its belt ( in a wide variety of models ) and didn't suffer from the same issues as the L26 in the Japanese spec. As I mentioned before, this was not highly publicised by Nissan and the whole issue was somewhat covered up. I still have never seen a Japanese service bulletin or any other Nissan-sourced document that mentions it. I think only a few hundred cars were affected. I think the spec of the domestic L26 concerned would have been different to the export spec L26 ( different carbs and more emissions equipment at least ) so that's why they treated them differently. I don't know the full ins-and-outs of the story, but it is an intriguing story. I would have thought that they would need to change emblems on the cars that were sent back out ( re-badged as 'Fairlady Z' models instead of 'Fairlady 260Z' models ) and this - along with the re-stamping of the firewall VIN and the engine change - might even have made it necessary to repaint the cars. And like most of these kinds of story, it is difficult to pin down the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I think Nissan would probably prefer us not to know! Alan T.