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Today i was finally able to complete a little project on which i've been working over the past few weeks. I completely reworked the Inspection Lamp. Remember a few weeks ago when i posted this pic? This is how it all started. Rusty, Painted over a few times, and in bad shape. didn't even work: Of course started to disassembly everything first Then had the housing tubmlered to remove old paint, dirt and rust (picture has other parts included as well, which don't belong to the inspection lamp): And got it zinc-replated and yellow passivated to get back the origina look. Then started to source the missing parts. Even if i'm in the business i failed to find an original green twin-wire with the original thickness. but since the original wire was still in good shape i decided to just clean and keep it. The bulb was a bit of a headscratcher too. but after i figured out the Keyword was "BA9s" (9mm bajonett-socket with single base connector) it was easy to find a fitting bulb, 12V, 8W as the manual states. Nowadays you even could replace it with a lot of less-power consuming LED bulbs, but i decided to keep it oldschool in this case The switch was the most tricky part. the original was toasted (see left). It could be saved and restored but then you still have a completely brittly 40 year old piece of plastic in an outdated electronic design, so i decided to replace it with a newer style switch. The first generation of inspection lamps had a metal switch too, so it's not a completey wrong look. The switch needs a 12mm thread, but must be small enough to fit inside the housing (most 12mm threaded switches are too big) and it should have the little notch in the thread to secure it properly in correct position. After trying various options i figoured out this one would fit perfectly (Available at farnell) http://www.atakel.com/urun/apem-5000-series-miniature-toggle-switches/EN/ While the original one is an ON-OFF switch, this one is an ON-ON switch, but if you remove one of the outer pins you have an ON-OFF function again: First the little nipple has to minimized by 0.5mm or so to fit the slightly smaller notch in the new switch: Then prepared all the cables. Cleaned them first with a rough side of a dish cleaning sponge, cut off the ends, removed insulation ca 1mm at each end with a special tool and then pre-soldered the ends to make it easier to solder it later. It probably helps if you have a full high-end soldering workstation like i have at my office and 20+ years of daily soldering routine skills All parts ready? Here we go. The fun part begins - assembly (got a new replica lens and rubber insulator from ebay, plus additionally a piece of black heat-shrinking tube and some red electronic wrapping tape). First i installed a new rubber insulator grommet on the bottom of the back housing. the original one was falling apart by just looking at it. New ones can be found easy in any electronis speciality shop. The removed the old wire-end from the connecting plate and cleaned it. resoldered the new wire-end to it and cleaned it with flux remover (removes flux from the soldering, which may decrease the electric connectivity! see bottle in the back) Soldered the other wire back to the hook and attached some black heat-shrinking tube like it was in the factory setup: Next was soldering the wires to the switch and protect the solderings with some black heat-shrinking tube: Also added the red electrical tape as it was in my factory setup (it goes inside where the clamp is to protect wires): Soldered the wire back to the little Clamp And installed the clamp back to the bottom and secured the cables inside with it. Done Apply 12V DC to it (ground to the housing, plus to the red wire, switch on - YAY! assembled it to gether and still everything works as it should: So here's the result. Quite the difference when compared to the first pictures, which was the same item! Spent quite a few hours sourcing parts and getting everything cleaned and so on, but honestly it was totally worth the work

Nice work. Of all the parts that I tried to re-plate using my D-I-Y plating set-up, this one was the most problematic (many heavily 'shaded' areas, along with a difficult-to-plate interior surface. Your results illustrate one the important superiorities of commercial plating.

Agree wholeheartedly. Not very much frontal crash structure out side of the engine. Replacements panels will come at a premium. Oh yeah, go through the brake system from front to rear. Don't skimp.

Throw that amount of horsepower into a Z and you'll be chasing the weakest link in the drive train. When you correct that weak link, you'll find the next one, and the next one, etc.

We don't know your son's age but I would pass along this good advice that the salesman told me when I got my first Z. Take it easy for the first six months of driving a Z until he gets to know the car's limitations and his. Most serious accidents in a Z happen in the first six months. If he has the "need for speed", local clubs often have novice racing driver training courses that include classroom and track time.

That is true. Why are you oiling fish?

I think I like it! So before the questions start, the grey filler I used is high temp JB Weld. Applied it like bondo and sanded it down prior to powder coating.

Squirrel!.... Finished the gas tank so went into the shop to play with the custom valve cover. Here’s the lineage and finished product....

.... and finally sealed. Will let the sealant cure for a few days and then start work on the outside of the tank!

Mark made my point very eloquently. You will basically have to reengineer the car to get a dependable car with those HP levels. Also keep in mind you can't just source a fuel pump that will work for 500+ Hp that is good for your current level of 250HP (or what ever). It needs to move more fuel than that. You can't run overly large injectors for a similar reason, you lose resolution and accuracy when large injectors are asked to deliver low volumes of fuel. That means you have to buy multiple injectors and fuel pump and misc odds and ends as you upgrade the car. As you do this you have to retune and retune... I speak from experience that this kind of project can be really frustrating and very costly. 50/50 odds on whether you ever actually get a dependable 500Hp Z to where you want it to be even after pouring piles of cash into... This is very good advise! Doable but still not cheap, and even at 300Hp you are gonna break stuff finding the weak links...

Early stripes little bar in Detroit

I have an R200 4.11. PM me if you are interested. I am in N.S.

Okay, I'm just curious, what kind of experience do you have with high powered cars? 550whp is a monumental amount of power in a lightweight car like a Z. I think you might be overestimating how much power you really need. 300whp in a Z is pretty damn quick. Unless you're drag racing, I just don't see the point in having much more than that since you aren't likely to be able to really use it.

https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/nissan,1972,240z,2.4l+l6,1209169,suspension,strut,7584 If you want to maintain stock ride, the basic KYB GR-2 is hard to beat.

Got the windshield in. That was a piece of cake and took just about an hour from start to finish. Wife helped out a bit on the install. The more challenging item was the stainless metal trim installation. It goes pretty well if you use Windex to lube everything up and then roll the windshield rubber over the edges of the trim. Also got the windshield wipers on, love those things. Now its back to the interior.

Another bright side? They say heat makes the spindle pins easier to get out. Those should fall right out.

Thanks everyone, By the way, some Z432-R will be showing up on the market not so far from now. Every owner becomes old, wife wants to sell the car. This Z-432-R was sold recently at 55000000JPY( approx.500 000 USD), we do not need to hurry for availability but, the price is going up like this. I guess millionaires are mostly out of Japan, so these cars will left Japan , sadly. Kats