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I’m glad this post has enlightened more than just myself. Thanks to Jim for suggesting I report my findings.

I usually go straight to the Unread Content, the Members Map doesn't show on the page but as soon as I jump to any thread the Members Map link is at the top of the page. Uhhh.... yeah let me work on that... what button is that again, hmm, let me ask my wife.

Hi everybody! Today I bring fresh news!!! During the last weekends we were working on the car…but some minor bad luck happened…we didn’t progress as we like!!! But bolt by bolt we are assembling the BIG puzzle!!! At this moment there is a willfull rubber, the one from the hatch glass…it will go directly to the litter! I bought an original in japan and I’m waiting for it! Then the doors…we didn’t finish the driver’s door because the inside locker is broken and we were unable to tune the door properly. I’m getting bored with all these tasks…only adjustments and tunning and…and…and… too much time spent on each part!!! The only goal that is keeping me excited is getting her to it’s original condition…and it’s almost done! Let’s see the photos!!! Plated and zinc parts… The fuel filter stand is originaly painted black, but I’ll leave it zinc…it’s cleanerto the engine bay…I think! New horns…before there were the giant vintage bosh… New heater grommets… Installing the door. New key lockers, new door handles, glass elevators and the main lock. This last one borke down. I suspected before the resto, that it didn’t opened the door properly! New hood handle...the previous one wasn’t original and didn’t match S30! New rubbers for hood handle and km mark. Cleaning and installing the side markers. Installed..they fit very well! And left side almost ready… Rear bumper installation! What an enormous task!!! 3 hours until the end!!! Too much parts, rubbers, guards, bolts, tune and so on…luckily everything is original and fitted well!!! All the new parts… The result before it goes to the car! Before the installation we cover the sides with sphincter to avoid some scratches! Annoying car said Mr.Vitorino... Almost!!! And here is the result!!! Seat in it’s place… With a Zelfie I finish this report… Hope you enjoyed all the results…next week some more news…I believe!!! Regards Mário

Yeah, I get that a lot. You need a lathe, my friend. Once you get the seam opened up, the face cap just pulls off the front of the lock: And the cylinder slides out of the lock body: Here's some of those corroded crusty tumbler wafers I was talking about earlier. However, despite the way it looks, this is actually the BEST door lock I've ever opened up. In fact, I wouldn't feel bad about reusing this one if I had to: And here's a shot down into the lock corroded lock body. If you look closely you can see some grooving in the body where the tumblers have dug in: And since I had the camera out, here's how the front face keyhole cover is held on. Note the dimples in the side where it was crimped into place. It's easy to just slide it off. Maybe use a small tool to un-bend the crimp a little bit if necessary:

It's fascinating how politicians around the world let their constituencies vote on something. Then, when they don't get the expected result, they do everything they can to not implement the voted outcome. I have an outsiders perspective on Brexit, but I would think being an independent and autonomous nation would be more desirable than being run over by a bureaucracy in Brussels.

I didn't get any of the expert welder in process. The body guy told me they used hardened steel in some places and silicone bronze in others IIRC. They also burned out the old seam sealer. Apparently it is quite the job and they were having to hold a big metal spoon or something on the back side while welding up the mutli layer seams on the frame rails. Lot of work now but I really think it will all pay off in the end. This is the one and only car I will ever take this far. I almost backed out of the seam welding to be honest but I think this build deserves it.

We 'know' the distance from the flange faces inner/outer on each side of the diff are different, as the Rxxx diffs are intrinsically wider on one side. The modern world (1980 and later) knows only of CV style joints that have very little in/out slop and have to be carefully sized to fit. Thus it was natural to assume that our lowly old school shafts would 'have to' be different lengths to 'work' in our unbalanced ancient hot rods. Wrong. Even when directed to the Z parts manual, where never the words 'left and right' could be found in the listings, they still disbelieved. What was never properly understood was the massive (by comparison) length variance our marvelous half shafts are able to supply. They do gum up, and often true that you can't compress them by hand all to the same length, or perhaps expand them to maximum for the same reason, which only added to the 'they are different' myth. And I've never heard of one breaking anywhere but at the u-joints themselves. Marvelous engineering indeed.

I thought this was the case You don't! Unless you go aftermarket EFI or turbo and aftermarket EFI

https://www.copart.com/lot/25174219 This car was interesting until I saw the rear damage! There will still be a lot of good parts here. It should be really cheap!

Continued from above... Cleaning things and polishing the shiny bits All the nuts, bolts, and other miscellaneous hardware pieces were cleaned up as much as I reasonably could with a red scuff pad, wire wheel, or buffing bad. One day, when I run out of projects, I think I'll try re-plating some of the hardware. Meguiar's 105 did a great job buffing up the stainless trim pieces. My old Black Dragon order also included a new set of outer door window trims. Can't say I'm super happy with them: the tips were bent in transit, the protective film was cut badly and super glued on, and to top it off, don't seem to fit very well. Power Locks The power lock kit has a soft zinc block that connects the actuator rod to the door rod via set screws. It would always fall off. Never more. Please don't judge my welds. Lights The marker lights were all filthy, but mostly just needed a good cleaning Three out of four are passable, but the front lens on one is a mess. Alt least it's only $30 for a pair of replacement lights. Headlights were cleaned up too. The turn signals needed more attention. The reflectors were rusted, the housings were dirty, and the paint on the surrounds was coming off. I still had material left from the paint job, so everything was cleaned, sprayed with adhesion promoter, epoxy, then rattle can white on the housing, and metallic gray on the surrounds. White is still plenty bright, so rather than trying to repair the reflectors, I left them out entirely. Badges The only badges I've left on the car are on the vents. Mine were pretty rough. Replacements aren't terribly expensive, but I'll salvage what I can. Removed as much of the old paint as I could, then sprayed with some Rustoleum, and scraped off everything that should be shiny. This'll do; I'll save the hundred bucks for something else. Hood and front end issues deserve their own post, but I think there's a football game about to start.

So for those of you that I haven't scared off yet, I got a couple minutes to take a previously unmolested door lock apart. Here's a lock, my anvil holding fixture, and my home-brew face cap pliers: For the pliers, I ground one tip down a little so it's slightly shorter than the other leg: And I ground a radius into the jaws to kinda sorta fit the curve of the face caps. It's not a perfect match, but the intent is mostly to keep the corners from digging in and creasing the face cap material: Here's another pic with a better view of the radius ground into the jaw: Using those pliers, I am able to catch the lip of the face cap and straighten up the bent bead around the edge. Like this: And after a couple minutes of careful prying and working my way around the lock a couple times, I end up with the lip pried up straight enough that the face cap can be popped off the front of the lock. Takes some finesse and "the knack", but in the end, it looks like this:

I have also seen these referred to as 'puddle lights' and 'threshold lights'. Intended to help your passenger not get her expensive footwear wet when having to exit into uncharted territory. You get one on your side, too, but that's not important.

I was working more along the lines of being able to combine all the locks I have to rebuild a good set of locks all keyed together. I have a few locks to work with...

And some words of experience about reusing the original locks... Every original lock I've ever opened up (with the exception of the rarely used glove box lock) has been a mess inside. Corroded. Pitted. Grooves worn where there shouldn't be grooves. Wafer / tumblers worn and sometimes bent. The pot metal they used for the lock body castings was probably chosen more for cost and it's ability to cast fine detail than it was for it's longevity. And the corresponding keys were worn as well, meaning that even replacing the wafers with new ones might not fix a sticky lock problem. The point is...... All you guys buying face cap pliers thinking you're going to open up and rebuild your original door locks? Based on my experience, you're going to find a worn, corroded, rusty, grooved, hunk of what used to be a lock. I would probably recommend buying a new set of door locks off ebay and opening them up and rekeying them to the rest of your car instead. If you can get new replacements that use the same blank as the rest of the car, then that would be a much better way to go. New versions of both the ignition locks and door locks are available. The ones you can't get are hatch and glove box, and thankfully those two usually got much less use than the doors and ignition and stand a better chance of being salvageable. Of course, YMMV.

the details of what happened may help with the diagnosis of the original issue. Generally speaking you want to go thru all the major systems, make sure wear items are dealt with considering age. ALL rubber lines (fuel/vacuum) are way past due if original to car. Electrical, suspect every connection and ground. check and refurb as needed. This includes rubber covers etc.. need to keep moisture out. Battery, often overlooked, good cables (not clamp on quick fix, think OE style). fuse links and connections to same, make sure in good condition, better still replace with new fuse links and make sure all blade type connectors are in good clean condition. Grounds, make sure ALL grounds (there are a lot) are solid and contact clean metal. look for "green wire corrosion" you will see it creep up copper wires. if it there you must cut back to good copper and make solid repairs. It would be best to address one of the above with a working car, but if you have a situation where you have tried the FSM trouble shooting procedures, then the above may solve an issue that the FSM was not written to address (like a 40+ year old car with wiring and other age related problems). The reason being you "could" introduce a new problem by a botched repair attempt. Multiple failures are rare on there own, but easy to introduce by addressing multiple systems with no way to confirm if they worked after the repair. An example, replacing fuel injector harness connections making poor connections resulting in a non functioning injector where as before it worked but was just ratty of the plastic parts were falling apart. A few of those, and a botched ground fix etc... could result in a major hassle in trying to find them in a non working car. Can't say it enough, its almost always going to be a single point of failure that stops a running car, so diagnosis is the way to go vs shot gun repairs of multiple systems.

Windows 7, Chrome. My screen looks like Grannyknot's.

I went with Brandon to check on his Z31 project. We dropped off the wall sculpture for his body man to work his magic on. It’ll have new trim, quarter window, mirror, door handle and Series I emblem. It’ll hang on the wall of my office......going to be fun to see what he does with it.

Thank you your Lordship, I suddenly feel a little younger.

Thanks. I am working on it

Sold!

https://www.classiczcars.com/membermap/

I was surprised the hatch glass was still intact too! Somebody needs to pick this one up.

Don't do it! L-Jetronic EFI and bigger cams do not play nice. I tried to put a Web Racing #91 grind street cam in my L28 and it ran like crap. After some research, I learned that L-Jet relies on proper engine vacuum and the cam reduced the amount of vacuum created. The car idled poorly, had no power through most of the rev range and at best, had a bit more power up top. I pulled the cam and went back to stock. I then installed the same cam in a L28 with very similar compression, but fed via SU carbs and it runs great. I couldn't be happier with the performance.

Sweet!!! My non-smooshed 77 must be worth $472,464 !!

Hood latch receivers for LHD S30's. These have been stripped and professionally replated in yellow zinc. Each comes with the sriker plate and fasteners as shown. Each striker plate has some dings. $65 each - buyer's choice, including standard domestic shipping. Payment via PayPal. PM me if interested. Thanks.

Interesting to see rear end collision damage contained. Sort of makes this shape:

Yeah, the springs are a problem. Most of the lock parts are made out of either stainless or a non-ferrous alloy. One of the exceptions, unfortunately, are the springs. From what I understand, there are some grades of stainless that are suitable for making springs, but good ol' carbon steel has better spring characteristics. That is, of course, at least until they rust into little unidentifiable nuggets of what used to be springs. Here's my hatch lock door. That little brown legless rusty lump in the middle of the picture is what's left of the original door spring: And for a fix, I harvested a couple springs from other door locks and was able to modify one of them to work as a replacement for the original. Here's a pic of some of the options I was working with. Original rusty nugget at the top and two options harvested from other sources at the bottom. I don't remember what the other sources were, but I have good reason to believe they were later Nissan products or from a Honda Civic: Based on the dates on the pics, it's been almost seven years since I was messing with this stuff, and I didn't do much writing about it at the time. So I have some pics, but the details are unclear at this point. I was definitely able to figure out a replacement option, but I'm not sure which donor spring I used. I have pics where I clipped the long one in half, but I'm not sure if that's what I finally ended up using: But for moral support... Here's a pic showing that whatever I did worked great! :

Well maybe that's because you don't know what to look for, it also is not a broad statement it is a very specific statement. Anyone that has actually worked on repairing rust knows that that dime sized spot of rust that has popped through from inside is in fact 4-5" in dia. if not larger. Lets start on the deck lid that you think is perfect, that 3" piece of visible rust actually goes from the D/S fender to the middle of the deck lid as seen by the swelling between the spotwelds and that means almost certainly the vertical support for the deck lid will need repair as well. This common area of rust started on the inside behind the show panel and has eaten its way through to the outside all the way across the back of the car and I can tell you from experience that is a difficult, expensive repair. The rust in this area around the gas filler door will be much larger than it appears to be and will require the spot welds to be drilled out and the box behind removed then the damaged area will need to be cut out and replaced with a custom fabricated piece of 20ga sheet with the exact compound curves, body line crease and bead rolled lip the gas door nests into. And here, replacing the visible damage on the firewall is the least of your problems, the fresh air chimney and the bottom of the chamber behind the firewall will need extensive repair first before the firewall replacement even begins. @Snaponfitz, in no way am I saying you are trying to sneak one by us or hiding anything, not at all. I just don't think you will get the kind of money for your car that was mentioned at the start of this thread. I would love to take this car on as project, it has great potential.

Yeah, maybe I'm not up to date on Z values, but I don't see a $20k car there. It looks like it needs a total restoration. $10k is way more in line with what I'd expect it to go for. Also, in addition to the rust in the firewall, it looks like it has rust on the inside of the tail panel, just below where the tail lights mount, where the tail panel meets the trunk floor. Strange place to rust, don't think I've seen that before.

Yeah I'm not really understanding the hype. It's a decent foundation, but there are signs of rust all over the car, just not many closeups of it. Though some parts of the body have been buffed to be shiny, it will still need a repaint...especially once the trim moldings are removed and the body damage is sorted out. It will likely still need a minimum of floors, more than likely frame rails too. Not sure how bad the rust goes on the passenger inner fender. I have a hunch the passenger side has more rust damage that's hiding. It's been sitting for a long time, will need brakes gone through, clutch system, all rubbers and bushings. The carbs sound like they were cleaned enough to start, but will still need to be completely gone through to be a driver. Front valance looks damaged, turn signal busted, seats need to be completely rebuilt, dash has a few cracks, rear bumper tweaked, etc. I can go on and I know I'm sounding like I'm being really picky for a 50 year old Datsun, but for $10k I would want something that isn't going to require as much of a restoration as a "rust bucket" that still needs roughly the same amount of repair as the ones listed in these ads: I'm not criticizing his price, everyone is entitled to ask what they want for what they're selling. It's the responses that this should be a $20k+ car that have me confused. Maybe if he sells it internationally...? The car in this post has been for sale for at least a couple weeks now locally, if it was that good of a deal it would've been gone quickly. I don't see a lot of difference between the one being offered for sale on this thread and the ones posted above that just sold recently (green earlier this month, yellow one this morning).

Cliff, Let’s wait until I get a 240z and then we can work on running the prices up. I’m still looking [emoji6] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It would be cool to see those transactions. I've seen it suggested they happen in secret, but without seeing one it's hard to know what really happens out there. Of course, value, as is often said, is what a person pays. The only person that can really assign a value is somebody who buys one. Sounds like you're saying that a sub-500 VIN adds about a 50% premium. Don't know, just would like to see a real $100,000 transaction documented. It would mean more, no offense. https://www.hagerty.com/apps/valuationtools/1970-datsun-240z

I agree with 26th. I think done reasonably well the car is 50k or so. I would say any sub 2000# cars are considered really early cars. That might even apply to 5000# and below. the first 500# cars are a breed apart and are already in the 90-100k value area.

I believe a lot of this is misunderstanding and the limitations of communicating through a forum. I dont think zed head is trying to impugn or injure anyone but for all I know he got taken by someone on the internet and is a little suspicious now. We have also occasionally had discussions on altering vins in the past and some people are more ok with that then others. As these cars become more valuable and the production history is so hit or miss it may become a bigger problem. History has shown zed head to always be available to help solve problems. By the way I'm not paranoid if everyone's really out to get me. ?