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Hi all, just wanted to post some status of my trip to Japan. I was able to meet @kats and we took a drive in his Fairlady Z432. Man what a great car! It’s in great shape and Kats knows how to take car of his cars. We met in Kyoto as I arrived, with my family, to our hotel. Kats lives about 30 minutes away from Kyoto and drove the car up just to visit with me. He has 4 Z’s and asked me which one I wanted to see (and drive). Since I’ve never seen a Z432, it was an obvious choice. We spent about 20-30 minutes ogling the car before he let me drive it around the block. I don’t have an international drivers license, so he took the controls and we went for an extended drive around the city. I’ll post more about my observations when I am able to sit down at a computer, but I wanted to share a few pics. What a great time, and I wanted to personally thank Kats for taking time out of his busy schedule to meet with me. As you can see, it’s springtime in japan and the cherry blossoms are in full effect!

My body man is finally getting around to starting my Z car wall sculpture. Thanks to Zup for going out his way in getting the driver’s door. I don’t think he needed to apply the parking brake on his parts car that he got the door from to keep it from rolling away. No one will steal it either. I’ll update as it progresses. ?

Leave the mirror off and you'll have "Zenus de Milo".

NO, my email is jerrypurcell@frontier.com

I would love to be there at the first Z car show you take it to and watch the faces as they try to figure out what is different about your car.

Finally got all the major pieces fabbed up for the rad support. Pretty tricky piece but almost there .... Punching oval holes was hit and miss so I need to decide what to do with the two bottom holes? I might just punch round ones and then drill / dimple die the 6 holes on the back of the lower rad support... Hope to wrap this up on the weekend ....

Thank you for the offer, but I would pass on the used one if only for the reason that it is more prone to a shorter life-span. I have other issues with the car that need my attention, the FPR / running rich issue was an unexpected diversion from my original resto game plan.

If you are using the same pressure plate and collar that came out of the 4 spead set up, than you should not have any problems with the height. If the slave cylinder is not leaking and moves in and out freely, than there is no need to replace it. Can you check the fork travel? It should be about 16mm, give or take a couple of mm. If it's less than 12mm, you will most likely have issues with disengaging and gears grinding like reverse. You should be able to push the slave cylinder rod into the slave cylinder about 10mm. If you can not do that you need to do some adjustment checks. Two things can cause that. 1: The clutch fork is not seated on the pivot properly. 2: The master cylinder in not adjusted properly and not returning far enough to open the resivour port. It's not likely to be your master cylinder because it was ok before the tranny swap. Other items that can cause your problems: - Dry input shaft splines. The clutch disc can not slide along the shaft and away from the flywheel. This causes the disc to drag on the flywheel and feels like the clutch is not fully disengaging. Well one side of the disc is not disengaging. Did you try the clutch disc on the input shaft splines before fitting the transmission? - A dry binding spigot bearing (bronze bush or sometimes a ball/needle bearing in the back of the crankshaft) will cause the same problems. It's rare and doesn't happen often. Both these problems will need removing the transmission to fix. I would leave this as a last resort. Try all the easy stuff first.

Back home in the crib. Now the fun stuff.

Yeah your missing the fact that such a car is a bargain .. over here a rustbucket with warn out mechanic's is 15000 euro... WAKE UP U.S.A. !!!! The fact that these cars were mostly sold in de States let you think it's a cheap item... (Most have rusted away and everyone wants one..) These cars were 3-4 times more expensive overhere (Europe) than a Ford Taunus (yeah that's what they are called overhere with a 1300 or 1600cc v4 engine.. (overhere midclass) ) offcourse we got the 5 speed standard in a 240z but still .. Little boy's who walk aside of mom and say: Mom look!! What a nice car!! And also i've seen cyclists looking over their shoulder and run into a street light pole! i was LMFAO.... !!!

I had to rewind because this went by so quickly, but it looks like the Z has earned its place in the investment world, in a manner of speaking. This showed up tonight in an ad for Principal Financial on CBS news, and it seems to show a good market ...

Got the engine fired this weekend, resolved brake issues and a few other misc items. Will readjust valves tomorrow and tackle a few electrical gremlins, I don’t plan to paint the car but am planning on shooting the underside of the hood and bottoms of the front fenders. After that I hope to get the car on the road and put some miles on her.