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But since when has (as mentioned in the BaT comments) the rather slippery concept of a "95+ Point Concours Restoration" become the standard by which a respectably refreshed daily/occasional driver level car should be valued? I don't know about anyone else, but I don't count the hours the work on my cars takes. It's a pleasure I'm happy to pay for when I can afford it. I don't tot up the hours I spend drinking beer, reading books or listening to good music either. I reckon many (most!) of the cars I've owned and sold have been negative equity propositions if judged purely in monetary terms. Well, so what? I enjoyed them when they were enjoyable, and was frustrated by the ones that let me down. That's the hobby. But the narrative from these over-invested grifters is that the only way is up, and they appear to judge the success/failure of ownership on whether they've made more than anyone else by bailing out at the right time. They're not connoisseurs, they're braggards. They don't hype these sales for the love and understanding of the cars.

Thanks, only the 240s had the vinyl on the transmission tunnel and rockers to my knowledge. This vinyl I bought was only about $50 total. Spray glue is about $20 and I also bought some sound deadening material which was $60. That stuff is optional but didn’t want hear the tranny and extra noises. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Joe, Thanks for the response and I appreciate what products you provide. The company I work now for deals with the same issues. Worker shortages, constant training, maintaining high standards and keeping workers happy, all this is a delicate balance. I led a 350 man organization and everyday my battles were associated with manpower issues, training people, supervising and maintaining standards and meeting production goals. It’s not easy and the culture of your organization / business is set by the people on top. People need to trust their supervisors and leaders, they need to be empowered and must feel part of the team. Punish with caution. I never punished for mistakes, to me that was usually a function of poor training or supervision. People who bent the rules were counseled with respect, people who blatantly broke rules or negligent were disciplined. Good people are hard to find, when you find them it’s imperative they know they are appreciated and compensate them accordingly. It’s not always pay more . Sometimes it’s, take a 1/2 day or buying them lunch or just recognizing them to the rest of the team as going above and beyond. You will get more productivity out of them. You want the people who work for you to be happy. Happy workers are productive workers. It’s the leaders job to set the right environment for this to happen. Counsel you people in private, praise them in public. I beat all 4 other squadrons on my base in aircraft availability, sortie production and personnel retention by using these concepts and others.. Tell your people exactly what you expect from them and when they meet that goal reward their effort. It’s absolutely critical to the success of any organization. It’s usually always easier to fix a poor performer than it is to find hire and train a new person. You have to know your people to do this you need know what impacting those lives their family etc.. Leaders set the conditions for success and the employees make it happen. It took me 24 years of leading people to figure out the science of managing and motivating people to a unified goal. Sorry to rant but I I wanted to share nuggets of wisdom that I’ve learned the hard way. I’m passionate about leading people. The culture or an organization is what what makes the difference between winners and losers . In the halls of business academia we call this “Just Culture”. Just Culture means we: 1. Counsel the Human Error 2. Coach the at-risk or poor performer 3’ Punish the reckless or negligent Independent of the outcomes! John

Okay, I’m finished for the day. Got other stuff a to do around the house (Christmas decorations to keep mama happy) and go for a run. Here’s the test fit. Needs some minor tweaks. It’s not sitting perfectly flat because it’s not glued down but just resting there.

Gents, My trans tunnel template is complete. check it out. Going to transfer this the the diamond stitch. Anyone who wants this template let me know and I’ll ship it to you for free as long as you send it back or send it to another member and pay it forward!

Cleaning up the engineroom was my last task on the 280zx, and it's slowly taking place.. I'm rarely in the garage to work on it.. my gas heater is broken down and with these natural gas prices.. I'm busy with electric heaters.. And for the time i have no solar collectors.. thats also expensive..(High electric bill.) As energy prices overhere also exploded we are all in the race for those solar collectors! And YES also made in Holland is an option! So i'm more often seen behind my pc..pfff.. Also my energy level is a bit low these days.. So i looked up my 240z and 280zx op Hagerty's and it seems that the 280zx is following the 240z's lines.. (I restored my 280zx just in time it seems!! ) Datsun 240z 1971... Datsun 280zx.. Double the price in one year!! My 240z is not an "excellent" car but i have more than enough parts to make it that way already in storage for years.. I finally assembled the engine in October.. was to sick to do anything in November.. Here some pics of the result. Still hanging upside down.. Inlet plus injection.. underside Taking out the old broken bolts with a good heatup by welding it... it was a easy job! New bolts installed with some red (very tight) lock-tite. And some new self locking nuts. Assembled the under the hood light also.. At this time the engine is ready to go back into the engineroom, i have to clean that up first, paint the inner fenders and just give it a good clean for the rest of the parts, most are already done. As it is a daily driver it has a black anti rust bottom and i leave that as it is, also on the lower beams in the engineroom. (I took off a bit of it from a brakeline and... surprise surprise.. the olive green ORIGINAL Nissan brake line paint came out looking brand new!)

Sorry for taking so long to respond. There is no excuse for what you've reported, all we can offer is our apologies. Getting quality shipping staff has been a struggle for many years. Unfortunately, the pandemic has only made it worse. We're training a new person now, and hope such packing errors are a thing of the past. With millions of possible combinations of parts, training is a long term effort. None of this helps or excuses what we did to you of course, and what you've described should be simple common sense, but it is something we continue to work on. As far as the email contact, I can see the email that we did send on June 15th, in the (failed) attempt to let you know about the 2 items that we hadn't received. If you do ever choose to give us another chance in the future, when you don't see an order confirmation email in your inbox or spam folder, after you place your order, please let us know. As far as the older order you mentioned, your account we have now only goes back to 2020, so we assume we had you at a different address before, and duped your account by accident. If you're willing to help me find that order, please pm me. Sorry again for the inexcusable shipping problems, and thanks for all the orders you've made. Hopefully we'll get a shot to help you in the future.

Sorry to respond so late, and muddy the current thread discussion. Things have been quite overwhelming here, we're trying to dig out. First of all, nice job on the Z so far, and it sounds great! Thank you for your patience with us. The email issues have affected many companies. Places like Yahoo flag a domain as spam, with no explanation, and no recourse. We did send you an email on October 13th (that obviously went to spam or disappeared into cyber-oblivion), that the intake and boot were delayed from the manufacturers, and that we would ship it all together when all items arrived. So our apologies as we should have followed up with you when we didn't see an email reply. Sorry about that. It is definitely something Greg is working on as we get new sales team members up to speed, and hopefully (soon) find a few more, so they aren't overwhelmed all day long. We have also recently been trying to call, in addition to sending emails, which can be tricky as many don't want to be bothered with phone calls. Unfortunately we're still waiting for the other items you ordered. Just call our sales team anytime for the latest we've heard from the manufacturers (side note: Your most recent order left yesterday, just in case you're not getting the tracking emails either. If you didn't, if you can help us out, please check your spam folder and let me know if our emails aren't in there). As far as successfully getting out of our old systems and into new ones where inventory can be shown, that has been the most difficult of all, a long story, and that one is on me. I will say that we have what we hope is a great new company working on things now, and are very hopeful that they can get it all figured out relatively soon. Thank you for all of your orders, kind words, and for having mercy on us.

In Georgia, they think the signs identifying the freeway are the speed limits. If you think I-75 and I-85 are bad, you should try GA-400...

Let's break things down. You said the car will shut off when you unplug the alternator. That means the alternator is backfeeding the ignition. That would be on the white/black wire attached to that plug. You may want to use an ohmmeter to measure the resistance between the white/black wire at the plug on the alternator and the black/white wire on the wiring harness. You'll need to backprobe the connector to get to the black/white wire. If the resistance is low, there is evidence of your problem. You will probably still need a diode to prevent the backfeed. Someone has definitely altered the wiring on your car. Nissan definitely NEVER used a wire nut on the Z wiring... (As an aside, I asked my wife if she could see what was wrong with the picture of the voltage regulator. She picked out the wire nut, too.) How long have you owned the car? It sounds like the IPO left you some surprises. What ignition system do you have on the car? I'm guessing it's not points. Anyway, you can wire the coil so that the tach doesn't work, and the car will run. Post some photos of the area around the ballast resistor and coil. If it's as I suspect, I have a video to help you sort that out. @Zed HeadThat was autocorrect on my phone. I'm back at my computer now, so improper words are my own ducking fault.

So I bought MSAs loop carpet and plan to use it for the flooring. Once the vinyl is in an glued down I’ll take those MSA floor pan pieces and cut them down to size and have a local carpet shop sew in the wrapped edges. $3.50 a foot, so it’s cheap for the, to do it. Maybe $40 to do that max. Then I’ll glue idown so it transitions nicely between vinyl and carpet. This is my plan

Definitely a good amount of hyping in the comments as an attempt to boost bids. I do agree with some, it's very difficult to do a factory restoration and not touch 6 figures of investment. Even if you are able to do most the work yourself, you can't get away from a full blown restoration with less than 1000 hours poured into the process. Value your time at the lowest shop rate you can find, plus just part costs, and it's amazing what it truly costs to build up one of these cars today.

Hey Cliff, "and NOT going completely" i asume? 🙂

I just disassembled the N47 intake manifold off of the head, and started to work on the rest. Then discovered about 4 days later about the specific details around emissions. It was a pain! The sale is currently pending, with a down payment. Now looking for a 240z!

...which would - if you believe two of the vaunted 'gurus' in the BaT comments - have left the seller with a $25k+ sized black hole on "restoration costs" they assured us must have been incurred. Over-hyping by these heavily invested characters does not - in my opinion - help.

Not to derail the original thread, and assuming that ZCD = ZcarDepot, MSA is a whole lot better at addressing issues than ZCD. Brought up defect issues on my first order with ZCD a year ago, and aside from an initial response, they went silent on the issue. MSA has usually been very responsive, and as a result they get most of my specialty Z parts business.

Zed, as far as we're concerned, we always appreciate you looping us in. Thank you for doing so. We'll always try to come up with the best option as far as shipping and delayed items are concerned. With all the supplier issues it has been much more prevalent and difficult than usual these past two years. On more orders than people might think, where we've screwed up and had to reship something, we often end up losing money on those orders. It is part of doing business, but Greg is working hard, every day, to get parts here from literally all over the world to ship out, and we're working on making certain everybody knows all of their shipping options. Thanks again for alerting us. As a side note, James is unfortunately no longer with the company, I'll be asking Mike to remove that account to alleviate confusion.

recently retired (sorta anyway) so hope to make a run to the dragon soon, missed it last year, but now work is much less an issue.

The problem is getting the connectors for the 280Z headlights. I could work around that in the 74-76, but even that involves backing pins out of the connectors between the dash harness and engine harness. See @Dave WM, even more reason to come up this way. There are even a couple of Publix around here for your wife.

I also highly recommend installing the headlight wiring upgrade with the relays. This will limit the voltage into your cabin at a lower amperage. It's great for older wiring and this harness uses your existing connectors (without cutting or splicing). https://www.thezstore.com/page/TZS/PROD/classic10d23/12-4651

Clean/shine up the connections?

First gear is where you'll notice the changes. 4th gear is always 1:1. But between those two choices you have a 3.321 1st, or a 3.062 1st. If you live in a hilly area or do a lot of city driving, the lower 12.95 overall might feel right. If you live on flat ground and don't do a lot of stop and go, you'll probably find that 1st is pretty "short". Also, the other notable difference between the two choices is that the early 5 speed has a noticeable gap from 2nd to 3rd. If you're climbing or trying to accelerate you need to stay in 2nd longer than you'd think to get a good shift. Waa...waaaaaa...waaaa...waaaa...waaaaaa versus waa..waa..waaa..waaaa...waaaaa Don't forget to calculate the effect of tire size. 3.321 x 3.54 = 11.75 3.062 x 3.9 = 11.94 3.321 x 3.9 = 12.95

Yeah I just snapped one of those off while trying to remove my front bumper and the cosmetics that go along with it. Always surprised these things hold together as well as they do with soft fasteners.

the later zx trans with the .75 od and a 3.54 stock r200 diff will get you 80mph right at 3k

I think that is the direction I am heading as well. I like the idea of a bit more top end because I drive the thing out to my parents house an hour+ away and usually dial in at 80mph. 4.5k rpm the whole way might get a little annoying after a while. Also one clarification because I was curious, you mention in your post “The sweet spot for 'stock' like acceleration” what did you mean by this? I assume your goal when you set off on this whole evaluation was some degree of performance improvement over your current setup but did I misunderstand?

https://www.jgrelining.com/

I decided on the 3.9 ration rear diff and the wide ration tranny ('77-'79). I think I mentioned that in my last post in that thread, if not I intended to and completely forgot.

I have a 5 speed "wide B" swapped in my 240. Original in my '77. Easy to work with, shifter stays the same but I did change the speedo cog from the 4 speed to a 5 on the 240 upgrade. Not sure the color but with 15" wheels in pretty dead on with the MPH on my GPS as the speedometer gauge reads. About 2,000 to 2,500 RPM at 75 MPH through 80 MPH highway. That's my best info as far as constant speed, you see I have an aluminum flywheel so red light to red light and traffic driving is all over the place on my tachometer.

Found it!

@muze, I just went through this exercise earlier this year and have a TON of data in the post where we discussed it. Let me look to see if I can find it for you. You may also search this site for info.

its been a min since i posted an update so here goes, ill try and keep it semi in order and ill attach lots of pics cause itll be nice to look back n see the progress ive made. shortly after my last update i did the s13 coilover conversion, and noticed a significant improvement, next goal is to do sway bars but that will be a while. i shed 19lb up front and 7lb in the rear, while not really important it was interesting seeing the difference. i used the maxpeedingrods coilovers from ebay, and they've actually been decent, should i need to replace them they are quite cheap. i did the alignment myself, -2.7* on the front and the rear is whatever cause i cant adjust it yet, and i set it to 1/8" of toe out but ill move it closer to zero toe soon. i also added a bunch of rake to the car to offset the squat some and make the car look more how i want it to. carburetor: sunk a float and set the engine on fire, but i had a fire extinguisher on hand so im just cleaning up residue, nothing major got burned thankfully, i also have been trying to sort why my jetting changes dont affect performance and it always behaves like its lean especially when it gets hot, culprit is what i believe to be gasoline boiling inside the carb as heat from the intake manifold transfers and heats the carb, causing vaporlock. ill 3d print a plastic spacer to alleviate this issue hopefully. electrical: ignition wise i lost an icm inside my hei, replaced it and things got better, been having trouble with keeping all 8 cylinders firing but ill resolve it one day. i also updated/cleaned up some wiring, so its easier to sort in that regard. i tried to wire the tcc lockup on my 700r4 but its not working so ill check my wiring again and go from there, millions of different ways to wire a 700r4 lockup. timing at the dizzy also seems to randomly be slipping which is odd, gonna try a few things after its redialed in to resolve it. exhaust: i finally built a full system for it, i loved the open headers but after my ear dripped blood onto my shiny valvecover i had enough and decided it was time, i did dual 3" in to single 3" out with a nice borla atak muffler, it sounds literally exactly how i wanted it to so i couldn't be happier, and my ears dont ring after driving the car. ill try to attach video of it. transmission: dropped the transmission for the 3rd time this year, replaced the tail shaft seals and bushings, sealed up the governor cap and the dipstick tube so i now officially don't leak any fluids in noticeable amounts, which warms my heart. tires: currently on nitto nt05, 200tw tire and they actually have some grip, combined with the suspension upgrades this thing handles really well, but is very twitchy so i need to tone it back a bit. racing: i am officially signed up for my first autoX race on august 15th, im super excited, i been working hard trying to get the car dialed in enough to go race, so if i can pass tech then i will have a ton of fun, even if i break the car at the start line ill still be happy gonna try and add pics, feel free to ask questions or leave suggestions IMG_5335.m4v 64832813541__345AF4C7-37FE-4190-B4EE-1B1B2090E00B.m4v IMG_5247.m4v

finally got the car to run, and i drove it today, my what a blast that was until the trans died and i had to tow it home, and ****ed up my truck in the process. i had slack in the throttle cable so i could only get about half pull, but it would still break the tires loose in 3rd at 50mph, so time for better rubber, im getting some nitto nt05s installed tomorrow in a 235/40R17 front and a 275/40r17 rear so hopefully they will grip better. also note to future self if i need to replace the dizzy again i need to advance it more than i think. i did eventually get the lt1 longtube headers to fit my car, but its very far from just a bolt in and go kinda deal, definitely wouldn't advise unless you have more patience than a saint times 1000. if anyone wants a full writeup on what i did to make them fit i can post one, but itd really be so much better just to get a custom one made. also the car now leaks oil worse than it did before and its pissing me off, but its simples fixes, the first leaks are the fittings on my remote oil filter, i had to relocate to clear headers, but i was able to put the oil filter right behind the hole where the i6 airbox would've gone, allowing me to get somewhat of a cooling effect on the filter. the second issue is my valvecovers, the stamped steel dented around the bolt holes and lost any sealing capabilities so it leaks a fair bit onto the header, making a constant massive smokeshow and coating my windshield in oil. i ordered new valvecovers that are a cast aluminum so that they have a much thicker gasket surface that i can make seal better. after these areas are addressed it should seal, everything except those two has been sealing fine without issue my brother and i went to go look at an 82 for him, still with the original i6, it is in much better shape than mine was at first, so hopefully it works out for him, i think itll be cool both having Z's. he rode with me today as we were breaking it in and it was a lot of fun, hes been helping me these past few nights waking up at 7am and going to bed at 3am just trying to get the car done, and ive been appreciative of that i lost a trans cooler line while i was out and drained the transmission while i was driving, i think how much i abuse this trans is really proof that they arent as bad as people say they are if you do the necessary mods to them(bascially just a shift kit and up the line pressure some). ill replace the line with something better, change filter and inspect trans for damage and call it a day. in the process i had to trailer it home, and my dad forgot to lock the hitch to the ball, so when i drove onto the trailer it jumped up and slammed into my tailgate, it made me shed a manly tear, but it still opens and closes so im just gonna pretend the dent and hole in the tailgate doesn't exist, besides would it really be a toyota if i didn't constantly beat the stuffing out of it? ill upload some pics of the car and some videos of driving it, the videos are definitely a volume on deal with how nice the open headers sound, carb still needs some tuning but the engine only has 27miles on it, lots of mid throttle acceleration then letting the car engine brake to establish a good ring wear pattern, basically just running from 2000-4000 rpm with no more than half throttle, and a bunch of in between stuff, feel free to leave comments or ask questions cm-chat-media-video-TAQMBPnXfUwQnJBIj7xk2.mov cm-chat-media-video-9rCc9naPlQiGuZmTbwZO4.mov