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Attended a Hagerty Cars & Caffeine event this morning, co-sponsored by Liberty Mutual and held in their parkling garage. Joining me were fellow members @Dens240 and @zed2. After the cars thinned out we were able to get our rides together for a pic. That is Dennis' beatifully restored blue over white '72 and Keith's very original '70 parked beside me. There was probably close to $5-6 milion worth of exotics at the gathering with a Ferrari F40 as a featured display car.

I made a manifold bypass tube out of stainless today so I could reconnect the coolant bypass tube in the rear of the engine to the thermostat housing. I received a great deal of snark on the FB Mikuni group when I asked how others were completing this part of the coolant circuit (short story is most of them don’t and sacrifice their heater) but I want everything working as designed and to be able to drive in the winter. Those that had done it just used “a rubber tube”, which is a wildly insufficient explanation, IMO. I opted for stainless because I am not confident a coolant tube poached from another car would survive the header heat. There’s a chance I will need to wrap this to keep the heat out and not boil the coolant, and I possibly need to get different set of tubes to get this pipe up further away from the headers, but I’ll see if this configuration will get it above the heat shield when I test fit that in a few days. We will see. It’s 316 stainless, 1/2” OD, .6 wall thickness, and 19.5” long. Here are some shots of how I cleaned up the tig-welded hose clamp beads with a lathe, and then the final piece.

Well at this point, the next thing I would do is disable the idle controller system. Pull the low side vacuum hose off and plug both resulting holes. And if that doesn't have any effect, I would disconnect the wire from the coil as well and see if that does anything. I'm not contesting that the system works fine at idle. I'm concerned that it's not working properly ABOVE idle. Breaking out into some sort of oscillation, or switching between it's different modes when it should not be. Something like that. Again, just tossing out ideas in the hope that you get to the root of the problem.

http://ace240z.com/window rollers.html Might be helpful?

I don't think you can go wrong with this stuff. Driven Racing Oil 03807 HR5 Conventional 10W40 Motor Oil, 12 Quarts (speedwaymotors.com)

I can not locate a regulator I think switching to the frontier alternator would be good just for on the road maintenance issues and parts availability

Hey guys! I am away from the car at the moment and I wonder if anyone knows the throttle body bolt spacing for the N42 intake manifold on the 76 280Z. I am looking at an aftermarket 70mm throttle body with 65mm bolt spacing. I seem to remember the stock throttle body was 60mm...? Can anyone help? @Captain Obvious perhaps? Thanks!

I removed my dash a few years ago, and am getting the point where I can put it back in the car, but in checking parts today, I came across these 3 metal brackets, and I'm not sure what they are from. I failed to take good photos or a video when I took it out, and well, the old Mark I memory system is giving me nothing on these. They were in a bag with the screws that held the dash to the dashed, so maybe they are dash related? I've looked around at photos here and at HybridZ, and it's not obvious to me where these would be, if they are dash-related.

Down under we called that outback engineering, love that you got it to run!

So I wanted to be sure the motor was still viable. So I hooked it up to a battery sitting on a trailer and spun it over with a remote starter switch. It spun freely with no plugs in it. So then I wanted to try to fire it over. It didn't have any carbs or exhaust on it. I messed with it for a while. Tried three different coils and two distributors called SteveJ to make sure I knew what I was doing. I then put the matchbox dizzy back in and got it to run on ether. I have a set of Ztherpay carbs that are evidently from 2011 that still look surprisingly good. They were on this engine and I will clean them up and reuse them for now 20231007_172650_447749883773934.mp4 It lives!!!

The microfiche also has a blow up of 77-78 door window track guide thingy’s. https://www.carpartsmanual.com/datsun/Z-1969-1978/body-260z-280z/2-seater/door-panel-glass-hinge

I am not a fan of doing front frame rail (the rails down each side of the engine bay) work when it's on the rotisserie. I worry about distortion and flexing because of the way its suspended.

Thanks, that is sound advice. I will have a chat with my body guy before I mount it. I haven't discuss the details yet about what will be done on and off of the rotisserie, but as there is front frame rail and floor pan work to be done, I believe it will be on a frame fixture for that.

Since that post 8 years ago I have done a more accurate weight measurement of a stripped 240z shell and it is more like 500 lbs. If it were me, I would fix the metal around the rear bumper mount first, then prime it, fill it before mounting on the rotisserie. That area becomes very difficult to access and work on once it is mounted. Is your guy going to prime and paint with the shell on the rotisserie?

Browse through the Knowledge Base area. The articles are oddly categorised, but there's not too many. I found one in Body and Paint, pretty sure there is at least one more. Edit - actually, it's in the same place. Copied link below. https://www.classiczcars.com/articles/

My car had a nap for some years and I had heard of a local Z club. A few years ago I was at a show and a blue 280Z parked next to me. He told me that he was in the group for a while but there was some bad blood that happened between some of the folks and the whole thing went away, probably 10 to 15 years ago.

Thanks @SteveJ. I've already got one in my cart, with the connector on my Amazon list. Reading all I can find on the wiring changes needed for my 77.

Just keep in mind, @the_tool_man, if you go with the Frontier alternator, choose from the offerings under New.

This new throttle has a proportional throttle wheel too.

It’s more the unpredictable throttle blade movement and return. Sticky and screws up my tps sensor too. The billet throttle is very smooth plus incorporates a port for post throttle IAC control. A pre throttle port for egr too.

I ported my intake to increase runner diameter and intake diameter.

The stock throttle body mounting bolts are on a 60mm square. Here's a sketch I whipped up a while back for a throttle body spacer I made. Might have some other interesting measurements on it, but the bottom line for the question at hand is 60mm square:

We’ll gang, happy to report the test drive with the new rad installed is showing a marked improvement. Like for like conditions but without the constantly variable electric fans installed (which I had on the old rad) temps are 15°-20°c lower than with the old rad - and that’s purely with the mech fan. The twin electric fans run off a second thermostat in the housing that signals a PWM driver - which varies their duty cycle from 20% to 85% depending on how hot the car is. That way the fans don’t just kick in when it’s too late but rather constantly adjust to help the car cool as the heat builds but without constantly sucking big juice out of the alternator. I also have an off position that does 7% duty cycle to keep them spinning so as to not be a blocker to the mech fan. I also have a 100% position on the switch for emergency cooling. The fans also work on a delay off timer that keeps them on for 5 mins after the car is turned off. The switch fits perfectly here! I have to make a new bracket to fit the elec fans to the rad panel as previously they were on the rad core and I never like that for obvious reasons. Especially bad on an alu rad! Why am I running two fans? Because they are high quality, came from a UK club member for peanuts and I like the fact that if one fails, the other will likely continue working. Paranoid, maybe definitely!