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So I had a great visit with Steve Nixon today of 240zrubberparts.com. It was a great time and I got to see the progress of his car. He is so close to having a running car. This is what I came home with. All individually bagged and labeled Here are the reproduction seals for the hatch vents They look great! If you ever need parts from Steve just give him a shout. Many orders he makes when ordered. The only things that show in stock are the extras from previous orders. As another point, the large vent gaskets are a little on the expensive side but the counter point is it takes two days to make one of those!! That's why some of the NLA reproduction parts cost what they do. So thankful they are available at all!!

So I finally got the BRE replica Z finished up and sent off to the owner. Below are some of the final pictures of the car and photos of the car in the trailer. The Z and its' traveling companion, a SEMA McLaren, are headed on their way down to Texas.

Completely and utterly agree with this sentiment! I only outsource the simple but needs a ramp stuff on the family cars let alone anything on the Z!! With something like this and so much precision required, no one will give it as much love and attention as you have. One of the guys in the UK club has spent a small fortune trying to get a while free LSD diff. Even gave one to Quaife to install their ATB into and found it worse than before it went to them. I suspect they outsource the smaller jobs and for £300 to install the ATB (this was a few years back) I can’t imagine someone spending as much time as you have sweating the details. Really great work here! I have to say, you are brave to be dealing with that pinion bearing. Consensus has been that many of the “outsourced” diffs end up with problems after the pinion bearing had been replaced. I suspect they didn’t pay as much attention to shims and wipe patterns as you have / will by the time it’s all together.

After the successful restauration of the dome light, i thought i need another project. I opened a random storage bn and the first thing that fell into my hands was the Airbox. I'm not even sure if i'm going to use the OEM airbox on the finished car. but i thought it's going to be a fun project anyway. This is how it started: Afte disassembling it, i quickly went through my various parts collection boxes and found a NOS filter (still in box) and a NOS rubber seal for the airbox. The original SU / Hitachi Carb insulators were quite brittly and disappeared once you touched them: At first glance i thought it was just dirty, so i gave it a quick wash. Then i quickly realized that there are many black dots on the "snorkel" that are baked in. Not sure if this is tar from the road, oil stains or some attemt of a "on-the-car" spray paint job. I also ralized that there are some corroded areas, but nothing that can't be fixed. While it was drying, i went through my collection of re-plated fasteners and found some of the fasteners in a nicer, shinier version. It's damn handy to have boxes full of Z-bolts which have been replated. Aside from the corrosion, there was a damage to the snorkel. Not sure when or how that happened. but aside from looking ugly, it also didn't allow the flap to close completely or evenly. So i used my very limited metal hammering skills to get it straight again. Not this is a mid-process photo, that dent on the bottom right side got corrected later too. Now the flaps closes nicely again (tent still not fixed). After realizing that the rubbers are all toast, and the housing needs a repaint / powdercoat anyway, i decided to remove everything and then get some replacement. This is it for part one. More updates will follow. meanwhile i wait for the delivery of some parts Since i need to take it to the paintshop, i will probably postpone the rest of the project a bit until it fits the timeline with other parts that need to be painted.

Thanks @SteveJ, that’s really great information. Yes mine is a ‘77 RHD 260Z; I believe we got the 260 2 seater from 75-78 in the UK (happy to be corrected). It has a slightly different looking fuel tank to the US 240/260 cars. It’s very similar to some 280Z tanks that I’ve seen advertised on eBay. Here’s a pic from when I was refreshing it during lockdown. That top breather hose with the crazy 180° loop was crushed on mine and instead of buying a reproduction one for a small fortune (which likely will go again over time), I opted for IIRC 17mm ID hose and inserted a 15mm pipe bending spring into it. Or was it larger? I can’t be sure. Regardless, the stainless steel pipe bending spring works a charm and will never let that pipe crush again. Before this fix, the top part of the tank wouldn’t fully fill and the needle only went to just over 1/2. I suspect it was because it got to the level of the smaller breather pipe just below it. Made filling up a lot cheaper 😛 Now that I know more precisely than ever before how much I have in it, it would be interesting to see what my next full fill up ends up as (60 or 65L). Given your explanation, I will likely leave it there for now and see what it does when I start putting miles on in Spring / Summer. Thanks again, much appreciated.

FYI - there’s a member over on HybridZ (walkerbk) who has created a nice replacement for the black bushing cover for the ebrake pivot. Picture of my OEM piece attached, which we used to design his version. Contact him with any interest, not me.

That rubber boot for the wiper linkage is a rare piece, I didn't know anyone was making that.

I'd try and get that out, that could clog up something? Maybe an air gun off a compressor would blow them out. It's possibly old pieces of gaskets, maybe the valve cover gasket? Don't blow air down, try to shoot it to the driver's side away from the valves and rockers. Good luck!

gotcha As a side note, there is some old/crunchy looking oil bits in there, should I try to pick those out or is that also, just an age thing?

Looks like mine. I think you are okay if your fingernail doesn't catch on the marks/lines. If you are going to clean the lobes I would suggest a green Scotch-Brite pad instead of steel wool. Steel wool will kind of disintegrate after use and leave steel wool fibers. Then you need Woolite.

https://www.thezstore.com/category/1008/splash-guards