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Well it did take 5 hours to get the blessed thing off (in prep for the Quaife ATB going into it)! My wife made some noise though as I told her I’d be just a couple of hours tops 🤣 she should know better by now! Things just take that much longer when you’re working on the drive between 3°-0°C with wind blowing across you. Helps go faster if you can feel your fingers!

My paint supply told me I should cut and buff within 24hrs. That I would get better results before I let it get too hard. I don't always do that but I have found it easier to get good results that way

As you can read from the title, I wanted to make a quick write up on how I got my Z to pass smog with flying colors and something that can help anyone diagnose why their car isn't. There is not a lot of write up on this either. I have a 1978 Datsun 280z. I ended up buying a second L28 with N42 block and N47 head (proper block and head for 78 280z). I performed a full rebuild on the engine along with restoring or replacing everything I can on the intake manifold. When it came time to smog the car, It failed due to high CO (Measured 1.84 on 25mph, max is 1.16) and HC was really close to being above the max also and NOx was practically 0 indicating my chambers are running very cold. It surprised me considering it was basically a new engine with new parts. Aside from the engine rebuild, I had new injectors, new AFM, all new sensors on the thermostat, new fuel filter, new hoses and lines, new fuel pump. new air filter, new Spark plugs, new cap and rotor, new spark plug wires, new egr valve and new Carb compliant catalytic converter from magnaflow and fresh 91 octane gas. Timing set at 10 BTDC with idle ~800rpm. Almost all the wiring has been redone with new connectors or cleaned connectors. The steps I took in diagnosing why the car didn't pass started first with making sure my valves were properly adjusted again, these damn valves like to go out of spec pretty quickly from my experience. Minor improvement was saw after doing a valve adjustment again but it was very minor. I checked all my spark plugs and saw a near perfect brown color that you want to see from spark plugs. My results indicate my car is running rich but the spark plugs say otherwise. California has very little wiggle room for cars running rich even if just slightly rich. Tested water temp switch resistance and resistance came back indicating my water temp was fine with ~290 ohms at 280 degrees. Inspected my Cold start injector to see for leaks when the fuel system was pressurized and also checked to see if it was firing when the engine was warm and saw that the cold start valve was working properly. Inspected all my injectors for leaks even though they were new. With a boroscope and the fuel system pressurized i stuck the camera into each cylinder and looked for fuel seeping. All my new injectors checked out and were good with no leaks. Ordered a fuel pressure gauge and found my pressure was right at 30-32psi at idle, a little low from the fsm 36 psi but imo was not a big deal since the car is supposedly getting too much fuel anyways. I saw PSI rise to 36 psi when revving the engine which is normal. To check if the fuel pressure regulator is working I removed the vacuum hose going to the fpr and saw a jump from 32psi to ~38-40psi indicating the fpr is good. THE SOLUTION FOR MY Z: Fuel was out of the question for me at this point and decided it was time to tinker with the AFM. I recommend doing this as the last step if all else fails. There are other things you can test such as the tps, afm itself, the ecu and so on! I removed my new AFM and reinstalled an old afm I already had that has already had the box open (didn't want to tinker with my new one). There is a good write up online about how to adjust the afm. There is a white gear (could be a different color depending on your afm) that has a spring on the inside. If your AFM has not been tampered with or has no adjustment marks, I would put some markings so you remember where the teeth originally were incase something gets messed up. This gear can be moved in one direction or another that essentially makes the car run richer or leaner. Do not mess with this without reading up on how to properly adjust it, there is tension on the spring! I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you find a smog shop that has a smog tech that is willing to constantly run the car on the dyno and get emission results while constantly adjusting the afm at the same time. This is essentially what we did. We got a baseline results on the dyno, after seeing the results were still rich, we turned the car off and I adjusted the afm a couple teeth leaner, tightened the adjustment screw and re-ran the dyno until it was eventually good and passed with flying colors! You may also need to adjust your idle depending how much afm adjustment you do. After you pass, drive the car for a about 50 miles or so and recheck your spark plugs and make sure you are not running too lean! My spark plugs were still a nice brown indicating everything is where it should be for California emissions and the car itself but I will still be swapping back to my new AFM since these cars like to run slightly richer. Heres my results. Didn't think a Z could have such low CO and HC. Something I noticed after passing this test was my measured 15mph NOx jumped to 862 (before was at nearly 0) which means that running leaner and reducing the CO and HC will most likely in return cause higher NOx (essentially hot polluted air). You will have to find a fine line when adjusting the AFM so everything is equal. If you choose to adjust the AFM, I think it would be beneficial to have an older one for adjusting just for smog reasons and swapping back to a newer one for daily driving which is what I did, otherwise make your markings so you know where to readjust after smog. Extra things to test and look out for: Some other things that you can also check on is the overall state of the engine by doing a compression test. Low compression usually causes an engine to run rich. If you have dying cylinders there is only so much adjusting the afm and everything else can do. You can add the option of putting a rheostat inline with the water temp switch and essentially trick to water temp switch to run leaner sooner or vise versa depending on the condition of your results. I am not sure if California smog techs will question this or not though during visual inspection. Change your catalytic converter. Depending on how old your catalytic converter is and how many miles have been put on it, it's possible that it is not performing at it's peak. You can test the Cat by using a temp gun and making sure the cat is hotter than the pipe before and after the cat, would indicate the cat is working properly. However, overtime a catalytic converter does slowly deteriorate and become worse at doing what it's suppose to do. Spark plug gaps can also play a roll in NOx emissions as the wider the gap the more NOx emissions produced. The smaller the gap can lead to unburnt fuel and cause a richer condition. Next thing you can check for is the TPS. There are multiple write ups on how to properly adjust the TPS. While it can make a difference to your emissions results, I don't think adjustment will make much of a difference unless yours is severely out of spec. You can test the EGR valve. There is a write up on how to properly test it. Change your oil is another thing that gets looked over. Fresh oil usually makes a pretty small change to the results depending how old the oil is. Hopefully for those you struggling, this write up gave you some insight on what you can do to hopefully pass your smog test. Some guys will tell you not to mess with the AFM and I do agree that it should be a last resort. If you have two working AFM's do what I said above and use one just for smog and use the other for daily driving. If most things are working as they should the AFM has the biggest impact on how the car does emissions wise but will also drastically change how the car drives if your car actually is not in good running condition to begin with! Good luck!

I was finishing up the sanding in the engine bay before spraying the high build primer when I noticed that I had forgot to remove broken battery hold bolt. The epoxy primer was already on so I couldn't use a penetrant without contaminating the primer, same with torch. I had to get a pair of Visegrips in from behind using 2 fingers to clamp on, two fingers to turn the screw 1/8th of a turn, release it, clamp on again, another 1/8th of a turn. That damn little screw took over an hour to work it out. With 95% of the filling done and the epoxy primer blocked out and smooth, I sprayed 2 coats of high build primmer on everything this morning and 3 coats on the doors and hood. Start the real sanding tomorrow.

This is the best I found for silver, the radio. They use a chrome coating on some interior pieces too. The interior emblems that I painted on the horn pad and console were this "silver" oil based Sharpie I found a hobby shop. Thank you @psdenno for the proper direction you laid on me.

There are plenty of people out there where $100k is a nice night on the town. At some level of wealth, time is more valuable than money. Maybe he didn't want to look for another car or it ticked all the right boxes? We'll probably never know unless Alan's suspicions supply feedback at some point.

I'll admit that I too find it a strange way to approach an auction, but second-guessing that bidder is not going to get us a firm answer as to why he did what he did. The plain fact is that the 250k USD bid is about right or slightly low for the car in its context, being away from its premium market (Japan) and needing a little work to bring it up to really nice condition, mainly underneath. I don't think he could have "saved 10s of thousands of dollars" by bidding in lower increments and in fact he may well have saved himself a fair chunk of money by discouraging other potential bidders who would otherwise have been pulled along by the more usual last-minute bidding war scenario.

IMHO $250K feels about correct for a good example when sold stateside. As I mentioned earlier, given that the predominant trading currency for a JDM car is Yen, everything is 33% off from 3 years ago, and over 50% off from when I bought my Z432 in 2008. In that light, I feel that $250K is actually a healthy result. These trade in a pretty thin market in the US, as I've come to understand. Many enthusiasts in the US certainly appreciate the PS30, but will typically tend to gravitate towards what they were familiar with as children, namely an HLS30, which is also $200K cheaper.

I've heard people talk about a "diff clunk", right? Hahaha!! And I totally get you about the cold temps. I used to be able to work on cars in the cold. Not so much anymore. My hands just can't take it.

Worth saying that exchange rates also play a large role in generating sale headlines. 43MM yen for a KPGC110 in 2020 was worth $432,000 then, but it pencils out to a (slightly) more reasonable $292,000 as of today - a 33% discount for those paying with greenbacks.

Talked to @S30Driver couple of days ago and told him he’s been a topic of conversation and said he was going to return to the forum soon. He’s fine and doing well.

Shipping the car to Japan would cost money. Import taxes and duties would be payable and getting the car inspected and road-registered would also cost money. No guarantee that the selling owner had any current connections in Japan to handle that for him (especially since he was using a dealer to sell the car on BaT on his behalf) and anybody doing anything for him on the Japan side would likely be charging him for it. That's why I said the car - being in the USA - is 'out of context'. People - including yourself - seem to be amazed that the car has been bid to 250k USD, but similar cars are changing hands for more in Japan. See above. I just don't think you are familiar with PS30 values. Over the last few weeks I was contacted by a dealer in the Far East (not Japan) who had been tasked with sourcing a PS30 for a collector client. He asked me my opinion on several PS30s that are currently on the market in Japan. He wanted an "investment grade" car. ALL of them were priced at equivalent to more than 250k USD at today's exchange rates. A couple of them nearer 400k.

'Interesting' - if not unexpected - to see comments on the auction where people were calling the car a '240Z'. Clearly a legacy of what was presented to them as 'fact' over the last 53+ years. I think this car is a good choice for anyone who wanted a 432. It is MILES better than the so-called "1969" 432 which sold at Mecum's Monterey sale last year for more money. I have an inkling that the car in question may soon end up in a Singapore-based collection, if my suspicions are correct...

Regardless of thoughts on value, it's just not rational to bid like that. If money has value to you. It would be ironic for somebody who has $250,000 of extra income to not understand how to maximize the value of his money. Unless he has so much money that $250,000 is a drop in the bucket. Or he made money the easy way, by investing in something like crypto and it's just a number on a computer screen. I know some crypto people and they have tons of money and really have not worked very hard for it. We live in strange times. Maybe the buyer expected some competition. Or maybe he believed what the internet says is the "correct value" of the car. Whatever is going on, he probably could have saved 10's of thousands of dollars by bidding in a rational way. It's just weird is what I'm saying.

I drank coffee from their Christmas gift cup this morning. Took a couple of years to get it properly seasoned.

Yeah, I'm not surprised about the minimum. At this point, I could probably be convinced to cut one part if you want to cover costs, etc. Send me a PM if you're interested.

In the past rubbers used to be softer, same with tires, these days they mix a lot of synthetic stuff in to use less naturel rubber €€. But the dis-advantage of naturel rubber is that it doesn't last that long and dries out quicker, but it's softer. With the Chinese scooters for my work they still use that old rubber in their tires also, but they are allready dried out in 1 year. With the mopeds with inner tubes to.. to old tires used to be soft, you could put them on with thand, without damaging the rim, these days i have to heat them up with an air gun to make em soft enough to put on without damage...

Yes, the Japanese Yen has depreciated a lot since then. AUD price in 2020 was around ~$645,000 AUD in 2020. (at 1 yen buying 0.015 AUD cents) Today it's closer to $430,000 AUD (at 1 yen buying only 0.010 AUD cents). Problem for us in Australia is we get slugged luxury car tax on anything over ~$80,000 AUD... (33% of anything above that threshold). https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/gst-excise-and-indirect-taxes/luxury-car-tax/how-lct-works So that would add about $115,500 AUD on top of the purchase price. 😞 So close to $545,500 AUD all said and done...and I believe you pay stamp duty when registering the car in your name. So not even on the road at that price.

I'm doing the whole shootn match, colour coat followed by 3 coats of clear, let it cure for a week and then start sanding the clear.

American Made

Thanks everyone. I will probably take a short break here and then work on another. I really enjoy the entire restoration process. It's nice to have a hobby that you truly enjoy. Have a Happy New Year everyone 😊

I started on the hood today, I dread doing the inside of the hood, all the little curves and angles make it the hardest panel. Nobody even notices it unless it is done badly. I'll strip the outside of the hood tomorrow, looks like I have a surprise waiting for me.

Jim said he hasn’t talked to him in awhile.