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Epilogue: So the car is now officially sold to a local collector. Fortunately I had plenty of time to make the decision and am pretty happy with how things turned out. I was a little surprised by the response and interest in the car, more than I was expecting. I could have stayed with BAT and possibly eeked out a few thousand more, but I felt much better selling the car to an individual that I had met and had a similar mindset about the car as myself. The seller plans to keep the car stock, drive it, and take it to some of the local shows. Already it looks like he has registered the car for the La Jolla Concours which is one of my favorite shows. So, I am glad the car will be in the area and look forward to seeing it with the new owner in the future. OK, now back to work on my other projects.

And, we have pics from the paint shop.

Just came across this one a couple of months ago. This was my grandfather's car, the one that gave me the bug. He bought it when he moved to southern California in the late 70s. He would let me drive it when I went down there to visit, would even give me tips on the best roads to hit up in the hills for the most fun. He would always tell me "don't be afraid to open it up, but just make sure you have it pointed in a direction where you have someplace to go".

It looks like Hitoshi Uemura?

I must have been 5 or 6. Dads 73.

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, will remove paint from the axle flange faces and spindle pin area. I saw that conversation on the Duffy thread (I think). I will however put a thin film of grease on the interface to help prevent rust on the mating surfaces. Interesting note: I worked space programs for 15 years and we used to use non-conductive thermal lube when mounting our electronic packages. It's sole purpose was to prevent corrosion set-up between the mating metal surfaces. The bolt torque was enough squeeze out the non-conductive lube between the metal surfaces so that you would get a good electrical connection, and the lube prevented corrosion. Go figure. I did not put in new wheel bearings. There was no play in the assembly and everything looked to be in good shape so I left it as is. And yes, it was great to meet and talk cars and flat tops in Atlanta! Hopefully we have many more opportunities in the future.

Wait... Isn't it clear that I'm pretty much always feeling a little OCD? Thanks for the offer. Might take you up on that during salt season.

This past Tuesday, with friends - went thru an extensive and well organized collection of used parts that had been pulled from S30's, S130's, and Z31's. Purchased a lot of S30 stuff to eventually organize, checkout, and offer for sale to our community. Some very interesting treasures were in there. Impossible to estimate how many cars had been stripped to build this collection that was stored in a shipping container. That's my Xterra with the back seat down and the storage area filled to the roof. Yes - that's a pair of E31 heads.

Classic photo! Maybe my favorite.

Well they missed the 510 50th anniversary (now) so it is clear the leaders of Nissan are not looking back. 1968 510!!!!

The Mercedes motor used in the Infiniti QX30 would be a natural choice for Nissan....and it gets 32 MPG. Dennis

Getting back to the Z now. Getting seats ready for the trimmer.

Gaps look great, finish should be super smooth! Love the car porn! so jealous....

Yeah, those compression numbers aren't stellar. Did you have the throttle blocked to WOT while doing the compression test? I do not believe that running rich would make up for poor compression. If you're running all the original hoses and stuff, I wouldn't be surprised at all if you've got a whole bunch of little vacuum leaks. Little leaks like that are killer at idle. Much less of a contributor at higher throttle positions, but a real problem at idle. You want every molecule of air passing through the carbs, not around them. The extra hoses and connections and complexity make it more difficult to achieve that with the flat tops. Also remember than none of the carb systems work great until the engine is up to temp. If you're starting the engine cold and expecting to be able to immediately take the choke off, you're kidding yourself. You'll need some choke (and the associated idle boost it provides) until the engine warms up. Next, if I were doing this, I would try to simplify the system to get things tuned... Remove the air cleaner and plug the appropriate connections. You should be able to remove and cap the anti-backfire stuff, the idle compensator stuff, and the intake air damper control snout lines. You can temporarily live without any of that stuff and disabling them will remove a bunch of potential leak areas.

And I keep meaning to tell you... It was great meeting you at Zcon my friend! I really enjoyed our discussions and I hope we get another chance to get together in the future!

I worked on the inside of the rear hatch last night. It was a painted mess with old and new paint plus undercoating. The stripper cleaned it all up pretty good and revealed a lot of surface rust on the lower part of the hatch. But the bare factory metal.... gorgeous.

Cam arrived today! Importfees = $170 : (

See@jem2749 told you these dudes would answer your questions ha. Nice to see you here. [emoji14] Sent from my iPhone using Classic Zcar Club mobile

Did some more pre-assembly work on the undercarriage parts. Got the passenger side strut cleaned and painted last weekend along with the caps. Put the springs in both the rear struts. Also installed the motor mounts and did a little pre-assembly on the rear suspension parts. Pics are below.

So about the cable itself... I started with a Honda Civic cable. 96-2000 will work. I think there might be some slight differences in length, but they are all longer than necessary, so it doesn't matter. Here's what I started with: I cut the original pedal termination off so I could pull the cable out of the sheath. I tried a couple different methods and I found a dremel cutting disk worked best for this Just go slow and let the disk cut. If you try to force it through, you'll blue the cable and fray the strands. After I cut the termination off, I pulled the cable out of the sheath and used the same Dremel cutting disk to shorten the sheath. Here's the tool I used: Now, since I cut off the original termination, I needed a way to replace it once I had shortened the cable. Inspiration hit while I was messing with the Dremel... I made an adjustable cable end stop based on the Dremel collet system. This allowed me to set the cable length by tightening up the collet where the length was within the adjustablility range of the lock-nuts out in the engine compartment. After going through the effort to make this collet system, I wouldn't do it again. I would just use a block with a hole through it and a locking screw to squish the cable. Once you have the cable length set, you should never need to adjust this again ever. When I first did this, I had no idea how many times I would need to adjust the cable length to get it right. In the end, I didn't have to adjust the termination more than once and it turns out that I put way more effort into this part than I really needed to. It's pretty though: So here's the whole under-dash setup. Note that this pic has my first design feedthrough for the fireawll with the threads and ring on the other (inconvenient) side. I made as second one with the threads on the other side so to minimize the under-dash wrenching. The collet lock works great, but is really overkill:

@Jem2749

ooooooh, I bet that was fun.

A similar opening can be found on the race cars that run in the NASCAR series. They even have detachable covers to increase/decrease the opening. Much less drag. We ran the MSA type2 front spoiler for a few years with everything blocked off except for a 14 X 5 inch opening. We constructed a shroud that expanded as it got to the radiator. Once we moved in vintage racing, off it came (not period correct) so we are running with the mouth of a basking shark.

Sitting in my garage after they decided to put on different wheels on the 280ZXTT. Has the BBS fan blade wheel covers to aid in cooling the brakes.