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Put on your party hats and toot your horns. Join me in celebrating the 54th Anniversary of the day I bought my 1971 240Z. Today, it sits in my driveway proudly showing its age. Unfortunately, I'm also showing my age and have a little more trouble getting in and out of it and working the pedals than I did in 1971. Great car, great fun, 54 years of great road adventures!

But the price of obesity drugs are much cheaper.

Winner winner chicken dinner, we have spark Now im gonna look into some heat sink and stew on where i want to mount it. Time to move on to the fuel system. I know the fuel is toast and the tank will need to be cleaned. I’ll probably start on removing that and see what condition the lines are in. I’m excited!

A work colleague of mine and I spent about an hour yesterday getting some video of the 240z I restored (got it on the road on Dec 31 last year). Unlike me, he has skills and talent for editing and creating videos. Have a look! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ3ieeuqjwI

Yeah, hopefully it should be easy to tell. In any event, it's got to be better than this!!! Hahaha!

Well done! Congratulations from another OO.🎉

So. I have been honored to help many of you here with your projects by shipping parts to you that I’ve accumulated over the years. I’m not a business, I don’t do it to feed my family, I do it help friends with their projects and to maintain my social circles. Recently, and I know I’m not alone, I and my customers have been faced with a massive increase in costs and effort shipping items to the US. I’m about to consider abandoning this service as it appears to no longer be practical. I can’t imagine what devastation is happening to Canadian small businesses who’s customer base is US based. I’ve heard rumbling on FB forums from others about crazy costs shipping both into and out of the US. I’d like to use this venue as a place to share our shipping stories and perhaps what worked better for you, or what services or techniques to avoid. So, to begin, I’ll share two stories that I’ve recently had, to help to both illustrate the difficulties and demonstrate solutions.

Story One. Shipping a personal gift to family friends in the US. I almost ALWAYS ship postal. Always cheapest, minimal or zero duty or brokerage charges (especially US to Canada shipping) Well, effective sometime in September I believe, there is a duty and taxes pre-shipping cost calculator application that has now inserted itself into the Canada Post shipping process. In a nut shell, shipping anything to the US requires you sign up with a company called ZONOS. This app sits between my Canada post shipping app where I make labels and pay for them, and my printer. I’ll explain. As I make the label, I (as always) I have to describe each items that I’m shipping. Now ZONOS gets in there and determines what specific trade type item each thing is and assigns a duty / tariff / tax amount to charge you. After you clear this hurdle it lets you pay for the shipping and lets you print the label. Now the fun part. First let me say, for Canada Post at least, THE SHIPPER (ME) MUST PAY THE DUTY/TARIFF/TAX, not the receiver in the US. So fine, I need to pass that cost on to the receiver by raising my shipping price. So I have to know what that cost is, right? Well I will know it, but not until I receive my monthly invoice from Zonos. NOT AT THE TIME OF SHIPPING!!! So, am I supposed to say “look, shipping is X$X today, but at the end of the month, I will ask for YY$$ more when I see your duty/tariff costs blah blah blah”. Oh I can’t ship that precious part you need for your restoration for 3 weeks while I wait to see how much that YY$ is and you send that $$. Oh and BTW, that YY$$ is going to be 500 times more than the 2$ part I’m shipping you. Are you a happy customer yet? What’s that, you don’t want that part anymore? Surprise!!!!: So back to specifics. We shipping a couple of hand made baby blankets and a bag of chips (don’t ask) to a family friend in US. Described it as a gift. Shipping costs were $25 bucks I think, but at the end of the month the Zonos invoices added $34 to MY visa. Sorry no more postal shipping to the USA

The passenger side was exceptionally bad in this car relative to other sections . The car sat outside on a rotisserie for years on its side with the passenger side down . Probably gathered water from rain . When I finally dug into this I was grateful I had scrap pieces to do some of these repairs . Somehow I was missing a hunk that I had to make - but it’s was a small hunk . Removing the firewall and all its spot welds really tears up the kick panel . That and rust required some patching work to make the kick panel strong again . I probably will end up ordering the panel for under the battery tray from KF Vintage . I don’t think my skills are up to fabbing that panel .

Seat cover fit might suffer. In essence, you'll be increasing the height of the side bolsters by 1 inch. The centre panel of the seat cover would end hanging in space above the carved-out foam. Occupant weight will force the cover down onto the foam, but the look (baggy) when the seat is unoccupied might make you wish you'd never tried it. I suggest that you run the idea by an experienced auto upholstery pro before you break out the carving knife

Just leave the condenser disconnected. You don't need it for now. You can also just connect both of the wires from the ballast resistor (the block) to the coil positive. You don't need it when you use the HEI module.

I would add some details of how, exactly, you are evaluating "spark". With a spark plug at the end of a plug wire, through the coil center terminal, with a spark tester...? Are you cranking the engine when you do this? Have you disconnected the original module by the fuse box or did you resintall it? And, or, but, I have noticed that you do not have any battery power going to the coil in your picture. You only have the coil connected to the module and no pwer to the module either. You need power to the coil positive terminal. Also, use your meter and make sure that the mounting screw of the module has a good ground. And make sure that it's the correct screw. Only one of the screws completes the ground through the module, it has a thicker ferrule. Looks like you have the correct screw but you might not have good contact through that screw head or where it seats on the TB. The TB is not the best place to mount it. That's where all of the coil current flows when the module is doing its thing. And, it you plan to run it for long you need a proper heat sink under the flat part of the module. It gets hot and heat will cause them to fail.

Here's a good read on what you're doing. You might read something helpful.

Look between 1st and 2nd spark plugs to see what head you have. Should be an E88 or N42, maybe N47? That will tell us what exhaust port shape you have and whether or not you have the injector notches. If it's an E88 you can use the 240 gasket. Fel-Pro has a universal diamond shape exhaust manifold gasket but it has the injector notches too. From what I remember it will work with carbs but I've never used one so maybe someone can tell us? If it's the OE E88 I would use the right gasket with round intake holes and square exhaust ports. I bought mine through Nissan dealership but zcardepot.com has them too.

I offer two different versions of my conversion bell housings to do the reverse tilt. One for the CD009 and one for the TL70. Most of the people that buy my head end up tilting them so I offer the bell housings to assist in that.

Story #2 continued While I was at UPS, those lovely people suggested I try DHL. They “suggested” that DHL seems to be able to get anything to the US with less “questions” and “risks” but the costs would be likely double, Like $400…. So after frank conversations with the buyer, we agreed to go that route. Without saying too much, the DHL experience was easier. Their online shipping app still requires a detailed item description so they know what it is, but the only concern the guy at the drop off center had was that it didn’t contain any fluids or oil. It’s on its way for $418CAD….. And also worth mentioning, the cost story is not complete. For UPS and DHL, and I believe FEDEX as well, the receiver is on the hook for the Duty/Tariff/tax costs before they will release it to the receiver, rather than the shipper like Canada Post, and we don’t know what those costs are. Yet. Will get there in about 3 days. Hopefully he will share those numbers. Conclusion about this experience? Again, unless the need to buy my items is critical, and the buyer has deep deep pockets, I can’t see most US buyers actually buying anything from me.

Story #2. Big heavy Datsun part. So after story #1, Postal shipping is now dead to me for US customers. As luck would have it, I have an E30 head that a new friend in the US “NEEDS DESPERATELY” for a fair lady restoration. You may have seen the thread here recently. Ok, 60 lbs, big box, 2 ft + long, 9x9”, what to do. Decide to try UPS. On line estimate suggested ~$200 shipping to Ohio. Take box to local UPS Store. Beg for help, plead ignorance An hour later, paper work fill out by hand, much trouble describing the item and finding it correct HS code in the system to describe it properly, having to provide PROOF that the receiver is a US citizen (imagine him having to provide personal documents to a foreigner standing in a foreign shipping business!!!! No f‘ing way!) and FINALLY, being told that If I can’t provide commercial invoices that prove the source and valve of this item that i risk the item being ABANDONED if I try to ship and the US gov doesn’t agree with my valuation or paper work, I walked out without shipping it.