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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!

Last weekend we worked in the shop some Here is a seam in the leather fender covers. I made this with contact adhesive and clamps. I picked the padding out in the seam area so it was just leather to leather. We took Lily down off the cubes. A lot less sketchy than the way I put her up there. Still had to have a 6x6 on the jack saddle at this point Rolled her outside and it promptly rained... My windshield leaks and I will add some sealant under the weatherstripping soon. I also ordered tool covers for behind the seats from Zcardepot. They don't have the hinges. So they may not work for me... Since I don't have the old covers

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

But the price of obesity drugs are much cheaper.

Well done! Congratulations from another OO.🎉

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.

Well, I gave up trying to find it and just yanked it off with a puller lol

The next thing to attack is the firewalls . I can’t finish the passenger upper frame because I need access to spot weld the firewall panel . The firewall is sandwiched between the inner fender wall and outer . I also have an issue with the passenger side firewall panel from KF . The drivers side worked out pretty sweet and I should be able to do a decent job welding it in . The biggest obstacle is that I wanted to preserve the vin# that’s stamped on the wall so I had to cut around it . The passenger side doesn’t line up right as you can see but the pics . They said they will send me a new one . I think the panel wasn’t square on their stamping machine . KF has been really good supporting their products . I’ll also add that their drivers firewall panel does not include the doubler for the inside

It's been a whole year since the surgery! Can hardly believe it, time flies when you're on the better end of healing. Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes, they worked. Next is a mid-foot fusion that I'm dreading but the docs said after a year with the knee replacement they could do it. I had planned a day of relaxing in the driver's seat of the 240 but it has rained like a cow pissing on a flat rock. Maybe tomorrow?

There was a post around that had someone replacing the guts of the old module with the new HEI but I cant find it. I might do that, but mount the box on the firewall or something. I like that it would appear more period correct. @EuroDat did that to his '77

As I've been saying for some time now; the upper middle class collector car market has been depressed for at least the past 10 months. Yes, should have taken the 90K.

Too many projects are IMG_2691.movIMG_2691.movdelaying this RHD hs30… Heading to the wetblasting area to determine if anything is left to work with……

I had her up on jack stands and stood about a 12" piece of 6x6 up on the jack and lifted her up. But the block and jack wanted to slide out once she was up high enough. I had to hold the jack in place while someone put the cubes under the tires

Years ago I sacrificed this Craftsman screwdriver to make a Z brake adjustment tool, it has worked very well.

And, as I noted in 2023, that NAPA kit seems to be NLA. But do your own checks. You might just get lucky and find one sitting on some NAPA shop's shelves. I just re-checked my old files. The NAPA kit (PN 6601000) was described as a 'RANCO HTR-100' rebuild kit. It was evidently applicable to the heaters used in the Studebaker Avanti, so it's conceivable that it was used across the entire Studebaker line (Lark, Hawk, etc). A little snooping around a Studebaker owners club website might turn up a lead. RANCO appears to have been swallowed up by Robertshaw. Most of the focus for the RANCO product line these days appears to be in electronic temperature controllers used for commercial/industrial heating systems. I suspect that the 'RANCO' of 2025 may be nothing more than a brand name (i.e. it's unlikely you'll find a RANCO factory with a parts desk). Just one thing, though: I see that NAPA Canada lists something called a 'URO Parts Heater Valve Repair Kit'. A little checking indicates that URO Parts is a brand marketed by A.P.A. Industries (Simi Valley, CA). A.P.A. provides aftermarket parts (incl. cooling system parts) for a variety of European, Asian and North American cars and trucks. In their website, they say: "A.P.A. specializes in accurate reproduction parts for classic vehicles, including a wide variety of items that are no longer available from the dealer". Maybe there might be some leads there. The heater control valve design used in the 510 and Z probably wasn't unique to Nissan. In fact, the Nissan heater design bears certain resemblances to the British 'Smiths' unit that was used in so many UK cars back in the 1950's and 60's. A little investigation along these lines might turn up a British shop that specializes in heater restorations and has a back room filled with obscure parts like a little rubber washer that will fit your 510's control valve. Try this link for a starting point... The MG Experience - Smith's Heater Restoration

@siteunseen The infamous Librarian. Please do your due diligence and bail Charles out of the issue at hand. You Da Best!!

Oh, that was no accident. That was desperation and frustration right there!! Cutting wheel on a 4 1/2 angle grinder, and then a BFH to crack through the center portion that I only cut through partway (so I didn't cut into the axle flanges).

Had to resort to the old drum puller once. Came off with a very loud bang. Putting on a couple of lug nuts loosely prevents it from exploding into your lap

I didn’t make the larger pieces of upper frame rail. Same car I bought my roof from I also bought all his straight scrap pieces . It was enough of a challenge to make that 1” filler strip between the pieces he sent me - ha . I don’t have the tools to do that complex of bends and curves. The tool is just a right angle air grinder with a Roloc sanding discs . I use that tool more than most . I have cut- off wheel mandrel and scotch bright disc options . I actually have 3 of them with different mandrels on each .

Actually...

We’d need the @Yarb inator to help us with the electrons.

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!

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

When I spoke with Sean @ ZStory, he recommended the Street-sport or Race-sport for my build. I'm leaning towards the street-sport, but as my build increases in cost, I may just re-use the MSA header I have for now and get the ZStory later, especially with the tariffs and all...

I'm installing new KYB's I like the idea of a light coating of lube on the inner walls.

Sold for $101K on BAT in 2019... Adjusted for inflation, to break even it needed to sell for $129K in todays money. Nonetheless in todays market - $90K was a pretty strong offer.

To get my plug out I used a small pipe wrench and a bottle jack to loosen mine. Situated the wrench so I could get the jack under the handle then pumped the jack a few times and it loosened up.

Yes you're correct. However, will a customer accept an exhaust manifold that will start to show corrosion almost the minute he leaves my shop after spending X amount of $ for a Y operation? Asking rhetorically as the answer is obvious. Everyone and I mean EVERYONE was very happy with the Jet-Hot cast look including, but not limited to, the Franklin Mint car.

Yes, nice shade of yellow. Looks a lot like mine. This is a Chevrolet color...'Rally Yellow'

Cody continues to make progress on his car. Thanks to SteveJ for helping us sort the engine bay harness @SteveJ He has the harness in and has started sorting out the electrical issues. There are quite a few We think we have a solution for the throttle control. It's loosely based on Ken Firch's cable system. His bracket won't work but we are working on making a heat shiel that will also hold a throttle cable and hooks for the throttle return screws. It will mount to the two lower studs on the SU's. The smaller SU's only have two studs and they are set diagonally. We are planning on using the the mounts at the balance tube to add a different 10mm OD tube with a donor part from a 240z. Which will supply a ball end for the cable to connect to I worked on a template for the heat shield today. I don't have a good way to brake the sheet metal so we will need to sort that out. We are leaning towards using 1mm stainless sheet...

Well, it should be no surprise really, but we are all (well most of us) carrying a little device that is more spatially aware than we ever dreamed. The humble iPhone has considerable power to know where it in space, what is level and what is plumb, which way is north and how far away you are from the sales at Best Buy…. Built in apps already expose those powers. Check out Level and Measure. I’m not going to go to great lengths to describe what I found, I’m just going to leave a web link here to an company that has developed an app and some simple hardware that I think is incredibly good at what it does. Read their story and see what you think. It’s called: Gyraline https://gyraline.com/products/the-case It consists of a little flat 3D printed plate that you mount your iPhone into. The plate has nubbins that let you place it against your wheel’s rim lip in a dependable way so you can align your phone to the rim correctly. Fire up the app, place the phone in a few key spots, push buttons, BOOM. Out spits your alignment. I will say I have their version 1, been using it for about a year, and that it works. I can get a toe in and camber measurement in literally 1 minute. All four wheels. Yeah…… I’ve compared it to “Real” alignments and it’s very very close. I just had my Mazda cx70 done at the dealership and I plan on comparing it to what they said as well. Anyway, read, study, you decide. The thing is not cheap, they know what they have. They are challenging the big guys with their marketing materials. No more string for me…..

This was solved today by retarding time! Thanks

Was that an accident or wanting them off? BFH love!

Lol!! The Yarbinator. Love it! ☺️

If the light is right you can probably see the notches through the hole. In practice you just jam a small screwdriver in the hole until you feel it grabbing the notches of the adjusting wheel, Keep jabbing to get the wheel to move. It's kind of tedious, you don't get much movement per unit of effort.

There's a hole in the brake drum. Had a rubber plug in it. Might still be there.

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 .

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

Zzzzzzzzzz…..

Hi, I don’t know much about originals of our cars, but if this helps for your reference that would be nice. The L20A is for a Skyline GT but it can be a useful reference. The Kaku -U crew inspecting the cylinder head that was a screen shot from the video of 1969 US & CANADA test drive. Kats

Quite true, thanks.

Turbo, Julio. You can do just as well with that P90 head and flat tops on that F54 block. I know you've read this before but I'm gonna post it anyway. https://datsunzgarage.us/engine/

I assumed he was mourning the loss of another turbo block to N/A..............

Yes, the plan is to paint the airdam too. Hopefully it will stick...

$840 (plus shipping) at Motorsport Auto.

I've seen good results achieved by hammering the metal over the long edge of a length of 6" structural I-beam. Use Vise-Grips to clamp the metal to the I-beam. Then hammer from one end to the other, making 3 to 4 passes to get from flat to fully bent.

I just wanted to chime in, since I'm also a member of S30 World, a later edition, so not in the group photo with Takeo Miyazaki, which took place when the museum opened. However I am thrilled to have been asked to join in and represent the Australian part of the team, as mentioned Chris' goal is to ensure we have a global perspective on these cars and I've been the local train spotter in the Australian market for many years now, having got into my first S30Z back in the late 90s and joined this website in year 2000 I believe? I am also the owner of a couple of low vin # Australian delivered cars - which have their own unique differences. Even though I've been passionate about the S30Z for 25+ years, I still have things to learn, especially when it comes to cars delivered to markets outside Australia. I think we are all still learning, which is why the S30 world project and website is important, to help educate, discover and document. I'm also thrilled that through the restoration work Chris has spearheaded new parts have come to market to provide quality OEM-like reproduction bits and pieces (eg: fuel tanks and door seals just to name a couple). I was fortunate enough to see the quality of work first hand back in 2017, a local Australian had his car in display at the Nissan Datsun Nationals in Sydney. (attached photos). I've seen many 'restored' cars over the years and this was indeed top notch! Obviously not a 'factory style' restoration, but a superb finish none the less. The quality of finish achieved on cars completed since then has only improved! On a personal level, I feel the S30Z series have been greatly under appreciated for many years, however it would appear that more and more are starting to appreciate these cars these days and I'm very happy to see more cars getting quality restoration work performed at this level.