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I think it is natural for people to have a bias toward their local market variants, and in pre-internet days not so many people got to see other market variants - so they didn't even consider them. What I do not understand are people who tell us not to look, or that a particular market/model is not worthy of attention. It is bizarre. Every variant has its own significance and the more contemporary variants you look at, the more you learn about them and your own market variant. There is always something to be learned. I own variants from three different markets; Japan, UK and North American, and two different models from one of those markets (Japan). Each one informs not just about itself, but also teaches us something about the others. I find it fascinating to compare them, and I'm still learning something new every time. I contend that you cannot understand each model/variant fully without looking at its production line and showroom siblings. It's a pipe dream, but I'd like to have an S30-series Z event where we managed to corral at least one of every variant/sub-variant and market model, and every different production spec and showed them all together in one space with full access. No velvet ropes around the cars and no cars locked. I think it would be both interesting and informative. Just a pipe dream though...

February 1972 paint after a cut and wax by an 80 year old professional. Back home... With her black satin panties on...

This is doable with a 3 liter motor but it takes about 12k to do it unless you are a very gifted engine builder. The head work alone is about 2-3k of that. Rebello or Datsun Spirit build them all the time but the real question is "How fast do you want to spend?" Very difficult for a DIY'er to hit those goals. These cars don't really need 300hp, an honest 200-225 makes them move really nicely without tearing the drivetrain and chassis up

I'm also working on car #503 right now. This car is in absolutely amazing condition. It's is the most original rust-free car I've seen and I've worked on hundreds of them. Unfortunately, it had a repaint many years ago that is not holding up so I'm getting the car ready to go to paint. This car is in such original condition, except for some hoses and hose clamps, I thought I would post it in case someone was restoring one and needs to see any original details. I'd be glad to post any pictures. This car even has the original water pump.

Got the dash, I think you guys will be pleased with your dash.

Not too many Datsun people out here in northern Utah, I think the winter salt has killed most of the old Datsuns like it did to my 73. So I just go with the regular local hot rodders. But note how much room they give me when we parked in this cemetery! And I took low hand for $80 in the poker draw!

A sample of some of the Holy Grail parts collecting dust at the shop

Some random Zcon 2019 beautiful cars, some of the very best of Mr M's timeless vision .....

I thought this was impressive. The 'Main Street America' car show sponsored by the Corvette Owners Club of San Diego was held last weekend at Sea Port Village. Probably close to 300 cars there. Taking first place in the 60-70's modified class was this 240Z. Yes, he was in the same group as the Vette's, Camaro's and Mustangs. Incredible. I had my roadster at this show about 5 years ago and it was pretty much ignored as it is primarily an American car show. Nice to see the Z's getting some attention. Pics below are from cars final build at Miguel's shop, paint by Miguel of course.

My restoration is finally finished. Now sitting in the show room at Robert's Automotive in Springfield, Illinois. 1981 280ZX Grand Luxury Edition, Manufactured September 1980. I drove it off the car lot on January 12, 1981. Features: Engine rebuild, original paint, original carpet and seats, re-upolstered interior and headliner, re-plated cadmium engine parts and restored wheels. I haven't driven it for almost 24 years. Original miles 25,536 and I have all documentation to back that up. I paid the ultimate price for NOT driving it - an entire engine rebuild. Everything works except the status display in the center of the instrument cluster. (See photo) Need to figure how to trouble shoot the status display. Needless to say I'm excited. I will be able to take it home before the end of next week. Still needs to have the air conditioning system re-charged.

I don't know Cliff, that's going to make you sound... respectable. Do you think you can pull it off?

I am a bad boy. Have not updated this thread for far too long. Shame shame. I'm nearing the end of the voyage. It has been frought with problems, big surprise, but the car is now running well enough to get it to my friends shop for a dyno tune next week. Plan on taking it to Vancouver for their All Japanese show on the 25th. You'll have to be satisfied with a few pictures for now.

I see how it is now, a club of stock owners. Y'all don't associate with us mod guys, huh?

I only had a chance to look at the BAT listing briefly before it was purchased. As is the case with so many of the BAT Z car listings, many of the comments were from what I call "internet experts". We all know the type, had a Z for 6 months and are now one of the wanna be recognized experts. I get a call from one of these types from time to time. Anyway, getting off course. This car was from the first batch. I can tell because the air filter housing decals were painted around rather than replaced with my reproductions. Had their been pictures of the ID plates perhaps I could have pinned it down a bit tighter. It was mid/late in the first batch, all Pierre cars, when Nissan started to use my products as well as the soft trim from Distinctive Industries. Sad thing about the early first batch, almost of the diamond pattern vinyl was reused as there just wasn't any left in the parts dept. It was about the time that the second batch cars got started that Nissan commissioned me to significantly expand my offerings. Second and final/third, batch cars had the full compliment of my reproduction parts and DI soft trim which made them so much more desirable. The whole story is much broader than my musings here but it's late and I'm tired. Cheers PS While the DI Wilton Wool carpets aren't correct they sure are nice!

Thought I'd post just a few photos, including the dozen Scarabs in attendance, the largest gathering in history. There were never more than six cars at Scarab Engineering when they were in business. This was special as we reunited Brian Morrow with the very first Scarab he ever produced in late 1973. Brian was unaware the car still existed and after 43 years he saw it for the first time. It's owner had it for 34 of those years and kept it in outstanding condition. Scarabs took four top awards at the 2019 ZCON. I debuted the Scarab book I have been working on for well over two years, after finding and interviewing all the original players. The book is titled, "Resurrecting The Legend - The real Datsun Scarab Story." For those interested in a copy, they will be available for sale on eBay early next week. I have a limited number of copies left. Enjoy!

@kats Yes Please. I can offer payment for your troubles to have the film digitized. I think the Z Community would be better for this! You are such a great researcher and source of information! BIG THANKS!

Heavy on the idiot... id·i·ot sa·vant noun a person who has a mental or learning disability but is extremely gifted in a particular way, such as the performing of feats of memory or calculation.

Ok I am really starting to believe I did in fact jump the gun on my motor, I went through everything while it was apart and all I could find is a small leak on the exhaust valves for 5 & 6, just like you said @Mark Maras. I did a quick lapping on them and it stopped the leak. I then cleaned the head up and put it all back together. It now runs great and the oil pressure is right where it should be. Nothing wrong with the carbs as well so if in fact it just decided to run really rich for a while I have no idea what caused it.

It's alive!!!!!!! I ran a compression test before I started it (so it was stone cold) and the highest cylinder was 175 and the lowest was 160. The max differential between any two adjacent cylinders was 10 psi. After all the crap I found wrong done to that engine, I'm pretty happy with that. I have all the valves set a little loose because I'm thinking they might tighten up a little bit over the first batch of miles as everything beds in. I don't want any of them hanging open, so I set all of them (intakes and exhaust) to .011 cold. The plug into the water jacket seems to be holding, and it sure is nice to be able to tighten down all the bolts on the valve cover down and have it not seep oil. That's a new one for me with this car! Might just be wishful thinking, but my oil pressure seems a little higher. I'm thinking that since it's not gushing out the seam between the cam tower bearing and the head anymore and actually feeding the cam bearing. @jonathanrussell the cam seems to be quite happy in it's new home!!! So far, so good! I'm gonna drive it for a couple days and then give everything a once over to see how it's doing. Pull the valve cover and see if I'm wiping any lobes off. Check the lash. Change the oil. Do another compression test. I forgot to pick up new plugs too, so I reused the old ones. I'll pull them and see how they look, but I'm not sure it'll be an accurate representation. I'll replace them soon. So, about the only thing that I'm worried about is I don't think the exhaust header is sealing properly. Stupid header. Not sure if it's a gasket quality issue, or a header quality issue. My copper nuts worked out great, but didn't make it seal.

You reminded me that it was 11 months on THIS vintage flat top IN 1972 that allowed me to save enough to buy the Z in 1973: USS Kitty Hawk, CVA63, Cubi Point Naval Air Station, Philipines, 1972

Hi all, I've had some time to start working on stickers again. This time I believe I've found a vendor who can produce them on the fly (without requiring that I buy hundreds). I'll be running these through some quality tests to make sure they meet my requirements. My biggest concern is weather resistance and anti-fading in the sun. Here's a snapshot of the samples I just received in the mail. What do you think?

I go to a lot of car shows here in Pittsburgh on the weekends, I am usually the only Z of any kind and most times the only foreign car. On Saturday I attended a show held by the local aeronautics school at the county airport. The control tower is the main building and is't an art deco design so I photographed the car in front of it. Hope you like,

The mark of a true Craftsman is one who cares about quality more than time and money. Are your expectations too high? Not at all. I suspect that the PO or his mechanic had never done quality work and didn't understand the concept of Craftsmanship and pride in a job well done.

Here's a gathering of 1960s/70s American sports cars: I think there's a Corvette behind one of those pillars...

Yep, and we all have matching jackets, leather of course. Our slogan is "No air bags, we die like real men".

Great picture Jim... If this was a gathering of British made vehicles, the floor would have to be mopped for oil. LOL. I say that in jest, but ya'll know it's true.. 🤣

Here's a nice stitched panorama of the Zcon judged car staging the night before the show. (Photo courtesy of Kim Taylor--- author (with collaboration) of the first ZCCA judging rulebook.)

That's quite the softball you're throwing for Cliff!

I’m ready.

Clogged filter somewhere? Do you still have a fuel pressure gauge installed? Oh, and if Dave is right and you ran it out of gas, you shouldn't ever tell us that. You should make up some story about how your fuel filter clogged with sediment from the bad gas you got last time because they were filling the tanks at the station while you were putting gas in your gas can. Yadda, yadda, yadda, Or something like that.

Fresh inventory for PartZ R&R - S30 heat shields just back from plating, before and after pics. One for early 240Z without the heat riser, three regular 240Z, one 280Z. Coming soon: Fuel Rail Fiesta!

"If so, would anyone in this narrow class of dedicated self-abusers, care to share the secrets of their success?" Oh! Hi there! Yup, I've done exactly this a few years back. Fiberglass mat and ABS cement will do what you need. I glopped on the cement (it's just ABS plastic melted in MEK) on the screw studs that were blown out and glued back the ones that were broken. Bottom pictures are of my steering column clamshell that had all the screw pockets broken off. Turns out we had some corporate pens at the office that were perfectly sized to be glued in place. Same approach would work on the arm rest lid.

Hello all!! As some will remember, I was working on a drop in replacement ECU for our Z's & had to take a hiatus when my daughter was born. This week she started kindergarten (my how time flies when you have young ones underfoot). Last month I began un-mothballing the project and gearing up to finish. Apologies of course for the delay, but rest assured I haven't forgot about this. The status when I paused was this: 1 - The prototype board came up nicely and I was driving my car around using 100% stock L-Jet components (save for the HellFire ECU of course)....poorly tuned at best & no enrichment code was in place which caused some stumbling when I floored it. This was expected & I didn't care, I was all smiles that it worked as well as it did. 2 - The primary GUI functionality is present, but has a *LOT* of debug screens and added test buttons here and there. It's quite cluttered as I continue to test/debug, but will be getting cleaned up as I progress. The GUI does look good and I'm mostly happy with the interface. Still quite a bit of legwork to make this clean and presentable. The communication with the ECU has been rock solid & realtime data is sent continuously to the pc to see while the engine is running. Firmware update via the Laptop needs to be finished. 3 - 20 ECU boards are assembled & just need programming to production firmware. 4 - Sensors (Primarily the pain the arse AFM) still need to be calibrated & the tables loaded with qualified data. Currently I have data that is *close* but can be better. I built a flow bench to calibrate the AFMS. I have about 20 or so AFMs from various years to play with. It will be interesting to see how they have aged. I'm guessing poorly. 🙂 The flowbench still needs some attention & will be the first on the list to work on. 5 - I need to qualify/test the stock injectors to characterize their average opening time and flow rates. I have some stock numbers in the tables now that work, but they can be improved. 6 - Various tuning tables need to be added, (acceleration, cold start, other enrichments) 7 - Then I need to tune it of course to the stock engine. I have one bone stock 77 engine and another that is bone stock plus the addition of a mild cam. I have a wideband O2 on the engine that I will use to assist with tuning. I keep wanting to build a dyno as well, but sanity so far has kept me from running down that rabbit hole. It feels good to be back on the project & I'm excited to make some headway. I'll post some progress pics on the flowbench and AFM results when they are available, and feel free to pester, prod, poke, or ask questions about the project. Len Here's a link to the last thread:

Hi Blue , the mono color 240Z picture was given from Mr. Yoshida when I met him and interviewed him . The picture is a big , like 200mm x 300mm . And the other pictures are printed from a set of slide film maintenance of Datsun 240Z which I bought a long time ago . In this case , is this a set of slide film belonged to Nissan , or an individual who owns it ? Anyway I have more 6 reels of film which are still in the wrapping . If someone want to see it and I maybe open them and print by a photo shop . Kats

😁 Ya, I noticed that after I reinstalled the speedo a few weeks ago. I've just been too lazy to get back under there to change that lower right bulb... I don't do much night time 140mph driving anyway. I mostly use that left side of the speedo. You guys may have shamed me into doing it before October though.

While you have those gauges apart you should pull the guts and repaint the insides of the cans a nice bright flat white. No matter what bulbs you choose, that will always help. Personally I don't like the harshness of the LED replacement "bulbs" that I have seen - I'm very old school that way. But repainting the inside of my gauges made a huge change in the brightness even using stock 3.4 watt bulbs.

Picked my car up from body shop prison. Just did touch ups on rocker panels and rear valence. STOKED !!!!

All done, just need to get it back and then my work starts!

Took the Z to Japdays at Mantorp Park.

Jason240z is from the UK and speaks English English. Allow me to interpret what he meant by: who are "the datsun garage" ( Translation to American English: Who are you? ). You're an unknown entity on this site, your website is intentionally devoid of phone and physical address information, so one has to wonder if your business is legitimate, a "drop ship" vendor, or a scam. what would a set of 14x6.5 be? ( Translation to American English: What is the cost of a set of 4 wheels size 14" X 6.5"? ) Glad to be of help. Dennis

mine is on the way scheduled for 8/62019 delivery!! Tracking it left Tracy CA fedex today

Thanks zspert. The support you gave me was a major factor in my car’s Gold Medallion success. There are few with your depth of knowledge and experience with respect to factory originality when talking about the Datsun 240z. The Z community will always benefit from your successes.

Guys, Guys, Guys, don't over do it!!! I'm in the process of prepping what should be the next 240 Gold medallion car for the 2020 convention. Here's the way I apply the yellow to achieve the correct look. I buy a can of School Bus Yellow spray paint at Lowe's/Home Depot, brand not important. At the same time I buy 3-4 1 inch foam brushes. Spray the paint into the plastic can cap, dip the foam brush into the yellow and apply. Results aren't too neat and the paint is thin, just like Nissan did it. Very interesting discussion about the red trans marks. Absolutely not the same from car to car and not always red. My last restoration, 10/71 Red with white, had a multi color piece of art on top of the trans. Difficult to reproduce but I think I did that line worker justice. Unfortunately can't seem to be able to find the picture I can't be sure I took, damn! Oh Yeah, don't forget the blue assembly marks on the balance pipe freeze plugs. AND the blue dot on the 240 fuse link. Just scratched the surface of this topic and have created enough confusion for now. Cheers

Hi all--- Sorry not to have replied sooner---I was immediately back at work and had to travel to several states for several days after the show. Missed so many of you, good friends!! I can't begin to tell what an honor it was to compete with Rich's immaculate fresh restoration of Bob's (Jayhawk's) Z. Rich is a master and a gentleman. His meticulous attention is preserved as archival documentation in this thread for all to see and emulate. As I conveyed in a PM to Rich, I had always wondered how a "rolling" restoration would fare with a fresh restoration done very well. I feel those hopeful thoughts are somewhat vindicated and I am relieved now that it is possible. I have always thought (and think Rich would agree) that the stock restoration of a 73 240Z was one of the most difficult challenges of all due to the many unique differences found in that particular model year. (bumper rubber trims, flat-top carbs, emissions, hoses and water plumbing, thermostat housings, electrical relays and switches, cigarette lighter, etc., etc.) The chance to compare, apples to apples, 2-73 240Z cars at a Zcon was huge for me. Rich and I shared several corrections that we each made to our cars before the judging. It just doesn't get any better than that in friendly competition! As Rich said, had he more time and a few parts the outcome could have well been reversed. We both made bonehead mistakes which we have learned from and will try not to repeat. This Zcon was so special in so many ways. Big Congratulations to my dear friend Jim Smirlies (S30driver) for his 1st place in daily driver. Fiona (his 77 280Z) never looked so beautiful since I have known him (and her). I wish and wish that those of you that we not able to attend the Branson event will attend and be seen at Nashville! It is just 1year and 2 months away----Let's GET READY!!! Zup

This just in: Hello Mark, Thank you reaching out to us. There’s a pallet of 280z dashes arriving this week. However, we are sold out for a month and expecting to have some in stock as early as September. So all of you on the wait list with deposits or prepaid should be getting your dash soon!

Great looking Z - great looking wheels - my Original's are still on my Z. About $42.00 each with shipping...

Thank you but I can’t take credit for originality. All of my inspiration has come from the masters on this forum. My skills are hard earned from trial and error, but my confidence comes from seeing truly great cars being restored by the great forum members we are so truly blessed to associate with.

So Sean, agreed 100000% with Mr Patcon (at least I think he is a Mr! As for being a gentleman, the jury is out on that one)! :P My L28 with E88 head and mostly stock internals* + SU carbs is doing 232BHP / 210lbft. The tuner backed off @6400rpm even though the power was still climbing (he was afraid of it going too lean and melting a piston). From this point on each pony gets exponentially more expensive. The tuner tells me that with better top end fuelling / triples there is another 10-15% in there but that’s a lot of money for another, say, 20bhp. (By the time it’s fully rolling road tuned up I make it well over £2000 / $3000 additional spend). In all honesty the power I have is plenty enough for spirited driving on the public road and safely putting it ALL down. 60mph comes around in 5 seconds and the old lady regularly scares the pants off Subaru Imprezzas and other exotic machinery. But the greatest fun isn’t drag racing off the lights, it’s the lovely power around the twisty roads. Aim for a lovely beefy flat torque curve over headline BHP figures - you will enjoy it more and much more often, in any gear. My engine was built by very experienced chaps doing this for 40 years. They have built a 300bhp NA motor for their time attack machine (no diesel crank either). Don’t even think about what it cost them in parts, blood, sweat and time! Sadly they are all retiring :( As said already, the power in these engines is mostly made in the head. So time and money would be well spent there. Then there are the ancillaries that have to be matched, such as a decent ignition, exhaust system, carbs etc that make a huge and sometimes overlooked difference. There are a lot of very expensive carbs out there that are poorly set up, so budget for a decent amount of time / money on the Rolling Road with an experienced tuner. You could always head for Jenvey throttle bodies and EFI but then, as said before, it gets expensive. Good luck and watching your progress with interest. *Schneider springs / caps, 270 degree cam, 0.48” lift, fully ported head, flat top standard weight pistons 1mm over, larger 280 valves.

First image shows the notch on the sender and tab on the tank Second image shows feed lines inside the tank that the float has to go over, then under the lines. You'll need tilt the sender to do this Third images show the correct orientation of the two top posts on the sender once it is seated. This would be the angle of view if you were working in the hatch. It should seat easily but If there is any binding you'll need to readjust the sender by lifting it up and try again. You'll know when everything feels right.