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A little late jumping into this conversation. I have been "out of contact" on holiday which I do every so often going internet dark for a few days in my effort to get away from it all. Often, I travel to Europe but I just returned from several days in coastal Maine and that northern wilderness. We were hiking and boating. Reading up on this discussion, I thought I would chime in on some of the issues mentioned. Nissan contracted with four private restoration shops during the Vintage Z program. Pierre Z in Hawthorn, California completed by far the most restorations, however Classic Datsun Motorsports of Vista, California, Datsun Ally of Signal Hill, and Old Car Service of Huntington Beach were also involved. Datsun Ally and Classic Datsun Motorsports prepared two cars each. I don't know how many Old Car Service prepared. Engines were rebuilt and provided by AER Manufacturing in Arington, Texas as transmissions came from Williams Technology of Summerville, South Carolina. Pierre Z rebuilt the units for the first restoration only as Nissan contracted thereon. They were assembled units, crate shipped, including everything except carburetors, generators, cooling fan and hoses, and exhaust manifold to the best of my knowledge. Part management was coordinated through Pete Evanow of Nissan N.A. and there were documents related to car assessment, part orders, and quality control however these were internal project documents related to the management of the project cars and not released with any of the cars. I actually have part order documents for cars that were never restored. Concerning CAD plating: The yellow / gold coloring that we associate with "CAD" is a chromate conversion coating applied over the plated metal, yielding the familiar gold color. A similar appearance can be achieved with a similar chromate conversion over silver zinc which is far less toxic and not easily discernible from a cadmium base electroplate. Cadmium electroplating on its own is not yellow. I believe that what we see on cars today is yellow chromate zinc. True cadmium electroplating is not easily found or inexpensive. We all seem to call it "CAD" but that's probably a term we use for the color and not AS 9100 certified or ASTM A165, SAE AMS 2400 specification. Finally, Nissan N.A. didn't just decide to restore a bunch of 240Zs; they schemed up an ad campaign to keep the Z legend in North America alive while Nissan discontinued their current model Z with only the promise to deliver a new design some time in the future. The goal was not to create 'restorations' but deliver complete, running examples of the original car with 12,000 mile warranties. They had to rely on private repair businesses to accomplish their goal with a parts inventory that could not sustain the project. But they pulled it off! Cudos to the businesses and people who contributed to the effort. The cars are quite valuable now, and it is always exciting to see one because the story behind it is one of the best automotive sales campaign stories. Especially after the blunder of dropping the Datsun brand, I opine. So, I did the research project / compendium in 2005. I have a huge digital file of stuff as well as a fairly good library of literature. I have a vhs video that Pierre gave me in 200? that has Mr. K's visit during the restoration program. I don't have any printed , bound copies at the moment. I hear some interest for copies of stuff I have. I'm going to get some copies of the compendium made. Stay tuned.

Countdown!! I got 100 miles on it: And those 100 test miles made it clear that I need front struts:

Over the last few days, I was busy in my workshop, getting some small tasks completed on my Z project. Time for a little update. After installing the partial gearbox to test fit the brackets and stuff, I realized that the gear lever is too much in the front of the hole: A quick look into the manual made it clear: I had mounted the lever the wrong way. So, gear box rear-end out, gear lever corrected: And back in, this time, correctly: Then I spent a lot of time at the rear end of the car. I had to clean the holes for the three taillight panels, so that the plastic rivets would lock properly. After that i re-installed the taillights, and ensured the sealing rubbers were set correctly, using my "string-trick": Next i have to finish the slightly worn chrome / metal trim around the taillight panels and get them back on: While working at the rear, i decided to install all those fasteners, stoppers, alignment pieces, guides, etc. Like those rubber spacers: And trunk dampers. I have a NOS set of everything, so the installed ones are only temporary, to not mess up the new ones: And the last bit at the rear end was to align the trunk / hatch. The body shop had installed some spacers to get it straight, but after all the parts got installed, I had to remove them again and massage a few areas lightly to have it all aligned: Next? Seat rails. I had those Bride seat rails from my Histrix lying around for a while and wanted to test-fit them. I'm most probably going to use something different setup in the end, but I wanted to ensure that the distance and position of the seat mounting brackets was right after all the bodywork. I thought the best way was to use the original seat rail mounting studs and spacers. Since I had several highly-damaged OEM seats, I hammered out the fasteners and used the plastic spacers after grinding away the factory spot-welds on the bolts. This worked unexpectedly well, so now I can do some trials with different seats, rails and setups - to figure out what will go into the car in the end. Next: I realized that I didn't have any upper rear number plate light in my part collection. Luckily, Florian from Datsun-Autowerk was kind enough to send me one of his broken ones including some other parts (more on that in a following post), for trials. After puzzling and glueing all the parts together... I could mock it up all together and drill the required holes. Fun-fact: I always thought that slight "dent" in the gray metal piece was a production fault of the reproduction panel, but it's actually there to make space for the number plate lighting bolt. After the holes were done and cleaned, I got the upper plastic part installed. And then the whole thing with the lens. Note all bolts and the light itself are temporary units for the mock-up only, final parts will be correct and fresh. Looks good if you ask me! Special thanks to the person who gave me the hint with the holes (I wasn't able to find the mail anymore, but you know who you are!) And then? Spoiler-Alert. Again. After i realized that the currently installed spoiler is beyond repair, I remembered that I had another one lying around. But it was bent in all directions and super wobbly: But all the brackets were still in good shape, so I gave them a little wire wheel brush and corrosion protection: I placed them on our terrace, which tends to get quite hot now in summer And let it take the heat every day. My thought was that the Polyurethane gets weak and goes either back in its natural shape by itself, or can be massaged. At the end, some areas turned out to be pretty stiff, even with heat and required some proper bending over my special bending bench :-) It didn't really work out. It's way better than in the beginning, but still super wobbly. I thought if i'd install it on the car, it might straighten itself a bit. Let's see. I have my doubts. The good thing is, there seems to be another spoiler on the horizon :-) I've seen worse ones, but yeah. Not good enough for me: I also went through my plated fasteners and sorted them a bit. I got various boxes over the years from various collectors and Z-specialists, so it was about time to ensure I find what I'm looking for :-) The to-do list gets smaller by the week. And there's not much left from my side, but some tricky bits. I guess I've earned my favorite Japanese "Hitachino Nest" beer for today.

You say: switched tops but maybe you must switch top and piston on the other bottom part.. btw always keep the parts of 2 carbs ALWAYS apart.. they look the same but are very fine tuned parts..

Moved upstate to Ithaca NY back in April. Had the 350Z shipped up ahead of us, then took the 280Z on. a clear day. Still no work on the cars yet, still setting up the grounds, garage & house Garage was used as. workshop, so it has a couple of 240 circuits, air compressor lines & ports, and radiant heat. Little more cluttered now, still working on setting it up Added glass panels to each door for more light Outside garage back in April: Better weather Adding slabs outside the barn & garage for me to work on - there are no flat/level/safe areas on the property outside of the garage

I'm not about to wade into this discussion except to say that I think there's a lot to be said for the quoted comments. First, I like, and get in this context, the Shakespeare reference. Ouch! I'm betting it was a weak moment for 26th and he'll be back onside soon. But more importantly, if there's a community on the internet more dedicated to knowing everything there is to know about Datsun Z Cars, I haven't found it. This is it. Sometimes it takes a long, rancorous discussion to get to the answer, but down the road it's only the answer that will matter. Good for you guys for caring enough about this stuff to challenge each other to get to the right answers. Not everyone will care about whether it was cadmium chromate or zinc chromate, but a few will, and we stand a better chance of determining the answer today than we ever will in the future. Cheers to you guys for your dedication to the cause!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP7R_FUHI9E

A bot seemed to find its way into the site. I squashed the bot with Bender.

I think it can be unbolted with the fenders on. just enough room with a swivel, a bent wrench, some friends and a 6 pack. lol The backing plates can be retrieved if they fall, use a stick magnet, you might have to remove the ECU, Holding them in place while starting the bolts is another circus act. get some friends back over and a 12 pack. haha!!

Nice ad. If they did it thoughtfully, there might also be promotional value in highlighting two other successful Datsun models from the early 1970's: the 510 sedan (contrast with Rogue), and the 520 pickup (contrast with Titan). Not too many buyers in 2025 realize that the pecking order for Japanese imports back then was Datsun-Honda-Toyota, rather than today's Toyota-Honda-Mazda/Subaru. The decision to re-brand from 'Datsun' to 'Nissan' (1977?) was such an unnecessary a disaster. The bland-mobile 1980's models didn't help either.

Sticky pistons on 4-screw round tops. Not ideal. About the only things that would account for that would be a) severely misaligned nozzles underneath or b) mismatched domes/pistons. You can check for the mismatching between the domes and pistons by taking the domes off, pulling the pistons out of the carbs and then sliding the pistons into the domes and see if they move smooth and free (while the dome and piston are in your hand, not mounted to the carb body). And you can check for misaligned nozzles/needles by either removing the needles out of the pistons, or by loosening up the nozzle alignment nuts on the under sides the carbs and seeing if the pistons move free while the nozzles are way loose.

Even though you put a ton of work into fixing up your old garage, I guess it wasn't too difficult to leave it behind in return for a clean, modern garage already equipped with a good floor, good lighting and three bays (not to mention a separate, two-level barn for storing panels and parts. 👍

They have a hinge mount plate on the inside that will fall when the bolts are removed.

Thanks, Yarb. I am on hybridz too, I joined it when I started exploring the Megasquirt/turbo upgrade (I was getting fed up with the AFM/running lean etc lol). There is less traffic now as it used to be.

Glad to see you back.

Very cool! Looks like the new shop is a nice upgrade. Looks like you might have more acreage too...

I think Yarb's thought might be it needs surfacing.. There are some chatter marks and possibly some blue hot spots too. Yarb, be me to it by seconds...

Just for fun, I've dug out the JUNE 1997 edition of OLD TIMER Magazine - published in Japan - to scan some photos from the 8 page article in which they covered Vintage Z Program-related activities at Pierre's, Z World and the lobby of NMC USA. The original photos are many, small and scan up with a noticeable Moire pattern, but people still might like to see them. 'Donor' cars sitting in the parking lot behind Pierre's, waiting to start the process. Original caption says that they counted 13 in this row alone and that Pierre's had a total of 25 base cars and 8 cars for parts, so a total of 33 cars 'in stock' at that time. Any lack of ambience is made up for with Ambulance: Caption says this is a stripped bodyshell, waiting to be collected by the bodyshop: Caption says that this lineup of suspension parts have been stress checked and delicate areas taped up prior to collection for blasting and "powder coating": I'll scan and upload some more tomorrow...

Forgot to say - don't neglect putting the return line end in the can if you try to use a portable can to see if it runs.

No good deed... ☹️

Nothing special. Just KYB gas. The really silly part is that I HAVE a set of KYB's here already. The plan for them was to put them on my 77 280 as part of a project I have planned for that car. But since I was working on this 240 and running out of time, I figured I would use those KYBs on the 240 and then buy another new pair when I was ready to move forward with the 280 work. So.......... I tear the 240 apart. Break one strut down and get the old cartridge out of it. Open the KYB box I have here, and......... There inside the KYB box is a note. In my own handwriting. I sent the small gland nuts to another Z guy some couple of years ago because I wasn't going to be using them. I need the big ones for the 280 and I didn't own a 240 at the time. The small gland nuts were surplus to me and someone else needed a pair. So I sent them away. Aaaaaaarrrrrghh!!!!!

Thank you everyone! I really appreciate it 🙏 Message received and I will hunt for best quality 195/70R14s I can get here in Qatar. Although choice is extremely limited. My mechanic recommended these with the white stripe (if I wanted something different) but not sure I have seen any 280z with this type of tire. Has anyone seen 280z with white stripe tires before? Maybe I should stick with period correct Yokohama or Bridgestone black wall tires. North Hants TyresVitour Galaxy R1 24mm Whitewall 195/70R14Marked Tyre Size: 195/70R14 Make: Vitour Galaxy R1 Sidewall Design: Whitewall Tyre Type: Classic Radial Tyre Season: Summer Whitewall Width: 0.94" 24 mm Overall Diameter: 24.80" 630 mm Section Width:

Please, please be most careful when suggesting ANYTHING from zeddsaver. I, and a number of folks I spoke with over the years , had problems, some big/significant.

Mike's removed them now but about a month ago there were some post in Russian that had nothing to do with Zs.

If you do one at the time you have a (mirrored) example there to see how it sits/comes together again.. and... ALWAYS make pictures BEFORE taking apart.. it's so easy to miss that sequence of the little rings/parts on there! RULE NUMBER ONE: MAKE PICTURES OF EVERYTHING YOUR GONNA RESTORE!

Hmmm. Not sure if this will help, but: OEM weatherstrip often makes strategic use of 'rubber stuffing' (technical term -- I just made it up) at locations where the strip has to make a tight bend. It's put there to keep the hollow section from collapsing (which would possibly lead to unwanted wind noise or water ingress). You can't see it. You'll only know it's there by doing a pinch comparison at selected locations along the length of your the weatherstrip. I found it in both the Kia Sportage and Nissan Altima weatherstrip that I experimented with. The 'stuffing', as used, was ~ 4" - 5" long. I wonder if the aftermarket suppliers are doing the same thing? p.s. I used the front-door weatherstripping from a late-1990's Kia Sportage for both my doors and hatch. Very happy with the results.

Gents, if you see this again, please use the "report" feature. It was broken previously but I fixed it today.

Hi all, wanted to let everyone know that our events calendar is now back online. It took me some serious debugging and problem solving, but it's back online! Thanks for your patience as I weeded through the code. You can find it on the top menu. Mike

I'm on HS30-H side here when it comes to Factory Nissan JAPAN Plating. The official Nissan documentation clearly shows Zinc plating plus Cadmium plating was banned in Japan by that time, so why would anyone believe it was anything else than Zinc plating (or yellow / blue passivating, as it's called here) On the other hand, the Z-restoration program was executed by selected workshops with support from NMC USA! According to the Z-head document in the previous post, it appears that those were indeed replated with Cadmium in the USA by some private shops. At least according to that checklist. Which is kind of interesting that the restored cars are different from the factory cars. Which is also a bit strange. Because there is a bit of difference in appearance between cad and zinc, so why would they choose something different - especially much more poisonous?? Maybe missing knowledge? Or was it cost saving?

But what has that got to do with the plating materials used when the cars were originally manufactured? That's what is being discussed here. Are you citing the 'Cad' plating used on the VZ Program as proof of what was used when the cars were originally manufactured? Will you also use the paint used on the bodies of the VZ Program cars to cite the paint that Nissan Shatai used when the cars came off the factory production line? Hopefully not. I simply don't see any mention of Cadmium in Nissan's technical specifications - according to Nissan Engineering Standard - which they quote for the fasteners on the S30-series Z range. However they specifically mention Zinc ( ' 亜鉛 ' ). It's as simple as that. If anyone can come up with an official, period, Nissan document which specifically shows that Cadmium was used for plating the fasteners and fixings on these cars when they were made then I'd like to see it. Otherwise we will just go around in circles. I'm all ears and eyes and every day is a school day with these cars, but I'd like to see a document which contradicts THIS:

We'd also need to know more about the people Carl Beck knew at Honeywell. I'd write more if I was here to argue. But I'm just here to learn more. I really hope that you were being self-referential here, in an attempt at humor.

Correct……Always do one carb at a time….piston and dome are precision matched. One more thing, make sure the needles haven’t been bent.

Indeed! We have almost an acre now, corner lot, with a driveway that loops around to the side road. That end I'm having concrete poured, it's been gravel over the beat up asphalt, and that keeps washing into the street, I've had enough of that in the short time we've been here. Concrete is scheduled to be poured tomorrow.

I installed the AZC pan, very nice piece. No leaks yet - I used a cork gasket with a few small blobs of black RTV in the areas suggested by the FSM. It might be in my head, but the engine noise had quietened down since the pan installation.

@Zed Head I was merely stating that most folks here haven’t gone that route and trying to be helpful of pointing him in that direction if needed.

In Japan the use of Cadmium electroplating in auto manufacturing was officially banned in 1969. Before that it wasn't widely used on higher-tensile fasteners due to the phenomenon of Hydrogen embrittlement. Nissan (Japan's) own documentation for the S30-series Z's componentry - according to and conforming with N.E.S. (Nissan Engineering Standard) - states that most of the non-Chrome electroplated parts were Zinc ( 亜鉛 ) 'Aen' galvanized, with various passivated finishes. Here's just one example page of the quoted N.E.S. finishes for fasteners from the C-236 Nissan parts catalogue for the S30, HS30 and PS30 models: Heading translates as: 'Indication of washer-assembled hex bolts, washer-mounted machine screws and their surface treatments. The part numbers of hexagon bolts and machine screws are followed by a ' - ' and the characteristic in the table below. Washer-assembled hex bolts, small screws and their surface treatments'. I have roughly outlined the relevant example surface treatments in red. They read, from the top: NO SURFACE TREATMENT GALVANIZED BLACK GALVANIZED CHROME PLATED ...and this pattern is repeated for each sub-classification of fastener down the page. The Japanese for 'Zinc plated'/'Galvanized' is 亜鉛メッキ ('Aen Mekki').

About 35 years ago, I was in the process of restoring a 240Z, as well as parting out another for spares. I took an assorted group of 10 or 15 nuts, bolts, washers and couple small parts off the Z's to our Materials Lab. "Our" being Honeywell Space and Strategic Systems Lab. A Materials Lab with men and equipment that supported putting men on the moon and probes on other planets. I ask the guys to tell me what was used for plating and corrosion protection, as I intended to have them re-plated. After testing them, they told me they were Cad. plated and given a yellow chromate conversion bath- and to be sure to wear a mask if I used a wire wheel ((bench grinder) to clean them up. Cadmium is very toxic and you don't want to breath any in. Given that the OEM fasteners on a now 50+ year old 240Z, treated with a little penetrating oil will break free and unscrew, without twisting off, is witness to me of Cadmiums use. That doesn’t happen with zinc plated fasteners in automotive use. In addition to Cad. plating having three to four times the durability of Zinc, Cadmium offers increased lubricity, so threaded fasteners release and unscrew. If you are not absolutely certain - best advice is to treat them as having Cadmium Platting..and be careful how you handle and clean them up.

Well done Ken. Perseverance par excellence! Dashboards are not fund to work on.

Update: put the transmission back with the Dorman $6 clutch alignment tool for 24 splines. Installed 2 guide bolts (don't forget to put slots into them, otherwise you won't be able to remove them). The transmission was in 1st gear, I moved the rear shaft a little to help it ease into the clutch splines. It took 10 minutes. Here is my improvised flywheel hold tool (saw some guys on youtube doing this): Next is the driveshaft, refill the tranny and exhaust mounting.

A few more: Caption for the above photo says that the guy working on the door is an Armenian, and that Armenians are historically renowned as being skilled metalworkers ("in their DNA").

Hi, I don't think he will respond, but you can get your parts from: Z-Services.eu | Shop for Datsun 240Z, 260Z & 280Z I also have a lot of parts for Z's not specific for the 280z as this was never a euro car.. Oh and yes as my name says i'm from the Netherlands too.

The Japanese caption specifically says powder coat, but that could easily have been a miscommunication (or, heaven help us, an assumption...) between reporter and the people at Pierres. I would think it much more likely that they were in fact painted, as per the original factory finish.

And be sure it's a high pressure pump for EFI. The fuel line going into the fuel filter should be as hard a rock with pump on. Also the hose coming out of the filter will be hard from pressure. The fuel pressure regulator is what brings it down a little, 32psi IIRC. You can get the metal fuel filter for $10 to $20. Good luck!

Back to normal programming. This 240Z auction is ending today but it's already up to $23,000. Kind of surprising considering its unusual appearance. It does look clean though. https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1973-datsun-240z-293/

That's a 1978 280Z. The fuel rail and other parts tell the story. Somebody has installed a fuel pump in the engine bay, and it is not connected a to a tank. of the type that don't like to pull fuel. That fuel pump should be moved back to the original area by the fuel tank (if it still works) so that it can self-prime with fuel. Download the FSM if you want to go deeper. https://www.classiczcars.com/files/category/13-280z/

Finally got it all back together! Had a few issues, nothing serious. My horn and dome light aren't working, I'll try to fix those later. I did have to run a new separate wire for the tach out to the coil, so tach works fine now. And I broke my glove box door! 😡 While installing I latched it close without taking the time to adjust the latch correctly. Of course it got stuck and I had to resort to prying it open with some plastic pry tools. As soon as it popped open it promptly broke those plastic flex hinges. I figure I could just get another off eBay, or order a 3rd party metal replacement inner door, until I saw the prices. My first thought was to use some small steel hinges to fix, but that seemed a bit heavy-handed. So, I ordered some plastic flex hinges off of Amazon. Original is also a flexible plastic hinge, which I'm surprised lasted ~50 years. I cut new hinges to approximate length of the original hinge. Used a utility blade to flatten out the area where the door side hinge adhesive will stick, 3 places. I pried open the channel so the hinges would fit inside, but not too far that it won't act like a vice when removing tape from adhesive and installed. This will make the channel about 1/16" thicker than original, and I did use slightly longer screws when installing on the dash. I removed the tape over the hinge adhesive and assembled. I did pry open the channel so I could slide hinge into position. And I marked the horizontal alignment to match old position, then glued door in place. Here's the back side. The old broken side of the hinge, which use to fit inside the channel, is not used, on the shelf. Side view of hinge. Installed. Too bad those hinges don't come in black. One other thing I did was epoxy a washer on the back side of my new map light bezel, so hopefully it gives the screw something to push against and won't crack again. Done, except for the dome light and horn. I'm very happy with the way new da$h fit, although it was quite a project to install it. Car has collected a lot of dust while sitting, time to go blow the dust off it!

I found a 1978 penny in my seat retractor handle cover it was jammed in there and looked almost new. It was an exciting time for me

I spoke with Marc Jones (former Datsun Alley owner) looking for some parts and he was telling me about his involvement in the project. Buddy of mine bought a 70 shell for his turbo built. He had alot of information and knowledge about the project.

Speaking of NOS parts, I can remember my local dealer calling me to see If I wanted any of our regions NOS parts. They had a list of the available parts and called to let know that it would be my last chance to get them due to the restoration program requesting them. I will try to find my parts receipt to get a date. Also just to make sure we don't double up on research I have requested information from Les at Classic Datsun such as Ser#, Color, which of the 10 Z Stores they went to, etc... JLP