Bruce Palmer

Steve will put your front carb on the autopsy table and will go over it with a fine tooth comb as soon at it gets back. We still have no earthly idea what may have been the culprit. He can be Duckie and I'll be Jethro....

We have a carbed 280ZX here in Salem you could experience for your self how the swap performs. This car pulls like a truck. I rode in it last year when we ran Mary's Peak during the Ft Hoskins BBQ. I talk to owners off and on who seem to be getting tired of fighting degrading, aging FI systems and just want to be able to get in hit the key and drive their cars. this swap is certainly one proven way to get it handled.

We had a 49 year old gal have a seizure and died last week leaving behind her fiance and her beloved 620 pickup "Elvis". Great gal and a fitness researcher at the local University. Her Ex ransacked the safe deposit box now it's up to her fiance to try and find her will. We have another Datsuner who has a garage and a storage unit or two, full of Datsun and Buick parts, near death from cancer. We are trying to help him get thru a "sort and sell" or "sort and scrap" but he's not having any luck in the energy department. Steve Epperly's dad is 80 and needs to make 130 in order to get all his projects done. Good to have goals. The man wants to go back to Bonneville competitively again. How cool is that? Leonard good luck my friend. I just heard about a Volvo shop in Eugene that is closing after 30 years of biz. Know anyone who might want to buy what I'm sure is a pile of obsolete Volvo stuff?

And two more from Indy on the Raw Fuel smell thread in Indy. I can sense a fun run in the spring in flat land America..... Come on spring!!!

Nice piece of detective work. That there's "mechanican" folks.

Mike, Welcome. I don't know if anyone has the weatherstrip kits. We haven't had completes for a couple of years. That's the bad news. The good news..... We have you covered on the earlier carbs. Buying used is also an option but at this late stage in the life of Hiitachi SUs whatever you might pick up would probably need some love to het up to speed. Happy to chat with you though, any time.

Well, there's the answer. Dave's a Z guy and already plays around corraling electrons in thos funny little copper tube thingies. And he is in the Northwest.

You know, re-reading your description and some of the responses, I'm going to say your situation isn't as dire as you might think. You have a lot of stuff working so the visual messy is probably what needs to be chased and remedied. Check a local auto electric shop. As we all know these systems aren't very sophisticated. Having an old car, you need to start accumulating some rudimentary electrical tools, a meter, and a connector assortment. Someone like a Tacoma Screw Products can certainly fix you up but there are others I'm equally sure/ That heater thing as has been stated, isn't electrical. You get hot water from the engine to the heater and the valve is open you should have heat. The valve is open and you don't have heat, the heater core is plugged. How many of you guys have ever seen an absolutely plugged heatercore? Back to this, do you have access to a wiring diagram? Get one, learn the color codes for wiring color get a meter and go snooping. Find out what goes where and don't start cutting wires. Just checking what needs to go where and if it doesn't go there see to it that it does..... Then when you can say everything is hooked up where it needs to be the problems should be lessened one at a time. One case in point is that rear tailight socket that isn't working. Is it corroded? Not all that uncommon on these old pots especially northwest cars. They make stiff wire brushes you can reach into those sockets and wail on the corrosion, then hit it with some dielectric grease and a new bulb and see what you have. If that doesn't work start working your way forward looking for a broken wire somewhere in that circuit. Ignore all the other wires you may be sorting through just the appropriately colored wires going to the socket. That's half the battle when chasing electrical gremlins. Identify which wires may be the culprit for a certain problem and IGNORE the rest. They may turn out to be the culprits as you chase additional problems.

Well, I suppose you can tell from the overwhelming number of people jumping on to offer assistance that this would be one of those ulcer causing projects that come along every now and then. Repeat after me, labor intensive, labor intensive, labor intensive...... Matching up someone with the skills and the desire to do it is going to be the trick. If that person might be close would only be a bennie. I'll run this by the 510 guys and see if there are any takers.

For any of you wondering "who is Dave Patton", take it from me, he is one of us. Builder, racer, collector and generally all around good head. Working hard to keep things for our toys available.... This is an un-paid underwriting. nyuck nyuck

Here's a little piece of info I got from Steve. On the tail light facia piece the 240 has the rectangular hole for the tail light where the 260 has an extra notch added to the hole on the license plate side of the hole for the backup light. Obscure enough piece of info for everyone?

As long as the mount holes are over and under (not side by side like some 280s) it'll bolt up. And the F&R hookup may be reversed. Just bend yours to fit and everything should hook up. I have the 15/16" on my wagon with the ZX fronts and drum rears so what I have should replicate a stock early Z and they work fine. And again, I doubt what gets called a "proportioning valve" on the early car is a proportioning valve. I believe it's a "circuit failure" switch which is designed to turn on your dash brake light should front or rears lose pressure. I actually talked to a guy from this list who has been into his switch and cleaned it up and got it working. I told him we'd give him a table at Canby next year if he wanted to drive up and sign autographs. Only human I know to have ever opened one of these up......

What John said. We have a Tune Up video that'll walk you thru about all these issues, if you'd rather do the plug and play. Fixin' stuff isn't nearly as much fun a bolting on new shiney stuff but for what you are describing, needs to be done.

Black and fuel soaked? Surprised it'll run at all.

By fouling out do you mean the plugs black and sooty? If so that's a rich condition and more than likely accompanied by a blubbery running condition. Do you know what needles are in your carbs? SUs are a variable venturi and supply air and fuel in direct relation to what the engine is pulling in. Not a whole lot of compensation tuning you can do. At X cfm of engine draw, the carbs will supply X cfm of air and fuel and all one can do is find that sweet spot between rich and lean.

Muck out the needles and seats that screw up into the float bowl lid w/ carb cleaner to cut any sticky fuel varnish and try it. As has been discussed more times than I care to admit, there should be no reason to assume the floats need to be adjusted when all they've been doing is sitting. More unintended carb problems have been caused by fiddling with float levels than have been solved by fiddling with float levels.

A lot of these ~40 year old L series engines, good as they were, are just tired. A set of compression numbers will tell you where you need to go next. It's not a whole lot different than chasing after Hitachi SUs that are 90% worn out. You can chase, but you won't catch a solution you'll be happy with. Merry Christmas.

Those mechanics, I'm sure, appreciated the fact that there was a neat ckassic that could be had that wasn't so valuable they'd be afraid to take it out amongst the great unwashed.

From what I've read recently, mileage numbers shouldn't factor into the discussion when we consider it takes more energy to grow and process the ethanol than the energy it produces. Oh, and lest we forget the gov't contribution to the growers of the corn. Ethanol is a scam of so many fronts, but it's on the books now and it'll take a jackhammer to get it gone.

Okay, once more with feeling..... Several years ago when we still had real gas here in Oregon I made a run from Salem OR to beautiful downtown Burbank and back which was around 2000 miles total. Had 2 tanks of Oregon gas going down and one coming back and all the rest were CA oxygenated version. Averaging the mileage over these extended runs certainly was simple and the driving was all the same, all Interstate. Twenty % was the difference. L motor, Hitachi carbs, steady pace, couldn't get more duplicatable than that..

Be prepared for your mileage to drop by about 20%..... but other than that this scam is a hellova good deal..... for the U.S. farmers.

What comments? Paint's ugly, don't do it? Looks straight and if it's solid, get on it and stay on it til you are satisfied with the results. Beyond that, our comments don't account for anything.....

Sounds very reasonable to me. I'd think $400 per hole would be about the norm for a job as in depth as what you've outlined.

And the wind across her belly button whistles a perfect middle C. That's pretty funny stuff. Stupid but funny.

Steve, Take the hood off and have someone else drive the car while you ride on the fender hunkered over the motor. I'm sure it wont help solve the issue, I'm just curious what the ticket will read like..... "Well, your honor, this dimwit out in Oregon said that if I were to ......... " :stupid: