Oiluj

I'm 55 going on 25... Every morning I look in the mirror and ask myself, "who's the old guy in the mirror?". I bought my 1st 240, a 1973 in January of 1980. Drove it for 8-1/2 years. Sold it when I took an after work / weekend Masters program. Bought a 1971 240 needing restoration in 1987. Had it for about 6? years till it was hit while parked and totalled. Bought my current 1972 240 in December of 2007. It's just a few months from completion if ll goes well...

I can take a peek at it this weekend, if the timing works for you. PM me tomorrow.

This is one tough crowd! *grin* Guess I'll have to come up with a serious topic like vintage air fresheners... BTW, I used to use one of those little green liquid bottle air freshener in my first 240.

Haven't worked on the car for a while... She sits safe & snug in the garage for now. Most of January I've been busy with family and for the last 1-1/2 weeks have been working long days and weekends as we are launching a new product. I expect to be too busy to work on the car for a few weeks more... Hopefully I'll have time to work on her again soon.

My take on it is to do what you want and not think of it as an "investment". Personally, I like the idea of keeping it original with only "bolt-on" upgrades, but if you want a better suspension, more power, etc, then do it. After all, it's YOUR car...

Why not go to TAP Plastics and look in the cut-off bin for some 3/4" plexi.

My OEM antenna for my late 72' has two leads and a ground strap. One lead is power for "up" and the other for "down".

My OEM antenna didn't work so this weekend I completely dis-assembled it, cleaned-up all the corrosion and "muck" on the inside and installed a new OEM antenna mast, (provided by the PO). Installing the new antenna mast was not difficult, but the interior of the mechanism was filled with a mixture of dried-up grease & dirt. Also, the aluminum channel the nylon antenna rod runs in was very heavily corroded. Inside the motor case I cleaned-up using electrical contact cleaner, paper towels and Q-tips. Once cleaned-up, lubricated and re-assembled, it now operates smoothly. Now I just need to decide if I'm going to use it or go with a more modern, "automatc" antenna...

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The economic argument Steve makes is valid. That's why we are still driving 11 & 12 year old cars. My wife's 96' SC 300 has decent performance and gets 23 mpg. In fact, I just had the uhpolstery redone on the wife's car since we plan to keep it for several more years, at the very least. My 97' ES 300 gets about 24.5 mpg. Add to that that my commute is about 5 miles, it's not worth the expense of replacing perfectly good vehicles.

Very Nice!

To some extent, I agree with zhead240, but one has to evaluate both sides of the equation... 1) Power plants are typically are more efficient than the family car when it comes to converting hydrocarbons to usable energy. This is especially true, if as pointed out by Carl, you have nuclear powered plants. That's why electric cars can make the valid claim of operating at and equivilent cost of 100 mpg compared to gasoline powered vehicles. That's still twice as effficient as a Prius. 2) I don't have any data to back this up, but my guess is that the environmental impact of the additional batteries is probably no worse, (and probably less), than the emmisons caused by all those 100,000,000 vehicles inefficiently burning gas and diesel every day. I'm not tring to trivialize the battery recycling / disposal problem, but you need to also consider the positives, not just the negatives. 3) What I'd really like to see is more hydrogen fuel cell research. I was involved in a small, catalytic hydrogen generator company at one time and it looks like a promising approach. We actually had a fuel cell powered demo car. All that exits the tailpipe is water vapor. Of course, that requires energy, be it chemical or electric to release the hydrogen from water, or a safe means to store hydrogen. To make electric or hydrogen powered cars viable, you need the infastructure. I think that's really the biggest hurdle to overcome. Vehicle cost will come down to be comparable to fossil fuel powered vehicles as consumer demand, (and sales), increase. Till then, as long as it's just a novelty market, electric cars such as the Tesla or Karma will remain a rich men's toys. Just my 2 cents. The soap box is now open...

Saw a Tesla "up-close" last weekend and got a quick tour of the car byt the owner who saw me checking it out. Looks like good build quality and designed for a specific purpose. Not to mention those things are d**m quick! Short range will be addressed as the technology and infastructure catches-up. In cold parts of the country, some parking lots already have 100VAC plugs for engine heaters at each stall. The cost of fossil fuels will only go up. In 10 years I expect an electric compact car will be in the same cost index as a standard gas powered vehicle. I also expect that more effiecient hydro-carbon hybrid vehicles will be competing as well.

Here's a pic of my almost complete engine bay. This weekend I cleaned and painted my fuel rail, installed ignition & alternator wiring, etc. Still need to replace the positive battery cable, install hose clamps and clean-up the emmision components. Starting in mid-January I plan to figure out how I'll mount the compressor, condensor & routing for the AC lines.

For X-Mas, my buddy Wayne bought me a JADA 72' 240Z. It's not a perfect replica, but it's close enough... What's really cool is he took it to William's Auto Body where I had my car painted. William was finishing my hood and painted the model at the same time using automotive paint. Then Wayne painted the wheels using the Duplicolor graphite wheel paint is used to paint my panasports. It was a real surprise! I'll complete the process by painting the interior to match my car.

Remember that there are tolerances in the head, valves, etc. If you are at almost minimum clearance, fit tolerances in the head-to-block and valve diameters could produce a "nicking" situation. (Been there, done that). I always prefer to have at least "some" room for tolerances / clearance in moving mechanical systems, especially for a street application.

Nice! Love to see progress pics!

Congrats on your new car and welcome! This is the place to find out about Z's.

You can also get restored lights from Zeddsaver. Best if you have restorable cores. http://zeddsaver.com/

I meant to type "Cal 500's", not Call 500's.

Cool! Looks like the Shelby wheels that came with my car are Call 500's. The catalog will let me ID the exact model and determine if the caps are original. I'll be cleaning them up and placing them in the classifids in the Spring.

Fun to watch, but also hard to see a classic driven that hard.

Cool! May have to get one of those. There are actually 2 GTR's I've seen in the San Mateo area. One is off-white and often I see the rear end of it as it enters the freeway ahead of me. Monments later it's out of sight...

Red seat covers are available. I'd go with the red myself to make it "right". If you need any red interior panels, I have a few.

Are you talking about the riveted-on door ding preventer strips? The aluminum is anodized and the pitting is where the anodized surface has failed. They can be polished, but you will probably need to remove them from the car. The vinyl insert can be restored using any good plastic polish. You can get new stuff at the following link. http://www.customautotrim.com/products/moldings/rivet.htm