Zedyone_kenobi

I understand your frustration, but the fact that you did not install it yourself, and you said that you are not a mechanic, tells me you did not know you had 0 problems. Just about NO 35+ year old car has no problems. Did you know the condition of every single part under that engine bay? I bet not. In the process of taking off the entire driver side of the engine and putting it back together perhaps a hose that was badly degraded finally broke. That kind of thing happens all the time. I am not trying to make excuses for a stuck throttle, which should be a very easy fix, or for anything else. But there are two sides to the story. He could have communicated better to you perhaps. I am just saying that your attitude is why many mechanics will refuse to work on older cars. Lets say you had three wires and a hose that were so far degraded that when he took them off they failed. Now did he charge you for those hoses. Probably not. Did he even know that there were bad connections or broken hoses, maybe not. Now, if he would replace everything that looked faulty and charged you for it he would be a A-hole for doing work you did not authorize. I am partly on your side as I feel your pain, but I think that not all the fault is the mechanics. Anytime you take your car to a mechanic you are at their mercy. Perhaps this guy was not entirely on the level and his customer service could use some work. Granted that appears to be the case, but it is time to admit to yourself that you either need to learn more about the car you drive daily and get your hands dirty, or find a dedicated Z mechanic in your area. Your computer analogy is not the same. WE are talking a 35+ year old machine. So lets modify your story. I bring you in my 200MHz Pentium 2 machine that dates back to the early 90's. I ask you to install Windows 7 and leave. I do not ask you to upgrade everything that is old or out of date, just install windows seven. Naturally when I get my computer back I have issues with it and I blame you for it. Whose fault is it really. The answer is both yours and mine. I should have made sure my computer could handle the upgrade, and if not me, you should have told me I needed to fix many different things before it will work. It is still a weak analogy the way I wrote it, but it is closer to what happened. Comparing upgrading cars to a computer is not really the same thing. Cars can degrade and still work for a long time. Computers will usually let you know when something is broken (blue screen of death, etc). Cars have gaskets and rubber that degrade over time, cars corrode, rust, and deteriorate. That is all I can say. Your problems sound minor, and I wish you the best. I do sincerely wish you the best of luck.

Okay, here is the deal. And you are not going to like what I have to say. First, if the guy did not know about these cars he should have warned you, and possibly turned the work down. Okay I said the only thing you may agree with. Now the hard to hear part. Mechanics get asked to fix one thing on a car. Say install a new carburator. Well they get the carb on as promised, but the owner is pissed when the new carb does not run correctly. WHy? Burnt valve, vacuum leaks, poor timing, clogged filters, etc. The list goes on and on. What you have there is an older car that probably needed MANY things MUCH MORE than a header and exhaust. However, you asked the mechanic to install it and he did. I am sure he found many things that your car needed on the way, but he did not tell you that, and did not bill you for them. I know you think he is the enemy right now, and he may or may have not done shoddy work. The welds do not look terrible, and the muffler looks about right. The pictures that show the throttle linkage tell me that you need to give the engine some attention. Wires need inspection, hoses need replacement, etc. A high idle sounds like a vacuum leak to me perhaps. That may make you run lean and that would also raise your engines running temp. My advice is harsh but sound. Replace all your vacuum hoses one by one. Take your time and do it right. Clean up the wiring and route it better. Get a new fuel rail from one of the datsun parts suppliers. Fix the cars old parts and cease adding performance enhancements. I understand that the exhaust replacement was to get rid of your old rusty exhaust, but did you need a header for that? Second, put your heat shield back on. I run headers and I installed my stock heat shield after I replaced my gasket. Third. Take a deep breath. This shall pass. When you put your car into somebody else's hands, this often happens. Mechanics get a bad rap, but for the most part they are not bad people. He had to remove the entire side of the engine to install the part you asked him to. Not trivial. Check for vacuum leaks, install new hoses, make sure your throttle is not binding. Methodically check everything. You will learn quite a lot doing this. Write it down and keep a log. Take pictures of the parts. We will all do what we can to help.

but you see, that is what these kind fellows are trying to tell you. A large drop IS in fact going to ruin your car. You will destroy the underbody, the vital suspension and engine parts will rub and scratch. Your ride quality will be absolute junk. You will make the car unable to deal with bumps and hiccups in the road, and it will be near uncontrollable with too large a drop. Try to think about a 1 to 1.5" drop. That is very possible and still keep yours car current suspension geometry in tact. It will look lower and at the end of the day you will be able to still drive it and more importantly, WORK ON IT. Being able to drive it up ramps and get a jack under you 38 year old car is not just handy but a necessity. Too many young kids want the look without thinking about the consequences. We are all being kind and telling you to STOP. Lowering a car 3+ inches is just too much. I promise you, that you do not have the technical acumen to do this properly. Stay with tried and true matching sets of struts/springs. Look at tokiko/koni/eibach. Look at what others have used. At the end of the day function is more important than form.

Well I cannot argue with that!

Gotcha, then I better get to swapping so you will know. I think it will a few weeks. I need to send it off. Is there anyway I can measure shaft slop? It may not need to be rebuilt, and if not, I can just take my pertronix off my current one and put it on my euro one.

I plan to run a pertronix unit in the new dizzy. I have a pertronix now. I do not plan on recurving anything. Why, Because for how cheap it was to acquire this distributor, I could not get mine recurved. So the advantage is a stock euro dizzy with pertronix over a stock US distributor with pertronix. So comparing running 5 degrees initial advance to 17 degrees will definitely change the way the car drives. Every other country got a more aggressive curved distributor. The US got an 'emissions' unit. I think this will be a nice step up. I stopped running points a long time ago.

I would be leery to let a shop that known nothing of an L series motor install a header. But that is water under the bridge. My first piece of advice, ask them what header gasket they used. Reason being is the intake and exhaust use the same gasket in most cases (my only gripe about the Lseries) and I would hate to think they just unbolted the manifold and either put the header on old the gasket, or they just cut you a new one. Also, ask them what torque values they used for the bolts/studs. They are going into aluminum remember. Just stay on them. I know mechanics hate being second guessed, but it is YOUR car and they should treat you with respect.

Shade keep in mind that MSA does not sell these anymore. At least they did not when I checked. I had to buy mine from a nice chap in the UK. That is why I am going to get it rebuilt. As I do not know how good of condition it is in since it is used.

well though lots of waiting, I finally got my hand on a used euro dizzy for my 240Z. I plan to have it rebuilt prior to installing. I plan on using these people... http://www.advanceddistributors.com/ They will rework the curves if I want to but I think I am going to keep it exactly stock and just get it cleaned, rebushed, and ready to install my pertronix on it. I may even get a new pertronix so I have a complete spare. I will snap some pictures of the new unit before and after rebuild. Currently my stock 1971 240Z dizzy has these stats: Static 5 Degrees Centrifugal 24 Degrees Vacuum 18 Degrees The euro dizzy looks more like this Stock 17 Degrees Centrifugal 12 Degrees Vacuum 11 Degrees I plan to use the OEM US vacuum advance module on the new european dizzy. I will give my impressions as this goes on.

That is the route I took with mine. I cleaned it off and resprayed it an picked up the new decals. LOVE the stock OEM look of it all.

I want to thank OptimaJim for taking the time to respond with very accurate information. My optima will only get to 12.4 v, which is pretty close to the red top specifications listed by Mr. Optima above. I will keep up with my battery tender jr, and keep my redtop healthy for as long as I can. I have had great luck with my optima. For the record, even at 11.2 volts my optima was able to crank my datsun. It is a great product. I know this thread got off topic a tad, but thanks to optimajim for helping out. It is good to see a vendor go the extra mile to give some personalized information. Thanks Jim. I will try to run my dedicated battery charger at 10Amps for 2 hours to try to break up the sulfates. Have a great day.

Hear hear! I agree with ES

If you had the paperwork for the car, then it should have been displayed properly. It sounds like to me you would have put it off forever had she not done her duty. Volunteer or not, she had a duty and responsibility. As do you. Owning any car is a heavy responsibility, and I think you need to ask yourself if your ready for this one. If so, go get your car and lets get it running and fixed up!!

That is a good enough point. I may have to invest in something more meaty.

This was also posted on the other website I frequent. They are using an LS7 in it. Which is not a bad engine persay, but a little run-of-the-mill for a Zagato designed beauty like this. It is the equivalent of using gorilla glue to hang up the Mona Lisa. Yes it will work just fine, but not really an elegant solution. Plus the press release I read is that the asking price is suppose to be less than 100,000 dollars, which to me is just not possible. You cannot build an body by hand in Italy, ship it to South America and mate it to a chassis, and then sell it in America for less than 100,000 bucks. But it sure is pretty.

I think what I will do is hook it up all weekend and see if it will get me to 13 volts. After 24 hours, the battery was not warm at all, so I am not really worried I am hurting the battery or that it has a short.

That is what I was expecting, but after 24 hours of charging, the red light is still solid and it never gets above 12.4. I may have to look into grabbing a replacement battery just to see if I can get it to charge to 13.XX

How hot did your tender get. Mine is hot to the touch. Not so hot you cannot leave your hand on it, but pretty darn warm.

Okay folks, I recently purchased the 60 amp alternator upgrade from MSA and the install was simplicity itself. I am very happy, but to make the job complete I also bought a Deltran Battery tender Jr 12v model. I have heard nothing but great reviews so I decided my red top optima deserved it. Now here is where it gets weird. I have left it on the car for a solid 24 hours now and it is still glowing red meaning it has never reached the 80% charged level it should and go green. So I picked up my voltmeter and started to do some fiddling. Hooked up to the battery tender, I get about 12.3 volts going to it or so after 24 hours. Unplug the battery and it stay around 12.4 volts. Start the car with my new shiny alternator, and I send a constant 14.2 volts to the battery, which is good. Alternator should put that kind of juice out. My old 40 amp alternator/regulator combo that was stock with the car only put out 12.2 volts. What gets me is no matter how much I charge my battery, it never gets above 12.4 or the 12.2 range. IF left for a long time without driving or charging it will often read less than 12 volts, 11.4 was the lowest. Now my recollection is that a fully charged battery should have in the neighborhood of 13.XX volts.. I have been thinking my optima is old and may be on it last legs. Any comments?

Why not high pressure/high volume oil pump Get your pistons coated with a low for low friction Larger oil pan to hold an extra quart Also, I would avoid shorter rods. They will make for increased side loads on the cylinder walls. I would go for a longer rod if you have to build a stroker, you will get more torque out of it.

I think she is a beauty. Pictures tell only part of the picture, but it sounds 10k is a very fair price for the amount of work. I would like to see how she runs and drives.

Wow, that is VERY clean. superb job man.

I can add to your question. Is the pulley/damper one piece on Z cars, I have not looked. I have no smog or AC system on my car, yet it has a 3 groove pulley. I would like to put a lighter single groove on it. To shed some light on your question, is the OEM'ness of the stock part is probably driving up the cost due to rarity.

THat radio and faceplate look TASTEY!

I will give you an amen my brother!