motorman7

This one looks interesting CLASSIC 1970 DATSUN 240Z ORIGINAL CONDITION! SERIAL # 646!!

Hi Carl, Nice commentary on the plating. The only item that seemed off was the ‘dull silver’ of the plating and the yellow chromate making it shiny. In my plating experience, dull silver will result in dull chromate. If it’s not shiny coming out of the zinc plating bath, the chromate will not make it shinier. Additives to the zinc plating bath allow you to adjust the ‘shiny factor’. That’s the nice feature about doing this at home. Also, to get the ‘rainbow’ effect, I use a short 20-30 second dip in blue chromate before the 1-2 minute dip in the yellow chromate. Warm DI rinse after this and heat dry and you are good to go. A couple other comments on the whole bolt thing: 1. The easiest way to go about this is to order new nuts and bolts on line as a number of others have noted. Unless you are going for a ZCON gold medallion, very few people will notice that your bolt heads are off. Only the few of us anal retentive Z-junkies will notice. Just make sure they are quality parts. 2. If you do send your parts to a plating service, they will throw all of the parts in a big bucket and leave you to sort these out. Even with great pictures it will be difficult to get the correct bolt in the correct hole for final assembly. Just something to consider. If you install the wrong bolt in the wrong place and try it in several other places, now you have worn your plating off. a. Another issue with sending out to plate is you may not like the plate job. Parts could come back dull, too dark, etc. (That’s why I started doing my own) b. If you go this route, make sure you have all the parts you want to plate in that batch. Will cost time and money to go back for second and third plating batch. c. If you don’t do your own prep work, this gets expensive as you will pay by the hour for them to wire wheel/sand blast your parts. Also as stated here several times, GIGO, the parts have to look good and clean before they go to the plater. d. No guarantee you will get the parts back that you sent in. You may get some additional, may lose some. 3. If you do choose to do your own plating, it will cost about $500 for a decent set-up. I personally use the Caswell product with a B-K power supply. ‘Blue’ has a very good write-up on the whole plating process which would be good to read before moving in this direction. a. Only go in this direction if you plan on doing this on a number of cars, otherwise it is not very cost effective. b. The beauty of this is that you can plate whenever you want and get your parts done same day if needed. You can also make adjustments to the system to get the exact finish you are looking for. c. Also, I use the zip lock baggy method and label all parts in small batches. When I plate, I plate one baggy at a time and keep them organized. Makes assembly much simpler and saves time searching for parts. Zip-loc’s, one of the best tools in my tool box. Anyway, just my thoughts and good luck. Best regards, Rich

Yes, it will fit in well there. We took it for a drive today....very nice car. I am sure my Z would smoke it though.

It has the 1.8 litre motor but 2.3 muffler. PO said it wa a straight swap. Nice sounding motor and very nice ride. My son is just thrilled with it. I love the styling of the CRZ but was a bit bothered by the visibility. Ended up getting an Elantra that gets 40 MPG...uh oooops, 38 MPG highway. Nice lines as well. Didn't want to deal with the batteries. The original Honda CRX is epic.

Interesting, it was not intentional. I think it turned out that way because the weather was cloudy and overcast.

Actually, my son bought the Z, I just co-signed. And obviously, it's a Z3. Very nice looking car and runs great. We did a little detail work and took some pics with the yellow 240. Sweet cars

Hi Mike, Thanks for the feedback. It's nice to see the progress. The more detail that gets added, the better it looks. The head is a bit of a challenge. Lots of crevices. This is fun as long as I do just an hour here and there. More time than that and it starts turning in to work. It will be way cool when we can start assembling the major components. Best regards, Rich

So many details on this thing. Slowly coming along though

Finally have a little free time to work on the model again. Added some more detail to the block. Getting the head and valve cover started as well. May even get to some suspension components over the holidays. Ten days off, Wooo Hoooo:laugh:

Oil Pan update. Added the stiffening rib. Weldment will be a bit of a challenge. Not sure how much detail I want to add here. There is a lot to do.

Got a series 1 oil pan modeled.

Started working on the block. Attached is the basic form but it still needs a lot of detail and clean up. Block.zip

Grrrrrr.......like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa ..........I know, I know

Just went through the pictures again. That interior says 8K miles. Very little sag in the seats, clean wood on the steering wheel as well as the black paint, although it may have been touched up. The foot pad on the floor mat is intact and it looks to be the correct carpet. Radio knobs are very clean. Very nice interior indeed. In spite of the muffler discrepancy, the chrome in the muffler area is very clean. On my ’70 with 97K miles, the exhaust has definitely effected the chrome finish and rubber in that area. The chrome and rubber finishers look to be very clean on this car. Now, how to explain the engine? So many scenarios here. Owner could have used an engine cleaner on it and not rinsed thoroughly before running motor hot. Car could have been kept in a coastal environment with salt in the air. Maybe in an industrial area where dew point would cause water to be slightly acidic. These last two might also effect the rear muffler. Hard to say. Would really be nice to have a set of eyes trained eyes look at this and report back. Sometimes pictures are very forgiving of a cars faults.

i'm betting the throttle linkage on the silver was refurbed along with the carbs. I think the smog rail is a better indicator of mileage.

It would be nice to see some undercarriage pictures. That is always pretty telling.

Mine has the 2k mile limitation as well s the "limited in driving to and from show's or events and not used for daily driving". Works for me

Just to offer a different point of view, there is a little more to an old Z car than having one in #1 or #2 condition. Personally, I love my old minimally refreshed 240Z and have no desire or intentions of making the changes required for it to be a gold medallion winner. I love it's originality and 'patina' as Dan so appropriately calls it :-) . My car will never be as nice as his and I'm OK with that. More than anything it thrills me to say, "yes, that is the original factory paint, seats, dash, sparks plug wires, fuel hoses, etc". Not too many owners can say that. The thing I prize the most is the uniqueness of the car. There just aren't that many un-restored Z's in good condition out there, period. I may not place well at the local Z shows, but how many Z owners can say that they have won out over a Bentley, Benz's and Cadillacs at a Concours event (preservation class of course. Along this lines, it seems more shows are jumping on the 'preservation class' band wagon). A well preserved Z is a unique and special car indeed. The question with the '73 is what are you really looking for in a Z. Personally, if I were to buy this I would do the least amount possible to make the engine bay look better. I would definitely re-do the zinc for corrosion purposes, but beyond that, can't say I would do anything else. I would just do a lot of cleaning and manage any potential rust areas, that's it. The car definitely looks good in the pics. A close personal inspection would be in order for any car in that price range. And, regarding the market for an old car: I believe there are people out there that will pay top dollar for a minimally touched Z in great condition. I personally have turned down several offers including a $40K offer while at the Dana Point Concours. Again, it's the rarity of the item that makes it valuable. Anyway, just my thoughts. Rich

Mine is currently insured for $40K with no appraisal, and I probably need to move that up to $50K. I do send Hagerty's award (concours) links just for the record.

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HHmmmm...looks like some stuff I could use there. I think my exhaust manifold has a crack and I see a nice one in the picture. You will have to clue me in on how to access some of these parts :-)

Inspection lid clip......Test for iges upload 240z_clip.zip

Wow, your model is incredible. I would love to get an .igs file of your model. I am a Pro-E guru and this would be great to play with. Also, noticed you are in Russia. I traveled out there a number of times working with the Russian space agency. Was fun work. Best regards, Rich

Yes, I wasn't sure what thread to post this on as this is a Z site. But it is somewhat relevant as these are the Z predecessors, and there are not many active roadster sites. I was going to post this on the 'What did you do on your S30 today?', but that would not be correct. Not many threads here for the SPL or SRL311, so I thought I would resurrect this one. I will have to research that block valve...not familiar with it. I had a 67 1600 roadster when I was much younger also, but sold it when my first child arrived. Now that the kids are (kind of) out of the house, I picked up a roadster to restore and am about 1/3 of the way done, I think. Hopefully I can have it going about a year from now. Below is a before pic. Also attached is a pic of what I would like final to look like, only in 1600 form. Best regards, Rich

I put the motor in my roadster today. Had to make room on the engine stand for my Z motor. Anyway, just thought I'd post some pics of the Roadster. The resto is slow going. Doing too many house projects for the boss. Probably need some new tires here too.