motorman7

This really is incredibly sad. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/17/politics/child-abuse-pandemic/index.html Again, sometimes the cure is worse than the poison. For Massachusetts, statistics tell you that there are well over 1000 cases or unreported child abuse PER WEEK in Massachusetts alone due to the lock down. I guess the governors are OK with that.

Got the POR-15 finished last Tuesday. Undercoating sprayed on Thursday. Most of the fuel and brake lines on Saturday and front suspension put in yesterday. Moving right along here. Hope to have rear suspension in on Tuesday. E-brake and smaller lines in on Thursday. Then complete engine and drive train installed this coming weekend. The more I get on the car, the more it opens up space in the garage. Here's a few pics.

Those are amazing! Best I have ever seen.

Car is now home from the paint shop. Started applying the POR-15 to the underside and wheel wells.

Had a crazy revelation after my trip to Target yesterday. The closing of all the restaurants, mom and pop shops and other small stores is the stupidest thing we could possibly do as a country to ease the pandemic. By doing this, you are forcing EVERYONE to only shop at a few stores. This is like forcing everyone to drink from the same cup, infected and non-infected alike. In my few trips to Costco and Target in the last month, both places were packed with lines out the door. Hard to believe that no one in those crowds was not infected. If I could have picked up my hair gel (That's a thing here in California) at a local salon and my ice cream at a local ice cream shop, I could have avoided the mass of humanity, all drinking from the same pond. Same thing with food. Instead of having 100's of restaurants to choose from, my choices are limited to just a few fast food places. Again, the lines are so long to the McDonalds, Carl's Jr, etc. that I just drive on by. Walked in to Chipotle and ordered to go. Again, the problem here is we are all being forced to drink from the same cup, or same infected cashier. Unless of course, you no longer need to eat and own a bidet. Anyway, just had to rant here. The insanity of this all is beyond me. Thankfully I pick my Z up from the paint shop this evening or I think I would lose my sanity.

This company will actually rebuild your flat tops. They do pretty nice work. http://paltech1.com/pricing/ http://paltech1.com/

Pics from the paint shop. Got the grey primer on now.....we're getting closer.

Yes, I was tempted to photoshop a grill on the front. Well she's finally painted. Woo-Hoo! Guess that was done on Wednesday. Pics are lousy because of the shade in the morning, but nice to see it finally done. Shop will do a color sand and looks like I may be able to pick it up on Monday. That would be awesome. Parts are sitting in my garage, ready to install.

Save and put all of those smog items in a nice box for any future owners. Without that stuff, you are probably lowering the value of your car by about $5K.

Pics from the paint shop

@Captain Obvious is the resident flat top expert. The rest of us bask in his shadow

Yes, that sounds about right, and I am guessing 200K or more by December. Earlier, the IMHE charts showed 0 deaths per day once we hit the end of June, which is why it was lower. Now they have it continually increasing which is what we will actually see . Personally, I don't think this goes away in the summer. I am guessing it will thin out a bit in the summer and come back again next winter. Also, I think we will see a higher peak than we did in mid-April on the charts. We moved the bell top to the right and a bit lower with the lock down. The peak will probably hit in early June and I am guessing that will be the top. I don't think the winter peak will be as high. For magazines, I do try and avoid extremes and politically charged headlines. Really, I just want to see the data. It's what I do. Wife calls me 'Spock' and 'Joe Friday', just the facts ma'm. Occasionally, I get political, but I do try and keep it to a minimum.

And here are the latest charts. Looks like we have the weekend swoon again.

Data really is just something to learn from and take action on. Data does not care if you like it or not. It is a tool to use to make decisions, providing information to help someone make the best choice. That being said, the data tells us that the age factor is critical, and not by a small amount. It is technically Orders of Magnitude (10X) different between someone who is 80 versus someone who is 50 versus someone who is 20. That's pretty crazy. I have a hard time thinking of things that show that great of a differential. Even turbocharger boost pressure wouldn't ramp up engine HP that fast. The other thing is: the data doesn't care whether you are locked down or not. This is deadly for the elderly no matter who you are, whether you are in New Zealand or Sweden. If you are over 50 (just to be safe), you want to avoid this at all costs. Ideally, you would probably want to secure all retirement homes and communities with a pretty hardcore lockdown. If you let anyone in, they need to be tested. All staff needs to be tested, etc. Those 50 and under? your odds are pretty good and probably not much different than the common flu. While Sweden may continue to take a lot of heat, they are just about done with the race and on the right side of the bell curve. I do not think that the US is there yet.....except for maybe NY and NJ. Below are the death by age charts for UK, Wuhan, Sweden, and the US.

I like option 1 as well...of course. Here is a thread that I blogged during a Flat top resto. I like the flat tops for the rarity and the fact that they are original to the car.

Good article on Sweden's response https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-crisis-sweden-refused-lockdown-other-countries-following/ I thought that this was an interesting quote: "Over half of Swedish deaths are in nursing homes. Of those who died, 90 percent were over 70 and half were over 86, with just 1 percent younger than 50. It is ironic that half of the Swedish deaths are in people over the age of 86. Life expectancy in Sweden is 83" https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107913/number-of-coronavirus-deaths-in-sweden-by-age-groups/ Yes, interesting chart. Most of the initial rise was New York and New Jersey and some of Michigan. As these three states seem to be beyond the peak and on their way down, other states are still ramping up, keeping the total new cases relatively flat. Would be nice if the summer heat would bring the curve down....we'll see.

Wow, that's a steal. Worth the price for the steel rims alone even with shipping. Hubcaps are easy to find, the steelies seem to be quite rare.

Selling here for almost $1800 https://jdm-car-parts.com/collections/wheel-nissan-datsun-fairlady-z-240z-260z-280z-280zx/products/wheel-hub-cap-set-for-1971-76-datsun-240z-260z-and-280z-nos?variant=786396845 Personally, hubcaps like you have shown in the pic I would say $1200-1400, if not more. Nice ones are getting very hard to find. Re-chromed ones usually to not turn out real well from what I have seen.

Yes, I noticed that for some states the daily toll is unchanged for several days, then there is a large uptick. Guess they are probably not reporting every day. Yesterday was another day with over 2000 US Covid deaths. While New York continues to drop, others are rising. New Jersey still has some high numbers and looks like the midwest is starting to increase. I added Illinois and Indiana charts because they seem to have a significant increase. I also changed the polynomial indicator to a 3rd order so that it follows the actual numbers a bit closer.

I once had a loud click on my '70 and it turned out to be the water pump (I thought it was perhaps a rod bearing). Turns out the bearings on the water pump were getting bad allowing the shaft to mis-align enough to have the impeller vanes hit the housing, causing the click.

The charts seem to be showing more new cases and more deaths over the last couple days per the mdmetrix charts. I believe these trends will continue for most of the US states for at least another month or two. As I said before, the better we quarantine, the longer we get to do it. The lockdown is pushing the peaks to the right. New York, Louisiana and New Jersey are on the right side of the peak and are in the best shape. I would also add Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming as states that are doing well. https://covid-19.mdmetrix.com/grid.html?list=death_curve https://covid-19.mdmetrix.com/grid.html?list=new_case_curve https://www.mdmetrix.com/covid-19-projections "Update for April 30, 2020 New York remains on its 20-day descent path for reported daily deaths from COVID-19. Louisiana also remains on a descent phase, with the last 18 days' data signals indicating a stable decline (albeit with a shallow downward slope). We’ll monitor closely as Louisiana begins "phase 1 reopening" this week. Encouragingly, Pennsylvania is now showing overlapping improvement signals for the state's reported daily deaths. Pennsylvania joins 18 other states that have been showing overlapping data signals indicating that they have moved away from the exponential growth curve for reported daily deaths: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. —Dr. Dan Low, Chief Medical Officer of MDmetrix" I still do not agree with the second paragraph assessment and think that Pennsylvania is not doing so well based on daily deaths. Their infection rate does however seem to be slightly slowing. I added them into my charts just to see how the data looks with the Polynomial indicator. Also, there was a spike in the US daily deaths that was again over 2000. Most of those (59%) were from New York, New Jersey and......Pennsylvania.

Yes, I stripped and painted the steering rack gloss black. I also lubed the assembly near the steering input and the rack portion at both ends. Then cycled the rack back and forth to work the grease in. Installed new boots. For the steering input shaft that attaches to the rack, I usually just clean and paint. The U-joint is typically in pretty good condition. If it were loose, I would replace it. Also, for what it is worth, I think the Japanese bearings on the Z cars are very high quality. Unfortunately most replacement bearings are Chinese and I don't think the quality is as good as the originals.

Unfortunately, I live in SoCal. You do not even want me to start referencing all of the articles up and down the state here of empty hospitals and furloughed doctors and nurses in this state. There is probably a balance in between the two states. As I have said before, New York is in the best position right now.

Unfortunately, that is true. We are artificially flattening the curve which I believe will do us more harm than good in the long run. We are running from the problem right now and our only hope is a 'silver bullet'. Funny thing, maybe it's smoking. Ayn Rand would be proud (All her 'hero' characters smoked). https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/scientists-must-discover-why-so-few-coronavirus-patients-are-smokers I still think Sweden is doing the best job as a country and their social distancing rules are pretty much spot on. I would add more mask usage though. Their curves are almost perfect and there is no need to start loosening restrictions as they are fairly loose already. The ones they have in place are reasonable and they are on the downside of the bell curve with large herd immunity. In the US, I think we are going to stay pretty flat and the drop off will happen VERY slowly. Here are some of Sweden's data and charts. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107913/number-of-coronavirus-deaths-in-sweden-by-age-groups/ Chart comment: After looking at this data of death by age group, I would be pretty pissed about the whole lockdown if I were 50 or under (More than I am already, if that could be possible). The death rate is incredibly low for those 50 and under. We knew this from the crappy China data. Unfortunately, the old folks running the show are penalizing the young for no reason, in my opinion. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105753/cumulative-coronavirus-deaths-in-sweden/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102193/coronavirus-cases-development-in-sweden/ Also, I noticed IHME now has the total at over 74K. That number is low. We will hit pretty close to 100K......unless we all start smoking maybe? https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america Also, new cases are rising in most of the states. I think it's because people are getting antsy and tired of the lockdown. https://covid-19.mdmetrix.com/grid.html?list=new_case_curve Check out the right side of the curves. Most are increasing and this is daily data, not cumulative. https://www.mdmetrix.com/covid-19-projections "Update for April 28, 2020 New York remains on its 18-day descent path for reported daily deaths from COVID-19. Louisiana also has entered a descent phase, with the last 16 days' data signals indicating a stable decline (albeit with a shallow downward slope). We’ll monitor closely as Louisiana begins "phase 1 reopening" this week. Encouragingly, 18 additional states continue to show overlapping data signals indicating that they have moved away from the exponential growth curve for reported daily deaths and are now on an extended plateau: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. —Dr. Dan Low, Chief Medical Officer of MDmetrixI " I agree with the first paragraph and would add New Jersey to that list. I still contend that the second paragraph is badly mistaken. These have been artificially flattened and the initial exponential is no longer valid. The data points on the far right for new cases are increasing in many of those states the Dr listed. That typically means more deaths.

Looks like we may be over the top now and on the down side of the bell curve as a nation. New York is definitely on the down side, maybe California? There are still a few states where the numbers are increasing, but most seem to be tailing off, which is a good sign. Maybe the warmer weather will help. Will be interesting to see how this plays out over the coming weeks. People are getting a little tired of the quarantine and lack of jobs/money.