motorman7

I will be there to represent the West Coast. Got my hotel reservations made....staying at the timeshare Sent from my C6902 using Classic Zcar Club mobile

I agree, there is definitely a steeper learning curve with these. That being said, I really enjoy the challenge of re-building these. It is nice to clean everything (love that Gumout spray) and re-assemble with fresh parts. Just got the throttle shafts in. I like the coating and it is definitely durable as they use this stuff on racing pistons. I did a quick test fit and they fit in nicely. Not too loose, not too tight. Not too worried about the color difference as most of this will be covered up...Pics are a little dark

I think you are a prophet. I think there will come a time when it will be popular for the '73 and '74 owners to put the flat tops on. They just need to see more nice examples. I am pretty sure it was folded under, but could be wrong. I took it off very carefully. The material is very supple, perhaps that is why no crease. Plus, there was a bunch of black 'gunk' right in the area of the crease on the last aluminum section. Not sure what the gunk was, but it came off easy with carb cleaner. Will have to see if I have pictures of that. Will also see how the pump in the second carb looks. I should be able to finish out the carbs this weekend...assuming I get my throttle shafts. Will also carefully save the bowl seals.

Started the carb re-assembly now that I have freshly plated parts. This is actually a lot of fun to re-assemble using the new gasket kits. Fortunately, I have a spare set of flat tops to look at to make sure that everything goes together right. Also have the 'upgrade' guide. Replaced all the gaskets on the pump assembly. Interestingly, it looks like the original one was folded over as you can see in the last pic. Choke mechanism works nice. My throttle shafts are supposed to be ready tomorrow with fresh dry film lube. Should be able to finish things out once I get those.

Nice

Hi Jim, Actually, the two shown are not for this car and are for earlier models (E30 and ?, I probably should not have included them on this thread) . They do not have the side port near the outlet which is unique to the '73 and '74s. The '73 manifold, I'm guessing early '73 (N36), has the side port as shown below and in earlier post. As you know, there is a tube that routes from this port up to the balance tube. On the '73 exhaust manifold, I drilled and tapped the smog ports. You can actually see part of that manifold in one of the above pics (3 manifolds). Also, I re-posted the '73 manifold pics below. The '74 manifold are much larger as seen in your picture. Not sure when the change came about for the larger size, but both have the side port. Yes, funny thing about the air galley and the discoloration. Not sure if there is any way to prevent that. It seems to discolor more if you disable the air pump which probably gets the air galley real hot since there is nothing to cool it down. It does appear that after the initial discoloration that the color stabilizes which is a good thing. And, I really don't have enough experience with the different platers to know which ones have a better finish or not. Will have to see how the air galley for this '73 does as it is NOS. Hopefully that does well.

Got parts back from plating. Sorted these into separate boxes to help keep things organized. Items are categorized as, Nuts, Bolts, Washers, Brake parts, Carb and Smog parts, small screws and washers, silver zinc parts, and misc. That will help when I start putting things back together.

I didn't check the chemistry (not my field of expertise) but I figure the fumes from the Kroil and PB Blaster are probably not good for you either. Did my best to keep away from that stuff. I should clarify, the color of the dry film lube for this application is dark grayish. My intent was not so much the color replication, but the surface build-up and the bearing surface. The shaft is pretty much encapsulated, so the color will not be visible. Also, the dry film lube finish seems to be very durable. They use it to coat the piston skirts on racing engines. And yes, I did have to google STNG ?

I was able to get two of the fittings to loosen on one of the manifolds. That is very promising. The other four on that same manifold would not budge. So, I think I will let them soak some more and try again on Thursday. No rush as this would be worth the wait. The fire and ice seems to work pretty well. Hopefully it will allow the Kroil to penetrate a little deeper on the fittings that would not move. The second manifold wasn't moving at all. So, I think I will continue to soak that one as well. I took the throttle shafts into Olympic coatings for a dry film lube coating. This should hopefully replicate the previous green coating that was on the throttle shafts. Forgot to take before pics on these. Also got a couple tires in today from @jayhawk. I will wait till later before I unwrap them. Pretty sure they are some nice Bridgestones.

Will have to look into the Freeze Off spray. Just found it on line.

I have a 14mm flare nut wrench that fits well on these. The problem is that the metal is incredibly soft, so it's hard not to damage the nut when trying to unloosen them. Occasionally I have resorted to the vise-grips but that rarely turns out well. I should get a little time tonight, so may give it a try using the torch and ice along with the flare nut. I need to add some of those funky looking vise-grips to my arsenal, thanks for the pics.

Wow, an automatic on a series 1. That doesn't seem right. Too bad there are no engine pics.

Bought a couple air galley's since these were pretty hard to find. One for this car and one for my white Z. Now that these are getting way too pricey, I am going to try and salvage these two. I have been soaking the two set-ups shown below in alternate soakings of Kroil and PB blaster. After about a week, I will hit them with fire and ice (torch on the exhaust manifold, then ice cube on the fitting) and see if I can get them to budge. I am not optimistic, but will give it a try. If that doesn't work, then I will just cut them off and drill and tap.

@zclocks has a funky e-mail confirmation thing before it will get to him. I guess that is to prevent spam.

And its not for a 1973. It's for a 1970 -1972. 1973 is an N36 manifold

Tempting, but I am currently space constrained. I am semi-seriously looking for a car barn. That would make me dangerous I think.

The scary thing is that I think it's a good deal.

Yes, it is nice to have someone with his quality of work. The delay is due to the number of Z cars he is working on concurrently. Here's a pic of the staging area: Can you tell that I am ready for the body to show up? I actually had an old '73 exhaust manifold laying around, so I worked on removing the old vestiges of the air galley and re-tapped the holes. Also, the large plug for the tube that goes from this manifold to the balance tube came out pretty easily. I will take this over to Olympic and get it ceramic coated. New air galley's are getting hard to find (meaning expensive) and old ones never come off well. Zstore and Zeddsaver are out of stock on these. Had to pick up one from Jay at jdm-parts.com It should arrive in a couple days.

More photos from the paint shop. Progress seems to be painfully slow as I have pretty much all of the suspension and undercarriage items complete along with the motor, but no structure to attach it to. I am chomping at the bit to start assembling things here. I still have stuff to keep me busy but would rather be putting parts on the car. Latest batch of plated parts will be back in a week. Will get working on the exhaust manifold, handbrake cable and finish up the dash here shortly.

Continued work on the other half shaft and differential (after a short Holiday getaway). I tried to buff out the scratches off of the differential rear cover and ended up making that a bit to shiny. Sprayed it with some matte clear to tone it down a bit. Drained all the fluid out of the diff. The diff gear assembly is pretty smooth with virtually no backlash so I won't touch anything here other than put in new fluid once everything is together. I sent the diff nuts and bolts out for plating along with some of the carb parts and some of the other remaining items, so I will complete the assembly in a week or so. Loosely pieced the parts together to get an idea of what the final assembly will look like.

This one is actually painted with duplicolor 'stainless steel' paint. Typically I strip off all of the paint on the half shafts and then just do a clear coat. However, these shafts were pretty discolored (I think due to the rust and corrosion) and 'blotchy', and no amount of wire wheel stripping would clean them up. I initially did the clear coat on this shaft just to see if the discoloration would go away, but it did not and actually looked worse. So, I stripped the clear coat from the shafts and painted it with the closest color I could find to it's bare state. Technically, these are supposed to be painted black, but since everything else under there will be black, it would look kind of plain. I am also planning on stripping the back plate of the differential and leaving that bare. That makes for a pretty nice looking rear end.....that few people will really see. The finished product should look something like the pic below.

That is 115 Sent from my C6902 using Classic Zcar Club mobile

That is the stock color. The lighting makes things look a little off. Sent from my C6902 using Classic Zcar Club mobile

Started clean-up work on the differential and half-shafts. And...Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Got some photos from the paint shop....very pretty ?