Gary in NJ

Funny, but sadly true. You might just start by disconnecting everything in the area of smoke and reconnect on-by-one to isolate the shorted system(s).

I'm not aware of any power assist kits. The "trick" to manual steering is to make sure the car is rolling just a bit before you turn the wheel. I've owned many cars with manual steering (my MR2 was just perfect) and they all lighten-up with just a little motion.

Yep, on some sealed beams you'll find the word "TOP" imprinted in the glass.

Two month old gas should not hinder combustion. Unless you last drove the car two months ago with 2-4 month old gas. Now you just might have an issue. Here is something else to consider. Just starting a car and allowing it to warm up isn't the best thing for the combustion chamber(s). This practice can lead to fouled spark plugs. Try some fresh spark plugs and see if that get's you going.

Your description places it somewhere between $500 and $20,000. Details and photo's would be helpful.

Fuel, air & spark. If the engine is turning over, one of the three is missing. For an engine that didn't have a pre-existing problem when it was parked 60 days ago, my first guess would be fuel.

The 280's have a Volt gauge, not a ammeter like the 240's.

What it means is that the carbs aren't balanced or in sync. There are throttle adjustment screws (air screws) on both carbs. Simply adjust the front carb until it's flow is equal with the rear. A little turn makes a big difference. To get more air into the venturi, you'll want to turn the front screw counter-clockwise. You may find that this change requires that the idle be adjusted. Lean, the single balance screw is to set the balance at Fast Idle (like 3000 rpm).

What exit?

Same as my'72.

Struts, springs and bushings. Replace them all with OEM quality parts and you should get a nice ride. Stay away from performance parts as they favor handling over ride quality. If the struts have more then 50,000 miles and the springs 100,000 miles they are all due for a change. The OEM tire size is 195/60-14. The 65 series ties have a higher side wall and will help with ride quality - only if your tires aren't old and hard.

The battery Positive (+) goes to the B (battery) terminal on the solenoid, and the Black wire (spade terminal) goes to the S (switch) terminal. The negative (-) from the battery gets connected to the starter near the ring gear (top left of photo). In the photo below, you'll also see a yellow wire that goes to a connector and then to a black wire with a ring terminal. That to gets connected to the ( terminal too.

Do you know your current set-up? Are there any know problems that need to be corrected? It would be helpful to know the baseline. If you are running a stock suspension, simply replacing worn parts will have a huge effect on ride compliance.

I just used more words;)

Place a multimeter on the output of the alternator and see if the readings are equally erratic. If so, the problem is most likely a bad regulator. If the reading is smooth, the problem is your gauge or the wiring leading to the gauge. It could be as simple as a loose connection.

Ah...wow.

The syncrometer I use for my motorcycles gets connected to vacuum ports on the carbs. How do you connect those to your Z's SU's? I only have one vacuum port on my front carb (connected to the vac advance).

The point is you don't tune to carbs to achieve a particular flow (measured in kg/h or lbs/h) but to have the same flow. You can use any carb sync tool, but the flow values are only used for reference to compare the flow of the other carb.

That's what I call a fundamental transformation. Nice job bringing that car back to where it belongs.

The weight would be kg/hr of air. Bruce is correct, there isn't an optimum figure as our carbs are variable venturis. What is important is that they open in unison, hence the use of a uni-sync rather then a synchrometer.

Well, according to Carl's website (zhome), the last '72 built was -100155 in 8/72. Series IV cars (1973) start at s/n -120000. There are a number of cars in the registry with sub-120000 vins listed as '73's.

OK, so I added my car to the registry. Here's an oddity, my car a 1972 240Z s/n HLS30-91415 lands smack in the middle of the 1973 cars, yet its build date of 07/72 clearly places it amongst the 1072 cars. I wonder what the delay was between the build date and the serial number.

Or as I like to say: Buy once, cry once. And... If you need one, buy two.

Like the line from one of my favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd songs "you're not doin' bad, you're not bad at all". It looks like most of your ills are at the surface, and that is good news indeed. With a little effort you might have yourself a good 20-foot car.