Walter Moore

If you had 6 throttle body injectors would you need 6 wide band O2 sensors? I don't know. There was a member of this site a while back who had a setup like that and loved it. (I think he was in Hawaii) It would be better to hear from him, than to just speculate and bloatavate.

Humor, its all in the eyes of the beholder.

The 12 on the T-Bar indicates 12 degrees of centrifugal advance at the distributor, which translates to 24 degrees at the crank. If the vacuum advance is attached to the front carb, it will only work at part throttle which is how it was designed. If you hook it directly to the manifold, as I have seen suggested on some sites, it will basically work all the time. (this is bad) The 47 Degrees of total advance that I showed on the chart is the theoretical maximum and only meant as a comparison to other distributors. I doubt that you would ever get that much advance because the vacuum wouldn't be available in the carb at that engine speed under most conditions. Even with the vacuum advance disconnected, if you set the static timing to 12 degrees BTDC as you suggest, you will end up with 36 degrees of total advance at high RPM which is probably too much for pump gas. I started down the road of looking up the distributor specifications because I set my car up almost exactly as you describe, and had excessive spark knock at speed. If you want to get more advance early with your existing distributor you will need to get it re-curved. Have you checked the condition of the bearings in your distributor? If it needs work anyway, that may be an excuse to do something else.

I looks to me like the original question was asking about the correct Nissan part number, Which Arne answered. I don't use the Nissan part, mostly because the nearest Nissan dealer that offers a club discount is 40 miles from my house, which seems like an unreasonable distance to go just to buy an oil filter. I live within walking distance of an Advance Auto, and the top of the line Purolator filters are less than $4. But to each his own.

I know that your car is in really good shape compared to where mine was when I started, but to reiterate what cozye said, when I pulled the fenders off of my car, the bolts on the bottom of the fender snapped clean off at the first twist of the wrench.

The other possibility is that the intake seat on the #4 cylinder leaks back into the intake manifold. But you should see that on a compression check... unless it is a small enough leak that there is only enough leak to allow the just enough burning gas into the intake to detonate the fuel air mixture. Maybe you need to do a leak down test on the #4 cylinder. That will tell you more than a standard compression test.

Click on the Go Advanced button, and below the text entry window there is a button titled "Manage Attachments"

Heh, when I first saw the title of your post I was afraid he was driving the Crown Victoria when you "met" him...

I thought that the Mikuni/Weber style carbs didn't have a choke... But I have no experience with them, so that is just hearsay. Anyway, if you have a cylinder that is pumping out raw fuel, the car will smell really bad. I agree that you need to check for spark first. Did the #4 cylinder look low in your compression test?

That looks really good. Quite the shine you have, it reflects clouds...

Personally, since the 2.4L blocks are not readily available, I wouldn't (in fact I didn't) bore out the cylinders unless the machine shop tells you they aren't round, or are worn too much to just hone. That way if someone in the future needs to rebuild the engine they will have enough material left to get the job done. If you trust the machine shop enough to let them do the work, then talk to them about what is needed for the rebuild. Most good shops will work with you and get the job done right, because references can be the life blood of that business. You will not end up with a flame thrower of an engine going this way, but hopefully it will end up back to its original power, and the car will run for years to come.

In the photograph below, the thermostat on the left is a Stant brand after market unit. The thermostat on the right is the Nissan part for a 240Z. The difference in the size of the opening is significant.

In the U.S. EGR wasn't required until 1972 I think... so early cars didn't have the equipment. (To the best of my knowledge, there was no EGR on my 71' ) The purpose of EGR is to reduce oxides of nitrogen by lowering the combustion temperature. This in theory makes the engine less efficient, not more efficient. (Research "Carnot efficiency" to understand why this is true... ) But I believe that in practice on the engines of the 1970's they likely need all the cooling that they can get, so without the EGR you MAY need to run a richer mixture, which would be less efficient. I have read that one of the reasons that some modern cars from Europe get so much worse fuel mileage in U.S. specification form is because our emission laws require the EGR valve, which reduces the thermodynamic efficiency. I am not certain that I believe that, but it is widely repeated. If your EGR is working properly it doesn't really hurt the performance of the car, so why mess with it?

The actual "ZX" shift lever generally doesn't fit in a 240Z (at least not the early cars) so it is very likely that you actually have a 240Z shift lever anyway.

10 BTDC at your normal idle speed, which is generally 600-700 RPM. Most people do disconnect the vacuum advance (VA) permanently which may be the easy way out if you don't have a lot of time and tools to predict how the VA will react. If you have a used S130 Distributor the odds are 50/50 that the VA doesn't work anyway. To test the VA you need a vacuum source, and a dial-back timing light. You get the engine idling well below the point where the centrifugal advance curve starts, then apply full vacuum to the VA and use the timing light to measure the advance that is produced. The later ZX distributors have a HUGE amount of vacuum advance, and to make it worse the only breaker plate that is available from Nissan is for the late distributors. My personal position has changed over time. If you aren't sure how much VA the unit you have produces, you should consider leaving the VA disconnected.

If you have a hoist you should be able to lift the engine slightly and pull it forward. How did you lift the motor in the first place?

Ben, Back to your original post: You say that you told Hagerty that you would be using the car for some business trips. I have been involved with discussions on this subject at two different employers. MOST personal auto insurance policies specifically exclude "business" use of any vehicle insured on a personal policy. The agent may, or may not tell you this, but check the fine print and the exclusion is normally in the formal policy. Most of the time, if you want to use a car for business trips, even occasionally, you need a commercial vehicle insurance policy. (This is why many companies strongly recommend using either rental cars or company vehicles for business travel.) One of my children was even told specifically by an insurance company (I will not name names, for liability reasons) that they would not insure him because he worked at a Pizza Hut restaurant. He was a manager, and never made deliveries, but the fact that he worked at a restaurant that is known for deliveries made him too high of a risk. He got insurance, but the second company eventually discovered the name of his employer, and sent him a registered letter telling him that he had six months to either: A) upgrade to a commercial policy or send them a notarized letter, written by the franchise owner stating that he would NEVER be asked to make deliveries. He recently found a different job. Auto insurance coverage is based on the risk of having to pay a benefit. That risk is normally based on three factors: A) Driving history, Location, and C) Duration of exposure. The driving history is easy to quantity, but the other two become nearly impossible when business travel becomes part of the equation. If you only drive for pleasure, then the exposure time is low, and the locations are easy to identity. Even commuting to work, the locations are identifiable, allowing the insurance company to calculate their risk. But if you are truly going to use a vehicle for business, then the location and duration become extremely variable, and the assumed risk becomes huge.

First get the fill plug out and check the level. (on the right side of the transmission) The plugs are steel and the case is aluminum. There is some tendency for them to corrode in place, and there is a temperature issue as well. If the plug was tightened with the case hot, and you are removing it cold, you will have trouble. If you are not comfortable with applying lots of force to your car, or don't have really good tools, the professional approach is safer. For the fill plug I have always ended using a pipe wrench and a hammer. (or was it a crescent wrench? maybe vice grips and a cheater bar?) The drain plug in the bottom usually has a recess for a 3/8" drive ratchet I thought. In any event, do not remove the drain plug until you are sure you can get the fill plug out. Otherwise you can't refill the transmission to get it to the shop. Also you need to try the search feature, because the transmission takes special GL-4 oil. If you use the more common GL-5 oil the sulfur in the oil will eat the syncros. The most common recommendation is Redline MT-90. I recall that Pensoil also makes an oil that is safe for "yellow metals", but have never used it.

Er, aren't average quality paint and wavy body panels exactly what you would expect to find on a true 27 year old all original car? If the paint was perfect, and it had no dents or dings, I would be suspicious that it wasn't really original.

Cool, I wonder how many of those still work...

1 Bravo 6's location is: Yeppoon Qld. Australia, so I doubt that he is American... (Just saying.)

Whether they want to admit it or not, we all started working on cars without experience. (There is a Mr. Obvious statement if ever I heard one...) The trick is to learn from other people's mistakes.

They made Mustangs by the millions, but did you ever try to find a 1967 Mustang in a run-able or even restore-able condition? The stripped unit-body can cost as much as a running 240Z. My wife wanted me to restore a 67 for her after I got the Z running. I went looking for one to start from, and ended up buying a 2008 GT for her. (Less money, and more drivable.)

Check your spark plugs. I had a similar issue with my car when I first got it running. I had the choke cables installed wrong and the car was running on constant choke. After about a week it fouled the plugs so bad the car wouldn't run. If the plugs still look new, and aren't coated with excess fuel residue, then move on to the coil.

Good job Dave! Well thought out and a good implementation. The security features may need a little work, but it really isn't much less secure than the ignition switch in most early 70's cars. (The less said publicly about that the better by the way...) And $170 is a reasonable price. Personally I despise the push button start concept, so I am not interested. However for those who are less stuck in the mud than I am, this looks like a promising solution.