Walter Moore

If you daughter is helping you fix the car now, does that mean she gets to drive it to school in 6 or 7 years? (I only ask because neither of my girls will drive my car, even if I offer to loan it to them. Something about the manual transmission and the fear of wrecking something that I spent a large portion of their lives rebuilding.)

I used to have a hand pumped vacuum style brake bleeder until the pump died. (I can not remember the brand.) Then I bought an Air Vac from Harbor freight, which is really intended for AC work. I changed some fittings around and use it with the brake fluid jar from the hand pump style bleeder. It works great. (You do need an air compressor however.) Mostly the vacuum bleeders work by pressing a rubber hose over the bleeder valve's nipple, so basically any bleeder should work on any car. (So long as the bleeder valves have a hose bulge, which nearly all of them do.)

The body is straight. The paint job is marginal. The seller is being honest with the rust issues. I have no idea if it is worth what they are asking, but I have seen worse Z cars.

Looked good to me. But the I am not a racer.

I know that most of the suspension bolts are 10x1.25, which is why I have a box of those left over in the garage. But the "standard" 10mm thread on the high strength bolts is 1.5 mm. I don't think that I have encountered the 1.0mm thread anywhere yet, but I will take your word for it.

Must be different in this part of the country. I have no trouble getting NGK plugs at any of the local parts places. Advance, O'reily's, etc. In fact when I replaced the plugs in my Chevy last year the only plugs Advance Auto had in stock for that vehicle were... NGK.

That whole date thing is so over-rated... ;-)

I actually saw that sentence on a bumper sticker on a Triumph Spitfire an a SCCA event at Raceway Park in the early 80's. Now the part about the TR6 having a frame is interesting...

Good luck finding a donor car that doesn't have the same problem. The rear wheel arch is rust spot #1 for these cars from what I can tell. If the body shop is going to weld in the new piece I would check with MSA and others to see what kind of repair panels they have. Did the body shop have a recommendation for a source?

I refinished my steering wheel. It wasn't a big deal. Just sand off the old finish, stain it with walnut or mahogany stain, and then finish with several coats of a good furniture type coating. I used tung oil, but I hear that polyurethane works well also. With tung oil you have to let it dry for a day or two, then use steel wool between coats.

The rear proportioning valve is brass. The fitting will not be rusted in place, but from memory it seems like you just about have to take the differential down to get to it. The really BAD NEWS is that in my experience when you remove the old fitting it will auger out the prop. valve and a new line will not seal. If that happens, PM me because somewhere around here I have one or two spares. (Unless someone "straightened up" too much...) No guarantee that they won't leak as well, but I can start digging. The prop valve is NLA. The standard recommendation seems to be to replace it with an after-market adjustable unit. I personally had a horrible time getting the rear brakes to work. I ended up bending my own lines all the way from the master cylinder back to the rear wheels. I was only able to do that because I removed the entire drive line. Even then I had to replace every single bit of the rear braking system with new parts, most of them OEM, before I got the rear brakes to work properly. I can see why Nissan switched to disk brakes in the early 80's because in my opinion their drum brakes were iffy at best. (We had a mid 70's Datsun B210 and that thing wouldn't stop for love or money, no matter how often the brakes were "fixed".) As far as the cost, the lines can be bought either pre-bent, or you can just go to a parts store, buy lots of 3/16" straight lines and start bending to suit. By the time you get done you will be a passable "bender" (Think Futurama.) New lines are hard to flare, but the old lines will be impossible. The steel gets brittle and the ends will split every time you try. Good luck. This is a big job, but it can be done.

The tachometer not working correctly with electronic ignition seems to be a common issue with the early cars. Mine reads about 10% high all across the range since I installed the ZX distributor. There are some threads on the subject, but there doesn't seem to be a common denominator to the problems. The tach stopping at a certain point seems to be common on after-market EI installations as well.

Minimal tools? A wrench and a hammer should be enough. Use short, sharp, shocks, (as Pink Floyd used to say...) and eventually you will break the bolt loose. But beware: if you get frustrated and start to really HAMMER on it you will break the bolt clean off. Good Luck.

The photo on the far right shows "scuff plates". They go on the inside of the door opening near the floor to cover and clamp down the weather stripping. The others I do not recognize.

Very Orange! I like it.

I assume that is a modern SBC (based on the oil filter location). What displacement will it have? Good luck with that. Are you going to use a manual, or go the automatic route? I think I offended someone once by trying to talk them out of using a TH400 in their car. I really didn't mean to be cruel, but those are just HUGE, heavy monsters intended for 3 ton cars and delivery vans. (I owned two or three cars with a turbo 400 and always thought it was funny that the transmission held more oil than the engine.)

The "Leaky air sound" might be a vacuum leak. (I don't know without checking a FSM if the air controls were vacuum, or cable powered on the 76.) On my 71 the fuse for the blower motor is actually located in an in-line fuse holder under the dash. (Not in the fusebox) I don't know if that was still true in 76.

Bruce Palmer is the guy to ask (Z Therapy). The 4 screw carbs are more period correct for a 1971 240Z, but I don't think that there is a functional difference.

I can't get the video to run on my system for some reason. That is the exhaust that I have on my car. I found that band style clamps sealed the system much better than the cheap U-bolt style clamps. They don't cost that much either. NAPA sells them as does Summit Racing: http://www.summitracing.com/search/Part-Type/Exhaust-Clamps/Brand/Summit-Racing/?keyword=exhaust+band+clamps They really cut down on the fumes inside the car for me.

The short answer is "yes, shell = different car". In most states the "car" is the uni-body chassis, and if you swap the "shell" you have a different car.

Hello! There is a lot of useful information available on this site. Search and have fun. (Hope the drunk driver wasn't a close friend or relative...)

Cool video!

Glad to hear that the real fun is about to begin!

Seems to me that we had this conversation a couple of years ago... I have owned 26 cars over the years. Nine of them were daily drivers. 13 G.M., 6 Fords (2 were Mustangs), 2 Dodges, 2 V.W.s (NEVER AGAIN!) 1 Volvo, 1 Suzuki, and 1 240Z. The only five that were in any way special were: 1967 Mustang (Wife's first car) 1974 Volvo 164e (Stodgy styling but a really fun car.) 1982 Dodge Charger 2.2 (I plead the fifth officer!) 2008 Mustang GT (Wife's current car, notice a pattern here?) 1971 Datsun 240Z

Guess he should have been more specific about the TYPE of feedback he wanted huh?