Walter Moore

I love the color! (Obviously...)

Heh, Dig the automatic shifter! Straight out of a Pinto! Why would you do that?

Maybe he just thinks they are stainless...

When my son gets his broken BMW out of my way, I need to drop the drive shaft (again) and try to find the vibration back there. I plan on having a local shop replace the U joints and re-balance it. Assuming that I don't find a bad bearing in the Differential or transmission. Actually, now that I think of it, the transmission has a bad sychro on 2nd anyway, maybe I just need to drop a 5 speed in there while I am at it... (the work never ends...) :tapemouth

Gee, all that I found was a strange brake pad (It had a wire molded into the pad...) and a "roach clip". (It wasn't mine! Honest officer!)

There is more room between the mounting surface and the strut in the rear than there is on the front wheels. I did some measuring and estimating on my car several years ago when I was looking at wheel/tire combinations. In my notes I see that I had some estimates of maximum offset that show something like 5 inches of maximum back spacing with the stock struts. That would give your 225's a max offset of about 10mm. But 215's would very likely work with a 13mm offset. I admit that I was trying to be safe with the 5 inches as well. It might work, but it would be really close.

If you are sure the engine needs rebuilt, find a good machine shop in your area, and after you dis-assemble the engine take them all the parts. (Leave the head intact, a good shop will want to take that apart themselves.) Have them inspect EVERYTHING. They can tell you what needs replaced, but generally you should expect to spend at least $900 for the parts and labor. That should cover the head work as well. Then you will have to re-assemble the engine. Get a good manual, and follow the directions closely. Most people also replace the cylinder head bolts just to be safe. (The shop will probably recommend that as well.) Good luck.

I couldn't get a pickle fork to work when I pulled the ball joints out of my car. I ended up using an arbor press. But with a press, go big or stay home! (Sorry a little euchre table talk there...)

If you have an early 240 that brass block is the brake proportioning valve. (See attached picture.) Be very careful with that thing. They are NLA, hard to find, and I stripped out two of them trying to re-attach brake lines to them. I don't recall them being a special thread. But then I also had trouble getting them to seal and hold pressure correctly. I had to use a lot of Teflon tape as I recall...

That right there is a hint. It hasn't been running in a long time. Check the compression on all six cylinders. It is likely that the rings are stuck. I am sure someone knows how to deal with that short of rebuilding the engine, but that is what I ended up doing to my 240. More suggestions guys? If his rings are stuck and he is getting no compression what can be done?

"Rust Free?" Is there such a thing as a rust free car? (Not in Indiana obviously....)

Yep, the only NISMO clutch parts I could find quickly were these: http://www.courtesyparts.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=CP&Category_Code=s30_nismo_clutch225

The damage from the wreck is mostly cosmetic. It needs a hood, grill, lower valance, etc but otherwise it looks salvageable. There seems to be a lot of missing interior parts however... I would check that the frame is straight. But if you get it, good luck.

I have had a lot of old cars, and many of them have had symptoms like that. If there is a lot of gunk in the oil passages, or a lot of blow-by past the rings the oil turns black very quickly. Oh, and I agree with Nissanman as well on the short trip theory. The color of the oil is not generally a good indicator of when it needs to be changed.

The first picture is the hose from the float bowl vent on the front carb. It goes to the fitting where the left end of the hose in the second picture is incorrectly attached. The left end of the incorrectly attached hose in the second picture goes to the float bowl vent in on the rear carb. Neither of them has anything to do with why it won't start, unless they are plugged.

My wife and I went for a drive this afternoon to experiment with different acceleration rates just to see what would happen. At first the problem wouldn't happen. But once we got everything up to temperature it came back. For the record, it happens at a registered speed of 62 MPH. It doesn't seem to matter how hard the car is accelerating. The first time that it happened I was accelerating hard in 2nd. Once we were at that speed it would go no faster. Then we drove through town at slower speeds and all seemed to be ok. So we took it onto the interstate highway to see if it would come back. We followed a really slow driver onto the highway, and just gently brought the car up to speed. But once again as soon as the car hit 62, that was all the faster that it would go. I pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor, and could hear the engine groan like it was trying to speed up, but the car just shuttered and kept going the same speed. So I guess my car is going to speed the winter up on jack stands after all. If it is the transmission, where is a good place to pick up another one?

Good Luck.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I doubt that is the problem. The entire fuel system from the tank to the carbs is new. Tank has been cleaned, and lined. All of the lines are new. The pump is new. The carbs are new. The hoses are new, and the problem came and went while the engine was running and hot. Besides, I know what fuel starvation feels like, and this was not fuel starvation. I am guessing that it is in the differential, or drive shaft. (Half shafts perhaps?). I recently resolved my differential thump problem by replacing the front differential mount, and tightening the nuts on the bar at the back. Could something in the differential been damaged by the thumping earlier?

Something strange happened with my Z today, and in 30 years of driving I have never experienced anything like it. I hope someone else has some idea, or I may have to rebuild the entire driveline. I was driving around this afternoon, and suddenly the car would not go faster than some fixed speed, which seemed to be about 60MPH. I first noticed it in 3rd gear. I was accelerating briskly, and when it got to about 60 in 3rd the engine bogged down like it was in the wrong gear! That isn't the problem because it was somewhere around 3500 to 4000 RPM, and the engine pulls strong in that range. I pulled off of the 4 lane road, and turned around and tried several other times. Each time the car just would not go faster than about 60. I found that if I tried to really push the acceleration it would pull all the way to 7000 RPM in first, and pull hard in 2nd, until it got to about 6500 then the engine just couldn't pull the load anymore. No matter what gear the car was in, it just lugged the engine when it got to this particular speed. I had the same problem in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. I turned off the radio and listened for strange noises, but with the loud exhaust I couldn't hear anything unusual. There might have been a noise coming from the back end, but it wasn't clear where. (All this was in a straight line. I wasn't turning when this happened.) I decided to just drive slowly home, and after a few minutes the problem went away. I didn't notice exactly when it cleared up, but at some point I looked at the speedometer and realized that I was going 75MPH, and the engine sounded normal. Any ideas from those of you who have actually had operational Z cars for a long time?

I have read about people hiding rust under fiberglass before. You will not really know what you are up against until you get all of that stuff off of there. It could be just a few rust holes here and there, but... At least it looks like someone did you the favor of chipping off the factory sound deadening. That stuff is a pain to remove. Most people here typically recommend cutting the floor out and welding in a new floor and frame rails. Personally that depends on what you intend to do with the car. My car's floor didn't have any holes the size of the one you have found already, so I just patched them by riveting in some metal plates. But that hole looks pretty nasty. I would bet that you will have to do more than that.

MIke, I notice that the car in your pictures is left hand drive, while the one in the other collection is right hand drive. I would expect the first prototype of any Japanese car to be RHD because otherwise it would be nearly impossible to test drive in Japan.

If I didn't completely winterize the car, but just started it about once a month would that suffice? (Of course I would let the engine get completely hot before I shut it down.) I only ask because I expect that I will need to move the car a couple of times this winter to make room for other things.

Hey! We have something in common, only one reverse light works! Neat video. Where was it taken? Are you in Australia, England, Japan? You posted at 2:40 PM EST. That would be 4:40AM in Japan, or Around 7:40PM in Europe. Are you in British Isles?

Another method to partially drain the tank before taking out the plug is to use the electric fuel pump to pump all the fuel that it can into another gas can. I have done that on other fuel injected cars. You have to somehow jumper on the pump with the engine off and the fuel line disconnected up near the engine. Just be sure you shut that pump off as soon as the fuel stops flowing to prevent damage to the pump.

Pretty bike. I would never own one myself you understand... Dirt bikes and compound fractures have too strong of a positive correlation for people like me who take medicine to prevent blood clots...