Walter Moore

If you are going to use it as a transportation vehicle, the 280, with its fuel injection and factory electronic ignition is likely to be the better choice. But that is strictly your call. In either case, from what I have heard about the weather in Bahrain I gather that if you want to keep paint on the car you need to park it indoors. But then you know the situation there better than I ever will. No offense intended. I meant it to be funny. Here we have salt on the road all winter that rusts out the entire car. There I gather that you have sand storms? (Someone I knew who lived there at one time talked about it raining mud...)

People generally don't vandalize ugly cars. I have had a lot of cars where you would never notice it. But talk about something that likely to get vandalized: http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=28265

I like it! But I wouldn't have the nerve to drive it around here... I really think it would look cute.

[quote=jackwarnock;232085The first thing I did was to check on the registration (NSW Australia) of the car. I found that the original registration of the 1971 car was "available" - meaning that my original car was probably beer cans. I take it then that Australia is one of those countries where the vehicle's license plate is basically a permanent part of the car? I always thought that was an interesting idea. Around here we have to "renew" our plates every year, and quite often the plate number changes when we do. (unless you pay extra for a vanity plate.) The result is that I can never remember from one year to the next what the license plate number is on my car, regardless of how long I have owned it.

Looks like a good deal for you. Sorry to hear about another Z coming to its end...

Can someone explain to me how a "Completely rebuilt" cylinder head could need welding on the combustion chamber? When I had my E31 rebuilt the welding that it needed to repair the damage from a bad head gasket was part of the price. For the record, my experience with 240Z parts from Ebay has been nearly universally bad. (one or two successes, all the rest were junk)

Add to this the fact that in addition to having to cut out the forward edge of the shifter hole, the additional problem that the stock shifter will slam into your console and break the front edge of it as well. Oh, and that larger hole is nearly impossible to seal... I would have bought the shifter, except that my car already had all those problems, and all that the PO had done was to swap in a 280Z 4 speed... So over-sized floor cutout, and broken console without the benefit of an overdrive 5th gear. What a deal!

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the 4 piston caliper upgrade require the later 280Z, or 280ZX master cylinder? I admit that I am just talking out of my hat on this...

Just under 15 lbs each if I recall correctly.

At least you are in California where you can actually use an old Z car as a daily driver and not have to worry about the rust monster. Around here they last about 3 winters. And I am not just talking about Datsuns, any older, restored or well preserved car will suffer the same fate. (unless is has a true frame, but those are rare.)

The paint job on that car must have cost a fortune. It is a very pretty car, but I wouldn't pay that much for it because it is just a show car. It was never really intended to be driven. A shame really... Like the guy that I know who sold his dream car (a 70 Superbird) because he could no longer get insurance unless he certified in writing that he would NEVER drive it. In his case, he made a fortune when he sold the car, but you can still see the pain deep in his eyes when he talks about it. He bought that car back when they were just strange cheap used cars, and he fixed it up as a driver! He wanted to drive the car, not trailer it to car shows. But it became so valuable that no insurance company would touch it if he actually intended to drive it on public roads. May it never be that way with my car.

Silly, she will just put a Z license plate on the front of it!

If you like it, go for it. My car was that color when I bought it, at least it was somewhere under several layers of paint, and bondo. My parents had a 74 B210 that was that color at one time. I thought it was the ugliest car I had ever seen. But my dad always bought brown cars in that era, because he thought that they didn't show dirt and rust. To each his own...

The PO of my car had a 280Z 4 speed installed, and whatever shifter he used hits the console. But then on a 71 you have to cut out the floor to get the later transmissions to work at all.

I bought mine on Ebay, several years ago. Don't recall how much I paid, but they had to be shipped from Hawaii to Indiana, so the shipping was a little steep. I had to strip the old clear coat off of them, and then clean them 6 times before I was able to polish them up to where they looked halfway decent. Then I re-clear coated them. That was a lot of work. $600 sounds like a bargain now...

I waited until others commented on this thread before I said anything. I have a 100A single wire alternator that I got from J.C.Whitney on my car. I had to make my own brackets, and even at that it just barely fits under the water pump inlet. As I only have about 200 miles on the car so far I cannot say for sure that this is going to work over the long haul. I already burned up one alternator belt. That was after about 50 miles, then I re-adjusted and modified my brackets. So far the belt seems to be working, but only time will tell. (And I now carry a spare belt and tools with me at all times.) The changes that I made to the electrical system consist of a separate circuit (In a watertight box) for my extensive high wattage headlight/driving light/fog light/electric cooling fan circuit, direct connections from the alternator to both my new lighting circuit and the battery, and a volt meter since the direct connection from the alternator to the battery bypasses the amp meter. As for the factory voltage regulator, I removed it and just covered the connectors heavy plastic. I hooked up the standard fuseable links at both the starter and alternator, so the existing wiring harness is still in use, but the new overblown accessories are separate. (My lighting/cooling box has a #4 AWG wire direct from the alternator, that feed three 30 amp fuses, one for each primary circuit.) My new wiring is all over sized for a car, but I am an electrical engineer and just couldn't bring myself to use normal car sized wire. Frankly, I really hesitate to tell anyone else to use a G.M. style alternator on a Z car because I have serious reservations about my home made bracket staying aligned over the long course of time. I guess there is a thread here somewhere about a company that is selling single wire, high amperage alternators in a standard Nissan alternator case. I may eventually scrap my existing setup and go that way.

I put "DAD" racing seats in my Z that I bought on Ebay. They looked similar in size to the drawing that you provide. The risk is the mounting rails. The original seats are very close to the floor, and if you put anything taller in the car you had better be really short if you want to drive it. Even thick seat bottoms will cause a problem. The seats that I bought came with sliders/mounting rails that had been designed just for early Z cars. They are only thick enough to allow two socket head cap screw heads to clear each other as they pass by. (Perhaps 5/8")

I guess I'm not... But to each his own.

The valve on the passenger side of the firewall is actuated by the cable from the dash lever that says "OFF" "TEMP" "HEAT". you should be able to see it if you crawl under the dash. Have someone move the lever while you look for motion. My first suspicion is that the cable is broken, or that someone disconnected it because the heater core is leaking. Heater cores can plug, but the typical failure mode is to rupture and leak.

Heh, the first question that one of my friends asked when I took him for a ride in the Z was "What is supposed to be there next to the choke lever?"

Having hoisted the L24 around in my garage for several years, I can attest that it is one HEAVY engine. A newer aluminum block V8 may well be lighter. But back on topic... As I said, it is a touchy subject.

Technically, aren't all 260Z's 74 models, at least the ones sold in the U.S? Anyway, an interesting question since the parts CD lists the R180 as "(Up to Nov 74)(From Aug 76)" And the R200 as "(From Oct 73)" I don't know which one was "Standard". Does it depend upon the build date? I know that the 180 and 200 refer to the diameter of the ring gear.

Thanks for the help

Well, here I am. I wasn't about to post a picture in the previous thread because I wanted a picture with me driving the car. But now that it runs I have no excuse.

Ok, I searched the forums but was unable to find any reference to the correct part number for the oil filter on an L series engine. I had originally installed a Fram PH8A filter, because it fit and is the largest size of filter. I am only about 200 miles into the break-in period, but I changed the oil today because for the first tank of gas or so I had the front choke badly mis-adjusted, and the choke cables were twisted at an angle that caused them to bind on the air cleaner. The net effect was that I drove the car about 40 miles with the chokes stuck full on, and another 30 miles with the front carb way too rich. (It fouled the plugs up to the point that the car would not run twice.) Anyway, I went to the my local parts store this morning and bought 5 quarts of oil and a new filter. I tried to look up the oil filter in the book, but it only went back to 1980. (Of course.) Since I was in a hurry, I used the number that was listed for a 1980 280ZX. So now I have a Purolator # L14670 filter, which is the same diameter as the PH8A, but shorter. (Interesting side effect, the car only needed 5 quarts of oil with the filter change, not the 5.25 quarts that it did with the larger filter.) What oil filters are other people running on their Z cars? Does the older L series engine need a different filter than the one specified for the ZX? If so, why? (Another interesting side observation, apparently the anti-drain back valve in the Fram filter had failed in less than 200 miles, because when I took the filter off of the car it was empty. Very abnormal...)