Walter Moore

You know of course that the one with vents under the rear window is a "Series 1" with and earlier build date. You even have the original seat belts! I am impressed. That is a huge project. Stick with it, because it will take some time to get either car back on the road.

I have used these connectors in the past for industrial connections: http://www.newark.com/jsp/level5/module.jsp?moduleId=en_US/8173.xml There is a version of the back-shell that is a heat-shrink and is waterproof. (Also nearly impossible to remove, so be careful.) They might be overkill for a car, but I personally think they are way more durable than the typical Molex connector.

Could this have been characteristic of an early collapsible steering column design?

Be careful, with that "deficiencies" word. Wouldn't want to start a flame war. There are people lurking around here who take talk like that personally. Anyway, back on topic, I guess I am just a tinkerer, more so than a restorer. I have resurrected my 240Z back into a functional sports car. (Started with a heap of rust that I thought had potential.) Some people play golf, or build models. I work on my Datsun. You will know that it is finished when I sell it to buy something else.

I just looks like the tires are too low profile and as a result don't have a large enough outside diameter to fill the wheel wells. Are they 14" or 15" wheels?

Here are some links to other threads that address these issues: http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32704&highlight=E12-80 http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34607&highlight=E12-80 http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34559&highlight=ZX http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34192&highlight=E12-80 Much information there, no need to repeat it all. Good luck!

Smoke signals, I hadn't quite heard anyone make that analogy. I did however know a mechanical engineer who used to claim that all electronics was smoke powered. As proof he pointed out that "...when the smoke escapes it quits working!" I couldn't dispute him on that point.

The Z32 got progressively more expensive with each passing year. The final year twin turbo version was something like $40k - $50k or more if my admittedly bad memory serves me correctly. (That was an outrageous price for a car in 1996.) Which is a large part of the reason Nissan didn't sell that many Z32s. I never drove one, but several members of the local Z-club owned Z31s, and one of the old timers remarked that with the factory strut inserts his handled like a Buick. While there are several Buick products that I remember fondly, none of them could be fairly described as "sports cars".

This has my vote for the most likely problem. I personally fought with the choke cable setting over and over until I got it right. If the choke is partially engaged you can't actually set the mixture, and it will idle fast. A vacuum leak makes fuel injected cars idle fast, but I am not sure what would happen with SUs. My bet is that it would just run lean, or not at all.

Without question the worst car I ever owned was a 1972 VW Beetle. I bought it in 1980, and the gas tank was already rusted through and leaking. No heat in the winter, unless you wanted to breath exhaust fumes. Unbearably hot in the summer no matter what you did. Always broken in some way or another. I sold it in 1982 and bought a Dodge Charger 2.2 (I loved that car, but it ended up in at least three major accidents...) Second worst was a 1990 VW Fox that I bought for my son his senior year of high school. It looked beautiful, with no rust or visible damage, but I knew I had made a bad choice when the clutch went out and NO repair shop in the area would work on the car. I ended up having to pay a $500 deposit to get someone to repair the car. The local dealer wouldn't even schedule an appointment to evaluate the car. (Which is a constant problem with "foreign" cars in this area. The local dealers will only do warranty repairs. Old cars are chased from the lot like lepers.)

Perhaps the best defense of MSA. They are reliable and easy to work with. Their marketing specialty is to be a one-stop Z-car parts shop. So naturally there are parts that they buy from other vendors and mark-up. That is the cost of the one-stop convenience for the customer, and in fairness there is a word for a company that doesn't make a profit on the items it sells. That word is bankrupt. Not all of MSA's items are overpriced either. Many items that they sell are way below the price at a dealer, or most other internet sources. If you want the best price, shop around. The cover that is the actual focus of this thread is nice in my opinion. I don't need one, since I am using a ZX alternator, but I don't see anything obvious wrong with that piece. And for full disclosure, I have no relationship to MSA, or any other car parts retail outlet.

Terripin Z, that is a beautiful car. Welcome to the club! Arne, when I first bought my Z in 2002 Tire Rack still listed the P7 as available on their web site. I remember because I always wanted a set of those and was impressed that they were still available. By the time the car was rebuilt enough to need tires they were NLA. I don't remember if it was a 14 inch or 15 inch size that they offered in 2002 however. I suppose they could have had a bunch of old stock on hand.

There are a couple of Cosworth Vegas that run around here sometimes in the summer. It sure seems like some people just don't "get it" when they bad mouth the Vega. They were famous for engine problems, and like all cars from that era they rusted quickly. But they were loss-leaders from the beginning. The Vega and Pinto were Detroit's first serious attempts to make small, cheap cars. But with the value of the U.S. Dollar in that era, (relative to the Yen...) and their chronically higher manufacturing costs, if either G.M. or Ford had tried to build a copy of the 240Z it would have cost twice what Nissan sold it for here. I still think he Cosworth Vega was a cool car, even if it's performance wasn't up to the full potential of the car. (By 1976 they had to run on 87 octane unleaded gas remember...)

Fix this problem first. They worry about possible fuel pump or ignition issues. It sounds like your car is running on three cylinders.

My wife calls my Datsun "Your Fair Lady" with that special jealous pout that only women in secure relationships can get away with... But, buying her the 2008 Mustang GT seems to have eased her pain.

Yep, $200 is the typical core charge for a rebuilt engine.

Why wasn't that obvious to everyone earlier...

However, following the link that Doradox posted, and the link on that page to the Library of Congress copyright page, there is a PDF that summarizes U.S. copyright law. According to that document, the maximum copyright protection currently afforded is 95 years, so the good news is that sometime after 2064 the poster will enter the public domain! The copyright protection duration was originally only 20 years, but it was increased several times. Most recently Senator Sonny Bono, just before his untimely death in a skiing accident, pushed through a bill to increase the time limit on copyright protection. As I recall "Gone With The Wind" was about to enter the public domain, and Hollywood was going nuts.

I can't identify the seats, but I have read that the stock seat supports are necessary for the structure of the frame and should not be removed. If you do bolt the new seats to the floor I strongly recommend that you re-enforce the floor first because the metal under the seats is very thin.

Not to belabor the point, but that is the EXACT symptom that my car exhibited when the fuel pump failed.

You could also have a bad fuel pump, or a clogged fuel line. Both will cause the engine to lose power under load.

At the minimum you need a hood, headlight buckets, a bumper, and whatever parts were damaged near the radiator. If the rest of the car is worth the trouble it could be fixed, but on older cars, unless you have collector car insurance, they aren't going to give you much for it. My car looked worse when I started.

Arne, I love the styling of the 80's 6-series myself. By the way CFC crushed 67 of those cars as well. (Way less than the 1310 5-series cars that fell to the eco gods...) Speaking of eco-madness, the 3 series that I hated working on was a 325es, which had the strange low-revving "economy" motor. (4500 RPM red-line with a timing belt instead of the normal timing chain, sort of the opposite approach to the L24...) That may have been the source of our repair problems. It was difficult to find parts for because it wasn't very popular in the U.S. The catalytic converter was nearly $500 aftermarket, for example, and it took two people to change the starter because it was mounted with through bolts and nuts. One of us had to lay under the car to hold a deep well socket and several extensions on the nuts while the other used a socket (with extensions) to turn the bolts from the top. To reach some bolts on the back side of the engine took literally 4 feet of socket extensions. I also had to buy all new sockets because most bolts used an externally toothed TORX head style. If I never have to work on another car like that again it would be too soon. (It was fun to drive on the other hand...)

What are P79 pistons? And is the engine you have an L24, L26, or L28? (displacement) The L24 and L26 use the same piston, but the L28 takes a larger piston, which will not fit in the older engine. If you have a 280Z cylinder head there is a good chance that it is an L28, but you need to check the serial number to be sure.

The later housing is probably 1/2 BSPT, not NPT. The differences between the two are so insignificant that it is nearly impossible to tell them apart. The NPT fitting is 0.345mm larger in diameter and has a slightly different thread angle, but the same thread pitch. Neither of those differences would have any effect on the interchangeability of a tapered thread. I only mention that because BSPT was adopted as an ISO standard, and is often encountered on pneumatic and hydraulic fittings in Japan.