Walter Moore

That sounds like Ohio. (No offense to those who live there...) I worked for a company based in Akron for 5 years. I think a line from that really old movie "Gumball Rally" sums it up best: "We have good news and bad news. The good news is from what we can tell no state has enacted the death penalty for speeding. The bad news is we haven't heard back from Ohio."ROFL

Perhaps shops where the tech writer is paid on commission? If you turn drums and rotors every time you do any brake work you can sell a lot more drums and rotors!

The diode is only required if someone has installed an internally regulated alternator. Does the car keep running with the alternator disconnected? Trying that would at least tell you if it is related to the alternator wiring or something else. With an older car that has no documented history it is hard to know what might have been done.

I see that O'Reilly Auto Parts lists a rebuilt distributor for a 75 280Z for $119 exchange. I suspect other shops sell them as well. (It seems like for the Z all the major stores actually stock the same brand parts) It would be easier, and might be cheaper, to just replace the whole distributor.

Carl is more the expert, but I believe that all of the Z cars had EGR valves as original equipment. I know that my 71 had one when I bought it.

I have owned a lot of G.M. cars, and some of them were excellent. Fuel mileage isn't really their main problem. For example, the average fuel mileage of the 2009 Buick LaCrosse, Nissan Maxima, Toyota Avalon, and Honda Accord are within 2 MPG of each other. (The Maxima and LaCrosse tie for the worst at 22.5) Even the Lucerne which is over a foot longer and 300 lbs heaver is only 1 MPG behind that pack. The real problem with G.M. was exposed years ago by the infamous Roger Smith quote "General Motors does not make cars! General Motors makes money!" I fear that he wasn't an isolated individual. That was the underlying "mission" of the entire culture within the company. That is why they switched most of their factories from making cars to SUVs in the 90's. They made a profit on cars, but made a killing selling over priced trucks. As for the new G.M., I am not willing to take the chance. Remember British Leyland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland_Motor_Corporation That is where nationalized industry leads in the end...

I concur, it looks like a series B 4 speed. What characteristics of the right side transmission make you think otherwise?

Personally, I think $600 for a running Z car is a bargain, but then I look at these things through rust belt colored lenses.

I have those wheels on my 71 and they work great.

I didn't know that the intake coolant passages existed on the FI cars, but I guess it stands to reason that they would. My guess is that a previous owner disconnected the coolant lines because there was a hairline crack in one of the passages that allowed antifreeze to seep into the intake manifold under pressure. Once the engine is up to temperature, either the pressure in that passage drops when the thermostat opens, or the crack closes when the manifold expands. That is only a guess.

Sad, We had a similar incident here locally last year involving a Jeep. All three occupants were ejected from the vehicle and two of them died. The survivor, who did not own the vehicle (The owner died in the crash) and claimed to have been riding in the back seat, was prosecuted for vehicular homicide... If I remember correctly he was convicted. Strange world.

Heh...

I had to actually drill out the broken bolts, which is a very delicate operation involving drilling a plot hole, and then enlarging it slowly with ever larger drill bits until I could peel the old bolt out of the housing. This is a dangerous operation if you intend to keep the housing because the bolt is steel and the housing is aluminum. One slip and you ruin the housing. The corrosion is because the metals are different and in the proximity of water. Oh, and by the way you should do a search on overheating in the forums. The temperature gauge reading 3/4 is not abnormal on the early Z cars. This has been discussed at length, and there is a lot of really good information here. It is way more than I have the time to try to summarize this morning. Good Luck!

I have a friend who owned a 2003 G35 sedan. He didn't have oil consumption problems, but the car was repeatedly in the shop (under warranty) for what he THOUGHT was a recurring transmission problem. To their credit Nissan worked through it with him, replacing things at first, until they discovered the true problem. It turns out that the automatic transmission in the Infinity, at least in the 2003 model, maintains a 15k mile log of driving history which it uses to predict the driver's intentions under various circumstances. In my friend's case, there was a particular section of a certain road where during rush hour traffic the transmission "thought" that he was about to execute a passing maneuver, and it dropped down a gear in anticipation. Immediately after the down shift the computer observed that he had not increased speed and it went back to the correct gear. It didn't hurt anything, and it would only happen one time, but he was sure there was a problem, so he kept taking it back. The local Infinity dealer "solved" the problem by clearing the transmission computer's driving history log at each oil change. My friend solved the problem by trading the car on a Cadillac at the end of the warranty period. (The Caddy has been constantly in the shop as well for different, but qualitatively similar, reasons by the way.) I just thought that you should be aware of this feature. I am not trying to discourage you from buying any particular make or model.

Be very careful bending the 5/16" line, it will kink on you almost instantly. For that size at least I recommend getting a two hand professional style bender if possible. We, my son and I, used a generic open style bending tool on all of the lines, but to bend the big stuff we had to lay the tube on a table to back it up and keep it from kinking.