Walter Moore

It sounds like you have a small short circuit somewhere that is draining your battery, slowly... If you start the car often enough it charges the battery back up, but if you wait a couple of days it is dead as a post. Your external battery charger, booster is taking the place of the battery on starting. If all this started after the clock was replaced, then it may be the problem, or as you say the mechanic who installed it made a mistake. Otherwise you need to start looking for something that is drawing current with the ignition off.

Ah, that explains the rear drum that was in pieces in the back of my 240Z when I bought it...

I have a frend who used to own a Taurus SHO. He claimed that the thing absolutely ate clutches. Too much torque for the wimpy FWD drivetrain... I don't even know where Ford got the manual transaxle and clutch, the Taurus isn't available without an automatic transmission... Could have been parts from a 4 cylinder Escort for all I know.

Well, I just started to rebuild and engine that was stored for more than 10 years by someone who just shut if off and stuck it in the garage. I don't know what to do to prevent it, but if you store it long term you need some way to keep the rings from getting stuck and so fourth. They tell me this engine ran "fine" when they shut if off, but it had no compression in 4 of the 6 cylinders when I cranked it over. Of course considering the state of the intake valve seats... running fine may have be an optimistic assessment... But the rings were stuck. When I took the end cap off of the no 5 piston with the block turned upside down the piston slid out onto the floor.

I have never even seen the fuel injection system on a 280Z, so it is ok to call me "brittle" on this subject... But, on my 1974 Volvo 164E you adjusted the fuel pressure by attaching a mechanical oil pressure gage to the system in place of the cold start injector (it had a hose...) and jumpering on the electrical fuel pump. That gave you a clear reading of the pressure in the injector rail. I doubt that I can be much more help than that. I recomend that you buy a manual if you intend to pursue it much further.

I had a Mercury that was making universal joint noise once. I took it to a dealer and told him I had a bad universal joint. They checked it and couldn't find one so suggested that it may be in the Differential... $80USD later... when they could find nothing wrong in the diff, they tried to re-connect the drive shaft and found that one of the U-joints was frozen. They were looking for a loose or wobbling U-joint. This one was litereally rock solid. It would not move in one direction. It made a banging noise when it turned. Lucky for me I noticed it before it did take out the differential. (Most of my passengers couldn't hear the noise I was complaining about...) I have been told that wheel bearings "usually" make a rumbling noise, not a banging noise. I also had a brake drum cut in half because I had replaced the pads once too often without having them turned... :stupid: but no one else on the planet is that stupid. (I mention it because that made a banging noise also.)

Sometimes on G.M. V8 starters the solenoids stick when they are hot. I have had a lot of them, and it seems to me that the not starting when they are hot is sometimes an early warning that the solenoid is about to fail... but perhaps not. At least on the G.M. the starter is replaceable separately. BTW, never use an old solenoid on a new starter... parts stores will sell them that way, but you will end up heaving that stupid thing up into the air again really soon... ( I just LOVE holding that stupid motor up in the air with my left hand while I thread the two mounting bolts in with my right... :stupid: )

I have made a note on my maps... avoid Ohio... :-) Actually something that I try to do anyway.

Personally, I am not sure that I really want tires much wider than say 205 or 215 on a 2K LB car. I had 205's on a light sports car back in the 80's and it was sad in the rain. I know, there that mid-western guy goes again worring about rain and snow, stupid: but for me that is a real issue. When it isn't snowing here it is often raining, and over wide tires just don't cut it in the rain, unless you are going for flotation. :

Generally, the lower the profile, the closer the wheel width needs to be to the tread width. The current (2002) U.S. Tire and Rim Association standard doesn't even list a 245/45R14. The only 45 profile tire they list for a 14" wheel is P225/45R14, for which they recommend a 14 X 7.5 inch wheel. (But they also list 14 X 7 as the minimum wheel width.) The book does list a P245/50R14, again the standard wheel width is listed at 7.5", but it does approve a 14 X 7 I know that different years of the 240/260/280 had different sizes of tires stock, but my glove box door lists the "standard" size at "175HR14", which given that the old metric tire sizes were generally 80 profile gives it an outside diameter of ~636mm. Scanning quickly through the book, here is a short list of the tire and wheel combinations that come closest to that outside diameter, along with their nominal approved wheel widths: P195/70R14 --- 14 X 6 P205/70R14 --- 14 X 6 P215/65R14 --- 14 X 6.5 *** Closest OD to 1971 stock. P235/60R14 --- 14 X 7 P195/65R15 --- 15 X 6 P215/60R15 --- 15 X 6.5 P205/55R16 --- 16 X 6.5 P225/50R16 --- 16 X 7 P205/50R17 --- 17 X 6.5 P225/45R17 --- 17 X 7.5 Three notes: 1. In the mid 70's sometime Nissan switched to P195/70R14 tires, which have an OD of 630mm, making many of the sizes listed above just a little too big. 2. The nominal OD is only really accurate when the tire is mounted on the "Measured" wheel width. Wider or narrower wheels will change the OD accordingly. 3. I restricted my search to sizes that were <= 1.1% different from the 636mm outside diameter of the "right" tires for my car. There may be tires that would work just fine with a different gear set, but I didn't go that far.

Ok, I see where the fume problem comes into play, if you replace the PCV valve system with a breather then you have crankcase fumes blowing through the engine compartment. But if you only replace the hose from the valve cover to the stock air cleaner with a filter on the valve cover itself, and leave the PCV valve stock, then there really shouldn't be any engine fumes escaping. (Ignoring the exaust system...) As long as there is a hose from the block to the PCV valve, you are still purging the engine into the intake manifold. Or am I somehow still missing something?

I would have expected the breather pipe on the valve cover to be an air inlet. The PCV valve is bolted into the intake manifold, and connects to a rather large pipe on the side of the block. Having taken the engine apart, I noticed that there is a baffle inside the block near that pipe to prevent pulling oil up into it. I just assumed that the air flow was in through the top and out through the pipe on the side. Or have others disconnected the PCV valve? Now I am really confused...

True story... I tried to teach my wife how to drive a manual transmission back in 1984, in my then two year old Dodge Charger 2.2. She was doing just fine until I mentioned to her that she might want to slow down a little (she was doing 80+ in a 40MPH zone...) When she realized how fast she was going, she planted her right foot on the brake pedal and just stopped, stalling the engine. Then she jumped out and refused to get back in the car until I returned to the driver's seat. I answered the poll "She can't drive." Can't drive a stick == can't drive in my book. But that means that 90% of American's can't drive... accurate I guess. I bought my son a VW Fox specifically to force him to learn to drive a manual... but those cars won't stay together for a week, so it is gone. :-( When I get the 240Z running it will be the first manual transmission car I have been allowed to own since 86' (The Fox was my son's...)

A 72' 240Z as a daily driver? The advantages of living in California I guess... My wintertime daily driver ( a rather large station wagon ) has a layer of salt on the outside of it nearly an inch thick a the moment. (At 0F there aren't many car washes operational at the moment) I somehow don't think the "Z" would hold up well under those conditions...

I live in the city of Lebanon IN, one county north west of Indianapolis. I work in Indy however. I was in Evansville once... I can't recall when or why... It is easier to get to Detroit from Indy than Evansville, at least unless/until they extend I69 down that way. I don't know how they plan to fund that project, when the state is flat broke...

Well, just tonight I bought enough steel brake tubing to replace all the hard lines on my car (I hope...) I didn't have any trouble finding them, but it ran me more than $60. Why am I replacing them all? Because I have the engine and transmission out of the car, so they are accessable, and in the past 5 years I have had the steel brake lines rupture on three cars due to rust.:mad: (Not one of those cars was over 12 years old, my Z is 31...) They don't call this the rust belt for nothing!

After being submerged in ATF for two weeks I was able to get the latch cycling with a punch and a hammer. Now it seems to work pretty smoothly. After I got it cycling with what seems like normal effort I put it back in the ATF, to finish off what little rust is left. That stuff is amazing!

By all means you want the front wheels to lock before the rear wheels. My old '72 Pinto always locked the rear wheels first (until I started running the rear tires 10PSI underinflated...) and every time that I made a panic stop I wound up facing backward...:stupid: Driving that car was like hitting myself in the head with a hammer, it felt SO GOOD when I quit! But at least even now, 22 years after it died, I can still feel a skid starting WAY before I need to correct for it...

The bolts are 10mm. Nearly all the bolts that I have found on the 240Z are the standard metric thread pitch, so I suspect it is a standard M10 bolt. You will need bolts that are longer than the ones that hold on the transmission, but exactly how long depends on the engine stand. I wound up having to buy 70mm length bolts and stacking washers on them to get enough threads in the block without bottoming out the bolts. Be sure you get at least class 10.9 bolts (the metric equivalent of SAE grade 8) or class 12 (which is stronger) because you are going to have 600+ lbs hanging on those 4 bolts. Have fun! Be careful! (one or the other if you can't do both...)

I have seen the G-nose kit for sale on E-bay... It looks nice to me, but I am not in a position to spend that kind of money at the moment. My "plan" (...first there was the plan, and then there were the assumptions...) is to eventually install a "BRE" style front spook and spoiler on my 240Z, but not until I have the thing basically drivable, and that isn't going to happen any time soon. My car is a '71, and personally I like the retro look, but not the stock look. The huge air dam/ground effect/whale tale look is an '80s thing, and I just don't want it on that particular car. Now if I had an '80s model... But to those who want make their car look like a 911 Turbo, that is their business. To each his own.

I have the old latch sitting in a jar full of automatic transmission fluid. That should eventually free it up, if it is just rusty... But if the thing is actually broken I will be looking for a replacement. Only time will tell.

The intake has the part number "E46" cast into it, so I am sure it doesn't belong to a 260Z... The 5 seconds I refered to is the time the Haynes manual claims the system should take to bring the idle speed back to normal after letting off the throttle, but that may only apply to the 260Z version with the electrical signal from the speedometer. If I understand the operation correctly, it would prevent backfiring, at least in theory. In any event, I think that I will just park the "throttle opener" somewhere as a decoration and get on with the restoration.

This may not be the right forum for this question, and those of you outside of North America likely don't know what I am talking about, but there is a device on my intake manifold that the Haynes manual labels a " Throttle opener control system". I assume from the description of the function that this an emission control system. Does it perform any other important function? The reason that I ask, is this system connects to the linkage for the carbs via a sleeved lever that actuates the linkage near the front carb, and this sleeve is rusted in place. With the throttle opener connected, the throttle is jammed. I am re-building the engine (step 1 of re-building the car...) and if I don't need this vacuum operated menance I would prefer not to re-install it. From the manual I gather that it's purpose is to prevent dumping excessive unburnt fuel out the exaust pipe when shifting gears. On the otherhand, I am not impressed with the idea of having something on the car that holds the throttle open for 5 seconds after I let off the pedal... The Haynes manual claims that this system was installed only on the 260Z, but my car is a 1971 240Z, with an L24 engine and 4 screw round top carbs, and it clearly has all the hardware, except the solenoid to disable the system when the car is moving less than 10 MPH. ( No wire from the speedometer...) I guess the book is wrong. We don't have emissions testing here in Indiana, and even if we did, I think that pre-1975 cars are generally exempt outside of California, so if it won't hurt the car any I am not going to re-install this when I put the thing back together.

For the record, just in case anyone else ever needs to know, I finally got the hatchback open today. This is how I managed to get it open: Step #1, searched on E-bay until I found another license plate light assembly. Step #2, purchased said light assembly. Step #3, After the replacement assembly arrived, I "removed" the old license plate light "tag light" assembly with a hammer. ( It is plastic. ) Step #4, Used a punch and a hammer to force open the latch, which was rusted shut. Now all that I have to do is find a new latch, I haven't seen any of those for sale on E-bay... :disappoin

I think that in the U.S. the insurance industry began to get into the picture in the mid 70's as well. The insurance rate for high horsepower cars became artifically prohibitive. At least that is my impression, since I owned some late 70's U.S. cars that clearly had way more horsepower than was advertised. You just can't push 5000 LBS as fast as some of those cars went with the insignificant amount of power that G.M. claimed the engine delivered...