Captain Obvious

geezer, Thanks again for the info. I don't know how deep stain penetrates, but it sure does look like the wood color, doesn't it? Is your plastic insert split? It looks like a crack along the back top in your pic? I'm thinking for my next knob attempt I'm going to make an insert like that, but I'm going to make mine out of metal. Either aluminum (easier to work with), or stainless (will look more like the original and will stay shiny longer). hls30.com, Thanks for your info too. I've got a line on a solo retired pin that is just itchin' to be turned into a shift knob...

Thanks for the pics geezer. Your stock knob is certainly much darker than the other OEM knob pictures I've seen. Are you sure it wasn't stained darker than original? Maybe it was completely dunked and is stained on the inside hole as well making it look like it's the natural wood color? Speaking of wood types..... Anyone know what kind of wood bowling pins are made out of? :bandit:

FastWoman, The trickiest part was drilling and tapping for the screws to hold the clamshell back together. There isn't a lot of meat to work with there. I held the two clamshell halves together with a clamp and drilled the hole right on the seam between the two halves. That means for the first few turns of the screw, there are threads in both the front and back of the clamshell. Then, of course, once you get deeper, the front part of the shell ends and you've got a full hole in the back half. Doing a pretty shoddy job of describing that, I'm sure... What else? I used 2-56 screws for the clamshell. Small is more important than strong. The bottom hole is blind. Don't remember what size I used for the flat head screw on the shutter blade or the retainer for the bending element. Haha! Yeah, I use a stunt double for my photos. This is what my hand look like. It's kinda embarrassing...

Using a small spring washer under the original pivot pin would work in a pinch, but the problem is the additional friction that it would provide. You don't want any stiction in the pivot as the resultant hysteresis could cause in unpredictable operation. The flat headed screw makes it such that I can tighten the screw to jussssssst a thousandth or so before it starts to bind. That way, I have good tight fit, but still no additional friction. I also noticed that the original pressed in pivot pin had a tendency to loosen up after the blade moved around a few times. I wanted something with threads so that I could threadlock it in place and not have it loosen up by accident. Speaking of the calibration marks, you can see how I have my AAR adjusted: Once it's warm, the window is completely covered (as it should be), but as you can see, at room temperature the window opening is pretty small. Because of that, my idle doesn't shoot high when the engine is cold, but pretty much stays constant. In other words, the additional flow through the AAR doesn't actually RAISE my cold idle, but in fact makes my cold idle the same as my warm idle. I need to open it up just a little more. I was fighting a high idle condition because the AAR was sticking open, and I overcompensated a little.

Been a while, but I haven't forgot about this thread. I got the opportunity to pull my AAR off the 280 to take some pics of the modifications I made. Unfortunately I didn't take any pics of the work in process, but I took some of the finished product. To recap... I used a lathe to cut off the crimped over lip that originally held the two halves of the clamshell together, cleaned everything up, and made some improvements while I was in there. Here's a shot of the inside. My calibration notes W = "Warm", R = "Room": While I had it apart, I didn't like the way the shutter blade wobbled on it's retainer pin and didn't always align properly to make a good seal against the inside of the housing. This can result in an incorrect high idle, so I pulled out the original pin and drilled and tapped for a screw instead of the original retainer pin. I countersunk the shutter blade to accept a flat head screw and screwed the shutter in place with very little play. Here's a shot of the screw, and I am holding the original pin: Then to put it back together, I drilled and tapped three small holes to accept screws to hold the clamshell back together: Here's a closeup where you can see how the screw is installed: I also drilled a hole for a retainer screw to keep the bending element in place: Used a little RTV silicone on the bending element and also between the two halves of the clamshell and then tighten up the screws. It works much better than new! No binding, no leaks, and I can easily take it apart again if future cleaning is necessary. And just for illustration, here's a pic of the components:

Unless you got orangutan arms, you gotta ask the passenger to change the radio station for you!

I suspect you've got a vacuum leak somewhere and you are running way lean. Are you sure you didn't miss a vacuum port somewhere?

Got the second coat of stain on and here's what I've got. I've sent the original knob I had back to it's owner, so I can't do a side by side comparison for color, etc, but from the pictures, it looks surprisingly close for just happening to have a can of stain pushed to the back of a shelf in the basement. I've got some feelers out for some maple and some walnut to try again.

Hi Mike, Thanks for the pics. That looks fantastic. I don't know what you paid, but from the pics, they did a great job. Couple of questions if you don't mind: Are there finger grip indentations on the forward facing (unseen) side? Do you know if they completely removed the original rubber material before they started the reconstruction, and if they did... Do you know how they built the diameter back up before the final leather covering?

Hi Mike, Thanks much. I'd love to see some good pics of your redone rubber wheel. The "before" pics are less important... I know what that looks like.

Nothing? No info on anyone who refurbishes the black rubber wheels? And nobody wants to trade their cottage cheesy bubbly loose rubber wheel for a 240Z "wood" wheel or a Grant GT which already has the correct hub adapter? I figured people would jump all over a straight up trade offer like that... ? :paranoid:

I didn't specifically look for a seam on the OEM knob that recently passed through my shop, but I didn't see one. I do remember looking at the grain from all sides and noticing that it seemed whoever made it did a pretty good job of centering the knob in the original rough cut blank. I don't know woodworker terms, but what I'm trying to say is that the grain patterns looked symmetric from one side of the knob to the other. Two sides has ovals and the other two have edges of the grain disks. The ovals were pretty close in diameter from one side of the knob to the other. Since I got nothing to lose with my first attempt, I tried some of that ancient golden oak stain I found in the basement and I think it looks pretty good! Directions say I'm supposed to put on a second coat tomorrow, so after that's done I'll take a new pic and post it here. Then, I guess my next order of business will be to get my hands on a higher quality chunk of wood and really try to make one like OEM. So anyone have input into how long I would have to wait until I could make a knob out of wood that was felled last week in the storm?

What options are there for having the 260-280 black rubber steering wheels recovered? On a related note... Anyone want to trade their black rubber 260-280 steering wheel for either a Grant or a Datsun faux wood 240 wheel? I've got one of each and would trade either one for a 260-280 wheel that I can mess with. I don't care how squishy or cottage cheesed the rubber is... :sick:

Not a chance. I've just reviewed both, and I can tell you that the steering wheel is definitely a man made material, and the original knob is definitely real nature created wood. Huh huh... Huh huh... You "like wood".

Thanks olzed. I have no experience in the field, so I'm shooting blanks. Thanks for the ideas. So I've got one vote for maple, and one vote for sap walnut. Anyone else got a theory they would like to share? I've got a maple down in the back yard now due to Sandy... How long would I have to wait until I could make a knob out of wood grown on my own property? Might just be me, but I think that would be cool. grannyknot, I don't mind at all. Bring on the knobs.

I don't think there is much risk of flooding regardless of the throttle position. I don't think it matters. The carbs supply fuel proportional to the air flow and inversely proportional to the venturi area. If you've got the plugs pulled, then you'll have minimal air flow. The only cylinder that would be pulling any air in through the carb will be the one currently under test. The other five will be huffin-n-puffing through their spark plug holes. I'm thinking that even if you do manage to pull any fuel into the one cylinder under test, it'll dry out as soon as you move to the next cylinder?

Where would I start? I would check my floor mat to make sure it isn't interfering with the gas pedal. (They call me Captain Obvious!!)

I'm not convinced on the walnut thing... Seems to me that the grain is too pronounced. Here's a good thread that talks about the original knob. http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/thread37451-2.html. From that thread, here's a pic of the original (left) and Nissan's current replacement offering (right): I would guess that the one on the right is definitely walnut, but the original on the left. I'm not so sure. The grain looks too (don't know what the correct term is, but...) "smooth". When you get your knob back and can take a better look, let me know what you think. olzed, Tinker or gunsmith is certainly better than the village idiot! I've done a lot work on paintball guns in years gone by. Does that count? So looking at that good pic of the original knob, can you make a better guess as to what type of wood was used?

Haha! Well it didn't start as resourcefulness in the traditional sense. I was just trying to get my hands on something quick and cheap. I got lucky mostly. I made the brass insert on my lathe. You might be able to turn the wood on a drill as you mentioned above, but you'd be hard pressed to make the insert. A buddy who does some wood working came over today and I showed him the original and my retro. He wasn't positive, but his guess was that the stock knob is maple and my copy is poplar. He also supports the oil finish thoughts and echoed the tung oil suggestion. Anyone got a block of maple that's itchin to find a new home? Haha! I was born too late. A couple hundred years ago I might have been the village tinker. But to answer your question... In the aftermath of the recent hurricane, I made an exhaust pipe extension for my generator so I could run the generator in the garage without having to keep the garage door open. I cut and soldered a contraption of copper sweat pipe such that I could run the pipe extension under a mostly closed garage door. It was brilliant!! Looked great. Fit great. Worked great. Brilliant I say!! For a few minutes... And that's when I discovered that the exhaust gases coming from a typical generator is way hot enough to desolder copper sweat pipe. I went in the basement to check on the sump pump, and by the time I came back up it had melted the solder and blown itself right off the generator. I wasted a lot of time on that one!! :stupid:

Carl, Hate to break it to ya, but that "metal" retainer on the bottom of the OEM knob is actually chrome plated plastic. I don't know if all of the years are like that, but here's the one I just fixed. This is the plastic insert removed from the OEM wood knob: I made a brass threaded insert to repair this one, so NOW it has metal in it. Prior to this, however, the only metal in the OEM knob was the copper and chrome plating on the plastic. I also made a similar brass insert for my new wooden retro-knob. You can see a little brass in the hole at the base. So now they have metal in them, but from the factory... Nope.

Thanks guys. To be honest, I was not expecting it to turn out as well as it did. I figured that this being my first attempt, and mostly freehand at that, this first one was going to be a test bed disposable. Because of that, I didn't want to spend a lot of money. The only scrap wood I had laying around was cut-offs from pine 2x4s from various projects gone by. So I went to the local Big Box Store and paid $3 for one of these: I'm was never expecting a perfect match to the original, but it looked close enough for a test run. It was light in color, had a nice tight grain like the original, and was large enough that I could take material off to shape it similar to the original. And... It was $3 and I could have it today. I have no idea what kind of wood it actually is, but the structure is pretty similar to the stock knob. I've got the cut off ends that I can use to test finishes. Since I was trying to achieve a shape similar to the original knob, the first thing I did was use the original knob to make a sorta contour gauge to use as a guide for shaping the new knob. Crude, but this is what I came up with: As for finishes, I don't think there's any clear coating on the original. There's probably some stain or oil, but nothing like varnish or shellac. So for my first shot, should I use stain or some kind of oil? I think I've got an ancient can of "Golden Oak" stain in the basement... Wonder what that would do? And here's a shot of boring the recess for the shift map. Just because I like "in action" photos:

I just finished fixing a stripped out shift knob for another Z owner and after messing with his wooden shift knob, I decided that I liked it. While I had his original wooden knob in the shop as an example, I figured I would try my hand at fashioning myself a new knob. Here's a shot of my new knob in process: And here is the trio... My faux leather black plastic, the wooden knob I just made, the original wood knob I just fixed: I'm no woodworker, and know pretty much nothing about finishes, etc. Any woodworkers in the house that can provide some input into stains, finishes, etc? Can anyone tell what type of wood and finish was used on the original? I used some light colored wood with a tight grain, but I don't even know what it was... I'm sure there are woodworkers in our midst!! :bulb:

Mike, That's great news. I love it when a plan comes together! CaptO.

The 74 is supposed to run the fuel pump when the engine RPM's are above 400 and the starter is not engaged. The electric pump shuts off if the engine isn't running. So, to answer your question... If your engine is running (assuming it's running faster than 400 RPM), you should be getting voltage at the fuel pump connector in the wheel well. See EF-6 and EF-7 for more detail.

I see the two tube variety now too. Cool, I didn't see that before. The junkyard AAR I have is the single tube style with the exit hole on the bottom. The only other thing I can add about differences is that the Pathfinder one has a phenolic shutter while the stock AAR has an aluminum shutter. Don't know if they changed to phenolic as a cost reduction or for some sort of performance improvement.