Captain Obvious

You could still do P-n-P if you were to plug into the connectors that attach right onto the back of the headlight bulbs themselves. (And as a matter of fact, using that technique, I think you should be able to produce an auxiliary harness that would work on any 240, 260, or 280.) I haven't drawn it up, but assuming you are pulling power and ground directly from the battery with new wires, you should only need to make connection to one of the original bulb connectors. Both of the original connectors would be disconnected from the bulbs, but you could leave one hanging (or snipped off and taped up). You would, however, have to deal with the unavailability of the headlight bucked grommets which will turn to dust with that much agitation.

CAT scan!!

The usable floor level is higher in 77. I know for sure.

In 77, they changed a lot of stuff. Doors. Floor stampings. Seat mounts. Door locks. Rear wheel cylinders (and brake shoes?) Shoulder harness belts relocated to the strut towers (or was that 76) Different quarter window trim because they don't need the hole for the seatbelt. Different rear panels where the speakers go and speakers on both sides. Relocation of the seatbelt warning lamp or something like that came up in a recent thread?

I have no idea. They changed lots of sheet metal in 77. Doors, floors, seat mounts... Safety updates maybe?

My 77 has storage bins. They are just hidden under the raised deck. They didn't bother to put any door lids on the bins, but they are there. I'm no expert on the whole timeline, but thought the whole raised deck thing was driven by the changes to the gas tank and the shallower spare tire recess. On 76 and earlier, they used a full sized spare and the recess for the spare was deeper. But when they went to the space saver spare in 77, they made the recess shallower (presumably for changes to the gas tank?) and had to create that false raised deck to get over the width of the spare. Is that the consensus?

Hi Z Greek, Sorry... Meant to get back to you and it slipped off my radar. I just sent you a PM.

And just in case anyone wonders what I think about the cars condition... I see a dash that has been sun baked and baked and baked. And baked. Covers on the seats hiding who knows what! Wrong shift knob (and missing the emblem to boot). A center console that has been cracked up. A wiring nightmare with hacked harnesses, splices and wires hanging everywhere. Steering wheel missing parts, Clamshell gone and wires exposed. Typical peeling vinyl on the scuff plates and rotted weatherstripping. Looks like the radio has been forcibly removed. Maybe even a theft recovery? So my read on the car is that it was driven hard for many years in a very sunny humid part of the world and put away wet. Now it's someone's half finished project where they pop-riveted homemade floor pans in it and then kinda gave up on the project because they lost interest or money, or both. And it may have been stolen and recovered in there somewhere.

I'm not sure if any of those terms ("exaggeration", "lie", or "disingenuous") really apply here. From my experience the people selling Z cars have very darkly tinted rose colored glasses on. I've gone to look at probably twenty cars for sale and the story was pretty much the same at all of them. The owners don't see the car as it is right now... They look at it and picture how nice it could be if it were fixed. So my read on the statement "Only rust on the WHOLE CAR is a VERY small amount on the floorpan(could cover completely with less than a dollar bill)" Means "There used to be a lot of rust on the car, but it was all in the floor pans which have been replaced. So now that the floors have been replaced, the only rust is a small amount on the floorpan." Of course, we experienced Z owners know that the rust you can see is a tiny amount of the total rust that you CAN'T see, and if the floors were so bad that they had to be replaced, then there are guaranteed to be other significant issues to be found if you poke in the right spots. But maybe (just maybe?) the seller hasn't that same level of experience. So maybe I'm giving them too much leeway, but I don't see it as dishonest... I see it as inexperienced.

Couple pics of my place. This is my parts ZX in the driveway: And here's my mailbox and my street before they plowed:

Sounds like a plan. Just remember... Good connections all around. 10A will drop an entire Volt on just 0.1 Ohms of resistance. It's the law. Might want to pull the defroster relay out of it's socket, clean the contacts, and reseat? Same with the fuse? I remember fogging on the inside of the glass from my first Z, but I must not be driving the current one enough because I haven't had that problem. Of course, being my summer car, most of the time my windows are down.

I wouldn't plug that defroster into the cigarette lighter outlet, but if you cut the lighter adapter end off and splice it directly to the wires that go to the original defroster, you'll probably be OK. The reason for that suggestion is that the defroster circuit has it's own dedicated relay to drive the defroster (and only the defroster) As Zed Head already suggested, the current draw from that defroster is going to be ten to fifteen Amps and the defroster circuit is fused for twenty. Where I come from, a factor of two on a safety device is the limit, so you'll be pushing that, but it's going to be for intermittent use. If anything, I would expect that the relay would go up first and not the wires. Just make sure you have good clean tight connections everywhere. Last thing you want to do is burn up any energy in the connection points. You want all the energy in the heating coils, not the connectors.

I don't think that pic has been altered. I think the front is lighter than the rear and if you got the nuts, you can move it like those three guys in the pic. At this stage in life I wouldn't want to be any of those three guys, but back in my youth, I would have been any of them. Of course, that may be why I couldn't be one of them anymore. My spine aint what it used to be, and doing stuff like that in the past is probably why.

I'm going to be shoveling until April...

Nabbed this off the internet a couple years ago.

Dang... Your access to military grade tools is envious!

Duetto!!

I suspect a testing/semantics error... If it passed the first two tests, it pretty much MUST pass the third. Here's my interpretation of the test procedure... Put +12 on pin 1 and ground on pin 5 (and yes... the polarity matters even though they don't tell you that). Test 1A and 2A - With pin 4 not connected to anything, you should have very low resistance (less than one Ohm) between pins 1 and 3 and very high resistance (greater than one MegOhm) between pins 2 and 3. Test 1B and 2B - With pin 4 to connected to ground (along with pin 5), you should see the reverse of the above and have very high resistance between pins 1 and 3 and a very low resistance between 2 and 3. Now if it passes those two (four?) tests above, it tells me that both coils are working and there's no way it could fail the third test. So... What do I think is going on? I think it's a semantics issue maybe? They say "continuity", and that's an ambiguous term. It won't read as low of a resistance as the first two tests because you're reading through one of the relay coils, but that relay coil is intact, or you wouldn't have passed the first two tests. I'm thinking you've got your meter on a continuity test setting and the resistance of the relay coil is too high to trigger the meter's interpretation of "continuity". If that's the case, put the meter into a resistance reading Ohms range and see what you get. I'm guessing somewhere less than 200 Ohms, but more than 50. Or, maybe I have no idea.... That happens too.

I talked with Fastwoman a little while ago and she said that she was going to be stepping back from the computer for a bit in order to spend time dealing with a health issue with one of her family members. I hope things are going well and wish her and her family all the best.

Any opinions? I think you pulled too hard on the chain tool. I don't like the looks of the oil pan gasket either. I think you ought to keep a very close eye on a plastic tube filled with an organic solvent.

I made a 4 speed version but I didn't make one for the 5 speed because I don't have one as a template. Do you have a 5 speed knob on your Z?

Haha!!! That's good advice!! And I'll try hard not to drop my beer!

I think I had asked about something like that, but can't find it again. I wish I had a preview button too. If you find one, let me know?

The 72 carbs were different than the previous years in that they actually had coolant passageways in the body casting that directed water out of the intake manifolds and up closer to the fuel nozzle. Previous years only had coolant flowing in the intake manifolds, but in 72, they went that extra step and tried to get that flow closer to the needle and nozzle. You can tell the difference with 72 manifolds, carbs, spacers, and gaskets which all have holes in the faces to pass the flow. Datsun seemed to like the results too as evidenced by the fact that they improved on this practice into 73 and 74 with the flat top carbs as well.

Right. Pics or it didn't happen!!