Captain Obvious

I cut the splines in on a machine called a "metal shaper". When you mention shaper, most people picture a wood shaper, and it's nothing like that. It's a machine with a ram that moves fore and aft. Cuts a little bit on the forestroke and then drags (but doesn't cut) on the backstroke. Picture the motion of a hand held hacksaw. Vooopah - Voopah - Voopah... You cut one groove to depth a little at a time, rotate the part the correct number of degrees and cut the next groove to depth. Once you have gone all the way around and cut each individual groove, you're done. Shapers are the machines from a bygone era and have been mostly replaced by milling machines. The saying amongst the machinist community is "You can make anything you want on a shaper... Except money." However, there are some jobs like splines and slotting, there's nothing better. I just like watching it work. It's memorizing. Fore and aft. Clickety-clack. Fore and aft. Clickety-clack. A little wisp of smoke off the cutting oil... Here's a couple pics of the setup. This is a pic of the cutting tool that gets rammed into and out of the blank workpiece. The shape of the small cutting tip has been ground to result in the proper groove shape to mate with the male spline on the steering column: Here's the tool mid-stoke inserted into the blank. The round device with the holes in it is called a "collet spinner" or an "indexer". The holes provide the ability to rotate the blank an accurate number of degrees: And here's a pic of the overall setup. Collet spinner on the left side clamped halfass in the shaper's vice, and the shaper on the right side with the ram at about mid-stroke:

Thanks guys! Yes, it was a difficult install. The problem is that the mounting spline dimensions from the 90-96 300ZX is different than what we have on our first gens, so I made an entire new mounting hub for the wheel, cut off the original one, and welded my replacement into it's place. Lot of work, but the end result is that the wheel is in the same location to stock and it's also about the same diameter as the original wheel. So it's not a fancy small diameter racing wheel, but that wasn't what I was after. I wanted something that was leather and had a thicker feel to it, but didn't look aftermarket. I wanted something that it "looks like it belongs", and I like the fact that it came from the Z family. Unfortunately it's not an easy adaptation. Here's a thread about the install with some additional pics:http://www.classiczcars.com/topic/46609-steering-wheel-300zx-240sx-wheel-into-first-gen-z/

I adapted leather wheel from a 1990 300ZX. Significant project and therfore not much help to the OP, but since people are showing off their wheels, I figured I would play.

Those are not the droids I'm looking for.

I hope you know that a post like that absolutely must be followed up by pictures of you modeling said contraption. There's no way you can toss that out there without supplying pics of it in situ.

Haha!! Just like a big puppy dog!! Love it! Sp welcome to the spindle pin club. Now that your hazing is complete, you're a full fledged member. Wish I had the tools you do! Hey... Is that a welded stack of military grade nuts as a spacer?

You know your car fell over, right?

It's an RPM controlled "fuel cut". Take a look at page EF-12 of the 76 FSM. It describes the operation there. Basically, if you take your foot completely off the gas when the RPM's are around 3200, the ECM stops injecting fuel. Once the car slows down to the point where the RPM's drop below about 2800, the ECM starts injecting fuel again. That's the "smoothing out" you feel.

Now THAT'S a press!! I think I just heard my wimpy little 20T press in my shop whimper in fear... More rough back of the napkin calculations: At an estimated 125K psi tensile strength for the spindle pin with approximately 0.69 square inches... It would take about 43 tons before the threaded porting tore off. So you can be confident that building a beefier puller device would probably never have worked anyway and would have been a waste of time. If it took 60 tons to move that thing, the tip would have ripped off long before it started to move. We absolutely DO need to get together for drinks!! I don't know if I'll ever get really close to you, but I am hoping to make it to ZCON 2016 in Toronto next year. That's not far from you, right? It's in Canada after all...

They may think it's a movement! So we're going to veer way off course for a moment... This past fall 2015, I went on a quest. I couldn't find the dump, but I did find: Unfortunately, it is a bit overgrown and no longer open: Nature has started to take over: The church, however, is still vibrant as "The Guthrie Center". https://guthriecenter.org/ And yes... That is a red VW Microbus in the parking lot: Sorry for the detour, and back to your regularly scheduled event.

Haha! Nope. It was a joke. I was just trying to lightheartedly reinforce your input that you mentioned more than once in capitol letters with exclamation points. In the middle of the other side. Away from everything else on the other side. In parentheses. Capital letters. Quotated.

Patcon, Here's some back of the napkin rough calculations to get an idea of just how little meat there was left on that puller... Major diameter of internal 12mm thread - approx. 0.47 inches Minor diameter of external 3/4-10 thread - approx. 0.63 inches Cross sectional area of resulting cylinder between the two - approx. 0.55 square inches When you compare that to the cross sectional area of the threaded portion of the spindle pin (approx. 0.69 square inches), you'll see that the puller is destined to fail before the pin does. And that doesn't even account for the stress risers or the fact that the spindle pin is made out of a better grade of steel than the all-thread used for the puller. If you were to use a good quality 1-5 acme threaded rod for your puller, your minor diameter of the acme threads would be approx. 0.780 inches and the resulting cross sectional area for the cylinder would approach twice the area of the spindle pin tip. And that means that if the pin doesn't budge, at least the pin tip will tear off before the puller fails.

wheee, I'm sure that with perseverance and the unbeatable combination of smarts, technology, and brute force, you will win this battle. Good luck! Zed Head, They call that technique a "shrink fit". One of the places you've probably seen it is with ring gears that were shrunk onto flywheel castings. Heat the gear and drop it over the flywheel blank while hot. Once it cools, it locks tight. In more recent days it seems cheaper to make the whole flywheel out of one piece instead of a separate ring gear though.

Chickenman, Other than some length of vacuum tubing, he's already got all the parts he needs right there already on the car including the ability to screw adjust the amount of idle boost desired. As described in post #11. Captain out.

Madkaw, Let me make sure I understand you correctly... Are you recommending that he uses a chain tensioner tool as part of this process?

Haha! "Impacted the frog out of it!". So you laid out what sounds like a perfect plan of attack. Good luck and hope you don't have to resort to the saw and dragging heavy parts to work. You got one side out right? Last I heard, you had one pin 3/4 out. I assume that side came out the remaining 1/4, without too much drama?

So out of curiosity... Have you tried the age old technique of soaking everything with penetrating oil, partially threading one of the nuts back onto one of the end of the spindle pin (such that the tip of the pin is flush with the outside face of the nut) and giving it a whack or ninety with a BFH? Or leaning hard into the end of the pin with the impact hammer and see if you can buzz it out of there? Either of those methods will eventually cause damage to the nut or pin, but if you're just going to resort to cutting them out and putting the struts on the 50 ton press you've got nothing to lose. I'm sure you tried that first, but it's my forum duty to ask.

With the stress risers from the valleys of the threads, I'm not surprised you're pulling the end off that thing. Even using 3/4 all thread, You've got less than a tenth of an inch of meat left between the ID and the OD. And a tenth of an inch wall thickness of the low carbon nickel plated cheese that most garden variety all thread is made out of won't be enough. And I wish you better luck than others, but as seen from that other thread, it gets better. Keep making your puller stronger. Use an even larger diameter rod of a known tensile strength quality grade of steel and eventually the puller will survive, but you'll simply rip the threaded portion off the end of the spindle pin. Here's to hoping yours pulls before that happens!! And make sure you're wearing safety glasses!! I haven't looked at it to any degree of scrutiny, but that bearing makes me a little nervous...

Cool. Sounds like progress. I'm trying to run the calculations to compare the springs you have to eachother and to what I've got like, but the results are only as good as the data input. A thousandth here and there can really make a difference. Also, when you count the number of coils, that's supposed to be the number of "effective" coils and doesn't count the partial coils at the ends. For example, my (what I think are stock) springs have probably 30 coils total, but if I don't count about a turn-n-a-half at each end of semi-formed coils, I get about 27 effective coils. When I get a chance, I'll take a pic of one of mine to show you what I mean. And the measurements of wire diameter and OD of the spring need to be as accurate as possible. What's this "crappy micrometer" look like?

Looks great!

We're not going to Moscow. It's California. It's like going into Wisconsin.

Yeah, I think you're right. I'm pretty sure they didn't go down into the pockets, but the more forward parts do appear to be covered. Do you think the kit include a thin piece to glue to the ashtray lid? If not, you better have a great looking ash tray lid or that's gonna stick out like a sore thumb once surrounded by new leather. Post some better pics of the whole process when you get the parts!

Careless, I don't have answers to your real questions, so sorry for the non-sequitur, but... Is it my imagination, or are the two halves of that brake caliper being held together by just one bolt? And one of the empty holes look like it's all ovaled out? Like someone took a file to it some time in the past?? And about fitting the grease bulb to a newer rack, if there's enough meat to drill and re-tap, then it sounds like it would be a fine idea. Just keep the swarf out of the rack innards. I'm not sure what real benefit the grease bulb actually has, but it would certainly look more period correct if that's the goal. Is it straight thread or tapered? Also, the pic with the car up on the lift... Is that your shop with all the interesting stuff in the background?

Gotcha. That was probably the language barrier that djwarner alluded to. When you asked them if the newer style would fit your 73, I would have expected them to tell you "No, but hang on... In two days, we'll be listing one for your year." So despite the communications issues, great to hear you found one for your year.. So looking at the pics again, it appears that skin just covers the outside vertical sides of the console and doesn't wrap up and over to the horizontal surface in the center of the console. In other words, it doesn't cover into the center pocket, ashtray, or shifter hole area. Primarily just the sides? Am I seeing that right?

I gotta admit... I was assuming from the very start that you had already looked at that vendor to see if they offered what you were looking for. I figured the reason that you were wondering if the one for the later years fit your car was because you checked into it and they did NOT offer one for your year. So problem solved, yes. But next time: Over by the auction seller's name, click on "See other items" You'll get 15,499 results. Enter "datsun console" into the search box to pare the results down. I get 11 results for different years and stitching colors. I should have asked at the beginning if you had checked to see if they offered what you were looking for. I think I might have to change my forum name...