Carl Beck

Hi Pete: Thanks - I hope you guys in that area realize how lucky you are to have a resource like John anywhere close to you. Great guy, loves the 240-Z's and there isn't anything he can't do, or hasn't done a hundred times already. Very reasonable shop prices for first class work as well. Not to mention a very competitive driver... I usually try to make it up to Atlanta for the ARRC, but this year it conflicted with a local Concours event I had earlier committed to attend. Also it conflicted with the Historic's at Daytona... Sure wish these event organizers of major events would coordinate a little better here in the South East at least. FWIW, Carl B.

Seems to have shown up here full size.... looks great... What happened to John Williams? Carl B.

Hi Shane: You'll have to look for a little more information on the car and let us know what you find. 1. Look at the side of the engine block - just below the #5/#6 spark plug's -you should see to flat pads cast into the block - and on them you should see L26 (if it's a 260Z) or L20 if it is a 2.0 Liter Fairlady Z.. on the second pad is the serial number of the engine. 2. Look on the firewall - just below the drip rail, where the hood closes down.. Stamped into the firewall should be some letters and numbers... sometimes you have to clean the dirt off to see them. You should see something like "GS30 xxxxxx or GS301 xxxx"... 3. On the data tag, that is under the hood, screwed to the shock tower - on one line or another.. you should be able to see "L20-xxx" or " L20E xxxxxx" or "L26 xxxxxx" stamped into the metal somewhere... Of course digital pictures will help a lot too - if you have a digital camera, up load a few pictures showing the engine, interior details etc... Whatever it is - I'm sure you'll have lot of fun with it... FWIW, Carl B.

If you can't tell the difference - why put them on the car? Just build a double glass sided display case and keep the solid core's for display/conversation pieces. Put the hollow core's on the car. Both my "DATSUN" scripts from the decklid, are hollow from #20 and #587... The 240Z Scripts from the quarter panels are solid, and the 240Z script from the trunk lid is hollow (only have one, and it's not from either car) I don't recall ever seeing a solid DATSUN script from the decklid... neat... I'd keep it for display.. FWIW, Carl B.

I'm still at 10.3.9... yes I have the Flash Player. All other video's everywhere else load and play (u-tube, xxx etc)... FWIW, Carl

These recent "click here to play video" things..... doesn't seem to work for me. When I click there - I just get a page with a lot of white space, and some advertising... I'm useing Firefox on a Mac... Carl B.

Hi Fred: I had something like that on my Christmas list too - so I decided to buy it for myself now. I ask a few people about current digital camera's, then did as much research as I could on the Web... wound up buying the Nikon D40x... although the Cannon offering was also highly recommended. I bought a Nikon CoolPix 950 about five or six years ago, and it is a pretty good camera still today... so thought I'd just stick with Nikon. You know how to use a good camera, and I have one that I don't know how to use... so we'll have to spend some time together. At the present time all I can do is point and shoot... on the fully automatic settings.. My wife tells me I need to learn how to stage the settings and pay attention to composition first - then worry about the quality of the photo itself .... (she's usually right)... Here's a shot from Jim's back yard..(of course all you can see is the low res. version on computer screen). The St. Pete Yacht Club's show runs from registration between 8:30 and 10:30AM - then the show runs till 3:00PM... with awards directly following. Their Web Site is: http://www.spyc.org/ Just hit the "EVENTS" tab... FWIW, Carl B.

Hi Fred: What for example would you consider a decent camera to be? I'd say the pictures taken with the camera you used - most likely would have turned out even better, if you catch the Sun at the right time of day... and/or have the car in a better orientation to the light source... {not easy to do in Florida this time of year...} The Z looks great... adding the Aero/Ground effects kit makes the car look much sleeker.. There is a good classic car show at the St. Petersburg Yacht Club this Sunday... right down town just North of the Pier. It's held in the Park just North of the Club.. very nice setting, lots of very nice people.. A few of us will be there... come on over... FWIW, Carl

You mentioned "a shop" but I doubt anyone, myself included, has any idea of what that means. A Body Shop, a Tire Shop, a Plating Shop, an Upholstery Shop?.... you'll need them all to refresh or restore a 240-Z. Does "no running engine" mean that the original engine is still with the car, but in non-running condition, or does it mean that the original engine is no longer with the car? A money pit with no real return?... Depends on what you paid for it to begin with, and how much of the original car you can refresh and reuse. Then it depends on the quality of the work done, the location into which you try to sell it and how much time/effort you are willing to put into advertising, promoting, showing and selling. If you can pick up a clean body shell for around a grand, if you keep close track of a rebuild budget, shop for price on everything you need to buy and do a bang-up job on the paint/body work.. A 240-Z with a good running L28 (non turbo) could easily bring $5,500.00 to $6,500.00... With a good running L28 ET (turbo) you might find a buyer with the cash at $8,500.00 (but it gets harder to find them) To make a project like that work out - you almost have to have a shop that specializes in 240-Z's. Where you would have lots of spare parts cars to draw from, known vendors to supply parts you still need at wholesale pricing, and perhaps other friends with which speciality work could be traded. Given the time and effort involved, given the expense involved... you might make a small profit, but it is unlikely to justify your time. On the other hand - if it is used to promote the business and your skills -it is at least tax deductible and most of the return would be in personal satisfaction and ownership fun anyway. FWIW, Carl B.

Timing is everything. Had you bought a very clean 240-Z 10 years ago, you would have had to pay around $3,500.00 to $4,500.00. That would have bought you a one owner, mostly rust free, mostly original 240-Z with less than 60K miles. One which still had it's original factory paint in good shape, shinny bumpers and trim and a clean interior. Had you taken that car completely apart - and preformed a correct restoration, putting it back to "as it left the factory" condition - - doing most of the grunt work yourself, and farming operations like paint and body work out to professionals - - you would most likely have spent in the neighborhood of an additional $10K to $12K. With $13.5K to $16.5K cash in the car - it would sell for between $20K and $25K today, if it had been maintained in freshly restored condition. At that point, you could have owned and enjoyed the car for 10 years, had fun doing the restoration and sold it for more than you had in it. Making a $3,500.00 to $8,500.00 gross profit. (net is a different story however, when you take insurance, storage costs, license fees etc into consideration) Alternatively - if you had just keep the car in the same or slightly better condition than you found it in - today it would sell for $7,500.00 to $9,500.00 perhaps more... While you can still find clean, mostly rust free, one owner 240-Z's that have had great loving care their entire life; and which still have less than 75K miles... for $9,500.00 or so ... The cost of restoration is now about two to three times as much as it would have been 10 years ago. Most paint and body work has doubled and most of the needed replacement parts are three to four times as much. (very limited supply at a time when demand is at its greatest). To do a #1 or #2 condition restoration today, when it's all said and done, will cost at least $20K and it's pretty easy to spend $30K. Nonetheless, 10 years from now, a Pure Stock, perfectly restored Datsun 240-Z could easily be selling for $40K to $50K. Modify it, with an L28, drill holes to mount the fender flairs... paint it a non-stock color etc etc... and the market value will most likely be less than a third of a pure stock example. Lose the original matching number L24 and it would most likely bring even less. The best buy in todays market is the #1 or #2 example you can buy for $18K to $23K... You can't begin to restore one today, to that condition for less than twice the price. Second best buy is the clean, mostly rust free, one owner car - that has had great care for its lifetime and which has 80K to 120K miles - but which is still stock and original. You can buy them for $10K, drive and enjoy them with very little additional investment (less than $5K)... and ten years from now you would not lose much if any money... FWIW, Carl B.

"Sure Fire" way - Yes, hit them with a acetylene torch and see if they melt, or turn into a huge sparkler!! <VBG>... I can't think of a non-destructive way to test the materials... there is most likely some type of acid test to see the reaction, that could be done on some scrapings... Really - just pick them up. Magnesium Alloy wheels will be noticeably lighter - about 65% of the weight of a like Aluminum Alloy wheel. Left to sit for months/years the Mag.'s will turn all but black, and when you remove the thin layer of black, you'll see a tell-tail layer of light green corrosion. The light green is a pinta somewhat like the light green of weathered copper. Only on the mag,'s most people think at first that the light green is a primer of some kind. I'd say scrape some of the black off the back side of the wheel - a thin layer at a time - and see what's under it. Another clue - is very few wheels are actually magnesium alloy. American did produced a very limited quantity of the 13" Libra's in magnesium alloy. The 14" were a slightly different design - the Le Mans wheels. I don't know what would be on the back of the 13" American's cast in magnesium.. I've never had a set.. You can use medium size/grain glass beads to blast the mag.'s - using a lower pressure than normal... about 90psi instead of 125/150psi. As I said before, they will come out of the blast cabinet looking like raw aluminum wheels.. Just make sure you don't blast the outer rim, if you want to keep it polished.. The best stuff I've found for polishing the outer lips - is the old stand-by - Metal Bright (cotton wadding in a can, treated with who knows what). Applied with a lot of elbow grease.... Did you buy the wheels in the ad this thread was started with? Or did you find another set here in Florida? FWIW, Carl

Yes..... If you want to keep them in their "natural" cast state (ie. uncoated) - the magnesium alloy wheels corrode very quickly if subjected to water (spots/drops).. the outer lips dull quickly too, so they require almost constant polishing (relative to what the aluminum wheels do). If you want to paint them - to protect the magnesium alloy - there are very special processes for cleaning, then special primers that have to be used prior to painting. The best method I've found so far, to maintain the magnesium alloy wheels, while letting them gray out to their natural color - is to coat them with Gibbs Brand Gun Oil. If you do get them wet, you should wipe them down as soon as possible with a cloth dampened in the Gibbs Oil. If you don't they wind up with white corrosion spots.. that eat the metal and leave pits. If you look closely at the wheels offered for sale - you can see the lighter gray area's and dirty white spots ... that were most likely white a few weeks after they got wet... and/or it is possible someone just tried to paint over the corrosion. ... which doesn't work for long before it comes through the paint.. Hard to tell without having them in hand for a physical inspection. If you bead blasted them - they would come out looking like the normal aluminum wheels - silver in color - but with a month of two they would be turning light gray, then in a few more months they turn dark gray.. Also - the mag. alloy wheels have a safe service life.... much shorter than the aluminum alloy wheels.. mostly because of the differences in their corrosion rates.. and the fact that most owners won't take the needed care required for the mag. alloy wheels. FWIW, Carl B.

Alan: Thanks for the pictures and the information - A friend in Russia is a modeler, and needed the info for an accurate recreation. I passed it along to him as well. I agree with Chris - the pictures are super. Carl B.

Hi Brandon: A kit for a Fairlady Z 432, would have an S20 engine A kit for a 240Z should have an L24 engine FWIW, Carl B.

Alan: On the 240 ZG as it came from the factory - how would you describe the color/texture of the fender flairs? thanks, Carl B.

Alan: On the 240 ZG as it came from the factory - how would you describe the color/texture of the fender flairs? thanks, Carl B.

I believe they are magnesium - not aluminum... These are not wheels you would want to run on the street - way too hard to maintain

What camera are you taking the pictures with??? They look great... as does the Z. $11K..... I think your not keeping close track... ;-) thanks, Carl

Hi Ron: You would seem to have a couple options - related to where you want to bring the tail pipes out from under the car. The NISMO Factory Sports Option set up brings straight pipes out the center of the car, and I believe that BRE did the same with their C-Production Z's. I'd guess that on the cars set up for road racing, the stock fuel tank was replaced with a safety fuel cell - otherwise the tail pipes would seem to be very close to the gas tank... and somewhat low to the ground. Bob Sharp seems to have run a set up sold by Datsun Competition that brought the tail pipes out to the left side - in the stock location. The Datsun Competition setup had the option of running straight pipes or two mufflers. If you are thinking of putting a single oval muffler, with two inlets/outlets - in the stock location (instead of two individual glass packs)... Then you'll most likely have to go with something like the Magnaflow http://www.magnaflow.com/02product/shopexd.asp?zone=main&id=475 I could be wrong, but as I recall, you need a muffler on the left that is about 14" long - so the example above might not be the exact one... You'll have to get exact measurements... Most muffler shops have catalogs of universal fit mufflers and they could easily come up with something to fit your needs. FWIW, Carl B.

Anyone recognize this specific radiator overflow/recovery bottle? I need this exact one if I can find it. thanks, Carl

Hi Jason: Can you give me the dimensions of the MSA tank? Of picture of it in the car so I can get a perspective of it's size? thanks, Carl

Speaking of DSP - I see Mark Jaremko finished 2nd. this year in DSP. I believe he finished in 1st for the previous two years. Mark was about 4 when I bought my first 240-Z from his father Paul Jaremko at Valley Datsun, in March of 1970. Paul was/is quite a driver himself, winning Datsun one of their first SCCA Regional Championship in 63 or 64 AIR - and is mentioned in John B Rae's history of Datsun/NISSAN in the U.S.A. FWIW, Carl B.

I agree - that first picture has beautiful symmetry, and that is the best perspective of the car to show it's Classic body lines. I'd at least have that one blown up into a Poster Size for your wall... Great job on the car and the photo's.. Carl B.

Hi Triari: I would not replace the steel fuel lines ... It really isn't all THAT simple to do anyway. All you need to do is clean the original steel lines out. Most likely that black tar is from the rubber lines decaying and it's unlikely much of it got too far into the steel lines. Disconnect the lines (fuel feed and fuel return) at the engine compartment. Get a small funnel and clamp it to the fuel line.... Jack the front of the car up a few inches. Pour Isopropyl Alcohol {Rubbing Alcohol ) into the funnel and let it gravity drain to the rear (you already have the rear lines disconnected from the tank... just put a catch pan back there to catch it when it comes out). You can buy Rubbing Alcohol at any drug store - and in larger quantities its pretty cheap. Look at the label and see if you can find anything above 70%... sometimes you can and its better for cleaning. Every half hour or so - check the funnel and refill... When you see the Alcohol run quickly out the back.. you know that nothing is restricting the flow - take some compressed air and blow the lines out. If the flow is restricted.. just let the alcohol dissolve it as it runs slowly past it... Next you can run a bit of fuel injector cleaner through the lines....(you use the Alcohol first because its cheap and effective)...AMOCO/CHEVRON used to sell a product called Techron with Toluene as the active ingredient - any fuel injector cleaner with Toluene will work just fine (or any Fuel System Cleaner with Toluene) Toluene is a common solvent, you can buy it at most Sherwin Williams Paint stores... Toluene is also a common ingredient in all gasolines, in much reduced proporations...It will clean most crude found in gas lines - out. Plug the rear of the lines - and pour the fuel injector cleaner (or pure toluene) into them... let it sit for a few minutes... then unplug the lines and let it run out... If the fluid is VERY dirty repeat the fuel injector cleaner... I've never had to do that more than once... No need to clean the toluene out of the lines, it mixes fine with gasoline (actually will raise the octane rating of gasoline). By now the lines should be clean enough for another 100K miles... and they will get cleaner as you drive and run fresh gas though them... Install a new gas filter and drive the car... Just my opinion FWIW, Carl B.

Sorry - that is completely WRONG and NOT SAFE AT ALL. The 240-Z's weight less than 2400 lbs. in part because the body is made of very thin sheetmetal. Surface rust, will work it's way though the very thin metal in very short order. No fun removing that tar mat - but doing it NOW might save you the expense and work of replacing the floorboards six months from NOW. FWIW, Carl B.