Carl Beck

If your R200 did not come with the mounting nuts/washers - you'll need them too. The R200 has larger mounting studs - so your R180 nuts/washers will not transfer. The washers and lock washers are important - as is the correct torque on the mounting nuts. FWIW, Carl B.

A friend of mine and his wife owned #157 since 1970..today another friend has the car. #157 came originally with Braided Fuel Lines. Still has its 69 dated spark plug wires as well. I'm pretty sure I have photo's of others as well..maybe some are more clear.. FWIW, Carl B.

Hi Mike: I don't understand your question. You just told us what you have - "a 70 hatch with a Datsun badge on the lower left of the hatch." To be "stock" it should have the Datsun badge and the 240-Z script on the lower right of the hatch. FWIW, Carl B.

A couple of thoughts.... 1. I have a friend near Tampa that started out that way.. refreshing a few solid Z's... today I believe he has about 20 of them restored.... 2. Sell your son's T-Bird, and buy my wife's. 91 Super Coupe with less than 11K miles. $12K and he can drive it back to California.. Great project so far.... FWIW, Carl B.

Google 13257-21000 and see what shows up... FWIW, Carl B.

Before you do anything - change the PCV valve... that's the most usual cause of your symptoms, once the rings seat. 11810-E3000 Assy-Control Valve Crank Case Emission. FWIW, Carl B.

Where in Florida are you located?

If your really picky - you have to have a few test panels sprayed first.. then adjustments to the mix can be made before you spray the car. FWIW, Carl B.

Given the broader choice between a) buying the stroker kit and building that engine, building an L28 with 10:1 compression, c) buying an L28 built completely by Rebello. I'd spend the extra money on having Rebello do the complete engine build, including intake and tuning - then install that yourself. There is a large difference in performance between engines built by shops like Rebello - and engines built by people that rebuild two or three L series engines a year. Not to mention matching the intake system to the engine and fine tuning everything. FWIW, Carl B.

thanks Jon - I've updated the Post at #60.. Carl B.

Hi Rob: Are you looking to spend $4K on an engine, $6K, $8K??? Being specific about the budget helps greatly in narrowing down recommendations. Truth be told, for what he charges I'd be ordering a L6 Stroker from Rebello. It would be done right the first time and you'd be driving the car in a day to do the swap. FWIW, Carl B.

Yes. If the engine was replaced with a Factory New short block - the Dealer would have stamped a serial number on that block - usually with a different set of dies, that had a different font style. The Factory supplied Complete New L24 engines and they also supplied New L24 "short blocks". That would be an engine without a new head and without new exterior items like oil pump, water pump, front timing cover, etc. If a short block was needed/used the additional parts from the original engine were put on the new short block. Yes all exterior parts from either the E31 or P30 were interchangable. I would guess that would be quite possible. Here is a picture of the serial numbers stamped by the factory in a late 71 production 240Z. You can see that the factory font is the same as the earlier factory font. {the shape of the "0" and "6"} FWIW, Carl B.

Since the "6" and "0" aren't the same font... I'd say the block was not stamped at the Factory L24-3260 9901A 12/69 HLS30 00587 FWIW, Carl B.

Would it be possible to get a picture of that engine serial number? The font on the dies used to stamp it might give us a clue. New replacement blocks from Nissan - came into the Parts Department at the local Dealerships with no serial number - -- Quite possible the Dealership stamped the original engine serial number that was in the car, on the replacement... If that happened, the font on the dies used will most likely not perfectly match the factory dies. FWIW, Carl B.

If you are going to have significant head work done - in the end - either E31 or early E88 are the same. According to the guys on Bob Sharp's team - when I discussed this subject with them circa 1975/6: The E31 castings suffered micro cracks, usually around the exhaust valve seats. So you have to have any E31 inspected closely and carefully before you start pouring money into it. The E31 was a popular swap back in the day - only when one was just swapping heads. In that case, yes you could pick up a coupe tenths of a point in compression. The E88 was a better casting and did not suffer the micro cracking that the E31 did, the intake and exhaust port runners were also improved in the E88. Both BRE and BSR used the E88 after 72. Not that the E88 was so much better, but rather because that was the current head - as I said, both teams modified the heads so much that they bore little resemblance to stock anyway. FWIW, Carl B.

With the Mallory UniLite - you run two ballast resistors. One for the electronics in the distributor and another for the coil. If you are running the 280Z distributor, make sure you have the 280Z coil as well. The ballast resistor is there so that the ignition supplies 12v at the START position of the ignition switch - then reverts to 6v to RUN on the 240Z. If you run the 240Z coil without the resistor you'll soon cook it. FWIW, Carl B.

Bonzi Lon, ol'red70 - thanks guys, I put the info in the list a Post #60.. Carl B.

To Recap what we have so far in this thread..and update as we proceed... <pre> L24 107 E31 92124 FSM L24-2130 E31 9828G 10/69 HLS30-00032 Mike B L24-2396 E31 9901D 11/69 HLS30-00210 Mike B L24-2465 E31 9901F HLS30 00215 mdbrandy L24-2585 E31 9X04C 11/69 HLS30-00331 Mike B L24-3260 E31 9901A 12/69 HLS30-00587 Carl B L24-3652 E31 9X04F 01/70 HLS30-01590 Mike B L24-4375 E31 9Y01A 02/70 HLS30-01704 JonnyRock L24-004621 E31 0126C 01/70 ???? BonziLon L24-005562 E31 02121 03/70 HLS30-02156 Kats L24-005757 E31 0327B 04/70 HLS30-02725 ol'red70 L24-05778 E31 0320A 04/70 abas L24 010878 E31 0660K 07/70 HLS30-07715 Napa Bill L24-011821 08/70 HLS30-08323 daddz L24-026313 P30 1109A 01/71 HLS30-19867 zztom L24-027116 P30 1616L 01/71 HLS30-20419 AZ-240z L24 O27310 P30 01/71 HLS30-20390 deadflo L24-032875 P30 03/71 HLS30 25734 lonetreesteve L24-039190 P30 1408a 05/71 HLS30-31306 mlc240Z L24-123315 08/72 HLS30-98122 ChrisA </pre> FWIW Carl B.

The L26 blocks have the same bore as the L24. The L26 blocks are eyebrowed from the factory. No problem if you have a 0.5mm overbore or larger.. FWIW Carl B.

Hi Kats: Your explanation is very clear. I believe it was quite easy for block castings and finished engine blocks to be mixed up - as they were moved around the factory, sent from the production lines, to the shipping docks and then shipped out to the assembly plants for installation in the various vehicles. No one was paying attention to the casting dates or finished block serial numbers at that point. For a time - I worked on the production lines and then in the shipping department of a manufacturing plant - believe me - the fork lifts running around - picking up pallets of finished goods - would move them all over the place and in a very random order - before they got loaded on trucks, or in train box cars for shipping. Very easy to get them all mixed up.. I have collect for decades - VIN's with original engine serial numbers for the Datsun 240Z's.. but haven't recorded all block casting codes. For the most part the L24's only have two different codes as I recall. I believe the L24 was used in a larger sedan and a commercial truck as well as the Z. The Datsun 2400 {GL130}/Nissan Super Six and Personal Deluxe Six are listed in the FSM. Maybe they got the first few batches of the L24's. The 1970 L20/L24 Factory Service Manual shows a picture of L24-107. So I would guess that they started the serial numbers at L24-00001. The L24 and L20A are two different castings of the same basic block. You can not bore a 2.0L with a bore of 78mm - out to 2.4L with a bore of 83mm - and have any cylinder wall thickness left. So the L20A had to be cast with smaller cylinder bores than used in the L24's - to begin with. So far the earliest L24 block number reported for a 69 production Datsun 240Z is L24-2079 found in HLS30 0042, but we have only found about 166 of the first 543. So it is quite possible that much lower serial number blocks were used in the Z's. FWIW, Carl B.

HI Kats: Interesting information you have presented. Wasn't the Skyline GT-R introduced in Feb of 1969 with the S20 engine. If so then Prince must have been casting production blocks several months before that.. They must have started production of the engines in 1968 sometime. I recall Mr. Matsuo writing that he was told to use the new Prince S20 for the JDM S30, in Aug. of 67. Why bother to put casting codes on any casting? Usually it is done for Quality Control purposes. If later a problem is found with a casting - you have a record that could lead you to the person that did the job, or the batch of castings that were cast at the same time, or with the same lot of cast iron. That way you can try to find out if the problem was caused by the person involved, or by the materials used or by some process step that was or wasn't followed correctly. Normally castings of any kind in a production environment - are not cast one at a time. Usually they are cast in larger batches. It takes a huge amount of energy to melt cast iron to a liquid form so it can be poured into waiting molds. If the casting marks track the castings down to the specific day - then the last two numbers might be the sequence number for the casting made that day, or they might be to identify the specific mold used. If the last two numbers identify the specific mold used - you would know who made that mold. If that person made mistakes in his molds - the entire batch cast that day might not have been bad.. if the problem shows up in several different molds made by different people - then the problem might be in the mix of the cast iron used that day.. So maybe: 9-6-24- 01 9-6-24- 02 9-6-24- 03 9-6-24- 04 9-6-24- 05 9-6-24- 06 9-6-24- 0x..... 9-6-24- 50 The block Serial Numbers are stamped into the block later - so they could easily be out of sequence with the specific casting numbers. Just a guess for fun.... Carl B.

There can be a number of reasons to rebuild an L24 with 63K original miles. 1. Perhaps the most common one is - - The car sat for the past 20 years and the person that either sold it or the person that bought it - failed to take all necessary steps to properly "awaken the sleeping beauty"... thus they scuffed the piston rings and/or cylinder walls... maybe they had a valve stuck and the piston hit it... maybe it was simply front or rear main seals leaking and it scared them... 2. The new owner is just going though the entire car. So they pull the engine and sent it out to be rebuilt. That way, when they start out on One Lap Of America, they know the engine is at its best. 3. They wanted to keep the original matching number L24 - but they wanted to bring it up to todays standard of performance - so they send it out for an L28 crank, some rework on the head and larger valves. They were going to re-seal {pan, head, front cover, front and rear main seals} the engine anyway.. so while you have the head off for inspection... might as well go ahead with a few mods at that point. FWIW, Carl B.

I would call Charlie and ask him if the front floor pans are the same on the Coupe and 2+2 - he has the floor pans manufactured. http://www.datsunzparts.com/NewParts/summary.htm FWIW, Carl B.

That is correct. The late 260Z has the complete 280Z body and interior. The 280Z radiator was increased in lenght - the lower radiator core support was strengthened, and the lower center valance on the 280Z body curves down to cover them and to allow more airflow into the larger radiator. The 280Z body for the U.S. has a lot of reinforcing metal to carry and support the larger 5mph impact bumpers. Eiji has a lot of good pictures related to the 280Z body differences relative to the earlier 240Z body. You can scroll down though a couple months of his Blog.. http://blog.livedoor.jp/datsunspirit/archives/2006-08.html http://blog.livedoor.jp/datsunspirit/archives/2006-09.html FWIW, Carl B

8/74 should have started production of the 280Z for North America. The L28E was late getting though development and EPA testing/certification and wasn't ready for production until late 12/74. The production lines and suppliers were all ready with the 280Z body as of 08/74.. so the 280Z body was put into production 08/74.. but then equipped with the EPA certified L26... thus the "late model 260Z". FWIW, Carl B.