abas

My 1970 ex-california car has one and its looks like it has been there since new. It too has rubbed off some of the paint on the vin plate but not too much. As they were not fitted on the UK cars I am not intending to refit mine. If you want to get a new vin plate you can get one from banzai motorworks http://www.zzxdatsun.com/decals.html Andrew

I bought one similar to this years ago, and it has been worth its weight in gold to me. It is also the most requested tool by far to borrow by my fellow car nuts. I never had any success with the pickle fork type, although others obviously have. Only problem I have found is when a seized 30 year old ball joint finally lets go when using the '3 finger' type it tends to go with a bang and you can get hit by flying tools/balljoints. Andrew

Rent or make a slide hammer to attach to a bolt in the screw hole you refer to hope it helps

Eric They do come in different sizes. The one I use is off an east european bike (MZ) which just happened to fit ( and incidentally is also a 'perfect' fit for undoing the inner tie rods ends on the steering rack :classic:) All I can suggest is that it will be quite a small c spanner as the bike mine came off was a small bike with narrow rear shocks. Your average bike monoshock one will be too big. Perhaps you could take a strut or a nut to a bike shop to see if you can get one the right size. If I had had to buy a tool to remove it I probably would have bought a pipe wrench as they are a lot cheaper than motorcycle tools and far easier to find. hope it helps Andrew

Ben I took the motor on mine apart recently and it had been lubricated inside with grey molybdenum based grease, and was still moving freely after at least 15 years. Would it be worth getting the whole housing gently bead blasted to get all the crap and corrosion off it?. hope it helps Andrew

I don't know about anyone else, but depending on what type of nut you need to do up, I use either a medium size plumbers pipe wrench or a motorbike suspension c-spanner hope it helps Andrew

$95 each side is a lot for those ball joints. Decent quality aftermarket ones can be had for $50 a PAIR. The originality fans might be interested in them but maybe not at that price. The later ones are not something 'visibly' un-original so who will know if you have them fitted to an earlier car. I think the guy asking $75 each side is already asking a premium price. I have just replaced the steering arms on my 4/70 car with the later 14mm ones, to avoid any problem over getting future replacements.

Phillip I think you are brave/committed/demented to take on a project like that. I hope you didn't pay much for it despite it being 'rust-free' Andrew

Is it possible it could be old rust repairs coming through? I think I read something a while back about water sitting at that point on the door, getting trapped at the forward end of the horizontal moulding

my April 1970 car came with the same all chrome z on the rear hatch that Mr Camouflage has just posted. I wondered if that meant it would have originally come with all chrome quarter emblems, but that seems doubtful as they were supposedly only on cars up to 2/70 (per Kats). The car had no quarter emblems on it when I bought it. Perhaps the all chrome hatch emblems were in use after the quarter emblems had the white z on them. Seems odd if so.

that's the ebay car from arizona which was initially listed as a 1972 car

Peter try this link. Definitely one of the good guys http://www.mjpauto.com/contact.html Andrew

Peter welcome to the site you can get seat covers from the UK that have been shipped from the US. price about €250-€300 plus shipping to Germany. Probably cheaper to import them yourself from the US. Shipping on the seat covers I got from the US was about $50. The shipping on the seat foams would have been about $100, but this was too much for me. Andrew

Mark great bit of improvisation:classic:

How about a long piece of wood or angle iron drilled in the middle to take 2 of the wheel studs, and then bracing the 2 ends of the wood/steel against something solid (like a between 2 house walls or something) I did something similar on my car a few years back. hope it helps Andrew

240zx thanks for that. I have heard this from others too. I know that the 'improved' brakes are not really up to track day use, but make a huge difference on the road, where most of my driving would be. Presumably though better pads would only make any hard use fade problems worse if the disk is the weak point? cheers Andrew

You are correct of course. I left the shields off mine because I didn't want to cut them, so I should have mentioned this. Andrew

perhaps someone will buy the lime green car off ebay just to get the braided top radiator hose and clips. Its $142 at the moment

perhaps, but for most people who I know who have done this it has been a straightforward fit and forget upgrade. Perhaps you can swap the bob-weights and vaccuum advance unit from old distributor to the electronic replacement to avoid regraphing it. I have swapped the bits from a euro distributor onto a recon US distributor body ( both non-electronic) and it was pretty easy. hope it helps Andrew

correct dwell is what you should aim for. It is a measure of how accurately the points are adjusted when the car is running, whereas setting the gap static with a feeler guage doesn't take into account wear in the distributor. The way that the points move when you adjust the gap means that a tenth of a turn will make a big change in the gap at the points, which I am guessing is why your car wouldn't start. hope it helps Andrew

s12-8 calipers 4 pots (non vented) DO fit over standard 4.5 and 5 inch datsun steel wheels with no spacers. Just a bit of info for those who might want to fit the larger calipers on their cars but still retain the possibility of putting the standard wheels and hubcaps on for shows etc. I could find no info on this before and ended up buying a secondhand set and trying them on my car. Hope it helps Andrew

My wallet mainly determines my theme, and my determination to get my car running after 14 years regardless of the look. Unmolested survivor look. Exterior of the car will look like crap until I am sufficiently proficient at respraying to redo it. 99% original and any parts replaced are correct from the year the car was produced. ( which could have been expensive as it is an early car)

Carl Out of interest, what are you hoping the newer crossmember you are looking for will achieve?

David the picture that you posted is like the one on my 1972 car. Yours and the early one that Carl posted are interchangeable as far as I know. hope it helps Andrew

correct me if I'm wrong but that car vin 20441 is a later series 1 car than the latest known on the zhome website ( vin 20438).