mdbrandy

rzola has a battery tray on e-bay out of the '71 that he's parting out. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=40017&item=2457211987

You can't trust their online stuff for availability or price, either. Check out: http://www.zcarparts.com/store/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=11-3100&Category_Code=SFC01C and say Wow! a choke/hand throttle assembly like I've been wanting! But you call them, and it's NLA. They told me that they are pretty much transcribing their old, outdated catalog (2 years old now or more) onto the web. So don't get your hopes up.

Metal fans only came on 70's and maybe early 71's. Unless you're doing a stock restore, you don't want them. They are heavy and tend to wear out the water pumps. A 73 would be a plastic fan anyway.

Great news!

Oh, and for reference, the three listed by color and cross sectional area are: Black 1.25 mm2 (0.0019 in2) Green 0.5 mm2 (0.0008 in2) Brown 0.3 mm2 (0.0005 in2) They don't provide any resistance values to go with the area.

As long as the material is the same for each of the link wires, then the resistance of the wire will be proportional to the length and the cross sectional area (i.e., the resistance per unit length will be proportional to the area). They are color coded too, though.

I have the factory manual, and they seem to be rated in terms of the cross sectional area of the wire. There are three different sizes listed, and visually, this is by far the biggest one.

This one actually looks fine. Doesn't break apart, seems pretty solid. But wiggle it and it appears to have a small internal break. Bummer on the special order. I'll pull one off the wiring harness from my parts car and see if it works while I order new. Thanks.

Thanks Tomohawk. Looks like it is the fusible link. There is one maked "ACC", and when I wiggle it, the lights that are out flicker on and off, and when I put the continuity meter on it (off the car) and wiggle it, it varies between a few ohms to infinite resistance. So I need a new link. I see sets on e-bay all the time, and I'm sure Chloe can probably get them for me, but does anyone know if this is something you can get at the local auto parts store? Or even at Nissan?

Cool. I'll certainly check that out. But if I broke it, or loosened it's connection, why would everything work in the 'on' position of the ignition, but not the "acc" posiiton? That'll probably take some schematic reading...

Well, all of a sudden this morning, I've developed a fairly serious electrical gremlin in my 280. I know it's pretty tough to diagnose on the forum from reading about everybody else's gremlins, but I wanted to post the symptoms to see if anyone recognizes the problem. Parked last night. No problem. Came out this morning, started right up, and the radio acted like it had lost power (no memory). Then I noticed that the clock had stopped too (and yes, it had always kept perfect time before). While the car is on (engine running), all is fine. Volt meter shows correct voltage, all lights work. As soon as I turn the key from On to acc to turn the car off, the radio loses power, the dash goes dark, and all rear lights go off. There is also a loud relay click at the passenger kick panel at the same time. The headlights still work. If I turn the key back to the on position (but don't start the car), all guages go to their appropriate positions EXCEPT the voltmeter, which stays at zero until I start the car, at which point it goes up near 15V and all is well again. Before today, the voltmeter always just dropped back to 12V or so when I turned the car off. In the ACC position, there seems to be no accessory power at all, and no lights except headlights. I'm assuming the relay I'm hearing is the ignition relay, but I don't know yet. The only "smoking gun" is that last night after parking the car, I replaced the two plastic covers over the fusible links in the engine compartment. I didn't start the car after I did that. After studying the electrical schematics for a while, I'll be taking a look at the area around the fusible links first, but I can't imaging what I might have done. If I had broken one of the links, I would think that something would be always off instead of working when the car is running. Oh, and I should mention that this morning while driving, the radio died 3 or 4 times randomly and immediately came back. Didn't happen at all driving home tonight. Any insights or recommendations would be very welcome before I start digging into circuits, grounds, etc. Thanks.

Several posts ago, I said: Essentially the valve doesn't let hot water into the heater core when you have either the vent or AC active. I don't know about the rubber seal. Good luck.

I guess I'm not sure what your question is...

I looked at the drawings more, and it looks like it is that vacuum valve. It shuts off coolant flow to the heater core if the HVAC controls are in the vent or AC position, and lets coolant flow through the core in heat positions. There are about 6 other drawings in the manual similar to the one I posted that show the position of the vacuum valve and vent flaps in various HVAC control positions. Hope this helps.

It's from your '78 280Z, right? The 78 that I just took apart didn't have one of those. Looking through the factory manual (do you have the factory manual on yours?) it looks like it is a vacuum actuator valve for the factory air conditioning. Do you have factory air? Is it the vacuum **** in the attached drawing?

Sending unit is on the passenger (right) side of the engine block, down near the oil filter. Screws into the block.

And none of the "beware for the children" warnings apply on a limited access highway. We've already discussed that the speed limits have different importances depending on whether you're on a surface street, in a neighborhood, or on the highway. It drives me nuts when people take a broad brush across an entire set of unrelated (or at least very different) situations and stamp them with some platitude. "There is no such thing as safe speeding" means nothing without context.

Well, maybe I oversimplified my statements, and I only cited two different areas: city and highway, but that is what I was trying to get across. You're right that there are certainly different levels of "risk" even within the city. I don't want drivers blowing through my neighborhood at 40mph endangering the neighborhood kids, while on some of the main 4-lane roads through town, 40 is quite reasonable (even though the posted limit is 35). And I NEVER speed in school zones. So, as a refinement of what I had previously posted, I agree with you. Considerations of factors other than driver skill and car ablility are needed to set the safe limit. But I still think that the limits are set for the lowest common denominator for all the pertinent factors.

I disagree. They set the speed limits at a speed for the lowest combination of driver skill and car ability. It is safe for grandma in her buick riviera boat. A skilled driver in a car that can handle transients would be just as safe at a significantly higher speed. A major risk factor on the roads however is speed differential. If grandma is doing 35 in a 45, and you want to speed and do 55, then the differential is 20mph, which gives you very little time to react to anything that grandma does as you try to pass or whatever. There is also a major difference between speeding on a limited access highway, and on a city surface street. There are so many more surprises waiting for you on the surface streets, and thus a safe speed will be much slower than on the limited access highway. One man's opinion...

Interesting article. As always, it has its own slant, and uses the statistics for its own purposes, but makes many good points about probable government misuse of the same statistics. I've always been of the opinion that, within reason, the safest speed to drive is the speed you are comfortable driving at. I used to spend a lot of miles driving on the open freeways in the western US. I found that about 70mph was a comfortable speed for me then, even though the limit was 55mph. Note that the 55 mph limit in the US was implemented as a gas saving measure in the mid 1970's, and not originally for safety. Now that most speed limits on US highways are 65 or 70 mph, what speed do I drive on them? About 70 mph! That's the speed I'm comfortable driving on open, clear, dry highway, and thus I believe is the safest speed for me. I go slower when conditions warrent - weather, traffice density, etc. And I wholeheartedly agree with the paper's premise that the most dangerous drivers are the ones that go very fast OR very slow. The slower drivers are usually the ones that have no clue how to drive their vehicles in anything but a straight line, and thus under any kind of unusual condition, are much more likely to be involved in an accident. The extreme speeders, of course, can't avoid the accident because they are going so much faster than the prevailing traffic flow. Anyway, FWIW.

The control valve (#5 in the picture I attached to the first post in this thread) is the only component I need that is actually attached to the balance tube itself. The check valve (#4 in the picture) is attached to the air distribution gallery that is a tube that connects to each port in the exhaust manifold. I need that gallery itself as well. Most of the other components don't actually connect to the balance tube except through a couple hoses (which I could use too, if they're in good shape, as well as the wire clamps that connect them). The antibackfire valve (#3 in the picture) is kind of a central component in the air injection system, but I have one of those in pretty good shape. The control valve (#5) and servo diaphram (#6) appear to control the speed of closing of the throttle linkage, and aren't part of the air injection system itself.

You have a PM.

I was wrong. The manifold I have does NOT have the air gallery pipe attached. I bought it before I decided to rebuild the air injection system, so I didn't care. So I'm looking for that too. Anyone that has an intact gallery/manifold that they don't need due to a header conversion, etc? Thanks.

Doing your Leslie Nielson impression Bambi ???

Wow, that was a big pic, even with broadband! Unfortunately, your car seems to be missing the entire air pump system too. All the valves and hoses are gone, and from what I can see, the air pump itself is gone. Too bad. What condition is the manifold/air tube that you have? All studs there, and the air pipe intact? Thanks.