jmortensen

My friend had that exact problem on his 510. Sounded like a small bird chirping under the hood. In his case he found it to be the throttle plate bushings leaking and the whistle was a vacuum leak. It was only one cylinder which is why it doesn't happen with every intake stroke. Doesn't really matter too much on a car with Mikunis, because once you open the throttle plates no air is going to come in through that small hole. His eventually just went away by itself, the hole must have either closed itself or more likely opened up to the point at which it didn't whistle anymore.

Arne, if you can find Konis for a 240, you've got them for a 280. The fronts are the same, and all you'd need to do for the rear is make a 3" spacer for the rear.

That last bit with the 280ZX sounds like a hydraulic issue. The clutch hydraulics consist of the master cylinder, the slave cylinder, and the hard and soft lines that connect them. Usually the master and slave are both replaced together. The hard clutch line is almost never an issue, and the soft line down by the slave can be inspected for cracks and leaks and replaced if need be. Your 240 clutch kit should have come with an alignment tool also, so you probably don't need to worry about going out and getting one.

Olderthanme did. 280ZXT transmission is a Borg Warner T5 last time I checked.

Appropriate gearing depends on many different factors, turbo or NA, tire size, powerband of the engine, weight of the vehicle, etc. There is no "right" answer. The T5 maybe perfect for cruising on the freeway at 2700 rpms, but that is the widest ratio transmission you can get for a Z. That's not good for a cammed NA car with a narrow powerband, for instance.

I hear that, and I can understand why people would feel that way. Beandip still seems to think that there is something hokey or half-assed about using a different module, and that simply is not the case.

When I found out that you could do this I did it immediately, because it is just removing another potential failure point from the system. The ZX module isn't particularly notorious like a Ford module IMO, but they do go bad occasionally, so why not just remove it from the system? You can just make jumpers to go from the red and green wires in the distributor back to the connector on the MSD. Mine had a 3" pigtail on the MSD IIRC, and I just cut the connector off and soldered on my own spade connectors. Haven't we had this discussion already? What is so ZX specific about the module? If I ran a Chrysler van with a ZX module, would the van get pissed off, or would the sparks it makes be less sparky? Would the Chrysler spark plugs gag on Datsun sparks? As long as the module works, it works. Which is why much to the dismay of some people HEI modules have been used in Z's for years. Get over it. It isn't "cobbling something together" in the sense that you're using sub-par pieces. It's a module, not a bottle of wine.

Looks great! I'm still trying to decide if I want to paint mine with a roller or if I want to spray. My compressor is way too small for HVLP, so this electric deal sounds like a possible alternative. Was it one of these, and could you comment on any problems you had? http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=91772 http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=44677

You're right. Sorry.

The ZX has a better triggering system than the pertronix as I understand it. I haven't seen the pertronix, but I understand it is basically like the 280Z setup where there is a gap that has to be set between the trigger wheel and the sensor. The ZX has a 6 pronged sensor, so it doesn't have to be gapped. I've only seen the gap cause a problem on a Datsun distributor once, but I have seen it happen. The ZX has a crappy vacuum advance mechanism. You're almost guaranteed to have to fix it if you go that way. The Z has a worse timing curve for performance. It has over 20 degrees of mechanical advance total. Especially on a performance oriented engine, getting rid of the vacuum advance is a good idea, and if you do that with the 240 distributor you really should recurve it for best power down low, where the ZX doesn't need it. You can do it either way, and both ways work fine, but if you're the type to install a cam and triples and rev to 7000 rpm I'd go ZX because it has the better curve, you won't use the vacuum advance, and it has the preferable trigger mechanism. Also in theory the larger cap should be less prone to carbon tracking and crossfires inside the cap.

Huh??? Bob, that don't make no sense. Datfreak, you've got it right, there should be more vacuum when the plates are closed, because the air can't get in to fill the cylinders. When you open the throttle plates, the restriction to the incoming air is lessened and you get less vacuum. You will get vacuum at part throttle, really the only time you have almost no vacuum is at WOT. Not sure how you're measuring or why you aren't showing vacuum at idle though. Maybe a vacuum leak, like at the bushings on the throttle plate perhaps.

The NA ZX distributors are stamped D4K8 and D6K8. Not sure what you've got there, maybe a turbo distributor. I'm pretty sure they don't have any advance mechanism at all, the ECU does it all on that one.

Love the 1st gen RX7. I even looked into Pro7 racing a bit. Nice cars, and reliability isn't as much of an issue as with the later turbo'd rotaries. As far as the Z, main thing to be aware of is rust when you're buying one. If you can turn a wrench you can fix or replace any mechanical part on a Z, but fixing a body that looks like swiss cheese is a bigger job. Do a search and I'm sure you'll find threads on where to look for rust when purchasing a Z. Also, the 240 is the lightest at about 2350 lbs. The 73 gained a few lbs, and in 74 the 260 came about. Mid 74 the 260 got the new heavier shell that was kept all the way through the 280Z, and those were about 2850 lbs. That extra 500 lbs makes a big difference in how the car drives. On a more happy note the 280 engine transplants right into the 240 chassis which gives a nice bump in displacement and power. The 79 280ZX starts a completely different chassis and only the powertrain is shared with the earlier cars.

ECU's are for pussies. Just get a buddy to stand on the front bumper and squirt starting fluid into the turbo impeller. No, as Stephen says you need a fuel source of some kind. I'd ditch the crappy stock injection setup and go with something aftermarket like megasquirt, that way when you decide to add boost and an intercooler and all the rest later on, you can add the appropriately larger injectors and the ECU won't be a limiting factor.

Matman has the metal fan blade if you can't buy the car. He doesn't have the valve cover though. Might PM him.

You shouldn't trust the mark on the cam, especially if the guy you bought it from built racing engines. Even if the E mark matched what should be in it, it might have been reground. To know for sure easiest thing to do would be to measure the lift and compare to the stock spec. Easy enough to do with a dial indicator and some V blocks. Just measure, then multiply by 1.5 for at the valve lift #'s.

I agree with Tom. In my experience with SU's rich = diesel on shutoff and backfiring.

Congrats to the retar... uh... lucky winner!

IIRC it doesn't matter.

I am a wiring moron. I'll state that right up front just for the record. What I don't see in your description is wiring for the trigger plug on the back of the MSD unit. If you use the trigger, then you can eliminate the module on the side of the distributor. I had mine wired up with the module to start, then later eliminated the module and used the MSD's internal module. No hard evidence, but from getting zapped before and after I can say that the MSD does a better job of it.

I just checked and there is an article about this on zhome.com. Go to the Index of Tech Articles, then it's the last one in the engine section, titled "Improving the Throttle Linkage or Getting Rid of the Jerk" Should tell you everything you need to know.

Cables are smooth and easy to adapt. Also, Mat your early 71 has a link between the firewall and the carbs that is slightly shorter than the later cars. The later cars were changed because the shorter link caused the throttle to be really twitchy. I think you had a couple boxes of linkage, you might want to dig through and see if you can't find one that is longer. I think the link changed to one that was about 1" longer, but it's been a LONG time since I swapped mine out on my car when I ran SU's, so maybe someone else can help you out there.

Could be one idiot at an otherwise worthwhile business. I'd call and explain what happened and ask them to call tag it and make it right. Email them a picture. If they don't respond well, then smear their name on the net.

I'm not sure if I follow, but the problem I had was with the strap being too far forward. On my first strap I just jacked the diff up into it and that worked OK but eventually the strap started to tear. At this point I took the strap mounts off and moved them back a hole so that they were only held in place by the rearmost hole in the body. I had to grind a little lip off in order to do this, that part will be pretty self explanatory when you look at it. I drove it like this for a couple years more, autoxing, track days, and daily driver. Now I've finally decided to do a front diff mount that doesn't require a strap at all. There are some very good ideas here if you search you'll find them. I like the clamshell or angle iron designs, would have done one of those if I had seen it first. Instead I ended up with the Simon de Groot method (probably got the name wrong on that, sorry) which is good, but more difficult and requires a lot more fabrication.

Solvang is close to SB maybe an hour drive, and it's a nice trip up there on the 154. The 154 goes right past Painted Cave where they had that HUGE wildfire about a decade back. Lots of hiking and that kind of stuff around that area. Figueroa Mountain is back there in the Los Olivos area near Solvang. You pretty much go right past MJ's Neverland Ranch to get into Figueroa. Beautiful camping spot or just go and enjoy the view. It's a REALLY twisty road getting in there. Then there's the beach, downtown shopping if you're extremely rich, clubs and bars and all that good stuff. Wish I was going!