SteveJ

Here's my 2¢. First, make sure your valve lash is set properly. Second, make sure your ignition is set properly: timing, points gap, dwell, spark plug gaps. THEN you can set up the carburetors. I bring this up based upon the other thread where I talked about setting the dwell. Points that are not gapped properly or having too much or too little dwell time will result in poor spark. If the hydrocarbons are not being combusted during the spark, they would probably show up as a rich mixture with colortune. You may want to settle upon what you want to do about the electronic ignition before you use up all of your colortune supplies.

FYI - This is a screen snip from Rockauto's website. I know I had a noise one time when I didn't tighten the links properly on the sway bar. I haven't tried to see if this is possible, but could the sway bar be mounted upside down? Would it matter? Sorry, I won't have time to put my 260Z in the air until the weekend. Another possibility - Go through the RA section of the 74 FSM. See what it says about tightening some bolts. If one was tightened in the air when it should have been tightened on the ground, it could be binding. Were the new bushings rubber or poly? If poly, were they greased before install? Just spit-balling some. I hope it gives you some inspiration. While my springs aren't stock, the rest of the rear suspension is. Are there any photos I could take under the car to help you?

Keep in mind that manuals like that were probably drawn by draftsmen, not the engineers and technicians who worked on the cars. The engineers probably had to review in a rush and approve for publication so Nissan could make the microfiche, print manuals, and get all of the materials out to the supply chain and dealerships. It is almost without fail that I go back to drawings I approved years before and see some detail I got wrong. Keep that in mind as you look through the FSMs and other manuals. There could be an error lurking, but for the most part, the manuals are correct.

He turns 80 today. Walking the track to help visualize his line.

If you're tuning with points, do you have a good dwell meter? I once tried 3 dwell meters on one car and got 3 different readings. (To make it even more fun, the distributor was missing one of the adjustment screws, so I had to wing it while adjusting it.) I since got a 4th dwell meter so I could confuse myself more. The old school dwell meters are NLA. I might eventually break down and buy a Fluke 88V. I think it will measure dwell, and I only have about 8 or 9 multimeters, so there is a need to buy another meter. Once you switch over to an electronic ignition, you can probably retire the dwell meter. Sometimes I still work on a luddite's car, though, so I'm keeping them around.

That's only because you weren't around in the early days for ZMeFly. He scammed people, had his girlfriend post that he had died, and then scammed her. She came back to this site and told the truth. If you're wondering why the recent thread was deleted, read Mike's last post in this thread.

@jfa.series1 Do you have any front turn signals left?

Redneck Lock Ring Tool - 2.5 inches of 1 inch angle iron. Cut a notch for posts on the sending unit, and weld a nut on there (with a better welder than I possess). I am curious, though, I looked through the 73 FSM, and I didn't see anything about installing the fuel sending unit. What exactly were you looking at? What section of the FSM?

Before you know it, it will be cheaper just to put on TBIs and Megasquirt.

Are you staying with incandescent or are you switching to LEDs? Also I didn't mention earlier that circuit voltage can affect the flash rate with the electromechanical flashers. For modeling purposes, R is constant. R=V/I, so if voltage drops, current drops. That's why old cars with electromechanical flashers blink slowly at idle. The alternator output drops from 14.5V to 13V or 12V. That drops the current through the circuit by 10% or more.

What is driving your question? There are only two exterior bulbs and the gauge bulb per side. - Correction: 2 in the back and one in the front per side plus the gauge bulb. That's not true for electromechanical flasher relays typically found in Z cars. The electromechanical flashers use a bi-metal strip that heats up, opening the circuit. It cools down and completes the circuit again. The rate the bi-metal strip heats up is a function of current flow. Since a bad bulb is very high resistance, there isn't as much current flow, so what would make it flash faster? LED bulbs are high resistance compared to incandescent bulbs, and if you replace all your bulbs (including gauges) to LED, you will see that an electromechanical flasher won't flash at all.

For the 73, there are 10 green BA9S, 1 red BA9S, 1 blue BA9S, and 1 green 194. There are also 1 red BA7 for the seat belt warning light and 1 amber BA7 for the choke warning light. Earlier 240Zs only need 9 green BA9S and don't need the 194. I also believe the BA7s are only in the 72 & 73. I forgot the count for the 280Z and 260Z.

Here you go, @Captain Obvious

I took the Z out for a drive today since I wasn't able to yesterday. Two steps (minor) back. I could see a long gap between the window frame and the door seal on the driver's side. I am thinking that a 12.7 mm bulb on the door seal would be better. The ones I tried were only 9.5 mm. I found the 1157 bulbs in front and back failed and were cross-feeding. I was seeing signs of that last night, but I realized the problem and confirmed my diagnosis today. New 1157 bulbs are on order front & rear. What were the symptoms I saw? Well, first, I saw the heater panel illuminate with the turn signals. I thought it was just stray light. Then I noticed the same thing happening with the brakes. I removed both the front and rear bulbs from the driver side and tested the turn signal on that side. The cross-feed was gone. (And, yes, these were 1157 bulbs with 2 contacts and oriented properly.) I took one of the bulbs and a spare 1157 socket over to my power supply. When I applied power to the brake lamp circuit on the socket at around 13VDC, I could see 12 on the positive wire for the running light circuit. Dang Chinesium electronics! Anyway, I ordered some red 1157 made by the same company as the H4 LEDs I'm using. The new 1157 ambers are from another company since Auxito doesn't sell amber 1157 bulbs on Amazon.

Well, I was going to put some miles on the 240Z today, driving over to a guys shop to see his GTU prepared 240Z in BSR livery. I got in, turned the key, and the engine wouldn't fire. I made sure it had fuel and tried again. I tested for no spark and confirmed. I then tested for voltage at the coil - nothing. Well, I figured it probably had something to do with my work from a couple of days ago. I took the 260Z instead and enjoyed looking at the GTU 240Z. The owner went over the car in detail, and I look forward to seeing at the track at the Mitty in April. When I got home, I tested for continuity between the black/white at the coil and the green white - open line. With my suspicions confirmed that it was at the tach, I went to work. First, I tried the shortcut - blindly feeling behind the tach. I could find the connector on the back of the tach, but I couldn't find the connector on the dash harness. Okay, pull the gauge. Since I have the dash cap (not glued down fortunately), I went through the process of removing it. As I reached behind the tach to get the wing nuts off the back, I noticed that I pulled the turn signal lights away from the tach. I also found I pulled loose the wedge bulb that lights the cigarette lighter and hazard switch. Not only that, I noticed bits of plastic falling that I could tell were from the socket for the wedge bulb. After getting the tach connected, secured, and lit with dash lights and turn signals, I took on my next distraction. I didn't like the how my electronic flasher relay was working with the LEDs, so I got out one of my EP34 flasher relays, added a ground wire to it, and plugged it in. It blinks faster than I would prefer, but it does click, giving it an advantage over the other flasher relay. Now it was time to turn my attention to the decaying wedge socket. I have some replacement wedge sockets, so I grabbed it and tried to fit it into the housing where the old bulb socket resided. I couldn't do it with the housing in place. Anyway, I also noticed the old bulb had a connector in the dash harness. It was a 3 pin stacked 2.8mm connector. "Great!" I thought, "I have plenty of those." And with that, I wired up the replacement socket to a male three pin after verifying I knew the polarity of the new bulb/socket. Then I went to plug it in, and it wouldn't plug in. At that point I compared the old connector to the new and noticed they were ever so slightly different. That meant I had to de-pin both connectors so I could use the new socket with the old connector. Then it was time to put the socket into the housing. I took the optical fibers off the housing and removed it from the dash. I ended up modifying the socket and housing slightly to get them to work together. Then I tried to put the optical fiber back on...only to find I needed the housing mounted to the dash to have the leverage to put the optical fibers back in. To keep this shorter than a Tolstoy novel (at least by a little), I finally got it all back together and working. At that point I quickly put the dash back together. Then it was on to phase two. I put the door seal in the driver's side door. I was about 1/8 of an inch short when I cut the top corner, though. D'oh! I'll keep some of the left over material and make a patch if I have to. I definitely need to take the car for a drive tomorrow after putting as much effort into it as I did this week.

The first thing to do is see if you're getting voltage to the solenoid. You can disconnect the wire from the solenoid and measure voltage to ground on that wire while someone is turning the key to start. If it's not getting voltage to the solenoid, they you know it's before solenoid (and rule out the starter for the time being). Two likely culprits are the ignition switch itself and the seat belt relay not behaving. It might be a matter of making a jumper plug for the seat belt relay. Disconnect the relay from the wiring harness and take photos of the relay and the harness. Take notes on the wire colors (including stripe) of the wires in the harness and which pin on the connector. Share that here, and I can probably give you instructions on bypassing the seat belt relay.

From the parts manuals, I only see the alternator changing in 3/77 to the externally regulated 60A. Our friends north of the border were getting that alternator even earlier.

So I did this last night. In my 73 there was no trimming. The part number I used was VDO PM9196. Rockauto still has plenty available for decent prices. Thanks @jfa.series1 for letting us know about it.

Actually the relay on the right is the horn relay. The give-away to me is that I can barely make out the B and the S.

So I got the seal for the passenger side today. I wasn't sure it would be thick enough when I did my first test fit, but I took the plunge and installed it on the full door seal. The door doesn't compress it much, and the door closes easily. I did use the top corner for the meeting of the ends. I got it just about perfect, too. Thank goodness. Anyway, the door closes easily, and it doesn't seem to rattle. I'll take it on the freeway tomorrow to see. Door Closing.mp4 I then took on the glove box and promptly wrote it off. RIP, original glove box. Well, I got the glove box door put back on for now. While I was looking around that area, I decided to go ahead and try to replace the blower motor with the Kia one I bought a few years back. After a misstep in wiring, I got the positive and negative figured out, and the fan is an improvement over the old Datsun fan. By the way, if you do that on a 240Z, use the non-latching T connector on the Kia fan. You're welcome. After that it was time to put the dash cap on. At first it wouldn't fit right. Then I remembered that I needed to remove the knob for the hazard switch, first. After that, the cap fit just right. As I fiddled with the lights, I noticed that the headlights were not coming on all of the time. There is an issue with the switch. At least I have a good stock of switches. The first switch I grabbed had a bad 9-pin connector from overheating on the parking light circuit. I replaced the connector, and I found this little screwdriver did a better job releasing the pins in the connector than the de-pinning tool. I installed the replacement headlight switch, and found the bullet on the white/red was bigger than the female bullet in the dash harness. I took it back out and found a switch that had the right sized bullet. Okay, the lights were working consistently. I put the steering wheel back on and adjusted the combo switches so the steering wheel could cancel the turn signals. I attached the horn button and got ready to put on the plate that goes on the front edge of the dash by the windshield. Then I realized I didn't put the nut back on the steering wheel. Who likes a loose nut in a Z? With the steering wheel PROPERLY secured and the horn button in place, I secured the metal plate to the dash and called it a night.

Thank you for clarifying. I wasn't paying close enough attention to the picture you posted. That's what I get for trying to read when I'm tired.

Have you tried here? https://zcardepot.com/products/headlight-gasket-rubber-seals-240z-260z-280z

I think the shock mounts are completely different. Here's the image for the 75/76 Here's the image for the 77/78 I would doubt they interchange easily.

And I was just going through the thread on my 73 and came across this photo. I think @Pat Carr's photo is hard to beat since he has owned the car since 79.

I don't think it's stealing any thunder. I appreciate you re-posting the pages from the manual. It's always good to compare the photos to the manual, too, since it can be a challenge to track the errata in manuals.