SteveJ

You might post your question over at Zcar.com. I think there are a couple of people who are willing to tackle the flattop carbs.

Either jack up the front or back at a given time. Don't lift one side at a time to place on jackstands. From the FSM: The front jacking point is center of front suspension member and rear is differential gear carrier. Do not apply a jack to center portion of front suspension transverse link. Front supportable points for (jack)stand(s) are both front side members. (Translation: along the frame rails but not under the floor pan.) Rear supportable points are both sides of front differential mounting cross member.

Yes. When the rear is on jackstands, there is not anything to keep the front wheels from rolling aside from the tiny lip on the ramps. Either chock the front wheels on the ground or put the front up on jack stands.

If you don't have the car yet, your questions on the exhaust and fuel lines are grossly premature, as is the effort to purchase a factory service manual. Get the car first, then plan accordingly. Focus on safety: rust, brakes, rotten fuel lines, etc., and then work from there. Make a list of all of the things that you need/want to do, and find out how much it will cost. It's not easy to have a 30 year old car as a daily driver. Be prepared to do a LOT of maintenance work unless you have time and resources to thoroughly refresh the car beforehand, even then you'll have a lot more maintenance than on a more modern car if you do things by the book.

Wait. He's still in high school. We should not prompt him to have the fully stocked fridge, yet.

Aw, that'll buff right out. Years ago I had an electrical fire in my Z due to my failure to properly secure the battery. Fortunately I had my fire extinguisher handy. I unlatched the hood and sprayed through the gap, quickly putting out the fire. It took some time to patch the wiring, but the car is fine now.

Don't forget about a 17 mm crow's foot and feeler gauge for adjusting valves. Also two torque wrenches. One should measure in foot-pounds. The other should measure in inch-pounds. Proper torque on bolts can prevent warpage and leaks. - By the way, Kenshin, search Zcar.com for valve adjustment. You'll find a link to an excellent guide written by a user named Kammy. I used it for my first valve adjustment, and it was a piece of cake. While you're at it, find the tech tip page of a user there named Blue and bookmark it. Other important tools to me are... Good jack stands Good ramps Spring compressors for your struts - Harbor Freight has them cheap Brass hammer Rubber mallet Floor jack - even the small ones for $20 at most parts places will work. Multimeter - get one that can measure 10 Amps. Timing light with an adjustable dial A good solderless crimping tool - there are probably a lot of corroded wires Boy, this list could go on for a while, especially if I looked out in my garage.

So what kind of research have you done (besides posting questions)? Have you looked at a Haynes manual or factory service manual? Do you know how to perform a basic tune up?

The Z car series have metric fasteners unless someone replaced them with SAE fasteners, such as on battery cables. (Edit) Oh, they do use SAE spark plugs. I don't think anybody has NEW gas tanks for these 30 year old cars, though Motorsport Auto may be working on some reproductions. You can get used tanks from any of a number of parts vendors. Be prepared to treat/recondition the tank, though. What do you want to replace the manifold with? Stock? Headers? Details, man. We need details. Why are you worried about sludge in your engine?

Yes, it's nice to have the headlights & running lights that go off when the door is opened. On the other hand, I know I'm not up to engineering that. I had enough fun just developing a working way to splice in relays for the headlights (done before someone smarter than I am thought to just design a plug & play solution). I placed the headlight buzzer under the center console. You can hear it, but I don't find it annoying. It can't be nearly as annoying as finding a dead battery when you need to go somewhere.

Actually, I took the terminals off the wires of the buzzer, placed the bare wire around the fuse, and put the fuse back in. I used the wiper fuse and right headlight fuse to work. The wiper circuit is not hot all of the time.

It worked for me like how Tanny told you. If my memory works, I'll look at how mine is wired when I get home.

SportZ is ending publication. Some of the staff members have scraped together some financing to start a new publication. They will honor the old SportZ subscriptions, though. The new publication has a larger scope than just Z cars, expanding to cover the Nissan line.

As for the example of a lease: apples and oranges. If you're going to compare things, make sure there is a valid comparison. It's more like this: You pay Spic And Span Carpet Cleaners in advance for their carpet cleaning service for a year. The rise in fuel prices drives Spic and Span out of business. Sure Clean buys Spic and Span's customer list and offers to cover the rest of the year, but Sure Clean doesn't use Spic and Span's patented cleaning method. Are you going to turn down Sure Clean's offer and get nothing? (Apparently not, since you're going to take the new magazine.) Most magazines fail. Some are able to sell their subscription list to reduce their losses. As for warning you, did you expect them to publish financial statements online?

The ethics would depend upon how the business is set up. They would not be based upon your wishes. If the magazine has been losing money as stated, there are more debts than assets. With the closure of the business, the magazine would need to liquidate assets and pay debts according to the laws that govern it. The magazine owes subscribers like it owes the businesses it used to publish the magazine. There are also people who worked for the magazine that may be owed wages. Should the employees and other businesses be deprived of the money they LEGALLY deserve just to refund your subscription? Let's consider it this way. Which would you prefer: pennies on the dollar (at most) for your subscription or another publication honoring your subscription?

While the issue of subscriptions has been addressed, I have to take issue with your post. SportZ was an enthusiast magazine. The guys working on the magazine are enthusiasts wanting to improve the community. Which scenario do you think is more accurate? 1. They were trying to defraud you of your subscription money. 2. They were doing everything they could to keep the publication afloat, but they finally realized they could not go on with the losses. The publication was bleeding money. Where were you thinking they were going to get the money for refunds anyway? The new magazine is GRACIOUSLY picking up all of the old subscriptions. (Granted, it can be a shrewd marketing move if they can survive the start-up costs.) In the age where people have digital cameras and internet access, there are enormous challenges in getting an enthusiast magazine to break even. Between this site and Zcar.com, I have found more tech tips than I can shake a stick at, usually with good pictures to boot.

Unfortunately I remember the previous effort at a Z car magazine. When it started to flounder, Marc Sayer tried to expand its coverage, but I think it was too little, too late. Marc disappeared from the Z car scene when he folded Z Car and Classic Datsun. The previous posts nailed it. You need deep pockets to start an enthusiast magazine, and you need plenty of sponsors and subscribers to keep it going.

Okay, let's be more specific. I assumed (possibly incorrectly) that you meant headlights. If you are having problems with the running lights/turn signals & hazard lights, you have different diagnostics. The tail lights and headlights do not share any circuits. They are controlled by different connections on the headlight switch. Did you clean your headlight switch when you had it apart? Have you cleaned the light sockets? Have you inspected & cleaned your hazard switch? If your dash lights work, but your running lights don't, the problem is not in your fusebox. The circuits ground at different points, so use a proper service manual to locate and check your grounding points. You can get a CD copy of the factory service manual from Courtesy Nissan, or you can advertise in classified sections of this website and Zcar.com for a paper copy, or you can look on eBay for a paper copy. According to a 72 wiring diagram I found online, the power for the running lights comes from a green wire with a white stripe. It goes into the combo switch and comes out as a green wire with a blue stripe. That wire splits out to the different lights. It comes back as a black wire that is grounded around the wiper motor. You can see the other connections here: http://www.atlanticz.ca/zclub/techtips/wiringdiagrams/72_240z_wiring.pdf Other wiring diagrams are here: http://www.atlanticz.ca/zclub/techtips/electrical.htm. Keep in mind that you might be looking to solve two unrelated problems.

How long have you had the car? Have you always had problems with the headlights? Has your headlights ever been modified for relays? Did you check the fuses visually or with a continuity meter? Tracing the circuit - The S30 headlight circuit basically goes like this: From the positive terminal (Please no arguments from the peanut gallery about the direction of current flow.) you have a wire that goes to the headlight switch. From the headlight switch, you have a wire that branches into two wires, one for each headlight. Each headlight wire goes to the fuse box, where you'll find fuses for the left and right sides. From the fuse box, the wires go to their respective headlights. There are two wires coming back from each headlight. One wire is for low beams and one wire is for high beams. The two low beam wires will join, and the two high beam wires will join. The low beam and high beam wires run to the high/low switch in the steering column. From the high/low switch, you have a wire going to ground. So in all likelihood, if BOTH headlights are out, your problem exists between the positive terminal of the battery and the split between the left and right headlights (to include the headlight switch) OR between the negative terminal and the high/low switch (to include the high/low switch). If your headlight circuit has been converted to relay operation, that could increase the number of suspects, depending upon how it was wired. Below is a simplified drawing of the headlight circuit. I did not include the fuses.

Sometimes there is a difference when a previous owner has changed the ignition lock without having it re-keyed.

I have put more thought into this subject than it probably deserves, but here is one possible line of thinking for the pricing that we (and lots of other people) perceive as outrageous. Some rare cars are valuable. For instance, Ferraris are produced in low volume. Due to the effort put into theses cars in the way of design and engineering, they are considered valuable with most models appreciating in value in the long-term. In differentiating between examples of rare cars, mileage frequently comes into play. I've read time and time again that some low mileage example of a collectable car will lose significant value if it is driven. The advertiser does not really understand the market for the cars he is advertising, so he has speculated wildly on the value. The big problem is that because he doesn't understand the market, he also is absolutely clueless on his advertising. He selected this site and Zcar.com just because both focus on Z cars. However, both sites tend to be geared more toward the enthusiast who drives his car instead of the collector who has the temperature controlled garage, assembling a vast array of collectables. He is a speculator, pure and simple, hoping to find the whale that wants to pay his price. I have to wonder if he truly has any appreciation for the cars on his website.

Not from that guy. He has a 94 Viper for only $200K.

The gentleman (and I use that term loosely) started a thread over at Zcar.com. Either he does not know what he is doing, or he is just looking for people who have more dollars than sense. He has many other cars at his website GROSSLY overpriced. While a car is worth whatever someone will pay for it, there is some reason involved. He equates rare with valuable. He doesn't realize (or doesn't want to admit) that a pristine Yugo is rare, but one would be hard-pressed to call it valuable. A 10th Anniversary 280ZX is just a badge and paint treatment. Low mileage means it's a low mileage 280ZX.

My 2¢: I have to agree with Arne's last post. I have a sneaking suspicion that the pushrod length is wrong.

Could you see if he's got a good center console for a 73?