SteveJ

By the way, if you do happen to have a stock VR, they are adjustable. The cover should be screwed on. A solid state VR probably won't have screws on the cover. You can download a copy of the factory service manual from this website. The VR section starts on EE-18 (195 of the 681 page PDF). If you or a friend know how to use a multimeter, there are some good diagnostics there. It's usually cheaper to diagnose than to fire the parts cannon randomly.

@Zed Head is steering you in the right direction. The voltage regulator is likely ignoring (or can't detect) the battery sense voltage. Do you have an external VR or has the car been converted to use an internal VR? If it still has an external VR, is it a stock VR, or a solid state one? (Hint, look for a manufacturer/part number on the VR).

Here is my 2¢. YMMV If you are concerned about corrosion in the brake lines, run denatured alcohol through the hard lines after draining (and removal), blow out with compressed air, and spray fogging oil into them. Prior to re-installing, used the denatured alcohol and compressed air prior to re-installation. Use rubber plugs/stoppers on the master cylinder, front calipers, and wheel cylinders to prevent contamination while in storage. As far as draining, have a quart jar or oil catch can handy. Remove the caps at the master cylinder. At the left rear, remove the hose from the hard line. Use a rubber cap when you're done if you want to prevent a mess during removal. Repeat for the right rear, right front, and left front.

Two aborted projects today. First, I got some new door seal. It was just too big to work right. I re-boxed it, and I'll send it back. However, that did spark me to take some measurements of the dead seal. I'm pretty sure I found a winner, and I'll post pricing and other info if it works. It arrives Thursday. One thing that did go right was getting the replacement distributor cap. As I transferred the wires to the new cap (one at a time to prevent getting them out of order), I also made sure the tips of the wires made good contact with the cap. I also removed the dash cap and steering wheel to install some LEDs. I almost got frustrated trying to figure out how to get the tach out. I found one of the wingnuts easily by taking some photos behind the dash, but it took some time to find the top wingnut by feel. I wasn't happy with the height of the LEDs when I compared them to the midget BA9S bulbs in the car. I just feel too lazy to remove all of the gauges to remove the illumination lenses. Again, measurements were taken, and I ordered bulbs that I believe will be better suited to the task as they are within a millimeter or so of the midget BA9S incandescent bulbs. Stay tuned. It wasn't a completely wasted effort. I replaced the gauge turn signal bulbs with the longer LEDs. I'm hoping for a conspicuous brightness to reduce the frequency of me keeping the turn signal on like an old man in Florida. (You guys know who you are. 😉) With the tachometer out, I also found the loose bulb for the hazard switch and cigarette lighter. The wedge bulb was dead, so I wrangled up a replacement LED wedge. I also needed to plug in the optical fiber from the hazard switch to the housing for the wedge bulb. Meanwhile, entertain yourselves with some of the photos I took while trying to learn what I needed to know before buying parts. Here's the old door seal. The carnage on the old distributor cap: Backside of the tachometer (done with a magnetic light stuck behind the dash and phone in selfie mode): Ha! I just noticed the wedge bulb is plugged into the tach and one of the tach bulbs is just hanging out behind the dash. Here's the backside of the cigarette lighter and hazard switch. Here's looking into the tachometer home while I'm waiting on the bulbs.

I knew there was someone stateside selling them.

Testing before running: With the battery connected and key OFF, measure voltage to ground at the S terminal (crossbar). It should read battery voltage. Measure voltage to ground at the L terminal (vertical). It should be 0. With the battery connected and key ON (not running), measure voltage to ground at the L terminal. It should be battery voltage. It could be a little less due to corrosion/poor connections.

Not stock, but I think the size is right if you need new boots for the sender: https://www.amazon.com/Fastronix-Small-Terminal-Covers-Black/dp/B01LM2BW6A

The caps only hold on the wires to a limited extent. If the connectors are bent, they won't hold well, either. I think Eastern Beaver had the caps. Maybe someone can recall them being sold by a business in the USA. If the vent hoses are rotting and you try to fill the tank, it will start spewing like a frat boy on his 25th beer. Do your research. Most of the vent hoses are NLA. You'll need to find fuel compatible hoses of the correct size. Do NOT use heater hose for the vent lines. You can get an idea of the routing of the vent lines from the FSM.

Yes, if you put it in the right location. Make sure you have the proper open barrel locking terminal. The ones from Vintage Connections would work.

The MSA cap has a diode that runs between the black/white and white/black, otherwise the lamp circuit will backfeed your ignition. It does not have any wires, so I don't understand your question. You need to hook up the yellow to the white, otherwise you will not get the battery sensing voltage. This will result in overcharging.

Yellow with the cap - Fuel sending unit signal. Black with the cap - Fuel sending unit ground. It's easy to tell which is which. The other two wires are for an electric fuel pump (unused.

It looks like someone snipped the white wire for some reason. The white wire will need to be connected to the yellow wire. You could pull the yellow wire out of the connector and use male/female bullet connectors to connect the yellow wire to the white wire. Here's the guide I started with 22 years ago. http://www.zhome.com/ZCMnL/tech/280Alt.html

Back in the old days it was not unusual to carry a spare cap/rotor/points. Caps were not made of the nice thermoplastics that you see today and were susceptible to cracking if hit with cold water when they were hot. Points? Well, there's a good reason why you haven't seen points on a new car in a long time. I suspect that I did not have the coil wire pushed all of the way down into the cap, or there was a defect in the cap that I could not see. Those are the two likeliest scenarios. I should have a replacement cap this afternoon with a couple of spares arriving in a few days. I try to stock some caps anyway for when I am working on other people's Z cars.

Well, I think I figured out why she was a little grumpy at times on the freeway. Back in 2008, when I went to look at the 260Z that now sits in my garage, the owner said it wasn't running. After digging through the engine bay for a couple of hours, I found a distributor cap damaged in a similar fashion but worse.

I would think it would be at one of the two screws near the seat spring. That's why I suggested you use an ohmmeter to verify with pressure on the seat/contact.

Sorry, I discarded mine when I put new foam and upholstery on the seats in my 73. It's just for the seat belt buzzer. Unless you also have the sensor for the seat belt (and want to use 50 year old seat belts), it will just cause the buzzer to go off if you have a passenger. The sensor itself should be positioned near the middle of the seat to ensure it is pressed down when someone is sitting on it. If you use an ohmmeter, you can find the contact that is closed when the seat has an occupant.

I finally took the 240Z back out for an extended drive today. That's the first time for it in almost 12 years. We went to the Worship car meet. (Think of a more intimate version of Cars and Coffee.) @gwri8 decided to drive down and visit, too. Plenty of Z cars showed up. I missed getting a photo of one of the 280Zs, though. It was nice to drive the 240Z again. Who is that mysterious photobomber? 😉

She won't hear it from me...for a price. 😉

The funny thing about the parts cannon is that it did work for me once today. My wife's Escape wouldn't shift out of Park without doing the redneck override with the screwdriver. I testing the brake switch, and it seemed to test fine. However, I pulled a WTF and ordered a new one. It arrived today, and I took a couple of minutes to swap it in. She can shift out of Park again without the screwdriver. The funny thing is that I bought a copy of the Escape wiring diagram, and it was pretty easy for me to read. However, with all of the dang modules in the car, you follow one wire around, and it goes into a module. There's a dashed line rectangle inside the box for the module that says, "Logic", giving no freakin' clue what that logic might be. Anyway, she can drive her SUV again. Sometimes the parts cannon will work, but don't bet on it.

Here's the latest list I have after working on the 240Z for a while. I'm also including H4 headlight housings and H4 LED bulbs. I like the Hella H4 housings because they look more period appropriate. The H4 bulbs I listed are polarity independent, so that's nice. White LED (license plate and reverse lights) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08XWWJ4N4 Amber LED (front side markers) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08XWXXPN5 Red LED (rear side markers) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08XWX81ZD Red 1157 LED (rear turn signals and brake lights) - Recommendation removed due to bulb failure Amber 1157 LED (front turn signals) - Recommendation removed due to bulb failure Green LED (gauge lights - green lenses) Recommendation changed to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B092VNXS6H because they are bright and fit under the lenses. Red 1156 LED (rear lights) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WGAUIR2 Hella H4 housings: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001G76Q2W Auxito H4 LED bulbs: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TQLK6SH

All of the lights are fairly easy to change out. I like the Hella H4 housings. Just view the attached video on YouTube (look at the lower left hand side of the image with the link) so you can see the parts link in the description. The Auxito bulbs I used do not need relays, but relays won't hurt. White LED (license plate and reverse lights) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08XWWJ4N4 Amber LED (front side markers) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08XWXXPN5 Red LED (rear side markers) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08XWX81ZD Red 1157 LED (rear turn signals and brake lights) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YFR8TPT Amber 1157 LED (front turn signals) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08BCCYWKF Green LED (gauge lights - note, you may need to remove the green lens in the gauges) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B087JGFK11 Red 1156 LED (rear lights) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WGAUIR2 Please note that I selected these for the best fit/most light that I could get. Match the lens color for all exterior lights.

So the alternator is charging nicely. The chokes have been dialed back. (Though I accidently went gorilla-mode a broke one of the air cleaner receiver bolts. Fortunately, I had a stash to replace the broken bolt.) I did one more test drive to see how the lighting was in the dark. It passed with flying colors, though I did adjust the headlight aim some when I got home. The heat is working nicely, too. It's time for the acid test. I'm taking it to a car meet tomorrow. It's the first excursion since the Mitty vintage races in 2010 at Road Atlanta.

The stock light switch of a Z will operate the parking lights (Some people call them running lights. I use them interchangeably.) at the first switch position. At the second switch position, both the headlight and parking light circuits are complete. I do have a good stock of headlight switches depending upon the year of your car. Also, I can design a circuit for the 77 and 78 Z to use relays for the headlights. IMHO, the best thing you can do for these cars electrically is convert all of the bulbs to LEDs. This includes doing something like using H4 housings with H4 LED bulbs. I was measuring the current draw with the LED headlights I have in my cars, and it's about 3 Amps total. That's about a third of the current that stock headlights draw. The 240Z has LEDs for all of the parking lights (front, back, and sides). The gauge lights and parking lights combined draw about 2.5A. That is a LOT less stress on the stock switches, even if you don't use relays for the circuits. Is there a reason why you aren't using the stock switch?

If I remember correctly from the Chem E Transport Phenomena class (using the classic textbook by Byrd, Stuart, and Lightfoot - I actually still remember the authors!) that I displayed a mediocre understanding of 36 years ago, for optimal heat transfer, I would think you want the inlet going to the bottom (think about the return on your radiator).

So I added tension to the alternator belt, and the alternator still wasn't charging. Time to load the parts cannon! I fired the cannon and tested with a new alternator. Still no charging. Now it's time to diagnose properly. I checked the sense voltage. It's good. I check the lamp voltage. It's not good. I checked on the positive side of the diode. Nope. I inspected the connector with the jumpers. Some time in the past I moved the jumper to the wrong place. I moved it back, fired up the engine, and saw 14.6 on the voltmeter. So let this be a lesson, kiddies. DON'T use the parts cannon before you make an effort to diagnose thoroughly.