Jeff G 78

The pics are small, so I cannot tell you one way or another if the car is worth $500 or $5000, but at first glance it looks OK. You REALLY need to crawl under the car and inspect the underbody. Look for any signs of structural repairs or rust. Since the car has been sitting, it *could* have a fuel tank rust issue like many, many other Z cars have. Before I'd lay down any offer, I'd ask to remove the fuel filter near the tank and see if any debris comes out of it. Tanks can be cleaned, but you'll spend time and money to do it. How do the suspension bushings look? Are they old and cracked, newish rubber, or poly? If they are old and cracked, you will likely want to replace them all. This costs money and time and you'd have to perform the mother of all Z repairs - spindle pin removal. Are the shocks worn out? Bounce the car and see if it gets hard to move after a few bounces, or if it keeps bouncing. You need to add up all the things that aren't quite right and start deducting from the asking price. If the car has any underbody rot, it's worth far less than the asking price. If the paint is good, the body is clean and the underbody is rust-free, everything else is easy. If all else checks out and it runs and drives well, $5000 is very reasonable. It's easy to find a $2000 "driver", but a clean car is worth much more.

The car is 37 years old and you are worried that it doesn't have original paint? You need to take a weak flexible refrigerator magnet and touch it to every square inch of the body. Anywhere it doesn't stick, means there is filler under the paint. Also 300,000 miles over 37 years is about right if it has always been driven. I'd MUCH rather have a high mileage Z that has been driven rather than a 100,000 mile Z that sat for a few decades. Z mechanicals can easily be fixed or replaced. Just make sure the body is solid and check the usual rust spots under the car. The TC mounts, battery box, and floorboards/rails.

The tank is likely fine, but the hoses that go to it could be very rotten. Pull the plastic interior panel and inspect the hoses. I'm betting they are the cause.

You didn't say which year 240, so I'll just assume it's a '70-'72. I'd rebuild the L24 since you don't know for sure what is in the "fresh" L28. It could be a junk engine for all you know. If your hypothetical 240 is a '73 with original carbs, then I'd call Bruce and get some round top carbs to replace the boat anchors it has now. Sell the SBC and use the cash for the rebuild.

Dammit, I hate it when I'm in a hurry and don't check the OP's date. I wish we could color code threads that are more than xx old.

You can swap pretty much ANY engine into an early Z, but IMHO, the Z31's VG30 is one of the worst choices. Stick with the stock engine and rebuild it or find a good used one.

Thanks Guy, I was tired of looking at my 280Z. BTW, why don't you have a garage? You of all people need one to show off your awesome collection of Z cars.

It looks better than I thought it would. You are off to a good start.

And then replace the cap.

That's an awesome price Guy. Nice find Stephen.

Yes, they just slip over the strut rod with the big end up. It doesn't matter where they sit as they will slide up and down freely on the rod. The originals fit up in the upper seat, but the aftermarket ones just float from what I remember. Keep in mind that the springs will have to be compressed and removed from the strut before you can install the bump stops. As for the ball joints, did they come with grease fittings? If so, you will have to hit them with a grease gun. If not, they are sealed. I think I recall the Moog parts coming with fittings.

The quick answer is that it doesn't matter. Buy the S30 with the best body you can find and be happy with your purchase. Body condition means far more than model within the S30s. Look at SRBigButt's post about Jalopnik. He has a 280 with 240 bumpers. It has the features of a 280 with the look of a 240. I've owned close to every year S30 and they each have their good and bad points. The early cars are lighter and simpler, but provide almost no crash protection even at low speed. The later cars have nicer interiors and will at least survive a parking lot bump, but they are heavy and more complex. The 260 is a nice mix, but finding the correct parts can get very frustrating. There is an early 260 and a late 260 which have some common parts and some that are non-interchangeable. You have to know Z cars pretty well before a 260 should be considered IMHO.

To me, that was a total no-brainer. Knowing what I have in my '78 and what I still need to put into it, $7k is a bargain for your car. NP

Latest photo of mine.

Guy, I got mine from www.tooltopia.com for much less than anywhere else. Check them out. Hmmm, I just looked and they are out of stock and the price shown is way higher than what I paid. :stupid:

Like Ron said, I have his dizzies. I had to mix and match the parts, but I have no idea which years any of the parts are from. Hopefully somebody will have the exact info for the combination of parts needed because I need to give Ron his parts back and buy a ZX dizzy setup of my own. My 260 distributor actually works fine, but I'd much rather stick with a newer ZX unit with the built-in ignition module.

It's a common swap and works without any problems, but if your oil pressure is already on the low side due to worn bearings or pump, you could possibly run into oil pressure issues. Either swap in a turbo pump or install spray bar block off plates. MSA sells them. Be sure you keep the rocker arms and lash pads with the cam as a set. Swapping cams and using the old arms will cause premature wear problems.

Thanks for all your help Bruce. The old SUs worked great when they had fuel in the bowls. :stupid: We didn't mind using race time to fix it since we finally did fix it. It's the first time in the year that we've owned the car that it has actually performed well for any length of time. I really don't understand WHY we had the problem we had, but we aren't worried about that right now. We were happy to finish the race strong.

Thanks Marty. I haven't looked at the pads, but I'd guess we might be able to get another race out of them. We really need to find more power. We are getting killed on the straights. After about 10 hours, we picked up a valve tick. We pulled the cover and found that a lash pad had come out. I had just adjusted them prior to the race, so we might have some weak springs. We might throw rings and bearings in it before the next race to freshen it up.

We just got home from GingerMan Raceway after completing a 14+ hour endurance race with our $500 BRE tribute car. The lighting was perfect, so we got some great pics at the track Friday night before the race. We completed the 14 hour race on the 36 year old original rotors and drums. We only changed the front linings to Porterfield R4-E and the rears to R4-S. We used MSA SS brake hoses and Ate fluid. We had zero brake issues the entire race and never even had to blead them. It's amazing what 10.8" solid rotors up front and drums in the back can do! Ever since we bought the POS car, we've had fuel issues. We thought we had everything sorted prior to the race, but it still ran like crap. After trying many other things, we clamped a pair of Vice Grips on the fuel return line and the car ran great for the remaining 11 hours. We didn't finish high in the standings due to the fuel troubles early, but once we got it figured out, we ran consistant laps. The last 3 hours or so were in the dark. We had to play with headlight aiming to get the corner entry points illuminated, but from then on, it was a LOT of fun. Night racing is a whole new game. We were able to run four 60W lights with the stock and very old 50 amp alternator. They were super bright even at idle. Special thinks to Ron (geezer) for supplying a distributor and to John at H4Lights.com for supplying the main lights.

Update: Bruce wins the "smartest guy in the room" prize for correctly calling the problem as a clogged pickup sock in the tank. We diagnosed the problem by swapping the two fuel hoses at the tank using the return as the supply and the supply as the return. We did an A to B and back to A test and confirmed the diagnosis. We have no way of fixing the tank, so we'll just race it using the return line as the pickup. We lose some range since the return isn't on the tank bottom, but it's better than heading into the pits every five laps with starvation issues. Here is a pic of the return pipe in the tank. You can see how the retun is up off the bottom. The supply is out of view on the far side of the baffle, so we had no way of knowing it was clogged. I did blow through it when I POR15'd the tank, but it could have been full of crud and had just enough free area to run fine for a while until the rest of the sock filled with debris, limiting flow. After the car would sit for a while, enough crud must have fallen off the sock for it to run well again for a short time. Thanks to everyone for all the help!

Thanks everybody for your quick help! I plan on borrowing Geezer's ZX dizzy to try. The big question is what does everybody think the problem is? Is the distributor a likely culprit, or am I barking up the wrong tree? I want to have as many possible fixes in my pocket as possible. I hope the dizzy solves it, but if it doesn't I want to be ready with other things to try.

Thanks Stephen, that makes me feel better. Give me a few minutes and I'll have all the info I need. Now, where is that search button???

Uhhh, you are scaring me. I need to go read up on this stuff.

That would be awesome Ron! One of my teammates lives in Windsor and usually comes every weekend to help us work on the car. If he's coming this weekend, maybe he could grab it from you on his way here. I guess I'll have to do some quick research and see how hard it is to convert to that setup.