Jeff G 78

It IS a rust-free Z and all the mechanicals are done. It just needs to be stripped and painted. I've been saying "One of these years I'll have the cash to redo the body" since 1991. Life just keeps getting in the way :disappoin

I met Jim at the 2008 Cleveland RockZ national convention and he is a great guy who is as humble as they come. I will be sure to look him up if I find myself in Florida. Being in the company of Jim, Carl, Chris, and other Z masters at the convention, I was embarassed to even let anyone see my pathetic Z. :laugh:

I had the single ITG on a triple Weber 240 I used to own (now Lazeum's car). It was big $$$ and was hard to get on and off for tuning, but from everything I read, it was supposed to be the best for performance. I think I paid close to $300 for it many years ago. I doubt I would buy that one again due to the cost and pain to R&R.

My car was also hit in the front before I bought it. The LH side was cut off and replaced from behind the strut tower forward and across the radiator support. If done right, it will be as good as new. Mine came out great and I'm sure yours will too. As long as all the bent areas are replaced and everything is measured to the specs, you'll be fine. I also had to replace the crossmember, LCA and the TC rod. They were all bent. Sorry for the small, grainy pics. The repair was done 18 years ago and the film pics were scanned at least six years ago when scanners still sucked. Wrinkled rail and shotgun Donor car Donor corner cut off Bent parts cut out and ready for replacement Back together and painted

I run 16x7 Panasports with the tires in my sig and yes, they rubbed severely. Do a search on my name and you will see what I went through. If you buy Panasports from Motorsport Auto, you miight not have rub issues. They sell +6 offset rather than the much more common zero offset like I have. They do look fantastic in zero offset and 225/50R16 tires, but I had to do a lot of trimming.

I don't know anything about that ebay seller or which lights I got. Mine are E Code 7" round with 60/55W bulbs and additional 4W parking light bulbs. The seller I got them from is a Z owner and sponsors zcar.com. His prices are about the same as the ebay seller, so if you are leaning that way, why not support a Z guy? BTW, I have no affiliation, just a satisfied customer. If you do get them from h4lights, tell John that Jeff with the LeMons Z sent you.

I always have a large white board around for the same reasons. It works great for my "Things to Do" list. We used it for the race car while we were building it. The LeMons car was bought and prepped for less than $500 excluding safety items. The paint job looks amazingly good for Rustoleum applied with rollers. It's a 74.5 260 with 3-screw SU carbs.

Nice Z! Since you revived this old thread, I will update my list. My garage right now is FULL. I bought another Z this summer for LeMons racing, so now that winter is coming, I have two Z cars, my Toyota 4x4 and my wife's 4Runner as well as a ton of spare Z parts, lawnmower, snowblower, etc in a 2.5 car garage. It's quite tight, but everything is inside and out of the weather.

FYI, there is a guy on zcar.com that goes by h4lights (http://h4lights.com). He sells Autopal E-code lights. I installed his lights on my LeMons Z for a 24 hour road race along with a pair of Hella lights. I wired each set through a relay with 12ga. wire and they were 10x better than what I have in my street Z. The Hellas were aimed way angled for corner entry and the Autopals were aimed very close to conventional. I'm not sure how they compare to other brands, but I was very happy with the Autopals. I will put them on my street Z as soon as I get around to rewiring it with a relay. They did all of the straight ahead lighting and were plenty bright even in the heavy rain and extremely foggy conditions we had during night practice.

Try Caig DeOxit contact cleaner. You can get it at Guitar Center for around $15 a can. Radio Shack has it, but they get $15 for two tiny cans that are only good for one or two connections each.

You forgot a big one Esprist. He also needs a flywheel and flywheel bolts. Also, a manual tranmission (obviously), shifter, and the associated rubber/pleather boots and clips.

Marc Sayer! Wow, it's been a long time since I heard that name. He used to be quite a fixture on the old Z Home mailing list. As far as his advice, I couldn't agree more. Poly is great, but there are major trade-offs. Most people would prefer new rubber for street driving.

From Terminator II: John Conner to the Terminator "We're not going to make it, are we... people I mean? Terminator: No And my favorite car quote since I'm an auto engineer "Weight begets weight"

I just replaced a clutch master and slave and it refused to bleed. We could pull fluid with a mighty Vac, but could never get any pedal pressure, so I sat in the car and pumped quickly while my buddy tapped on the side of the master with a screwdriver. Suddenly the air bubble was dislodged and I got pedal pressure. From there, we could bleed as usual.

Can I run my late '74 without a ballast resistor if I upgrade the coil, or will it fry the pick up coil and/or transistor ignition unit? From what I've read, the coil can't handle the extra power, so I will replace that with a Crane Fireball or something similar. This is for the LeMons car and I'm out of time to try to find the source of the problem. If I can't figure it out soon, I need to remove the resistor. The resistor checks out fine, but the only way I can get decent voltage to the resistor is to disconnect the "start" wire to it. When I do that, I get 12.5V, at both ends of the resistor and at the coil. With everything hooked up, I get 10.3V to the resistor and 2.5V to the coil. With either the "start" wire OR starter wire unplugged, I get 12.5V, but the resistor doesn't know the voltage down. I WILL keep looking, but I need to move on very soon.

Update: I checked everything per the sheets Geezer sent and everything is within range. If I only follow the manual, I'm fat dumb and happy, but in reality all is not well. I am pretty sure I have a back feed from somewhere because I figured out how to make it run, but when I do, there are consequences. If I unhook the wire going between the "start" position at the ignition switch and the center terminal of the resistor, I go from 10.3V at the resistor (<3V at the coil) to 12.5V and the car starts and runs. When I do this, however, The resistor does nothing and I get 12.5V at all three terminals as well as the coil. I tried every combination of removing wires to find the culprit and it didn't matter. I still get 12.5V at the coil. As soon as I hook the ignition-to-resistor wire back up to the center terminal, the voltage drops to 10.3 at the input terminal of the resistor and 2.5V after the resistor and at the coil. I'm completely stumped why this is happening, but it has to be back feeding from somewhere. Why would the ballast resistor read 1.4ohms (1.0ohms+.4ohms) across the terminals, yet not do anything if the wire is not connected between the center terminal and the start position of the ignition (note that I don't have an ignition cylinder, I am using a HD toggle switch and pushbutton starter and the wiring has all be checked per the FSM). I can leave that wire off and the car runs, but then I am running 12.5V through the coil at all times. Do I really need to run the ballast resistor? My car is a late 260 without points. What does the resitor protect? I have heard of people running without them if they don't have points and others say the coil will burn out quickly. I have also heard that a new, high power coil doesn't need a resistor. I have a Fireball coil on my '78 280. If needed, can I run that so I don't have coil problems? What about the transistor ignition unit and pickup coil in the distributor? Is there any risk to them if I run without a resistor? I don't have time to tear the harnesses apart and check every wire, I just need it to run and not crap out halfway through a 24hour race. Chasing problems in the middle of the night doesn't sound like fun.

Thanks Ron. I will take a look at them and see if anything doesn't check out. The 74 FSM doesn't have any diagnosis in it. What manual are these from?

Here's the background. My barn find LeMons car is a 74.5 260Z that hasn't run in 15+ years. I swapped the carbs to SUs, cleaned the fuel system, tore the engine down and installed new gaskets. It fired right up and ran great (no tuning yet). That was Monday night. Tuesday night, after touching nothing, we went to work on the car and cranked it over. It fired right up, but died as soon as we stopped cranking. I got out the FSM and traced every wire back. I found that the black/blue wire is hot when cranking which bypasses the secondary resistor and gives the coil more voltage. That all checked out. Here are the specifics from testing: Battery +12V Black/white wire at (+) end of resistor +10.5V with ign on Ballast resistor 1.4 ohms end to end - FSM says 1.2 to 1.4 ohms Ballast resistor 1.0 ohms secondary ((+) end to center) Ballast resistor 0.4 ohms primary (center to (-) end) Black/blue wire (center post of resistor and hot wire during crank) +3V ign on Black/green wire ((-) end of resistor) +3V ign on Coil (+) terminal +3V ign on Coil (+) terminal +5.5V while cranking though tough to get steady reading in short time during crank +3V and +~5V seem very low. I thought these were supposed to be +6V and +12V respectively??? If so, why are they so low? The resistor info is lumped with the coil info on one simple page in the FSM and is states that the Primary resistance range is 0.45 - 0.55 ohms and the secondary resistance range is 8.5 - 12.7 ohms. Where are these measured. I couldn't tell. Is this the coil from the (+) to the center terminal and the (-) to the center terminal? That confused me and it never shows how to test or where. FYI, the resistor gets very hot, very quickly with ign on. Is this normal? I know it will get warm, but it seemed extreme. The car fires right up during crank, but dies immediately when not cranking. The FSM says next to nothing about testing the coil, resistor, etc. We are in a huge time crunch and need to fix this ASAP. Can someone tell me where to look next? The FSM listed the resistor at 1.4 ohms which it is. The car does fire, so the transistor ignition unit must be working and the coil must also be good for the same reason. That leaves wiring and the resistor, but the resistor tests what the FSM says. The wiring is a disater in the car, but we traced everything ignition-wise back and it is wired per the FSM. From the ignition switch, we have power going to the resistor and transistor ignition, and while in the start position, we have power going to the starter and center terminal on the resistor. What am I missing??? If the problem is the resistor, can I fix it with autostore or Radio Shack parts? I don't have time to wait for new replacement parts to arrive. The race is in a week and we have a hundred other things to finish as well. What exactly does the resistor protect? Is it the coil, or the transistor ignition unit? It's frustrating since it worked one night and then didn't the next.

zbane has it. You will fine crumbled plastic on the floor mat. Either buy a new plastic plug, or replace it with a bolt and nut. Mine has had a bolt and nut for years after the same thing happened.

On a late 260Z, the fuel inlet and return fittings are next to each other on the front of the tank. They are the same size and one ends on each side of the baffle, but I don't know which is which. Can someone tell me which is the supply line? I'd guess this pipe on the bottom right of the photo is the return since it's fairly high off the tank bottom, but???

Hmmm, yeah. I guess you are correct. Thanks for the correction.

As long as the fuel tank hanger strap hardware is in good shape, dropping a tank isn't too bad. Remove the interior panel to get to the filler neck clamps. Once you drop the tank, remove the fuel sending unit and shine a flashlight into the filler neck and look for debris on the tank bottom. If you see rust or sludge, you get to have fun and restore the tank. I just did the tank in my LeMons 260Z that had been sitting in a barn for 15+ years. The tank was NASTY, but it turned out great. I used the POR-15 kit. Cleaning a tank properly takes about 7-10 days total and is a lot of back breaking, stinky, dirty work, but the results will be worth it. I can post my before and after pics if you'd like.

Do the TTT parts eliminate the rubber everywhere? I was looking at their TC rods, but I was afraid of what the impact loads would do to me and the body of the car.

When I do my '78, I will slot them and measure bumpsteer to dial them in. This mod was for a LeMons car, so nothing fancy was needed. I don't have the time to dial it in - the race is in 3-1/2 weeks and the body is still at the cage builder. I had a spare crossmember so I did the mod while the car is away. Now I just have to make and attach the reinforcing washers like the stock crossmember had.

Hey Jon, how much can you move the front pivots out and still have enough thread engagement on the tie rods? Last night I did the inner pivot relocation for bumpsteer and camber on my LeMons car. I moved the holes up 20mm and out 6mm. The springs will be cut to lower the car about 1" to 1.5" I really like Mark's rear suspension mod. I might have to do that on my '78 to get the alignment closer to spec. Keep us informed of how it works Mark.