Arne

I need one for my car, but there's a whole pile of stuff I need worse, so I wouldn't buy it now. But decent bumpers always sell on eBay.

Be aware that the Euro springs aren't supposed to lower your car much, if any at all. I've seen references to 10 mm lower in front. For my purposes, that's fine. But other people may want it lower than that.

I've seen several places list the Koni inserts for 240Z (not 280Z) as being "discontinued by the manufacturer." Looks like there are still some NOS floating around though, if you search a bit.

Are the Koni adjustables available for the 240Z any more? I had thought they were NLA.

Edit: Oops! I meant PL411, just can't make my fingers do what I want. I saw this and thought someone might be interested. No connection with the car or seller, just thought it needs a good new home. http://www.craigslist.org/car/128556898.html

So are the bolts for an automatic different than those for a four speed? Will I need to buy new bolts when I swap my transmission out?

If it's worn bad enough to require a rebuild, it probably NEEDS to be bored anyway. If you're not going to be stuck on numbers matching, find a decent 2.8 from a 280ZX and use it as your starting point. You should be able to get an '82 or '83 with flat-top pistons for a few hundred bucks. Then put your IT head on that instead. While the following site may not have perfect info, it can be used as a good starting point. http://www.geocities.com/zgarage2001/engine.html

A guy I worked with about 10 years back restored a Top Flight award winning Corvette. He took great pains not to over-restore the car. I can recall even now the yellow weatherstrip adhesive slopped all over the door jams. On purpose, of course, because that's the way they did it in the early '70s in Bowling Green.

As long as you live somewhere that they aren't required to pass inspections, sure.Here in Oregon, I could get by without them, but I'll most likely keep them as original. Not that my car is planned to be a total stock restoration, but those marker lights here in the US simply scream "70's" and that's the look I'm going for. Stock chrome, factory color, and 14 or 15 inch vintage look mags. Yeah, baby!

Are you going to run of the mill exhaust shops? Because for what you want, you need to go to the shop that all the local hot rodders use. Those type of shops don't mind if you watch, and they depend on word of mouth for their business. They are generally very easy to deal with.

Using a tow dolly should be fine on a manual transmission Z. For an automatic you'd need a full trailer or pull the driveshaft. Since there were no automatics that early, a dolly should be fine.

When used to sell custom wheels for a living, we went by the rule that a 12 mm stud must have 12 mm of engagement. So on a 12x1.25 that would be almost 10 full turns. FWIW...

A pushrod Chevy six would be right in character. At 250 cubic inches it comes to 4.1 liters. Cheap parts, too.

I have seen various uncracked dashes going for less when offered in non-auction situations, but even then, $600 or more is common. On eBay (where bidders go nuts), they frequently touch this kind of level, especially for the early cars like mine. (I'll live with the single small crack in mine.) Sad, but true.

Man! That's the cleanest Patrol I've seen in decades! There's one rotting in a field about 20 miles from here, but my wife won't let me stop and talk to them about it.

Positive definitely goes to the solenoid. Negative to one of the starter bolts, wouldn't have to be the bottom, but that'll work.

Don't have my FSM yet (on its way), but this appears to assume that the bearing cap must be removed: http://www.autozone.com/servlet/UiBroker?ForwardPage=/az/cds/en_us/0900823d/80/1d/18/26/0900823d801d1826.jsp

No, painting it should be fine. Shoot, I don't have a dust cover! I forgot about that! Another part to add to the list.

Hmm, I think the rear bearing cap has to come out. That was why I had ruled out doing the rear seal when I do my auto-to-manual swap later this spring.

Several years working on brakes for a living lead me to say that you should use both shims and brake grease. If you are re-using existing pads, clean the back surface and edges of the backing plates as well. Apply a thin coat of the grease to the shim where it sits on the backing plate. Apply a thin coat to the edges of the backing plate, with special attention to any spots that look like they have metal-to-metal contact. Apply a thin coat to the piston surface where it contacts the backing plate and shim. Use new retaining hardware if possible, or clean the existing hardware thoroughly. Put a thin coat of grease on the cups of the spring plates that go between the two retaining pins.

70-78 are all the same - coupe and 2+2, 240, 260 and 280Z.

Intake: 10-5002, $11.13 Exhaust: 10-5022, $17.70

Here are the two keys I got with my 10/70 240Z. My ignition key appears also to be Voss. As you can see, the door/hatch/glovebox key is badly worn. But luckily, the sticker inside the glovebox with the key numbers was still there! I took that number and the old key to a locksmith, they cut a new key from the code, not the old worn key. Works perfectly in all locks. Surprisingly, my ignition key shows almost no wear by comparison, although it is obviously not new. The locksmith thought that it was a recent replacement though, with a key code stamped on the head.

A diode allows current to flow in one direction only.

Since it fixed the original poster's problem, it was probably an OK thing to do in this case. But for most cars I doubt that this would be necessary. Because the full current to the starter does not go through the ignition switch anyway - the switch sends a much smaller current signal to the solenoid, which does the heavy lifting.In fact, I would say that - unlike the headlight relays - this one would only be necessary on cars that are having a problem sending enough current to trigger the solenoid. Also, I'm still betting that the original source of the problem is bad contacts in the electrical portion of the ignition switch itself, not the wiring. The contacts in the switch are probably not able to pass enough current to reliably trigger the solenoid. One solution is to use an additional relay, as was done. But I strongly suspect that replacing the electrical part of the switch would have fixed the problem also. The problem with using an additional relay to "cure" a problem with the contacts in the switch is that if the contacts continue to get worse, eventually they won't be able to send enough current to trigger the relay either, and then the no-start problem will return.