Arne

The zhome page is great for a rough guide, but you can't mix paint from a digital image on a computer monitor.

Jordan, my car was born 905 red (which I personally prefer to 110 persimmon), and I had it painted in the Spring of '08. My painter color-matched to the underside of my tool box lids. Turned out great. He also mixed me a pint of single-stage for future touch up. I could probably brush some on a piece of white or light gray paperboard and send it to you. Send me a PM if you're interested.

The Canby show is held in early June, the actual show itself is on a Sunday. When the date is announced there will be talk of it here on the forums.There's also another yearly Datsun/Nissan show in August at Blue Lake park East of Portland. Typically one or two weekends prior to Labor Day. I'm 100 miles South of the regular meetings, probably won't ever make it to many. But I do like to attend some of the cruises and other gatherings.

I'll be doing it with the bumpstop, and will be happy to document it. But I don't know how soon after I get the mount I'll get around to installing it. Might not be until after the first of the year.

Well, I hope to meet you and see the car in person perhaps some time next summer. Perhaps at the Canby show. Or you could join Northwest Z....

From a manufacturing viewpoint, the S30 chassis (240/260/280Z) will take a huge investment to build what you refer to as "true" coil-overs. Both front and rear strut housing on these cars have integrated, forged and machined suspension and brake mounting bosses, plus the front includes the spindle and the rear includes the wheel bearing housing. No way to do reproduce this in small numbers. That's why all coilovers for early Zs have been sleeve kits, because the other way isn't economically feasible in anything other than mass-production quantities.

You don't want "reviews", you want references, and previous work you can look at in person. Just ask the guy for references. If he wants your job, he'll give you some names to call. If he can't provide any, look elsewhere.

Easy one first. The mags that he called "Per Spec" were made by "Performance Specialties", and were a very common dealer installed brand on the West Coast, especially in California. Yours are very nice shape, but note that replacement center caps are not available, so don't lose them.If the Pirellis were bought in 1990 as the invoice shows, then a.) they must have been some of the very last P7s that Pirelli made; and b.) being almost 20 years old I wouldn't trust them for anything more than puttering around town. P7s were a high performance tire, and the carcasses were not designed for longevity. If it were me, much as I love seeing these truly period correct performance tires on the car, I'd plan to replace them forthwith. Will be a bit of a problem finding similar sizes these days, unfortunately.

Status as of today (11/25/09): Item | 240-Z | DATSUN | Total | ------------------------------------------- Ordered | 40 | 20 | 60 | Paid for | 34 | 18 | 52 | Pending | 2 | 2 | 4 | ------------------------------------------- Available | 4 | 0 | 4 |

Farve needs to retire again. Permanently this time... Dave, did my MO get there with today's mail? If not, I suspect you'll see it Friday.

Oh my! It has Pirelli P7-F's on it!! How old ARE those tires? Any sign of weather-checking?

The reason that works is that engaging any gear stops the gears from spinning. That may correct the symptom, but doesn't fix the root problem of why the gears are spinning with the clutch depressed. Either the clutch is dragging, or the gear oil is too thick.

Forward gears are synchromesh, so it has to get a lot worse for you to experience it there. Always see it in reverse first.

Does anyone (Darrel?) know how much (if any) to trim these bumpstops? when used in addition to the stock lower mount?

What Stephen said. The guy telling you he doesn't use Bondo is like me saying I don't use Kleenex, but use tissues instead. This statement alone gives me the impression that he typically caters to people who aren't knowledgeable in repair work, and may think of Bondo as a cheap fix. That said, it's still quite possible that he could do fine work. The price does seem low to me, but business may be slow for him now, and a job is a job. I'd ask for references, look at some of his older work, preferably at least 5 years old, to see how it has held up. Also ask him if he is quoting you his top line work, or just the quickie job.

A small delay on the production side. The manufacturer believes that the die he still has marked "240Z" is mis-marked. So I am going to (following his instructions) build a new paper template from my car, and will have to mail that to him before pre-production fitting tests can proceed. I will be creating the new template this evening, but figure this will probably add 7-10 days to the process.

I'm with 240ZX above. Mine is simply "the Z" or "the Datsun". While the parts cars still existed, they were all identified by color - "the red Z", "the yellow Z", etc. In fact, I can take it much farther than that. I bought my first car in 1973, and I have never named a single one. Closest I've ever come is my current BMW K75-RT motorcycle - very dark metallic gray-black, de-chromed with no reflectors, its plate reads "STLTH K". But even that is more of a description than a name. Remember, there are not many cars out there today that can be identified with a single letter - Z!

Yes. 1972 production started in 8/71 or thereabouts.

My off-work brain power has been occupied on the Bolder Tint deal and a house project recently. Both are wrapping up shortly. I also think this is a great idea, and will be looking through my left-overs to see what I can offer.

Looking at the pictures, I figure someone picked up a straight and fairly clean 240Z to flip that was originally 110 red, but at some point had an external color change. (Note the bits of persimmon paint peeking out from behind the cheap black engine compartment paint, especially on the strut tower.) Probably paid less than $3-4k for it, because it needed paint. Whoever this was realized that while repainting it in the original color would be best for resale, way too much effort would be required to pull that off decently. Far easier to paint the BRE scheme and try to sell it as something "special".

No, I don't think so. Looks like a quick refresh in BRE livery to try to make an average driver sell for more than it's worth. Around here that's an $8000 car at most.

Yeah, they did have lots of potential. If you swapped the pistons to get the compression up into the 10's, add a pair of Crane cams and replace the injection with a pair of DCOE's, you could easily double the horsepower. Chevy completely ignored the potential of that motor. Of course, my old car is being touted there now because it is so stock and original. And the only reason it survived that way was because at that time in my life (bought it at age 19, sold it at 22 with a new wife and fresh mortgage) I couldn't afford to modify it like I really wanted to. Ironically, had I done that back then it wouldn't be considered all that special now.

No, not the 240Z. In fact, I sold this particular car 30 years ago! Amazingly, it looks as good or better today than it did when I sold it! http://bringatrailer.com/2009/11/22/clean-and-original-1975-cosworth-vega/

The early '70-71 console won't clear the relocated shift lever location of the Type B transmission from '72 on. Or rather, it requires modification to clear the shifter. Never done by Nissan.

Working as I did in the auto repair industry in the late '70s through the late '90s, I can say for certain that it developed over time. Pretty much all Nissans with those Nippondenso lock assemblies. Many Subarus used the same unit and were subject to the same issues.Interestingly, the mechanically-similar ignition locks for the Series 1 cars (that use a single cut key) don't seem to be subject to that problem. Don't know what that tells us about the cause, but it does appear to be true.