Namerow

These three photos may provide some additional insights... although they may just add to the confusion. I have four master cylinders and two Mastervacs in my parts collection. I've discovered that these have provided me with three different pushrod designs and three different clevis designs (although I can't say for certain whether they're all Nissan OE parts). Mixing them up creates the potential for 9 different geometries...

That's a nice-looking car. Like the wheels. Your leather seat covers with the contrasting stitching help to liven up the interior 🙂.

Work is coming along nicely. Just noticed your Volvo Hatch in the driveway. I always liked these -- except for the Interior (the word 'plain' doesn't do it justice).

Looking at Photos #1 - #3, it appears that part of the shop's technique for the floor pan replacement was to first cut away a 'skirt' from the transmission tunnel and then, working off the vehicle, fit and weld that to the KFV panel before installing the finished result in the car. I suppose that would give a perfectly-shaped welding seam along the top of the 'skirt', but I wonder how they judged the alignment of the skirt relative to the KFV panel before joining the two pieces during the off-vehicle procedure (similar to what seems to be going on in Photo #1)?

Interesting photo, to say the least!

I'm going to speculate that these little 'dents' were used as master positioning markers. If so, were they created to guide the panel-stamping/forming process? Or, instead, were they used to guide and/or check the positioning of the stampings in their jig prior to welding? The latter seems more likely. One wonders, then, what prompted the change in orientation of the dent in the rear floor deck stamping after less than 100 units had been assembled. Perhaps the performance of the assembly jig in its original design iteration wasn't delivering adequate results, making this small-but-important change necessary before the production process ramped up to full speed.

Are these 'door lights' the ones that appear in the Parts Manual (Electrical - Step Lamp and Map Lamp) as PN 26420-E4100 ?

Here are three photos from my installation. A length of 1 x 2 clamped along the side channel helps to distribute the clamping force. The plastic pinch clamps are cheap and worked nicely.

There's lots of discussion and photos available on this site concerning the Z's early and late hinge designs. The early design was a little crude (articulating 'leaves' or 'blades', with a spring that supplied a bit of resistance when closing the door) and lacked any type of provision for stabilizing the door in a partly-open position. More critically, the leaves could go over-centre if the door was forcefully thrown open by a gust of wind (I believe that the spring would pop out in the process, too). Once this happens, there's no convenient way to get the leaves to reverse back over centre. Any attempts at strong-arming the door to get it closed again would bend the leaves. The later hinge design works pretty well, although lack of maintenance (lubrication) will cause the roller pin to wear out prematurely. There's a thread here on the site that details the rebuilding process for the later-style hinges.

Nice photo. Boy in the front is making engine noises, right?

You say, 'also'. Were the 4 captive fasteners installed only on cars fitted with automatic transmissions? And the doubler panel as well?

It's possible that it was left there so that it could be bent back into place and welded/finished so as to return the car to 'stock' configuration at some point in the future. Or maybe it was just laziness.

Nice photo essay. Well done. If you or anyone else has the opportunity, a similar presentation for the rocker panel area would be a great assist for other restorers.

Good question. Perhaps they're used to secure the special finisher plate used on cars with the automatic transmission? The cutback in the tunnel sheet metal was a common solution for those who installed 5-speeds. As it stands, you may find that your knuckles come close to colliding with the dash trim when you select 1st, 3rd, or 5th gear. One solution is to fabricate a modified shift lever with a 'S' bend down low so that the upper part of the lever is moved about an inch to the rear. This will also allow the sift lever to better align with the outer shift boot. The 'extra' plate is, I believe, just a doubler sheet, used to provide a little extra stiffness for this region of the transmission tunnel (otherwise weakened by the cutout for the shift lever).