Engine won't start!

[imd240zman]

About a year ago, I was given a 1971 Datsun 240z. The guy who gave it to me let it sit for over 9 years, without touching it once. He said that when he parked it, it had over-heated. And that the clutch didn't work, at all.

Me, some friends, and some partners/sponsors have been working on restoring this car. But, we've run into problems getting it to start.

The car has no signs of over-heating, engine damage, and the clutch works on occasion.

This is where we've gotten stuck. The engine turns over, but refuses to start unless the air is cut off from the carbs (we use paper towels). If it does fire, it only fires on a few cylinders, then backfires through the rear carb and dies.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what may be wrong? And, if so, how do I go about fixing it. The car will not be brought to a shop, I'm trying to fix it all with my friends. For the learning experience.

If anyone has any idea how to fix the problem and get this car started, please let me know. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you all, Jeremy Femia

[seerex]

First of all have you changed all the fluids from the car before trying to start it? Mainly the gas tank? If the car is running a mechanical fuel pump try getting fuel from a gas can instead of the gas tank , the tank is most likely full of crap and you are only causing more issues by trying to use that gas. Then start with the basics, are all 6 cylinders getting fire? Check for spark and make sure the points are gapped right and that you have spark to all of them. If you know the spark is good time to work the carbs, mostly likely having sat for a bit the floats in the carbs are stuck and possibly the interal piston. Make sure all the carbs have oil in them, open the back cap on top and make sure it had oil in it < for oil types that will work do a search >. The car should run < not good but will run > probably at this point. If not you might have to rebuild the carbs and definalty have to tune them. I would get the video from z therapy great investment, probably 2-3 hours for a first rebuild and an hour of tuning to make it right. BY the way expect to have things break , if a car hasn't been ran in a long time expect to replace hoses and seals and everything else that has cracked and decayed due to lack of use. Good luck

[zeiss150]

Seerex is right! 9 year old gas will reek havoke on an engine. after about a year it starts to turn in to lacker. I would guess that from the tank to the fuel rail to the carb float bowls to the nozzle to the needle is filled with this crap. Even carb cleaner won't do the trick... it will help and its a start, but you need to "clean" everything out. I would start with cleaning the fuel rail, then clean the float bowls, nozzles and needles. once you have that stuff clean then you can run a line off a five gallon gas tank just to get the car running and "tuned". Once you have it running and tuned, pull the gas tank, have it boilled and lined, then either clean the hard fuel lines from the gas tank or replace them (with larger ones for when you go turbo ). The Z therapy video is great I recomend getting the Just SU's first then get the SU's tune up video. Welcome to the Z world and good luck.

Keep us posted.

Matt-

[Curtis240Z]

Do a compression check too, before you get too deep into this motor.

[Roujin]

im not sure what the 240 is like but when my 280 would not kick i found the problem laid in the ic module (Hitachi12-92) when i changed the dizzi the problem was fixed but i would overhaul the whole fuel system to make sure.

Im probably wrong but i hope this helps you