New Z lover, Kansas City, MO.

Posted April 8, 201014 yr

Hello every one.

Another new Z enthusiast here out of KC. I've been reading here for a month or two. Thought id chime in and say hi.

First of all I cannot thank everyone enough for all the assistance on here!! Several of my questions found answers, I even found answers before I had the question, ha. THANK YOU ALL!!! Esp the member with the red gauges in his signature pic. This appears to be the best Z site for non-hybrids.

Anyway. My twin brother bought a Z this past fall. The bug spread and 2 months ago I traded a old motorcycle for my very own. Before this I was leaning towards a MG, I'm glad my brother had the foresight. You just never see Z's around here period. Super neat little vintage cars.

Its a 1976 180z. All original and thankfully was a Texas car most of its life. There is no rust except for what seems to have been a long ongoing battery leak, the frame rail is toast below it, but oddly enough the tray and firewall escaped unscathed.

I found the car on CL, it had been posted by the owners son. They lived about 30mins from KC, off a gravel road outside a small suburb town. He needed to get rid of it and didn't know a whole lot about the cars history. Just that it was purchased in Texas and had been sitting in a guys shop for a long time.

Purchasing the car was the usual, a utterly stressful fiasco. And in VERY, very short,,,,the owner was down on luck, lost his house, lived with a girlfriend and the car was miles away at his friends farm. He seldom found work as a truck driver and was hard to contact. He never knew when he would be in town or for how long.

We finally struck a deal and decided on a date to trade. But there was a large snow storm, a bad one with near single digit temps. I was very concerned id loose the cheap rust free Z to a cash offer being in the rustbelt and all. So all kc area schools had closed and my brother and I where renting a car trailer. The rest of the night was filled with gravel roads, shady gps, and gas station pizza. We pulled away from home trailer loaded at 6:00pm and returned at about 1:00am!

My brother and I both have had several toy cars/bikes over the years....for some reason all my deals seem to go down in this fashion per him. But to his credit, when I was apologizing for the circumstances he replied with: "Its okay, r u kidding I live for stuff like this. But dam, this is why I own a gun and didn't even bring it." Ha.

The car had sat for a VERY long time in a Texas a shop with the windows down I suspect, then in a MO field for 1-2 years before I came along. The interior weathered badly. In fact its unclear to me if the car has 25k or 125k miles on it.

I drained the tank, replaced a dead fuel pump, oil, filter, and plugs. It started right up purring like a kitten. Its valve train is super quiet. Comp is right at 160's across the board. It revs great but struggles badly under any load and smokes oddly only with load). I found all kinds of hokey stuff on the car. Just missing vacuum hoses and A spare fuel injector was stuffed in the intake port of the charcoal canister, the other end(afm hose) was capped with a lug nut/bolt. I found the afm itself was bad. You can see clear through to the circuit board on its "finger contact path". Black Dragon is here in town and im waiting on a new one. I will probably end up making a new afm hose, its shot as well. With the AMF replaced and massive vac leaks solved I hope its road worthy. Will have to wait and see. The breaks came back to life great with a little bleeding.

I plan on getting it running right, then hopefully swapping a 7mgte with r154 tranny. I have owned mk3 supra's before and just love those motors. The interior and paint will probably come first but im not for sure. I could easily enjoy the rat-rod look for awhile and go 7m right away.

Thanks again for every ones help and glad to be here. Jason.

Sorry for the quality.

Off the trailer:(brother)