My Z build

[Jonu]

Just got back from a 30 day field exercise and I'm looking forward to finishing up the final touches before it's first start in around 6 years. I'm going to make sure the battery has a nice full charge tomorrow as well as finishing up getting the carbs tightened down. I'll be taking a picture of that and posting it so I can get a confirmation that everything looks right. Finally, on Saturday the car will go up on jackstands so I can pull the wheels off and have my new tires I ordered mounted and balanced.

[Jonu]

Today didn't see much progress. I decided I would try seeing if the cause of my lighting issues was a fuse or not. It took me a while to figure out where the fuse box was located, even with looking at the FSM while out at the car. I was really limited to only one solution today since I didn't have a voltmeter to check the wiring. So I replaced all the fuses with brand new ones. I figured it couldn't hurt since I had no idea how old the fuses were. I ended up finding one blown fuse and the others appeared ok, but they got replaced anyways. After doing this I still was at the same spot as before. I've been doing some research and most of my google searches have led me bac to posts here. Anyways, tomorrow I'm going to have a multimeter and will be checking other likely culprits. From what I've read it appears that a faulty Hazard switch can cause the symptoms I'm having as well as the turn signal switch. So if the multimeter points to either of them I will just pull both of them off and clean them up. If they check out good and power is going to the fuses, I'm not sure where to go after that except to pull out the dash and start following wires around the car. As for the headlights, I'm going to suspect it is either the switch or the bulb. I looked at the bulbs to see if a filament was broke or not, but they appear to be ok. Finally I was hoping somebody could help me I.D. my wheels. They appear to be factory wheels, but when I bought the car the seller also gave me 3 Hub caps. These wheels don't appear to use hubcaps but maybe I missed something or they where a factory option.

[mgood]

They look kind of like mine, Mine are Appliance and not factory. I purchased them when I bought the car in 76. The centers have an A on them for Appliance. Keep the centers they are very hard to find. I have after market centers because mine rusted very badly.

[Jonu]

Thanks for the help mgood. I have to agree with you, after doing some searching on google using your information, I do believe that is what they are. I'm thinking they are the Appliance Wide Mags. I just thought that the letter on the center cap was a D for Datsun. I would never have guessed it was an A. I had been thinking of having them painted or powdercoated, but after seeing how they look all cleaned and polished up I think I'm going to find a good shop around here that can clean them up and get them polished.

I did manage to get new tires mounted today so I'm pretty happy about that. Tomorrow I'm going to start working on my lighting issue since replacing fuses didn't help. I borrowed a multimeter from a friend of mine and I'm hoping that helps me track down the problem pretty quickly. I would like to be able to get this thing started and through the safety inspection by the end of next week so I can get it registered the week after next. Anyways here are a couple pics I took with my cell phone earlier today. I'm also going to need to do something about the suspension as well. I did notice while I had the rear tires off that it appears to have a couple of plastic spacers in the spring on the both sides of the car. I'm not sure if they should be there or not, but i wouldn't think there should be anything in the spring that would cause it to bind up. I should have taken a picture but wasn't thinking at the time.

[Mike W]

They are definitely Appliance wheels. They are called Wire Mags and were a pretty popular after market wheel for the Z back in the 70's. I have a set also and bought them new for my car a few years after I purchased the car new in 1974.

About a year ago I needed new tires and so decided find a local company that could clean and polish my wheels. I posted a write up on the whole story which you can find here:

http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/thread43224.html

I am very happy with the result and that the wheels help to keep the car period correct. Here's a quick before and after picture so you can see the result of the process that I went through.

Mike.

[Jonu]

They definitely did an outstanding job on your wheels Mike. I really like how you had the area inbetween the mesh painted silver. In my opinion it gives the wheel a much nicer approach. I'm going to have to do some looking around and see if there is a place out here in El Paso that can do a similar job. If I was at Fort Hood still Austin wouldn't be a problem. But I would like to find somebody within driving range, so I guess the search is on to find a place that can refinish the wheels along with the center caps. None of them have much wrong with them and the center caps are what appear to be in the worst condition. So I guess once the car is running, this will be added to the top end of my list of things to do. Thanks again for the help identifying these wheels guys.

[Jonu]

Well, last few days have been slow. I've been dead tired after being in 100 degree heat all day at work, but today I got off early and started trying to figure out my lighting issues. The first thing I did was reinstall the T/S switch and combo switch. I then hooked it up the battery terminals to my truck for power. I then checked my combo switch and T/S switch for power. I found that I was getting full power to the combo switch and none for the T/S switch. After seeing that i decided I would check for power at the headlights. As I was pulling the headlights I noticed my side markers, and the rear combo lights were all on as they should be. The turn signal lights were on as well, but the still only work when the 4 ways are on. I ended up pulling out the plug for the headlights and checking for power at the connector. I found that on the driver side there was no voltage and on the passenger side it had .65 volts. I ran out of light about then so I packed everything up and picked up my newest item to help me for this problem. I found a high quality .tiff file for the wiring schematic on this site (through google) and had Kinkos print up a nice big 18"x24" Laminated printout so i can trace the wires with wet erase markers. I've traced out all the wires but I'm stuck trying to follow the wires through the combo/turn signal/hazard switch. I'm hoping i can figure this out soon. I'm thinking my headlight problem is a bad ground and the turn signal may be a bad switch since those lights are working.

[Jonu]

So today was supposed to be the big day that one of my friends and his Dad were going to come over and help me tune the carbs. Unfortunately that got pushed back. First thing I did today was go and buy a 5 gallon fuel can. While there I ended up buying new nuts and lock washers for the carbs as well as new hose clamps for the radiator hoses. When I got back I changed out all the hardware and decided to redo the gaskets for the floats. I figured I could do better than the original ones i made. Two hours later and I had two new gaskets that I was happy with. I then called my friend to let him know I was ready for them to look things over and try to start it up. While they were making sure the carbs were working propperly (they were a bit tight) I topped off the coolant and poured in the gas. Then we connected the battery to see what would happen. Then nothing happened, you could hear the electric pump whirring away but there was no fuel getting to the filter. After noticing and correcting a few minor things we went back and looked at the pump and found that there was no fuel line connecting the pump to the tank. Fortunately I had some fuel line on hand and we were able to take care of that. The next attempt was just as unlucky as the first tries. We decided that what had happened was that the fuel lines were clogged somewhere. So I went to get a little more gas so we could fill the float bowls and see if it would start that way. After filling the floats, we reconnected the battery and gave it a try, and it started up on the very first crank!!! It was idling and sounded to be in pretty good mechanical shape. Granted a lot of dust went flying at first since it had been sitting for so long nothing seemed wrong with it. Thats when we noticed that the transmission i thought was empty started spewing fluids. So we cut the engine off and I proceeded to clean the mess I made. I had forgotten to reconnect the oil cooler lines and while cleaning up the resulting mess I noticed it wouldn't have mattered if the were connected because both lines are dry rotted. One actually fell off when i bumped it while cleaning the mess. But I now know that the engine does run, there was no smoke out the tail pipe, no pinging, no metalic clicking, and when I checked the radiator to see if it needed more fluid, there was no sign of oil. While I'm a bit disappointed that we couldn't start it using the tank and that I missed fairly easy to notice things, I'm happy to know that my engine appears to be in good mechanical shape.

[johnny haywire]

Sounds like you are making some good progress - glad the engine sounds good. One issue I had with my 280z (which had sat for almost 14 years) was that the hi-beams didn't work when I got it. I took off the ignition trim and used some "contact & control cleaner/lubricant" from Radio Shack (which I use on old stereos and amps to clean up the static in the pots) and gave the turning signal tree a few good blasts and worked it around - voila! The hi-beams started working. Anyway, might not hurt to hit the moving parts/switches for your lights with some of that stuff.

[Jonu]

So I'm a bit stumped with what to do about replacing the transmission oil cooler lines. I've checked Courtesy Nissan, MSA, as well as trying a google search with no success. Is this something I will need to assemble myself? I figure it shouldn't be to hard for me to do. I think the hardest part would be finding the proper threaded fitting. I'm also thinking that if I have to make these lines myself I might as well make them with some SS braided lines. Still trying to figure out what's wrong with the head lights and turn signals, I think I will be looking for a good piece of wire and try bypassing the circuit to see if the turn signals work then.

[Jonu]

Well, this is moving a bit slower than I expected but I'm steadily making progress and hopefully the pace will start picking up now. I ended up pulling the fuel tank out and took it to a radiator shop to have it cleaned out. They ended up stripping it to bare metal on the outside, cut it open and cleaned it out then welded it back together. It is now coated and they also repainted the outside black. I also just ordered a new fuel level sending unit w/ gasket and lock ring, headlights w/ gaskets, and a new hood release knob since the original one decided to break on me. All that should be here by Tuesday and I plan on having everything on the car by Thursday. Tomorrow I'm going to hit up the auto parts stores to find some hard lines that I can use to bend up new hardlines to replace the original fuel lines running from the tank to the engine bay.

[Jonu]

Well, it's been a while since i posted any updates on my car so here is a quick rundown of what has been going on since the last post. I di end up getting new lines for the fuels system, although I never was able to get a chance to get them bent up. I bought 20' of both sizes since I wanted some extra to practice on. Then in December I towed it home while I was on block leave. While I was home I dropped it off at a shop to get it stripped to the frame, media blasted and reassembled. I want to do some performance mods, but my first priority was to make sure any and all rust that may have been on the car was taken care of. The guys at the shop were pretty impressed with the condition of the car and said it was probably the best looking 240 that they had a chance to work on. Since I left it there, it has been stripped down and been media blasted. It is now having the body work done (having a front air dam and BRE style spoiler added on) and should be ready for paint pretty soon. It is going to be painted the original blue metallic and assuming I can find the pieces, will be swapped over to a 4 speed manual. A lot of guys in my platoon give me crap for not going with a 5 speed, but I'm trying to keep it pretty close to period correct. Hopefully I can get some pictures soon. The internet here isn't to good so I'm going to have the pictures they have taken sent to me on CD. Then I can resize them and get them posted up. Can't wait to get home and see how she looks!!