Greetings From Austin Tx

[motivealloy]

Hey Gang,

 

My son and I recently picked up an early 1970 car. It's a great project for the both of us even though my wife is less than thrilled.

 

Been learning lots of great info on the site. 

[dtshaw66]

Welcome! I learn something new every time I log on. 

[Mike W]

Welcome to the site and to the Z family!!

 

I am also from Austin and so wanted to let you know that we have a local Z club with a good number of our members owning the older S30 models.  We are called Capital Z of Texas or CZOT for short.  You can get info on us at czot.org and we also have our own Facebook page as well.

 

Monthly meetings are the 4th Monday of each month (ie tonight) and we meet ak Pok-e-Joes in the Brodie Oaks shoppong center (corner of 360 and Lamar).  Meetings start at 7 but a number of us gather early for a quick bite to eat and shop talk.  Also have monthly drives as well as tech days.  It's a great way to learn more about your Z, meet some new people with the same passion as you, and really learn how to enjoy your car.

 

Hope to meet you soon.

 

Mike.

[jfa.series1]

Welcome to the group.  If you've been looking over our shoulders for any length of time, you know that pictures and details are required entry fees.  Looking forward to hearing more of your team project, you've picked a great platform to work on together.

[Hardway]

Welcome to the club MotiveAlloy.  Mike gave you a good run down of the Z club here in Austin.  Maybe once the holidays pass and you get the cooling issues taken care of we can all do a breakfast meet nearby up north.  As JFA sais above, we love pictures!

[Mike]

Welcome!  I was just in Austin a few months ago.    I'll ping you guys next time I'm down that direction.

[siteunseen]

 you get the cooling issues taken care 

The wife? 

[motivealloy]

Wow, thanks for the warm welcome guys!!

 

Oh shoot I didn't read about the Austin meeting for Monday night till today. DOH!  Definitely plan to make the first meeting after the holidays and after we figure out our overheating issue. Leaning toward a stuck thermostat.

 

We've already made a lot of progress on the Z so far. One of our easy projects was replacing the weird butchered 5 speed ZX shifter for a proper 240-260z style shifter. We installed bronze bushings and a new pin cup bushing. We went from OMG what gear am I in - to solid fun time!

 

[Hardway]

Good job on the shifter!  The blue on the car looks great.  Was that under the plasti-dip stuff you told me about?  If so, it is hard to figure out why anyone would cover that up.  We look forward to more updates, more pics, and hopefully meeting up soon.

[motivealloy]

Yup, that is the lovely dark blue paint that was covered by the black plasti-dip. That stuff is annoying to remove from the car.

 

This weekend Robert and I did a lot of little maintenance items to the Z.

 

Topped up the radiator fluid. The radiator doesn't seem to be leaking any longer from the pin hole leak I noticed earlier in the month.  We are still going to replace it with a champion rad even though it's holding fluid. 

 

Now that the rad has proper coolant level the temp gauge is hovering between T and E now instead of over by P. Very happy to see this. I was afraid the thermometer was going bad - turns out it was just low on coolant.

 

Topped up the engine oil. We have a slow leak from the oil pan gasket. Not a major deal but we want to button that up one of these days.

 

Replaced ALL of the fuel hoses in the engine compartment with new rubber. The hoses that were on the engine were full of cracks The fuel filter doesn't need to be changed yet. One thing I did do was remove two inline fuel filters from between the fuel rail and the SU's. Not sure why the PO added these. It seems like they were messing with the fuel pressure from the pump to the carbs. Carbs run a little smoother after I took 'em off.

 

Went through and cleaned all of the electrical connections to the distributer with "Lime-a-way" in the spray bottle. this stuff is great at taking all that brown oxidation off of electrical leads. It has a mild cleaner in it so it also helps clean away gunk from the wire ends. Once you have bright metal again just rinse with clean water.

 

Re-positioned the hood and hood latch. Our hood sits a bit wonky cos it was hit at one time and our right front frame rail is pushed in about 1/4 to 5/8 inch. This hood was replaced at some point in it's life. I noticed that it has the hallmarks of a 73 and later hood. Oh well, It will probably be impossible to find an early 1970 hood in decent shape and at a good price. 

 

Robert replaced the interior map light with a good used one and reattached some of the AC heater controls back together. Yay, levers work and the fan control knob is solid.

 

Buttoned up the interior panels with new clips from Pep-boys. They are Toyota/Nissan panel clips. Just have to trim a bit of plastic off for them to fit, but they look and work great. 

 

I cleaned up the electrical connectors that attach to the gas tank sending unit. OMG, what a cruel joke to put those rubber caps over the blade connectors. I ended up just cutting them off as they were hard as rock. Did the same lime-a-way clean up and what a difference. We can consistently tell how much gas we have in the tank now. I wrapped the connector ends with electrical tape so that they wouldn't get covered in road gunk.

 

Well, that was our weekend fun. I think we did a few more little things but I can't remember at this point.

 

I'm ready for some thanksgiving left overs.

[Hardway]

That is a lot of great progress!  Good to hear things are moving forward and at a good pace   I don't know if there is a real difference between early and later 240z hoods but if you look around on the Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio Craigslist one seems to pop up every few weeks.

[motivealloy]

Quick and embarrassing update! 

 

Was going to run some errands this morning in the Z as it's running really good now. I'm half way to the post office and I run out of gas. What?! the gauge shows a quarter tank. DOH! I guess quarter tank is now the "Empty" zone.

 

Luckily I ran out of gas right in front if a Chevron. Whew! 

 

Filled up the tank and it took forever for the fuel to get pumped up to the carbs while I was cranking.

 

I'm guessing there may or may not be a fuel gauge level adjuster on the back of the dash gauge. I'll search the forums.