1973 Rebuild

[Yarb]

Nice work… That was not easy.

[Patcon]

Can you mark up one of your pictures to elaborate on your changes if you were to do over?

[Matthew Abate]

1 hour ago, Patcon said:

Can you mark up one of your pictures to elaborate on your changes if you were to do over?

Yep.

I would cut the brackets somewhere between where I cut it and where the red line is in the photo above.

I considered doing this at the beginning and second guessed myself, thinking I needed the clearance for the air box. I may take the bracket off and cut them like this at some point down the road, but only after I’m done with the car.

Edited October 3, 2023 by Matthew Abate

[dutchzcarguy]

8 hours ago, Matthew Abate said:

but only after I’m done with the car.

Dare i say it.. now everyone is asking him/herself.. what does he want to say: oh well.. It's: So never then?  ( Not that i think you never end the car, it's just like that one thing many people want to improve on their car.. but they never get to it !! )  😂  I got 1 or 2 myself?  (More like a 100!! 😢)

[dutchzcarguy]

10 hours ago, Patcon said:

Can you mark up one of your pictures to elaborate on your changes if you were to do over?

A LOT of times people that constructed something, most times the first 3 or so times they make modifications in the design.. I know of people that said that..  It's normal..

I had it a few times ...  you learn a lot during the creating proces.

[Matthew Abate]

I made a manifold bypass tube out of stainless today so I could reconnect the coolant bypass tube in the rear of the engine to the thermostat housing.

I received a great deal of snark on the FB Mikuni group when I asked how others were completing this part of the coolant circuit (short story is most of them don’t and sacrifice their heater) but I want everything working as designed and to be able to drive in the winter. Those that had done it just used “a rubber tube”, which is a wildly insufficient explanation, IMO.

I opted for stainless because I am not confident a coolant tube poached from another car would survive the header heat. There’s a chance I will need to wrap this to keep the heat out and not boil the coolant, and I possibly need to get different set of tubes to get this pipe up further away from the headers, but I’ll see if this configuration will get it above the heat shield when I test fit that in a few days. We will see.

It’s 316 stainless, 1/2” OD, .6 wall thickness, and 19.5” long. Here are some shots of how I cleaned up the tig-welded hose clamp beads with a lathe, and then the final piece.

Edited October 7, 2023 by Matthew Abate

[Yarb]

@Matthew AbateAre those ZStory headers?

[Matthew Abate]

44 minutes ago, Yarb said:

@Matthew AbateAre those ZStory headers?

Nope. Spirit Garage

https://www.spiritgarage.com/

[Yarb]

By chance did you have the headers ceramic coated along with the collector?

[Matthew Abate]

29 minutes ago, Yarb said:

By chance did you have the headers ceramic coated along with the collector?

No, I haven’t. This is straight out of the box.

[Matthew Abate]

The engine harness is in.

Everything is pretty much right. There are a few places where it got twisted as I was wrapping it, and the headlight plugs aren’t exactly in the right place, but I can mitigate that when I require the front lights.

The harness is quite a bit thicker than OEM because I used marine wire, so I had to trim the firewall boot all the way to the widest hole size. As a result it’s not quite tight, so I need to fix that, but otherwise it’s done.

☝By the way, does anyone know what this tab is for? I assumed it’s for a clip to hold the coil wire because it’s similar to the tabs for the plug wire clips.

***

I also test fit my Mikuni setup:

Okay, so…

It wouldn’t be my car without some substantial but not insurmountable problems. They are almost entirely because I went with the Mikuni manifold, which has the shortest runners of all of the options. The Harada I traded for this one probably wouldn’t have had any of them.

There is interference between the manifold/carbs and a few of the factory configurations:

1. The water pipe that goes into the thermostat hits the throttle linkage. Yes, the one I just made that stainless steel pipe for. I’m going to see what a 45° or 90° elbow adapter does to fix it.

2. The OEM manifold studs are too long by around 3mm and the stainless ones by about 11mm. Luckily I was able to figure out that the stainless “manifold studs” that you see all over are actually set screws, and you can get them in any length (in 5mm increments) at McMaster Carr. I have 40 and 45mm studs/set screws on the way (watch, I’ll end up needing 35mm).

3. The metal riser for the plug wire clip hits the manifold. It definitely has to come off to get the manifold on, but I think this one is for a ZX. The 240z one at Z Car Depot is different and may work.

4. The plug wires bind up in the throttle linkage. I think I can partially fix this by adjusting the linkage so it isn’t sticking straight up, but I may end up rerouting them.

***

Lastly, I replaced my corroded and beat up 280ZX thermostat housing with a new one for a 240z. It didn’t fix any of the interference issues but it looks nice and I don’t have a bunch of plugged sensor holes.

Edited October 8, 2023 by Matthew Abate

[Patcon]

That's progress though, and progress is good!