I swore I was done with big restorations for.a couple of years. I was even going to simplify things around here and get rid of one long term project (remember the 73 I have, I mean, had, for sale? Yeah that one). 

Well along the way of selling the Z, one of the potential buyers says to me, "I'm interested in talking to you about buying your Z, but want to mention I have an older Z that I've been sitting on for a few years. Maybe you'd be interested in looking at it?" So I ask a couple of important questions like "What's older mean?" And "whats the VIN".  Took hime a while to go to it, an read the VIN's.  One he says reads 25401 or something and the other says 03798. Ok, now you got my interest.

Ok, I bet you already know where this story is going. Yes I went to see it, yes it followed me home. The VIN is 3798, 5/70 build date. Rusty old dog, few things missing, but hey, it has a cool sun roof! (See other recent thread about SEMA and Sun Roofs and being cool).

 

On 11/1/2017 at 8:10 PM, zKars said:

I swore I was done with big restorations for.a couple of years. I was even going to simplify things around here and get rid of one long term project (remember the 73 I have, I mean, had, for sale? Yeah that one). 

Well along the way of selling the Z, one of the potential buyers says to me, "I'm interested in talking to you about buying your Z, but want to mention I have an older Z that I've been sitting on for a few years. Maybe you'd be interested in looking at it?" So I ask a couple of important questions like "What's older mean?" And "whats the VIN".  Took hime a while to go to it, an read the VIN's.  One he says reads 25401 or something and the other says 03798. Ok, now you got my interest.

Ok, I bet you already know where this story is going. Yes I went to see it, yes it followed me home. The VIN is 3798, 5/70 build date. Rusty old dog, few things missing, but hey, it has a cool sun roof! (See other recent thread about SEMA and Sun Roofs and being cool).

What was the other one like? Or wait, was that just meaning the two VIN codes for the same car?

Edited November 3, 20177 yr by wheee!

 Yes, two different VIN's on the one car. The dash from from a 71 and has the non-matching 25xxx VIN. 

1 hour ago, diego1988 said:

Wanna sale your steering wheel?

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If you PM me we can discuss options. Gotta pay for this resto somehow, right?

Is the steering wheel for sale, I'll pay by paypal

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1 minute ago, diego1988 said:

Is the steering wheel for sale, I'll pay by paypal

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Yes it's for sale. It is in excellent condition. 71.5-73 wheel with the holes in the spokes. With horn button. Asking $300 shipped.

How can I reach you

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1 hour ago, diego1988 said:

How can I reach you

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Send me a PM and I can send you a phone # or email me at z240@shaw.ca

If any of you haven't experienced this electrical issue with Datsun's, let me show you something. 

I need to clean and change some of the wires in the long-tail fuse box in this beast. The two 12 gauge white high current input wires needed new terminals on their ends, and appeared quite corroded where they were crimped onto the bus bar. So I decided to just change the wire. 

When I opened up the crimps on the bar, the situation is much worse than it appears on the surface.

 

 

I had similar concerns over what I saw with those fat white and white-red wires in my 3xxx 70 Z.  Toasted, but not fried.  The challenging part is that the wire is rock-hard for about a half-inch inboard from the the connector and there's really no excess wire to let you just lop off the offending section and crimp on a new connector.  I've decided to just hold my nose and put in relays as 'triage'.  Also, I extracted all of the fuse terminals, c/w wiring, out of my 70 Z's fuse block and re-installed them in a good-condition block salvaged from my old 72.  It can be done.

Great photos, BTW... but not pretty.

This is turning into a build thread...lol

Without concern for originality, the "right" thing to do is install a new fuse block with modern ATC fuses ALA what MSA sells, or make a new one. Maybe a couple of more circuits so adding a couple of basic things isn't an effort in futility. I'm trying to get this thing reliable and mobile, restoration comes later. Maybe really later.

Staying on the topic of electrical issue handling, yesterday was combo switch cleanup and modification day.

Now this car is a 5/70, and as I mentioned the dash from a 71, but fortunately the dash wiring harness is still the early type. Now what does that mean? Well two things identify it as such. One, the fuse block is the LONG pigtail style, and two, the head light wiring is what I call "Ground Switched" rather than the later "12V switched" variety.

In the early cars, the head light switch connects the dimmer switch common terminal to GROUND to turn the headlights on. When in the OFF postion that terminal is simply left to "float" (not connected to anything). The headlights themselves have their common terminal directly wired to the fuse box  (top right two fuses) and has power at all times. The dimmer switch just decides if hi or low beam bulb terminals are grounded. 

In the later cars (can anyone nail down a  build date or VIN where this started?) the headlight switch connects the battery (white red wire at the switch) to the fuse box two fuses via the red wire at the switch to turn the lights on. The center terminal of the dimmer switch is hard wired to ground all the time. The position of the dimmer switch determines if hi or lo beam is on. 

Electrically it is better to turn power off in most of the circuit except when needed. Also its an easy system to design and document.

Now in my case, while the dash wiring harness is "early", the combo switch that is in the car is the later version. Who knows where that came from.  So the head light switch has the usual White and Red 12 gauge wires dangling there. And worse yet there are no 12gauge white/red and red wires coming to the combo switch in the dash harness from the battery and fuse box. So what to do? Get an early combo or modify what I have? Well I only have one early combo half with the ground switch wiring, so I don't want to use that up, so I just modified the wires on the late combo I have to appear to be the early type.

All you do is un-solder the. white/red and red and solder on black wire and terminals so that you replicate the early arrangement. The dimmer switch common (center) also gets a red wire rather than the usual black. All other components are identical. 

Here is the starting point combo head light switch wiring.

Fat white/red and red wires. Red wire turns on the fuse box top right two fuse positions. White/red comes direct from the battery.

Here is what a real "early" switch looks like. Two blacks on the center terminal, and a red  pig tail with a FM bullet. The fatter black goes to a large 0.313 spade FM that connects to the fat black chassis ground in the dash harness in the wiring at the combo. The smaller 18 gauge sneeks under the bottom and provides a ground for the wiper switch. 

 

 

 

 Here is the finished mod with the Fat and skinny black on the center HL Switch (skinny black sneaking underneath to the wiper). The and the new red pigtail connected to a new matching red pigtail from the center of the dimmer switch (instead of the usual black). Now the switch when turned on connects the center dimmer terminal to ground.

 

Edited November 6, 20177 yr by zKars