Early 71 Choke Lever

[w3wilkes]

Yesterday I drove my 240Z up to a car show and all was well. Didn't win anything, but I did meet some fun folks. When I went to leave I pulled the choke and could tell the lever was no longer attached to the cable. Today I opened up the console to find that a "micro" screw had come loose that then disconnected the lever from the choke cable. Once I got into it I couldn't see how I would put things back together! You'll notice in the attached image there's a BOLT that goes through a "Y" in the choke lever that has a sleeve around it and a little retainer to hold the loop in the cable so the cable can be both pulled to apply the choke and pushed to disengage the choke. That's not quite the way Datsun initially did this. Sorry I don't have a picture. The jest of it was there's a round brass bar that on one end is a smaller stud that goes through a hole on the far side of the lever in the image and then a washer and "micro" screw holds brass bar in place. There's no way to get to that screw without completely removing that plate you can see on the other side of the lever in the image. What I've done is a small engineering change that makes it like in the image. I found a small bolt that fits through the sleeve and retainer that holds the choke cable and then tapped the hole in the other side of the "Y" in the lever so that I could use a bolt to hold the sleeve and cable retainer in place. Don't know what Datsun was thinking with that original hokey design! I stole this picture from WoodworkerB and the red circle is just showing his broken choke cable.

[w3wilkes]

I did take a shot of how my revised assembly of the choke lever parts. The bolt will replace the little brass bar, "micro" washer and "micro" screw.

[CanTechZ]

I went through the same problem a couple of years ago and had to modify my choke lever assembly as well.  On mine the cable broke as well as the "tombstone" shaped cable washer and some of the spacers were lost when it came apart. To fix it I replaced the choke cable wire with .055" music wire using the original sheath,  got a plastic "tombstone" shaped cable washer from a '72 choke assembly and made a plastic washer/spacer to make up the extra space.  Also had to modify the brass pin to suit the newer plastic cable washer, I was able to use the original M2 x 5mm screw that retains the brass pin. One of the more difficult issues was bending the music wire to fit the groove in the plastic cable washer. Here's a couple of pictures of my repair:

 

I also documented my repair with 3D Cad

[w3wilkes]

Really impressed with your CAD work!

What I did, using your CAD image, was eliminate the items marked A here and tapped the hole marked B for the bolt I used to replace all A marked items. This allowed me to leave the housing attached to the console console and only remove the choke lever from the housing to tap the B hole.

Since my car didn't have the throttle lever and I've replaced the radio with a RetroSound Bluetooth radio I repurposed the throttle lever slot for the antenna up/down rocker.

[CanTechZ]

Thanks. That's a good fix you came up with. One of the weak points with original design is that if tombstone washer can't pivot on the brass pin from crap building then the pin will start to pivot and loosen that tiny M2 screw. 

Is your tombstone washer metal or plastic?

My old series one parts car had the antenna switch relocated exactly as you have done. 

Cheers

Mike

[w3wilkes]

My tombstone washer is metal and so is the backing sleeve that goes over the pin that my bolt replaces. I think all these parts are brass. Didn't mention before, but I used MRO Solution #10 Blue in the newly tapped bolt hole to keep the bolt from backing out like the micro screw did.

If my cable ever breaks I'll use your piano wire fix and again won't have to disassemble the choke lever housing from the console!