the only thing I did not like was the input shaft needle was branded "made in china" I think the other larger ball bearings were made in japan, but I can not swear to that. You can buy the ball bearings only as well, they are standard size, I suppose if you did some research you could perhaps by "premium" stuff. I know I talked about the to the guy at Datsun Spirt, IIRC he only wanted to use OE Nissan parts, both bearing and balk rings, that would up the cost a lot. His point of view was it a lot of labor cost to install sub standard parts.

Edited August 27, 20195 yr by Dave WM

Excellent advice. I'll pick the best one. Clean it meticulously. Install and see what I have. If I have to pull it, I'll try my hand at a rebuild. Thanks for the input. 

I've been doing a bit of research before heading out tomorrow and selecting one of three 280ZX 5-speed transmissions I have available to me. I've read there are two slightly different versions of the FS5W71B transmissions. Supposedly the two versions have a slightly different 5th gear ratio. Apparently one version was used in 1979 and 1980 ZX's and the other in non- turbo 1981-1983 ZX's. Since the casting numbers seem to be the same, I'm wondering if there are any other ways to tell the two apart since all had been removed from the cars years ago. Any help would be much appreciated.

you could mark the output shaft and input shaft with a grease pencil, turn them  say 10 times (input shaft) and compare (output shaft). IIRC the later ones had a taller gear ratio, but you should know better if you have been looking at it recently.

Edited August 29, 20195 yr by Dave WM

I dug into the FSM's for the various years a while ago and here's some excerpts from my notes...

79 - is the same as 77 and 78 - 5th gear ratio is .864

80 - is different than every other year. 5th gear ratio is  0.773. But an interesting thing to note is that they got that ratio change from the main drive and counter drive gears, not from by using a different 5th gear set. This means that all of the other gear ratios are different than the prior years as well.

81 - has a 5th gear ratio of .745. They got that ratio change by adjusting the 5th gear set. The main drive and counter gears are the same as 80 so other than 5th, the rest of the ratios are the  same as a 80.

82 and 83 - are the same as 81.

So the bottom line..... If you put the tranny in 5th gear and turn the input shaft ten times:
77-78-79 output shaft will turn about eight and a half times.
80 output shaft will turn about seven and three quarter times.
81-82-83 output shaft will turn about seven and a half times.

That ought to be enough distinction to tell them apart.

I am not sure but I think the 81-83 also used a reverse nut on the main shaft, CW to loosen, Just some thing to consider when trying to disassemble.

If you rebuilfd the transmission I would recommend using Nissan parts where possible.

See parts list I used in 2012. You might have some trouble sourcing some of the parts, but most ar still available. The bronze bush in the rear extension for the propellor shaft yoke was never available through nissan.

 

Tranny_Rebuild_FEB2012.pdf Identification FS5W71B.pdf

that bronze bush on EuroDat list is the one I used, very nicely made. Omega Tools.

Just picked up the 5-speed and brought it home. Now the cleaning and seal replacement begins. I will plan to install it over the next 60 days and report back on results. Did not find anything metal on the magnetic plug and there is very little play in the input and output shaft or noise spinning the input shaft. Fingers crossed.

did you do the 10 turns?

Didn't do the 10 turns as I ended up only having two choices and the one I took seemed to be much tighter overall. I did notice of the two choices, one had long ears where the shift lever pin goes through and one had the short ears. Does the length of the ears identify it as an early or later ZX 5-speed? Somewhere back in my memory banks I seem to recall that the one with the longer ears was 1982-83.

That's correct - and the shift lever has a spring and different bushings than the early transmissions.