So I’m still helping this young lad with his 81zx. Those familiar know that the inlet for the water pump has an extra fitting to run around to the TB and EGR stuff . Well he wasn’t using that stuff and decided to use an early inlet that has the heater hose fitting only . The problem was that the early fitting would cause the clearance between the alternator and hose to diminish and not allow the alternator to slide close to the engine to install the belt .
Looking at it I see the ZX inlet is made with a sharp bend vs the early fitting . I never noticed this before but I’ve mostly dealt with early Z’s.

So is the later model alternator a bigger diameter which causes the rubbing ? It doesn’t make sense to me because many - including me - have done swaps to later alternator on an early Z . Maybe I was in to much of a rush yesterday to carefully look at this . Trying to figure out what I missed .

The one on the left is what came off his engine .  I’ve never seen one like that . The one on the right is the later ones I’ve seen . I have not tried the one on the right l but we tried one without the extra hose .

I can only say that i have the left one on my '79 280zx (original) .. euro version.  I have seen those copper pipes with only one outlet maybe thats cleaner look and easy to install.

I have the one on the left on my 79



Edit: found a pic with the Alt still in.






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