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Greeting to all. I joyously join this site after having discovered an abandoned treasure in a middle aged lady's garage while installing some kitchen appliances at her home. A 1980 zx n/a. I asked her how much and she said 200$. I went to the bank right then. A tuneup and some seafoam and it sits at my house. About to tear into the intake/exhaust to do the gasket and replace vacumn and elec connectors, fuel injectors and such. Sent from my N9130 using Classic Zcar Club mobile

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1972-Vintage-Original-OHIO-License-Plate-A-239-Z-Pair-/162318002416?hash=item25cae828f0:g:76gAAOSwMNxXYErQ This one seem appropriate as well..... http://www.ebay.com/itm/TX-vanity-Z-DEBT-license-plate-money-Dollar-Tax-Collector-Sports-Luxury-Car-/252678441780?hash=item3ad4cf0b34:g:e1IAAOSwZVlXsmtR

Welcome to the club and good luck with the refresh! Looks like you found a great car at an even better price. Let us know if you have any issues, there are several ZX members in our midst!

Ok some great progress today. I used a dial gauge(like a piston stop) inserted into cyl 1 spark plug hole to find absolute TDC. This worked great. But even before this I tried looking for the notch and groove on the cam plate and cam gear, no luck maybe I didn't look hard enough. Anyway it was cold so I continued, I got TDC on cyl 1, using the gauge on the compression stroke, the cam lobes were in the V orientation. I looked down on my damper and it was no where near 0 TDC, more like 50 degrees. I knew the issue right away, my damper was twisted at some point. So I used a white ink pen and made a mark to locate the new TDC mark. I also saw my distributor tang was at 12 not 11:25. Went on to the distributor locked it down and tried to start it, had to play with the distributor a little bit and then it ran. I was able to set the distributor where there was no backfiring and the engine revved easily. I then used the timing light which is useless as my damper has incorrect measurements. I noticed the timing was maybe at 10-15 degrees, this is a very rough estimate. As of now i'm done with the timing, I will have to one weekend thoroughly go over the timing. I'll look for the notch and groove, check to see at what pin my cam gear was installed on, check crank to cam timing, drop the oil pump and realign the distributor drive, install a new damper. The next is to tackle the carbs, I readjusted the front float and the car was less rich than before. I tried looking for some clear hoses to check my float levels(thanks Peter for this suggestion and the multiple other suggestion) but couldn't find any. But in the meantime I will buy some plastic tubing and try to make some float level gauges from the bowl drain bolts. This float issue are a real pain in the arse, I'm done trying to bend them this way and that way to get it straight. I know for sure the front carb has more gas in the bowl as compared to the rear per the WD-40 stick per @siteunseen(thanks!) I'm going to buy some new ones and call it a day. My carbs btw are almost synced as I used my uni-syn to check between them so once I fix the float levels and some minor adjustments they should be good to go.

I suggest you look at the trim panels sold by Mike at Banzai Motorsports. They're very close to the originals in appearance (not the case for the panels offered by many of the other vendors) and they include the embossed chrome trim strip. Price is very competitive at $275 for a pair and Mike is a good guy to deal with... http://www.zzxdatsun.com/catSoftTrim.php (see Item #ST-12)

That's a great reference from atlanticz.ca. The drawings in the FSM don't give a good idea of what they actually look like. I cut out the part that shows the notch and groove, although the yellow arrow is off a bit..

Here's a picture from the FSM showing the notch and groove inspection. The groove is on the plate behind the sprccket and the notch is in the edge of the sprocket, next to the plate.