zKars

I hear your frustration, but ordering on-line is a fact of life, especially for us-guys with old cars. I've been forced to order stuff the US that my local Napa Parts Source etc no longer carry. With that convenience and accessability comes risk....(and fees..and exchange rates.) but you get what you want. Your only recourse is to stop doing business with them and move on to their competition. Definitely let them know why your no longer using them. There are tons of US car parts suppliers willing to ship to Canada. I found some complete gasket sets for $78 from some place called Northen Auto Parts via ebay that were over $160 locally. I purchased tires from TireRack that were 30% cheaper including UPS shipping than buying them my Fountain tire 2 miles away. Its just SUCH a pain to return things when they are wrong....

Like many of you, each time this thread or similar comes up, I start dreaming of better ways of designing this tool. One of the challenges of building them is getting the 12x1.25 threads "created" in the end of threaded rod. Certainly in my experience, the strength of these threads is critical as I have pulled a few threaded inserts out and stripped some threads that where directly cut into the end of the rod. Getting machinest's involved is often costly. So I started thinking about alternative sources of pre-existing hardened good quality female threads of this dimension. One that come to mind is our wheel nuts. There are certainly lots of wheel nuts out there, but which ones might have the properties we desire? Hard, lots of thread depth at least. So looked through my predictable assortment of wheel nuts and found a set of old wheel locks. No idea which brand, but I think that due to the security aspect, these are likely pretty hard. Now the hard part of this approach for the average home mechanic is attaching a wheel nut to the end of the threaded rod. Welding is the most obvious approach. Lucky me, the old miller MIG in the corner is called to service, and voila I have new hard long threads to use on the next pin I have to pull. I'll report back on the success likely sooner than later. And I have three more to use if this breaks or to make 3 more! Not sure if the cost of set of good quality locks plus the cost of a welder to do this if you don't have access is actually any cheaper or better than the internal threading/machinist approach, but this is just another alternative to this never ending challenge. Next great idea is a double ended puller. Yank from both ends. Seems like it works against itself? Not if its locked in the center. Stretch is good for you. Or if you push from one end while pulling from the other.... Or how about this? Thread a good hard aftermarket wheel nut onto the spindle pin nice and tight and use a big bad air impact gun to attempt to jar and spin the pin to get it free? Hit ir both directions by using a wheel nut and another thin nut locked to it to go CCW like when your pulling studs. I love how Coffee says he uses a big bad air hammer to knock them out with axial impact. Show them no mercy!

Are your hubs scalloped or round? 240 hubs are scalloped, (surface where the studs mount). 280 hubs are round. Someone may have done a hub swap to for a brake upgrade.

240 and 280 rotors are different hat height. Check Rock Auto part numers for 72 vs 76. They likely send wrong ones. Spacing them to make this work is not wise. Get the correct parts.

Vacuum runs it all. Check for lines and hoses off and cracked ends.

Quote "...240Z.... and is currently appreciating strongly...."

Thanks Blue for reminding us that shortening a spring has the (perhaps) undesirable effect of making it a stiffer spring as well. Since I've always had a hard time conceptually understanding why this is, so imagine others do as well, try thinking of it this way. Instead of a coil spring, think just of a long retanglar straight bar of steel. Perhaps you have a springy 36 inch ruler in your shop to try this with. Clamp one end to your bench with a c-clamp and let the other end extend off of the bench toward you. Press down on the end of the ruler. It takes a certain amount of force to push it an inch downward. Now press on the bar at a point half way along it's length instead of the very end. It is much harder to push down. You have in effect a shorter lever arm so you need more force to get the same deflection (at that position on the ruler, not at the end. Feel free to cut your ruler in half to confirm...). So we see that compressing a spring is just deforming the steel with a given force, and if you have more length of steel to push on, you have more leverage to do the deforming. Cut coils off and its harder to deform. To further cement the understanding that is not just a function of the material that the spring is made of that determines the lb/in rating, but the leverage you are excerting to deform it, imagine putting your ruler on edge in the above experiment and pushing down on that.... Its a combination of the material stiffness and its manufactured length that gives a particular lb/in rating.

The only technical innovation of the time was the proliferation of spandex apparently. One of my favorite inventions. Thank you Dupont or whoever...

The shear beauty of these things stripped bare still takes my breath away. Alone, vunerable, calling for attention.... Hang on, I might need to take a moment here... Excuse me.... .... ok.... I'm fine. Carry on...

Patience Grasshopper. Soon you will be able to snatch this spindle pin from my hand, and then, you will be ready....

Great stuff. Thanks Dave! Nice memories. But man, were people more gullible back then about what was acceptable levels of out right fakery and totally impossible stunts? There were about 150 obvious fake or really bad things that were just wrong with that whole sequence. Heck we could make a game our of counting the mistakes and fakes. Mind you we have Bachlorette and "America's got Talent" now, maybe nothing has improved after all....

Eurodat, I do not believe the required force is properly conveyed by the word "tap". Perhaps "bludgeon" is closer. Don't be afraid. You will not hurt anything unless you hammer directly on the metal hub or rotor, or use too small or too soft a piece of wood as the buffer. Support it as Eurodat has suggested, then HIT the wood resting across the hub center HARD and centered with a 2 lb or greater hammer until the halves begin to separate enough to get a good big cold chisel in the gap. Then use the chisel with the above hammer to wedge/separate the halves, working around the circumference. This way you will minimize the blows to the hub circle. These things can be quite "attached" if they've been married for 40 years....

DJ, The internal control your knob or slider is attached to, IS the temperature sensitive switch you are looking for. Vintage air warns of this freeze condition, and it just means your dash control thermostat is just set too cold (and your system is working too efficiently!). Just turn the "cool" knob or slider to the warmest (least cool) temp you need to get the cooling you desire. Too cold a setting will freeze the thing solid as you have discovered. Takes a bit of trial and error to get it right. Not exactly a hi-tech system.

You have a replacement carb, intake and likely exhaust manifold from an earlier Z than your 73. None of the EGR and smog stuff that came with your car are there anymore. No smog, anything, anywhere. Cut the wires of the broken sensor put it back in the housing to plug the hole, and move on to more important things.

As an interesting project, your idea to create a smarter choke light is great. Nothing worse (well, a few things...) than leaving your choke on too long. Wastes fuel, clogs up plugs, chokes small chidren on the sidewalks with the black cloud. But there are some places where computers don't belong. Coffee pots and Datsun's are just two...

Buy an "sand through the hour glass" style egg timer. Put velcro on both ends. Stick to dash on top of tach area. When you start your car and put the choke on, turn it over and stick other end to the dash. When the sand runs out, push your choke off.

there is a thread on hybridz about a 6 speed swap. Not simple or cheap, requires welding two bell housings and some mighty exact line-up...

Pull the domes and make sure that both jets are flush with the bridge with the adjusters all the way in, or at least both are the same and close to the top. Did you remove the needles from the piston? Back in the right place? You are definitely running rich.

Good to hear you got that solved. Now you'll lay awake nights wondering what changed that caused it...

Look at the engine and find the vacumm accuation device that has a hook/arm that touches the throttle linkage. There is a way to adjust it mechancially so it doesn't push as far. Other option is that something changed the vacuum and it now pushes farther than it did before, or it got bumped by accident.

Removing the hatch strut AND the bracket will give you the clearance you desire. Warmth (the panel, not you...) and patience are key here. Most panels get cracked at this stage, take your time. I'm assuming this is a panel you just took out and not a new one...

So, I get 222,000 hits on google for "flice water". Now I want to believe that Idahokidd found that ad in a way that is just part of the usual "sharing of cute stuff" that permeates our lives the interweb. Still funny as hell. Then there's a part of me that wishes, that maybe, just maybe, that he accidently found this while cruising Craig's List for Datsun stuff, and found someone nearby who actually thinks someone will spend $2 on gas + $2 more to come get a "real deal" on a really nice pair of flice waters...... I know I would.

Incredible. They even spelled it that way twice. Haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Thanks!

Ah yes. Kia is great stuff. Even new from kiaparts.com its only $46'ish a side. And its a proven solution, and trivial to install, though not perfectly stock in appearance of course. I've even used it on the hatch.

Have you tried 411.com? just type in the person's first and last name and the city, and get all matches. Free.