Zvoiture

Got a couple around here...let me know if you're interested... steve77

The lightest I have ever seen is 11. 13 is pretty common. Be prepared to spend somewhere North of $350 for one. A machinist can get the stock one down to 17 or so, but the safety of that is contested. steve77

So how do you tell the difference between a 180 and a 200? Is there a bolt pattern or something? steve77(200) steve79(180) steve 71(Alleged 200)

I jacked up the rear to get the diffy out and put the stands under the rear rails and when I took the jack off, the front tires came off the gorund! I threw the hood on and both rear tires and both seats and a battery on the hood to bring it back down! NOW this thing really looks gorgeous. My wife is about to murder me. OH, YES, and then one of my good Z friends (YES TIM, YOU!!!) came over and while I was out of the room told my wife "...it is probably full of black widows." THANKS A MILLION! steve77 (it IS full of black widows)

Took these off my '79 parts car last night for a possible adition to my '71 project. I can't believe how wimpy these calipers are! The pads are, like, 2 square inches!!! and the caliper 'housing' is a big stamped piece of sheet metal! I know this is a hotly debated topic, but I can't help but wondering how this could possibly be an upgrade over the stock drums with decent shoes. Is the raw physics of a disc brake that much better that this little thing would stop better than drums? steve77

"Also, it suggests that if your 280ZX is equiped with a 5-spd it would have the earlier "280Z 5-spd" ratios. Sorry if that brings bad news! " No bad news here...I am not a drag racer. I much prefer to cruise at 90 on the freeway quietly and efficiently. I was actually kinda hoping it was a 'tall' one. Now, I have a question for you about the 280ZX diff! I am just curious but do the half shafts attach to stub axles at the diff by 4 bolts (at the diff end) or is the axle attached to a yolk which is held to the diff by one bolt? Sorry, if that is confusing, it will make more sense if you are looking at it! There is one 14mm head bolt (probably 3-4" long) in each shaft whose head is nesting in the center of the yoke closest to the diffy. I took a box wrench to it and as you loosen it, the splined stub begins to move out of the diffy. Removing it completely and the stub comes completely out of the diffy. steve77 (steve79 gets lighter every day...)

I don't want to scare anyone away from buying the full dash cap. That was not my intention. It looks wonderful. Fits very well. There are just a couple places where it is a bit snug. That is all. And I think these areas could be solved by some judicial shaving of the swollen cracks. It will improve you car 100% and looks a hell opf a lot better than those carpet things. steve77

Just removed the diffy from my free '79 parts car last night. Tried the Royce method and got 16.75 turns of the input for 10 turns of the axle. So this is a 3.365? I was told it was a R-180 by the person who gave me the car. Does this make sense to all you diffy pros out there in regards to year/ratio/model??? I guess I need to go back and try and find all the available specs... steve77

I bought the full cover from VB and had some of the same issues. It fits really well under that Japanese Ninja-weapon thingy the defrost blows through, and it fits pretty well down the heater and radio columns, but is almost a 1/4 off at the edges, near the dash dimmer and opposite. Also doesn't go all the way down into the gauges. I THINK it is because of swelling of the old dash in the sun. The numerous cracks are visibly raised and need to be ground off. I have never attempted to cut the dash down and I have never glued mine on. It fits really snug and when you screw that Ninja thing down, it's not going anywhere. My original plan was for a hot day, parked in the sun, windows up...get that thing good and hot and see if it would 'mold' a little better. Doesn't work. The dash cover is too good of material. So for now, mine just sits on the dash. It fits well enough that nobody notices it--even Z people. Run into someone who has fought a dash cover, though, and they see it immediately! It is definitely not a concours fit, but it looks 5 billion times better than the original. steve77

"Zvoiture, you are looking a little pensive in your new avatar. Is there something troubling you, or is it just the moody lighting?!" "Sports Bersion".................... Yes, its that old Japanese pronunciation gremlin again - mixing up B with V......... " The new avatar is a pic I smapped of 'My Little Ball of Hate', ala my 18 month old daughter... One of my favorite screen names is 'Yerrow Dog'.... Have you seen the History Channel's Z documentary? When they are showing various design predesessors of the Z, I think they show a very close version of your HS for a split secone....I will check again. steve77

By TERRIL YUE JONES, Los Angeles TIMES STAFF WRITER SMYRNA, Tenn. -- Steve Fisher runs his fingers along the paint jobs of the Altima sedans and Xterra sport utility vehicles that hum past him on the assembly line at the Nissan Motor Co. factory here. He spends an average of 66 seconds on each vehicle as it passes by--up to 465 times a day--checking switches, panel fits and connections under the hood. Occasionally a screw doesn't line up, a hose fastener is broken or there's a chip in the paint. But Fisher, who has worked here for 11 years, rarely finds defects--perhaps no surprise, because this plant has been ranked the most efficient car factory in the U.S. seven years in a row. Exhaustive quality exercises, scores of robots and the industry's first fully automated paint shop are part of the arsenal behind the No. 3 Japanese auto maker's forthcoming assault on the U.S. market. Nissan already has announced more upcoming new models than any other auto maker except global leader General Motors Corp.: the much-anticipated Z sports car; the Murano "crossover," a blend of car and sport utility vehicle; the Quest minivan replacement; a full-size pickup truck; and a full-size SUV. On the luxury Infiniti side, Nissan has the G35 coupe and M45 sedan, the FX45 crossover and an upscale version of the full-size SUV. That's nine new vehicles that will hit the U.S. market between now and mid-2004. With its recent new models, the company has been "hitting home runs, with the products very well received," said Jeff Schuster, an auto industry analyst with J.D. Power & Associates in Detroit. Analysts praise Nissan for its efficiency at Smyrna and around the world. "When you hear platform sharing, 'lean' manufacturing and flexible tooling such as Nissan is doing ... it ensures things like quality," said Catherine Madden, an auto manufacturing specialist with forecaster DRI-WEFA. But the news on the quality front is not all rosy for Nissan. In J.D. Power's annual Initial Quality Satisfaction survey--a ranking of problems reported during the first 90 days of ownership--released last month, Nissan fell from No. 3 to a tie for No. 6 as domestic auto makers gained ground. "We've always focused on the long-term quality, durability and reliability," Bill Kirrane, general manager for the company's Nissan division, said in an interview. "There are a lot of complaints such as wind noise, which are more design-related than things that might take the car out of service," he said, referring to the J.D. Power findings. "But we'll look at things we have to do." Industry experts agree that productivity and success in the market are separate issues and that the buying public pays little attention to benchmarks such as factory efficiency. Nonetheless, after years of financial decline and not getting its products right, Nissan is back in the U.S. market with a vengeance. "They've brought excitement back to their product lineup, which has jump-started everything else," Schuster of J.D. Power said. "They haven't had a miss yet in the new products they've launched under the revival plan." Three-Year Plan Is Realized in Two Years To fuel this product assault on America, Nissan is adding higher-margin Maxima sedan production to Tennessee and tripling production at its engine plant about an hour from Smyrna. The company also will assemble the new minivan, large pickup and SUVs at the sprawling factory it is building in Mississippi, drawing largely on lessons learned here about quality and productivity. "The layout of Nissan's plant areas allows a person to do the most work in the least space," said Ron Harbour, president of Harbour Associates, a Detroit-area research firm that publishes a closely watched report on auto factory efficiency. "They minimize excessive walking, put tools close to workers. The safety is right, the ergonomics are there, the parts are easy to put on, they minimize fasteners. The byproduct is pretty high quality and pretty high productivity." That's good news for a company that was teetering on bankruptcy just a few years ago. Before French auto maker Renault bought a controlling stake in Nissan, the Japanese manufacturer lost money in seven of eight years. Nissan President Carlos Ghosn, sent to Japan by Renault to turn around the company, devised a revival plan calling for heavy cost reductions, plant closures, an overhaul of product design and the product lineup and additional manufacturing efficiencies. Nissan realized the main goals of the three-year plan in just two years: to get back in the black in the first year, reach 4.5% operating profit margin and halve the $13 billion in automotive debt. Last month, less than three years after Ghosn took over, Nissan reported a record net profit in fiscal 2001, ended March 31, of $2.96 billion. Throughout Nissan's ups and downs, the Smyrna plant, just outside Nashville, has been remarkably consistent in turning out cars and trucks more efficiently than any other factory in the country. The Harbour report ranked Nissan in 2000 as the most efficient manufacturer for the seventh year in a row, reducing assembly hours per vehicle by 7.1% to 17.37. Its Japanese rivals Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. ranked second and third, followed by the joint-venture plant that Toyota and GM operate in Fremont, Calif., and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. If the Detroit-area Big Three of GM, Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler Group were as efficient as the Smyrna plant, they could shed 95,138 workers, the report said. Having achieved his goals a year early, Ghosn is pushing the "Nissan 180" plan: to sell an additional 1 million or more cars and trucks each year worldwide, reach 8% operating profit margin and bring automotive debt to zero. Nissan's U.S. plants are a big part of the strategy. The Smyrna factory produced Frontier pickups at a rate of 120,000 a year when it opened in 1983; last year it rolled out 400,000 Altimas, Frontiers and Xterras. With the Maxima coming in January, Smyrna production will increase again, to 500,000 vehicles. The new Canton, Miss., factory will add 250,000 trucks. Production at Nissan's engine plant in Decherd, Tenn., will be tripled to 750,000, and the factory will become the sole engine supplier to the company's two U.S. assembly plants. The Altima is a key to Nissan's growth. It used to be an underpowered and undersized mid-size sedan, available with only a four-cylinder engine. But the Smyrna-built model launched earlier this year has a sleek, high-tech look, comes with an optional six-cylinder engine rated at 240 horsepower and boasts a rear-seat area with more legroom than any other model in its class. The Smyrna plant can be easily adapted to produce more vehicles that are in demand, a point that is crucial as Nissan aims the Altima at the segment leaders: Honda's Accord and Toyota's Camry. What sets Smyrna apart, industry experts say, is the level of automation in assembly and painting and the continuous quest to make things better and quicker. In the fully automated paint shop, some robots open and close doors while others, resembling elephant trunks, snake over the bodies, spraying primer and topcoat. Paint areas are extremely sensitive to contamination; the slightest condensation, or even vapor from workers' deodorant, can cause cratering. But automation and continual improvements have resulted in a consistent 98% defect-free first run in Altima painting, the company says. Plant workers designed and built their own "line-side limos," or platforms that move alongside cars on the assembly lines at certain locations, carrying tools and workers at adjustable heights to make access to the vehicles easier. Nissan also follows its own version of "just-in-time" manufacturing, a hallmark of Toyota's lean production system. Three years ago, the Smyrna plant kept a five-day inventory of Xterra parts, but "now it's about 2.5 days, and for the Altima, we've gotten it down to 1.6 days," said Randy Knight, the plant's stamping manager. Efficiency Adds to the Bottom Line John Reagan, department manager for Xterra body assembly, gives another example of how the plant's performance is improving. The Xterra originally was scheduled to be produced at a rate of 17 an hour. But because of the SUV's popularity, workers made further productivity gains, such as adding conveyor belts and robots, and boosted the rate to 25 units an hour, increasing Xterra production by about 33,000 a year, Reagan said. Workers even maintain a "Supplier Wall of Shame" on which problems with incoming parts are detailed. In one case, for instance, they determined that a worker at a supplier had used peanut oil to help insert a piece into a receptacle. It "caused a chemical reaction that made the support feet fall off," said a note on the wall. The problem was brought up with the supplier and corrected. Reducing the number of defects and the time workers spend on assembly may not have a direct effect on market share, but it adds slowly and surely to Nissan's bottom line, said Michael Flynn, director of the Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation at the University of Michigan. "People don't buy cars because of the efficiency of a factory--people buy them because of the product," Flynn said. "But efficiency is a very important competitive element. In good times, you make more money; in bad times, you lose less."

Hey! You've got a ton of Z people up there! CLUB Z is in San Jose and is 4G only, but they are all great Z people nontheless, and if you contacted them, I'm sure they could put you in touch with local 1G people...Here's their site (and this is the coolest home page I have ever seen. Takes a minute to 'catch on', then it's fun)... Club Z Also, Z Owners of Northern CA are based in Sacto, but have a Bay Area 'branch'. They can put you in touch with lots of Bay area Z people. ZONC Last but not least.....If you are in the South Bay, we are not too far. 2-3 hours....We like to go to the NASA Auto-X in Monterey, too, which is easy for you. We are about 2:15 from Monterey at a fairly legal speed.... Central Coast Z Car Club On our site in the 'bookmarks' area there is a link to NASA-X so you can see the schedule...there are always Z's and 510's there... See you at Blackhawk on June 23rd? Mr. K will be there....should be a great show... steve77

I was very tempted to try the cartriges NAPA sells (Monroe) just to see how they compare to the Tokico non's. Again, only $30 bucks or so. Haven't done it yet though.... steve77 (1 1/2" of travel)

"a limited-volume Homologation Special" ...at least now we know what HS stand for.... steve77

I'm not normally a fan of headlight covers on Z's OR off-colour flares, but I really like h30's car. It just works. Is that an original colour? Another question H-30: I was surfing ZCLUB.net today and in the classifieds there were some strange combinations of numbers. Over here, when somebody puts an ad in the paper saying they have a "1983 280z" we know it's a typo, but I know there were other things available internationally. On the first page there is listed a '75 260 and a '74 240. Is that for real? steve77

All pretty basic stuff. The usual turbo AFM tweaked to work on N/A engine and the larger intake and TB. This is more or less the recipe I will be replicating, at least for now. The only differences will be flattops and a N42 head. I would like to get something North of 10:1. This recipe is attractive to me because it is a good primer for the modified FI method and all the parts are cheap and available and don't take a master's degree to play around with. I spent too much money on my '77, so this car is going to be severely budget! The individual TB's and/or unmetered air flow is intrigueing... steve77 (and a FI 71 very soon)

Congrats on car of the month! Your car is one of my favorites on the site. Everything works well together. Nice package and presentation. steve77

Absolutely. That's where it really matters, so why try to 'butter things up'? Just dyno'd a well-tuned but stock L28 re-build in a 240 with same drivetrain and round-tops. 135. Depressing? Only to people who's self-esteem depends on some sort of wack numeric measuring scale where everything receives a numeric score and is judged accordingly. Make the car happy. Make it breathe and run good. If you are not capable of diagnostics (I am not), spend the money to get air-fuel, timing, and valves in sync. Then drive it. And learn how to drive it. Don't let a number that is 50 or so less than you were expecting dampen your appreciation for this wonderful automobile. So it's not a '72 Nova SS. It never was meant to be. It's smarter than that. That's why we are Z people. We are smarter than that. steve77

"BTW_ I like your Valve cover" It's not mine. It is 'Mad' Mike Taylor's. It is my motivation for my new engine project. Everyone said I was crazy to want to build a hot FI motor. I couldn't find anyone that thought it was a good idea. Then I go to the MSA show and BAM! here's Mad Mike's car. It is a bored-out, AFM-adjusted, Turbo TB, high pressure FI L28 that just happens to have a really cool valve cover. I took lots of notes. Now you understand my fascination with this Japanese Co? They have not responded, BTW. I have not seen anything else like theirs anywhere in many thousands of hours of surfing. I think it is a great theory. steve77

And the zx is another couple hundreds. The ZX is probably stouter, and the engine bay is at least as big..I have a ZX shell sitting in my garage and it is put together really beefy...Parts? I don't know. The ZX ws not made for as many years as the 1st gen, but there were a ton of them but they are not collectable and they are really cheap, and everything is different body and susp-wise, but it changed again completely in '83......so you see there are arguments either way as far as parts availability. Smog requirements on a '79-83 model year would be something to check out... steve77

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So....whadaya sayin'? Z car forums are not good places to pick up chicks? steve77

I have this '79 I got for free which I am stripping of any remaining parts useable on a 1st gen....What about the steering rack? Someone told me it has fewer turns lock-to-lock and is a straight bolt-in on a 1st gen. It LOOKS the same as my '77, although it is mounted behind the front crossmember, of course. Comments, please. steve77 (and steve79, although I am not proud of it!)

"and remove least popular links from the section while your at it, " HEY! I kinda like Central Coast Z Car Clubs' place of honor in the 'Least popular links' section'!!!! steve77

I had my stock '78 into the 120's numerous times for extended periods of time whilst commuting the lonely 505 in Norcal. Usually cruising with something else that wanted to go fast. Not racing, just cruising fast. Totally rock-solid, totally stock. My current 280 has never seen much over 95--not because it did not want to, but because I have a wonderful wife and a beautiful house and two gorgeous girls and I just don't flaunt the law like that anymore. In a controlled enviroment, I feel my current Z with its great tires and complete suspension overhaul would do 120+ pretty safely. With it's 5-speed, I'm turning a nice, comfortable 4200 at this speed. I would love to see 5500 in this car. Side-note...I have a CHP friend who speaks of various Mustangs and Camaros and Corvettes who have tried the sustained high-speed thing...His motto: Just stay on 'em, and bad things will start happening to the motors. steve77