doradox

Some other interesting info on "Z". > From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In many dialects of English, the letter's name is zed (pronounced /zɛd/), reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta (see below). In American English dialects, its name is zee /ziː/, deriving from a late 17th-century English dialectal form. Another English dialectal form is izzard /ˈɪzɚd/, which dates from the mid-18th century and probably derives from the French et zède "and z".[1] This is the predominant form in anglophone South Asia.[citation needed] Other Indo-European languages pronounce the letter's name in a similar fashion, such as zet in Dutch, German, Romanian and Czech, zède in French, zäta in Swedish, zeta in Italian and Spanish, and zê in Portuguese. In Chinese (Mandarin) pinyin the name of the letter Z is pronounced [tsɛ]. In the Philippines, it is quite common to hear people pronounce the name of the letter Z as "zay" rhyming with "say". < Steve

Yes, that's quite likely. The thing I find funny is people write out Zed, which is how they would pronounce the letter Z but I've never seen it done for Zee. Steve

In some other parts of the world the letter Z is pronounced Zed. Steve

The glass is good and it has the vertical defrost rear. I need a windshield for mine as I have a wiper scratch. It's got a good windshield but it's a tinted replacement and not original (I think). The door hardware works and the original key still locks and unlocks everything. My drivers side is frozen. When I get it stripped in the spring I'll probably sell off some of the parts. I gave $300 for the car, 2 rocker, and 2 quarter repair panels, a rear brake hardware set, 2 new rear wheel cylinders, new shoes all still in the NAPA auto boxes, 2 extra sets of gauges and clocks, and a bra (wadded up in the back along with a bunch of junk). Does anyone still use those? Steve

I like the direction you've gone. Tasteful modifications that are well implemented and maintain the character of the car. It's got the look I am working towards and hope to someday achieve. Steve

Another thing to consider is if you do it make sure you use a 5 pt system. With just 4 pts. the shoulder straps will pull the lap belt up on your body during a crash unless you have really cinched down on the lap belt (uncomfortably so). This puts the lap belt across the soft stomach area instead of across the hard structure of the hips. Of course with the stock seats the 5th belt can't be mounted to work properly unless you cut a hole in the seat. Steve

That is one nice looking car you have. Steve

I mainly bought it for the hood, roof, hatch, and windshield which are all in remarkably good condition considering the rest of the car. I don't like the 280 hood on my '72 and was going to buy a 240 hood this spring, and I think my roof has quite a bit of filler in it. Upon closer inspection it had AC at one time as all the underdash components are still there but the underhood stuff is all gone. It's a good start on AC for my '72. It's complete under the hood, emissions air pump and all. When we were digging and pulling it out the rust was so bad I was worried we would break it in half. It had been repaired over the years with scraps of metal and lots of body filler. Pieces were falling off all over the place. One of the front turn signals was held in place with a license plate. We put a 2x4 under the area just in front of the right rear wheel and jacked it up into the car about 6 inches before the rear wheel finally lifted. Steve

I just bought an early 72, HLS3048925, and some misc. parts. The guy had brake trouble and parked it 13 years ago. It was slowing sinking into the ground and is rusted beyond repair. Had to dig it out of it's resting place. Almost ripped off what's left of the rear bumper pulling it out. Has a bunch of odd parts in the back. Two sets of all three gauges, new rear brake hardware, shoes, and wheel cylinders, and a little bag of lug nuts among other things. Just thought you all would like to see it. Steve

I just purchased a 72 240Z parts car and some misc. parts. There were two quarter panels and some other panels included in the deal. From the tags it looks like the quarters are for a 74-78 260/280. I can't find the tabco number on their web site and no luck searching for the numbers on the other tag. These parts may be at least 13 years old or older as the car had not been on the road since '95. Can these be used on a '72 240? I am asking because the current patch panel offerings seem to span 70-78. These panels cover much more than the ones I've seen currently for sale. The PO was going to "fix" the car with these panels. Thanks, Steve

A bent electrode is almost always caused by a foreign object in the cylinder. Assuming it was straight before it was installed of course. Maybe something fell in intake during reassembly. At first it might wedge in a valve and cause your lash pad to fall off. Then it would get past the valve and bang around in the cylinder. Could bend a valve or punch a hole in the piston. You can imagine that's not good. If you have a way of pressurizing the cylinder with air you can listen at the exhaust pipe, intake, and the oil fill on the valve cover to determine if and what might be leaking compression. You need the cylinder to be at the top of the compression stroke. And a way to hold the crank from spinning when you pressurize. In gear with the brake on and wheel chocks will work, just don't use 150 PSI. A little goes a long way. Steve

Look at the motor from the front.. then think of the cam sprocket as the hand on a clock. (engine rotates CW when viewed from the front) If the mark on the cam hasn't made it to the mark on engine yet the chain is stretched. A small change in cam timing won't cause your problem. Steve

When you hit 4500 rpm @ full throttle does the engine shut down like you turned off the key and then return to life again @ 4000 like you turned the key back on? You can try turning the key off and on at 4000 / 3500 to get a feel. Does temperature make a difference? Do you have the stock air cleaner? Age/condition of ignition components? Steve

The shoulder belt in a 3 pt belt tends to rub on your neck in the S30. The stock shoulder belt is fine because you can add slack. A retractor based 3 pt keeps some tension on the belt at all times. It will vary depending on how tall you are, how you sit in the seat, etc. Most have no problems. The D loop mount geometry is not exactly ideal for both comfort and safety (only at the extreme limits) . I work at a place that makes seat belts and I designed a custom system for my Z. Dual sensitive retractor, high g buckle, high strength webbing. The dual sensitive retractor has to be oriented in a particular manner to work properly and I had to design a high strength steel bracket to tether the retractor to the original retractor mount points. It's way overkill as the car it's attached to doesn't have the structure to protect me in any crash that would stress the belt system.

Those look fine. Check the boots for cracks/splits. If all is good then I would say that was a dead end. Steve

Yes, and an analog one works just as well. Steve

When checking the resistance of the wires with the DMM the car would be off and the wire removed from the engine. Positive DMM lead on one end of the wire, negative on the other. Doesn't matter which end.

A '92 240SX coupe. A fantastic car. Simple, reliable, efficient, effective. No automatic driving "aids" to get in the way. It's got 230,000 miles and I'm starting to have a hard time keeping the rust monster at bay. I drive it all salty winter long and my gravel road peppers the underside constantly. When it dies I'll probably buy another from out west. There's nothing new that can replace it. Steve

Wires. Steve

I'm still betting on plug wires. Have you resistance checked them? Steve

You only need the door key. Keep the spare ignition key hidden in the car. Steve

Considering that most people keep both door and ignition keys on the same ring they would lose both. The result is the same as a common key for door and ignition. A lot of modern cars have only one key too. Steve

Well, less than 6 months old might change what I would suspect. Are they stock replacements or high performance? Steve

Did you resistance check the wires? I've seen wires cause this problem I'd guess 20:1 over coils. Wires are easy to check, and cheap to replace.

I'd start with the wires. Check the resistance of each wire with a DVOM. They should all be around 5K ohms or so. The actual reading isn't really important as you are looking for one that reads much higher than the others. So if they are 2K or 10K don't sweat it. Do the coil wire the same way. You can do a quick check of the coil by loosening the coil wire at the distributor cap and, while running, slowly move the coil wire away from the cap. Assuming you have a good coil wire it should give a nice strong spark up to about 1/2 to 3/4 inch or more. Beware, don't touch, or be within a couple inches of any other part of the car while doing this. You could get shocked. Actually, you probably will. You can do the same thing for each plug wire at the plug. You should again have the same strong spark at all six. If one is weak then it's the wire or the cap. A cracked rotor will effect all 6. And if this problem only occurs when the engine is fully warmed you'll need to do everything but the resistance check fully warmed. Steve