EverRude

Quick update. Dropped tank. Inspected inside. I am amazed how clean it is. VERY light surface "rust" in a few places I can see but otherwise very clean. However there is some kind of clear plastic floating around inside. Going to know clean it with a poiwer washer then flush it with some denatured alcohol or acetone and finally give everything a quick paint before I reinstall. Ofcourse I will be installing all new hoses. Two of the oriiginal vent hoses were cracked and the upper one was actually leaking and severely deteriorated. My guess is that the one that was dropping the black particulate I was finding in the fuel filter. The clear plastic however was the one truly causing the disruption in fuel flow. Here's some pics. One major benefit of having a primitively wired fuel pump. Easy to pump tank dry and filter the fuel with 2 filters so I can put it back once the tank is back in. One of the pics shows the clear plastic floating around inside tank. It is hard to see but hopefully it'll show for ya. But you can see the tank is very clean, It also has a baffle. Is that correct for an early 240 or is that from another year?

Ok while attempting to service differential I found my rearend clunk. One of the mustache bar bolts of diff was loose. Tightend it and now I can shift without hearing the clunk. However I didn't manage to get diff filler plug out. Will try again today perhaps with some heat and a much longer wrench. But I have another issue. She started not wanting to pull past 3500 rpm. At first I thinking timing. There's a bit of valvetrain noise as I approach that rpm but that isn't the only problem. Car does it siting still as well. Watched the fuel guage. It should read nearly 4 psi. But was reading less than 3. As I reved the motor I watched the fuel psi and it dropped. As it hits zero the motor starts missing. Pulled fuel filter installed on pump inlet. Sure enough there a bunch of gunk there. Not rust. Maybe a particle or two. But mostly something that looks like black rubber and I clear piece of plastic film. Someone dropped something in tank and it's clogging filters restricting fuel flow and not allowing enough fuel for upper rpm running. ofcourse it would built up and stop fuel flow entirely. Now I have to drain tank I just filled yesterday. Ofcourse I drained tank first thing but apparently this crap managed to stay inside but since I didn't find anything in the fuel I drain the first day I hoped it was a fairly clean tank. Pipe dream clearly. Now I have to do it all again. But hey. Atleast I found clunk.

OK new update. Managed to remove the taillight bypass the PO installed and get the normal brakelights and blinkers to function. The hazard switch I got from junk yard was broken. Missing internal pieces infact and I simply used it as a harness to create and plug-n-play bypass. So no 4 way flashers but atleast I have working blinkers and brakelights. Apparently while restoring the tail section harness to operation I managed to connect the sending unit plug and now that works. Works well too. I had maybe 3 gallons of gas in it from a jug and it read just above empty. Drove her to gas station and filled up (about 11 gallons) and she shows full. So that's good. Provided it keeps working I'll be set. Replaced tires. Unfortunately I ended up buying 195/70 14 for my 7 inch wide American Racing Vector wheels. Little narrow for my taste but the only things I could find locally in a wider usuable size was Goodyear T/A and while that would be fine I couldn't afford $120 per tire right now. For $397 installed I got General Altimax RT's. They get good reviews for wet and dry traction and for now that will be fine. Someday I may upgrade wheels and that'll be when I get tires more performance oriented. Last things I NEED to do is service the rearend and transmission. Transmission seems fine but there is a tailshaft output seal leak. I want to service it to buy myself some time before I install 5 speed. However the rearend is making a noise. After about 2 minutes of driving it starts humming. While coasting it's quiet but if I get on throttle even slightly there's a hum. Low on fluid? Going bad? Either way it also has a small leak on passenger side half shaft seal so it needs some servicing. Hope the fresh oil will eliminate the hum. Not holding my breath though. I hope to drive her daily to work for 2 weeks. Track any problems I have and calculate mileage. After that I will install 5 speed and possibly the 2.6 motor I have after I inspect it to ensure it's a good motor. Then track my mileage again to see how the other combo does compared to my first setup. Anyways I am happy with the progress. Just wish it hadn't cost so much. At this point I am nearly 4k into this car and I most certainly could have bought a better car to start with at that price. It's been fun though. I'll probably stop updating this thread after I actually manage to drive her to work for a day or 2.

As some 240's get restored to become more valuable more die to become parts cars or scrap or just rust away forgotten. As long as this continues the ratio of nice vs junk z's. Will dwindle. It'll be harder to find a beater z that worth restoring because parts and parts cars wont exist. Someone correctly mentioned that a mustang coupe and a 240 can be valued around the same in same condition. However the cost and headache to restore a mustang is far less due to the large aftermarket and resttoration part support the stang has. In 20 years with better aftermarket support it might be too expensive drive a 240 much less restore one for the common man. I think the buy it now is a little high but in 20 years with good care that could be one of the few 240's left.

Halfshafts installed yesterday. Didn't have time to do much else but decided to take her for a spin. She sputtered and lurched whenever I would take off. Severely. Once I was leveled out all was good again. But anytime I turned sharply and braked hard I was treated to some severe lurching. Really upset me. I took her home and parked her. Was too late to troubleshoot. So today I decided to sort out that issue. There were several issues I needed to sort out but doubtful they had caused the issue. The SU damper fluid was low. The cylinders would move atleast a quarter of an inch without any damping effect. I understand that could cause a fluttering and mess with venturi and fuel flow. Possible cause of the lurching but doubtful. Still I used a syringe and pulled the existing fluid out as best I could then used 20w 3in1 oil. I decided to try checking timing with a vacuum guage. If you've never done it, it's kinda cool. It does work better on V8's though. Put a vacuum guage on a balancing tube port and adjust timing to get the best vacuum possible with the least amount of needle bounce. The bounce is caused by the valves opening and closing. The smallest ammount of bounce will give you a nice smooth running motor. I set this with the disto vacuum disconnected btw. But I had to retard timing slightly because it was too much advance and cause a hard start. Trouble is without a timing light and not really knowing what disto I have (obviously a replacment) I don't know my total timing. Anyways I was hoping this would help a bit with the hesitation. Advancing the timing caused my idle to change. Jumped atleast 400 rpm. So I rebalanced carbs using Unisyn. Got idle back down to around 900 with a good balance between carbs. That's when she died. Seriously. Just quit. So I tried to start her back up. Nothing. She was plenty warm but I hit choke anyways. Nothing. WTF I asked myself. Several times. Then I noticed the fuel pump was louder. Hmmm. So I checked fuel pressure guage. Zero. Crap I say, using other words. Shut off pump and disconnected fuel pump outlet hose. Dry. Dang. So I disconnected inlet hose. Nada. Crap again. Then it hit me. Outta gas. No way. Seriously? Sonofa... So I figured out the lurching problem. Thinking back it was happening on sharp turns and hard braking and launching. The little fuel in the tank was sloshing away from the pickup tube and causing the pump to loose fuel causing the car to lurch as the fuel was shut off sporadically. Moral of the story? Fix the fuel guage.

Here's a scan from FSM I got from another thread. I needed to do this as well, when I replaced my master. Warning though. Don't pull on the rod to get ahold of it. You pull it out of the socket and cause the rubber reaction disk to fall out which will cuase the same pedal problem but much harder to fix. Have you friend press on pedal to get the rod out where you can get ahold of it for adjustment. Good luck.

It was both carbs. I may remove the bosses when I perform engine swap in a month or so. Today all I managed to do was get the half shaft ujoints replaced. They were a nightmare. They were aftermarket greasable ujoints installed already. Whoever installed them managed to mangle the shaft holes enough with a hammer that I was forced to use a dremel with a small cutting blade to remove the dented metal preventing the joints from separating. Not a fun job. 5 hours of work to replace 4 ujoints. The main drive shaft took maybe 45 min and that was spending some time cleaning the shaft. So tommorrow, if weather permits, I'll install half shafts. Hopefully have enough time to sort out why the fuel guage doesn't work and then repair the blinkers and brakelights to normal operation. Really hope to drive her to work sometime this week. Guys on my crew getting frustrated hearing about my new toy but not seeing it. But however frustrating it was I did make progress today and that's all that matters IMO.

She's running fairly well now. Here's the scoop. Picked up the 2.6 moto,r 5 speed tranny, and 3 screw carb assembly yesterday. After 13 hours of traveling I didn't feel like working on car so waited till today to start swapping. I am doubting the rebuilt motor at this point. But it was just icing on the cake. Cared more about carbs and tranny. Anyways decided to just try carbs first. So I installed them without doing anything. Shoulda checked float hieght but I'll be honest I suspected they were just as bad as my old ones after I got them removed from motor. Alot of play in shaft. I was sure they would leak. They didn't. Had to do floats at that point. Then balanced them. She idles at 800 and both carbs balanced easily. Unfortunately it didn't remove all the off idle hesitation completely but it certainly helped. A quick test drive revealed she still struggled under load a good bit but it was better. Stalled easily on take off. So I searched forum for answers to the stalling and hesitation. I found out the coil and condenser could cause those issues. So I replaced them both from parts from my 70 Mustang motor. Hesitation gone. Load stalling gone. She pulls easily without requiring tons of gas. Runs fairly smoothly in fact and the sputtering I had heard at idle was gone. I drove her around my small backyard in second gear at like 5 miles and hours in circles and she did it smoothly. Before she would stalled and died trying that. So all in all I'm happy. BTW 3 screw carbs suck. There's a boss on side of carb body that prevents the float bowl lid from coming off and being installed with the float attached. WTH is with that? The 4 screws have no such boss and the float lids lift straight up without a need to remove floats first. Anyways while I test drove her I noticed the clunking I had heard before. Now I have all 6 ujoints but I only installed the driveshaft joints before and not the half shafts. I decided to go ahead and do half shafts now that she runs nicely. Unfortunately those are more corroded and caked with grease than the driveshaft so I cleaned then and soaked them with Liquid Wrench to finish tommorrow rather than fight them today. Again I think I did good. Might still get those ztherapy carbs just to get my 4 screws back. But I believe I may just be driving her to work someday this week. Yay.

What is so great about the aluminum drums? Pure originality or the low weight? If they were in good shape should I pull the new cast iron replacements off my car and use the aluminum instead?

You guys are surprising me with your answers. Did not expect door hardware and headlight assemblies. But this is why I asked. I have yet to run into some of these NLA parts.

Here's a list of relevant cars in a local junkyard. I'm wondering if there's anything I should really try to get while they are there. The yard is getting full and I have the feeling a mobile crusher will be coming soon. 1972 240z - Interior gone. SU's gone. Sheetmetal is not bad but as expected floors are shot as are frame rails. Doors fairly solid. Hatch rusted. Hood solid but dented. Fuse panel missing cover but in excellent shape. Has a rear sway bar gold colored so aftermarket. Front sway bar stolen already. BTW rear bumber of that car has overrider bar. Also has a 5speed tranny. I got console (complete it even had choke lever and solid choke cables.), antenna, hazard switch, blinker and headlight switch and a couple of doodads for $75. 1978 280z - Interior crap. Body rusted. Engine and 5 speed tranny in place and complete. There are also three 240sx's and two late 80's 300zx. Is there anything I should look for that is of real value on these cars? Here's the 240z there. Didn't think to take pics of the others.

Actually the $400 was minus carbs. Carbs and intake added another $250. Not worth it by a long shot. I decided to leave that car alone. However I am possibly getting the interior parts I need from it. There's a local junkyard with a 72 240z and I got a ton of parts from it I needed. Thinking about going back for dented bumbers and good looking radiator and shroud. OMW in the morning to pickup a rebuilt 260z motor and 5 speed trans from a hybridz guy that swapped it out with a v6 he installed for more fuel economy and power. He hung onto the engine tranny assembly for 3 years thinking he might get another Z to use it in and is finally selling to clear space in his garage. He swears the SU (3 screw) were perfect and he had recently rebuilt them with a ztherapy rebuild kit. For $450 for engine tranny and those SU's I'm willing to risk it.

I'll look. Thanks for tips. Have a bead on a 2.6 with 78 5 speed and 3 screw tops running and recently rebuilt for 450. Pulled for v6 t5 swap 3 years ago. Guy is clearing garage. Seems too good to be true. But worth risk I think.

Yes there's a local yard that has 2 zx's and 1 z. No 240z but he says they have no been piced over much. I have not managed to stop by yet. Plan to this afternoon.

It isn't just about mileage though. This is more of a "can I sell it" situation for Mrs Moneypenny... I could out and out lie. But haven't done that in 20 years about something I wanted. She's my partener and financial manager. I want her input but she needs facts to help me decide. So at 200 hwy miles a week. With current gas prices. It would take a year for the tranny to pay for itself on a purely economics footing. The other benefits also factor in. Quieter. Less wear on engine. Etc... Also I add the fact I would then have a spare transmission in the event of a failure of the 5 speed. S shaped. Posting pics Below. Think you may be right. Type B 4 speed?