Oiluj

Duffman, Your center vent is printing as we speak. Send me a PM with your address and I’ll ship it to you later in the week. Think I need to take the prototype shop guys out for a beer later for allowing me to make use of their tools for my project!

Attached is a pic of the installed "custom" HVAC controls & stereo. The "defrost"sysmbol is hidden by one of the knobs in the pic. Still need to replace one damaged decal, but otherwise it all looks and works as intended.

Tomo, Sorry, but my CAD skills aren't good enough to make a decent reproduction of a supermodel. Besides, her head would be empty, though that may not matter... *grin* However, your idea of making cad models of NLA parts for later reproduction is a very good one. Some 3D part models could be easily recreated in Pro/e or Solidworks, but many are complex shapes that would be difficult to model. I don't have acess to a 3D measurement machine used to digitize complex part shapes. Anybody else have access to one of these machines?

Since it's not my machine or material, assuming they will let me use the machine to make another one, it wouldn't be ethical to sell it. I'll only want you to pay for shipping. I'll find out if I can get another one made next week.

Dave, My next-gen kick plates will also be for 4" speakers, because there is so little room behind them for the magnet. I'm not planning on producing them, just making a set for my car. I'm planning on making mine using paperboard, plywood, (for the ring), and epoxy filler for the radius blend. It's labor intensive, but I can do it in my garage. Then I'll paint them with textured black paint. Once I get the design finalized, I'd be happy to pass it on to you if you want to produce them. I think the best / cheapest way to make "production" parts would be thermoforming, and at $30/set could be profitable. If theormoformed, any suface texture of your choice could be achieved.

The abs rapid prototype material is pretty brittle, but the polycard material is very strong, so no issue there. You can now buy a small STL machine for about $10K, so the price is already coming down. I expect to see this process get faster and cheaper in the next 10 years, replacing injection molding for small part runs. Since the machine and material are at my workplace, and I don't control them. I'll see if I can get a couple more center vents made, but can't promise anything.

I made floor heater-duct diverters and a plenum for the center vent using a rapid prototyping machine. It’s essentially a 3D printer. You send the 3D CAD file to the printer and 4 to 12 hours later a plastic part emerges. Pretty cool technology. The parts are made of white polycarbonate which I painted black. Attached are pics of the center plenum before paint, and then mounted to the control panel. It’s held on using vinyl covered spring clip taken from my old door seals. The floor duct diverters will be glued to the bottom of the heater box vents. (see attached pic). These will direct the air into the footwells. I plan to install the controls this weekend. Then comes the under-hood stuff later in the month.

Attached is a pic of my “temporary” front kick panel speaker mounts. (Ignore the sawdust, I was cutting & fitting). They have 4” Pioneer, 3-way speakers mounted on wood spacer rings. The kickboards themselves are made of 1/8” thick paper composite board covered with upholstery vinyl. The wood rings are covered with vinyl tape. My plan for this winter is to make similar kickboards with the speakers on angled spacers that project the sound out & up about 15 degrees from the plane of the kick panel. This will provide better high frequency sound to the driver & passenger. I also plan to add 3/8” radius between the spacer and the kick plate for aesthetics. (See attached 3D model sketch, *not to scale*). In the rear I have 5-1/4” Pioneer 3-way speakers mounted behind the panels in the original location. For the passenger side, I made a mirror image of the stock speaker mount on the driver’s side. While not as good for sound, I like having the cargo area looking “stock” and uncluttered. No sub-woofer, as I’m not a fan of over-amplified bass. I’m not going for premium sound, just something that reproduces the tunes reasonably well. It’s driven by a Pioneer AM/FM/CD/MP3 deck that I’m mounts in the original radio location. Now I just have to play a bit with the equalization and balance to optimize the sound. All-in-all, I was surprised by how good it sounds! kickplate.pdf

Yep. You got it right.

Saw it Friday at William's Auto Body. Was there with my neighbor getting a quote to have her 72 240Z auto trans painted.

Max HP is between 5600 to 5800 rpm. See link below to earlier post with my dyno sheet. http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32222&highlight=rebello

The dyno sheet on my Rebello 2.7 upgrade w/ stock carbs, std exhasut manifold and upgraded head/cam combo shows peaks at 212 HP @ 197 ft-lbs torque. Torque peaks at about 210, but not at max HP. The car really performs much better than she did with the stock engine. Given these numbers, I'd guess that 240 hp w/ headers & triples is a reasonable expectation. You'd also need to upgrade the fuel system to provide enough fuel. I'm not at all worried about longevity of the block, pistons & rods. The cam & valve train components will not last as long as a stock head, but they should go 100K as long as I don't get stupid and push the engine beyond it's limits. A couple of things to consider: With the increased compression and the head work, I no longer have that silky-smooth idle for which the the L-series is famous. No major lope, just a bit rough with a very nice, throaty "thump" in the exhaust note at idle... My only complaint is that to avoid pinging, I had to retard the timing a bit more than I like and also need to blend -in some race fuel or add octane boosters.

Thanks! Will pick-up a screw tomorrow! Julio

Davis, Can you measure the diameter? That should tell me what I size need. You might want to keep that one in case yours ever comes out or is lost... Thanks!

Seems I lost the screw that holds on the fan switch knob. Anyone know the size? We don't have metric fasteners that small at work or in local hardware stores, so I can't find out the easy way by "trial fit".

Or import a termite colony in the car. They will fight to the death... Just remove the wood shift knob first.

Here's a pic of the control panel. Realized my selector switch nomenclature was not clear and went with symbols. (see pic). I need to redo the lower strip, as it has a defect and reposition the middle strip as it's not quite straight.

Lastly, I need to make the control nomenclature on the facia match the new functions of the system. I’m going to print new control labels on adhesive backed mylar and cover with clear tape. The place these over the markings on the facia plate. (See pic) I’ll have to paint the embossed “DEF” above the bottom control black. This is not finished yet, but it's pretty easy and should look OK.

The Vintage Air (Indak) rotary fan speed switch was incompatible with the stock facia plate, and decided to see if I could make the stock fan switch work. I mapped-out the connections for both the Indak and original Z fan speed switchs. The original switch will work if I add a jumper wire for the A/C power. It's the A/C wires shown on the circled section of the wiring diagram. (See Pics)

I wanted my HVAC controls for my aftermarket Vintage Air unit to look as close to "stock" as possible. Tried different approaches that didn't require modification of the stock controls, but was not satisfied. Finally gave-up and had to bend one control arm and drill a few holes. I fabricated some custom brackets to mount the Vintage air controls and connected them to the control arms with pushrods. (See Pics) The rubber pads prevent rattles.

Well, yesterday actually... Got my next door neighbor's Green 1972 Automatic 240Z "on the road" for the first time in almost 3 years. She is the original owner and want's me to do a refresh on hers when I'm done with mine. Has some rust in the quarter panels under the doors, but not terminal. Will get it taken care of when it goes in for paint.

One of my mirrors wa still not that tight, so I put some thin, 0.030" thick rubber between the housing & the ball. Fixed the problem.

I'm still thinking about this also. A determined, proffessional thief will get your car no matter what you do. 1st: An alarm system, especially with a flashing indicator will deter some thieves. 2nd: Any means or preventing the car from running will stop "casual" theives. 2nd: A means to track you car if stolen by a determined thief.

pretty much the same thing I did, but used fiberglass cloth. Yours will probably be stronger.

Yes, sodium bicarbonate will inhibit rust, for awhile, but there's a saying I like: "rust never sleeps".. The poster's location is Austin TX where it's fairly humid. Won't last as long as in say, Phoenix... BTW, baking soda can be used to clean rust from some materials. I use a paste of baking soda to clean rust stains from my sails.