Jehannum

First order of business was to pull the motor - it's been on a steady diet of coolant for a few months, owing to some nasty weeping out the side of the head gasket (compression is good in all holes - about 135 at 5000 ft). The radiator core support was bashed up a bit - the old AC condenser was wedged in there pretty good: The top is bent a little forward and down: Fortunately, pulling this motor took about 2 hours (instead of the nearly 12 that my blowed up '92 300ZX took): It looks so sad (note the OSHA-approved footwear):

About the middle of May, my 240Z was the meat in a station wagon sandwich. I was parked outside of the university (where I was studying for a final). A drunk driver plowed into the Volvo station wagon behind me, pushed him up into my car, and my car into the Subaru station wagon in front of me, and so on for about 3 more cars. Fortunately, and for the first time in my personal driving history, the guy had insurance coverage. After dealing with an adjuster to get an estimate, State Farm's higher up decided that the car was worth (in previous unmolested state), $15k. So, I went out and got my own estimate, and settled with SF for $10k (and no salvage title). As is typical, the early bumpers served as little more than decoration.

I went after the joint with an oxy-acetylene torch. They came right out after that. I had to buy a new set, though, because they suffered an unfortunate accident after removal (and the ends were mushroomed, badly).

I have that setup in my '71. My impressions are vague recollections at this point (since the car's been in body shop hell since mid-May), but they were a lot stiffer than stock, the drop looked good, and my daily driving setting was "1" on the illuminas.

I can have it half way, 1/3rd way up, or whatever. The cutoffs only happen when the antenna reaches the end of its travel - that is, the motor stops running when the antenna gets to full extension and at full retraction ( (regardless of whether you're still holding the button or not). No non-factory parts required (other than the antenna). This, of course, assumes that your "up/down" switch are working properly. Were I not tearing my 300ZX apart this weekend, I'd do movies or something.

I'll turn 29 in November. I've loved the S30 ever since I was 14, when I helped one of my friends get his early 260 2+2 running. In August of '05, I got fed up just enough to drop a 240SX I bought the previous summer, and while I was driving home from getting the AC repaired (unsuccessfully) for the 3rd time, I spied a nice looking 300ZX. I picked up my Z32 (twin turbo) then, and thought that would be enough for me. In May of '06, I got married, and in June of '06 my wife was expecting our first child. We decided then to start looking for another solid Z car, so that both of us could drive Zs to the z club meetings. The looking gained a bit more momentum when my boy was born in February '07. Luck and good contacts got me in touch with a lapsed member of the Albuquerque Z club, who was looking to sell his '71. I went, without high hopes or deep investment, but fell in love. In retrospect, taking money out of my portfolio to buy the car then was probably the best financial decision I've made to date. Now, with 2 kids (newest born in November of '08), I just have to hope we (and by "we", I mean "the wife") don't decide to have any more kids, because we're out of seats in the Z cars, and I'm not a big fan of any 2+2s.

The net result of that is 1) when you press "up", both the red and blue wires to the antenna receive around 12V, and 2) when you press "down", only the red wire receives 12V. That works, because the antenna has a DPDT relay on it. When both the trigger and the source receive voltage, the relay switches, and the leads feeding the motor in the mast get "reversed". When just the source receives voltage, the leads feeding the motor don't get reversed. There's a little gear driven thing inside the mast that controls the logic for how long to allow the mast to run up and down.

:classic:I've already buttoned up the car, so pictures are unlikely until next weekend (when I tear it all apart again to sand and paint the area around the antenna hole). The diode was the same one I used in my 280ZX alternator conversion - You should be able to pick one or several up from somewhere like digikey using the part number 1N5402. The idea is to put the diode between the two lines stock in the car (blue/red stripe for up, blue/white stripe for down) with the diode's anode towards the "up" lead. Then connect the "antenna signal" lead on the antenna to the "up" lead, and the "constant power" lead on the antenna to the "down" lead. Doing so will allow you to do the whole shebang with the switch - raise and lower in increments of your desire, in the order that you desire (though the antenna retains the intelligence to stop lowering at the bottom, and stop raising at the top). The diagram I've attached should help somewhat (though I'm somewhat rusty on my electrical diagramming skills):

I usually stick with "Real Oldies 1600" when I'm tired of right-wing hate speech. I really just don't see the need to put a fancy stereo in, and I was getting a little irritated with my old broken antenna. It was OEM, but the motor was toast, and the mast was stuck halfway down. Made it a little hard to put my car cover on, or get it washed.

Because I'm keeping the original AM radio, and the raise/lower switch. The diode is just a one-way gate, so that I can feed both the switching mechanism in the relay and the motor in the antenna mast with the "up" lead, and just the motor in the antenna mast with the "down" lead from the switch.

I adapted a Metra PW-22 today to work on my 240Z with the antenna switch. Turns out, all I had to do was to put a diode between the red and blue wires, and then hook them up to the switch's outputs. For lowering the antenna, the diode allows you to power the mast motor without energizing the magnet (and switching the relay). For raising the antenna, the diode allows you to power the mast motor and energize the magnet (thus switching the relay). The PW-22 can be had for $65 at Autozone, about $100 cheaper than the MSA replacement.

Cars are running like tops, and nothing beats knowing that I have a car that will survive a nuclear war that destroys all transistor-based electronics

Nice to see you over here, too Jill. I'm also at RSW, and you've seen both my 240 and my 300 at the last Nissan get-together.

The US is still a significant consumer, even on a per capita level. Saying that the rest of the world needs to reduce their usage, when they don't even begin to approach the average US consumption per person is a little hypocritical.

Here's one of mine: Here I am cleaning the cones off from the previous day:

It was a little joke. It comes from this. According to my careful prosthesis, you've got the plague!

Dunno where you are, but oxygenated gas is only mandated by the Fed between the first day of November and the last day of February. It used to be MTBE, but recently it's all been ethanol. According to my careful prosthesis (I track my fuel stops in an excel book), my mileage was affected a lot more by the weight of my foot than the kind of fuel I was using. The standard deviation was a *lot* bigger than the difference between means for each period. My standard deviation was 2.37, while the difference in means for "good gas" period and "bad gas" period was 1.95. As a sidenote, I had quite a time tuning the SUs for the oxygenated fuel (it was damned near full rich adjusted). Since the switch back, I've been able to back the mixture down to the recommended spec in the FSM.

Seems like a good compromise would be to have a wideband on the first and last three cylinders, because you're not going to do any significant amount of adjustment in mixture between cylinders that share the same carburetor (unless your valves are way out of whack). Even the FI systems commonly used (280Z/ZX and Z31 ECCS) aren't tunable to the individual cylinder, because they're batch fire. So, unless you're running some fancy EMS, going with 6 oxygen sensors is overkill. Go with the number of carbs, or the number of batches (if practical, and the batches fire on the same header, like post-recall wiring for the Z31). Don't go buy a stock 1-wire unit, though, because they're not spectacularly useful - the voltage slope between very rich and very lean is not very great. A wideband has a much larger voltage slope, which is much easier to read, though they are a lot more expensive.

You can run a bigger gap with a hotter coil. It's a good supporting modification for when you intend higher cylinder pressures, either via cam or forced induction. Stock on stock, though, you're right.

Art, If you need, I have a known good 240 distributor, coil, and ballast resistor. This is Geoff from the Z club, BTW. Give me a call if you want to give it a go.

Running a hot coil without the ballast resistor on a points distributor resulted in significantly shorter life of the points that with the stock coil, hence my "protect the points" comment.

Yeah, it reads about 400RPM higher without the resistor. At least, mine does.

1. The ballast resistor is there to protect the points in your distributor. 2. The 280's coil is wired up differently because its ignition is transistorized (no points in the distributor). You can get away with using the stock 240 ignition wiring, if you've got the 240 distributor on the L28, but it's probably better in the long run if you swap to either the 280Z's ignition (a big box under the dash), or the 280ZX's ignition (swapping to the 280ZX distributor and E12-80 unit). So, the bottom line is that without either the 280Z's distributor and transistor unit or the 240Z's distributor and points, your L28 isn't going to run at all. Decide which way you want to go, and it'll be easier to decide what to do with the ballast resistor - with the transistorized ignition, the resistor is pointless (except for keeping the tach somewhat closer to true).

Tokico springs are progressive rate, so they should be fairly easy to identify; just look for tighter-wound coils at one end.

How big is the dent in your fuel tank?