motorman7

I think this is a picture of the voltage regulator bypass you were asking about.

I look forward to getting those. Thanks again for all of your hard work on this. Rich

Boy, this is slow going. Hours and hours of sanding. It's not bad, but it seems the more I work on this, the more I find stuff I don't like. There are quite a few dents on the underside of the panels where the PO placed the jack to change tires. Didn't catch those earlier. I ended up replacing a section of the passenger side dogleg. Fortunately the PO also gave me the Tabco panels that he had puchased for the car, both right and left side. The drivers side was pretty clean. The passengers side was pretty bad. Again, worse than I had expected. My son helped out with sanding the engine bay while I tended to the doglegs and the jack dents. I have most of the body dings fixed, but have not even started cleaning up the door jams and hatch are. That will be a chore. So, looks like I will miss my April 3 date to Maaco. Now shooting for the April 10. I opted to use the all metal body filler versus the regular bondo. Its pretty nice to work with and seems to dry harder. Thanks for the input guys, Rich

http://store.classicgarage.com/nid24brmakit.html I rebuilt my 40 year old '70Z with this kit and it works great. Bought another kit from them for my '71Z and will fix it in the next week or two. It's inexpensive and is the major rebuild kit. Parts are Japanese.

Aaahh, but it's not just any Maaco, It's Lance at the Maaco in O.C. who will do the paint. Lance (aka Jackboxxx on the thread) comes highly recommended by a number of the members here, so I will have him do the work. He's done a number of Z's so I would be happy to have him do the paint. There is actually a Maaco about 3 blocks from my house, but I will trailer it about 60 miles to OC. I will feel better about it this way. Also, since the car is a "mutt", I didn't feel it was cost effective to put a 5 or 10K paint job on. I will do the high end two stage Maaco though. Thanks for the tip on the epoxy seal. I was using the light gray primer to cover the areas I sanded. Attached are some pics of the progress today. Got the tranny pulled and the rest of the firewall stuff off. I tied some of the tubes to the center of the engine area to keep them out of the way of the painter. Also will bag and stow the harness. For now it's just resting on the battery tray. Got the left fender replaced. Massaged out a few small dings and started a bit of sanding. I have some rust near the doglegs. I was thinking of brazing up the hole and grinding flush. Rich

Hi Doug, Yes, I love that color! It looks great. That is the color I am looking for; not too orangey, not too pale. As for painting the car a different color than the original, my plan is to just have painted the areas that are typically visible. So, the door jams, hatch area and engine bay will all be painted the same yellow. One of my pet peeves is an engine bay that doesn't match the car color. Plus, only takes about half a day to pop the engine out, so might as well take it out. I am not sure what to do with the wheel wells. I painted the front ones a yellow spray can color as you can see in the pics.and not sure I like the look. I may revert it back to the black undercoating. Will have to look at some pics and see how that looks. Thanks for the tips on the windshield with the razor knife. The gaskets leak, so they will be replaced. No harm cutting off the old one. I will also have the trans serviced at this time and rebuild my brake master cylinder. Also need a new booster. So, lots to do. Ah, and of course re-zinc my bolts. Thanks for the input Rich

I spent most of the day stripping my silver '71 in prep for paint. I am figuring it will take about two or three weeks to get it ready ( Unfortunately that usually means four to six REAL week). I should be able to finish the part strip tomorrow (Friday) and then begin sanding and rust repair. The one glitch I ran into was the front and rear glass removal. I was thinking I could get a glass company to come and remove them for me for about $40. Unfortunately, the first place I called wanted more than double that amount to remove the front and rear glass.:disappoin The second place said they don't work on old cars. So, I think I will read some of the treads here and try it myself. I think I can take the glass out, but will probably have to pay the price to have someone else install it when it's time to re-assemble. Since the car is a "mutt" there is no need to paint it an official Z color. I was leaning toward the an original Z green, but have decided to go with a bright yellow (I was out voted). I am looking at painting it a yellow similar to the current 350Z or the PPG base yellow. I want a color that is bright and grabs attention. It should work well with the Panasports. I am planning on doing the majority of the paint prep and then taking the Z to the paint shop. I am also planning on having Lance (jackboxxx) do the paint job up at the Maaco in Orange County. I am hoping to get a little input here on the paint prep. I haven't had a car painted for quite some time. I am not sure that I want to take the car down to the bare metal, but I would at least like to get to the original primer at the least. Currently the car is an oxidized silver. So, here are some pics of the teardown. i'll post more as the project progresses. Rich

Cool...thanks for posting. I should of took pics of my cowl area when I removed/cleaned it. I think there was half a bush growing in there. Needed a shop vac to clean out all the leaves.

Funny, I had a similar thing happen on my '73 and now am a bit afraid to drive it for fear I will get stranded. Aside from the voltage regulator, which I would like to replace, my guess was that the problem on my car was the battery hold down bracket. It seems a little too close to the terminals and I am thinking something may have shifted while going around a curve. I will monitor and keep posted.

I hope those aren't new cast iron-too brittle. Preferably stamped steel with zinc plating most likely. Much better properties

Just thought I'd post this in case any one was interested. http://sandiego.craigslist.org/nsd/cto/1633558881.html Car is HLS30-96591, Original Engine: L24-121846 , Original 4-speed transmission. All original smog equipment in place including smog pump belt. Car is original paint but has areas where bondo was used (obvious) and car spray paint used to cover. The frame rails are in very good condition with no rust; Driverside is near perfect, passenger side has some dents from lifting with jack, but not bad. Battery has hard rust underneath but the metal is still solid and not broken through. This seems to be the only bad rust area - not counting the bondo areas. Bad bondo job done on both front fenders (maybe ran out of sandpaper?) and minor bondo repair on both rear doglegs. Front of hood hits the upper bumper bar, paint scraped off in this area. Interior color is red and fairly original. Seats nicely re-done, small 4 inch crack in middle of dash. some rear panels on drivers side are cracked or missing chuncks. Carpet is original, has original radio and antenna. Also has original steering wheel. I don't understand the Grant steering wheel reference. Owner is second owner and has owned it for three years. Original owner did the bondo work- an older gentleman. Minor door dings along door and rear fender with auto spray paint to cover bare dings. Rusty rear bumper trim. Nice rims and Michelin Radial tires 195/70-14s. Engine started right up, no loud knocks or ticks. Odometer reads 51K...Most likely 151K. He said mechanic checked the compression and that it was good with all cylinders yielding about the same value. Not a bad car, but not worth what he is asking, $6995. I told him I thought it was worth more like $4000-$4500. He told me to make him an offer. So, sounded like he might take the ~$4K+ if I offered it. I got 3 right now with way too much to do on them so I am not buying. Just thought I'd post this for anyone interested since it was only about 2 miles from my house. Rich

Thanks for adding the July '09 copy to the spreadsheet. Looks much more organized now. I added my three.

5 cm????? That's like 2 inches! That can't be good. Perhaps you mean 5mm?

Yes, congrats! I love the color and it seems to have most of the items you were looking for. Very nice start!

here's the latest pics

The '73 is running pretty nice now. The carbs are tuned and have new brake pads installed. The '73 will now be my daily driver for the next couple months. I will post a pic in the next day or two. Now the focus is back to the '71 and getting it prepped for paint.

I thought this was cool... Changed the front break pads on my '73 and inspected the old ones. The old ones have 'Akebono' inscribed on them with the Nissan logo up in the right hand corner. I am guessing these are original. Was debating on whether to toss them or not.

It looks like it needs more brightener. I put the hole bottle of brightener in my 3 gallon tank. Seems like that comes pretty close. Your 'T' looks too dull. These are the nuts and bolts I made with the caswell kit

No Panasport option? That would be my preference.

The two tach wires are part of the start/ignition circuit. I removed my broken tach once to get it serviced and the car would not start, it just turns over. I had to jump the two wires in order to get it to start without the tach installed. I am thinking of tapping into this circuit with a hidden switch in the future to use as a hidden circuit break to make it harder for theives to steal the car.

I read somewhere that if you open up the hole on the back of the fuel rail return line that it solves alot of the problems. Guess I will have to see how it does. As for now, I am very happy with how they are running. If I didn't pop the hood, you would think there were SU's under there.

Sounds like a good idea. I'll have to give that a try.

OK, running lean was exactly the problem. I pulled the flat tops off and checked the piston and needle configuration. The collar of the needle was about .010 out of the piston base on both carbs. I loosened the set screws and made the collar flush with the base, then re-assembled. Car now runs very smooth at constant speed. We will see how these perform now over the next couple months.

I am pretty determined to keep my newly acquired '73 240Z original and run the flat tops (AKA boat anchors). Initially, the car idled real well but coughed all the way up the power band. With a little study on the threads here, it sounded like the issue was the small pump on the side of the carbs. Sure enough, took these both apart and cleaned out the 'jelly' in the forward carb and the operation was much improved. (The rear carb side pump looked to be in good shape). Float bowls were both at the proper levels. The car now idles beautifully, works well when accelerating hard, works well when choked; but seems to have an intermittent miss when running at constant freeway speed. It 'feels' like the car is running lean. So, I am thinking that I will adjust the needles 'up' about .010" and see if that solves the problem. Any thoghts on this from the flat top crowd? Any input, other than switching to SU (which I agree are better), is appreciated Thanks, Rich