motorman7

OMG...of course I want to be very politically correct and not have anything offensive on my car. I know the 'A' on my distributor stands for Advanced. I believe the 'R' stands for Retard. I will bet it is even in my manual. How many people has my distributor offended? I offer my sincerest appology for my cars behavior. Good Grief:sick: This whole Palin-Emanuel thing is unreal. Sorry, just had to vent

I have a similar Brake Booster problem on my '71 only my RPM's increase; they go from 700 up to 1200. I wonder why they respond differently. I get the same whoosh/hissing sound. Also takes a lot of pressure on the brakes to get them to stop. I am planning on replacing the booster in a month or so.

Too late for the yellow center caps. I already painted one silver to see what it would look like. The rims should clean up well too. I think I will leave the wheels like this. I'm planning on keeping the flat tops for now, although I love the round heads. I want to keep the car as original as possible. Hopefully they wont cause too much of an issue down the road. Did a seat swap today. Put the stock seats in the '73 and transferred the Recaro's to the '71. The interior of the '73 is in real nice condition. The cross-hatched vinyl is in good shape. The Only thing I really need is the driver and passenger floor mats. Also pulled of the Z tow hook. Wonder what I can get for that bad boy on e-bay. Guessing the PO used that to pull his golf clubs.

Boy, top part of spread sheet was really messed up. It said somebody else owned my '70 and they were parting it out:ermm: I fixed it, but I am sure others are messed up. The name and comments was disconnected from the S/N, engine, and colors grids

I had to find something to do since we ditched the cable TV. Lot's of time on my hands now. Amazing all the things I can get done. Actually, the latest Z is nice to have because I don't have to rush the work on my '71Z. I can drive the '73 while I prep the '71 for paint. Then I'll drive the '71 while I work on the '73. (I really don't drive the '70 except to shows). It's fun to work on the cars when you don't have to rush because the car is your daily driver. It's been more than once where I have been up past midnight working on something because the car is my daily driver and the only why to get to work. This should make things a little less stressful. Anyway, I'm taking tomorrow off, so that should give me a couple days to dink around with it and clean things up a bit; Oil change, fuel filter, tune carbs, polish mags, etc. Should be fun and relaxing Thanks for the comments all, Rich

OK, I will stop with three. The latest looked so original (and cheap) that I had to get it. It's a 1973 that I picked up off of Craigslist for $950. Just needs a lot of cleaning and an exterior paint job. I will keep it the same color and try to keep it as original as possible. There is very little rust on the car; just minor spots on the rear doglegs and one spot on the hatch. No rust on the floor boards, frame rails or under the battery. Surface rust on the exterior in spots, but nothing bad. The frame rails are a little beat up. It comes with the old style mags. The fourth is in the back of the car with a flat. Trying to figure if the spare on the car now is original. It is a Toyo 175 HR 14. Haven't seen an HR in a long time. The other tires are 185/75 R14's. The dash is cracked, so may get a cap for that. It also has some nice Recarro seats which I will put in my '71. '71 has nicely recovered stock seats which will work well in the '73 to help with the originality theme. Once I finsh the paint on the 71, I will work on the restoration of this one. The odometer reads 41K, so I am guessing 141K . Anyway, should be fun. Here are a couple of pics. Rich

Hi Adam, I got most of my info from this page: http://www.mckennasgarage.com/xke/jag_16.htm It's kind of funny actually, because this guy says all the info is in the Caswell manual, but I found his write-up far better than the Caswell manual. Once I followed this guys process, things turned out great. Also, I did break down and bought a BK precision 1621A power supply (like the one shown in the website above). After about 2 hours of plating, something in my set-up was dying (overheating most likely),and I had to shut down till things cooled. Also, this will handle larger items for the future. Thanks for the feed back. I like the spring idea. I am thinking of setting up a wired basket here. Best Regards, Rich

This is probably the best way to get hold of them for now. Not sure what is up with the site. http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/zcsd/ Rich

Your good enough, your smart enough, and dog gone it people like you! Just wanted to pass along some reassurance there.

First off I make sure the parts are free of oil and grease. I use the SP degreaser from the caswell kit in a crock pot (on 'high') to degrease the parts. I do not want to gum up my wire wheel. Next I dry the parts then wire wheel to remove all rust, crud, previous plating, etc. Parts actually look pretty nice after this but will corrode quickly since they are bare steel. I then wire up about 4 to 8 parts with single conductor copper wire. Eventually I will make a basket that is wired so I can do more parts faster. This is still a work in progress, but don't mind going slow at this point. So at this point I have my parts hanging, aboout .5 inches apart on my copper wire. This 'string' of parts is then hung in the 'pickle'. The pickle is 5% muriatic acid mixed with purified water (from my reverse osmosis tap). So, 1 part muriatic acid with 20 parts water. The Pickle is heated to 140 deg F. You can get the muriatic acid at Home Depot in the pool section. While the string is pickling for 15 mins, I work on cleaning and stringing my next batch. After the first string of parts has pickled for 15 minutes, I take it out and immediately put it in the plating bath. I wire it up, + on the zinc plates, - on the copper string. I leave it here for 15 minutes to plate. The plating solution is at 110 deg F. While this is plating, I put the second string in the pickle, and start cleaning on my third string. So essentially I have developed a 15 minute cycle here. After the parts have been in the plating bath for 15 minutes, they will have a nice shiney finish. I detach the electrodes, pull the string out of the plating bath, do a quick a quick 3 second dip in the pickle, 3 second dip in pure water , then 30 seconds in the yellow chromate. The yellow chromate is in the blue bucket heated to 80 deg F. After the 30 second dip I lay the parts on a paper towel to dry. That's it. I am told for best corrosion protection you should heat the parts for about 30 mins at 150 deg F after the chromate dip. I haven't really done this yet, but have used a hair dryer to dry the parts. Hope that helps. Rich

I am using a constant current power supply form a class I took a while back. It puts out 5V, 5 Amps constant current. I am using a large 25 Ohm rheostat that I got off of e-bay ($15) to adjust the current, .2 Amps per square inches to plate. So, I adjust to 1 amp if I am plating an estimated 5 sq/in. I run the line through my cheapo ammeter to tell me the current. All I really needed to buy was the rheostat. I had everything else. Definitely the Caswell constant current rectifier would work better. I just didn't want to spend the money....yet. May see if I can find something on e-bay eventually to simplify the set-up with just a single unit instead of the 3 pieces I have now.

Roughly 15 mins in the 'pickle' and 15 mins in the plate tank, 30 seconds in the chromate. Yes, that's the kit I have. Works well after a little practice. Rich

They tell you how to dispose of it in the enclosed Caswell plating manual. Essentually you neutralize it with a base..baking soda, then dispose. Also, I am getting much better with this. It's actually pretty exciting. Here are some more samples. Got my son doing it now for parts on his T-bird.

I bought the 3-gallon kit ($205) and the yellow chromate liquid ($30). Add shipping and it's a little over $250. Also got a crock pot (for heating the solvent) from target and Muriatic acid and a couple of buckets from Home Depot. So the whole package is roughly $300.

I got my Caswell plating kit set-up and plated some parts today. It took a bit of practice, but I am very happy with the results. The difficult part was getting the right current to produce the bright color. I originally tried doing the plating the cheap way by just getting the chemicals (NaOH and ZnO) off of e-bay, but the plating came out dull. So, I had to pop for the Caswell kit in order to get the parts to have the correct shine. Below are 2 pics of the dull finish and 2 of the Caswell kit finish. Also have my plating shelf shown here. I am actually pretty thrilled about being able to do this myself. When I strip the 71Z at the end of February here, I want to re-zinc all of the bolts that I take off while the body is off to paint. Should make it look nice when it's all put back together.

It's original if you are driving a Datsun 1600 or 2000 roadster. That's the cap for the overflow tank. Rich

Hi Frank, The ZCCIV (Inland Valley/Temecula-40miles north of SD) club meeting will be at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, March 9th. We meet at the Carrow's restaurant, near the Datsun Heritage Mueseum. On March 13th, a number of the members are taking a drive out to Palm Springs for "Dinner at Jerry's" which I hear is quite an event. I think most are returning on the 14th. Not sure what the San Diego club has happening. I know that thier club meeting will be on Tuesday, March 2nd. Perhaps David/Montezuma knows a bit more there. That's all I am aware of for now during that time frame. Best Regards, Rich

Thanks for the tip there Carl. I will definitely do that when I pull them off again to paint the car at the end of February. BR, Rich

I think the guy who had them came a bit late to the swap meet, so they were there a bit later in the day. Ron Carter pointed them out to me. This was much cheaper than re-chroming the blacked out ones on my 71

That's right, braid for the crankcase, Rubber-cloth for the smog. Thanks

Thanks Arne! Started to second guess pops here after seeing the e-bay ad. The amazing thing about that rubber dipped cloth stuff is it seems to be in real good condition. It does not seem to harden like the braided hose does. Wonder if they still make that type of hose. Best Regards, Rich

What's the original "hose style" for the 240Z fuel hoses that are under the hood (hoses going from fuel rail to carbs, fuel filter to rail, etc)? I was pretty sure that mine were original, and they are not braided. I saw some on e-bay that were braided so I am now questioning. My hoses do not appear to be an off the shelf rubber fuel hose. The hoses on my car seem to be almost like some rubber coated cloth material style. Are these original? The EGR hose is made of the same material. Were the original ones braided? TIA, Rich

And here are the bumpers. Quite nice for $300. Now if I could just get the paint job for that price

The turn out was great. It was nice to socialize with all of the Datsun fans there. One of the best aspects of the show was the Datsun parts swap meet. What a great selection. I picked up a set of Series I chrome bumpers in great shape, complete with rubber for $300 total. Incredible deal-couldn't pass them up. Will post picks of them tonight.

Perfect weather for a nice Z gathering today. 75 degrees and sun shine.