Namerow

Permatex High-Temperature Thread Sealant looks like the most appropriate compound.

It will be a frosty -9 degrees F tonight in my part of southern Ontario. No relief in site either. The prediction for Friday is the same. Happy New Year to all!

Nice write-up. Good that the engine was out of the car and already stripped, because the drilling-and-tapping job would have been more difficult otherwise (canted engine doesn't help). That said, I'll bet the engine-in-situ helicoil job has been performed hundreds, if not thousands of times in Nissan service bays around the world. The front one is certainly easier to get at than the back one. Interesting that the reverse-rotation drill didn't provide a solution. I've heard others swear by that technique. I could never quite understand why, though. The direction of rotation should have no effect on the amount of heat generated (to help break down the thread corrosion) and the reverse torque generated by the drill's cutting action would seem to be modest at best. I wonder whether the end of this stud (broken-off well below the surface) could have been successfully built up with a MIG to the point where a nut could have been tacked onto the end? Anyone care to comment on whether this example was within the limit of the MIG strategy? I wouldn't think that there's going to be an issue with the HeliCoil insert backing out because of heat cycling. But you never know. Did you consider using Loctite on the outer threads of the insert? Did the HeliCoil instructions have anything to say about this?

US$80,000 !!! I'm out.

Nice work. Of all the parts that I tried to re-plate using my D-I-Y plating set-up, this one was the most problematic (many heavily 'shaded' areas, along with a difficult-to-plate interior surface. Your results illustrate one the important superiorities of commercial plating.

You can tell it's the cylinder head because the rear manifold stud is broken off.

I took a kind of pragmatic approach for this job. I dipped a lint-free cloth into clear gloss enamel and then used the paint-soaked cloth to coat the lines. I held the cloth stationary in one hand and dragged the line through the cloth. It turned out a lot better than I thought. In fact, I don't think I could have got a better result with a spray gun. Very little prep work required, good coverage, and no mess to clean up, either. Only one coat required. That was two years ago, and the lines still look great.

Second that. The top two nuts are hard to get started on their threads when reassembling. Kneel on garage floor, lean in off balance, then then try to make arms reach back to the left so that two or three fingers holding nut can find their way into dark, confined recess. Wins my vote for 'Top 10 Most Difficult Fasteners'. Other nominations?

Is that rust on the rocker panel of the white Z miniature?

Rough guess: 1/64" / 0.025"

ummm... Can you define what you mean by, 'satisfactory'? Sometimes my parts plated brilliantly. That included a few tough-to-do parts like the hatch strikers or the e-brake linkage 'equalizer'. On other parts, the plating was what I would describe as indifferent. Not terrible, but not award-winning either. I cannot put my finger on the reason. I produced very few results that look like what other members are having returned to them by commercial platers. My best results were what I'll call 80-percenters. As a general comment, my plating efforts took a noticeable step forward when I finally broke down and bought the Ca$well chemical for my electrolyte, replacing the DIY solution of vinegar and epsom salts that I let myself be tricked into using by some overly-enthusiastic motorcycle hobbyist website. The change to the electrolyte was accompanied by borrowing a controllable current/controllable voltage power supply from our ever-generous friend, Grannyknot. Only after making these two adjustments did I start to get worthwhile results. And after that, I found that a regular dose of Ca$well's 'brightener' solution made the critical difference between a shiny vs. dull outcome. 'Moss Boss' comes in the form of a 4"-wide roll of thick foil. I made hoops (by soldering the overlapping ends) whose diameter was slightly under the diameter of my electrolyte bucket. I stacked three of the hoops, one on top of another, so that the entire inner wall of the bucket was lined. The result was a 360-degree anode, which I hoped would mitigate masking issues during plating. I suppose it did, but I didn't have the time or patience to compare this set-up with a uni-directional anode. I do not recall experiencing problems with 'impurities'. It's my understanding that a powdery, granular plate occurs on the surface of the part if you set your current too high. But I wouldn't call that an impurity issue. Moss Boss is relatively cheap, so I encourage you to try it. If you can find it, that is. It's disappeared from retailers' shelves here in Canada because it's considered to create unacceptable environmental (groundwater) issues. A patient google search might turn up some manufacturer's info on purity level. As you know from my previous commentaries, I came away from my DIY plating experiences somewhat less enthusiastic than when I started out. My positive outcomes were very rewarding, but they went 50-50 with not-so-positive outcomes. If I had been able to decide where I was going wrong, I would have kept at it, but I could just never figure out why some of my parts just wouldn't plate properly -- even when I took them all the way back to the blasting cabinet stage. It was almost like certain regions of the part's surface had been poisoned by something (maybe residual impurities in my blasting media?). I did not get good results from using a wire (brass) wheel. I suspect, the wires on the wheel were already contaminated by materials and grease/oil from previous, non-plating jobs and they just burnished that contamination into the surface of my about-to-be-plated parts. Pickling after wire-wheeling didn't solve the problem. Moral: If you're going to use a blasting cabinet, start with fresh media and blast parts only after they've been de-greased and pre-pickled. If you're going to use a wire wheel, buy a new one, de-grease it before use, and de-grease it from time to time during use. BTW, some people, as well as Ca$well, recommend a fibre wheel over a wire wheel (but I don't know why). My sense is that, overall, the process is intolerant of what I'll call 'fouling' at any step along the way -- whether it's blasting, wire-wheeling, pickling, rinsing, wire hangers, or the electrolyte bath itself. My fear is that once one of your steps gets fouled, you have to dump that liquid/media/material and start all over again. The challenge, of course, is to figure out which step got fouled. And, once you've figured that out, make sure that you don't carry the fouling back to the start of your chain.

How did you get it apart?

IIRC, that's just an adjuster nut. I don't think you'll get much further without 'destructive disassembly'.

IIRC, it's just a typical spring-loaded, wax-pellet type check valve. There's a cut-away drawing buried somewhere in the FSM. While it is possible to screw off the end cap, it doesn't really show you too much of the inner workings (not that there's that ,much to see). I think I soaked mine in a calcium-rust-lime-remover product overnight and then put it back together. It worked OK before cleaning, and it worked equally OK after cleaning... so the cleaning was obviously an important step . I suspect that the long-term health of these valves was directly related to whether the car's cooling system was run with plain tap water rather than coolant.

When you set out to find a replacement spring, note that the same spring is used for LHS and RHS door. Once you have the spring, it may not be obvious which way is 'right side up' when you go to install it on its shaft. The correct installation for both the LHS and RHS regulator is to have the hook on the free end of the spring oriented so that it bears against the bottom of the engagement tab on the main plate.

Search this site for Grannyknot's write-up on refurbishing. These lift mechanisms are called 'regulators', so first go to GK's postings and then search on that word. The hard-plastic idler wheels can be replaced (with units from a cabinet drawer 'slide', IIRC). However, the mounting shaft takes a lot of load, so you'll need to either work towards a light interference fit (maybe assisted by some Loctite 'stud mount' anaerobic) or tack the end with a MIG weld. As for the spring: After the regulator is un-wound to the point where the gear rack comes loose from the pinion gear, the spring doesn't really have that much tension on it. Once the gear rack comes free of the pinion gear, the remaining spring tension will go to zero after the lever arm has rotated about another 30 degrees or so. At that point, you can just pluck the spring out of the slot in the centre shaft. When you're re-assembling, it's pretty easy to load the lever by hand so that the gear rack comes in contact with the pinion gear. At that point, you can just start turning the window crank handle to feed the gear rack back into full engagement. That said, it won't be easy finding a replacement spring all on its own. If anyone has a spare, they're probably not going to want to sell you just the spring.

PM sent.

There's one thing that still puzzles me in all of this: I owned my first Z (a 1972) from 1977 until 1981 and logged about 40 thousand miles of driving with it -- much of that at freeway speeds on regular trips between Toronto and Montreal (~ 300 miles, each way). I do not recall ever smelling exhaust fumes inside the car during those drives, nor feeling any effects while driving (which I surely would have over 4 hours of driving). The car was bone-stock and all-original (e.g. no weatherstrip replacement, no new taillight seals, no rear or front spoiler spoiler, no special exhaust tip, no replacement grommets, no caulking -- nothing). So I'm reasonably comfortable in saying that there was nothing in the design of the later-version cars (i.e. with the cabin air extractor vents located on the sail panels) that led to exhaust fumes being sucked into the cabin. Not, at least, when everything was left in original configuration and all of the grommets and seals and weatherstripping were in good shape and and the body seams were in proper alignment. In fact, I don't think that even the addition of an aftermarket exhaust system changed that, because I don't recall reading any warnings or tales of woe, back in the day, about exhaust fume issues showing up after an Abarth/ANSA/Stebro/etc. performance exhaust system had been added -- something which hundreds, if not thousands, of Z-owners did in the 1970's. I have a different opinion about the early-version cars with the cabin air extractor vents located on the hatch panel. I think that design may have been inherently weak, even when the cars were fairly new, because the open water-drainage tubes provided a secondary airflow exit (or entrance, depending on the circumstances) at an aerodynamically-undesirable location that also happened to be fully exposed to exhaust fumes caught in the 'bubble' that sets up behind the rear valence/trim panels when the car is in motion. Once the 'one-way' flaps and/or the hatch interior trim panel started to get tired, or the hatch interior trim panel was improperly installed, you had all the necessary ingredients for exhaust fumes being sucked back into the cabin -- esp. when the side windows were opened a bit and changed the pressure differential between the cabin interior and the location of the drain tube exits. I don't think this arrangement could be called a 'defect', because Nissan development engineers surely would have noticed the problem during the car's development. However, problems must have begun to be reported after the cars had been in owners' hands for a year or so. The change to the air extraction design was a costly move for Nissan and I don't think they would have taken it without figuring that they had no other choice. I wonder if anyone with 1970's driving experience with a Series 1 car would care to comment on whether they have any recollections of exhaust fumes coming up into the cabin?

Can I send you my parts?

Ditto on this comment, in case you missed it. This panel (plastic, not vinyl) tends to warp, opening up some pretty wide gaps along seams that are supposed to be sealed shut. It's also held in place by the usual push-pin plastic rivets and I've noticed from photos that some of these are often missing from owners' cars. Once gaps appear between the plastic panel and the inside sheet metal of the hatch, the factory's cabin-to-outside airflow scheme can be bypassed (including the one-way flaps located inside the ducts) and exhaust fumes can enter the cabin by entering the hatch cavity and then leaking past the plastic trim panel. In the factory scheme, the air extractor pathway is supposed to be the only route for air to flow from the hatch area of the cabin to the outside, and that pathway is supposed to be sealed off from the interior of the hatch.

For Series 1/'early' (take your pick) cars with the extractor vents located on the trailing edge of the hatch panel, there's one aspect of the exhaust fumes suck-back problem that I've never heard mentioned before and which might be fundamental to the design. I'm talking the drain tubes that allow rain/wash water to drain out of the two air plenum chambers (located inside the hatch cavity). Those drain tubes exit on the underside of the hatch, outboard of the weatherstrip and are therefore nicely exposed to the ambient air (and exhaust fumes) at the rear of the car. Since the air flow and air pressure back there is, shall we say, 'variable' and because the 'one-way' airflow control flaps (the ones that control airflow from the cabin into the plenums) are less than perfect -- even when new, I suspect -- there are all the ingredients in place to allow backflow into the cabin. The triggers for that backflow would be: 1) amount of side window opening; 2) air speed over the rear deck, and; c) airflow/air pressure serendipity in the region just under the hatch lip. I can't think of any easy design solution (putting one-way flaps inside the round drain tubes would be a challenge).

If you think the discussion here is getting getting too pedantic, wander over the Ferrarichat.com and see how the big boys duke it out over faked and transplanted VIN's and chassis numbers. In F-car-land, certain practitioners have been accused of building complete cars around 3 square inches of metal with a frame number stamping... and then selling the results for a lot more than any S30 Datsun is ever going to raise. The debate over there often centres around whether certain well-known names in the biz were or were not actually criminals.

At what point of opening the door did you notice the drop issue? Or was it, instead, something you noticed when you were trying to close the door? (e.g. door latch wouldn't line up with the striker plate and/or the stopper ramp) Also: How many miles are on the odometer of your car? (trying to get a sense of how much use the vehicle has to see before this kind of hinge-wear problem becomes an issue needing attention) And: It appears from your photos and comments that the pin wear problem was largely restricted to the lower hinge (the one with the spring). Since the upper and lower hinges should see approx. the same loadings as they take up the wright of the door, it appears that the excessive wear in the lower hinge's pin could be related to the transverse load that the spring being applies to the top of the pin. Either that, or Nissan decided to use extra-crappy steel for the lower pin. What are your thoughts on this, having taken the door off and disassembled both hinges so that they were lying there on the bench for you to stare at? Also: Has anyone with an early Z (no spring/detent in the door hinges) noticed this kind of pin wear in the lower hinge?

Well, it was a different time and place back then, wasn't it? The concept of safety systems and warning lights was brand new (how many warning lights were there on the dash panel of a 55 Chevy?). We'd all been reading about Mercury and Gemini capsules and Mission Control and supersonic aircraft and James Bond, and it seemed like there could be no such thing as too many warning lights. Or buzzers. Or digital warning messages ('Your door is ajar.') Of course, we're much smarter now.

I think that skinny little strip of channel steel is best referred to as a 'stiffener' rather than a 'beam' . (although it did meet the FMVSS requirement!)