Namerow

I don't have a picture, but my results are pretty much identical to the pix just posted by Siteunseen. It's a 'whiter' look than the OE finish. As an engineer, I respect the advances made in paint chemistry but I'm still skeptical about whether a paint can get the job done in high-visibility underhood applications. Diseazed says his experience supports VHT paint for this application. All I care about is good solutions for all of us. Anyone else with similar positive experiences with VHT paints?

Of course it looks beautiful. But that's only as long as you never touch it with oil, fuel, or any kind of cleaning solvent.

The FSM has some surprisingly detailed instructions on how to tune the horns. Personally, I found the results no better than 'ok', Nevertheless, you should be able to adjust so that you at least get a 'bleat' rather than a 'dink.

I blast-cleaned my cover using fine-grit glass. Afterwards, I dressed it with 'Gibbs' brand fogging oil (aka 'snake oil'). I'm happy with the result, but it is not an OE look. If you want that, it looks like vapor bla$ting is the way to go. The OE appearance looks 'harder' than what you'll get with typical media blasting, although walnut shells might come closer.

Many years ago, I was invited to make an inspection tour of a government research facility (big building, big test rigs). It was located about a mile away from two steel mills, separated from them by an open harbor. The facility manager showed me a bunch of expensive electrical panel that he said had been ruined by the SO2 carried in the air from across the harbor.

The two manifolds on the L24 engine are shown in the parts diagram to be secured with studs at all seventeen locations. However, the engine in my 70 Z uses bolts for the top row (six locations). A spare L24 engine (from a 72 Z that I had as my daily driver back in the 1970's) also used bolts for the top row. I'm 90% certain that the head and manifolds on that car had never been removed for service (I was the 2nd owner and bought it in 1976 with only ~ 40,000 miles on the odometer). The bolts used on both my engines show similar markings on the bolt heads. Comments or insights, anyone?

Don't feel bad. My two-year project is now entering Year 5. And even with a relatively careful job of photographing the disassembly and bagging-and-tagging the parts, I still occasionally find myself wondering, 'Where did I put the #$!&* part?' or, 'How the heck does this fit?'.

Uh-oh. I hope it's not the sulphuric/muriatic acid you may have been using as a pickling agent. I've read that that the fumes from that stuff can be corrosive to equipment and tools if stored indoors.

Interesting. I've seen both plain and braided hoses on restorations by others, but never cloth-wrapped. Always something new to be learned on this site.

Apologies for jumping in here so late in the game, but I thought that the OE fuel hoses running from the fuel rail to the float bowls (and from the fuel pump to/from the fuel rail) were not fabric covered. For the three Z's that I've had my hands on (one '70 and two '72's), these hoses were not fabric-covered. Of course, hose originality can be tough to nail down because they've so often been replaced during the earlier service life of the car. Maybe others can comment... Have a look at this photo of an unrestored Jan. 1971 car.

Walter: Welcome to our 'self-help' group. Longtime member, Blue (now goes by '240260280', IIRC) has previously written a detailed article with dozens of photos, that explains the teardown and rebuild of the MasterVac unit. Use the search function to find it.

Joe: There are some excellent write-ups already on this site regarding complete tear-down of the steering rack, tie-rod end issues, substitute dust boots, etc. etc. I'm not going to find them for you (maybe someone else is feeling more energetic), but I encourage you to use the search function (select 'Topics').

I've just gone through this exercise, using a re-pop grommet from 240ZRubber. Their grommet fits well, relative to both the cable (ID) and the firewall hole (OD). However, there's no way that the grommet's ID could be stretched enough to fit over the cable's metal end fitting (same at both ends, BTW). And believe me, I tried. I had to slice the grommet and then use KrazeeGlue to bond the cut edges after I installed it over the cable. This particular grommet is made from a stiffer material than the original, so it was a struggle to make it fit into the firewall hole. In the process, my glue joint gave up. However, the cut edges aligned nicelly once the grommet seated into place and now you'd never know it was cut. I'm going to guess that MSA discovered the same challenge... and came up with a bad solution: a grommet that fits over the cable end fitting but won't fit into the firewall hole. I recommend you just buy the grommet from 240ZRubber and be done with it.

I was going to say that a manifold swap might be the easiest solution. However, it appears that the 260Z head has port sizes that are bigger than those for the 240 and smaller than those for the 280. The 260's header has a PN that's different from both the 240 and the 280, which tends to support the theory that it is a unique design (but in what ways, I don't know). Other members will know for sure if a swap can be done successfully. Is it possible for you to buy, inexpensively, the part that threads into the manifold? That would make it easier to measure the thread dia. and pitch.

FWIW, the OE heater valves respond very nicely to an overnight soak in CLR calcium/lime remover.

Come on, admit it. That's not really an office. It's a parts storage room disguised as an office so that you can keep your Z stuff in the house without your wife noticing.

Mike may have a point. The flat on the ferrule could be just a provision to orient the switch properly relative to the OFF-LO-MED-Hi markings. Note how the the front of the switch housing has a 'lumpy' surface that's maybe supposed to key into the mating surface of the fascia plate. Note that in his photo, Mike's switch appears to be missing a white nylon washer that's should sit between the jamb nut and the front surface of fascia. I think it's there to spead the clamping force exteted by the jamb nut over a broader surface area. Maybe a couple of small dabs of Gorilla glue on the front of the switch housing before you re-assemble against the back of the fascia?

More importantly, the mounting hole in the fascia (what your holding in the picture) is supposed to be slightly D-shaped, so as to match the flat that's machined onto the threaded ferrule of the switch. It looks like a PO or passenger got over-enthusiastic and torqued the control knob so hard that the 'D' was completely stripped out of the plastic. It'll will be very hard to restore the D shape to the mounting hole in fascia. But perhaps you could try grinding a D shaped hole into a fender washer (Dremel tool) and then glue the fender washer to the back of the fascia plate. Or maybe you could just solder a piece of flat sheet on the back of the washer so that it slightly overlaps the hole, thereby creating the flat that makes the hole become D-shaped. Anything you glue onto the backside of the fascia plate is going to act as a standoff for the switch housing, and that means that the shaft of the switch isn't going to stick out on the other side as much as it normally would. In other words, keep your repair materials thin. Whatever you adopt as a repair, it's going to need to be sturdy or else it won't last very long. The simple-but-expen$ive route will be to simply buy a new fascia plate.

I've had mixed results with computer matching. According to one paint tech I dealt with, the darker the color, the more difficult it is to get a good match. Metallic content adds to the challenge. My car came painted with an unidentified, non-stock dark green metallic, so getting a match has been a problem. I ended up asking a high-end restoration shop for help and they put me onto the specialist paint supply shop that they use. I removed one of my Z`s inspection cover panels and gave that to them to use for the paint-matching. Perhaps you can try the same approach. Find a resto shop that works with high-end customers and high-end cars, and then ask them who they use for their paint.

The seller said somewhere in the Q&A comments that he installed the later-style console because the original was in poor shape and a replacement was impossible* to find. * Impossible? Almost never the case. Expensive? You bet!

If we're lucky, this will trigger a rising tide that floats all our Z-boats If we're not lucky, it will attract a fresh horde of parts-car-quality Z's to BaT, thereby reinforcing the belief that all Z's are either victims of the J.C. Whitney catalog or just rust buckets and thus not worth more than $5K - $15K.

I missed the note in the write-up about the dash cap. Nothing wrong with that if it's properly done but, again, it takes the car an important step away from the 'all-original' status the has always seemed to be mandatory to get a Z's price firmly into the $30K - $40K range.

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1971-datsun-240z-35/ I'm surprised that there's been no commentary so far on this car. It brought a ton of attention during the auction. It also sold at a price that -- I think -- lies well above the curve (not that that's a bad thing). Almost $40,000! The part that really surprised me was that previous high-dollar Z sales (i.e. those in the $30K+ range) seemed to be based on extreme originality. This car didn't have that. While it was very free of rust and had been very nicely restored and had a nice, shiny-new paint job, there were a number of details that weren't OE (most notably, the ZX 5-speed transmission - also: Konig aftermarket wheels, lowering kit, PU bushing kit, overside front roll bar, black-crackle paint in the engine compartment, aftermarket aluminum rad, mishmash of engine hose types, screwed-in-place bare-metal replacement battery mounting frame). In addition, it was a crossover car that had a mixture of Series 1 (angled halfshafts, metal engine fan) and Series 2 (seats, steering wheel, console, no-vent hatch, etc). Don't get me wrong. I wish that my car was this nice. But this one seemed to violate some of the accepted rules for when a Z will move in value out of the low-mid 20's and into the 30's (and the very high 30's in this case). Does this sale mark the beginning of a new era of S30 pricing, or did the car just show up in the right place at the right time?

Thanks. I probably never would have gone down this path if you hadn't created this thread in the first place! I was thinking that the vent grills in my car would have the clips intact, but I'd never taken a close look until I read your write-up and became intrigued. When I finally got around to it, I discovered that the clips were missing altogether (the PO had done a lash-up job, which included two-sided tape to hold the chrome grills in place). And by the time all of this became known to me, you'd sold all of your clip sets and I had to look for other options. The main uncertainty was whether the clips really needed to be made from tempered steel to work properly. Based on my what I've learned, the answer seems to be, 'not really'. My torch-and-quench tempering scheme seems to have been adequate, helped by the fact that the forming process creates a bit of localized work-hardening around the bent areas. And then, the legs of the clips don't have to spread that much when the clip is being pushed into place. In answer to your question, it probably would take me 15 minutes to make a new clip. Side business? I'm guessing there's not more than another 50 customers left out there in Z-Land, so not enough in it to be worthwhile. Maybe someone else will be interested in taking it on, though.