Walter Moore

You mean one like this? I don't have any spare ones. They are apparently somewhat hard to get. There is one guy in our local club who keeps his at home and never puts them on the car, just to prevent losing them.

By the way, I have had problems with the fuse clips getting loose and having too much voltage drop in between the fuse and the clip. This can cause all sorts of strange and difficult to diagnose electrical gremlins. It is also the reason that you see so many early Z's with melted fuse boxes. Motorsports Auto, among others I suspect, sells a replacement fuse box. Personally, I just used small Ty-wraps around the base of the fuse clips to increase the clamping force on the fuse. It is a good temporary fix, but it does mean you need needle-nose pliers to remove and insert fuses. (Disconnect the battery before trying to install the wire-ties, or sparks may fly.)

Ah, but if some part of the circuit that the ignition depends upon is partially shorted to the wiring for the low beams or high beams,(either a Red/Black, or Red/White wire. The schematic isn't clear to me.) then "turning on" the headlights would pull the voltage to the ignition circuit to ground, and the car would stop running.

I have had radiators where the filler neck, or whatever you call it, was bent down or dented and the cap would not seal completely when the system reached full pressure. I have seen people use the cardboard trick, but it always worried me that I might forget and end up overheating the car. Besides of the 20+ cars I have owned, I never had one that needed a SMALLER radiator, even when it was bone chillingly cold. If the thermostat is working the radiator size is irrelevant in cold weather.

But how would you get the bikinis on baby chickens?

By my thumbnail calculations the maximum safe offset for a 205 on the front of an S30 is about 20mm. What is missing here is the type of wheels that are giving luke002 trouble.

Apparently the "correct" speedometer gear depends upon both the differential and the speedometer. The factory service manual for the 1971 240Z shows a 17 tooth gear for the 3.364 differential and a 19 tooth gear for the 3.9 differential. The P.O. of my car had installed a 16 tooth gear when they put the series B transmission in it, and the speedometer was way off. After checking the FSM I bought and installed a 17 tooth gear, which brought it back into calibration.

This is always a difficult and divisive question. The answer depends upon what you intend to do with the car after you buy it. If you just want a Z to thrash around, then so long as the unit body is mostly solid, and it runs, it is worth the money to patch it up. Just understand that you will never get back what you put into this car. (Translation, don't put more money into it than you can afford to lose.) If you are looking for a car to "restore" to "like new" condition and take to shows, this isn't the car that you want to use as a starting point.

Hello. Always good to hear from another owner of a 71. But I hate it when people ask me if I bought my car new... I was only 10 when my car was made. (And there were no Nissan dealerships in this town back then.) I must look older than my age. I blame the kids for giving me gray hair in my beard.

I'm going to open myself up to ridicule here, but I looked at the FSM for the 83 S130, which you can download here: http://www.xenons130.com/ I don't see anything that looks like power seat motors in the wiring diagram. Admittedly, the PDF is really hard to read. There may be something there that I am missing. Hopefully someone here who has an S130 will tell us if they were available with power seats. That was a pretty unusual option on "sports cars" in 1983.

Good job Steve.

You were running an INR of 7.5?!!!! :surprised WOW, just WOW I have been taking Coumadin since July of 1991 and I have never had a reading that high. Because of the artificial valve in my heart I am supposed to keep my INR between 2.5 and 3.5 but when it gets up above 3.0 most dentists don't want to touch me. (You should have heard the scolding that I got from my doctor when he found out that I had been working on my roof... ) :stupid: I will add you to my prayer list. Take it easy for a few days until the INR gets back down to where it is supposed to be. Wow...

My "chrome" was all worn off and displaying the blue plastic underneath. I just painted it silver with a brush, but my car is not, and never will be a show winner, so my methods may not be appropriate for you.

I used the 4 speed shift lever when I installed the 83 ZX transmission (5 speed) in my 71, with no issues. Try that first, before bending your 5 speed shift lever.

I hooked a battery charger up to my Z and measured the exhaust pipe to verify that it really is 2 1/2 inch pipe. Then I ordered a glass pack muffler and band clamps from Summit Racing so I can splice in my own "resonator" to cut down on the drone at highway speeds. Other than that, there isn't much I am willing to do with the car on the ice, snow, and salt encrusted streets around here. ;-(

I know that when you enlarge the hole in the transmission tunnel on an early car to install the later "B" series transmissions you have to use the later inner shift boot because the hole is too large for the early boot. Be careful about drilling holes around the opening however because the fuel and brake lines run right next to the opening on the passenger (right) side of the tunnel. I ended up just using heavy clear tape (long term storage tape) on the right side of the boot. I drilled holes at the front and rear of the opening where it was safe.

Actually it has both a larger bore and longer stroke. The L24 and L26 share pistons, and the L26 and L28 share crankshafts. Either way, to get to 200+HP you need to talk to someone like Rebelo who can pump up the engine a lot. (and bring money.)

The synchronizers in the transmissions are brass or bronze and they tend to wear out. They are also susceptible to damage from using the wrong gear oil. (GL-5 has too much sulfur for "yellow metals".) You could try draining and re-filling your transmission with Redline MT-90. If some one has put the wrong lube in the transmission the Redline will help significantly, but if the syncros are truly worn out you are probably looking at a rebuild or swap from a parts car. By the way, the 83 transmission is considered by many to be the most desirable. Just something to keep in mind.

Yep, the one on the upper right hand corner, where the empty clamp is located. But I am sure Zedyone_kenobi was just showing the picture as a reference.

Could the holes be from an after market wing that was installed by a previous owner?

You can also check for leaks by spraying carb cleaner on various fittings and gasket surfaces around the intake. When you spray the cleaner on the leak it will be sucked into the intake and the engine will suddenly run "differently". It may die. It may stumble. It may surge. But whatever it does it will change, and that will allow you to identify the source of the leak.

Looks good. Just curious, what model of Pirelli are those tires?

Didn't the Skylark have an aluminum block V8? There was a guy I saw somewhere who was trying to install a V8 from a Range Rover into his Z. I thought those engines were similar at one time. (Perhaps not so much today however...) Anyway, G.M. used to have different transmissions for Chevy engines then everything else they made, so that could be an issue with putting a Buick engine in your Z. All the kits are made for the Chevrolet parts.

Without a catalytic converter the air reactor is mostly just window dressing. I have searched and never been able to find any reputable source that can document that the things did anything meaningful to reduce emissions. (Other than dilute the exhaust with fresh air to give the appearance of doing SOMETHING about air pollution.) Not all cars from that era even had an air reactor pump. (All Z's apparently did, but I personally owned three other early 70's cars that came from the factory without this oddity.) On the other hand, they were pulled off and thrown away with such abandon that they may be collector's items. You may want to hang on to it as a conversation piece. The air reactor on my car was missing when I bought the car, and I wouldn't even know where to find one if I wanted to replace it.

So, in five years our cars start the transition from classic to antique... It is hard not to take that personally. Oh, having owned a 72 Pinto I feel obliged to point out that while it was indeed one of the WORST cars ever mass produced in the U.S., the primary thing that caused them to "go BOOM" was being hit from behind by a much larger vehicle travelling at a substantially higher speed. Having removed and re-installed the gas tank in my 71 240Z I personally doubt that it would fare much better than a Pinto if it was struck from behind by a full sized van travelling in excess of 80 MPH while it was sitting at a stop light. (which I recall being the nature of the accident that was the genesis of the law suit that gave the Pinto the reputation of being a death trap.)