Walter Moore

Be glad that the cover is a casting, (more or less) and is pretty rigid. The worthless sheet metal covers that they used to put on small block Chevys would warp if you looked at them too hard, and nearly always leaked.

Most tires have raised black letters. I believe that 5thhorsemann is suggesting that you highlight the existing lettering, not create your own. You could mask the edges of the lettering if necessary to produce a clean edge.

How does one get the October issue of a magazine in August? I drove to the nearest bookstore to get a copy and they only have the September issue on the rack. I guess that I will have to wait until next month. Oh well, I needed an excuse to drive the Z anyway. It had been sitting all lonely in the garage for over 24 hours...

I suspect that it is the ethanol that causes your problem. As for the author of the thread, there could be a lot of issues that contribute to "vapor lock" (which isn't accurate on a fuel injected car.) I suggest that you use the search function to look for threads about fuel injection and see if any of them relate to your specific issue. Most of the things that can go wrong with a fuel system on the Z have been discussed here many times.

I had never heard of "tire paint". That is an interesting idea. I looked around on the internet last night after reading this thread and the only tires that I could find with white lettering were B.F.Goodrich T/A radials, and http://www.cokertire.com/ who sells tires with both the T/A logo and a Firestone logo. The Firestone tire style may predate the 240Z by a few years. The way that tire companies made the raised white letters wasn't paint by the way. They are literally just like a whitewall tire. There is a thin layer of white "rubber" material molded into one sidewall. After the molding process they send the tire into a grinding machine (literally called a white sidewall grinder) to remove the outer black layer and expose the white materal underneath. At one time some companies would put the white materal into all tires of a particular size, and just not grind the tires that were ordered as blackwalls. Today since the white letters are out of style I doubt that anyone does that. I have always heard, but have seen no factual evidence to support it, that whitewall tires, and tires with raised white letters were weaker than tires made without the whitewall material inside. Certainly the sidewall with the white material is thicker, which may degrade its heat dissipation capability. The white letter tires are also likely to be slightly heaver than a tire that does not contain the extra decorative material. I suspect that as the whitewall/ white lettering went out of style, the tire companies have nearly all decided to save a few $ per tire and just skip the whole process. Personally, I have never cared for raised white letters on tires, but if you want them you might checkout the ones I listed above.

The site actually lists videos that he has made about cars, not the specific cars in his collection. Many of his videos are about other people's cars. And not all of his collection appears in his videos. For example he has a large collection of Bugatti cars, but only a couple have been featured in a video. He does have videos of two Nissan GTRs currently available on the site, so the statement that there are no Nissans is not accurate.

I didn't see any brake upgrades on the Techno Toy Tuning site. They seem to want to sell piece parts whereas the Arizona Z Car site wants to sell kits. It just depends upon what your objective is, and how much you want to spend. The Track-Pack is clearly intended for racing use. I assume you could use it on the street, but it might be a bone crusher on rough roads. On a side note, I wonder if those tension control rods on the Techno site would help with my car's high speed front-end steering shake...

I installed a sway bar kit from MSA over the winter, both front and rear in my 71 and I love it. I didn't have to weld anything, I just drilled holes in the floor and used the brackets that came with the kit. As for handling, the front bar is bigger than the rear, and the car still understeers when you are off the throttle. But you can kick the rear out with power. I suspect that if you only installed the front bar it would make the stock understeer worse.

This could be related to the running lean thing. I would fix that first.

I mistakenly put studs on my headlight buckets by drilling out the broken bolts, (which I thought were studs) tapping the holes for M6 threads, then screwing in stainless steel bolts from the backside and applying JBWeld to the threads up against the head. They hold really well, so well in fact that it wasn't worth the effort to take them out when I discovered that the headlight buckets aren't supposed to have studs.

Is a limited slip differential essential for drifting? I know that when I really get on the gas in a tight corner I get wheel spin from the inside wheel (I think) but I don't think it would sustain a drift for very long.

Thankfully you were not hurt. Cars in general weren't very safe when the 240Zs were new, and cars don't get safer with age. Could it be saved? I don't really know without seeing the condition of the unit body. Personally I doubt that I would try, particularly if I had to pay someone else to do all the work. (Which I assume is what you meant when you mentioned that you have medical issues that would preclude doing the work yourself.) But that is just my opinon.

Is 15% ethanol going to work any better in SUs? I don't know that it isn't possible to set them up for E15, but it seems like they would need bigger jets. E10 is already a pain. Anyway, back to the original subject: I am convinced that if you are going to go to the trouble of building or buying a stroker you may as well go "whole hog" as the locals say and go to a crank sensor ignition system and modern fuel injection. Triples were the hot ticket back in the day, but there are a lot better ways to make power now. Having two SUs to balance and setup is already a pain. Why would you want to make life even harder? I also strongly suspect that SUs aren't going to have all the power you want on a 3L+ stroker. (just a subjective guess...)

So, have you started the engine with your fuel injection system? It looks great. What kind of FI controller do you have?

Nice job! The car looks great. What is with the yellow headlights?

I have the stock heat shield installed over my header. Of course with the SUs, I don't know how you could not install the heat shield, since that is where the throttle return springs attach.

The Holley pump that I used has a red label on it (For what that is worth.) I mounted it back by the fuel tank, and have never had a problem with fuel spillage from the carbs. I assume that the return line must be working... I have electric fans that run off of a thermostat I installed in the carb heater line. I generally don't have any issues with vapor lock. I haven't driven the car much in 100+ degree F temperatures, but just because I don't like sitting in a pool of my own sweat.

Once I thought that I had oil leaking from the head gasket, but it turned out just to be that the intake/exhaust manifold fasteners were loose. The "Oil" was just unburned fuel and condensation that accumulated near the exhaust leak when the engine was cold. If you know already that you have an exhaust leak, I would try re-torquing the manifold nuts before I spent the time pulling the head.

I ended up having to drill the sheared off bolts out of the housing. I do not recommend that since the bolts are steel and the housing is aluminum. Before it was all over I bought a new housing here: http://www.thezstore.com/page/TZS/CTGY/SCC11 However I notice that you have a 73, and the site only lists 70-72 and 75-78. I don't know what 73-74 owners are supposed to do...

The "rear proportioning valve" on the early cars is essentially a hydraulic timer. It has a spring loaded cylinder that fills with fluid when you step on the brake pedal to delay the operation of the rear brake shoes. (giving time for the front brakes to engage first.) When you let off the brake pedal the spring pushes the fluid in the cylinder back towards the master cylinder to "reset" the time delay. By the way, these valves are NLA... The later cars (starting in 73 or 74) have a true proportioning valve in the engine compartment.

Yep, nice car but stupid driver... You will notice that he is driving in a straight line. (See the signature below.)

No, everyone expects a 240Z to be fast. This is a true sleeper:

I didn't know there was such a thing... Need to keep my eyes open because I LOVE sleeper station wagons. Oh, and nice Z you have there! Personally if I could find one that was in that condition and all original I would preserve it as is. It is only original once... But from what I have seen your cars are all nice, and it is your car now, so do what seems best to you.

I hope you have fun! I really enjoyed the two F1 races that I went to when the USGP was in Indianapolis. If you really want to see something cool however, watch them run in the rain. I never thought that I would see the day that there would be a pack of cars shooting "rooster tails" down the front stretch of the IMS track...

Ahem: "...never notice the 15-20% loss of efficency..." You do understand that he is in New Mexico, right? Since you already have the dash removed, this would be a great time to do this work. You can pick up a complete kit for around $1200, which is a lot less than the value of the car once you have it working. Personally I removed the dealer installed York compressor and air conditioning from my 71. (York peppermint patties are OK, but the compressors never worked.) But then around here we call 90 degrees F "Hot". I cannot image driving an un-airconditioned car when it is 110 F.