Walter Moore

Ouch!!! Glad to hear that you made it through OK. Knowing what car accidents were like back in the 70's I am always worried about the risk of a major collision.

Both the hood, and the hinges have slots on one portion. You will need to loosen the mounting bolts for the hinges and lower the hinge to get the height to align properly. You didn't say if the hood is off center the whole way, or only at the top. My car had been in a small accident at some point, and I have to elongate the mounting slots in the hood to get sufficient movement to fully align the hood. Take your time and record your steps to keep from going into a "death spiral", but it is possible to make the hood fit properly.

Do you mean the section of the uni-body that goes under (or above) the radiator? Have you checked with a junk yard? They may be able to cut one out for you. Or check with the Z club in Cleveland to see if anyone there has a parts car that they would let you chop up. http://www.clevelandzclub.com/czc/

All that you need to know about NASCAR is that the record for the fastest qualifying speed in the history of that racing league was set by Bill Elliott at Talladega on April 30, 1987. (212.809) Yes, you read that correctly: NINETEEN EIGHTY SEVEN! That is before many of the current generation of drivers was even born. NASCAR today is a joke. There are street cars available now that could lap the field with ease.

The widely reported story at the time was that Joan Claybrook, who was the head of the NHTSA, believed that if the speedometer only went to 85 people would be more likely to obey the dreaded 55 mph national speed limit. You know, 55 is more than half of 85, so it looks similar to 70 on a 100mph speedometer... or some claptrap like that. Personally that was the era of my misspent youth, and I got even by keeping my 85 mph speedometer pegged as much as possible. (As my DMV history from the era shows...) Keeping up with traffic on most of the local interstates today, an 85mph speedometer would be nearly pegged most of the time.

I would think that a 77 would run fine on regular gas since the late 70's cars were made in an era when premium just wasn't available. In 77 most gas stations in the U.S. only sold two grades of fuel: 89 octane leaded, and 87 octane unleaded. My 71 on the other hand, with its E31 head, S130 electronic distributor, and functional vacuum advance, will ping like crazy when I try to hold a constant speed on the interstate in 5th gear if I have anything less than 92 octane in the tank.

a quarter inch seems like a long way, but the wheel cylinders do slide back and forth during operation. The cylinder is single sided. It presses against the front shoe, and the equal but opposite force pushes the cylinder backward into the rear shoe. I suspect that the pads on that side just aren't adjusted out far enough.

Cool... I just found out that one of my friends, who has been mysteriously missing from work this week, is at the Barrett Jackson auction this week. He said that he will bring back pictures of the Zs that were there. He mentioned the "Ferrari tribute" car. I can't wait to see the pictures.

Do you mean the emissions control charcoal canister in the engine compartment, or the vacuum advance dashpot on the distributor?

The first owner may not have done the conversion. Who knows what has been done to your car in the past 39 years? Can you even be sure how many different people have owned the car? The issue is less "Why was this done?" than "How do I make this work correctly?" Are the relays causing a problem?

I have the factory heat shield installed, and I have a Motorsport 3-2-1 header. I may have had to "tweek" the heat shield slightly (I honestly don't remember), but it fits fine. Why anyone would remove the heat shield with stock SUs is beyond me...

Buy one of these: http://www.harborfreight.com/catalogsearch/result?keyword=volt+meter measure the resistance of the ballast resistor with it disconnected from the car. It should have about 2 ohms of resistance, give or take.

1. Yes 2. No (But it would be a good time to replace the U-joints...) Search "5 speed" for more details. There are dozens of threads with details.

He says in his second post that he has a 4 speed. The FSM shows that only in the U.S. and Canada. It also shows the 5 speed with a 3.9 differential. I assume that he must have a car from North America. But there I go...

There are a lot of good wheels available for the Z right now that do not require spacers. I personally don't think that spacers or adapters are a good idea. However some people do use them, apparently with success. As far as the question of "stress" the centerline of the wheel would be the same with a custom wheel or a "proper" spacer/adapter so most of the suspension isn't going to be exposed to any force difference, except as follows: A spacer sits between the wheel and the mounting surface, and requires longer wheel studs. The studs will see more shear force when a spacer is used because the spacer doesn't carry any of the vertical load, and the wheel will be held in place only by the studs. Further, the vertical load will be at a distance from the mounting surface, creating a lever arm effect on the stud. Normally the wheel bore pilots on the hub (at least on the front wheels) which carries most of the vertical load. The studs are intended to just hold the wheel in place horizontally. An adapter has built in studs, and is bolted to the standard studs with thin lug nuts. Once the adapter is mounted the original studs are cut off flush with the adapter. Depending upon how they are designed, adapters could reduce the shear force on the wheel studs, but most don't. They nearly always raise an eccentricity concern relative to wheel mounting. You are at the mercy of the manufacturing tolerances of the adapter as far as whether or not the wheel ends up being mounted on center. The stock wheel stud circle and hub is never going to be perfectly concentric to the wheel bearings. Adding an adapter is almost guaranteed to exaggerate the small error that existed initially. My concern about shear forces on the wheel studs is based on the knowledge that the shear strength of any bolt is rarely more than about 10% of the force it has in tension. In my opinion, using wheel spacers, and potentially wheel adapters, in a high stress application like performance driving is asking for trouble. But others may disagree.

What he said... If you want performance go big. I rebuilt my original L24, and it runs great, but I have been trying to keep my car sort of "In period low dollar performance" themed. I have an L28 from an 83 ZX sitting the garage waiting, in case I ever decide to go for serious performance.

Merry Christmas!

When they say "Seal Everything" they mean everything. Strangely the "fix" that cured most of my exhaust smell issue I found by accident when I installed a new power antenna. There is a drain hose that comes out of the bottom of the antenna and goes through a grommet into the rear fender area. On my car that grommet was missing. Once the new antenna was installed with the drain line and a new grommet, the smell pretty much vanished. But by then I had replaced nearly every rear seal on the car, and switched to band clamp style exhaust clamps, so that was the last open hole in the car. The drain line comes out right by the muffler by the way.

The filter mesh is inside the block, just below where EGR pipe exits. It is near the front of the engine near the header/exhaust manifold.

A previous owner had already cut the transmission tunnel opening to adapt to a series B 4 speed. The center console was broken when I got the car, apparently from the PO shifting into 3rd. I "repaired" the console by cutting out the broken plastic section and installing a metal plate that filled in the broken area but was bent sufficiently to clear the shifter in 3rd and 5th. You have to use the later style shift boot because the opening ends up being too big for the early boot to seal, and as you noted the early boot bunches up at the front of the hole and causes the transmission to pop out of gear in 3rd and 5th. My comments earlier in this thread were directed at the original author, who had a 73, which came with a series B transmission to start with. Somewhere on this site there was a thread about a modified shifter that would adapt the series B transmissions to the early cars without all the hacking and chopping. It wasn't commercially available, and I don't think they gave exact dimensions, but it might be worth searching for before you start cutting things.

Hey everyone! I have deal for someone. At the 2011 Midwest Z show in the Chicago area I received a gift certificate from J&G Relining for a discount on relining the original drums from a first generation Z car. The specific vendor's site is here: http://jgrelining.com/ The Gift certificate entitles the bearer to "Reline 2 aluminum drums and get the 2nd. for 1/2 price." I assume that this is basically a 25% discount. See the image below: This subject was discussed in another thread: http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?37396-Anyone-interested-in-relined-Aluminum-drums Anyway, I would really like to know if this process works, but it will be years before I need new drums on my car. So here is the deal: I will GIVE this gift certificate to the first person who agrees to use it to get a pair of drums relined, AND report back to all of us how they turn out. Send me a Private Message if you are interested. I have only one certificate, and I will mail it to the first person who asks for it, provided they agree to report back the results. Merry Christmas!

Per my records the hardware kit is actually a Nissan part: 41080-N4425 It includes enough shims, pins, clips, etc for both front calipers. You should be able to order it from your local Nissan dealer. Whether that is faster than getting it from MSA depends upon where you are in the country. But with the local dealer there shouldn't be any shipping charges.

No, you only need one of the MSA kits. I made the same assumption and ended up with a spare kit. If I thought that I could find it I would offer to sent it to someone, but I misplaced the second kit long ago.

What you need are the shims that go behind the brake pads. They are included in the kit shown below, but you may be able to get them separately somewhere else: http://www.thezstore.com/page/TZS/PROD/SBC04/24-5301 I suspect that you can get the kit from your local Nissan dealer as well.

Ooooh, I like that color! If I ever have my car "Professionally" painted I may try to match that!.