MikeW

By the way, when I was in high school my girlfriend's mother was his receptionist and I went to a race with him up at Roebling road. I was part of the pit crew. The car was a lightweight Formula D racer with a fiberglass body and a Renault engine. My duties on the pit crew involved important jobs like shoving a plastic milk crate under the car while the other guys were physically holding one end up in the air. This was all in the infield grass under an awning hanging off of an RV. Not exactly your NASCAR pit crew under the pressure of a stopwatch. To bring things slightly back on topic, this was before I even had my 240Z or knew what one was for that matter. I did take a picture of a 280ZX driven by a guy named Jim Fitzgerald. I had no idea who he was but someone had mentioned that he raced with Paul Newman and I had heard that name.

I think you'll find that average speed exactly corresponds to the elapsed time over a fixed distance. If you want some wiggle room you can claim that one car might not drive as straight and therefore had a higher average speed because he drove a longer distance to reach the same finish line. That would be the only case where average speed doesn't count.

I'm sorry but that's simply not correct. The dragster's finish speed was actually 332.34 mph but the average speed most certainly counts. The dragster did average 202 mph. That's what I was demonstrating. If the dragster averages more than the Corvette it wins. Less it loses. There are absolutely no "if's" here. This is the data used in the Corvette comparison which you posted. I can't find evidence of a newer record set since 2003. Here's a link to the raw data: http://www.nhra.com/2003/events/race18/index.html If you can demonstrate that my calculations are incorrect I'd be more than happy to admit I'm wrong.

I agree with Stephen. From the earlier thread that I posted it mentioned that the current world record for a top-fuel dragster was 4.441 seconds for the quarter mile. The following formula shows the average speed: There are 3600 seconds in an hour. 3600 / (4.44100 * 4) = 202.657059 mph average speed. Therefore, if the covette averaged exactly 200mph for the same quarter mile the dragster wins. However, it's very, very close. (3600 / 200mph) / 4 = 4.5sec As you can see, the dragster only wins this by 4.5 - 4.44100 = 0.059 sec During that 0.059 sec, the Vette, at exactly 200 mph only has to go a short distance to the finish line: ((200 * 5280) / 3600) * 0.059 = 17.3066667 The Vette only had to travel 17.3 more feet to reach the finish line. That's about one car length. There's no way that the dragster passed the Vette within 3 seconds as claimed. While that would be theoretically possible since we don't have an acceleration graph, I highly doubt it. For that to work, the dragster would have to accelerate to far more than 200 mph, pass the Vette at the 3 second mark, and then slow way down to 200mph or less in order to cross the finish line just 17 feet ahead more than a second later.

http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10152

That's what I'm thinking. I'd rather have something that looks just as good without the shortcomings. People will pay a lot of money for something just because it's rare and somehow special. For instance: http://www.cnn.com/US/9901/13/mcgwire.01/ Is this baseball really worth more than a brand new ball that hasn't even been used?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=4533217311&category=6187

Considering the apparent demand and the fact that tooling up for these is probably the biggest expense I would suggest just having a bunch of them made up. You can sell them one at a time on eBay if you want to even if it takes years to get rid of them all.

I would actually agree with this. It' s not so much that it's difficult to get proper color coverage with the engine in the car (after all there's plenty of room in the engine bay) but it's certainly a lot easier to prepare with the engine out. You could get yourself a chair and just sit in there with your paint prep tools. Preparation represents the bulk of the time painting a car. In my case it was about 6 weeks solid of prep work and less than a day to spray it.

I had my engine bay painted without removing the engine. The painter did pull back all of the wires and remove accessories mounted to the bay. Most people who've seen it are surprised that it was done without pulling the engine.

Assuming that you're planning on going with an original color, one of our members here put together the following page showing all of the colors: http://www.datsunprojects.org/zpaintcodes/ If you're not considering an original color you might want to just browse through the member galleries here to find colors that you might like on a Z.

I don't think getting a fair price will be a problem considering that a number of people here have already expressed a keen interest in the car and are the kinds of people who would, in fact, attempt a proper restoration. That's what I would call a good home. As others have mentioned, finding proper parts for the earliest Z cars can be a real problem. Trying to restore your car here in the US will be even more difficult given the fact that it's a JDM RHD car (those parts just aren't available here like they would be in Japan) and that fact that RHD cars we produced in smaller numbers in general. I may well be wrong here but I'm assuming that the overall parts supply is directly proportional to the number of cars produced of a given model and with older cars being more difficult to source than newer cars. Also, notice that member "kats" is doing a very thorough restoration of a LHD car in Japan and has access to many of the original Nissan executives. Even he is having difficulty finding certain "proper" parts: http://www.geocities.jp/datsunz903/working.html

Well, that may be what Carl is willing to pay so that's what it's worth to him. Some might be willing to pay more; others less. Perhaps the best way to determine a true market value of something is to just put it on eBay and see how high people are willing to go. Your second sentence above seems intended to provoke a reaction out of people. It's your car and you are free to do with it as you like.

I wouldn't necessarily consider the title to be authoritative. For instance, the title on my car lists it as a 4-cylinder. I suspect some ignorant DMV worker just assumed that because it was a Japanese car. The fact that your car has a specific VIN and a specific manufacture date is good enough. After all the so-called year of the car is somewhat arbitrary. We know that there were overlaps during the transition periods between model year.

From the outside the only visible difference is that the bumpers on a '73 stick out a little farther and have a black spacer between them and the body. Internally the big change in '73 was the "flat top" carburetors.

Here's an even better idea from MSA: http://www.zcarparts.com/store/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=10-2069 I suppose someone could ask them what it's for ...

As I mentioned in a previous post my local auto paint shop carries a selection of fasteners as might be required by auto body shops. I went ahead and ordered a box of rivets that were listed as applying to Nissan and appeared to be a close match to what we require. I'm not sure which models these were used in but I'm guessing that Nissan learned a lesson and came up with a better alternative. As you can see in the attached picture these use a plastic screw with a phillipps head instead of the smooth push pin. While the head is slightly larger that's not really a problem. The barrel part is slightly too big which makes for a tight fit. A box of 25 of these was under $10. MSA lists the original rivets at 10 for $6.50 and people seem to often pay far more than that on eBay.

What makes are you seeing a lot of? We obviously see a lot of Kia and Hyundai in the states and I've seen Daewoo (and actually driven a rental) in Europe.

There is almost always rust under the tar mat. If you really don't have rust please post some pictures of your floor pans.

We've discussed this here several times - both for wheels and other components such as valve covers. Do a search for "sandpaper polish".

No, you get one attempt to vote for as many items you want to choose.

In addition to the previous advice I found that a wet/dry vac is very useful when working on the inside. Several of the POR15 steps require rinsing with water and a wet /dry vacuum will get most of it out in a hurry. There's also a lot of other debris that comes out with it. I know that this thread was started talking about the underside of the floor pans but to do it right you really have to treat it on both sides. If there's rust at all under the undercoating there's going to be rust under the tar mat.

Just a quick clarification: it's very important to install the stainless trim in the seal before installing the windshield/seal back in the car. It's virtually impossible to do later.

I didn't see any italics at first but now I do. It appears that the options you voted for are shown in italics.

There are more than likely screws or rivets holding them on. You can easily verify this by removing the black rubber part from the silver channel. The fasteners will then be visible and if you then decide not to remove them you can just re-install the black part.