Jonu

I know it's been forever and a day since I posted an update. since the last time I updated, I dropped the car off at a car shop before my last deployment. Progress has been slow but I'm ok with that since I know once it is finished, the frame and body will be good for quite sometime. First they pulled the car apart and media blasted it down to the metal. They then fixed the few little spots of rust. They said that it was the best car they had seen come through with only a couple of half dollar sized spots in the drivers foot well that were rusted through. All the rest of the rust was only surface rust. I was able to stop by on Monday and we talked about how I wanted it painted. I told them I was wanting to go with the factory metallic blue that it was originally painted with white side stripes. They ordered up a 4 oz. sample and sprayed a sample card with primer first then the paint and a clear coat so I could see how it would look. It seemed a little darker before it dried, but since it's done nothing but rain all week I haven't had a chance to get it in sunlight to see how it looks. At the moment I'm thinking I'll ask them to darken it up a couple of shades. Anyways, here is a picture of how the car currently sits and a horrible picture of what the paint looks like (it doesn't even look blue, I think the white balance was off). I've also bought all the necessary parts to convert it from an auto to manual, the MSD 40th anniversary ignition, and will be getting a Mallory Unilite distributor in a month or so. Only reason I got the anniversary ignition is due to it having the original MSD logo so that at first glance it looks like something from the 70s.

Thanks for the heads up guys. I just did a google search on the site and this is what I came up with first (didn't have time to look at others since internet is so slow here). I'll look at some of the other results once they finish loading again. (intermittent internet ftw!)

I know I've brought this back from the long since dead, but I just want to make sure I get this right before a drop a bit of money. I've already got the MSD 6AL and was planning on just using a pertronix until I realized that it won't drop in to the Auto dizzy. So I figure I'll just get the mallory unilite w/ mechanical advance since I plan on going to triples sometime shortly after I return from deployment. According to what I read I will need the Unilite Dizzy pn: 4563901, MSD Tach adapter pn: 8910, and I've also got the MSD Blaster 2 coil. How can I determine what the proper ballast resistor would be or should I just follow the instructions that are on the Mallory Website? Here is a link to their instructions, Figure 4 is definitely the one that applies for me. From my understanding, according to figure 4 I don't need the ballast resistor, is this correct?

You have a PM

Well, it's been a while since i posted any updates on my car so here is a quick rundown of what has been going on since the last post. I di end up getting new lines for the fuels system, although I never was able to get a chance to get them bent up. I bought 20' of both sizes since I wanted some extra to practice on. Then in December I towed it home while I was on block leave. While I was home I dropped it off at a shop to get it stripped to the frame, media blasted and reassembled. I want to do some performance mods, but my first priority was to make sure any and all rust that may have been on the car was taken care of. The guys at the shop were pretty impressed with the condition of the car and said it was probably the best looking 240 that they had a chance to work on. Since I left it there, it has been stripped down and been media blasted. It is now having the body work done (having a front air dam and BRE style spoiler added on) and should be ready for paint pretty soon. It is going to be painted the original blue metallic and assuming I can find the pieces, will be swapped over to a 4 speed manual. A lot of guys in my platoon give me crap for not going with a 5 speed, but I'm trying to keep it pretty close to period correct. Hopefully I can get some pictures soon. The internet here isn't to good so I'm going to have the pictures they have taken sent to me on CD. Then I can resize them and get them posted up. Can't wait to get home and see how she looks!!

So if you aren't worried about emissions, you could rip all that stuff out and just plug the vent tube @ the tank?

The car inspection is no joke. Not sure if you already have it there or not, but it will have to pass a noise test. IIRC it needs to be less than 92 dB. You should also make sure that all safety equipment is working properly (i.e. seatbelts, lights, brakes). I know they also have a limit on how far out wheels can be from the fender, i don't remember what it is, though i think it may be that they can't protrude at all. Good luck and have a blast driving over there!

So I think I'm slowly getting everything working now. I have a new question. I was compiling a list of parts to swap out the existing auto to a manual. I have located a 280Z that I can get the transmission from. At first I was going to just get what i need to get the transmission in the car and working, but now I'm wondering if it would be worth it to take out the whole drivetrain from the transmission all the way to the half shafts. Do you guys think this would be worth the time, work, and money to get the rest of the drivetrain or would it not make much of a difference?

Looks great!! out of curiosity where did you get the fender mirrors?

Well, this is moving a bit slower than I expected but I'm steadily making progress and hopefully the pace will start picking up now. I ended up pulling the fuel tank out and took it to a radiator shop to have it cleaned out. They ended up stripping it to bare metal on the outside, cut it open and cleaned it out then welded it back together. It is now coated and they also repainted the outside black. I also just ordered a new fuel level sending unit w/ gasket and lock ring, headlights w/ gaskets, and a new hood release knob since the original one decided to break on me. All that should be here by Tuesday and I plan on having everything on the car by Thursday. Tomorrow I'm going to hit up the auto parts stores to find some hard lines that I can use to bend up new hardlines to replace the original fuel lines running from the tank to the engine bay.

So I'm a bit stumped with what to do about replacing the transmission oil cooler lines. I've checked Courtesy Nissan, MSA, as well as trying a google search with no success. Is this something I will need to assemble myself? I figure it shouldn't be to hard for me to do. I think the hardest part would be finding the proper threaded fitting. I'm also thinking that if I have to make these lines myself I might as well make them with some SS braided lines. Still trying to figure out what's wrong with the head lights and turn signals, I think I will be looking for a good piece of wire and try bypassing the circuit to see if the turn signals work then.

So today was supposed to be the big day that one of my friends and his Dad were going to come over and help me tune the carbs. Unfortunately that got pushed back. First thing I did today was go and buy a 5 gallon fuel can. While there I ended up buying new nuts and lock washers for the carbs as well as new hose clamps for the radiator hoses. When I got back I changed out all the hardware and decided to redo the gaskets for the floats. I figured I could do better than the original ones i made. Two hours later and I had two new gaskets that I was happy with. I then called my friend to let him know I was ready for them to look things over and try to start it up. While they were making sure the carbs were working propperly (they were a bit tight) I topped off the coolant and poured in the gas. Then we connected the battery to see what would happen. Then nothing happened, you could hear the electric pump whirring away but there was no fuel getting to the filter. After noticing and correcting a few minor things we went back and looked at the pump and found that there was no fuel line connecting the pump to the tank. Fortunately I had some fuel line on hand and we were able to take care of that. The next attempt was just as unlucky as the first tries. We decided that what had happened was that the fuel lines were clogged somewhere. So I went to get a little more gas so we could fill the float bowls and see if it would start that way. After filling the floats, we reconnected the battery and gave it a try, and it started up on the very first crank!!! It was idling and sounded to be in pretty good mechanical shape. Granted a lot of dust went flying at first since it had been sitting for so long nothing seemed wrong with it. Thats when we noticed that the transmission i thought was empty started spewing fluids. So we cut the engine off and I proceeded to clean the mess I made. I had forgotten to reconnect the oil cooler lines and while cleaning up the resulting mess I noticed it wouldn't have mattered if the were connected because both lines are dry rotted. One actually fell off when i bumped it while cleaning the mess. But I now know that the engine does run, there was no smoke out the tail pipe, no pinging, no metalic clicking, and when I checked the radiator to see if it needed more fluid, there was no sign of oil. While I'm a bit disappointed that we couldn't start it using the tank and that I missed fairly easy to notice things, I'm happy to know that my engine appears to be in good mechanical shape.

Well, last few days have been slow. I've been dead tired after being in 100 degree heat all day at work, but today I got off early and started trying to figure out my lighting issues. The first thing I did was reinstall the T/S switch and combo switch. I then hooked it up the battery terminals to my truck for power. I then checked my combo switch and T/S switch for power. I found that I was getting full power to the combo switch and none for the T/S switch. After seeing that i decided I would check for power at the headlights. As I was pulling the headlights I noticed my side markers, and the rear combo lights were all on as they should be. The turn signal lights were on as well, but the still only work when the 4 ways are on. I ended up pulling out the plug for the headlights and checking for power at the connector. I found that on the driver side there was no voltage and on the passenger side it had .65 volts. I ran out of light about then so I packed everything up and picked up my newest item to help me for this problem. I found a high quality .tiff file for the wiring schematic on this site (through google) and had Kinkos print up a nice big 18"x24" Laminated printout so i can trace the wires with wet erase markers. I've traced out all the wires but I'm stuck trying to follow the wires through the combo/turn signal/hazard switch. I'm hoping i can figure this out soon. I'm thinking my headlight problem is a bad ground and the turn signal may be a bad switch since those lights are working.

Thanks for the suggestion Zed. I'm going to reinstall the switches tomorrow after work and connect my truck up to check the power. I got to looking at the wiring digram some more and it definitely appears that there is a fusible link just after the starter motor. It is on a line that runs from just after the starter motor and appear that it supplies power to the fuse block, the Ahm meter, and the voltage regulator. I'm thinking that if that link is bad it might be what is throwing everything else off. I'm going to start drawing up a schematic of the head lights from the FSM on paper and see if I can make some sense of it. Thanks again for the help.

I believe so, I Have the ground from the battery going to both the starter as well as a smaller wire that runs to the firewall right next to the battery. I'll have to go back out and check it later today to look at the rest. But now that you mention it, the starter doesn't seem all that strong even with a freshly charged battery in place and jumper cables coming from my truck. I'll post back what i find out, would be awesome to find the culprit in an easy to access area.