Carl Beck

Interesting article in the Nov. Classic Motorsports Magazine, on their Z Car project. Engine rebuilt by Sunbelt Performance, Balanced Performance Motorsports and John Williams in Atlanta, GA. Stock L24 started at 134 HP at the rear wheels... and 169 HP after the rebuild.... FWIW, Carl B.

I agree with the recommendation to replace the studs when you have the intake/exhaust manifolds off. With water cooling running through the aluminum head - I would not recommend using Stainless Steel studs. Far less electrolysis, corrosion of the studs and galling will occur using the Cadmium plated steel studs from Nissan. The Cad. plating is a sacrificial coating, so new studs with their full depth of coating should always be used... and old studs that have given up their coatings should be discarded before they corrode. FWIW, Carl B.

The Fuel Injection System on the 280Z/280ZX's were put there by the factory to meet the US Emissions Standards. They are analog (ie hard wired) systems, and the only way to "tune" them is by feeding false signals from the sensors they use. By todays standards they are historic junk... Making the situation even worse - call your local Nissan Dealers Parts Dept. - and price a new set of Nissan Injectors...CARZY!!! If you feel at home with Fuel Injection Systems in todays digital world... by all means look into what is available in the aftermarket... Todays F.I. systems are very "tuneable" and a way of overcoming the limitations of the tapered metering rod's in the S.U.'s.. Visit hybridz.org and go from there... lots of guys have installed various F.I. systems on the older in-line sixes - to yield great results. good luck, Carl B.

Because I said; "In the case of our DATSUN 240-Z's ....." I could have said; "In the case of the Datsun 280-Z's.." the "H" stands for the 2.8L engine.... but wasn't thinking along that line at the time... Why Nissan used "R" for the 2.6L in the 260-Z, then reverted to the "H" for the 280-Z's.... we'll most likely never know ;-) FWIW, Carl B.

Hi Bryan: Wrong - VIN's existed before 1980. They were simply "standardized" in 1980 and the new standards included more information, that both the government and consumer groups wanted to see related to each vehicle. The "VIN" was required to be visible, from outside the car for all 1969 Model Year cars sold in the USA. (check the dash of any 69 Model Year car sold here in the USA). In the case of our DATSUN 240-Z's the complete VIN is comprised of two parts. Vehicle Identification Number = Car Model Information + Chassis Number HLS30 XXxxx H= 2.4L engine L = Left Hand Drive S30=Sport Coupe XXxxxx = the chassis serial number for that model FWIW, Carl B.

Hi Chris; Is there a page missing? the article seems to start in the middle.. thanks, Carl B.

Hi Michael: Well it's about time!! ;-) Great photo's and it's easy to see that a lot of elbow grease along with a lot of money has gone into that 280Z. It's got to draw a crowd where-ever you take it. Hope you have a few weeks of good weather to enjoy it before the ice and snow come... regards, Carl B.

Hi Warren: Good to hear that you got your 240-Z back. The pictures look great.. Now the real fun begins... Having the car there with it's finished body and paint work gives you an incentive to devote more time to the project; and every bag of old parts you open, clean, refresh/restore and get back on the car yields a great deal of personal pleasure during the process, and satisfaction upon completion. Personally, I'd refresh/restore a lot more cars if I didn't have to deal with getting the body and paint work done... Keep us posted with your progress on the project.. Carl B.

Not quite what you said - - from the comments that followed Post #7 it still seemed to me that it would be helpful if people knew both the starting number as well as the ending number, along with the starting and ending months of production. Just wanted to add some information... FWIW, Carl B.

Just my opinion.... Failure to sell the car - at this point in time - isn't about the price of the car at all. About the SALESMAN: The reason the car isn't selling - is because you are failing to "Sell It". The pictures you Posted with your Ad - are tuning prospective buyers off before they go any farther. Drag that car out of that dark, dingy garage, clean/polish the chrome, stainless and especially the tail lights... Don't "detail" it, don't gloss anything over - just clean things up with soap and water!! (shinny chrome on the tail lights would be worth $500.00).. Show it as it really is - not at its worst. THEN - take clear pictures of the important details, to both Post in an Ad. - and Send to prospective buyers. You know enough about the Z's to know what details prospective buyers want to see - if you don't show them, buyers will know that your description is most likely BS - - and that your trying to hid major flaws in the car with crummy pictures (that's just the way it works isn't it?). Put the car up on a lift - pay a shop to put it in the air for you - and take good pictures of the floorboards and frame rails. Pull the carpets and take good pictures of the floorboards from inside the car. That will help confirm or dispel the talk here about hidden rust issues there etc. I can see rust spots on the rear bumper - are the bumpers rusting through from the inside out? Can you poke a screwdriver through these spots? Are the bumpers dented, twisted? Show clear pictures if you expect to get many calls about the car... (bumpers are VERY expensive now), and if they are rusted through - you can't do anything with them except throw them in the trash... Anyone can see that at least the rear of the car was re-sprayed.. and a sloppy job at that.. so show clear pictures of the inside of the rear panels - so we can see they aren't crumpled, and with bondo sticking through... You have to show off-sets - for every flaw that shows... Bottom line is - show everything clearly, don't hid anything... the right buyer will accept a few flaws in a 37 year old car.. About the Buyer: The car would sell to the people looking for a 240-Z, that they want to refresh or restore themselves. They want to do it themselves because they like the hobby (enjoy the process of restoring a classic), or they want to know that everything has been done the way they want it done. That person loves the Datsun 240-Z's, either has one or more, or has wanted one for a long time. $3K, $4K, $5K won't matter a hoot to the person above - they just don't care about a couple thousand dollars one way or the other - when they find the car they want to start their project with. They know it's going to take a couple years and $20K + to get the car the way they want it - because they have researched the subject, have friends that had done the whole nine-yards etc The have the money and they can easily afford to do what they want... There are a lot of potential buyers that fit the above description out there - but you have to do far more work in presenting the car to them. They aren't bargain hunters, they aren't thinking of building a driver, they are a completely different group than that. They are the people however that have been driving the price of "restorable" vehicles up over the past couple years... About the Car: I agree with you - a Series I, 240-Z, with a crack free, perfect dash (which you completely fail to show clear detail pictures of), with less than 60K miles, in unmolested condition - should sell easily for $3,500.00 to $4,500.00 on the East Cost... The problem is, you aren't really "showing" anyone "that" car. You have described it, but your pictures do not at this point, match your description as far as any prospective buyers are concerned... rather the pictures you have simply raise suspicions ....(as you can see from many of the comments here - I hope). On the other hand: If the floorboards and frame rails ARE rusted to the point of needing replacement, if the rockers are really much worse that expected... if the damage to the rear panels are more extensive than expected... it's a $1,500.00 to $2,000.00 car in non-running condition, and it isn't the car that the buyer I outlined above, is looking for - he wouldn't buy it at any price... FWIW - as I said, just my take on the situation... good luck, Carl B.

According to one factory document: Aug. 1977 thru June 78 HLS30 420001 - 470009 So 470009 should be the last 280Z produced (but I wouldn't bet too much money on that) FWIW, Carl B.

Hi Pete: Thanks - I hope you guys in that area realize how lucky you are to have a resource like John anywhere close to you. Great guy, loves the 240-Z's and there isn't anything he can't do, or hasn't done a hundred times already. Very reasonable shop prices for first class work as well. Not to mention a very competitive driver... I usually try to make it up to Atlanta for the ARRC, but this year it conflicted with a local Concours event I had earlier committed to attend. Also it conflicted with the Historic's at Daytona... Sure wish these event organizers of major events would coordinate a little better here in the South East at least. FWIW, Carl B.

Seems to have shown up here full size.... looks great... What happened to John Williams? Carl B.

Hi Shane: You'll have to look for a little more information on the car and let us know what you find. 1. Look at the side of the engine block - just below the #5/#6 spark plug's -you should see to flat pads cast into the block - and on them you should see L26 (if it's a 260Z) or L20 if it is a 2.0 Liter Fairlady Z.. on the second pad is the serial number of the engine. 2. Look on the firewall - just below the drip rail, where the hood closes down.. Stamped into the firewall should be some letters and numbers... sometimes you have to clean the dirt off to see them. You should see something like "GS30 xxxxxx or GS301 xxxx"... 3. On the data tag, that is under the hood, screwed to the shock tower - on one line or another.. you should be able to see "L20-xxx" or " L20E xxxxxx" or "L26 xxxxxx" stamped into the metal somewhere... Of course digital pictures will help a lot too - if you have a digital camera, up load a few pictures showing the engine, interior details etc... Whatever it is - I'm sure you'll have lot of fun with it... FWIW, Carl B.

If you can't tell the difference - why put them on the car? Just build a double glass sided display case and keep the solid core's for display/conversation pieces. Put the hollow core's on the car. Both my "DATSUN" scripts from the decklid, are hollow from #20 and #587... The 240Z Scripts from the quarter panels are solid, and the 240Z script from the trunk lid is hollow (only have one, and it's not from either car) I don't recall ever seeing a solid DATSUN script from the decklid... neat... I'd keep it for display.. FWIW, Carl B.

I'm still at 10.3.9... yes I have the Flash Player. All other video's everywhere else load and play (u-tube, xxx etc)... FWIW, Carl

These recent "click here to play video" things..... doesn't seem to work for me. When I click there - I just get a page with a lot of white space, and some advertising... I'm useing Firefox on a Mac... Carl B.

Hi Fred: I had something like that on my Christmas list too - so I decided to buy it for myself now. I ask a few people about current digital camera's, then did as much research as I could on the Web... wound up buying the Nikon D40x... although the Cannon offering was also highly recommended. I bought a Nikon CoolPix 950 about five or six years ago, and it is a pretty good camera still today... so thought I'd just stick with Nikon. You know how to use a good camera, and I have one that I don't know how to use... so we'll have to spend some time together. At the present time all I can do is point and shoot... on the fully automatic settings.. My wife tells me I need to learn how to stage the settings and pay attention to composition first - then worry about the quality of the photo itself .... (she's usually right)... Here's a shot from Jim's back yard..(of course all you can see is the low res. version on computer screen). The St. Pete Yacht Club's show runs from registration between 8:30 and 10:30AM - then the show runs till 3:00PM... with awards directly following. Their Web Site is: http://www.spyc.org/ Just hit the "EVENTS" tab... FWIW, Carl B.

Hi Fred: What for example would you consider a decent camera to be? I'd say the pictures taken with the camera you used - most likely would have turned out even better, if you catch the Sun at the right time of day... and/or have the car in a better orientation to the light source... {not easy to do in Florida this time of year...} The Z looks great... adding the Aero/Ground effects kit makes the car look much sleeker.. There is a good classic car show at the St. Petersburg Yacht Club this Sunday... right down town just North of the Pier. It's held in the Park just North of the Club.. very nice setting, lots of very nice people.. A few of us will be there... come on over... FWIW, Carl

You mentioned "a shop" but I doubt anyone, myself included, has any idea of what that means. A Body Shop, a Tire Shop, a Plating Shop, an Upholstery Shop?.... you'll need them all to refresh or restore a 240-Z. Does "no running engine" mean that the original engine is still with the car, but in non-running condition, or does it mean that the original engine is no longer with the car? A money pit with no real return?... Depends on what you paid for it to begin with, and how much of the original car you can refresh and reuse. Then it depends on the quality of the work done, the location into which you try to sell it and how much time/effort you are willing to put into advertising, promoting, showing and selling. If you can pick up a clean body shell for around a grand, if you keep close track of a rebuild budget, shop for price on everything you need to buy and do a bang-up job on the paint/body work.. A 240-Z with a good running L28 (non turbo) could easily bring $5,500.00 to $6,500.00... With a good running L28 ET (turbo) you might find a buyer with the cash at $8,500.00 (but it gets harder to find them) To make a project like that work out - you almost have to have a shop that specializes in 240-Z's. Where you would have lots of spare parts cars to draw from, known vendors to supply parts you still need at wholesale pricing, and perhaps other friends with which speciality work could be traded. Given the time and effort involved, given the expense involved... you might make a small profit, but it is unlikely to justify your time. On the other hand - if it is used to promote the business and your skills -it is at least tax deductible and most of the return would be in personal satisfaction and ownership fun anyway. FWIW, Carl B.

Timing is everything. Had you bought a very clean 240-Z 10 years ago, you would have had to pay around $3,500.00 to $4,500.00. That would have bought you a one owner, mostly rust free, mostly original 240-Z with less than 60K miles. One which still had it's original factory paint in good shape, shinny bumpers and trim and a clean interior. Had you taken that car completely apart - and preformed a correct restoration, putting it back to "as it left the factory" condition - - doing most of the grunt work yourself, and farming operations like paint and body work out to professionals - - you would most likely have spent in the neighborhood of an additional $10K to $12K. With $13.5K to $16.5K cash in the car - it would sell for between $20K and $25K today, if it had been maintained in freshly restored condition. At that point, you could have owned and enjoyed the car for 10 years, had fun doing the restoration and sold it for more than you had in it. Making a $3,500.00 to $8,500.00 gross profit. (net is a different story however, when you take insurance, storage costs, license fees etc into consideration) Alternatively - if you had just keep the car in the same or slightly better condition than you found it in - today it would sell for $7,500.00 to $9,500.00 perhaps more... While you can still find clean, mostly rust free, one owner 240-Z's that have had great loving care their entire life; and which still have less than 75K miles... for $9,500.00 or so ... The cost of restoration is now about two to three times as much as it would have been 10 years ago. Most paint and body work has doubled and most of the needed replacement parts are three to four times as much. (very limited supply at a time when demand is at its greatest). To do a #1 or #2 condition restoration today, when it's all said and done, will cost at least $20K and it's pretty easy to spend $30K. Nonetheless, 10 years from now, a Pure Stock, perfectly restored Datsun 240-Z could easily be selling for $40K to $50K. Modify it, with an L28, drill holes to mount the fender flairs... paint it a non-stock color etc etc... and the market value will most likely be less than a third of a pure stock example. Lose the original matching number L24 and it would most likely bring even less. The best buy in todays market is the #1 or #2 example you can buy for $18K to $23K... You can't begin to restore one today, to that condition for less than twice the price. Second best buy is the clean, mostly rust free, one owner car - that has had great care for its lifetime and which has 80K to 120K miles - but which is still stock and original. You can buy them for $10K, drive and enjoy them with very little additional investment (less than $5K)... and ten years from now you would not lose much if any money... FWIW, Carl B.

"Sure Fire" way - Yes, hit them with a acetylene torch and see if they melt, or turn into a huge sparkler!! <VBG>... I can't think of a non-destructive way to test the materials... there is most likely some type of acid test to see the reaction, that could be done on some scrapings... Really - just pick them up. Magnesium Alloy wheels will be noticeably lighter - about 65% of the weight of a like Aluminum Alloy wheel. Left to sit for months/years the Mag.'s will turn all but black, and when you remove the thin layer of black, you'll see a tell-tail layer of light green corrosion. The light green is a pinta somewhat like the light green of weathered copper. Only on the mag,'s most people think at first that the light green is a primer of some kind. I'd say scrape some of the black off the back side of the wheel - a thin layer at a time - and see what's under it. Another clue - is very few wheels are actually magnesium alloy. American did produced a very limited quantity of the 13" Libra's in magnesium alloy. The 14" were a slightly different design - the Le Mans wheels. I don't know what would be on the back of the 13" American's cast in magnesium.. I've never had a set.. You can use medium size/grain glass beads to blast the mag.'s - using a lower pressure than normal... about 90psi instead of 125/150psi. As I said before, they will come out of the blast cabinet looking like raw aluminum wheels.. Just make sure you don't blast the outer rim, if you want to keep it polished.. The best stuff I've found for polishing the outer lips - is the old stand-by - Metal Bright (cotton wadding in a can, treated with who knows what). Applied with a lot of elbow grease.... Did you buy the wheels in the ad this thread was started with? Or did you find another set here in Florida? FWIW, Carl

Yes..... If you want to keep them in their "natural" cast state (ie. uncoated) - the magnesium alloy wheels corrode very quickly if subjected to water (spots/drops).. the outer lips dull quickly too, so they require almost constant polishing (relative to what the aluminum wheels do). If you want to paint them - to protect the magnesium alloy - there are very special processes for cleaning, then special primers that have to be used prior to painting. The best method I've found so far, to maintain the magnesium alloy wheels, while letting them gray out to their natural color - is to coat them with Gibbs Brand Gun Oil. If you do get them wet, you should wipe them down as soon as possible with a cloth dampened in the Gibbs Oil. If you don't they wind up with white corrosion spots.. that eat the metal and leave pits. If you look closely at the wheels offered for sale - you can see the lighter gray area's and dirty white spots ... that were most likely white a few weeks after they got wet... and/or it is possible someone just tried to paint over the corrosion. ... which doesn't work for long before it comes through the paint.. Hard to tell without having them in hand for a physical inspection. If you bead blasted them - they would come out looking like the normal aluminum wheels - silver in color - but with a month of two they would be turning light gray, then in a few more months they turn dark gray.. Also - the mag. alloy wheels have a safe service life.... much shorter than the aluminum alloy wheels.. mostly because of the differences in their corrosion rates.. and the fact that most owners won't take the needed care required for the mag. alloy wheels. FWIW, Carl B.

Alan: Thanks for the pictures and the information - A friend in Russia is a modeler, and needed the info for an accurate recreation. I passed it along to him as well. I agree with Chris - the pictures are super. Carl B.

Hi Brandon: A kit for a Fairlady Z 432, would have an S20 engine A kit for a 240Z should have an L24 engine FWIW, Carl B.