motivealloy

Yes, those are high pressure fuel Injection hose clamps and are far superior to worm gear style and even the stock Datsun double wire clamps. The FI style will not "dig-in" to the rubber line and cause thin spots. I've noticed on our L24 engine where the double wire clamps were used, the old braided style rubber lines tended to split right where the wire clamp was seated. With the typical worm gear style clamps they tend to dig into the fuel lines and cause the rubber to squeeze between the holes in the clamp when over tightened. This looks unsightly and can eventually damage the hose if you remove the clamp multiple times. Another reason I like the FI clamps is because they look more similar to the original double wire hose clamps in construction. Especially if you can get the cad plated kind.

Not a big fan of the shaved bumper look and headlight delete, or the paint job. It's definitely a custom cali hot-rod. Not my cup of tea.

Okay, so the adjuster on the 280 tach is the aluminium thing with the slot that has 30K stamped on it, and the 240 is the brass nut.

I hit the inside of our bumpers with Rust-oleum Universal Silver Metallic. It repels water really well and doesn't look that different from the natural color of the inside of the bumpers. BTW, It kind of has a greasy feel so you can spray it directly over bolt threads - nuts will still thread right on. Also if you spray it on thick and you get runs, they pretty much level out and disappear. Oh, and spray it outside away from anything you want to keep clean. This paint throws a LOT of stray metal flake into the air that settles on pretty much everything in your spray vicinity. Hope this helps.

Thanks Zed and Blue, I'll try a new condenser. We haven't changed that out yet - could be a culprit. It's pretty grungy so swapping for a new one wouldn't be a bad idea. I did notice that a lot of the blade connector leads on the wires in the engine bay are pretty brown with oxidation. i'll go through and spritz them with Lime-a-way to get back to clean brass again. This should cut some of the resistance from the wire leads as well. Definitely sure my tach/dwell meter isn't broken. It registers RPM correctly on my V6 Mustang and 4cyl Honda. So i knew that wasn't the case.

Okay here is a wacky tach issue. Not really a must fix issue bit annoying non-the-less. So when I hook up my tach/dwell meter when tuning up our 1970 L24 engine I've noticed that the tach in the dash is reading much faster than my tach/dwell meter hooked directly to the coil. We have stock coil and vac adv dist. I don't know if the tach is original with the car. I assume it is, but we haven't torn into the dash yet. Here is the issue: When my tach/dwell meter reads 700rpm the tach in the dash is reading about 1100rpm. When I slow the rpm down to say about 500 rpm the dash tach reads about 850rpm. When the engine rpm goes up to about 3000rpm the inside tach reads closer to 3200rpm-ish. Could it be that the inside dash tach is out of calibration some how? Has anyone else seen this issue with their dash tach? Get a new (used) one?

Hardway is correct. Always try to find an unmolested original car to start with. It is FAR easier to convert stock to modified than convert someone's "modified" to your idea of modified or back to stock again... If that makes sense. Generally if you buy a modified car on the cheap there are going to be issues. And, those issues are generally due to something that got messed up due to being modified from away from stock. Another great thing about getting a stock car is that you have a base to start planning your modifications from. You will also figure out what you do and don't like about the stock setup as well. Hop on Craigslist or flip through the local auto rags or the paper. Don't be afraid to search outside of your local area to find a great deal. My son and I found our 240z about four hours away (one way) in a small town in the middle of nowhere for a song.

On the bright side, you can at least see where the hidden rust was.

Wow, thanks for the warm welcome guys!! Oh shoot I didn't read about the Austin meeting for Monday night till today. DOH! Definitely plan to make the first meeting after the holidays and after we figure out our overheating issue. Leaning toward a stuck thermostat. We've already made a lot of progress on the Z so far. One of our easy projects was replacing the weird butchered 5 speed ZX shifter for a proper 240-260z style shifter. We installed bronze bushings and a new pin cup bushing. We went from OMG what gear am I in - to solid fun time!

Hey Gang, My son and I recently picked up an early 1970 car. It's a great project for the both of us even though my wife is less than thrilled. Been learning lots of great info on the site.

Hey gang, I've looked around and didn't see anyone mention this issue about four bolt dome top SU carbs that run horrible after everything else on the engine is correct. Recently bought an early 1970 Series 1 and it's been having really bad stumbling issues when you open the throttle from idle. Timing is dead on, valves are within spec, compression is good on all cylinders, cleaned up the carbs and even swapped out a few bits and pieces from a donor set of carbs. Bushings are in really good shape and there is almost no vacuum loss from the throttle shafts. After tuning the carbs way out of spec I got it running half way decent. Nearly impossible to sync the front and rear carbs without the front being overly rich. Most of the hesitation upon accel was tuned out but it was smelling super rich and power was lacking. Luckily this is our project car so I wasn't driving it anywhere serious. I know I am doing everything right... why is it running like crap. Fast forward several weeks and we are replacing those aftermarket K&N filter cans off the SUs for a stock air cleaner assembly. In the process I start hooking all the hoses back up to stock and discover that the previous owner have rerouted all of the vapor hoses coming off the SU's into a T fitting that basically went nowhere. Hmm, that's weird. Then I start investigating the other vacuum hoses and discover the vacuum port on the front SU isn't connected to anything and the vacuum canister on the dist is connected to the fuel vapor fitting from the gas tank! WTF!!! *Light bulb goes off in head*!! Are you freaking kidding me!? I totally see how I missed this one glaring issue. The hoses went down out of sight and I assumed they were the same hose. DOH!! Needless to say, once the vac port and the canister were correctly joined - I did a 5 min basic tune on the SU's - the 240 purrs like a kitten and has full power through the entire acceleration curve. What do we take away from this experience... If you have a poorly running 240 it might not be the carbs. Make sure to check the vacuum canister is working properly and is receiving vacuum from the vac port on the back of the carb body. I would have saved myself a few weeks of aggravation if I had noticed this from the start.

WOW, great info on the radiator. My son and I just recently bought an early 1970 Series 1 and your pics have really helped us figure things out.