YoshiDori

Thanks man! I'll do it!

Thanks guys!

So it happened!!! The car looked and ran great!!! No issues other than some minor fuel leaks at the gas tank when parked at an angle. Definitely watch the video! Worth the watch with a few cool shots of the Z!

Z update! Painting wheels today. I found the perfect color match paint to the original enkei gold through a company called grimmspeed. As you can see in the picture, it's pretty darn close! Once these are painted, it's oil change, fan switch install, coolant fill, and running there tach signal wire at least today. Then need to run wires for the fans, figure out why dash lights don't work, then put the interior back together. From there, wash and polish, and possibly brakes. As far as the truck goes, I recharged the AC, just need to top it off. I took a video of the car running that showed the wheels on the car. I'll have to get a picture tomorrow. After my video earlier, I went out to check the mail to see that the trunk seal came in. So ran to the store to get some seal adhesive. When I came back, I installed the seal and dove into the wiring for the lights. Thanks to some good wiring diagrams, I was able to pin point the problem to a "rheostat" that acted like a dimmer for the lights. Since the lights are so dim anyway, being from 1970, I bypassed the dimmer and then I had gauge lights! Only had about 3 burnt out bulbs. Going to the parts store tomorrow to get replacements. After that, I tackled the wiring for the fans and got that done. I also went ahead and started to assemble the intake/filter housing. I am missing the hold down wing nuts, so I'm going to the parts store tomorrow to pick some up. All that's left is timing the engine, putting the interior back together, torquing the wheels, wash, polish, wax and DRIVE!!! While driving I can fine tune the temp switch for the fan. TLDNR: Here is the stuff I did today: Painted wheels Installed wheels Changed the oil Filled the coolant Ran tach signal wire Wired the electric fan and switch Installed new trunk seal Installed backing plate for filter housing Fixed gauge cluster lighting Things to do tomorrow: Replace burnt bulbs for gauge cluster Get new wing bolts and install filter and filter housing Assemble IP and Center Console Torque wheels Wash, polish, wax DRIVE!!!! SO CLOSE!!!

You can, but that 5mm difference in track width will affect driving more so than not adding the weight will. Also tire pressure being different or one tire being worn more than another will affect it more than either. On our cars if we don't have everything right the wheel will usually ends up off center. (Also happens a lot when we are lazy and don't use our turn plates) In the end, yes, especially with a suspension that actually compresses a good bit, like stock suspension, it would only make everything better to put weight in the car to simulate driving. Really just a matter of how patient you are. Also that link is good for people to get an idea how to do it. I personally like the strings closer to the car than they have them. That way you can use a small metal scale instead of a giant square. Also the laser deal is cool too. I haven't messed with those yet... may need to try.

I know this is an older post... but I have some suggestions to people who may want to do this. String alignments are just fine. We use alignment strings on our Pirelli World Challenge race car... along with all the other teams. We use smart strings that keep consistent distances which makes it a little quicker than with jack stands. If you want to do this at home, the key is to know the difference in track width front to rear. I do not know track width on the Zs off hand, but for example, lets say the rear track width is 20mm more narrow than the front track width. In order to get the strings parallel to the car, we will pick an arbitrary number, for sake of demonstration lets say 100mm to set the distance of the strings to the center of the front wheels. You want to set the height of the jack stands so the string is in the center of the wheel. Then measure and move the stands to get the string 100mm from the center of the front wheels. Then since the theoretical track width of the rear is 20mm more narrow than the front, you want to split that 20mm between the right and left side of the car. This gives you a 10mm difference per side. So then you move your stands to get the string 110mm away from the center of the rear wheel. Make sure you keep the string taught. Once you have the string 100mm from the front and 110 mm from the rear, you are now square with the car. Do this for each side. It is tedious and takes some patience, but you are doing an alignment at home... you need to have patience... Then to set the toe after centering the steering wheel, you want to measure the distance from the front lip of the wheel to the string and the distance from the rear lip of the wheel to the string. If you want a stable but sporty feel, go 1mm toe in, this will make the front measurement 1mm longer than the rear. If you want a livelier feel of the car you can go zero mm toe where the front and rear are the same distance. And for track settings, depending on handling characteristics you want to achieve you can run up to 3mm toe out per side. Other things that can help is to make, make-shift turn plates. As you adjust toe, the tire moves and everything kind of binds up. With out turn plates, you need to keep wiggling the steering wheel and checking on it to make sure it remains centered. If you don't, then it can lead to a lot of frustration after you think you have it set where you need it only to look up at the steering wheel and it's off center. To avoid this on the cheap, you can get two floor tiles and some sand. You put the first tile on the ground, then sprinkle sand on top of it and set the other tile on top of the sand. This creates a simple bearing and allows the tiles to rotate easily on top of each other despite having the weight of a car on top of them. It's not perfect, but it helps and is simple and cheap to do. I hope this helps with anyone looking to do any alignments at home. Feel free to ask me questions on the topic. -Josh

So does it start right back up after dying?

@Griff Thanks man! On both accounts! Mine is an 85 GSL... :/ Diff broke after a rally x and drift event so it's sitting right now. I need a new rear end for it... You wouldn't want to sell me your rear end and front struts would you? that way I could go 4x114.3 instead of 4x110. It's a street ported 13B six port with dellorto side drafts. Neat little car and has a whole other story behind it haha. @siteunseen haha that would be funny! @Patcon Yeah, I figured the paint is kinda on it's last legs and could use new clear. But like you said, I can buff it up nice for the big day and worry about that later. And thank you for the compliment on the wheels! I have never polished aluminum that wasn't already shiny to begin with haha so it's been a learning experience. It's not hard, just tedious and time consuming, but the results are definitely worth it! Also, update! The distributor came in today. This morning I had to go put coilovers on a customers car and do some welding for a friend. When I came home, I had a nice little box from rockauto! After a quick nap I ran downstairs and put it all together and just set the distributor to center spec for now, will time later. After sitting for almost 2 years, it only took about 45 seconds of cranking and it fired right up! With the choke open too! It stumbled for a bit, then smoothed right out. Revs nice. I can tell it needs timing adjusted, but it's RUNNING!!! Also ran a dummy wire to the tach to make sure the 280zx tach works. I swapped the internals of a 280zx tach into the 240Z housing with the 240 faceplate so it would work better with the electronic distributor. It worked GREAT! Super smooth and consistent. I'm a happy dude right now!

So I just ran a dummy wire to test to see if the tach works. It's PERFECT! No jumping, very consistent and steady. Moves well with rpms. No issues what so ever. It's smoother than my miata's tach. Thank you all for your help! -Josh

Well the distributor came in and the car fired right up! Just need to run the signal wire then we will see if the tach works. Also I used the 240z faceplate so it looks completely stock.

Hey everyone, Just wanted to take time to share what I have been working on lately and tell the story behind the project. Long story short, I bought this Z around the same time I met my soon to be wife. I'm a huge Nissan/Datsun fan to begin with and I have always loved the early S30s. When I hired on at my current job, one of the guys figured out I was a Z fan. He told me that a guy he knew was selling a 1970 240Z and asked if I would be interested. I was blessed enough to have hired on with a sign on bonus that happened to be sitting in my bank account. At the time that money was going to be used for a dry sump system for my other project (S13 240SX w/ VK56DE and 370Z 6 speed). I could not pass this up. I went to go look at the car. It looked great, but wasn't perfect, but pretty darn good for a 1970 Japanese vehicle. It ran well and drove well, but would get hot. Work picked up and life happened and it sat patiently waiting for me to take care of it. My fiance and I both love the car and after I proposed I got to thinking. The wedding is really more for the bride than the groom. You do things like go to bridal shows and they try to convince you that $30 per plate of finger food is a good deal and that 8 hours in a barn with no air conditioning is worth $10,000. You taste cake, you talk to food venders, dj's, videographers, photographers, "do we need a photo booth?", is 300 people too much?, and worry about burlap and lace. You want her to be happy but stay reasonable for the day. In the end you sort through all the wedding propaganda and find the real deals that you both want for a realistic price... but in the end, this is all a means to the end of pleasing the woman you love on your special day. I'm fine with the lace and pretty things, but I'm a car guy at heart. I have a few cool cars, but the coolest by far is this Z. I have to leave my own mark on this wedding some how. And that's when it hit me. I'm going to make the Z our getaway car! So, here is the car: Went to a local car show. The gas cap was broken off, I have since fixed that: Had a shop for a while: And a local road near by: The group: My garage at the time: Then we moved to our current house: And that got us to where we started working on the car to get it ready. Because the car would over heat, I decided to go ahead and replace/update the entire cooling system. So out came the dash, the old heater core, the old radiator, t-stat, t-stat housing and hoses and in with the new. Also I wanted to upgrade to a newer electronic distributor so I tracked down a local guy that had a 280ZX sitting around and got his tach and distributor and distributor base off him. Through the help of this lovely forum, I was able to find out that the distributor was bad and wound up ordering a reman that will be here this coming week. I also went with an MSD blaster 2 coil. The wheels and tires are coming off of my drift car. They have had a rough life and needed some tlc. I searched high and low for a local wheel refurbisher to no avail. The plan was to make the blue wheels match the gold ones and fix some lip damage. No one local could do it. So since I don't have a lathe I can't fix the lip damage but I can strip the paint and polish the lip. The wheels were profiles from sand blasting, but after a few hours of stripping, sanding and polishing, the paint is gone and the lips are almost a mirror. I have ordered the paint to match the others. Some paint stripper and 2 stages of sanding: Fully sanded and polished: Then I took a minute to get a brake from the polishing compound fumes to see how well the car will clean up, so I did some polishing on the nose of the car: Things are coming along! TLDNR: This is going to be our getaway car at our wedding! Neat, huh?

Yeah, the thing that broke was the only magnetic thing I took out of it... I don't claim to be an expert here though. Also the internal swap decision came from reading a bunch of posts how the stock tach doesn't like the electronic distributor. So it's pretty much just a 280ZX tach with a 240Z housing and face plate, that works with the 280ZX distributor. The tach arrived at my local post office today, so hopefully it will come tomorrow! Then moment of truth.

Thanks man! Will do!

Haha we are getting married July 2nd and I'm a big car guy. I bought the z after I got my job and around the time my fiance and I started dating. She loves the car and it's a car I've always wanted. So this car kind of has special place in both our hearts. When I bought the car, it would over heat. So I got a new radiator and electric fans and pulled the dash to update the tach and replace the heater core. I haven't had a bunch of time to work on the car because of work and the race team I'm on takes up most of my time. So I'm taking a break from the race team between now and the wedding except for the weekend before we will be at Road America for a Pirrelli World Challenge race. I'm hoping to have the car running and cleaned up before then. Also fun things, we are making the beer, wine, and mead for the wedding ourselves. So good drinks, good company, and a great z it should be an excellent wedding! Thank you for your help and input! It's greatly appreciated! Here is the car: -Josh

I'm open to suggestions for future upgrades. For now, I'm trying to get the car going to be our get away car at our wedding.