AK260

Having been one of the first 800 S2K owners in the country I used to love the bahhhhhhh above 6k rpm on EVERY drive. Then I drove my fiend’s BMW Z3M with the same headline 0-60 but that torque curve was just delicious! The Z is very similar in that respect. S2k was a motorbike on 4 wheels and you had to rag it everywhere to get the performance (and that was part of its charm). Z3M, any gear any speed would push you into your seat. Totally different ways to win your heart. Ask yourself what suits your driving best? High rpm / BHP and less low to mid range torque or good spread of torque and lower headline BHP? People buy BHP but drive torque!

^^^^ wot he said ^^^^ Not withstanding protecting against a weepy windscreen rubber in the future and rust! Rule of thumb: if you can’t see it, it’s rusting in silence! ;) Give it the best possible start in life especially given that you can now and not later!

So Sean, agreed 100000% with Mr Patcon (at least I think he is a Mr! As for being a gentleman, the jury is out on that one)! :P My L28 with E88 head and mostly stock internals* + SU carbs is doing 232BHP / 210lbft. The tuner backed off @6400rpm even though the power was still climbing (he was afraid of it going too lean and melting a piston). From this point on each pony gets exponentially more expensive. The tuner tells me that with better top end fuelling / triples there is another 10-15% in there but that’s a lot of money for another, say, 20bhp. (By the time it’s fully rolling road tuned up I make it well over £2000 / $3000 additional spend). In all honesty the power I have is plenty enough for spirited driving on the public road and safely putting it ALL down. 60mph comes around in 5 seconds and the old lady regularly scares the pants off Subaru Imprezzas and other exotic machinery. But the greatest fun isn’t drag racing off the lights, it’s the lovely power around the twisty roads. Aim for a lovely beefy flat torque curve over headline BHP figures - you will enjoy it more and much more often, in any gear. My engine was built by very experienced chaps doing this for 40 years. They have built a 300bhp NA motor for their time attack machine (no diesel crank either). Don’t even think about what it cost them in parts, blood, sweat and time! Sadly they are all retiring :( As said already, the power in these engines is mostly made in the head. So time and money would be well spent there. Then there are the ancillaries that have to be matched, such as a decent ignition, exhaust system, carbs etc that make a huge and sometimes overlooked difference. There are a lot of very expensive carbs out there that are poorly set up, so budget for a decent amount of time / money on the Rolling Road with an experienced tuner. You could always head for Jenvey throttle bodies and EFI but then, as said before, it gets expensive. Good luck and watching your progress with interest. *Schneider springs / caps, 270 degree cam, 0.48” lift, fully ported head, flat top standard weight pistons 1mm over, larger 280 valves.

Bluetooth or not, your tac signal runs off the coil wiring - that shouldn’t change with 123. Edit: I think the 240 wiring is different to my ‘77 260 so you may need a resistor somewhere in the circuit. I will let our wisened elders comment. As for timing curves, the FSM is your best bet. With timing you have 3 advance points to consider: Static timing (or base timing): this is how far advanced the distributor is when installed and without the engine running. Centrifugal advance: increases and decreases with revs. Vac advance: engine load dependent - I.e. wide open throttle is zero vac and zero advance, foot off the throttle is max vac advance. This is used to improve emissions/ fuel economy, keep your engine cooler at idle and improve throttle response from off to on power. Now, “all in” refers to Base + Centrifugal timing (but no vac). So, typically, the best way we set up old distributors is to disconnect vac advance and put a bung over the front carb’s vac pipe. Then turn the fast idle screw up so you have say 2800 rpm, then set the “all in” timing at anywhere from 30-34 degrees. I find that with a stock dizzy at 34 @3000rpm my idle timing sits around 17 degrees. Then when you connect up Vac you will see another 15 degrees added. This is perfectly safe as the mix is very lean at idle / part throttle and needs the additional timing to burn fully. Now onto the 123. Pay great attention to this. Take your plugs out, turn the engine by hand (using either the cam sprocket bolt or the crank pulley - I cant get to the latter on mine). Put the engine at the static / base timing point. I use zero as what I see on the 123 curve is what I get when the engine is running but it does require extra cranking for cold start. If you don’t go for zero do yourself a favour and set it at 10 degrees as it’s easy to subtract later. Now, if you are aiming for a stock curve, then I would go with: 500 rpm (anti-stall): 7 (optional) 800 rpm (idle): 5 2400 rpm: 18 3500 rpm: 20 (optional but works well) 6000 rpm: 24 (optional for best top end power) Remember the above numbers are 10degrees less to account for the static / base timing. Connect the vac but leave it at 0 degrees for now and run with this set up to see if you are happy with the way the car runs. When you are happy with this, monitor the MAP gauge on the app or use a normal vac gauge and determine how much vac you are generating at idle and at 3000 rpm. Then set 10 degrees (your stock dizzy does 15 but I like to play safe on vac for various reasons one of which is the unknown “rate of attack” with the 123). Here is FSM vac curve Here is a great table - see if you can find your stock dizzy Apologies about the rant but it was a long commute to work ;)

Stainless steel into aluminium - galvanic reaction city. The heat generated while undoing them accelerates the reaction and is what makes them resist even harder. S/S is brittle (unlike tensile steel) and you could regret this one. My vote would be leave it alone. You are making such superb progress, don’t suffer scope creep and other unforeseen issues now. iMHO of course!

Mike pretty much said it! Oh and don’t trust the no.1 HT lead mark on the dizzy cap - I blew up my silencer and scared the neighbours as a result ;) ALWAYS check timing with a timing light at idle and all in. Leave nothing to chance when it comes to timing. And here is another write up I did a while back, hope it helps: https://zclub.net/community/index.php?threads/123-ignition-for-datsun-l6-on-my-l28.25467/

You’re right, no bleed nipple on the master but the trick is to have someone with their foot on the clutch pedal all the way down, then get a rag and undo the nut that tightens the outlet bolt exactly as you do a bleed nipple and do it up quickly before the fluid stops coming out. Repeat x3 (like the Irish, to be sure to be sure to be sure)!

Thanks dude! HS30-H (aka Albrech) is our site Yoda! I am forever in awe of / STUNNED by his depth of knowledge (and kindness in helping people out with rare parts).

Gosh this is a toughie! What brand kit are you using? So the easy thing is: don’t worry about the fluid as dot 3 or 4 have boiling points in excess of 200c (400F). If you can get your clutch fluid that hot then you really have other problems ! ;) But on that note I trust you are using fresh fluid and not old stuff that’s been sitting for a while? Being hydroscopic these fluids absorbs moister. I thought my synchros were done for until I bled the slave cyl. Then realised how sweet my ‘box is. Based on that I would say your clutch is just on the edge of disengaging enough. The obvious: When this happens, how hot does the master feel to the touch? Is it significantly hot? Have you bled both master and Slave cyls? Are all your joints fully torqued up? And the nipples too? (The latter sounds painful[emoji1787]) Do you have any twists in the flexible pipe going to the slave? Are you seeing any fluid leaks? Anywhere!?

Once the kids FINALLY went to sleep, I went out for some carb playing / tuning at night. So I thought I’d take some photos to show how well the LED bulbs work behind standard H4 lenses. It was bugging me that I hadn’t shared that ;) The iPhone camera does it no justice but here’s the beam pattern with a rock solid horizontal cut off on the driver’s side (RHD car) and the break in the middle kicking the light up onto the pavement side of the car. And here is dipped beam on a piece of (sorta) straight road: And high beam: You can just about see the way the high beam lights the stuff in the distance - like I said the iPhone 6s camera isn’t great at night - time for the upgrade I’ve been putting off! ;) Oh and got stopped by the local police again. Got the usual chat: “I used to lust after that car as a little boy sir!! Straight six, right? Sounds really nice!”

Thanks buddy, you’re too kind. Oh, just a thought - I didn’t have the heart to bin the original parts. If I can find them, i can either send you the main board or mail you the part you need if you wish? Let me know.

You’re most welcome and I would gladly have popped over to help if you were more local ;) Great that you can still get the original opamp!! At least you can preserve it. I didn’t wish to hijack your thread so I didn’t post the link before but since you asked ... https://zclub.net/community/index.php?threads/stock-radio-modern-internals.20247/ It was all done in a bit of a hurry in small increments of time so I didn’t do as good a job as I would have liked, but it works. This little bad boy sits totally invisibly under my passenger seat and kicks out some serious bass for it’s size. On about 1/4 to 1/3 of its volume setting it perfectly “fills in” what the stereo lacks without being wide-boy, as we say in the UK, read “red-neck”. https://www.caraudiocentre.co.uk/product_m-in-phase-car-audio-usw10_p-25817.htm

Nice work! 3 decades ago when I used to design /build / fix amps (long story), your best friend was a signal generator and an oscilloscope. Do you have access to at least the latter? It’s the only way to truly troubleshoot a circuit like that. Having said that you are making great progress. I would say if two speakers were connected, the final stage amp would be fried and the Darlington transistor or pre-power stage op-amp would also be toast. Very often when a power amp / transistor is overloaded, it pulls way too much current on its collector and effectively shorts out what ever is feeding it. Watching with interest. Now don’t swear at me but I replaced all the old electronics with new in mine; with microswitches behind the FM/AM buttons so everything looks totally stock and all the knobs switches function as they should but I get 20W RMS x2, half decent sound and connection to my iPhone so I can hear the Satnav over the exhaust [emoji12]. Somehow sad that all that lovely design and beautiful engineering you see nowadays fits on a chip or two. Good luck and well done for the great trouble shooting to date! It really isn’t as complex as it looks [emoji106][emoji106]

Well this is great news that you have no piston / valve damage and are getting your car back on the road. We are all at the mercy of the POs’ shortcomings / shortcuts! Mine had done some pretty scary things too - especially on electrics - things like adding a 50A fuse for the washer pump ‘cause the 5A kept blowing (he didn’t bother trouble shoot/cover his hacked about naked wiring that was intermittently shorting out)!!! Keep at it fella - looking forward to hearing about her growling again!

Forgive my ignorance - I have to ask to learn: how does pushing the needles up differ from dropping the jets? With my limited knowledge, I would have said that it’s changing the annulus area akin to winding down the jets, but is there something special going on when you move needles instead of jets?

That’s good thinking - otherwise too much hassle! [emoji106] I’ve found that on 4 other classic cars I’ve helped with, the 50% brighter H4 halogens with relays will rival most modern car halogen headlights. There are the 120% brighter halogens but they tend to have a blue tint I really am not a fan of. Defo do a before and after shot in the same lighting conditions.

I hear you!! That’s why I went with Vanssi because at the very least, I knew others had success with them. Frankly if they weren’t great, at £30 (c.$40) for a pair I could afford to put it down to experience and bin them without feeling like I’ve been taking food out of my children’s mouths or crying too much about it. But, 2 years on and no regrets yet!

Exactly! [emoji106] Lots of space for the heatsink and connectors without touching the bowls or being squashed in. Edit: just read the rest of the thread properly. I’ve never had the “directional” issues mentioned above but I wonder if a European ‘77 260z has different wiring to early 240/260? On flickering - only get that issue on cranking. If idle is set too low, I see them drop in brightness a little. Even with a custom undersized pulley, my alternator spins slower than stock due to the ATi damper’s blooming stupid half sized pulley.

I don’t like the relay kits so I designed my own and moreover I don’t like relays in a hot / harsh engine bay and want to position them behind the dash on passenger side. I bought all the bits but ran out of time - a job for another day. I will still do it to reduce load on stalk contacts. It is as simple as a take the bulb out, plug the LED replacement bulb in solution. It has a bigger bottom but our cars have plenty of space in the headlight bowls to accommodate. One of the best mods ever! Especially as it reduced the alternator load too. The actual bulb bit rotates so that you can get the beam pattern right - remember LEDs have more directional light. So whereas your halogens have to be top to bottom oriented, these bulbs need to be side to side. Here is when I incorrectly had them facing top to bottom - lots of light but the beam pattern wasn’t going up on the left (as they should on RHD cars). Also you will notice a “hotspot” directly in front of the car which is where you don’t want the light (as it makes your eyes close up and reduces your night vision). I don’t have a photo of it corrected but suffice it to say the light spread is far more uniform without any obvious hot or dead spots and the beam pattern had a very sharp cut off and break point. The cut off is important to avoid dazzling. Phillips are the market leaders but are expensive at 4 times the price. So I took a punt with the cheap Vanssi ones as others had used them without issue. One last thought - in the UK, we have some European legislation on type approval for use of LED bulbs. And the majority of non-factory fitted don’t have the approval. But UK law is fuzzier about the approval. It is more focussed on practical things like beam pattern and dazzling. I have passed and sat behind many a police car at night without bother. I have however been pulled over a few times by police who are car enthusiasts and wanted to have a good look at a rare beast! [emoji41] Just make sure you don’t get into hot water with law enforcement in your jurisdiction.

On that note, I didn’t get the time to relay mine so I went for the led option. Absolutely TRANSFORMED my night driving and no being flashed by oncoming traffic either! Here is the LED v halogen candles comparison in day light!! I wanted to experiment so I bought mine for £30ish from AliExpress and they have been superb. Try to avoid going over 3000-4000 lumens as they get silly bright and cause issues. Mine are NLA but here is the newer version ... ￡30 26％ Off | VANSSI H4 LED Car Headlight HB2 9003 Hi/Lo 40W 4000lm 6000K White High Performance Auto Headlight Fog Bulb Conversion Kit https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/crVunp44

Pulled all (except roof liner) trim and carpets and sound proofed Z. Probably added 10-15kgs. With windows up it feels 3 times quieter. Quite amazing how noisy these panels were when knocked - spare wheel horizontal section, wheel houses, shock towers, trans tunnel, floor pans and body panels. I tried to only apply as much as required rather than covering the whole thing. Firewall was OK but got a couple of sheets for good measure especially next to trans tunnel next to where exhaust would reverberate. Floors already done by PO but quite thin MLV so I added more and covered with 3mm sticky backed closed cell foam on top, then carpets. Feels positively Audi like ;). You realise how loud it was inside before - when you wound windows down there was little difference before! Now it’s like someone whacked the volume knob up! Also bass from radio is now way deeper and audible over exhaust note! Very happy! Rear deck area will get 20mm closed cell foam under carpets for good measure soon!

Sorry to hear that CO! I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t for a moment imagine camshaft failure was the root cause! (And I didn’t watch the vid) My initial thought after cam shaft discovery was that I hope you didn’t bend valves!! [emoji33] I know some engines have a non-interference set up with dished pistons etc. Do you have access to a borescope to be able to look through the plug holes and check for marks on rear 3 pistons? Would hate to see you install new cam and have a bent valve to a “paper clip being bent back and forth a thousand times” trick and kill the head. Good luck!! Ps. Loving the home made tool! [emoji106][emoji106]

And that was before you found the leak!? :P Seriously though - that’s quite a lot!! Here’s a screen shot of the FSM

That is strange indeed, typically one side or the other will be darker. Some other thoughts and forgive me if it’s already been said. Let’s eliminate potential electrical issues: 1. Swap 3 and 4 with say 1 and 6 and see if you get the same effect. Could it be a faulty pair of plugs? And are the gaps the same (although that shouldn’t make a huge difference). 2. If 3&4 soot up again, try rotating HT leads from other plugs that aren’t sooted up. 3. Check the 3&4 electrodes on the inside of the distributor cap to ensure they are not corroded. Looking at the mechanical side: 3. Have you checked manifold gasket for leaks? 4. Have you checked valve clearances lately? 5. On your comp test, what was the difference between 3&4 and the other cyls? 3&4 aside your plugs look a little too hot to me, how have you adjusted your mix? I have found that idling for a long time with a lean mix on a hot day, the car starts to misfire as if there is an electric problem, but it’s a heat problem.

Not today but the weekend ... https://youtu.be/C1clNk-Mq24 Best savoured with headphones.