mdbrandy

You found this in Ridgecrest, CA near China Lake? Any other Z's in the yard? I get out there (to China Lake) once or twice a year, and I'll have to take time to look if you saw anything else in the yard...

Hi Kats. I've been a lurker as of late. New business taking all my time, and only time to read about others and their cars . Yeah, mine came with the hand throttle, but there were two choke knobs instead of the choke and hand throttle knob. And the PO had removed the hand throttle cable (and apparently discarded it :mad:) because it was "unsafe". I think I have all the parts to put it back together correctly, although it will be some time before I can work on my cars again... But you guys just keep going so I can do car stuff vicariously through you! Mark

Here's what was on #215 when I got her. Look's like Mike's original pic. Sorry about the quality - I don't appear to have a better one, and the parts are in boxes in the garage...

Memory's a bit fuzzy, but I believe that the two small pieces in your picture are part of the mount for the body piece that mounts in the space between the front bumper and grill. A long, thin, body-colored "filler" piece. The big piece looks like a shield for a bumper shock. May be a heat shield for the driver-side rear bumper shock, but I'm not sure... Factory manual pic would be a good idea .

Now THAT's cool. I didn't even know about it...not paying enough attention to the board, I guess :disappoin Thanks! Mark

FYI: http://www.zhome.com/IZCC/ZRegisters/ Mark

I had a similar problem, but I had already removed the strut from the car! I solved it by using the wheel, rope-tied to an 8-foot 2x6 as shown here. Might work for you on the car too... Mark

I got a 280Z hood from Nissanparts.cc. Ordered it in April, got it in July. The first one they got from Japan was damaged, and they had to get a new one. They told me that they weren't sure that they could even get another, as apparently they are getting hard to get. About $500 with shipping from their CA location to me in IL. Had to be truck shipped. Don't know the status with 240Z hoods... Mark

If your '77 is truly stock, then you must have a problem. My '78 gets 17 in the city, and that's with a 3.9 diff instead of the 3.545 that is stock. I could get more in the 18-19 if/when I put the original diff back. And I have a pretty heavy foot... Mark

Just for more information, try this thread: http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21572 I had a crunched hood, that I've been using a rusty replacement on for 2 years, and just a couple of days ago, after 6 months of waiting, actually obtained an Nissan NOS hood replacement for. Dealer thinks "I got the last hood available". But the thread above led me to believe fixing hoods is hard to do right... Good luck.

Will's suggestions are great. I'd look at the area under the battery tray too. Battery acid is no respector of climate.

The one I have for #215 has little paper "corrections" glued over the top of references to the hand-throttle...

Well, I certainly won't say that I know about every leak in Washington, but I really expect that any commercial plant is the least of your worries. Even your dog example stems from cold-war, government-sponsored research long before regulations started reigning in what the government could do with impunity at these sites. I'm sure Hanford was the recipient of a whole lot of junk, just like Savannah River was. I worked on the Defense Waste Processing Facility at Savannah River for a while (a glassification plant) too. I don't know what actually happened to it, but that was 15 years ago, and since Yucca Mountain is not yet available, they have no place to put the glass anyway. That's another political fiasco. Bottom line is the glassification is a band-aid to fix decades of production of millions of gallons of high-level waste that wouldn't now be necessary as a by-product of reprocessing spent commercial-grade fuel (note that commercial reactor fuel is VERY different than what went into the production reactors at both Hanford and Savannah River). So I'm just saying that as a country, we already know how to solve the technical waste problem (mostly) if the politics could be solved.

Thank Jimmy Carter for most of the waste problem with US Nuclear. Reprocessing the spent fuel would solve most (not all) of the waste problem, but it was banned due to worries about plutonium proliferation, the latter being a very solvable problem as well. Security versus technology. And if you're talking about the Hanford reservation in Washington State and nuclear waste, then you really can't compare that to commercial nuclear. I worked at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina (the East-coast version of Hanford) for five years. The environmental challenges at both sites are large, but that is because of many years of government weapons production through the 50s and 60s (and some 70s), mostly before the commercial nuclear industry was even online, and totally without the commercial industry's regulations. So you're right - we have to solve the waste problem to get Nuclear viable in the US; but much of the solution is already available. We just have to use it. Mark Brandyberry Ph. D. Nuclear Engineering But Not working in that industry because it pretty much died in the US...

I want chrome Z's for #215 Guess I'd have to be better at the search out and buy game...:eek:

One big argument that has been being discussed around here (heart of the corn belt - ethanol plant planned just outside of town) involves use of the local groundwater to produce the product. Large increases in ethanol production may have impacts outside just its use as an automobile fuel. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071010120538.htm As with global warming, and most other hot-button topics, there are basically credible people on both sides of the issue.

Yeah, I had a place that sold "real gas" until last fall, but they switched to gasohol this winter. I just filled up at another place that at least doesn't have the "10 percent Ethanol added" sticker on the pumps (which I at least "think" is required if it's gasohol), so I may have found another source for my "drug of choice". We'll see what the mileage on this tank is . There's supposed to be an Ethanol plant going in within about 20 miles of Champaign, and if it does, I'm sure I'll be out of luck sooner than later. And from what I understand, our groundwater aquifer will be depleted at an alarming rate too... Oh well.

Just finished my first tank after the winter's sleep, and only got 15.4 mpg ('78 280Z). However, I couldn't find anything but 10% ethanol, which cut things a bit. Last year, I was getting around 17 mpg on "real" gasoline, and that was after adding a 3.9 diff, replacing the 3.545 stock unit, so that should have knocked off another 10% or so. Thus, if I could find real gas, and put the 3.54 unit back in, I'd probably get 18 to 19 in the city. I don't do much on the highway with the Z...

We just got a Harbor Freight in town 2 weeks ago...I'll have to go look at this cabinet now! I'm really tired of the little plastic bench-top unit that I've got. Thanks! Mark

I put a hitch on my '75 280Z (long gone...) and towed a trailer back and forth between Illinois and Los Angeles. The first time I went west (1983), as I came down I-15 from the high desert into LA, the front brakes started making grinding sounds. Ends up that if you want to tow a 900 lb trailer with a Z, you'd better start out with really good front brake pads, because they wear down quick going through Flagstaff and the mountains around LA! Changed the pads in a friends driveway in LA, but left the grooves in the rotors! Ah, days gone past... . Mark

My 280Z is a good-weather car now. Essentially no rust, and I intend to keep it that way. But my 1st and 2nd Z's were year-round cars ('71 240Z and '75 280Z), and here in Central Illinois, they saw their share of snow and salt! Which is probably why they were both rusty pieces of .... by the time I had to get rid of them. Really, though, they handled quite nicely in snow - I did quite a bit of drift-busting on the streets of Decatur and Champaign! Now I'll just let the Camry brave the salt. I sold that '75 280Z in Los Angeles (after Grad School), and I'm sure someone said "how the heck did this happen to the poor car in California!".

Yup, I believe it did. If memory serves, I got it at Sears...

Back in the 80's I used to drive my 1975 280Z back and forth between Illinois and Los Angeles a couple of time a year, and I added an aftermarket cruise to it. It was vacuum-based. The '75 had a vacuum bottle that ran the HVAC vacuum servos that I tapped into. Used a magnetic pickup that you strapped to the driveshaft. Attached a magnet to the inside of the tunnel, and every time the magnet on the driveshaft came around, the cruise knew "one revolution" had happened. So you set the cruise at some speed, the unit knew the revolutions that were happening at that speed, and it keep speed constant through a vacuum valve and a wire-arrangement that you had to set up to pull on the throttle linkage appropriately. I expected it to be mediocre, but from what I remember, it would keep my speed within about 1 mph. Mark

That is a great story, and you tell it well! You can almost see the guy... When I was 17 (in 1978), I had a choice between a 1969 Firebird, and a 1971 240Z. I bought the Z. And except for a period between 1989 and 1993, I've owned an S30 of one sort or another ever since...not always running, but I had one! And now I have two

Me too! I can wait on the other stuff until this is available too if you haven't shipped it, to save shipping twice. Mark