davewormald

I went through the same thing last winter. There's a thread in this forum about it somewhere. It went on for months with various different reasons why nothing had shipped. I eventually heard from someone named Mark, who got things sorted out as well as possible. He shipped the items they had on hand and cancelled the remaining items. The email thread with various people from Datsun Garage stretches from July 2023 to January 2024. I was calling and leaving voice messages at the same time I was emailing. I never had anyone answer the phone. I would keep after them to ship anything they have from your order and process a refund for the rest.

I've been meaning to say something similar. I purchased well over 100 different parts for my car while I was working on it and while @grannyknot was working on it. The parts came from a lot of different suppliers. Z Car Depot was the best supplier I dealt with by a pretty wide margin. I look on their site first now.

I used blue loctite (because I had some around) when I got mine back together. I eventually accomplished that by cutting the stainless steel braid back a little from the end of the inner sheath, then wrapping thread tightly around the braid so I could get it back into the ferrule. That worked very well after many frustrating tries without the thread. I'll eventually attach the cable to the adjuster, but am avoiding blipping the throttle from the engine bay until I do. Replacing the linkage with the cable has made the car a joy to drive again. Having said that, I've found one particularly sticky joint in the linkage I removed. I don't think I'll be going back, though.

Sounds like the right solution. I'll be doing that with mine when I get a chance. Other than that avoidable (but disconcerting) issue, my installation of your kit is working really well. My old linkage was sticky enough to make driving in town somewhere between embarrassing and impossible (it was really fun the time or two I drove it without a muffler). It's now a joy to drive it. I went out for an hour or so this morning and was in heaven. I came home and told my wife it was time for her to come for her first ride in the car. That's partly a result of the improved throttle, but mostly because of a slightly ugly, but very successful seal job I did on the hatch, which has all but eliminated exhaust fumes in the cabin. I'll post a couple of pictures of that in the build thread. Thanks Ken!

I wouldn't if I thought cheaper definitely meant lower quality, but I haven't always found that to be the case. That's why I asked for people's experiences. I don't mind paying for a quality product and/or a quality design, but I don't want to pay extra for a brand name (I don't know anything about Lokar, but their pricing certainly implies quality). From Ken's response, it seems like there are functional advantages to both products he's worked with, and a quality advantage to the name brand version. I do understand your question, but I don't think it's actually rhetorical.

Ken (or anyone else), do you have any thoughts on the Lokar versus cheap Amazon versions of the cable? In the grand scheme of things, the Lokar isn't a big expense, but in some cases there really is no difference to justify the 4 to 5x price premium of the name brand item. I don't mind paying for quality, but I don't like throwing money away, either!

Just advise him to order a weatherstrip kit as soon as possible.

The gaps are small, and are slightly on either side of the latch. There are probably plenty of creative ways to deal with it.

Does it make it worse that I'm having to use the wipers this morning?!

The clunk in the passenger side rear suspension turned out to be a result of me not having tightened down the nylock nut on the top of the strut. I remember now that I didn't do it because I thought I might have to take it off again before getting the car back on the road and I didn't want to have to replace it. Neither side was tight enough, but only the passenger side was clunking. I tightened them up and the clunk is gone! In fact I've never driven a Z as quiet and (relatively) well-behaved on rough roads! If anyone happens to know the torque spec for those nuts on KYB rear shocks, let me know. I dug around a little, but didn't find anything. The TachMatch was shipped four days ago and has so far made it from Seattle to Los Angeles. I guess I should consider that to be progress, but it's not exactly the most obvious route to Toronto. I checked the resistance of the fuel sending unit and it's showing 0 ohms, so I think I'm just going to order a new one and move on. There are some gaps between the hatch seal and the bottom of the hatch, which explains the "richness" of the interior environment. Tomorrow I think I'll try filling the gaps with a towel or something to see how much I can seal it up. The sides of the hatch seem to be well sealed, so I'm not sure why the gaps exist at the bottom. Both hinges are interfering with the top of the hatch seal, but I'm hoping the exhaust isn't getting in up there. Slowly, but surely ...

This is more a "What I Did With My Z Today" post, but there really haven't been any pictures of the car in this thread since it got back on the road. I went out for a four hour drive on the local back roads this morning, including some fairly fast runs on a couple of gravel roads (I cringed a lot, but it was always intended to be a driver). And it's fun to drive! Lots of waves and comments from other drivers and pedestrians when in town. People in the lane beside you find it funny when you have to lean over to the passenger side to roll the window down! It's going to be a fun summer!

Count me in!

Sorry man, I'm sure you can understand that I've been a little distracted! I got the muffler on the car last Friday, and spent a couple more hours driving around on the way home. For the benefit of everyone else, there were a few outstanding items when I picked the car up (none of them were Chris's problems - they were almost all parts that I hadn't ordered or that we were waiting for). The missing muffler was the most notable item, so it was good to get that completed. I had to remove all the spacers from under the driver's seat. That tells you how much the original seat cushions had collapsed, because I never had any trouble fitting in the car back in the day. Even with all the spacers removed I'm brushing against the headliner with the seat back and reclined. The rear sway bar links that I'd ordered months ago were the wrong ones, so the sway bar was in place, but not connected to the suspension, which was the suspected cause of a clunk happening when hitting bumps. I got the correct links (unfortunately I mistakenly ordered only one first and had to order a second) and installed the second one this morning. Unfortunately, the clunk is still happening, and I'm starting to think it might be coming from inside the passenger door. The other suspect is the gland nut on the passenger side strut. I might not have tightened it down properly when I re-assembled them a couple of years ago. The tach isn't working consistently, so I need to order and install a TechMatch device to sort it out (I believe it's the TachMatch TM-03 I-Drive that I need? Current-driven tach?). I'm not confident that my ear is good enough to recognize redline, so I probably haven't gone past 5000 RPM yet. The engine sounds and feels absolutely great up there, though, so I'm looking forward to really trying it out. The throttle's a little sticky, which made driving without a muffler quite interesting. It's either getting better or I'm getting used to it. The linkage all looks fine and all the pivot points are properly lubricated, so I'm going to keep driving to see what happens. The gas gauge isn't working, which is mysterious, because Chris and I both had the sending unit working properly, and I think I tested it once when connected to the gauge in the dash. It's probably something simple, but I haven't got to that yet. Mostly I've been driving the car, which has been fantastic! It's starting to come back to me. As I mentioned somewhere a while back, the engine somehow feels much larger than it really is when you first start driving it. That long hood has something to do with it. The car's already starting to feel smaller and more nimble to me after only a few hours of driving. I'll keep driving and knocking these items off, and I'll keep this thread updated!

It was March 14th when I posted that message. Today I got a call from the Ministry of Transport Ontario saying I own the car again! The paperwork to have it transferred back to me disappeared twice in the depths of MTO, but good eventually triumphed over bureaucracy. I wasted no time getting insurance on the car, and picking up the new ownership papers and license plates. We're now one exhaust system and a signature on a Vehicle Condition Report away from being on the road! MTO doesn't require the Vehicle Condition Report - they returned the car to "fit" condition, because that's the state it was in when transferred to the wrecker. My insurance company needs the form completed before they can put collision coverage on it.

Driving a Euclid must be something! Rolling in one must be terrifying. Which model? I spent the summer of 1982 in Whitehorse, Yukon, working at a construction site. They had a few Euclids there. For a while they used to drive me around on the hood so I could take extensometer readings at the rock face. When they got bored of doing that I found a lot of other creative, if not entirely safe, ways to get to the extensometers. I did once get my current 240Z up to ~120mph on Hwy 401 late at night. Once I got there I found the steering wheel to have no feel whatsoever. I slowly let the speed come down while my heartrate continued to go up. I don't think I'll do that again.

I just re-covered my passenger seat with the Interior Innovations cover that I bought from @KenFirch a while back. I purchased the replacement foam from Interior Innovations as well. I wasn't really looking forward to the job. It sounded like it was a bit of a pain, but it went very well and didn't take me more than a couple of hours. I thought I'd add a couple of things to this thread that might help people doing it in the future. My car is a 1971 240 (the one @grannyknot has been working on in a current build thread), but the seats seem to be from a 280Z. They have the metal "springs" in the seat bottom rather than the webbing. They've been recovered previously (the covers were obviously not original), but the foams seemed to be original. A couple of things made the job easier, as described here. There was a thin sheet of plastic covering the foam of the seat back. It seemed to be professionally made to fit the seat, but I don't know whether it was something that came from the factory. It was a little worse for wear, but I was able to reuse it. I was also able to leave the very thin layer of foam on the metal seat back. It was wrapped around and over the edges of the foam on the front of the seat back, but I was able to peel it off. I first glued the edges of the new foam to the metal seat back. I used Lepage Multi-Purpose Spray Adhesive and it held very well through the rest of the work. The plastic on the top of the seat back made it easy to slip the top of the new cover over the seat back down to the point where I needed to hog ring it to the metal back. Once I'd done that (more on that in a minute), I was able to very easily roll the rest of the cover down over the rest of the back. When using the tangs to secure the front and back of the cover to the bottom of the seat back, it was easy to pull the material down far enough. This was probably because it could slide easily on the plastic sheet. I was able to hog ring the cover to the metal back through the slot without too much trouble. I first used plastic cable ties to pull the wire on the metal seat back and the wire in the seat cover insert together, then used the hog ring pliers I bought to add the hog rings. I was going to cut the cable ties off afterwards, but decided to simply trim them instead. I can't see them doing any harm, and they're providing extra holding power. When I did the seat bottom, I first used the tangs to pull the cover down tight on the foam and metal seat base. Once I'd done that, it made the job of attaching the hog rings much easier because the foam was quite compressed. I used the cable ties again, which made it very easy to attach the hog rings. I do kind of wonder whether you could do this job with the cable ties and not bother with hog rings at all. Maybe they'd wear through over time. So I would suggest using a plastic wrap over the seat back, attaching the seat bottom cover using the tangs before doing the hog rings, and using cable ties to pull parts together when installing the hog rings. I'll be doing the driver's seat over the next few days, so I'll get a chance to do this again. Hopefully it will go as well as this one did.

They very proudly proclaim that the carpets are made in USA, which I saw as a big positive when looking for a supplier.

The weatherstrip kit continues to be elusive (my first order, via Datsun Garage was last July). Today was the day MSA told me they'd be receiving kits. I spoke to Precision, who supplies them, and they told me that they'd be shipping MSA half the number they'd ordered. MSA then told me I was in the "upper middle" of their orders, so they thought I should be OK. I asked them again today and they told me that they received enough kits to fulfill orders they'd received "before the end of January". The wording made it sound like I wouldn't be getting one of the kits (next ones forecast for April 23rd), but my order was placed on January 30th, so I've asked for clarification. At this point they're very aware that it's the part holding up completion (and apparently tutorial development)!

How's that for a coincidence? The smudged date is, in fact, March 29th. 30 years ago today. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the most expensive 240Z sold in Canada at that point! Most of them were already wrecks by 1994 (this one had just arrived from Georgia), and I don't think many people were restoring them yet. Shockingly, it was appraised at $10k, though I don't think anyone would have paid that for it back then!

So it's not just me! Safari Gold, under artificial light, at night. What a great tribute picture to a beautiful car!. I've got to stop looking at these pictures. Between weatherstrip kit delays and Ministry of Transport bullsh!t, I don't know how long it will be before I can (legally) drive mine on the road! That very short taste I had of driving it the other day put the hooks back into me. There's some weird contradiction between the way the engine feels way bigger than it is when you first start driving it, and the way it feels once you've been in it for a while. I've never felt as "merged" with a car as I do with a Z. I love driving my Mini - it's small, nimble, and peppy, but there's just too much technology between me and the car/road/experience. I've kept this at bay for a very long time, but now it's killing me. Having said all that, I'm not sure who's more frustrated with the delays - me or Granny!

The guy in the Alcatraz shirt was my best friend growing up. He was a very funny guy. I've been an admirer of the pictures of your car in your signature! Thanks for sending a few more. Great colour! Nice car! I think a lot of the early Z colours had different looks in different lighting. For some reason, I find the Safari Gold looks great under artificial light at night. Strange.

That thought crossed my mind, but I don't remember pulling the hose through it when I removed the AC equipment. I don't think the hoses came forward from the rad. I don't know any of the car's history pre-1994, other than it came from Georgia, so I have no idea when various modifications were made. I doubt the dealer removed the smog pump and installed the air conditioner in its place, so it seems likely that it was modified later in its life. If I find some time, I might do some looking around BAT for pictures of the area to see if I can find any other cars with similar grommets. Maybe one of them still has something passing through them.

This one had the dealer air installed. Weirdly, the air pump had been removed and the AC compressor had been installed on the driver's side where it had been. One of the first things I did to the car back in 2020 was remove it. It had never worked while I owned the car, and I didn't think I'd use it much. So it's possible that the grommets are on this car as a result, though I still don't remember any wiring using that routing.

I had an orange 1972 240 back in 1984. I really liked that colour and thought about having this one repainted orange. Granny and I both like Safari Gold, and it didn't seem to make sense to change the colour of a car that was being kept mostly original, so we stayed with Gold. It certainly is a unique '70's colour!

I took this picture back in 2020. It (barely) shows one of the grommets in place, but no wires going through it. I might have removed some wiring by then, but I don't actually remember any wires going through the grommets.