julitoMX_1964

Sorry I wasn´t clear. Still have a lot to learn. Thank you

@Zed Head well, as I said, I was just looking at options in case I realy need to do something about the car´s cam. I haven´t even disassembled the engine yet but have been buying parts here and there (new water, oil and fuel pumps, timing chain kit , gauge senders, etc as well as a rebuilt 280ZX distributor and a brand new Holley 390 4bbl carb and Arizona Z manifold) My aim is to build a reliable, responsive daily driver (even if it won´t be driven daily) rather than a high performance or racing car. And yes, I´m aware tha it´s not the only thing I´ll have to purchase and that´s also part of why I´m buying parts before taking the big steps.

Hello and Greetings from Mexico. The other day I came across this on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/COMP-Cams-84-123-6-Camshaft-260S/dp/B005H89VY6/ref=sr_1_27?keywords=Comp%2BCams&qid=1672171010&rnid=2941120011&s=automotive&sr=1-27&th=1 And was wondering if it´d be suitable for my project (´72 240Z, automatic and pretyy much stock in most ways), as you probably know here in Mexico brand new aftermarket or OEM cams are extremely hard to find so I´m curious to see if any of you have had experience with this brand/model, can you recommend them in terms of quality, , performance, etc Thanks in advance

Hello, greetings, i hope everyone is doing fine. I have a question, well, actually a request and a question, first the request (to the administrators of the forums), since the 4 barrel, downdraft adaptations are not that rare among S-30 enthusiasts, wouldn´t it be nice if they could have a dedicated subforum just like the SU and Mikuni ones? and for my question, I have plans to install an Arizona Z car manifold and a Holley 390 in my ´72 240 (the rest of the engine will be left pretty much stock) Will the mechanical fuel pump provide enough fuel for the Holley? or should a switch to an electric one?(obviously with the correct specs) Thank you in advance

https://www.mobilgaz.net/wp/product/datsun-240z-gauge-face-full-kit/

That´s great! In the meanwhile, Seppi72 could you also provide me with the measurements? Thanks in advance.

Thanks! Iwas thinking PS because the machine I can make these tests with is not a fully professional or industrial grade one, it´s mainly for decorative crafts and stuff like that, but I can have access for free and can do some experiments. I´m not sure if it´ll be strong enough for ABS (if the sheet is thin enough, maybe, I don´t know)...and even if it wasn ´t or for some other reason I had to settle with PS, I was thinking about reinforcing the piece afterwards with fiberglass for example. Maybe the thermoformed piece can serve as a mold for actual fiberglass castings? Anyway this will be trial and error...and basically for the fun of it.

@Seppi72 I didn´t mean polistyrene (the white porous stuff that ´s used in packaging, etc..) but styrene plastic, the material most car and airplane models are made of. I think each material goes by diferent names according to each country. Anyway I´ll be very grateful if you can supply the measurements. I really don´t know if what I intend to do will be succesful so I can´t make any promises, , but I´m willing to try and report back here what the results are. Obviously if the benefit can be shared with others all the better.

@Seppi72 Hello, my 72 doesn ´t have the glove box insert and I was also looking at alternatives other than the aluminum or cardboard ones, but instead of fiberglass I was thinking that since I have access to consumer grade thermoforming equipment I could try it with styrene sheets or laminated PVC which I can easily find in local crafts stores, but I would need a (more or less) complete piece or object of simmilar size to use as a mold or pattern. Do you think you could take some mesaurements of your cardboard insert and post them here? It doesn ´t have to be super precise or of every shape and angle, just the most general outline measures so I can make a mock up and mold the piece (or pieces) from it.

Thank you! Great Info!

No. The distributor is still the old point and condenser one. I relly don´t know why they discarded the ballast resistor. I removed the coil and oddly there´s nothing written on it, no brand name, model number or any other indication (for instance, wheter or not it has an integrated resistance, etc) I just got a new one that seems to match the factory specs and a new ballast resistor. I ´ll connect everything as it should (by the way, does anybody have a simplified coil/resistor/distributor diagram? I have the FSM butsometimes it gets a little confusion for me) Interesting that you mention the ZX distributor swap, latter down the road I hope to switch to an electronic ignition system and it seems like a fool proof option (if I can find one in good shape), if I can´t do that, maybe the 123 Ignition one? The pertronix adaptation is out of the question since it doesn´t seem to work with automatic transmition cars like mine (Am I correct on this?)

Thanks! Indeed my plan is to use a Ballast resistor, now I´ll check if they just disconnected, bypassed or cut any wires when they put that old coil. I´ll let you know how it turns out!

Hello everyone, greetings from Mexico City. My 240Z has been stored for a number of years and I´m decided to finally start working on it (a number of personal issues had prevented it so far) I have another post with its presentation in this club and received great feedback and some nice tips regarding a first restart of the engine after years of inactivity. Among the things I´m planning to do is an engine tune up and connect everything as the factory indicated. The engine is pretty much stock but it seems a couple of things have been fiddled with (for example, there is no ballast resistor, it seems to have been removed, a couple of wires are disconnected, etc) At some later point I intend to switch to an electronic ignition but right now I just want it to start and run on factory specs in order to diagnose the engine´s condition as precisely as possible. I already have the usual parts; points, condensers (the car is automatic), distributor cap and rotor , new ballast resistor (rated at 1.5 Ohms I think) spark plugs, spark plug cables. I still haven´t bought the ignition coil tho, and here´s where I´d appreciate your advice. Of course there are a lot of places, stores, on line sellers, etc where one can purchase an ignition coil for this car...but it caught my attention that most vendors either don´t publish the coil´s technical specs (most times it just states wheter it will or won´t fit your car model) or when the specs are available, they are not what the FSM indicates. The FSM indicates a Primary Resistance of 1.5 to 1.7, a Secondary Resistance of 9.5 to 11.6 and a 1.6 Ohm external resistor. So my actual question is the following; I was browsing through some local sites that published their coils´specs and found a local brand with a model that has a Primary Resistance of 1.6, a Secondary Resistance of 9.5 and require an external resistor of 1.35 Ohms, the application list says it´s meant for older Ford and GMC V8 engines (the Datsun Z cars were never sold in Mexico at that time) My question is: Would this coil work for my 240Z? Also I found the specs for the Duralast C831 at the local Autozone site and are as follows: Primary Resistance of 1.1 to 1.9, Secondary Resistance of 7.5 to 13.0 and no mention of an external resistor, and its supposed to fit my car according to them. Would this be also a reasonable choice? I really don´t need right now the best brand or model, the highest performance or even durability, I just need the car to perform within "normal" conditions in order to decide what or how much work the rest of the engine needs. What do you think?

Thank you!

Hello everyone. I have almost the same problem with my ´72 240Z, but in my case it´s regarding the side fender DATSUN emblems. they filled the holes when they painted the car years ago and recently I bought a pair of new emblems. The paint itself is in good condition so I´d prefer not to have to sand the area to locate those little holes. I hope somebody can help me. Thank you in advance.

Good idea, I was just thinking about spraying some black paint. But the textured finnish seem better. thak you!

Greetings again! So I decided to try and fix it. I did some research online and of the many methods and tips I found I chose three as the ones more fitted for the task (and my experience or lack of) ; first the super (crazy) glue and baking soda method, second was two part epoxy glue/resin and finally, fiberglass and its correspondent resin as the third option (I had never worked with it but was curious so it seemed a good opportunity to practice)Since I was not sure which one ´d give the best results I decided to use them all three (yes, its overkill but I didn´t want to take any chances, the piece is so fragile it could break again even after a "succesful" repair) after purchasing all I needed to do it, I started by cleaning an sanding the whole back side, I couldn ´t believe how brittle that old plastic is, just by manipulating it I made a new crack on it (fortunately not very large), the super glue/baking soda method is surprisingly good (provided you align the pieces to be joined very carefully) and dries really fast, then I mixed and applied the two part epoxy (the one I used is suposedly filled also with "metal particles" or something, it ´s recomended to fix gas tank and radiator seals and you have to mix it and apply it very fast because it starts its curing process right away, at that point i also put a coulpe of metal strips I hd lying around for extra reinforcement, after the epoxy was fully cured one or two days after I proceeded to apply the fiberglass and resin following the instructions on the kit I bought and when the fiberglass was also fully cured a couple of days later I decided to give the whole area a couple of coats of undercoating/bedliner paint with a brush to give the whole repair a more finished appearence (it also gives the piece a little bit more of "body", it feels stronger than before in general) As you can see in the last picture a fine crack is still visible on the front side but I haven´t painted it yet, that will be the last step before installing the trim on the car. I´m pretty happy with the result and even with the combination of different methods it was still far cheaper than buying a new or used piece again.

Thanks for your comments! I ´m not sure I´ll be able to get a refund (the guy will surely blame the shipping service and viceversa) but since I was thinking about buying more stuff from him I might ask for a future discount as Zed Head suggested. I ´ll experiment a little and if I can salvage it I´ll report back to share the method with the best results, maybe it´ll will help others. Like I said I don´t need it to be perfect since I´m more concerned about findding a good speaker solution and that back trim will probably be aout of sight. In the menantime, Merry Christmas to all! please take care.

Greetings to everyone. My ´72 240Z came without the rear interior trim piece (the one that covers the tail light assemblies from the inside), the rest of the trim pieces are in fair condition. I wasn´t too concerned about it since I plan to install an aftermarket stereo and I´m still deciding if I´ll put a 6x9 speaker panel or go with custom speaker boxes (in that same position, all the way back and aiming at the driver/passenger) but decided to buy a used one while I decide the sound matter. Unfortunately the part´s seller did a very poor job packaging the piece and it arrived broken (see the photos) Since I don´t know right now if the trim will be used or visible after I do the speaker thing, I´d prefer not to have to buy another one and try to fix this one. I´ve seen several YT tutorials about repairing or restoring plastic car interior parts, but most of them depend on what was the original material those parts are made of. For instance, I don´t think these old datsun parts are ABS, are they?, what method would you use to put it back together? I suposse I need to start by adding some material to the "back" (not visible) side and reinforce it, what would give the best results?, fiberglass, epoxy resin, car filler/bondo? Thanks in advance!

Thank you for your answers. Indeed it´s a 260Z grill. Well, I´ ll stick with the original one and forget about messing with this one. Take care and have a great week!

I have a 1972 240Z and about to start its restoration process. I have this grille in good shape that I was thinking about cleaning and painting it to rplace the original one (the original one is also in good shape as far as I can tell but it´s still in the car and I was thinking that I could renew the other grille to gain some time and when I start disassembling the front end it´d be just a matter of dropping in the freshly painted one) but the "new" grille is different, doing some photo research I´m led to believe its from a 260Z and the lower bars are shorter to acomodate the later model´s bumper mounts. My question is: Would it fit right in onto my car or would I need to modify something? I wouldn´t mind havind those "holes" in the grille because I could fit a couple of small rectangular driving lights (most likely LED ones) ant thoughts?

Hello again! I hope you are all fine. I just got a used 240Z tail light to replace the original one that was broken. Now I´m planning to clean/polish and maybe clear coat both lenses. I already separated the lens from the lamp´s body using the hot water method. Now I´d like to get rid of that gooey residue from the adhesive that held them together. Is there a simple way to do this?

Well....like I said before...or has I remember is that one of the original 72 tail lights was broken. My father went looking for a replacement in junk yards. This was way before internet and since Z cars never were sold in this country, it was very difficult to get parts for them. I think he found this rear end in a Texas junkyard and drove back with the parts all the way down to Mexico City. Like I mentioned Z cars in general are a rather rare sight around here and my dad was far from being an expert on the matter so he didn ´t think twice about the swap (I remember he even said that it was even a way of "modernizing" the car......Yes I know, I know) At that time he had someone who came and worked in his cars anddid the (rather crude) adaptation. Now that you mentioned it, it´s likely that the bumper/spacer also came with the tail lights and panel, I really couldn ´t tell. Next time I´m there I´ll look for the original bumper (luckily my father used to keep a lot of his car´s parts even when he didn´t actually used them, that´s how I rescued the original 240Z rear end) What I have already done is removing the 260Z tail lights. They happened to be in a really good shape.

Thank you! Great advice! ...Yes I have several things to ponder before I start really fixing things in the car. While I haven´t been able to do any serious work on it I´ve been doing a lot of research (this site is an amazing source of information) and trying to decide on certain things like for example if I want to keep the original engine or do a swap for something more modern/reliable, or if I´ll keep the current paint job or change it to another color that better matches the red interior...or on the contrary, may be just changing the color of the interior. I´m still not sure, every option has pros and cons. What I´m sure about is that I don´t want/need to do a complete restoration and full originality but at the same time I neither want to radically transform or customize it. It´ll probably wind up being a mild resto mod, basically stock looking but with little improvements here and there (like LED lights, a better sound system and such) What you can be sure is that I´ll be coming back here to show this project´s progress and certainly to ask a lot of questions. Have a great day everyone!

I´ll take a look next time I go to my parent´s home, again thanks for the tips. Sorry about yor dad, I wish I had more money to keep mine´s legacy going but he left several (almost too many) other cars so I´ll just focus on the Datsun (which apart from the sentimental value is a great car!) I think I´ll be there within the next couple of weeks. The only way to get into the car is trough the rear hatch until I make space to move it (it´snot only boxed in like you can see in the photos but also has a pile of old parts in front of it from years of collecting/hoarding pieces and sparts here and there. We´ll be selling most of the cars but it´s hard to even decide where to start (most of them are unfinished projects and with many parts laying all over the place) I haven´t decided a 100% about the Datsun but I don´t think it´ll be a full restoration to its original shape, what I do know is that I don´t want it to be an all out custom car either, probably more of a daily driver/restomod. I think I ´ll star by cleaning it up as much aas I can, then proceed to check the electrical system to see what works and what doesn´t, then gast tank/lines, brakes/brake lines, etc... I´ll leave the engine for later since I´m not really sure at this moment if I´ll use the original one or I´ll swap it (if I do the later, it´ll be on a basis of reliability, ease/cost of servicing and parts, etc rather than power or speed, I´m 56 Y.O. and never was much of a racer)