John Coffey

My racing 240Z in its final incarnation cost between $850 and $950 an hour to run, including planned engine refreshes, tires, fuel, entry fees, etc.

You might be able to clean up the outer shoulder for the out bearing. Most likely the bearing siezed and deposited metal on the spindle. If you can remove that and polish the spindle you can save it.

Godspeed John. We lost a great shoe.

C3s are getting expensive - even the last 1970s ones. C4s are still the cheapest Corvette you can buy right now.

The 1990's were the Jurgen Shrempp years for Mercedes. He almost destroyed the company with the W140, the horrid ML350, and the Chrysler merger. As part of his reign he dictated the Mercedes vehicles will be 100% recyclable despite the misgivings of the engineering staff. The W140 chassis was the first with the biodegradable wiring and you can buy any of those S class cars for less the $5k including the 6L V12 version. Shrempp was listed as one of the 15 worst CEOs of all time by the WSJ. BTW... I owned a C4 Corvette. Avoid it unless you are planning on racing or autocorssing the car. They are a great bang for the buck for that purpose, but a C5 is light years better as a street car.

Looks like your strut tubes were shortened too much for your application and a taller spring won't help if the shocks are fully extended. Its all documented here: http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/38589-strut-sectioning-faq/

Its a mistake to assume rust remains "encapsulated." It doesn't. Rust never sleeps (to quote Neil Young).

Old Japanese saying... Man with one watch knows what time it is. Man with two watches never certain.

If its the bolt that connects the TC rod to the control arm/ball joint then is a M10 x 1.25P and any class 10.9 bolt of the correct length will work. Its not a shoulder bolt, its a partially threaded bolt. If its the bolt that connects the steering arm to the strut tube then is an M12 x 1.25p and again, its not a shoulder bolt, its a partially threaded bolt. Any partially threaded bolt of the correct length and class (10.9) will work.

It doesn't matter. There is no original flowing Datsun engine anywhere in the country after 40+ years. Its all relative based on the condition of the engine you are working on.

The gasoline is the same. Here in California its all the same base stock and all the fuel trucks (Chevron, Arco, Hector's Cheap Gas, etc.) fill up from the same pipe. Each brand has its own additive package and octane booster that's added in the truck as its being filled. So, what you're smelling is the additive package, at least if you're in CA.

Without the numbers matching engine and the unique 1969 car parts (hatch glass with no defroster, date matched seat belts, date matched wheels, hubcaps, cylindrical hood bumpers, plastic inspection lid clips, etc.) its just another rusty S30. The Dash is worth something ($1,500 to $2,00) if undamaged.

I've run an essentially stock L24 to 7,300 rpm every lap at Cal Speedway when drafting another car. Had to do it to stay in the race. The engine was a bit soft after that event. Swapping in new valve springs brought the engine back to life.

The issues isn't the bottom end, the issue is the valve springs. Anything over 7,000 rpm on the stock valve springs is risky, especially if there's a bunch of hours on them. 6,500 on the stock valve springs is fine. What happens during autocrosses and on a race track is that you have to stretch the rpms past what's ideal to keep from doing an up and down shift in quick succession. So, you may want to keep a hard redline at 6,500 but you can gain a .5 second by running to 6.800 rpm before a specific corner.

A typical good quality wrap is $2,000 and above.

Someone sprayed a bunch of that shiny auto dealer black crap all over the underside of the exhaust. That car is going to stink for a week until that all burns off. It looks like they sprayed that stuff over most of the underside of the car. Notice a lot of the undercar nuts and bolts are rusted. The rest of the is finished to a good standard, but as usual, the underside of the car is substandard.

At least here in the USA, that roll bar would have not been legal for race use from about 1970. I've got the historic SCCA GCR going back to 1968 and straight rear braces for the main hoop were required from 1970. It might be a one-off bar or something sold as a "street" bar.

Except for some IMSA specific class and safety items, the allowed mods for GTU were basically FIA Group 4 regulations. You can order the FIA homologation papers from ACCUS. You need specification 3023 and ask for the addendums for the 280Z for 1975. FIA Historical Technical Passport (HTP) -- Purpose and Acquisition

It hasn't sold yet so the car referenced is not an indicator of anything. Wait to see if the deal is actually completed after the auction ends. The bids might be from flaky buyers or shill bids from the seller and his buddies.

In all industry and consumer measures, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Mazda vehicles of 1991 were orders of magnitude better quality then the Saturn SL2. Your own personal standards were different, which worked out well for you. But over a larger sample size the Japanese cars of 1991 were designed and built to a much higher quality standard. The only reason GM could sell the Saturn at a competitive price to the Japanese was the increasing value of the yen due to the Plaza Accord in 1985. That forced the price of Japanese cars up in relation to the dollar. If the yen to dollar relationship remained as it was in 1985 that 1991 Saturn SL2 would have been $1,650 more expensive then a comparable Accord or Sentra.

If you drive a FWD car like you drive a RWD car, you won't get the most out of the FWD car. Same is true for a 356, 911, or 912 driven like you would drive a 240Z. You have to drive to the strengths of the car and not to the strengths of the car you drove before. A well setup Acura Integra Type R, a Datsun 240Z, and a 2.2L Porsche 911 will all lap a race track with identical times given good drivers.

The draw, according to our vintage Porsche customers, is (are) in no particular order: 1. Marque history 2. Beauty/style. 3. Driving experience 4. Increasing pricing - in some cases stupidly increasing prices. 5. Lifestyle. Quality never enters into the conversation. Sometimes they talk about engineering brilliance but that's usually from someone who thinks engineering is driving a train.

Someone noticed Vizard is a product whore? Imagine that; A magazine writer skewing an article to sell more products or even, heaven forbid, just reprinting a manufacturer's press release as editorial content. Whoda thunk it? All these magazine writers are product whores. They are not writing articles to help you out, they write articles to make them and their magazines money.

If a consumer's primary purchasing criteria is price, the consumer is the problem. Working on vintage Porsche's for last two years has really opened my eyes to that simple truth. There is a large and constant demand for Made in Germany parts for these cars and the customers are happy to pay the prices. When I worked on S30s for 13 years the exact opposite was true. Few customers wanted to pay extra for a Made in Japan part if a US or Chinese made part was available. Ball joints are a perfect example. $100 from Nissan for Japanese OEM quality. $30 from Moog made in China with marginal quality. I had exactly 5 customers step up for the Nissan parts that lasted 40 years and only failed because the boot got torn and the previous owners didn't spent the $20 for new boots. The problem is us, not China.

There's nothing bad of odd about a stock open diff. If you've never spun the rear tires on your Z in a corner, then you'll never know the benefits of a LSD. If you want the car to be more stable in a corner and allow earlier and more throttle exiting, then a LSD is of great benefit. Its the single best thing you can do for the handling of a S30. If you're not a cornering kind of guy, no need to spend the money on the diff.