John Coffey

FYI... Find the Betamotorsports page on Facebook. I added some quick pics of the car, it arrived at our shop (Benton Performance) yesterday.

Yes, the serial number above is correct.

FYI for those that might see this car on eBay, Craigslist, etc. Barn Find/ Shop Find race prepped 280Z for sale in socal. - Nissan : Datsun ZCar forum :Nissan Z Forum: 240Z to 370Z

A couple helpful tricks: Put the new races in the freezer and the hubs in an over at 250F. The races go in much easier. Getting the races out is very easy if you have a TIG welder. Just run a bead around the bearing face of the race, flip the hub over, and the old race just falls out. No pounding needed.

Its already been repainted once. It will probably get repainted again.

And how do you pry these cars out of the owner's hands? Be nice, honest, and pay a fair price. Janelle said she's had a lot of guys try to buy the car and all treated her like she was a stupid woman. She's smarter then most and knows a lot about cars. She was a fast shoe in a Camaro for years.

I've known about the car since the owner, Janelle, took it to her first autocross back in the mid-1990s. I was her instructor and when I realized what the car was I suggested she find another car to race. She put this car aside and just drove it on weekends. I wanted to buy the car for years and things just never worked out, mostly because I tend to modify whatever I buy to suit my tastes and this car needed to be restored. About 10 years ago a Datsun guy trying to buy the car told her she couldn't drive the car because of unleaded gasoline (he was a **** head trying to low ball her on the price). She called me and I told her not to worry about it. But she did and stored the car in her horse trailer. Years later I'm now working at Benton Performance and we have a very good customer and car collector, the guy you see in the video. He was telling me his Z story and I thought about Janelle's car. I called her and she said she would sell it to John if I said it was OK. I did, and John has the car with us to do a complete restoration in the next year. BTW, Janelle is the lady driving the forklift in the video. I'm pretty sure the serial number is 502 but I could be mistaken - I checked it when we pulled the car out of the trailer but I forgot. Build date is 11/69. Engine serial number is in the 2000s.

Honda, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Ford, GM, Chrysler...

A short video of it coming out of the horse trailer it was stored in for a few years. https://vimeo.com/101361546

Adding a zirc fitting or penetrating any of the seals to add or change the grease will just create an avenue for contamination. And a sealed bearing is not a panacea, look at Porsche's problems with the intermediate shaft bearing on the M60 Boxster and Carrera engines as a perfect example. And regarding grease "flow" into the rear hub bearings... I've opened up a few dozen rear hubs and have yet to see evidence of grease flowing into the bearings from a packed housing. I may not be smart enough to see if that occurs but most of the grease packed in the housing has solidified and only "flows" when I scrape it out with a putty knife. I know packing the housing is a step in the FSM but its not something I do when I rebuilt them. I just use a grease (Wurth SIG3000) that didn't exist back in the 1970s and is orders of magnitude better then what's spec'd by Nissan.

The rear wheel bearings on the S30 last a couple hundred thousand miles with normal road use. How many more miles do you guys want?

That's really cool!

So... you're saying to choose the cooling system thermostat opening temperature to boil off water in the oil? I have never heard that before. That would require an oil temp gauge. I suggest that the OP refer to the FSM picture in Zed Head's post above to select the correct thermostat temperature.

M48 x 1.5p taps are a little difficult to find. Use a M12 x 1.5p threaded bolt to hammer the top of the strut tubes round. Lay the bolt thread in the tube thread and hit the side of the bolt with a hammer to correct the out-of-round areas. You can also carefully move the bolt around the threads in the tube and tap on it to restore any damaged threads. Order 3 new gland nuts from Koni and use one as a tap to correct the threads on the strut tubes. Use a light oil to help that process along.

This is how to properly string a car. Determining Wheel Alignment - String Your Car - Circle Track Magazine

Exactly. There is a lot that can be done with those additional parameters and JWT can custom program the unit to meet your engine specs. I know at least one person running one of these ECUs on his turbo 280ZXT and its making over 400hp and passes CA smog every two years.

Its already been done... Jim Wolf Technology website

You are assuming that both wheels droop the same amount. They don't, for various reasons. You also assume that every car sits level side to side while on the ground and loaded. They don't, for various reasons. You are also assuming the end links are equal length, the control arms/bushings are in the same position vertically, ...I can go on... One little quibble... coil springs and torsion bars work the same. The spring material is twisted as the spring is moved through its range of travel. Coil springs are just torsion bars wrapped in a circle.

Good post ^. Sway bars also should be tightened at the end links with the car on the ground and in a neutral position after doing the control arm bushings above. You do not want to introduce preload in the sway bar (its a spring) when tightening the end links.

Straight water with a bottle of water wetter is fine for cars that will not see any freezing weather. That's what I ran in my race car. On my street car I ran about 10% anti-freeze to water. To flush, disconnect the upper radiator hose, cap the upper inlet in the radiator, and run and hose into the radiator cap. Start the engine, turn on the hose, and watch the mess.

Solves a lot of the cooling issues on 5 & 6.

The Nissan Motorsports gasket was made by Garlock and is easily cut to fit modified parts. There is also a gasket from Hooker for their Super Comp headers that might work.

Why don't you just tune the carbs you have?

I would be leery of someone replacing floor pans for $150 in labor. It a big job with at least 8 hours work for each side from start to finish (I've replaced at least two dozen floor pans in S30s). At $150 flat rate his effective hourly rate is $18.75 an hour. For a fabricator with 20 years experience that's very low. You're either getting a fantastic deal, he has under estimated the work involved, or he's going to hack the car up.

You should never, ever have to use a press to install one of the side shafts.