John Coffey

There has been a lot of discussion off-line regarding that car. Lots of questions about the serial numbers on the firewall and the door jamb plate. The engine compartment tag and dash tags appear legit. Comparing the firewall VIN numbering orientation with a Series 1 1970 and 1971 shows alignment issue and the overstamps on the jamb tag concerned a few potential bidders. Personally, I don't know enough about the very early cars to say if these are really problems or if Nissan did a sloppy job on production startup.

I'm not an engine guy so I don't know. Amir seemed to think there is a difference (at least with the US spec engine) and he spent some time trying to locate the Cosmo 13B.

Nope, he's already done a 20B in a FD RX7 and I'm in the process of putting a Cosmo 13B single turbo in a RX8 for him. The SR260Z was sold last year and Amir bought it back. Now, with the RX8 nearing completion, he wants to sell the SR car again. Some pictures here: http://www.betamotorsports.com/services/hybrids.html

Weld a bung on your exhaust pipe in the correct spot. Attach a length of braided line with a schrader valve at the end, do the dyno run, and check with one of those low pressure off road tire guages. When you're done, remove the line and cap off the bung on the exhaust. The line and the schrader valve may not last more then a few dyno sessions due to the exhaust heat.

Jim Thompson at Sunbelt told me that the normally aspirate L6 engine, regardless of state of tune, likes to see 1.5 to 2 psi of pressure in the exhaust, at full throttle, at the engine's torque peak, measured 6" from the end of the header collector.

Just take it to a driveline shop and have them set the backlash correctly. I've run a number of R180s out of 4x4s (4.56, 4.38, 4.11) and one needed the backlash reset.

As the old saying goes, "Its worth what someone is willing to pay." And my perspective on what cars are worth is obviously warped after watching someone pay $110,000 (+ 8% buyer's commission, + $350 bidder fee) USD for a frickin' Amphicar at the Barrett Jackson auction.

Well, we're at $6,600 USD now, with 3 days to go, and the reserve hasn't been met. And this is for a Skyline GT-X (not an R) that is a roller. It doesn't come with the S20A engine or even the correct L20A, it comes with a generic rebuilt L28 that you get to install yourself. Its also had a bad repaint job from silver to white, there's white overspray all over the interior, has rust, is missing the carpet, missing the shift knob, and is probably missing a few unique exterior and interior trim pieces. Its not a bad car but, at least IMHO, the price has exceeded what I was willing to pay. A 240Z in similar shape is worth $2,000 here in Southern California. This car is probably worth double that in the condition its in because of its rarity and the "Skyline" mystique. EDIT: The seller does have excellent eBay feedback and everyone who has bought a car from him is happy, so that counts a lot. A lot of those cars are charity donations that the seller somehow gets and resells. That might be th ekind of business he's in.

I sent the seller an e-mail asking if I can come by and look at the car. So far, no reply. If I get a chance to look at I'll let you guys know. The price is way out of line for what it is, but remember, this is an eBay auto sale. I've heard that only about 33% of the cars sold on eBay actually sell.

The pictured exhaust is not stainless. Thin wall mild steel, which is lighter then the same wall thickness stainless. The only thing lighter would be .035 wall stainless and mandrel bends in that thickness get very expensive. Most racers don't need the added expense of stainless especially here in California. What makes the exhaust expensive is: 1. Completely TIG welded (no weld material inside the tubing). 2. All welded joints smooth on the inside and lined up properly (no diameter reductions). 3. Custom made merge collector "Y" pipe with the inside honed out and smoothed. 4. O2 sensor bung added. 5. Complete 3" mandrel bent from "Y" pipe to tip. 6. Borla XR-1 Raceline muffler. 7. Optional straight pipe. 8. Extra thick CNC machined 3 bolt flanges. 9. Stainless t-bolt clamps. 10. Exhaust fits: not dragging, no banging, no rubbing, clears driver's footwell, clears T5, clears custom rear mounted ARB, clears forward mounted fuel cell. 11. Can be completely removed in 2 minutes for trans and diff swaps. 12. Can have an additional muffler added to meet Laguna Seca sound limits. All of the above takes time and that's what increases the cost.

Yup, I'm in La Habra.

The Nissan Comp header for that car was an additional $600. For the vast majority of Z owners the price is stupid. For the few Vintage racing, ITS, and HybridZ guys I've built exhausts for, the price is cheap (well, maybe not "cheap.")

Did you guys know that Pete Brock designed and built an aluminum bodied Can Am car in the mid 1960s? It just finished a $500K restoration and it was out at WSIR yesterday being shaken down, along with Pete and his wife.

About $1,000 gets you this kind of a 240Z exhaust:

That's one way of checking the condition of the ball joint. Just screw the nut down on the shaft until it bottoms and use a torque wrench to check how hard it is to turn the ball in the socket.

For every few goofy ricers that is a hard core Japanese car affcianado. Just today a 20 year old Chinese girl was in my shop having me machine the Cusco camber plates for her Evo 8. She autocrosses, drifts, and does open track events. She spent the entire couple hours she was here going over and crawling under a dirty, greasy 240Z shell that I'm going to build into a Solo2 SM2 car for a customer. She said whe would really want to drive and race a 240Z or a 510 and is saving her money. Right now she can only afford one car payment so a $24,000 used Evo 8 fills the bill for her.

And I'm thinking that all the 20 something kids who really enjoy Hondas, Nissans, Acuras, Toyotas, etc. will be these same folks who will be at BJ 20 years from now bidding on Japanese collectables.

There's kind of a chicken-or-egg thing regarding vehicle valuations and restorations. By far the most expensive aspect of a restoration is labor and most restorations require 500 to 1,000 hours (or more) of work to get the car (any car) to a #1 or #2 level. At $60 an hour you're looking at $30,000 to $60,000 just in labor if you have a shop do the work for you. Most rational car collectors will look at those number and figure that spending their resoration dollars on a Z28 Camaro that can sell for over $100K is a better investment then Datsun 240Z that might sell for the price of the restoration. Irrational car collectors will restore the 240Z for the love of the car, cost be damned. A perfect example for us to watch next year at BJ are Amphicars. One sold at BJ for $110,000! That's over double the price of the previous Amphicar sales record. Next year I bet we'll see a dozen Amphicars cross the block because people figure they can make a profit on the $60,000 is costs to restore one of these little turds. And every one of those will sell for $60,000 or less.

I just listed Carl's site as a place to start.

Start your research at Carl's site: http://www.zhome.com

A locked diff (welded) works very well for putting power down, but it affects trailing throttle behavior. Cars with locked rear diffs tend to have a lot of corner entry push and need a lot of trail braking to get rotation. A Detroit Locker is only locked when power is applied so the understeer problem is eliminated on corner entry. As Jon said, there are NVH tradeoffs and the abruptness of the lockup must be factored into how the car is driven.

JMS has done an ITS spec L28 for me and I was happy with their work: http://jmsracing.com/ House of Cobra built a 300+ horsepower NA L30 for a friend and he was happy with the work: 154 S. Cypress Orange, California 92666 U.S.A. Dean Woodruff (714) 639-8088

Not in electronic form. When the car was a street/autocross car I ran individual ITG air filters on the SUs and built an overkill heat shield: http://www.betamotorsports.com/benchracing/heatshield.html

Probably not. I put a few temp sensors in the engine compartment of my 240Z and once you get the car moving about 25 mph there's at most a 7 degree difference between the underhood temps and abient. At idle you will see significant increases in underhood temps but once the car gets moving the Zs engine compartment cools down quickly. Also did similar testing on my 2000 Ford Contour SVT and a racing BMW 325is. All showed very similar results to my 240Z test.

And here's a video of the master himself doing a lap in the BMW M3 GTR: http://www.dgtalpimp.com/m3_gtr_nurburgring.wmv