EScanlon

That point gap looks to be about 1/8" of an inch on this monitor! LOL Then again, since people are using their monitors for all sorts of :stupid: things, I did adjust the CONTRAST and they don't look scorched at all! (It's amazing what you can do with the different controls on your monitor, you can even make BLACK look GRAY! Which means I'm going to have to be "VEWY VEWY CARE-FUL when I use it to match paint colors to send to my printer!!!) J/K E

Randy: As Carl Beck has pointed out before, was the time estimate part of the written contract you wrote up with the shop, or was it "understood"? I'm not trying to get your Irish up, (and to those of Irish ancestry who would think this is offensive, look up the word "IDIOM"), but from what you posted on another thread, you had various quotes, from $3k to $12k. Obviously, you picked towards the lower end of the range, but not at the bottom. What were your reasons for doing so? Was the timely completion promise one of them, or some other factor? You mention "Fast being in a reasonable time", but that again is an undefined term, to use algebraic parlance (sorry algebraists!). So in reference to your quotes, you've picked more towards Inexpensive and, presumably, Correct than Fast and Correct. Not saying that more money would have guaranteed a timely completion, but it would have meant MORE to the bodyshop who would have been performing the work. Unfortunately, $3-$4k for a complete re-paint with metal work and glass removal included...IS inexpensive nowdays. People are paying that much JUST for the re-paint, which is why shops such as MAACO and Scheib are doing well. But don't just take my opinion on this, there's Jackboxx and Candyblue2+2 who have experience with this. Let's hear from them as to prices and estimates of time. FWIW E

Arne; I wasn't addressing your point. I was addressing Mally002's point about living up to the customer's expectations. You had answered in your own post, that you HAD had a body shop meet a deadline. So there wasn't much to mention there, and I too agree with you. Sadly, having been in those shoes, I can understand the body shop's side. Those guys would like to finish the job, and get paid, just as badly as you want your car. But then we get into the points that I was addressing. However, in addressing the main issue of your post this time, which is "a REALISTIC time estimate", the problem comes down to the fact that sometimes it is impossible to guess what lies beneath the "surface". Add to that that as a customer you're the one that gets to decide whether the estimate is "realistic" or not...whether you're qualified to judge the length of time required OR NOT! You've seen what Jim/A7DZ is finishing up, ask him what he thought he was going to be doing, and in what time frame he thought he would be finished. I'll bet that his wildest, furthest, and most pessimistic time estimate doesn't compare to the ACTUAL time he's had to devote to it. Gary's story started out similarly. A "simple" repair led to close to 2 years worth of work. Mike G's car sat for a number of years due to various factors, but wasn't rushed strictly because he wanted it done right. I went to remove and replace a gas tank simply to eliminate a small gasoline leak so I could get some repair work done on the rear end....and 12 months later, finally got that rear end work done and was finally able to drive my car again. Your own car (yellow) needed a new dash harness, which should have been hopefully somewhat readily available....and it wasn't. How long did it take YOU to find the correct harness, and why? Did you think it was going to take that long? What else could you have done to shorten that time estimate? If you point out that you could have just bought one from the dealer...you're right. How much was it going to be, and why did you decide to keep looking? All of the time "estimates" I've mentioned, went out the window in order to do the job CORRECTLY and INEXPENSIVELY. We on this site joke a lot and call it "While I Am There" syndrome, or "You Might As Well", but it's exactly what also happens in a quality driven shop. Where should they draw the line? Strictly on the front fender bump and repaint they estimated on, or would you like to know that the strut support is about to be ripped out of the front end? What about hidden or collateral damage? So, as far as an "honest" time estimate, would you accept "I don't know until I get into it, and then it might be longer yet?", or would that not be honest? And, let's face it, if the guy told you that it would be 6 months and maybe more....you'd go elsewhere. Eventually someone would lie and tell you it would be ready next week...and the next week, and the next. Is it dishonest, yes. But it's also dishonest the way that you tell a kid it won't hurt to get a shot, or that his pet hamster ran away. Until they develop X-Ray machines that are convenient and cheap enough to install in a bodyshop to estimate what is actually wrong internally, you're going to find all sorts of surprises when you open up the literal "can of worms" that the damaged auto body can be. Add to that the availability of parts, and suddenly it becomes very difficult to ascertain with any degree of accuracy how long it will take. Top that off with the rock-bottom prices that customers are not happy to pay, and you have all the incentive for timeliness that anyone would want...:stupid: Modern vehicles and modern bodyshops have a lot of advantages. They often don't have to bump out a fender, cut and replace rusted metal, or even apply bondo several times until the panel is right. Many times now, it's simply un-bolt, paint the new part and bolt it on. And if it's much more than that....sorry, your vehicle is totaled. Add to that the famous MOTOR Estimating Book that lists time estimates, and a body shop is basically gambling that it can shave minutes off what time the book estimates it should take, in order to make a profit on that job. How is the shop going to shave time off that job? By being thorough, or by being super-fast? Anyone who has ever worked in a manufacturing or production environment with TIMED work knows what happens...people rush, and mistakes get made. Then the piece gets shunted off to the side and addressed later....when it's not being timed. FWIW E

Emphasis mine. FAST- CORRECT- INEXPENSIVE- PICK TWO! Unfortunately, most customers pick two and think that the third will be thrown in by the body shop. If a body shop, or a mechanic's shop could in fact actually perform to the customer's expectations at the prices that most customers think is "fair", they'd be out of business in nothing flat....or so swamped with business that they wouldn't be meeting the customer's expectations....or doing a poor job just cutting corners to make up time...or skimping on materials or... There are some definite time constraints in the materials used, as well as windows of time within which certain procedures can and cannot be performed. You can only shorten the time element...so much. It takes 21 days to hatch a chick from an egg. If you try to speed up the process with heat...you get a hard cooked egg! It's a Catch-22 SQUARED! E

And when you drill from the top, use Finger Drill Bits. These are commonly used in model making when you want to drill a hole very slowly. E

Actually, the Headlight (L & R) fuses are each 10 Amps, whether you run them on High or Low beam. The original lamps were rated as 50/40 Watts. The problem with the old wiring is that many of the splices, and connections as well as other spots where the wire element has been exposed to the air is where they've corroded the most....and well INTO the wiring insulation that covers the wire. As such, it is at these various spots that you end up with a large build-up of heat induced by the added resistance of the corrosion on the wire. By substituting the Headlight Relay Upgrade, you are quite literally...replacing ...the lighting circuit to your headlights with newer and higher amperage capacity wire. That is why you'll see it recommended so often. FWIW E

Mike, while I want to agree with you, sadly there are way too many people who seem to get offended at the slightest little item and deem it their personal crusade to correct it. A friend of mine living in a pricey condominium complex (values ^$500k for a condo) replaced a rose bush that had died on the side of his house that faced onto the common paved access road...and received a letter from the HOA imposing a FINE for "having performed or having had unauthorized landscaping" on his unit. It turns out Mrs. Grundy submitted photographs of him digging out the dead bush and replacing it with one that wasn't dead. On this site, one of our more respected members, is constantly having to put up with the re-appearance of that maroon...Clod Zirconia. Why? Because of a perceived slight. Heck, I've also been subject to some grief over a person's willingness to see a racial slur in the use of an idiom commonly used in the U.S....Why? Because of a willingness to see ill intent where there is none. So, Neil, be grateful of the 20 miles separating you from your neighbor. Down here in the "lower 49" all you need to force your neighbor, fellow site user, etc. to kow-tow to your whim...is to claim you've been offended or find some "rule" to stick em with. Sorry for the wasted bandwidth. E

Gregg: I checked that site you mention, and these are the conditions they insist you agree to before you can place an order: I used their system to select a Datsun 240Z as my vehicle, and came up with this: Emphasis mine. FWIW E

Neil; Buy a car-port. While this isn't a cure-all, it will at least keep the snow/rain off the car with the car cover you've put on it. Since you mention it's a "budget" car cover, I presume it's the typical Size A CoverCraft possibly "Noah" fabric. You can buy a custom fit car cover, but you can expect it to be $200 plus, and take 6-8 weeks to get from the manufacturer. You might also check with some of our club sponsors and see if they might have something on hand. I bought 3 car-ports from Costco, don't know if you have them up there, or are a member, but for $159 they are a 10' x 20' unit that are very well put together. Assembly is only a couple of hours for you and a buddy, or several hours alone. You don't mention whether you're living in your own home or are renting. This normally isn't much of an issue, but you might check with your local zoning laws / ordinance rules to ensure you're not going to get Mrs. Grundy all cracked up about it. Sometimes these are considered semi-permanent structures in some areas. As a home-owner you might be able to take the "risk" of Mrs. Grundy's complaints, or be able to fend of the local Neighborhood Association, but as a renter, you may not have those options. 2¢ E

Here's the link to the one I recalled in LA, it is a 75 280 though: http://www.classiczcars.com/classifieds/showproduct.php?product=1589&cat=1 E

Some of the other guys in California can help you more on the legal aspects of re-registering after that many years. But as with all these cars, the key factor is what the car's condition is. If it's a rust-bucket, are you inheriting someone else's junker? Have you checked to see just how much rust it DOES have? (And there are very few truly rust-FREE Z's.) Do a search on "Rust Spots" and you'll find tons of reading material. Not too long ago, there was another member in the LA area who had one in the Classifieds who just couldn't get anyone to buy it....that also needed some work. Have no idea if it's the same car or not. You might even get Stephen Blakeney, the club's resident AC expert to help you out with what needs to be done to the AC, he's been in the business for years. The carbs need not be a problem, Z-Therapy has good info and material. The 300ZX wheels are also not a problem. MSA sells wheels, and you'd be set. The biggest question is how much would you have to invest into it to make it into a driver and what YOUR intentions are. 2¢ E

If it's the same stuff I recall using years ago, it is clear, but it ends up looking kind of cloudy-milky when it's dry. It appears to be from the same 3M family of products, so this may be the same or slightly different formulation. It was mostly sprayed on after the rocker panel already had been sprayed with the color of the car, sometimes they'd spray one quick coat on the top of the stuff to "even out" the color to the rest of the car, because of the slight color changing properties. IIRC while you could shoot it with a regular paint gun, the rep recommended it be shot with a Body-Shutz style gun (i.e. syphon venturi). Can't recall what it was thinned with. As a side note it's dried consistency is more like dried rubber cement...somewhat rubbery-soft, but nonetheless hard. Also kind of grabby like you would expect a rubber surface to be. So don't expect it to clean or wax like the rest of the car. (That was another reason for the "top-coat" of paint.) That rocker panel spray that I used needed to be sprayed on rather thick to attain the true protection that car's were getting back then in the 80's. In fact, you had to be careful if you tried to get an even appearance as it didn't spray evenly very well at all. It's main selling point was that it basically gave you a rubberized coating to allow small rocks and pebbles to bounce off the rocker panel instead of chipping the paint. Take your time when you paint it on and it should work out well for what you intend Tomo. Just be careful of how you mask off the rest of the panel so you don't end up with a distinct cut -off line. This is where a masking tape line can actually work against you, and you would need to have very careful control of your paint gun to maintain an even line without the tape. Unless you have a body line against which you can hide the cut-off line. FWIW E

Those are sharp wheels! But then again, I'm biased. All you need now is a nice set of center pieces, whether you decide on plain cones, spinners, or .... it will really finish them off nicely. Here's a link that Arne gave me when I mentioned I couldn't find them from the store I had bought my original set from: http://www.gorilla-auto.com/products/?sfID1=270&sfID2=274&productName=2.68%22+WHEEL+O.D.+4%2F5+LUG&image=5941.jpg HTH E

Adam; Without intent to flame, nor to vilify, but if you were willing to pay more than $100 then why didn't you bid that higher amount? Obviously someone was willing to pay AT LEAST $2.50 more....maybe LOTS more, but IF or HOW MUCH is irrelevant, all they need to do is bid one bid increment higher than you to win the auction in the time permitted. If the tools were only worth $100 to you, and $60 to others, then it's simply logical that someone else willing to pay MORE than that would do so and therefore win the auction. What if they bid $500? The notion that if you had known that someone was going to bid higher than you then you would have bid higher is simply totally foolish ILL-logic. Unfortunately, that is what "sniping" preys upon. If you would have been willing to bid higher....then you should have done so. A snipe bid will only go as high as the maximum allowed by the new bidder. If that maximum is higher than what you were willing to pay...and that's the KEY to this, what YOU are WILLING to pay...then they would win the auction, plain and simple. If the snipe bid's maximum is below YOUR maximum....YOU would win the auction, although at a higher amount. If you're purposely under-bidding, thinking that you can always increase your bid if someone out-bids you, you're fooling yourself into thinking you "Got a GREAT bargain" just because you didn't bid what you thought you would have to pay for the item. Bid what the item is worth to you, and not a penny more. If no one else bids against you, you WILL get those outrageous bargains. And if someone else wants it more than you...they will simply have to ante up the cash to get it away from you. And when it happens, and it will, then you will know that you didn't over pay for the item EITHER. A snipe bid combats one thing and one thing only...the furious bidding war that ensues when someone fools themselves into thinking that nobody else would / should / could bid higher, and that if they had enough time, they would just "up" their bid. Then it gets into ...$5 more, then $20, then... That's where you see the furious $1800 dash auctions, or the $325 European Tail-Lights (see link at the bottom). The winning bidder came back at least half a dozen times...each time upping his bid a bit more, and a bit more, and probably sweating the whole time worried whether he'd win or not. So no doubt, that person had a bad case of doubt BEFORE he bid and all throughout the process. If he'd just bid $350 the first time he bid he might have been out bid, but then again, maybe not. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=015&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&viewitem=&item=250068801869&rd=1&rd=1 Just my 2¢ E

Mohamed: Yes I was referring to the Headlight Cover Mounting Clips, from the first pictures it was hard to discern what they were. With your new set of pictures, it became very apparent what they were. Which leads me to ask: Why don't you use the Headlight Covers? As far as the air dam/valance in my first questions: That is a very unique look. I don't know that I've seen it elsewhere. If you'll note, the rounded bulge where the 240 has the front quarter lights, and the rounded opening visible in the 3rd and 4th picturesl, are very distinct looks. I'm sure others have noticed that. Very nice overall. Enrique

It depends on whether it's the Crank Handle, the Splined Shaft that drives the Actuator Gear, the Actuator Gear or the Actuator Arm that has become worn. Any one of those items will cause what you are experiencing. To repair and eliminate the problem will require careful removal and replacement of the offending item(s). FWIW E

No worries Wade! Glad it helped you out. E

Those are the wires that go to the Power Antenna switch. Blue is main power, the other two are directional. Ground is return. E

Alan: I agree with what you've said here, but maybe I can toss in something that has caused me to be confused about the different "models". The S30 and all it's variations did not arrive equally to ALL markets. As a result, there are HLS30 European and HLS30 United States (and it is from that U you used that I'm deriving that bit of information). But I'm deriving information that may have been garbled in my attempt at understanding it. While this may have been addressed in various different threads, different variations have not been posted to ONE thread. That is partly what Will is trying to do. Could you help us in turn, and give us a brief syllabus of the different S-30 models? This would help myself and others in being able to properly identify the specific model being referenced when posting the picture for a part. What I'm suggesting would be along these lines: (This is not accurate in the least, as I'm totally confused.) S30: "Fairlady-Z" model; Sold in Japan only; 2.0 LITER engine; RHD H-S30: 240z; Japan only; 2.4 Liter; RHD H-L-S30: 240z; Europe only; 2.4 Liter; LHD H-L-S30-U: 240Z: US/Canada; 2.4 Liter; LHD L-S30: "Fairlady-Z"; ????; 2.0 Liter; LHD G-S30: "Fairlady-Z";Japan only; 2.0L; RHD; Extended Hood/H-Lights S31: P-S31: etc. While this is something that you are well versed in, I find it baffling, and I'm sure there are others who are as perplexed as I am. I'm sure that in my brief example above, I've omitted and possibly "created" a model or two. But I think it explains how confusing it can be This would allow those with parts with differences they've noted to properly document what model they found them on. 2¢ Enrique

Excellent point Camo. I've also noticed the amount of "cross-posting" that happens. I'm sure that both groups would benefit. While the Z has a lot of qualities/problems/quirks that span many different models and countries, the K car is pretty much limited to your part of the world. And if I have this not quite right, let's not pick nits. I'll forward it to Mike, and see what he says. E

I recently had this done on one of my cars. As I watched the mechanic do so, AFTER he had gotten the crank to move at all, he would rotate one way until it stopped, then he'd rotate the other again until it stopped. Each time he'd push just a small bit. It took him a couple of hours of doing this one tiny bit at a time before he was able to get a full rotation out of it. Then again, this engine had only sat for a couple of years. And it was running well, when I shut it off the last time. E

Jim (a7dz) said it, with the spark plugs removed and the ATF having been allowed to sit in each of the cylinders, try turning the 27mm bolt one way and then the other. Do NOT get in a hurry about this. Apply some pressure, but do NOT torque to 9,000 ft-lbs. All you will succeed in doing is either breaking the bolt loose or worse yet scoring the cylinders, deforming parts from over torquing, or even breaking something. The trick is to try to rotate one way, then the other in SMALL but FIRM strokes. This will eventually cause the pistons to break loose and once again slide. If this simply does NOT work, then you may have a bigger problem. E

From what I recall, the basic simple adjustment is to pull up on the handle and release several times until the brakes grip at 7 "clicks" or so. Of course, this presumes the system is working properly and the shoes aren't so far gone as to not allow for adjustment. This is what the FSM refers to as "automatic adjustment", except YOU are doing it "manually". E

YES! and the Fuel lines, and the Emergency Brake mechanism. Not to mention the car metal's propensity to rust...especially when you add a hole and fill it with a dissimilar metal. Far better to attach the snaps to the carpet than to the metal. If the carpet is properly affixed to the car and the jute below it (or whatever you have for sound deadening or padding) then that's sufficient to hold the cover in place. When you find the snaps, you'll find various styes amongst others. One is the screw on method, another is the rivet method. You can also find the sew-on kind, but that would be more of a problem unless you're handy wiht a needle and thread. The screw on method requires a hole as you were mentioning. The other style, the rivet, usually has or you can buy a simple rivet gun. I've seen both the style that requires a separate rivet gun like you would use to rivet two pieces of metal with separate rivets, and the style that has the rivet built into the corresponding half of the snap that goes BENEATH the material. This half will usually have a deformable rivet head that gets forced through the fabric, and through the upper half of the rivet, then you press both together with a small tool (usually enclosed with the snap set, or available cheaply) and you use a hammer and small anvil to deform the rivet. Ask the person at the counter and they should be able to help you out, as they are common for Blue Jean repair. In fact, you might check and see if your blue-jean sized rivet would work, and that would give you a size to look for. Did a quick search and here's a link to show you the second style: http://www.umei.com/snap-buttons/snap-buttons.htm 2¢ E

Take a note from Ed and don't start drilling holes and driving screws into the transmission tunnel. E