2ManyZs

Well, I happened to look in the drawer and there is another book also, How to Rebuild Your Nissan/Datsun OHC engine by Tom Monroe. It also goes into detail on how to check you contact patch on the rocker pad, basically what you want is the contact patch to be centered on the pad. You can check it with layout dye, or even a black magic marker. You need to cover the pad of the rocker with this, doing one rocker at a time, and assemble the valves, lash pads, etc with a good cam lube, and rotate the cam 360 degrees with the while the rocker pivot is threaded all the way in and the jam nut is up as far as it will go. Then you will be able to remove the rocker arm and check the contact patch. Thicker lash pads will move the contact patch toward the rocker tip, and thinner moves it towards the pivot. BTW, some of the aftermarket cam manufactures may be able to supply the lash pads, as well as Nissan Motorsports. The are available in thicknesses from 3.85-8.5mm (.150-.330 inch) in .010 increments... So you can see, this can be a very involved process.... One which I haven't done either, I'm learning it while I read it myself....:cross-eye

The book you need is the 'How to Hotrod and Race Your Datsun" by Steve Smith Autosports Publications... You should be able to get one through Amazon here on the site if you use our bookstore. As Mike said, it is a complicated affair, and is best done when you have nothing better to do for a while.... Remember one very important thing, use new rockers with the new cam, or you run the risk of doing damage to the new cam if you use old rockers. It is a very labor intensive job considering in the book it says that a difference of .015 inch difference in lash pad thickness can make the difference in your cam lobe contacting the rocker in the proper place, or having it run off the edge of the rocker pad. Basically what you need to do is adjust the lash pad thickness so the cam lobe runs off the end of the rocker pad within .010-.015 of the end of the pad. If the lash pad thickness is not right, the cam lobe will run off the rocker pad too soon and will not keep the valve opened long enough, or too late and have the valve open too long, which could possibly lead to valve/piston contact on some engines.... What you need are new rockers and an assortment of lash pads in different thicknesses, hopefully if you can get them from a dealer with the understanding you can return the unused ones and only pay for the ones you use you'll be able to do this fairly inexpensively. Then you'll need a very good light and perhaps a small magnifying glass to make sure your're seeing things correctly. One word of caution, I wouldn't try to do this with the engine still in the car.....you'd end up standing on your head in the engine compartment. If you need, I can scan the pics to show the correct and incorrect cam lobe to rocker pad contact...:cross-eye

I've used RedLine synthetics in both the diff and trans, not that it made a huge difference.. It did help the trans a bit making it easier to shift, but no huge improvement. Synthetics are a bit lighter in weight, which will help conduct heat out of the diff and trans, as opposed to holding the heat, while still giving you the protection that a hypoid oil will. Unfortunately the synthetics are quite a bit more expensive. I've used them in the race car, and plan on using them in the street car as well... Call it piece of mind more than anything.

If you are going to pull the rear cover, you'll have to pull either the whole diff, or at least the mustache bar in order to get the mounting bolts out of the mustache bar. Only way to get the rear cover off without removing the diff or mustache is if you pull the mounting studs out of the rear cover, that would be your easiest course of action. Take the nuts off that mount it to the mustache bar and double nut each stud one at a time and remove them. Then you should be able to remove the rear cover if you can get a wrench on all the bolts... Might be difficult on a couple..... Otherwise you'll either have to remove the whole diff or mustache bar.

Yup, ya know they are ripping us off if they want 9/10 of your arm, leg and first born too....:cross-eye

Funny, looking at the page on this site it says it's BSR's 240 at Lime Rock, yet the back end says it's a 280 and those flairs are obviously on the GTU 280... Here a pic of the cars on zhome, still looking for more... http://www.zhome.com/History/sharp.htm

Just happened to think, if you have a hard time finding them, try a good hardware supplier. Seems if you gave them the measurements, a brass cruch washer should be something they could come up with. Or Try McMaster-Carr, or you never know, a good farm implement shop might have something that might just work? Hard to believe, but a farm tractor supply is one of the only places you can find a U-joint for the steering shafts now...:cross-eye

As far as where to find more pics... ya got me.... I'm pretty sure that BSR sold all the old GTU, IMSA and SCCA cars back in the mid-90's. Even the Turbo ZX... I think the only car that Bob has kept is the first car, the 240 C-Production championship car that Scott later used as his break into the big time... I remember seeing an article in the old Z Car Magazine with pics of all the cars that were for sale. This looks like the 75 280 CP car that might have been the last of the CP cars that he ran, which was the last "true" Z before he started with the ZX's...and if it is, it is the one that won the CP championship in 75. I'll do some searching and see what else I can come up with....

Yup, Georgia and South Carolina have always had the lowest prices on gas and other fuels as they have some of the lowest state taxes on them.... Anyone else hear on the news braodcast a couple nights ago, the price for a barrel of oil has gone down 14 dollars a barrel since last month? Anyone notice a drop in the consumers prices? Half of our problems are right on Wall Street, with all these people trading in oil futures..:cross-eye

I wouldn't put it back together without them. They would be a crush washer that prevents the sleeve, or distance piece as it's called in the FSM, from being deformed. Best bet would be to try MSA or Courtesy Nissan for replacements... I know they must be available somewhere as racers break stub axles all the time and have to replace these items.... If no luck, get back to me and I'll see if I can dig up something through one of the guys I used to race against that has a lot of experience changing the stub axles...Their car is the one featured in MSA's catalog, the #61 ITS 24 hour endurance car.....

Who are you asking this question to? If you want to ask a question in a thread, use the new reply not the new thread option.

It will fit, but I'm not sure if that is an R-200 or an R-180.. looks like a 180. The only thing you would have to do is change the flanges and output shaft. If it is an R-200 you just change the mustache bar and lower lateral link the same as you would if you took the diff out of a 280... Subaru's have always been a good source of LSD's to fit into Z's. The hard part is knowing which models of Subaru's had the LSD's and which rear it has, as I believe some of the Subaru's did have 180's while other had 200's....

If you can't find a used one, MSA has new stock knobs... although they are 47 bucks... They also have custom knobs with your choice of pattern inserts....

Seems to be a run on people needing gas tanks, so if one of you guys still has one..... http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=34165#post34165

I don't like to disagree, but you can't go by the VIN numbers to guess production output. You have to realize that prior to 71 production output was less than 20,000 HLS cars, yet for the 72 model they produced somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 in one year. I don't know the production numbers for HS-30's, et al, but I'm sure Alan might have some ideas? My 71 has a production date of 11/70 as does a friend of mine. His cars VIN is 1028 less than mine while being produced in the same month... So as you can see, they were already increasing production as early as late 1970. So you can see a guess of 2 months =700 cars is going to be on the short side.... Then there is the fact that the HLS cars were mixed in with the HS-30 models and others, which would give you an even higher per month production run....Hard to say how many could have come out of the factory on a daily basis, at least not without seeing invoices of some kind from the factory.

Definately strip off any cracked or chipped areas as you might have moisture in behind it doing you know what.... Eastwoods has a pretty good undercoating remover, don't know if you can get a like product over there, but it does help to soften the undercoating and makes it so much easier to remove, and they have another product that gets rid of the leftover undercoating residue.... You can heat it with a fairly decent work lamp, such as a 350 or 500 watt halogen type worklamp or you could use the dry ice/chipping method. I'd go with the heat from the halogen worklamp as it is a bit safer on the fingers... If you do part of it, I'd go ahead and do it all, and coat it with POR-15... that way, if anything is hidden under it, you can find it and repair it if needed....:disappoin

You'll have to take into account these engine were never imported into the US in any cars. Finding parts to repair them is not going to be as easy as going to the local Auto Zone. Some parts might be interchangeable with other engines that were imported, but there are going to be some that are specific to that engine only... which means you might find them nearly as hard to find as a winning Lotto ticket...:disappoin Just something to consider....

5 speed would have had to come from either a 77-78 280 or a ZX in the first place, so bolting it into your 280 will be no problem. 73's only had 4 speeds. You might want to check those wheels a little closer. I hope I'm wrong, but they almost look like those Uni-Lug wheels that required a washer behind the lug, the hole looks oblong like the uni-lug, but it looks like they have standard type mag wheel lug nuts... If they are uni-lug and don't have the right lug nuts, the holes could be trashed... they are supposed to be oblong, but not because of wear due to the wrong lug nuts being used... Vinyl isn't easy to remover, but it can be done if you are very careful, it all depends on how well the glue is still sticking...:cross-eye Shouldn't have too much trouble with cooling without the vents, but most people want the vents on earlier cars, so if you wanted to sell the old hood you shouldn't have too much trouble there....

I don't use gas, but diesel has been $1.72-$1.74 here in VA and gas(87) has been around $1.58 for the past month.

The only con's I can think of would be the work involved to change the flanges to the 240 style as I believe the 200SX Turbo's or Silvia had CV joints. Not really all that difficult, but it is a bit of work. It should also be an R-200 diff, which means changing the mustache bar and the lower transverse link as the 240 link won't give you enough room to mount the diff. You'll need the curved link such as our 280's had that came with R-200's. Of course, it is possible your Silvia's had an R-180 diff, I'm just guessing since ours came with 200's, the only ones that came here with 180's were the non-turbo's. Pro's? Car would be substantially quicker off the line and with the 5 speed your overdrive will give you a bit lower highway RPM. All depends on if you want a little more snap in the lower gears without sacrificing cruising RPM's. There's quite a noticeable difference when going from a 3.36 or even 3.54 to a 4.11 ratio. That is if your car doesn't already have a 3.90 which would make the change moot..

Sounds to me like you are going to have to pull the door panel and do some adjusting on the rods. It probably is too tight against the lever on the latch assembly, you should be able to access the plastic adjustments nuts fairly easily on the back edge of the door by just pulling the door panel. It could also be the adjustment on the rod coming from the inside door handle as well, and that if I remember right is the one that is a bit tougher to get to without nicking your hands on the sharp edge of the inner door panel. One way to know which way to adjust them is to see how far the outside handle has to be raised to unlatch the door... and conversely the inner door handle as well. There is no real adjustment setting for either of them as every door is going to be different due to the differences in striker plate adjustment etc....Just one of those things you do buy the trial and error method.

Even if you don't use it, I would suggest you get it anyways... bet there would be a lot of people that would like to have one....:devious: Have you got a ZX 5 speed in the car with the higher overdrive ratio? If so, then the 4.11 would be fine... With a 4 speed it would be too low for the street for anything longer than short trips...

No problem George, guess in a way I was right even though I completely forgot that your L-28 probably would have come from a ZX and not a 280Z... I knew the early L-28's in our 280's didn't have the oil temp unit, just wasn't sure if the later ones did or not... Guess that shows how much interest I have in ZX's huh?:cross-eye

Hmm, might need a pic of that one.... Only reason I can think of for a wire coming out or off the iol pan would be for an oil temperature sending unit. Someone may have put an oil temp gauge in the car at one time or other? Other possibilities, but would have to see it or know exactly where it is....

If you have one, try running a tap into the captured nuts before you put the now bolts in. If the old bolts have rounded off the threads, perhaps you can restore the threads with the tap enough that the new bolts will tighten securely.