Arne

Assume that there is a complete L24 sitting on the ground, manifolds, carbs, airbox, flywheel and clutch. How much does it wirgh? Can two (or maybe three) guys pick it up to load it in the back of a Land Rover?

If you do anything to seal it, you are just covering it up. The problem will continue to get worse. You should have that filler removed to see what is underneath it. It may not be all that bad, but either way the only way to deal with it is to have the filler removed and properly repair the damage underneath.

Got the dash out yesterday, have all the gauges out for cleaning, and will swap out the harnesses soon. All looks good so far. Now that the dash is out of the car, I can see the engine compartment harness, and I find no sign of overheated wiring there. It is beginning to look like the damage was restricted to the dash harness. If so, I may be past the biggest hurdle. I will likely build a relay setup for the taillights before I put the dash back in, and will build a headlight relay set before the car gets back on the road. The melted fusebox strongly indicates that the headlights were the original problem - which should surprize no one.

Welcome! Good looking car, looks like a good starting point. Rebuilding the L24 will be simpler than swapping in a V6 of some sort. And swapping in a running L28 will be simpler yet. Food for thought.

The zebras definitely seemed to have it in for the 'Hawks, but even so, I'm not sure that it would have made a difference. Might have been a bit closer at the end, but probably still would have gone to the Steelers.

Well, after checking it over and cleaning terminals for the better part of the day, I'm happy. This harness is in remarkably good shape. Not perfect, but I didn't expect perfection from a 35 year old harness. But far, far better than most. Might find time to pull the dash out of the car tomorrow before the game, if not it'll be next weekend. I will say that after going over this thing thorougly, I am now well educated on the dash wiring of the Series I cars.

Severe left pull when braking is not the alignment. More likely to be either bad bushings in the front suspension, or a brake problem (right caliper not working). Or possibly a combination of the two. I gather that your rear bushings are shot, if the fronts are bad as well don't waste you money on alignment until you get them replaced. The best alignment in the world can't help a worn out suspension.

Oh! I mis-read it, thought you were looking for something for the distributor, not the alternator. You don't need the adapter that I came up with, it can be done with normal wires and crimp connectors. But you also have to solder a diode into the circuit. Search the forum for diode and you'll find lots of (sometimes contradictory) posts. The adapter that I came up with is designed to simply plug into the main harness in place of the external voltage regulator. It has the required jumper wires and diode all self-contained. I have now found suppliers for the factory-style terminals and connectors, but now that I am hip-deep in replacing the wiring in my car, I don't have the time to build them. (Maybe later this summer, after I get my car sorted.) For now, I have only built one - and it's on my car.

New master cylinders should be bench bled first, to get the bulk of the air out of the master cylinder itself. But you will still need to bleed the rest of the system once you get it on the car, to remove the air that was introduced when the metal lines were connected to the new cylinder.

Don't waste your money on a 4 wheel alignment. The S30s don't have any adjustments on the rear. Instead, ask for a "thrust-angle" alignment. That will still measure the rear and relate the front to it, but should be less money. It will still point out if something in the rear is wrong, too.

Cosidering the tooling that it would take to reproduce a complex stamped sheet metal part like hubcaps, the repros would likely cost just as much as good originals. Me? I'll end up with something totally period-looking on mine - slotted mags, or maybe a set of Libres. Leave the big dollar hubcaps for the trailer queens. (No offense intended to any trailer queen owners who may be reading this. You need those hubcaps way worse than I do.)

Congratulations! I remember how stoked I was when I got my car re-wired to start correctly and get the tach to work as well. Glad we were all able to help. What adapter do you need for the distributor? Are you using the dizzy from an '81 that has the 3 wire module (E12-93)?

Glad I got it, John. It has cleaned up quite nicely. Still checking the harness over, it looks very good as well. While I'm thinking about it, anyone have a wiring diagram for the heater blower? There's no hint of that in my FSM. And since all that was disassembled when I got the car... I can figure it out if I have to, but I imagine that someone has already done so.

Yeah, I hear you. And I pretty much agree. I do know about all the branches and such in the wires, got my FSM sitting open to the wiring diagram next to me even now. I probably won't check each and every wire, since all the original connectors are intact and unmelted. Perhaps a few spot checks on some of the more critical wires, but definitely cleaning all the terminals.Just spent an hour cleaning all the terminals on fusebox, it is great. One down...

I assume that the European model is similar to the US model. If so, the turn signals and hazard flasher units are separate. The hazard flasher unit on my '71 is gold in color, about 50 mm long and is bolted upside down to the steering column. It has two wires, blue with white stripe, and green with white stripe. The turn signal flasher unit is smaller, and may (or may not) plug into a white plastic base unit. The two wires for it are solid green and solid white.

Yup. Had my car still had an L24 in it when I bought it, I'd stick with it. Nothing wrong with a sound L24 for a daily driver.

It's been 5 weeks since the last post, and I don't know how much of that time I have spent fretting about wiring. I've learned several things: Good Series I wiring harnesses do exist, but are not all that easy to round up. About the only way to get a full set from a single car is if you buy your own parts car. And good luck finding a parts car with intact wiring. Pricing for harnesses is all over the board. For the full 3 harness set, I got prices from $150 to as much as $900!Since I couldn't easily get a full set from a single car, I decided to drop back and do it one section at a time. Since the dash harness assembly is the one that I KNOW is bad, it was the place to start. So this morning my dash harness (24013-E4602) arrived, along with a matching long-tail fusebox. Completely intact, right down to the fuse holder for the radio. No signs of ever having been hot. The fusebox also shows no sign of getting hot. So for the rest of the weekend, I'm planning to get out the Fluke and test each wire for continuity and resistance. I'll also clean all the terminals, and make any necessary repairs before I pull the dash to install it. The same for the fusebox, a couple of the rivits seem a bit loose so that will be dealt with before it ever goes in the car. Once this harness and fusebox is installed, I can perform some tests to decide if either the body or engine compartment harnesses are really needed. Stay tuned.

Just an FYI, there's a nice looking long-tail box on eBay right now. I feel safe pointing it out because I already found one. But some of the rest of you guys might still need one. Series I fusebox on eBay

That'd be me, if I was really doing it. But I ran out of time before I actually got the first batch made. I plan to build some eventually, but right now I've got too much going on with my own car to find the time to build and ship these gadgets. Maybe later this summer, if all goes well.

You'd need the L28 crank and rods both. The result is the same as the 260 crank and rods, as they are the same.

Ron is right, the "A" box has all the moving parts of the linkage built in to the transmission tail housing. It is impossible to design a short shifter for this without designing a replacement for the tail housing. But on the other hand, your sig mentions that your car is a '72. I was pretty sure that by that time Datsun had switched over to the "B" transmission. Are you certain you have an "A" box?

Hmm, it does appear that this is an Australian spec head, but just because it's not common doesn't mean it's good. It is from an injected car, that's obvious. But since it has the round-port emissions liners, I can't see that it would be all that different that a P79. Certainly not worth any special amount to me, but if you just want a conversation piece... Maybe it's just me, but a whole lot of people in Datsun-land seem to be preoccupied with cylinder heads. Perhaps we need to admit to ourselves that for anything less than a full-bore race motor, the differences between all these different heads are not all that great. Use what you have, and don't fret about it.

The answer to that is to not buy them new. My current family car is a '96 328i that I bought in 2002 with 37,000 miles on it, for about 40% of what it cost new. It will last me for many years. The 328i is my second BMW (not counting bikes), the previous one was an '81 European 323i. (For those in the US, imagine a 320i with small 240Z-like bumpers, four wheel disk brakes and a 2.3 liter six.) I don't catch too much of that behaviour on the road from other cars, but even driving a 20 year old BMW prompts comments like, "Ooh, you drive a BMW!" Jeeze people, the 323i had 250,000 miles on it and cost me $5000. And my 328i cost less than a new Civic would have! And these people are probably driving around in a $35k Tahoe or Explorer! :stupid: Sorry, that punched one of my buttons.

It's different, for us Yanks it takes a bit of getting used to, but in theory the fenders are a better place for mirrors. You don't have to take your eyes as far off the road to look in them, and the forward position tends to reduce (or eliminate) the typical blind spot. Of course, the image of what you are seeing is smaller, because they are farther away. But they can really be hard on pedestrians, which is probably why no one uses them anymore on new cars.

Far be it from me to disagree, but I'm pretty certain that the above diagram is how I did mine, with the original tach. Works fine, as far as I can tell. I'll have to wait until the weekend to verify, however.