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Hey guys, Courtney here. I haven't posted since my last update on getting my orange Pumpkin Z home. Everything was great, until seemingly overnight, the car started to give me problems again... Last time I messed with it and fixed it, I had adjusted the timing to further advance it, and that seemed to fix the issue. After a fresh rebuild on the dual Webers, I thought for sure that I would have a good chance at getting the setup to work. Now I'm finding that it's not that simple. I took the car out around town the other day, and it started bogging. I now can't drive it over 2k rpms, because it bogs that badly, and honestly, it's a little scary. It even backfired from the carbs once, which was an issue we had before, but thought we had fixed when we adjusted the timing. (The timing is currently fully advanced.) At this point, I'm looking for any advice I can get. I've been told that dual Webers on Z cars can be the most difficult setup, and that running the stock SU carbs is the best way to go. But I've also heard that if you dial in your Webers correctly, they can be great. I'm really conflicted, and since I have no history on these carbs other than the fact that I rebuilt them, I'm not sure what to do. Ideally I would like to keep them, but I won't be able to decide until this mystery issue is fixed. If any of you know 510s, you probably know who Troy Ermish is. I'm thinking that I might just take the car to him, since he's local and builds race 510s running dual Webers all day long. Any advice or ideas would be appreciated! Thanks guys.

This is my very first forum post... ever. Yeah, I know. I've scoured forums before for information, but never actually registered or posted! So here I am. My name is Courtney. I'm a freelance photographer here in the SF Bay Area. I mostly shoot automotive material, along with events, weddings, etc. I'm also a huge car enthusiast, and my soft spot sits with Japanese classics. My boyfriend bought his four door 510 about a year ago, and I had been searching for my dream car for about that amount of time. Fortunately, I now own it! This is my 1973 240z. To make an extremely long story short, all I can say is that this was one of the most stressful car buying experiences ever. If you want to read the entire story, please check out my website's blog, found here: Courtney Cutchen's Portfolio - Blog - Chasing A Dream: My 1973 Datsun 240z It covers the whole experience, and has lots of photos. I really only had a few requirements for my new car. It had to have minimal rust, had to be running, and it HAD to be a first gen. It took a lot of searching, and a lot of patience. I had dead ends and scam ads on CL that left me discouraged. But I can now say I own my dream car! It's in beautiful condition, and I'm a diehard fan of the classic, clean, stock interior. Regardless, I'm excited to start modding! My goal is to get it in solid running condition before any of that fun stuff, though. A couple weekends ago, we did a rebuild on the dual Webers, which was a success for the most part. They just need to be fine tuned, as I think the mixture is just a little off. I think there's also a little hiccup in the ignition timing, so I'm going to address those problems this coming weekend. I'm working on building my profile, and I look forward to reading about your builds! Cheers, Courtney

Hey guys! First off, I was so happy to have received such a warm welcome to classiczcar from my first intro thread. I'm really glad you guys enjoy the car, and I'm going to do my best to keep consistently updating on my progress! So, here's what I did yesterday. (Get ready for a lot of words.) If you didn't read my intro post, you missed some info. Basically, when I brought the car home from Oregon, I was unable to get it back to the Bay Area that same night. I was fortunate enough to be able to leave it at my friend's shop in Sacramento (known online as CAtuned) to be able to work on it until I got the kinks worked out. The first day we went to work, we rebuilt the dual Webers. I really don't have a lot of history on these carbs, and the previous owner didn't tell me when they were installed, so I figured a rebuild definitely couldn't hurt. They also needed a good cleaning, since when we were struggling to make it up a mountain pass on the way out of Oregon, the car ultimately died on the side of the road after backfiring and sputtering incessantly. I had never rebuilt a carburetor in my life, so it was a learning experience. But it was successful! After the rebuild, we couldn't get the car to run right. It started and idled just fine, but under throttle, it spit flames from the carbs. Not good. After some observation, we started to think that it was more of a timing issue than a carb issue. I had failed to check the timing initially, so that was my fault. But at this point, we had been working in the hot Sacramento weather for almost nine hours, so we were ready to call it a day. When we returned yesterday, we brought with us a timing light and some faith. The battery had died since we'd last started it, so we hooked it up to a charger to get it started. However, when we got it started, there was an immediate knocking coming from the motor. I felt my heart sink, and my friends and I looked at each other and all said, "Oh ****." It basically sounded like an awful rod knock. We listened all over the motor, down to the oil pan, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Just this stupid knocking coming from somewhere in the front right of the engine bay (from my pov in the driver's seat). Under throttle, it sped up, but then seemed to go away at around 2k rpms. We figured if it was a rod knock, the damage was done, so there was nothing we could do. We ended up advancing the timing just a tad, and that fixed the entire backfiring issue. The carbs were probably fine from the start, but now I have rebuilt carbs and a solid running motor, so I'm happy. But the knocking was still there. When my boyfriend went to flip the off switch on the battery charger, the knocking immediately went away. We all stopped for a second and just stared at each other. He flipped the charger back on, and the knocking came back. We laughed hysterically, and mostly out of relief that it wasn't a rod knocking in my motor. Has anyone ever encountered anything like this before? We had no idea what could cause something so weird. There's absolutely zero ticking/knocking from the motor now. After that, we went on a test drive. Everything went smoothly, and the car ran great. No backfiring, no sputtering, and no hesitation like before. I did notice that the throttle hangs up just a tiny bit, but it's nothing major and doesn't really affect the drivability. I'll address that next. I decided that it was time to bring her back home to the Bay. I wasn't 100% confident to bring her on an hour and a half trip of all freeway. After waiting a short while for the tow truck, we were on our way. All in all, it was a really successful day, and I'm beyond stoked to have Pumpkin home. (The blue 510 below is my boyfriend's.)