Nov 2007

Even though the car was running pretty reliably with the 1970 carbs I had read too many good things about Ztherapy's rebuilt carbs - I took the plunge and ordered the rebuilt set (plus their videos - maybe I can learn to work on the car myself <g>) even though they were pretty expensive.

It was truly a learning experience dealing with the local Nissan dealer's service department - it seemed they were almost scared to work on the car, even with my supplying the new harness and allowing them to use my factory shop manual. Two hours later they swapped out the harness and got the gas gauge working again; the electric fuel pump is still inoperative thanks to the inline fuse immediately blowing fuses (I started at 10 amps and stopped at a 30 amp fuse). Nissan did properly diagnose the inoperative brake lights as being a bad brake light switch - naturally they didn't have the part but a quick call to MSA fixed that problem (and was a two minute fix that I was able to figure out once the part arrived). They also fixed several of the gas hoses in the right rear of the car's interior that didn't have the rubber grommet properly fastened to the sheet metal - the hoses would eventually have been sliced by friction if left unattended.

Working brake lights and gas gauge - almost feels like a working car now! I refastened all of the interior panels in the rear of the car with rivets again...

I found several of the gas hose clamps in the rear of the car to be extremely loose - after tightening them the interior gas smell has been eliminated.

I decided to finally install the leather shift knob cover so I pulled the center console - and learned that the choke cable had snapped where it bends in a "U" shape near the lever - definitely unfixable.

My Z-guru swapped out the carbs (and left them set at 2.5 turns for both); removed the broken choke cable and installed the new one (after reinforcing the center console to protect it from the choke cable being torqued on), and swapped out the old mechanical fuel pump with the new. No more carb backfiring.. car does seem to be a little more coldblooded in the morning with the new carbs installed (which may be attributed to the properly working choke). I had bought a Colortune carb tool to configure the carbs - maybe there is some fine tuning that they need to truly dial them in...

Knowing that my 280Z radiator "hangs" about 3" lower than stock I figured I'd be proactive and buy a spare radiator plug for the in-car emergency tool kit. I finally purchased the seat foam for both seats and made an appointment to have the seats fully restored (finally). I cleaned all of the gunk out of the inspection lid tunnels and installed new rubber on them to ensure a tight fit of the hood. My dome lights don't turn on when the doors are opened - hopefully the new dome light switches will restore that functionality (the center light turns on when manually pressed, so I know the light works). The previous owner installed a Nissan Skyline horn button in the steering wheel for some weird reason... the wheel is a Momo so it needed a Momo button to "set" things right.

If the weather warms up I'll strip down the interior floorboard/hatch area and install the soundproofing material. The right rear of the car is pretty noisy above 40MPH (transmission whine coming from the right rear) - maybe that will cut down the volume to a tolerable level.

I was able to pickup my seats from Bear Nut Upholstery (a fantastic job - seats look BETTER than new; I'm so glad that I chose to replace the foam inserts with those sold by MSA; the leather covers look phenomenal). Jay @ Bear Nut was able to fix the passsenger seat mechanism, as it didn't want to 'catch' in an upright position without serious effort - Jay stated the mechanism had rusted but copious amounts of elbow grease (and grease) cured the problem - he was even able to salvage the original sticker from the back of the passenger seat for the new seat! It took a few tries of installing/removing the seats to figure out that lithium grease needed to be applied to ensure the seats would slide back and forth on the tracks.

Item Description - Price Paid

TOTAL: $1560.73