Tony D

Like I said, the biggest thing I noticed was how much of my PRIOR sight problems were due to DRY EYES. If you start seeting 'fuzzy' put your artificial tears in immediately. Whenever it popped up on me, the tears INSTANTLY restored razor-sharp vision. And that made me realize how important that proper hydration and blinking is to actually seeing clearly! People are chronically dehydrated, and that leads to dry eyes which 'fuzz' over the surface resulting in blurred and fuzzy vision. You don't notice it till you start watching for it. And the artificial tears are important so your eyelids don't abrade the surface of the eye after surgery. When in doubt, put in drops!

Ever close a door at -40 and have the glass shatter? What sucks is then driving back to the rental car agency with no driver's window... The unsympathetic rental agency people conveyed that 'external forces' (i.e. me slamming the door "excessively hard") caused the breakage, and therefore I would have to pay for it. Curiously, when I got the bill, it was for TWO windows. Apparently the other glass broke when they took it to the replacement shop. They got the CC Charge Protested, and I gave them the 'go pound sand' letter after a month or so of arguing.

My favorite is not stored here right now. It's kind of like something you currently have in storage. Which is why I wanted that covered trailer. You know the car...red blue and silver 1976 280Z 2+2 with tinted windows... The one that will get the cows mooing, and the neighbors out on the porch gawking when it's fired up... And oh gawd, DON'T start it in the trailer! (That car is sitting in Los Alamitos in a 20 foot trailer, resting...) After that one, the 73 Shark-Car is my favorite, and the Blue 260 Coupe is the daily driver for work right now. Whenever the covered work area is completed, work progresses towards restoration of any one of them as a 'thing to do to stay busy when I have the time'... Each one in my list has a story probably as long as the list itself, so I now just refer to them like the Tower Controllers do at the EAA Oshkosh Fly-In, by a number and a color...LOL

Uh.... 1969 510 2-Dr Black 1970 510 Wagon Black 1970 240Z Yellow 1971 510 Wagon Gold 1971 240Z Green 1971 240Z Orange 1971 240Z White 1971 Fairlady Z (S) White 1972 240Z Red 1973 240Z Green 1973 240Z Black (Sharkie) 1974 260Z Grey 1974 260Z Blue 1974 260Z Orange (Getting Cut to Parts soon...) 1974 Norskog 350Z 2+2 Conversion (HybridZ Sourced) Maroon 1974 260Z(T) 2+2 Red (Fat Bumper) 1975 280Z 2+2 1976 Fairlady Z 2/2 (Standard with Plastic Mats) 1976 280Z Blue (non A/C Car) 1976 280Z Silver (with A/C) 1977 280Z Brown (LeMons Car) 1977 280Z Brown (Cutting to parts currently) 1977 280Z Brown (Last Years LeMons Car, Cut to bits awaiting trailer) 1977 Fairlady Z 2/2 (GL with Power Windows) 1978 Fairlady 280Z (Manufactured July 1977) 1979 280ZX 2+2 1980 280ZX 2+2 1981 280ZXT 2+2 1983 280ZXT 2+2 (5 Speed) 2000 Frontier ****************** Non Datsuns in the Yard: 1960 Corvair 700 4-Dr (First Sold, December 23rd, 1959...) 1962 VW Deluxe Microbus 1966 VW Standard Microbus 1966 Corvair Corsa Turbo 1969 Opel GT ****************** Datsuns (And Others) that aren't mine, but are stored here: 1978 Black Pearl (Owner is in Delaware) 1980 280ZX White (Owner is in Holland/Utrecht) 1982 280ZXT Blue on Silver (Owner is in Holland/Utrecht) 1970 240Z Red (Owner is in Holland/Rotterdam) 1970 240Z White 1970 240Z Blue 1971 240Z Red (Owner is in an Apartment in L.A. All Previous Three) 1977 280Z Brown (LeMons Spare Car for next year if needed) 1990 Chevy 3500 Service Body Pickup (Temporary Guest's Conveyance) 1994 300ZX 2+2 (JeffP's Wife-Wreck!) 1972 Toyota Celica (TG's Beater) ****************** I now will say 3 Hail Marys for Absolution of my sin of coveting that 22 Foot Enclosed Trailer and Chevy Dually Big Block for $5000 For now, I'll make due with the Wheel Dolly and the Tow Bar. Yeah, that guy in Ventura got nothing on me!!!

Devil Z was not a 240. I have several: S30 S46 (1971) Fairlady Z (S) GS31 S51 (1976) Fairlady Z 2/2 (S) GS31 S52 (1977) Fairlady Z 2/2 (L) HGS130 S53 (1978) Fairlady 280Z (S) Then, there are the North American Market ones I own as well... My company is based in Export PA...maybe I'll drive one of the Fairlady's back East so you can drool over it...LOL I drove through there coming back from the San Antonio ZCON a few years back with the Grey 2/2 Fairlady towing my spares trailer on the way to visit relatives in Michigan.

You now have the throttle plate equivalent cross sectional area of a Cosworth Vega (twin 50mm)... Just had to throw that in there!

Most aftermarket vendors will give you the choice of buying the glove box FLAT or ASSEMBLED. Clark's Corvair Parts in Shelburne Falls MA ONLY ships their repop gloveboxes unassembled so they can go in a flat postage box and save on shipping. This is something you may want to consider. not everyone has a sheetmetal brake at home to make the proper bends in the sheetmetal, so the increased price of shipping is the price they have to pay for not being equipped!

Given recent sour-note developments on another thread regarding "OPSEC" I can not say... Though, truthfully, to this day...I'm not exactly certain, outside of the veiled reference I made earlier. It wasn't Canada...at least they told me it wasn't Canada. All I can say is my boy-scout training, and growing up in Da U.P. served me well during that extended deployment. 14 days after returning to a tropical base, we deployed to somewhere other where the ambient was 40C+ Curiously, I realized this past year, I have actually operated in environments where I have personally experienced a 100 degree differential...both in F and in C! How many people can say that? And 53-55C is freakin' HOT! Personally, I'd almost prefer -50C....

I used the stock electric pump that came in the 73 240 and 74 260 to feed my surge tank, along with running the return line into the top of the tank. I have never had an issue with that setup. Frankly, I think once that tank is full, just the return flow on it's own is likely to sustain the main pump. I set up another 240 some years ago with a low-pressure carter fuel pump for carburettors that had an internal 4psi cutout switch. At idle I could hear that pump come on before I started the car, and then shut off at idle. I eventually put a light on the circuit, and found that unless I was on boost, the pump usually was shut off! But in corners it would come on... so it's there 'if you need it'!

Do you need your speedometer? The speed sensor from the 240SX (91 is where I got mine from) fits in the early transmissions, and is driven by the speedo drive gear. The most you might have to do to make it mesh properly is cut the retainer groove 180 degrees from where it currently is, to accomodate the earlier transmission orientation. They fit directly in the 83 five speed I have in mine for driving an electric speedo without cable. I've put cables into SX trannies doing the opposite as well. Good Luck....though thinking about it, you can always drill the trans case and stick a standard MPU to read the gear teeth on the output shaft if is comes to the absolutely worst case scenario.

er... not quite. Though on my archive drive, I have found my R32 Service Manual!

Not me, but a guy from the Navy whom we all referred to as 'the goat roper' gave himself a critical heart attack painting his Z Car using urethane and using no respirator. Before he started painting he had put on new doors, but never closed them and I warned him that the strikers may cause an issue. He blew me off. Well, they took him away and we ended pushing his car out of the bay so we could work on our stuff. When I closed the door, it was plainly clear this idiot had picked up 2+2 doors and installed them on a coupe. This is the same guy who refused to put jackstands under the Isuzu 117 Coupe he was working under, and just kicked them (6 or 12 ton big jobbers) under the rocker panels in disgust because the hobby shop people were 'wasting his time' pulling him from beneath the car to tell him he HAD to use jackstands. Kicked em under there and said all angry 'There! They're under the car! Get out of my face $#@%$#!" I ended up putting the tire he had pulled off the car under the rocker panel as well. We were all working in the other bay (separated by a concrete block wall) and we heard BOOM-Scruuuuuuuunch-THUNK...."Help! Help! The fu*king car is on my fu*king chest! Help! Help!" He had tugged on something, popped the pumpkin off the floor jack, the axle hit the side of the jackstand and slid down it till it laid the rocker panel on the tire and rim I had placed under the side of the car. I think I may have saved his life. he had several cracked ribs, and did not argue about jackstands thereafter. This was before he gave himself the heart attack. When he came back form the Naval Hospital, he resumed painting...without a respirator, but 'Outside where the vapors can get spread out more while I'm painting.' Some people, you just can't reach. I wonder if the Goat Roper still roams this planet, or if he's Darwined himself into the mythological ether...

Darn, I felt guilty taking a couple of hours this morning to dewater the ponds in the yard that filled up with all the rain... if I don't drain them, it becomes a mired bog that I cant drive anything onto for months. And you guys are snowboarding... Heck, I'm at work now uploading training manuals to the company server... BAH!

FYI, whenever I get an engine from an unknown source, I already have a pan gasket ready. The thing gets to my house, it goes on the engine stand for an inspection and cleaning. The top end is flushed clean and the cam components are cold-set to tolerance as well as cam break-in lube being applied. The thing gets inverted, and a similar perusal of hte bottom end is done along with sludge being cleaned out. Depending on what I find in those two places, I may even pull the intake manifold off and regasket it along with attending to the studs on the head that hold those parts on. This is what I would do with any unrunning motor that I did not see running at one time in the past. Unless there is a seal on the oil pan for some sort of warrantee, that baby is coming off unless it's really clean (and not steam-cleaned clean...steam cleaned engines get the same treatment as they usually were poorly maintained while being run...hence the need to steam-clean them!) In SoCal, I parrot KTM, around $500. Sure, you can pull on complete at a PYP for $275 if you know where to go, and one with a trans attached complete for $400 in some cases...but find it and be there before some group of mauraders comes to take the fuel injectors, or opens the valve cover and then leaves it off for who knows how long... For an unopened L28ET (with a turbo I would not really rely on being good for any length of time...) yeah, $500 is a good round number to expect. Sometimes, a car with a bad turbo is available for that price, and if it runs, that is a better deal IMO...but again, it's finding it and getting there quick enough.

Loose Lips Sink Ships.

In a Z? About -28F. In a VW Microbus? -50F In a Jeep CJ10 Bobtail, between -58 & -65F, depending on what shift I was working. These are ambient conditions--no pu$$y wind-chill numbers, real, actual starting temperatures BEFORE windchill is applied (which is pretty much irrelevant since you're indoors in the car, anyway. Now you want to talk windchill... On a Ford Tractor, towing a 5mph maximum speed, into about a 30 knot wind, -65 AMBIENT---you do the math on the windchill...I have never wanted to know how I abused my exposed flesh that evening, I got stuck with the tractor once....ONCE! Sometimes you drew the short-straw and got stuck with the ONE tractor on the deployment, other times you got the nice warm cab of the jeep... I think Doung and I were just across the border from one another driving our respective conveyances... those diesel bobtails you simply didn't shut off...the just ran and ran and ran. Driving at -58F is a whole different affair than driving at -58F wind chill...

I got an 18" straight piece of 2.5" pipe from the tubing section of Pep Boys, and added it in the transmission tunnel at the end of their intermediate pipe... I hung the muffler end, and trimmed accordingly so it fit nicely. It could have been 12", but I got 18 and trimmed to fit to make sure I wasn't going back 2X because I might find out it was a hair over a shorter piece... What I cut off may have been 6"...I don't remember. But all I did to make it fit my 260 2+2 was add that length of pipe to the coupe exhaust system they sell.

There IS a specific spoiler made for the 2+2, both in the IMSA style, as well as the original 'kick tail' BRE style. The 2+2 versions were moulded with different angles on the mounting portion of the base to accomodate the different hatch angle. The smaller "BRE" style spoiler was an OEM fitment in Europe, and there exists different Nissan Part numbers for coupe and 2+2. Similarly the 4 and 6" IMSA spoilers (the three piece ones that wrap down over the quarter panels) are / were also available in Coupe or 2+2. Gokiburi, he he he...I know what that means!

The wires are on the glass, and anything that rubs across or scrapes them can cause a break in the circuit, and defeat that line of defroster. They sell conductive paint to repair the breaks, I saw it recently in a store and was amazed! On top of that, there is actually a procedure in the FSM for finding the breaks and repairing them with that conductive paint! I'd start with making sure there is power to the grid, and then going from there. There is not much that can screw it up as long as it's getting power. After that, breaks are about all that can screw the circuit...it's not like it wears out!

I would think a combination of a compression spring on the throttle cable, maybe a torsional on each butterfly or a tenstion spring on each 'triplet' along with a suitable reduction in mass of the linkage bellcranks to eliminate braking induced throttle movement, and all will be well. Yeah, braking induced movement---the linkage will be moving fore-aft in operation, and I have seen cars with heavy shift knobs come out of gear because of inertia under hard braking...

"What determines the lowest threshold you can run no fuel, no throttle while coasting in gear?? " The buck on re-engagement, and the customer's tolerance for a surging or bucking ride. A lot of this gets into flywheel inertial ring weight now, as you can move things around when you got a heavy flywheel... Mileage Motors have HEAVY flywheels. Ones with THICK inertial rings. Then you can run real lean and not 'feel' the surge most people say the find intheir Z's with the aluminum flywheels well before others notice it. This can go off on a BIG tangent, a thread all it's own. I had a 69 Ghia that would get 55+ mpg back in 1979...but it was a pain to try and cruise with with the original 12# flywheel. We ended up putting a stocker back on, along with a Berg Equalizer (think 8# Thick-A$$ Harmonic Pulley on the other end...) to keep it smooth while cruising during mileage marathon competitions. Feeding fuel on the top end after drop-throttle is merely a function to allow combustion to complete and not dump unburned HC into the Catalyst and overwhelm it. I have said it many times before: our engines are calibrated to run too rich for best fuel economy. They set 14.7 because it's optimal for catalyst function... you can run a LOT leaner and drop your emissions to near catalyzed levels on HC and CO, but your NOx number skyrocket. So then you pump a lot of EGR into the chamber to cool the combustion process down (or spray anti detonant like water---yes in an N/A you spray water into the intake...) and your NOx is reduced. I ran my 73 on a set of SU's clean to 83 Catalyzed Standards with nothing more than one header tube having an AIR injection into it (#1). Got 27mpg on the freeway at 65-70mph. I was visually failed at SMOG. I was forced to reinstall the EGR and Flat Tops. I dropped to 19-22 mpg. I had (no exaggeration) 10X the HC and CO#'s that I had with the 71 Setup on tuned as I did... At that time they didn't test for NOx. My guess is it would have failed NOx if they did, given the way it ran. Don't get me started down this path! Don't, dammit!

Lifting the head is not really an issue with Nissan Heads like it is with Ford 5.0's. more likely it's a partial failure of the head gasket under boost. On the subject of 'when is it appropriate' I think it goes more towards what BMEP the engine is designed to operate at full time. The stresses of a stock turbocharged L-Engine is still below what the FIA engines were running in the early 70's, and those engines got a special non-crossflow head that had more of the 4 Cylinder L-Head arrangement for evacuating coolant from the head with large chambers between cyls 1/2, 3/4, 5/6 to a separate manifold that went to the radiator. Same goes for the LY Crossflow head which took coolant off the head above the cylinders in pairs similarly to the FIA head, and ran it out to the radiator in a hose-sized manifold which contained the thermostat (it was not on the bolt-on casting on the side of the head). I believe Nissan recognised that below a given specific output, the L-Head was totally acceptable in it's cooling characteristics, but permanently turn up the wick some more (325HP on the L24...) on an expected full-time horspower expected operation, and the cooling was not so great and so they changed it in purpose built parts specifically designed for that purpose.

Wow, taking a 65 Corvair out there... Should be 'Balls of Steel'!

Curiously, since I have what appears to be an electric glass following cult here... In the UK I noticed adverts for 240Z electric defront FRONT windshields for rally prep! How cool is THAT? Just flip the toggle and the windscreen gets heated. I have seen one, and it's a laminate film, no 'lines'... What I wouldn't have given for one on the LeMons car, so I didn't need to run the whole heater!

LOL, the banner ad for 'Korean Cupid' shows up at the bottom of this thread! Uhm...'no Kimchi for you!' LOL