Tony D

Ag states in the Midwest is considerably different than pricing in other parts of the country, like the coasts.

Nice "raw" castings. Very nice, indeed!

Worrying about an impact blow is a bit of an overstatement of the Risk. My father-in-law got RK some years ago. He then took a nose-dive on his mountian bike and detached a retina. To this day he blames RK on his loss/impairment of vision in that eye. Both he and his wife were big anti-operation voices in the house against my operation due to ther misplaced fears. "Oh now, don't do that, remember what happened with Ken's Operation!" Big news: detaching a retina has nothing to do with the cornea. You can't worry about 'what if' to every eventuality. One doesn't have any bearing on the other, and no matter what you foresee, something that is random CAN occur rendering anything you have done to safeguard yourself totally and utterly moot. IMO, it's a red-herring. If you get hit that hard, detaching a flap (or your retina) is the least of your worries. You could turn the corner one day and walk into the end of an unopened umbrella, as well. There is 'reasonable and forseeable' and there is 'unreasonable and unforseen'... Chances are good, even in motorsports activities, the chances of encountering the forces necessary to involve the remote differences in healty/operated upon eyes is miniscule. Nothing is ever 100%, and no matter what you do, no matter how well you eat, and how in-shape you stay....you will die. Life is a terminal disease, which there is not any cure. We are all afflicted. So make the most of the time you have, because your disease of life will result in your death! And as mentioned, there are 'alternative' techniques. I was unaware that anybody considering this technique in this post was a human rocket-sled test subject, either...

For the rental fees, and price of the air time, you can buy a cheap local phone and use it. Seriously. Globalphoneworks offers the same service. I use Skype for the phone calls home that don't go on my business line. 2 cents a minute... And I can call internationally in the USA through my Skype 'dial in' feature from any phone using a local number. I can actually call from my home phone (which has no long distance carrier) via local phone number to Amsterdam for cheaper than my old intra-state charges!

There are several places that offer parts on EBay AU but drop-ship directly from Japan. The shipping is not as outrageous as one might think (to the west coast at least) and the Japanese EMS post has courrier requirements in the USA---they end up sending a supervisor in his own vehicle out to deliver the parts to my place! I wish our post office was as effcient as Japan Post... I sent cash through the mail there routinely with nary a problem.

Just got a text back from the truck's seller, it missed his house. But landed less than 3 blocks from his ex-wife's house...(I remain mute on what else he said along that line...) About 2 miles shy of the runway, more near Miramar than Clairmont. Looks like nearby a railroad overcorssing, and I can't place that in my head right now...

Woah, I just went to look at a truck yesterday between 3pm and 6pm in the Clairmont/Miramar area! I commented as we passed the Holiday-Inn Select on I-15 to take the 163 South "There are normally F18's flying over the freeway right here!"

"Old"? Those fittings and furnishings are better looking than what I have in my kitchen. I'm just glad to see someone with two Corvettes has the same idea about using those dual french doors to get the cars inside the house for work to commence! I don't feel bad about running the snowmobiles into the dining room any more...

That is so cool, I'm bookmarking this thread! Thanks for these photos. Even with a forklift and a gantry available, they don't go everywhere on my property, and this would make some things a LOT easier during the times of the year I have a full wash restricting my access to the westernmost portion of my property.

At my place, it would be a coin flip over whether to use the gantry, or the forklift... I like the orange-rotisserie. And my wife asks why I always buy engine stands for the new engines I store...muahahaha!

It made sense to me when you said it, but after John said move on...I figured it was implied tobe clear to all... LOL

Actually, what looks so obvious from the photo is not! That air dam was built and the car owned by Spanky's Auto Body in Phoenix. Not Az Z-Car, Dave supplied some mechanical pieces, but the body and construction was all done at Spanky's. He does have a connection with AZ Z Car, but they (Spanky's) are an autobody shop, and the pair of brothers that own/work there specialize in Datsun work, wrenching on them since the 70's... and great guys both! Give Spanky's Auto Body a call down in Phoenix (or maybe on some of the other forums they frequent...I think they have some input on the Four Barrel on an L thread) and they can set you straight on what gives with ther setup. As I recall, from talking to the constructor/owner at one of the local Z-Car meetings some time ago, he used a prefab sheet of some sort to cut fab time and give incredible rigidity without needing a support frame behind it, then blended it to the body using conventional techniques after initial bonding. Why ask everyone else when you can get the information straight from the horse's mouth? http://www.spankysautobody.com/gallery/index.php?cat=2 That linked page states it was made from SMC Sheet Plastic, and gives the reasons why Danny used it over fibreglass...

What you plan on doing with the car and it's intended function should top the 'priority' list IMO, and the budget is based on that. It makes absolutely no sense to get a bare bones ECU that won't fit expanding demands later on, and it doesn't make any sense to buy a top of the line 5000$+ Motec unit for something that does 1000 miles a year driving on and off the trailer at a drag strip and making causual drives on the occasional weekend. You have to know what you want to DO with the car, before you start deciding on what components you want. BIG mistake assembling components wihtout regard to what you want to actually DO. We ran a car at LeMons last year on an MS1 with 8X8 fuel tables and no spark control. It ran BETTER than the stock ECU, and proved rock reliable in two crashes that would have disabled the stock system (broke the distributor and would have totalled the AFM in each case...) If we even has MS-n-S on the car running N/A for spark control, the second crash would have done us in as the CAS was shot and nobody had a spare...but if it was a simple distributor swap, we had that, and so did the parts store in town. The MS is cheap, and upgradeable quite a bit for very little $. I have an SDS that will likely never go on any of my cars because it's N/A ONLY, and does not control spark. Can't upgrade it. It's set at what the original purchaser set it up for, period. Got a great TEC2 system off the Bonneville car, but..... Point being, know what you want to do, and if you THINK you will REALISTICALLY do something in STEPS/STAGES consider buying the EFI system that will best suit your end use. Frankly, the stuff coming out is cheaper and BETTER every year. I would not spend high dollars on something if you are going in steps. Chances are good the price will come down on something by the time you get to the 'next step' and can get a better system for less, with more capability. There are 'learning' systems out there now, that have OEM style long and short term fuel trim self-tuning that are available for under $1500 as an ECU. Frankly, SDS has lagged and unless you have a dedicated race application where you KNOW you won't be changing much later on, I'd skip that option. For the money there are better options available. If you are stuck on the SDS/MS choice, I'd go with MS due to low cost/universal compatibility. The setup is documented here well enough to get you going, and the expansion possibilites with the system are almost endless. Want to go V8 later? Change configuration parameters. Not on SDS. Not on TEC2 (much to my chagrin...) Want to go EDIS? Same Same... But know what you want to do. it will make all your choices later much more focused.

I go with BRAAP on the 'dimples'---they all get removed... though I simply install the injector screws with some loctite blue, or PST567 to seal the threads. I don't use the stock screws, either, for stock mounts they get stainless steel button-head allen screws or SS Standard head Allens. Makes wrenching them tight or loose easy as pie with a dimple-ended Bondhus Allen Key set. For an O-Ring injector setup, the holes get plugged for sure with the SS Button heads and 567PST. It allows 'reversing' to go back to a standard rail and injector setup easier, and the SS doesn't rust and they look cool as heck!

Verizon is SCREWED overseas! The don't have a 'network' there, but it's irrelevant, unless you have a VERIZON WORLDPHONE you can't use your phone outside the USA. Verizon SUCKS for overseas operation, it's expensive, you have to use their special phone with a GSM chip that ONLY works overseas on their partner networks, and when there is no CDMA service in the USA, you CAN'T use the resident GSM SIM chip in your worldphone to access the FULL STRENGTH GSM Signal you can find here in the USA... I know, I had their worldphone (I had three, actually, the service was FRCED upon me!). If you want that functionality, there are vendors on E-Bay that can sell you a Verizon CDMA/GSM Worldphone for a lot more reasonably priced setup than the $400+ they wanted for a four year old (but new in the box) Samsung they sold me (which I still have in my pouch as it contains all sorts of info...) If you want worldwide capability, go GSM with AT&T or Cingular. Their world-capable phones start at $19, and the service for overseas is MUCH cheaper than Verizon. Skype and Vonage is also an alternative. And as NZ said, you can walk into as many different celphone outfits and simply buy a months service and phone for under $50US equivalent. Keep the phone, likely it's unlocked. Then, the next country you go to, you simply buy the local SIM chip, stick it in your phone, and away you go. I would stick local SIMS into my old AT&T and Cingular Phones and they worked fine. I could stick my AT&T SIM into local phones and it worked fine. GSM is wonderful in that regard. Most of the world is on GSM, CDMA is Verizon, Korea, and some other strange places---about 6 countries as I recall where GSM didn't reliably work. I know in Venezuela I could use my AT&T GSM phone in Caracas and Maricaibo, but outside the cities it went to 'no signal' and I later found out that rural areas there were CDMA due to it's ability to handle more signals over a greater dispersed repeater network (thank you JeffP for that explanation!!!) This is not an option with your Verizon phone. I works only with what they give you for it... Did I mention Verizon Phones SUCK internationally... I saw this two days ago, but just now got back to it, sorry! I have an AT&T GSM phone with their international service once again with this new company, and have recently returned from 65 days 'away'... I started in Spain, went to Morocco, Nigeria, Indonesia, and back home. I had a signal everywhere I went and could make calls out. Some places easier than others, but I could call. Functionality of some features was compromised, my voicemail may not notify me of a message for three days, but you learn workarounds. I am much happier with a GSM phone than I EVER was on "Verizon's Network"---especially at the prices they charged for the services overseas. I'm talking 5X the cost in some cases. I rarely had a bill over $400 a month with AT&T, but with Verizon I was getting hit with close to $2000 a month when travelling abroad. Yeah, you read it right. Did I mention Verizon SUCKS overseas?

TAKE THE PILL! DO NOT DO WHAT I DID! TAKE THE PILL! I agree, I was seeing the next day, and within a week or so was only taking the artificial tears. The big thing that I learned from the operation was how much of my day-to-day vision problems were tear-production related. I found taking those artificial tear drops that my vision seemed to be much clearer. And found that the 'fuzzy' things I was seeing after the operation were cleared up by a simple blink to rewet my eye. I had experienced it before my operation, just never drew the parallel. Wet eyes work better! Oh yeah, and I was Customview not simple lasik. That wsa on the Doc's recommendation back east. "Go with the latest machine and software, it gets better and better every time."

The stock seats will move upwards nearly 2" with proper placement ofthe black plastic spacers under the slider rails. IF you can get a set of JDM sliders, they have threaded portions on them that would allow almost 3" of vertical adjustment compared to the N/A Market 1 1/2-2" adjustability. Also, on a 72, make sure your 'straps' in the seat bottom are properly functioning. They have a terrible tendency to disintegrate, and let the seat portion 'sink' considerably. The 73 and later seats have spring suspension that is not as prone to this effect, and can be retrofitted to the earlier cars easily enough. My wife is 5' 2" and complained about seating position in her 74 260Z, I simply put four of the stock spacers between the mounting rail and the seat slider section, and she was happy. Though it's tight on my head if I sit up straight or don't have the seatback raked a bit when I'm driving it (6' 0") Our 260 has Real Leather Seating Areas applied with custom uphoulstery on stock seats. I like it.

The pieces from a coupe TO the seats are identical for a 2+2. So if you get a kit for a RHD Coupe, and use the footwell pieces, coupled with the rear section of a LHD 2+2 kit, it will work. I pieced together two kits similarly for my Fairlady 2/2 from a set of carpets I took out of a Fairlady Coupe in Japan, coupled with a 'missing pieces' 2+2 carpet kit I bought at MSA during their 'garage sale' which was missing the footwells (and was exceedingly cheap to boot!). I have also pieced together LHD kits similarly with coupe fronts and 2+2 rears. The difference is BEHIND the seats. The front mounting rail for the seats is identical in coupes and 2+2's from what I have seen by my piecework. And I got lucky as heck to find someone who was missing the pieces I had left over, and had him pay out the nose to take them off my hands to rejuvinate his car! LOL From what I know about 2+2's and 2+2 Eurospec vehicles, order a 2+2 kit for an EARLY LHD 2+2. Compare your rear seat to what you can find on early 74 260Z 2+2's and Early 75 280Z 2+2's here in the US Market, as the hinges changed, as did how the carpet was trimmed to fit the back seat area. I doubt a 77/78 LHD 2+2 kit would work for a later model (77-78) Eurospec 260Z.

Egads, not a revisit of wether headers save weight over cast manifolds again!

That, sir, is a relative statement!

Given a 22mm pin diameter, print the photo, scale with a caliper, and measure center-to-center on the rod photos and I bet you get pretty close to figuring it out! This is the kind of thing I do (similar to NZ): Look at those Japanese Articles, and then scale, scale, scale! LOL And before Braap comes back on and says it: "core plugs"< please! LOL The interior of that block looks a lot like one someone showed me at a shop in Holland... he he he

ND is not exempt, take a look online at some of the emissions compliance zones the EPA is charting. Outside the cities, sure, there is not going to be testing for a while. But many of the larger cities are 'non compliant' and as a result have localized emissions testing that can be FAR more onerous that CA testing in some cases. I was amazed when I looked at current standards compared to 2010 standards and the radical increase in 'non attainment areas'---places where you NEVER would think there is a smog issue. It's a 'decreasing goal target'---eventually if you raise the bar high enough you will fail anywhere you go. While your state may be fiscally solvent, they do have a large length of interstate highway running through it, and if they don't comply to the federal demand for setps to be taken to insure compliance within the states 'non-attainment areas' your federal highway funds go away. Even if it's one city (say, Fargo) they pull the funding till you make your plan, and the plan is always cookie-cutter, and taken from someplace else. (Wanna guess where? Ask the guys in the Northeast...) It's a big stick, and a big carrot. And given current political realities, those sticks have gotten porportionally bigger each time in realation to the items in question. This is digressing too far from the original topic, and should be gone PM if you want to discuss it further. As for the 'oil burnin' pit'...I just filled mine in. Now we just let it seep into the ground, and when it don't soak no more, we cover it with a 6" concrete cap and call it a 'parking pad' or 'driveway'....

I had it done some years ago this month... What made up my mind? Going to Watkins Glen and talking to one of the premier eye guys on the east coast who told me to get it done in SoCal as the guys there were in the 10K eyes range and were all over, and the cost was cheaper. What REALLY made up my mind: Working in Indonesia, I was hot, humid, and sweating like a pig looking off a bridge over a 'river'... My glasses slipped off, and fell into 'the river'. I was 20/150 and 220/200. I can do close work, so I was good for work, but couldn't do anything else. I paid a kid to walk into the filth that was 'the river' because my glasses did not 'sink' into the 'water' that was 'flowing' through it at the time. I cleaned the glasses off, doused them liberally with Alcohol (which we have for final pinion and bearing cleaning) and then wore them the rest of the way back to the hotel. KNOWING where they had been. And what sewage was flowing through there. Anybody who was to The P.I. in the service, or walked the bridge from San Diego into T.J. will know the kind of 'river' I'm talking about. The entire way back to the hotel one thought went through my mind: "I'm getting that damned eye surgery when I get back home, I'm NEVER going to have this happen again!" I went in, did not take my valium, had the flap procedure done on both eyes. Before I went into the clinic portion, I looked at my wife without my glasses...she was nothing more than a blur across the room. 20 minutes later I came out, quickly opened my eyes to see, and could see her clear as day! I have had eye injuries before, so I knew I had to keep my eyes closed for 18 hours minimum, so I did so. The NEXT MORNING at 0500, I drove my son in pre-dawn hours to a scouting event...the first oncoming cars I saw, I looked right at the headlights to see if I had 'halos'---I did not... and thought 'Great!' That afternoon I was camping in Death Valley with the scout troop, and wearing my sunglasses, and applying my antibiotics and eye drops. My only regret has been not doing it sooner. Especially with the testing they do for corneal thickness. If you have thick enough corneas, you can have the procedure done several times if your eyes shift shape as you age. I bought insurance that will let me undergo corrective surgeries in the future for $200. I do not wear reading glasses, but eventually like almost 'anybody' with good distance vision, I know I eventually will have to. I did notice that I can't hold a book 3" off my nose a view clear 12 pica type any longer. And in some cases micetype (like 3point or smaller than 6 ppoint) may require a concerted effort to read at normal reading distances, I can no longer just stick the book 3" off my nose to read it. But I can see. And see far. I'm 20/20 in my 'bad' eye that was 20/200, and I'm 20/15 in the eye that was 20/150 previously. As the doc back east told me, 'it's the machine, the software, and thee technician running it, they do all the work, the doctor is there to evaluate your suitability for the procedure---go with the best machine you can afford, with the most recent mapping technology' The doc will test you for corneal thickness, and tear production. If those are copasetic, it's a pretty much done deal. I oversimplify it to some extent. All I can say is "Take the Pill" before you get the surgery done, I did not, and they cut the flap, zapped my balls, and sent me on my way. Yeah, I endured it, and smelt my own eyes being burned... After that I can relate to alien abduction claims as the procedure somewhat resembled that to me... That was without anestetic of any kind other than some dialation stuff on the eyeball. Like I said, 'Take the Pill'! Now the best part: My mother one day noticed I was not wearing glasses. She asked if I had contacts in... I told her no. When she pressed me, I said my eyes simply 'got better', and upon further pressing, I confessed that my wife had finally agreed to concede to all my sexual needs and yielded at each demand, negating my need for self gratification any longer. True to what they told me in freshman health class, when I stsopped that, I no longer needed glasses! So that's waiting for you should anybody ask! And if you think that is bad to do to your own mother, you should hear what I did to the delivery room nurse after my son was born! he he he he

No, not really. Besides being totally illegal, which I won't get into, the frequency of random compliance checks, roadside dyno checks, and remote onramp monitoring make that sketchy at best as a 'solution'... The 'solution' is to simply comply with the applicable regulations. They are exceedingly simple to meet, and as you mention, are without performance penalty. As I posted earlier, the effort people go through to avoid some stuff is blown all out of porportion to the effect of simply complying. CA Smog has some stupidity to it (run course away from further political commentary) but really it's not that big of a deal for a properly running vehicle in proper tune. And the final caveat for your post should be, more aptly "got away from Smog Laws...for now" Muahahahhahaha! The coming 2010 Fed Standards will make almost every state of the union posess a 'non-compliant' area within their borders. That means smog testing is coming. There will be no hiding before too long.

Don't need it, matter of fact, some N/A cars in the Japan Market with L28's didn't have a cold start injector...they just used coolant temperature to determine a longer pulsewidth for 'warm up' enrichment, and the 'Priming Pulse' as startup covers what the cold start injector does. Lots of people misunderstand what the cold start injector does---which is sprays a LOT of fuel in the intake while the car is cranking... that's why it's so easy to foul the plugs in the earlier cars with the Bosch EFI system. And a primary reason most manufacturers went with a batchfire pulse to fire the engine initially once they bought enough processor power to accomplish it. The Cylinder Head Temperature sensor is the best possible place for warm up enrichment signal source, as it warms hotter, quicker under load for best fuel mapping. The thermotime switch just changes state to disable the original cold-start injector for prevention of activation when the engine is warm. This is why hot restarts with a low battery can sometimes be an issue with the early cars...the cold start floods the manifold when extended cranking occurs and the threshold of the thermaltime switch is just below the 'switchpoint.' It's why increased pulsewidth and priming pulse is a better way to approach cold start/initial engine fireing.