matt_w

When putting my suspension back together, I noticed one of my T/C rods was about 1/2 an inch longer than the other. I'm curious as to which one is "correct", before I go about deciding if I want to replace them. Can someone with a 240Z measure from the small washer where the bushing starts to the center of the first bolt hole?

Mine required an additional 10 mils of shim to fit properly. Nissan wants $20 per shim, which is insanity, so I bought a shim kit for a 12-bolt chevy rear end for $10. The shims are smaller in diameter, but still work fine.

Yeah, I tried a search but maybe the terms I used sucked. Anyway, thanks for the advice, I ordered a set of bad dog frame rails. John at Bad Dog provided some good advice as well on installing and bending back/prepping the old ones.

If your calipers are leaking, you can also just get a rebuild kit instead of buying new calipers. Chances are you won't be getting new calipers anyway, just ones rebuilt by someone else. As far as cheap parts, check out rockauto.com. They have rear calipers for about $80 a piece, but their rebuild kits are only around $10.

If you want to know what tires will fit those rims, I suggest looking at the tire racks website, selecting a tire size, and then clicking on "specs" for the search result. It will list what tires fit which rim widths.

Hi, Recently, while working on my 240z (new car), I noticed that the passanger side floor pan was buckled up. Also, the frame rail that runs all the way up to the engine compartment and back to under the passanger seat is bent slightly upward at about a foot from the end. I hammered the floor pan out and it mostly popped out, but the frame rail is still slightly bent. While hammering, part of the frame rail (the very end of it, maybe 3-4" from where it tapers off) kind of collapsed, and it is fairly rusted through. What should be the next course of action? Should I just cut off the rusted part? Should I reinforce the part that I cut off?

I was putting my front suspension backtogether, and noticed when I torqued the tension rods back to spec, the drivers side rod had about 1/2 an inch more of threads showing on the other side of the nut. I measured both rods, and the drivers is shorted by 1/2 inch! The actual rods are the same length, but the the length from the first bolt hole to where the bushing starts is shorter. The shorter rod looks like it was damaged slightly in the area where the bushings sits, maybe from rubbing on the frame. Is this common, or is it some kind of ghetto fix for some other problem?

I ended up going with the 7-washer arrangement that John did. Seems to work pretty well. Before putting mine back together, I soaked the case in degreaser and then ground down the sharper edges with a dremel(there were a lot of pits and pointy parts in mine). Doing that removed all the old packing grease and made the case appear more Quaife-like. Let's hope it stands up to the test of time!

Just got my OBX today...the gears were backwards on mine too. Mine also only came with 7 washers too. However, when I stacked up 8 of the better washers, the height was pretty damn close to the way OBX had their 7 washers stacked. Guess I'll stick with 8 for now!

Just got mine together...there is a trick! I put 2 balls and 2 spacers on each rail in the housing at the top (after installing the washer and snapring in the housing, then slid in the shaft all the way through. When it came out the other side, I put an additional ball and spacer on each rail and added the cross-shaped washer and snap ring, then pulled it back out. Worked first try, and it extends and contracts fully!

My 240Z also has that chunk of metal under the diffy mount. According to some book I read, that was a quick fix to solve vibration problems (only mounted if the customer brought the car back to the dealer to complain about it). Did you double check the strut mounts to make sure those bolts were tightened? Did you remove the differential crossmember or something? (You mentioned the mount being out). There is a band of thick rubber mounted between two bolts above the differential towards the front where the driveline connects, that may have possibly been tweaked when you put the crossmember back on. May want to double check that the diffy is sitting up against it properly.

That's kind of what I was trying, but it kept ending up where the washer would be just slightly too high so that the snap ring wouldn't fit back in. Do you have the cross-shaped washer and other snap ring installed on the end of the shaft before sliding it in?

I am currently rebuilding the halfshafts for my 240z (new ujoints, replacing the boots, re-greasing the innards). I can't seem to figure out how to get the little ball bearings and spacers back in properly so that the axle extends and contracts to its proper ranges. Has anyone done this that would be willing to share some tips?