Swami's Orange 260z

[Swami]

I was having an intermittent battery drain myself. Was able to focus on it for a few hours last night, and traced it back to a loose connector on the interlock relay. Seems to have fixed it! And yes I hear you about how hard it is to fix dips and spikes in Afr on carbs.

[Swami]

Wow i haven't posted an update in quite a bit here. For the past few months, I've been taking every opportunity to just drive the car. Finally got her sideways a few times and now i'm trying to cool it on that behavior so I can preserve the remaining tread on these tires. =)

 

Anyway, this might be a boring post for some of you, but "story" is starting to become a focus for me with this particular Z, and these bits (while not technical in nature) are certainly part of it.

 

So there I was, driving to a client meeting in Palo Alto, when I see this sign. Lo and behold, it's Gunn High School, where this car spent some time with the students of Gunn Auto Tech. I made a pit stop and talked to the folks at the front desk, who connected me with the auto shop teacher, "Mr C." We chatted via email and he filled me in on the back story of this car. It's so cool, and it gives the car just that much more character. It got me thinking how cool it would be to fill in ALL the blanks of this story.

 

"This car originally was donated to the Gunn auto shop as an automatic.  One of my students at the time had a  black 240Z that he drove back and forth to school.  One day he was in an accident and his 240 Z was totaled.  He wanted to know if I wanted what was left.  I did.  While the orange car was nice and straight it was still  an automatic and spoiled the "Cool" factor.  We decided to take the parts from the wrecked 240 and make the 260 a manual.  All the necessary parts were swapped out.  We used a rear end and control arms leftover  from one of the Z's for the rear of one of our custom cars we are building.  We stripped the totaled chassis and eventually junked it.  I still have some parts off this car...old air cleaner/intake set up.  Some misc.  stuff that is just taking up space. All the best stuff went on the orange car.  Spoiler, roll bar, etc.  The kids got it running and we played with it a bit.  Hit an autocross or two.  At the end of the year the student who did the most work on it asked me if I would sell it to him and since it had served it's purpose(kept them busy for a year and taught them how to keep track of stuff) and I had no emotional ties to it I sold it to him fairly cheap.  Hey, I can't keep all the cars!"

 

Crazy. my last orange 240 was an automatic that I converted to a 5 speed, as well. Some kind of weird "Car karma" at play here or something.=)

 

 

A few days later, I meet up with a friend I haven't seen in many years. We both had orange 240Zs back in the 90s. Eventually he graduated to a 1990 twin turbo. Which he sold but somehow magically made it's way back into his possession. We ruminated about the impact these cars have had on our lives, over a few hundred beers.

 

Several weeks later, I had a weekday off with nothing going on, So I drove up to Cameron Park and was treated to a little tour of Techno Toy Tuning by Gabriel, and we discussed future plans for my suspension. We looked at the GTX2 front lower control arms, and I actually brought up the point that Tube80z mentions in this thread, and he seemed to indicate that the "extra degree of freedom" mentioned here has been addressed. So that's interesting. Took a few snapshots too. Kind of hard not to drool over piles of suspension cores and stacks of mustache bars made for several rear ends.

 

In the mean time, a few odds and ends have made their way to my bench; a Carter fuel pump, Mishimotor oil cooler + sandwich plate, and oil catch can, as well as a few assorted Aeroquip hose ends. When the weather cools, I plan to hit the fuel delivery first, then see if I can snag a turbo oil pump, and plumb the cooler. Just tonight though, I had something weird happen. After pulling out of a parking lot and gunning it up the overpass, I noticed my oil pressure gauge was spiked! I took my foot off the throttle and coasted to the next parking lot. By the time I was able to stop, the reading had returned to normal. This is the first time I've seen this happen, and it's a bit odd. Do oil pressure senders go out, intermittently? Did something clog up an oil passage and get blown out? What the heck. I'll be keeping an eye on that for a bit, I guess... O_o. 

 

Oh yeah, and I also changed the speedo cable drive gear seals, and picked up these slick little velocity stack screens from Pegasus Racing. Oh and these high fidelity earplugs. Initially I only picked them up to protect what little hearing i have left on long freeway drives, but these have an unexpected benefit. They drop the exhaust noise by 20db (advertised) but some of the highs are preserved. It's like having X-ray specs for your ears! I can hear little rattles in the passenger compartment and under the hood, over the deafening exhaust under full acceleration. The first time I heard it, I thought something was wrong with the car, but it's just the noises I don't normally get to hear. Some of the stage 8 fasteners jingle. There's are some rattles all through the center console and in the driver door. It's like having a stethoscope to look for loose screws.  

 

So that's it for this chapter. Hopefully I'll have some more upgrades to share in the next post. 

Edited July 28, 2015 by Swami

[Leon]

I love it! I actually got an email from the kid that I bought the car from, when I was selling it. The shop teacher saw the ad and he forwarded his teacher's email on to me. It's so interesting to get to know the history of these old cars. Love the work you've done to it, keep it up!

[Swami]

Well the wet season has had me laying low for a while on the Z project. Been saving my dimes for some wheels and coilovers for the daily driver in the mean time. Yeah my daily turned into a light project too, so now i'm spreading myself out kinda thin.

 

However, when Xmas rolled around I caught wind of a group buy from skillard.com. Front bumper delete panels in black powder coat. I decided to get in on it, and they finally arrived today! 

 

 

 

Not too shabby! I had to elongate a few holes in the urethane air dam to get the fasteners to line up. Also, the turn signals overlap them just a little. Judging from the pics on the skillard site, it looks like they might fit a little better on the MSA air dams, but they're a little snug with the xenon vented air dam on mine. From what I understand, the Xenon air dams don't come with holes drilled, so it's likely just the lack of precision at that step that is causing the "snug-ness")

 

Again, nothing to really complain about here. They are reminiscent of the Rocky Auto bumper delete panels i've seen, and the black finish compliments the urethane quite well. =)

 

Not a huge update, but it's an update. Hopefully more to come in the spring =) 

Edited January 15, 2016 by Swami

[wrcbonk]

Came back around to this thread after losing touch. The sterileness of your engine bay is amazing, especially the electrical. Look forward to more updates.

 

Bill