seattlejester's 1971 240Z

[seattlejester]

So my friend pulled the plug on my cheap trickle charger and short circuited/drained my battery so I had to jump the battery to provide enough voltage to test that my relays work, and for how much voltage they were getting (about 11.X volts) I was very impressed.

 

Had a chance to spy on another members car this past week, so I think I have my fan wiring and fuel pump wiring figured out, thanks Austin!

 

A friend stopped by to help hang the doors, it took a few tries and some frustrations, but it got done, (thanks Andrew!).

Didn't get a chance to install the weatherstrip to push the door out, but the driver side lines up pretty well.

Passenger side had always stuck in my memory as a problem child, and putting the fender on quickly proved the point.

Some shimming will be required to get the door to line up with the fender properly. Really not looking forward to the door coming on and off again.

 

And I started tearing down the engine this week as well.

I think I have enough money to get started on my way so, now it's down to tearing everything down and finding out what needs replacing.

Believe it or not, the garage was actually clean, but by the time I got to this point, it felt moot to bag everything as quite a few bolts had snapped, and I had resorted to pulling off the item in question then removing the remaining bolt remnant with a vice grip.

I realized I would benefit very well from a stainless bolt kit, as several heads snapped off, and some bolts look like they barely managed the trip out. I think I would be heart broken if they broke while I was installing everything.

So to take my mind off things, I started to scrub the pieces that would be reused. The timing cover was dirty, and the oil pan was atrocious not to mention fairly squarely dented.

After a night of scrubbing to very little success (engine degrease, steel wool), I thought I'd try my hand at some environmentally clean soda blasting.

I had bought the blaster way way back when, and had never used it, as I needed the rust busting power of sand. But now that I could benefit from some soft blasting I pulled it out of retirement. Plus being able to wash away the baking soda after I finished was a real treat.

After about 30 minutes.

I came away with a little sleeve. I wouldn't dream of trying this with sand blasting, but soda really wasn't bad. I will have to cover up next time though.

The soda I filled started running out, (probably 10 lbs or so), so I called it a day. Definitely will finish up tomorrow.

 

And opening my garage to this everyday is a dream.

Edited July 15, 2012 by seattlejester

[Devil_S30]

No problem man! I did find out what was causing my short. It was the left side marker, that little thing was creating sparks when I took off the cover.

 

When putting your car together you started by aligning your door with the quarter panel and moved forward right? Your Fender needs to come forward a bit, but I'm not exactly sure without looking at it in person.

[Pharaohabq]

Looking good. That's great progress. That Soda did a great job on the aluminum...

[seattlejester]

Devil: That's great, everything works then I hope? Or is the headlights still kind of funky?

 

I'm pretty sure the car was hit on the right side with all the rust in that forward section and the newer rocker. I'm going to start from the rear and work my way forward, hopefully only need to take the door off once!

 

Pharaohabq: Yea, I was surprised. I kind of regret having attacked it with a brush now that I see how well the soda worked. Soft enough not to remove gasket remnants, but strong enough to blast grime .

[Devil_S30]

Nope called it quits after I electrocuted my self lol. Headlights I honestly have no clue what to do with those.

 

Good idea with doing that, as well you can't move the quarter panels. I know I had issues with aligning a new door, took the door off I think 9times total on the passenger side. -________-

[seattlejester]

I think I just nailed the passenger side at 4 tries . There's a bit of a gap, but I think the fender still sits a little forward so I hope that fixes that. Ended adding material to the shim to add the desired curvature, and found that the washers I was using had slipped through the bottom hinge forcing it to sit skewed! The flange at the top had separated on the driver door, so had to go ahead and weld that back up, that combined with an air hose that decided it wanted a piece of my door means more body work in the very near future.

 

Engine block is completely stripped and will be heading off to the local machine shop on Thursday I hope. Having the bores refreshed and the block hot tanked with new core plugs. It looks like the head gasket had blown and had leaked oil into the cylinders causing the smoke, because as far as I can tell, the rings are perfectly square and the pistons look to be in really good standing.

The engine shop I called was very familiar as they just had a customer who wanted the same thing (L28 block, early 240z head). Unfortunately they were looking at about 400-700 for head work (new valve seats, recondition/replace valves, inspect/replace valve guide), so I'll be holding off on that until I can pull the head off the L24.

 

Decided that I really wanted HID's which meant I had to go ahead and run the H4 conversion.

There is one kit on ebay that comes with the high and low controller which looks like this...

It's essentially a dual relay! Powered independently from the battery, comes with an inline fuse, and has signal for both high and low beam (a little separate charge pushes the HID ballast backwards via a solenoid is my guess). Since running a relay in front of a relay is redundant I'll be taking the ends off and saving this for future use.

Spent some time fitting the Hi-Low HID since it is bulkier the rears had to be cut out and the little parking bulb was removed as it didn't want to sit right.

Pretty excited with how they turned out.

[Devil_S30]

I saw those before, thought about getting them. But now I'm going a retrofit route.

Make sure your headlights don't end up like mine haha

[seattlejester]

I believe you have seen these, since you have 'em on your car, haha. I prefer the glowing orb to the super bright dot, so I went with the H4 housing. I'm pretty sure it's what's on my daily and I do like how it looks.

 

Engine block is at C&D engineering for a good clean and some light deglazing. Hopefully they don't find any cracks, as I sure didn't notice any. And thank you all for the little tip for removing the block from the engine stand, worked like a breeze and made the whole task a 30 second ordeal.

 

Door stuff:

Door locks came, so I had a little fun installing those. They fit very well and all I needed to add was a zip tie to make sure the locking rod doesn't slip loose, my car has brand new functional locks.

 

Did a little more fitment with the driver door and now it shuts with very little effort instead of having to slam it. Hopefully the new weatherstrip won't make it too bad when I install them.

Found out that at some point when the passenger side was hit, the fixers had widened the holes for the door hinges for better adjustment. So now I'm on my second step of step ups for the washers. A friend will be coming tomorrow to help the fitment, hopefully I can shave the few mm of fitment to get everything nice and perfect.

 

Before I put the door card in, I realized that the door handles won't work as my door bar is in the way.

So taking inspiration from this:

I made these little guys,

big dangling hoop earrings for my girl .

Popped the handles out and drilled a hole for my temporary zip tie hold and it works pretty well, if I ever have the time to spare I think adding a pulley to make it a pulling instead of a pushing action would make it a little more user friendly, but my car isn't very friendly to begin with .

Edited July 20, 2012 by seattlejester

[seattlejester]

So I started the doors with the precision weatherstrip, and it really really messed up the doors. They only shut when you slam the hell out of them, and even then they barely latch. There's so much tension when it latches that you can't open the door using the little pull handle on the inside. I really don't want to spend anymore time on this, so this will be addressed in due time.

 

The block came back to me, unfortunately they didn't replace the core plugs. For 150$ I'd kind of hoped they would have taken care of that. The deglazing did look really nice though. After waiting a week for the core plug kit to arrive I found that the dorman kit doesn't come with the proper amount for the L28 block. The kit came with 7 of the 35mm plug, and the engine would need a total of 11, 9 for the block and 2 for the head, so after running around town, I finally was able to source all the plugs I needed.

I also bought a carb cleaner dipping kit, and boy does that make a ridiculous amount of difference!

Then came the assembly, all new bearings and seals.

Crank rotates with minimal effort, and the entire assembly glides fairly smoothly even with the new rings.

 

Head is now at the machine shop I felt I should have gone to in the beginning. An hour drive, but the price break more than makes up the difference.

 

Need to rebuild my carbs, grab a new radiator, timing set, and front chin, and hopefully will start on trouble shooting.

[noobie]

Awesome build thread!

[seattlejester]

'preciate it.

 

Got the head back from the machine shop. The work looks top notch, and the N42 head checked out. Decided against the E31 as one of the mounting studs had been drilled out to a larger size, and in the process a PO had punctured into the water jacket.

 

Put everything back together, even had the timing kit in, when I decided to try and torque the bolts to 7lbs, turns out that was a bad idea (didn't and probably couldn't feel the click with that leverage arm) and now I'm left with a broken bolt on one of the timing chain guides . Will have to wait till tomorrow to find an extractor and hope I don't mess up the hole too much.

 

Finished up what wiring I had for the front of the car. Will have to wait till the engine is in to wire up the fan and ignition. Still need to make at least two accessory ports, one for a usb charging port and the other for the electric ceramic heater and fans I'll be using to defog the windows.

 

Put some more body panels on the car. Definitely needs some clean up and touch up, but it's looking pretty good. Still very annoyed about the doors, but alas I believe that is beyond my abilities by myself.

 

Ordered new clutch kit and clutch slave, combined with a transmission fluid change, I hope I won't have any problems on the transmission front.

 

And gosh, flat/matte white is really gorgeous when it's clean.

[robbs70z]

She's coming along. Like how you did the doors

[Gollum]

On the extraction - Go slow, start with the smallest bit you can reasonably use. Don't overheat the bit. Then keep stepping up the size until you've got a large enough hole to fit a good portion of the easy-out in there, not just the tip. GO SLOW!!! I've marred up my own fair share of stuff...

[seattlejester]

Thanks, actually went back to add the pulleys since they were silly hard with my whole weatherstripping door fitment issue.

 

Well couldn't extract all of the bolt, but got enough of it out to thread in a shorter bolt which is not ideal but acceptable.

Got the timing cover on, and the oil pump and distributor. Timing everything was a bit of a chore. The distributor doesn't swing freely, so I think I might need a longer bolt.

 

Then got around to wire brushing and ceramic coating the headers and the valve cover. Not quite happy with how the valve cover came out, and ceramic was probably overkill, but I have another one to play with.

 

Almost all buttoned up, need spark plugs, oil pan, and some nuts.

Kind of sad that the headers are hidden under the carbs but function over form I suppose.

 

Carbs are suppose to work, so we'll give them a shot, if they don't run or spit I'll have to rebuild them. Hoping I get lucky in that department along with my transmission.

 

Only things left are:

Plumb my clutch master to my new clutch slave and install the transmission and engine combo.

Install windshield, hatch, headlights, buckets, radiator, front chin.

Work on interior accessory wiring.

Work on fuel pump and fan wiring.

Color sand and touch up.

Door fitment and mirrors.

 

Than test drive and wheels .

Hoping to install the motor this weekend, so wish me luck!

[seattlejester]

Ladies and gentlemen we have touchdown!

[robbs70z]

Just to let you know I have 40mm triple mikuni's with mikuni intake I will be selling shortly. I am going a different way with my z

[seattlejester]

Hmm, Thanks for the offer, but I'm planning on going 4 barrel for my next carb setup, so mikuni's aren't really on my radar. We'll see if these SU's even want to cooperate then I may be knocking on your door .

 

So I assembled most of the engine last night and boy were there problems. The transmission bushing was stubborn as a mule, the bell housing wouldn't line up with the engine, the flywheel kept spinning, and on and on.

 

Eventually buttoned up the engine and transmission and a friend came over and really helped me out with putting the engine in, but that too wasn't without problems.

 

When I pulled the engine, I used the 1/4 ton setting on the cherry picker which was longer, and removed just the engine. Installing the engine with the transmission necessitated using the shorter 1/2 ton setting which made it an ever so tight of a fit.

That combined with the fact the car had to be raised so the cherry picker could fit under the control arms made the effort a lower a cm, push forward a cm affair.

After we thought we had everything, a quick look in the car showed the transmission shifter portion was comfortably sitting underneath the transmission tunnel, so the shifter hole had to be trimmed about 2 inches.

 

But eventually we had touchdown.

Tried to fit the drive shaft to find that even the 240 one was too long due to probably the diff problem I encountered earlier, so I shortened the ZX shaft and put that in.

 

After about 2 hours we had the motor in and bolted up.

 

Radiator arrived today so I'll be connecting that with the stocking on the radiator inlet to collect rust scale, found some spare lines to plumb my clutch master to slave, and will wait a few days to buy some oil, spark plugs, and coolant, and hopefully will be able to turn her over, or else witness the destruction of a month and about 1000$ in rebuild items.

 

Truth be told, I really don't know what I'll do if that happens, wish me luck .

Edited September 18, 2012 by seattlejester

[seattlejester]

So I feel I'm almost there, but I'm stuck on a few things, hoping some of you fine gents could point me in the right direction.

 

I have the E12-80 ICU that came with the 1979 280zx motor, unfortunately I'm really stumped as to how this wires in.

I'm going off of ducer's image.

 

On my 240z wiring harness, I have one spade connector that goes to where the old distributor used to be, one to the coil, and two to the ballast resistor. The new distributor has two spade terminals labeled B and C.

 

From the picture it shows I should bring a power wire from the battery, split it to the coil and the B label of the ICU. Or use the black and white wire (is this the spade connector from the 240z harness?).

 

It then shows a blue and black wire going to the coil as well, (is this the coil power wire?)

 

Connect a ground from the coil to the C label on the ICU, then attach another ground from the coil to a 280z or autometer tach with a 2.2k ohm resistor. That seems fairly straight forward, it looks like I will need a new wire with two spade ends to make this connection.

 

Now the picture shows the removal of the ballast resistor. Where do the 2 plugs that attached to the ballast go?

 

 

The second concern I have is with some water routing. From what I remember the 90* fitting on the back of the head and the fitting going from the carb water heating passage are used to run the heater core. Since I have removed the heating system, what is the best way of routing these lines? I know MSA sells a heater bypass kit, but I vaguely remember an aussie by the name of Kev saying that using the bypass causes a temperature fluctuation as the water bypasses without being cooled or some thing along those lines, any advice on this?

 

On the to do list:

Install headlights and bucket

Pick up front air dam

Modify/install air dam

Pick up wheels

Order tires

Fill fluids

Re-notch strut bar

Install windshield

Install/wire up fans and fuel pump

Mess with alignment and lowering

Touch up/flat paint

Line up body panels

[seattlejester]

Alrighty,figured out the wiring for the ignition using this post

http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php?topic=5211.0

Supremely helpful!

 

Messed around with the e-brake, still need to gain some more adjustment, hopefully I don't max out before the car is fully lowered.

 

Ordered a pretty kickass shift knob (1 lbs!) so waiting for that to arrive.

 

Picked up the wheels and the front air dam, still need to button up the air dam and build the diffuser and mounting brackets, but for now my car has a face .

Picked up my first set of wheels, curb rash all the way around on several of them so that was addressed along with a fresh coat of paint.

 

Wired up the spark plugs to distributor, literally stalled on 2 things before I try a crank.

1. Where to get signal for the fuel pump and fans (possibly from positive side of the coil?)

2. Battery (still in the mail )

[Leon]

Unless you removed it, there should already be wiring in place for the fuel pump next to the gas tank, behind the right rear wheel.

 

As far as the cooling fan, why not run a clutch fan? There is no added electrical circuitry and no additional load on the charging system, plus the clutch fan works great. I've not had an issue with mine and the temp gauge needle rarely gets past the "E" if that matters (rebuilt cooling system, 180deg thermostat).