Brad's '71 240Z

[GTI-Z]

Thought it was about time to put some words and pics together so here goes.

 

The car was purchased early December 2010 from a Victorian gent who had owned it for the previous 30 years, who had bought it off his brother who was the original owner.  The car was very straight, fairly rust free (apart from some surface rust on a couple of panel edges) and quite original.  Including the tyres that were on it !  Uniroyal CR78/14.  I have no idea when they stopped making that tyre.

 

Driving home was incident free, until I reached about Hurstville, when it proceeded to run on three normal cylinders, and three half cylinders.  Managed to get home at much reduced speed, where the car sat until early March this year.  The inactivity was due to the fact that though I had room in the garage to do the work, storage was at a premium.  After a few trips to Bunnings and cleaning out a section underneath the house, a workbench (read rectangular picnic table) and shelving gave me the room to start work.

 

The break gave us a chance to have a real good look over the car.  Underneath the car looks good, with no apparent rust.  With only 61000 miles on the clock, the engine still felt good, with no smoke.  However, due to the age, it had quite a few oil leaks so a full engine stripdown is on the cards.

 

Suspension is well past its use by date (springs, shocks and bushes), interior carpet is ratty, although the dashboard has no cracking.  Seats are quite tired, bumber bar chrome has deteriorated badly in places, and most badging needs replacing.  Paintwork is not bad, but a respray is planned.  The steelies and hubcaps will go pretty quick, with a set of Watanabes planned.

[GTI-Z]

A couple of weeks ago we started in earnest.  Bumper bars off and out of the way, then the bonnet to allow better access to the engine.  I don't think that the engine has ever been pulled apart in any way, as all nuts and bolts, once "cracked" have been able to be rotated and removed by hand.

 

All the engine hoses are the original fabric covered type, with the usual wire type hose clamps.  Underneath the battery tray is almost unmarked, with just a bit of loose dirt sitting there.  By the way, the three pin socket is something my father added.  I just have to plug in the battery charger to keep the charge up on the battery.

 

Don't know if there is any significance to the number written in texta on the firewall

 

The head came off prior to the engine coming out.  Must have spent about 10 minutes trying unsuccessfully to seperate the engine and the gearbox until we found one last oil and crud encrusted bolt holding it together.  After that was removed, they just slid apart so easily.

[GTI-Z]

The car must have had a passenger side front accident, as the difference between the driver and passenger side front metalwork looks vastly different (first two pictures as comparison).  Also, the passenger side headlight surround is now metal, with the driver's side still fibreglass.

 

The front skirt also looks a bit ragged and will need a bit of straightening.  Fortunately the front indicator panels are unmarked.

 

I am quite enjoying pulling the car apart (brings back lots of memories of my 1600 club race cars) but start to worry about whether I will remember how to put it back together again.  I am hopeful I will be spared having to do anything major to the chassis. 

[reverendzed]

Seems like something has happened on the passenger side (or both) as the original headlamp buckets are metal not FG.  You mention that a metal one is fitted on the side of suspected damage and FG on the drivers, I would have expected it to be the other way around.  You may find that it had a hit in the front with most damage occurring on the passenger side with a small amount on the drivers, hence the FG Bucket.  Try and have a look at the rails in the engine bay, if the vehicle has sustained a decent impact these will tend to get a kink or 'gathering' in the steel.  Let's hope all is fine, great job on your write up.

Rev.

[GTI-Z]

Just after buying the car, I was wondering how I was going to get the engine out.  Cue my father, who then decided to build a frame to support a chainblock to raise the engine out of the bay.  Made good use out of the heaps of scrap metal he has lying around at his place.

 

With the head off, this confirmed my suspisions on the rough running of the car.  Prior to pulling the engine out of the car, it had been turned over for about 2-3 minutes.  The second photo shows the result of this.  Cylinder 2 had a lovely little puddle of petrol in it, with 1 and 3 rather wet.  Looks like the front Hitachi needs some investigation (along with a new set of gaskets and adjustment).

 

Cylinders 4,5 & 6 didn't get away scot-free.  Check out the shape of the gasket hole on cylinder 6 (last photo).  It actually overlaps into the cylinder by about 2 mm for about a quarter of the circumference, with the remainder sitting well away from the lip of the cylinder.  Cylinder 4 & 5 were not much better.

 

With the engine in pieces, the gearbox had to come out for a general clean, new oil and a replacement rear oil seal.  I had the spanner ready to crack loose the nuts holding the driveshaft flange at the back of the gearbox, but found all 4 nuts only fingertight.  Looks like I might have found the cause of the drivetrain clunk when going from forward to reverse.  I'll be interested to see what the rest of the drietrain flanges nuts and bolts are like.

[Z]

I have seen a doco recently on the 240 and the buckets were neither metal or fiberglass, but plastic! If this could be confused with FB I have no idea!

[benny]

if your referring to this doco-

 

 

at 9.40 he did say "this plastic is FRP" FRP which is fibreglass. I have heard of being FG maybe only in early 240z's??

 

 

[GTI-Z]

Rev,

 

You are probably right.  It may have been that when repairs were done, they could only source fibreglass for the driver's side headlamp bucket ( or the cynic in me might think that they couldn't get the cheaper fibreglass one for the passenger side). 

 

The rails in the engine bay look good, so the damage appears limited to that front section.  It looks a bit messy, but everything does line up.  I will be stripping back all the crud coating the damage and straightening up much cleaner than what it presently is.

 

It is similar damage to what occured with my previous Z back in 1983.  Although that time, we had to stretch the car to straighten out the front section that was damaged.

[GTI-Z]

I was basing the fibreglass on the information in the following link:

 

http://datsun-240z-blog.viczcar.com/nissan-datsun-s30-buyers-guide.html

 

I know mine is actually considered a 72 model, but was complianced in Dec 1971 (probably built Oct-Nov 1971)

[shanec86]

the socket on the battery is ghetto as hahaha, but why is hooking a couple of clamps to the battery harder for charging? 

[gav240z]

The early 70 / 71 cars had Fiberglass headlight buckets from the factory because the tooling wasn't available to do them in steel. So it's definitely the passenger side that has had the knock and the headlight bucket replaced.

 

I'm not sure what your plans for this car are, but I'd be very tempted to keep it original and source a replacement fiberglass bucket. I think it keeps the early cars unique.

 

She looks so original, btw when you replace the steel hubcaps with Watanabe's store them away somewhere don't get rid of them!

 

My 240z has similar front end damage (doesn't appear to have disrupted the radiator support at all), coming from a minor incident. I was thinking of cutting off a good front (2+2 or donor car) and welding it on, but was going to ask Lurch about the best way to approach it. Would be interested to see what you end up doing.

[gilltech]

Gav240Z's advice is sound as always.

Mind you, info I've seen indicates that the f/glass was deleted sometime mid '71 in favour of steel, so your car could have had either depending whether it's early or late '71. But I've seen more than a few cars with a mix of both, probably due to repairers using whatever was available to hand at the time. Both are available.

The inner guards in front of the front wheels on Zeds & the radiator support panel (not to mention the bonnet) are very vulnerable in even a small crunch particularly diagonally. They & the attached radiator support / frame rail below & ends of the chassis rails need to be checked & damage ironed out as they can be rippled even if the overall body shell is still straight.

My early 260 2-seat is probably much the same as Gav's, a couple of panel ripples that shouldn't be there from some PO's indiscretion; really annoying.

You're better to re-align & fix what you've got unless it's rusty. You'd need a front off a 240 or early 260 - the later 260's had a different x-member below the radiator so no good. Like Gav I've had the idea of buying a nose cut & taking whatever off it was in better nick than my own, but all the nose cuts I've seen for sale to date have been rusty in the seams, whereas my car's not, so not worth the trouble.

Keep us posted - sounds like a very good base car to work with!

[GTI-Z]

Gavin,

 

I actually have about 7 of the hubcaps now, 3 were left over from my 1974 260Z coupe from back in the 1980's.  I will be storing the wheels and hubcaps, along with the original seats (down the track I will be on the lookout for some better seats).  Same with the bumper bars.  I have a couple of fibreglass ones on order, and will store the originals.  I like the cleaner look of having no overriders on the bumpers

 

A good inspection of the front end would indicate that there is little damage apart from that small front section of damage.  Radiator support looks good, along with the chassis rails.  In that respect, very lucky.

 

shanec86, i know it looks a bit tacky, but I havent had any issues with shorting out of the clamp to the bodywork.  Each to his own and nice and easy just to have to plug it in !

[gilltech]

FWIW, & not being picky or wanting to insult, the hubcap I can see on the LH view of the car is the later '73 240Z / 260Z type with a 'Z' badge centre, hence you have 3 matching spares from your old 260! The '72 & earlier 240Zs had a different & plainer hubcap with a 'D' badge in the centre. You might like to contact the POs perhaps & see what happened there, perhaps someone lost one & couldn't replace it so substituted the later style? If so, perhaps some of the original ones might still be lying in someone's attic...just a thought.

In any case, stash them away in very dry storage. They will gradually develop surface rust (this from personal experience) unless protected with a good wax coating or the like, although I've found the earlier style more prone to that than the later style.

 

[GTI-Z]

Gilltech,

 

Now you mention it, the 7 hubcaps I have are identical.  Looks like the originals were replaced with later caps.  Unfortunately, I got everything that the PO had, so no luck with the original caps.

 

Does anyone have any idea how long the 260's got the steelies and hubcaps before the alloys were standard equipment ?

 

Brad

[Scoota G]

Does anyone have any idea how long the 260's got the steelies and hubcaps before the alloys were standard equipment ?

 

Brad

 

I found a quote in "Fairladyto 280Z" by Brian Long that refers to 1976 the 260Z-T was identified by the cross star alloy wheels.

[chris240]

Brad..very nice ride & great write-up. +1K

sorry fellas, did I miss something here....I thought all Aust 260's came with the spoked rims ??

[gilltech]

I have been told by a Z guru that the alloys weren't available as a dealer option in the Australasian market until at least a year or more after the 2+2 came on the market, that being late '74, so therefore late '75 at earliest, but can't corroborate that. Someone in this club might have better info.

So dealers fitted Cheviot & other brands of alloys to up-spec the 240 & early 260 cars & load up the prices. Even back in '84 when I bought my then 10-yr old car it wasn't common to see Zeds still wearing hubcaps, as most people just didn't like the skinny steel rims. But the same alloys were used in great numbers on the 280ZX, so as a result there are lots around today & many earlier Z cars have been retro-fitted with them.

 

[GTI-Z]

Just like I did with my old 260Z back in 1983!  After my brakes failed going up the Putty Road (very poor cooling with the steelies and hubcaps) , I managed to pick up a set of late model 280ZX rims from Lennox Motors in Parramatta. 

 

Apparently, a guy who bought a brand new 280ZX drove there and told them to remove the wheels and put on another set of alloys.  So the rims sat in the showroom until I was offered them for about $65 each (I think they were about $150 each if I had bought them brand new).

 

Thanks Chris240, the wealth of information in this forum has been a real help to me in finding parts and suppliers.

[GTI-Z]

Hasn't been any updates for a while due to being overseas (ocean cruise from Florida to Los Angeles via the Panama Canal).  Back home again with the work starting again on the car.

 

Had some fun getting the carby's fully dismantled for cleaning and new gaskets.  One of the screws holding the butterfly valve in place decided to have its head shear off whilst desmantling.  Managed to drill out the offending screw, and having retapping the thread, used a spare screw from an old set of 260Z carbs I was given about 25 years ago.  Carbs and manifold have cleaned up well, with the linkages now moving quite free, compared to before.  The purchase of a Dremel a couple of months ago has certainly helped in cleaning some of the accumulated crud off parts that the kero can't move (or get at)

 

The engine came apart quite easily, with most of the oil leaks around the engine the result of rock hard gaskets.  The only bit of internal damage or marking has been the water pump with a chipped impellor blade.

 

The same cant be said for the water passages.  Punched out all the welsh plugs and found most of the mud from the Yarra River in the block.  Fortunately the water passages in the head are quite clean.  The block was sent to a workshop at Peakhurst to be tanked, coming back absolutely spotless.  My father came over with the trailer to pick up the block with the help of his 14 yo grandson.  From engine stand to engine hoist and into the trailer.  At the workshop, one of the mechanics proceeded to lift the block out of the trailer by hand.

 

Spending the time at present cleaning up the head prior to reassembling.  With the limited miles I expect to do with the car, I am not going to have hardened valve seats installed at this stage.  The current seats are still good.

 

The purchase of the car has been a good excuse for the purchase of new "Man's Toys".  Besides the Dremel, a Karcher high pressure water cleaner caught my eye during one of the many visits to Bunnings (dangerous store - I have never walked out of there without purchasing something).  Definitely made cleaning the head and manifolds easier.  I might even find a use for it around the house if I am lucky...

 

Have been impressed with the service from suppliers of the parts I have purchased.  MSA and Black Dragon in the US have had a very quick turnaround, the Stewart Wilkins has been quite helpful and prompt with supply of engine parts.

 

Try to get some photos this weekend.