gav240z

I'm all for it, if it takes off and becomes wildly successful maybe we can work out a way of hosting images in a larger format for those with large monitors. The forum is restricted in image size to conserve server space.

Gordon I think I and the rest of Auszcar would be very interested in hearing more of these stories. Perhaps we can continue this discussion via email (gavindoolan at gmail.com) and find a way to best present it on our site? We could certainly do a write up on your racing history and include some great photos.

The form is on the website under the member rides section. http://www.viczcar.com/member-rides/submit-your-ride However if you find it easier you can email me directly on gavindoolan (at) gmail.com

Spammer, gone now.

If you don't mind I'd like to know why you are not a fan of having the other groups along? If you are afraid of a public prosecution feel free to email / pm me about it. Personally I think other marquee's could make it epic!

I don't know where I'll be in 2 years time, location wise. However I'd definitely consider taking time off and coming back to Australia for a couple of weeks to take part in this. Don't think my 240z would be ready for it, since it's been sitting for a few years now and I'd need to do a lot of prep work for a trip like this, but if someone has a spare seat I'm in!

Guys I don't want to lock this thread because of a dispute. I also don't want to ban anyone and I don't think it should be necessary. Once you start banning people it becomes a slippery slope and I've seen this divide communities. Plus I'll also get a ton of personal emails I'm sure, which I don't really need . For the most part I'm sure both parties have something valuable to contribute otherwise they wouldn't comment and in this case different opinions. Sure somebody 'may' or 'could' be wrong, but you also have to remember that offline many of you guys have close relationships, so when someone outside of that immediate social circle comes in I respect that many of you will jump to defend each other. Also members should show mutual respect for each other, even though at times I know this can be difficult to do and you may want to really prove someone is wrong. Comments on forums can sometimes be hard to properly interpret due to the restriction in the medium's tone, I'm sure we all know this. Just look at the fighting over YouTube. It may seem obvious and perhaps optimistic on my behalf, but perhaps we should take this incident as water under the bridge and move on?

I think where Lurch is coming from and may not be very obvious when you first join the site is that: 1. Everyone is on the look out for a cheap 240z project. Unfortunately cheap and 240z are starting to become oxymoron's. You used to be able to pick up a cheap project, but there are far more people looking for a project than projects for sale. So a car that you used to be able to get for peanuts will often start around $5k and need some serious work. There are however a few exceptions and a couple of shells / stripped down have sold recently for a couple of grand. Which is amazing value really. 2. I've never been an apprentice but I have been a broke Uni student. It ain't easy trying to fix up any old car on a salary like that, but if you are in the trade and in particular doing panel beating / body work then you could be in a good position. It really is the bodywork on these cars that costs the most money. That and missing interior trim. The mechanical stuff in my opinion is pretty straight forward and not too expensive. I was 16 when I fell in love with Z's, and bought my first 1 at 17. However what the others have said it true, it's a long term project no need to rush. Hope you have space in a garage and patient parents. Looking back my mum was great, letting me take over the freshly built garage for my messy car parts. Mind you she always wanted a 240z in her younger days so that may have helped.

I was gonna say the same thing, to me it reminds me a lot of the 250 GTO look and that's probably why I like it. I also think the old rally cars looked great with them on. I only like the OEM covers though, I don't like the cheap copies that motorsport auto and others sell. I had a set of tinted ones (non-OEM) on my first Z and they were a major hassle with water and dirt getting under the covers and then there was the fogging up with moisture. My step dad lent on 1 when I was working on the car and cracked 1 of them. I just remember them being a pain. If I had a set of OEM covers I'd definitely put them on my Z. The Chrome trim is what does it. The non OEM never again, they just looked cheap.

Hey guys, I was under the impression that the position of the calipers would affect the balance of the car (brake bias) under braking. Therefore is there some way of determining the ideal position of the caliper from a braking perspective as opposed to a ideal handbrake cable perspective?

Yeah let's see it first before we decide if she's too original. Not that it's our car anyway

Hi Freddy, Sorry about the delay, replied to your email there. Would be great to have someone local producing quality bits for the Z.

My friend's brother had a Celica like that, the 3SGE was a good motor. A good first car and Toyota reliable with F.I. I bought a AE92 Corolla with the 4AGE and it used to really annoy my mate that I could beat him in the little Corolla in a straight line drag. I had bought the Corolla as a run-about while saving money to fix up the 240z, but unfortunately the Corolla was broken into and vandalised whilst parked at Southland shopping center. I had no insurance well only 3rd party so no cover for vandalism only if the car was stolen and burnt out. I then sold it and decided to focus on the 240z. That 260z 2+2 of yours needs some love, please apply love to it . Who's 1600 is that in the background?

Absolute bargain for anyone who's going to put a high powered motor in a Z and doesn't mind a modded 1. Save someone loads of time and they can still finish it the way they want it. A Supra motor 2JZ's would be insane in a Z. Sorry I just wanted to use that image haha.

I don't actually mind if people register to sell parts or cars, since it's better it goes on here than eBay in my opinion. Everyone wins, but in the past I haven't actually worded the rules that way, so it will need some revision. We can restrict people posting in the classifieds, but the problem here was not posting but rather someone viewed the classified and got the deal. I could block the classifieds to guests, but I think having them open is good as not everyone is a member who wants to buy a Z and the classifieds should get as many views as possible.

Just to show you guys what I'm on about. You can see total-visits.png is showing all visits to the site in the given date range. This is about ~35,000 visits p/month. Visits from people who have signed in, in the last 2 years is ~11,000 visits p/month. So actually less than 1/3 is the total number of people who have signed in. Lots of guests, lurkers, trolls whatever you want to call them . You may think, well that's because lots of people outside of Australia visit the site, but in actual fact the majority of those 35,000 visits come from within Australia. So potential members. I hope this also shows that I collect the data in aggregate / anonymous fashion.

Actually I'm a bit more clever with how I measure members vs guests. When visitors on the forum sign into the site a cookie is dropped on their machine with a 2 year expiry date. (After 2 years it gets deleted automatically). This cookie tells my Web Analytics tool that the visitor is a member. So even if you don't log into the site in later visits those visits are still attributed to a member. Basically you have to have logged in at least once within the last 2 years to be counted as a member. If you delete cookies then obviously you get counted as a guest again. So using this form of measurement I can see a definite 1/3 split between members and guests. 2/3 of visitors to the site are guests. I also want to stress I don't use any cookies to "spy" on users, rather I collect this information in aggregate.

I have no idea what your on about with the first point, but I can't really limit IP address access from guests because that would block important "trolls" such as the Google bot crawler that indexes the site and makes it findable in Google search results . Your second suggestion is something that's been on my mind for a while. Improving the sign up flow, to be honest the forum software like most package forum software doesn't lend itself too well to customisations. Notice how I always blame the software? On a serious note though I should be able to find the language files that are used when people sign up and hopefully change the welcome email to provide a good starting place for new members. This welcome email could provide 5 or so quick points for joining our site like 1. It's a good idea to write an intro post. 2. Don't talk about sheds. 3... etc... . I could limit newbies to the intro section, but I think a welcome email might be the best solution. LOL when I had food poisoning a month or 2 ago I felt dreadful. Damn shell fish, never again. I couldn't even use a computer. Agree, and I imagine it wouldn't change much at all really. On the bright side the catalyst for this discussion turns out the person who bought the item really did need it and has now become more active so there you go. At the end of the day if you want to sell something privately you can always contact people in the club you know and offer it to them first. Many clubs do this to prevent those pesky 16 year olds buying their pride and joy and driving it into a tree lol...

As others have mentioned prices have gone up. When I first bought a 240z at 18 (10 years back now) I bought a semi-rusty but definitely relatively easy to refresh 240z for $3,500. Even then finding a 240z for sale was rare, it was 6 months between them showing up in the Victorian trading post and when I went to inspect it there was already about 6 other blokes going over it. That was 10 years ago! I can only imagine how many are looking now, the good news is we have the "internets" and many classifieds sites like carsales, eBay and of course this club/forum so you can search for a car nationwide as oppose to only in your local state. This helps tremendously but even then finding a "good" 240z and I mean properly restored car is a challenge. Many on the surface are in good nick, but dig a little deeper and you see many short cuts. This is why it's so important to document the resto process carefully and of course not rush it. Parts for these cars is going up and finding things like door cards (for $400+) is not uncommon. Many of the mechanical parts are relatively cheap, but interior trim and body trim is expensive relatively speaking. If I were you and really looking for a project, then perhaps you need to find a way to make room? Rent out storage with a couple of automotive enthusiast mates. There is nothing like paying for storage to motivate you to work on it and get things done, rather than drag them out over a long period of time. At 21 you have something on your side, time! Without the distractions of work and g/f's to get in the way. Mind you a g/f is not a bad distraction. So yes, prices have gone up, but at least if you buy 1 and fix it up you'll loose less money than buying a new car eg: MX-5. The MX-5 is not a bad car mind you, although if you want something close to the old 240z and relatively cheap perhaps consider an 1979 / 1983 Mazda RX-7? I think the original RX-7 is at a low point right now in terms of price and will probably rise in the next 10 years. Just a thought.

Who did this for you? It looks great and 10,000RPM? They got the Typeface spot on, looks stock love it. Modern internals would be awesome too, since my 1 bounces around a bit.

This poll is a result of a recent discussion that started in this thread. http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,9023.0.html Then was split into this thread: http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,9026.0.html

Topic split to here: http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,9026.msg86280.html#msg86280

I understand where you are coming from and I know it's frustrating as someone looking to restore these cars that hard to find parts come up seldom and then disappear. In some ways I understand the frustration and how you may feel "cheated" as a contributor to the site who adds value. However I also see the flip side of the coin, I recently bought an RX-7 and am an active member of the Irish Forum for rotary cars. However there is a far larger community in the UK and much more good parts available, I've been using eBay and the Mazda Rotary Club forum to source bits and pieces, spending way too much money I might add . I have not contributed to this other site yet in the form of technical info or really given an introduction. Rather I've been purchasing parts. From this perspective I don't see a problem, someone wants to sell something, I give them the money they want and buy it no mucking about and no backing out of an agreement, which often happens when selling cars or parts. Others may get upset if I "beat them to the bargain" but as with any good deal, you snooze you loose. A problem I have is that you can only really be an active members in some many forums at a given point in time. I would love to participate in all these forums if time were readily available as I'm sure there is much I could learn and much I could share with others. I suspect many of these others who view the forum may feel the same way or be just busy restoring their car and not ready to invest the time yet to become known in the community but are happy to spectate. As you mentioned 1/3 of visitors to the site are actually registered users. We can't force everyone to join and I strongly believe that the reason the site has grown is due to it's open nature. Totally understand where you are coming from, and it sucks to miss out on the bargains or the good deals. I think my situation with the RX-7 is a bit different to this community because the Z is getting rarer and hard to find. The RX-7 is still relatively easy to obtain parts for, although some parts are getting difficult to source or very expensive for OEM. Remember just because the owner of the Z you sold has not registered yet (He may have) doesn't mean he wont' drop in and say hello soon. He may be busy putting it back together and getting it up to speed. God knows I should spend less time on forums and more time on the car. I tend to agree mate, although I understand their frustration. In many ways it's a case of the early bird gets the worm . Hi Phil, In many ways I couldn't agree more with everything you have mentioned. I would like to point out that Phil is not alone and there have been a few donations from people who have no membership or registration on the site. I think a members only section could be a good solution to this issue. Where members who donate only have access and can post cars / parts for first dibs there and then if the seller wishes they can move it to the normal or open classifieds. The only problem is that there is no automated facility for such a workflow built into the forum. There is also no good way of "billing" forum members regularly, although you can have paid membership through the forum it's actually not very intuitive to find. Although some members have found this facility. It may be worth exploring in more detail and perhaps creating a "how to" page to instruct users how to become re-curring paid members. The other alternative to donations on the site would be more advertising. I've been looking into various options and with more advertising it could be possible to offset the hosting costs of the site with advertising. Of course I don't want to put flashing banners on the site to point of causing seizures. However this would obviously be more intrusive than the current advertising so it's a trade off. Funny thing is when it comes to advertising we make more money off the "trolls" than the regular members who become "banner blind". So we could put the costs of the site onto the non-donating members in many ways. Just something to think about. Then there is the option of paying to not see so much advertising, again it could be a bit of work to implement and something to research. I would like to know how other members on the site feel before taking any action on this. I think a poll might be in order to get a feel for how the community feels about this issue.

I own 2 in the Top 11 so happy with that, although I don't need a list to validate my choices . It really is tough to make a list like this because so many great / fun Japanese cars are missing.

That's 1 way to describe it. Actually the interior (excluding the dash) is not that bad. Kit cars don't really float my boat either, but sometimes the real deal is not obtainable. Like the Daytona Coupe or Ferrari GTO, Shelby Cobra. You just can't get them so your only choice is a copy. Why do you like it if it looks wrong? Seriously though it looks wrong to me too, I've seen better but it looks incomplete at the same time. For me this car is not my cup of tea the proportions just look odd and if you are going to do a GTO go with the classic Ferrari red, not black. In my opinion he's asking too much also.