Zeddophile

The other alternative is to simply to loosen the adjusting locknut on the distributor, and rotate the body of it anticlockwise until the tip of the rotor lines up with the lead for number 1 in the distributor cap. Assuming you don't have the distributor 180 degrees out, it should start then, and you just need to get the timing light on it and set the timing at idle to spec. Going by the photos, you are currently set to somewhere around 40-50 degrees advance, which is why it won't start - the spark plug is going off while the piston is still on its way up on the compression stroke, and is halting the engines momentum, meaning it can't actually spin fast enough to start. Yes, I know it won't be set up exactly as factory (in terms of where everything lines up to), BUT you know how its set, and it will work fine, as the only thing that really matters is that the tip of the rotor button is hitting number 1 on the dizzy cap at just before TDC when number 1 cylinder is on its compression stroke. Also, its a lot quicker and easier than resetting your drive gear! As a side note, if you've been cranking it over a lot to try and start it, its probably worth pulling the plugs out and cleaning them before attempting to start it after making your adjustments - they may well be fouled with fuel.

That bonnets got more bog than a mangrove swamp....

Very unlikely to be mechanical.... We actually have a car living at work which does exactly this. Sometimes you jump in, turn the key, and the motor turns over one revolution, then stops. If you keep the key in the crank position, after sometimes 5 seconds it will suddenly start cranking at full speed. Other times you jump in, and it spins over real fast from the get go. Somewhere in the electrical system there is a gremlin pissing himself laughing. My theory is that the contacts in the starter motor solenoid don't quite make a good connection at times, then get a little heat or something into them and shift enough to work properly.

Polyurethane will take much more of a beating than fibreglass - like scraping on speed humps, crappy driveways etc... My standard poly front spoiler on my alfa has gotten hooked on the bank on the side of a gravel road with a small amount of speed, and all it did was pull the screws through - didn't stuff the holes or anything, just neatly popped them through. Fibreglass one would likely have exploded. Kangaroos at 80km/h tend to break them though..... (Wasn't me, was before I got the car)

These will be the best bet, if they don't know about nutserts ask for rivnuts (same thing) Not sure about self compressing ones, the special tool is very similar to a pop rivet gun, except that you screw the rivnut onto the end of it, the use it just like a pop rivet, then unscrew the tool out of the now secure rivnut. You can also put them in with a bolt, 2 nuts and a piece of scrap strap steel, but I'd have to experiment to remember the sequence.

You remove the flywheel from the car, and give it to the balancers along with your clutch pressure plate and friction plate. They will then bolt it together, and balance, then will usually mark both the pressure plate and flywheel (maybe with a dot from a centre punch). You then make sure it is marked (or mark it yourself), unbolt it, put the flywheel back on the car, and then put the clutch plates on, making sure it goes onto the flywheel the same way it came off. Due to the dowels on the flywheel, the pressure plate can only go on in one of three positions, one of which your two marks will line up, the other 2 it won't. *EDIT* 500 posts? I've been around here too long....

If you find someone with a lathe, they'll be able to take the centres out to whatever size you need - if you find the right person, shouldn't cost more than a sixpack or two.....

One of my mates has been pulled over in a 40,000km old Peugot 206 GTI (2004 model) with no mods other than an exhaust, and been told that: - The back end of his car was too low, because there is less clearance between the tyre and the wheelarch than at the front (obviously because as most cars do, the rear wheelarchs aren't cut as high as the front.) - He needed new brake pads (the officer ascertained this by putting his foot on the brake pedal ) - The gear lever had to be moved too far to select gears (this car has a shorter shift than most other front wheel drives, and compared to any older car its far far shorter!) - The STANDARD FITMENT front spoiler lights were illegal, and he had to take them out. And a couple of other stupid things like this that I can't remember at the moment. This mate is, like me, a mechanic by trade. He thought this cop was joking when he made his first comment (which I think he said was the wheelarch one), then realised as this farce went on that it wasn't a joke. He said by the time he got the sh!ts up, asked the cop to explain how he could inspect the brake pads for wear by pushing the brake pedal inside the car, and how he could say the brakes were worn when the pedal felt exactly the same in the cop car, then drove away (while the cop was trying to work out how to answer that), he'd been held up for over an hour. And drove away with no defect of any sort. He and I finally know why some people think the strangest things are required for a roadworthy though - they've been pulled over by these clueless cops on a power trip, who achieve nothing but getting a bad name for all the good cops out there. Although, the question has to be asked - do all the stupid and arrogant ones get the highway patrol duties, while the smart ones work on criminal investigation? It would explain why there are so many stories about pain in the ass cops giving out defect notices....

You can get these globes from Bright Light Auto Parts http://www.brightlightautoparts.com/ - the pictured one is 54 LEDs, I have 36 LED white ones in the rear indicators of my Alfa, and they are BRIGHT. Especially compared to the dull point of light which was only just visible in the centre of the lens, now when the indicators are on the whole lens lights up right to the edges of the reflector. I believe stop/tail replacements are also available. If you are going to use them as indicators, you need to change your flasher can - in the Alfa I could pull it apart, and change the capacitor inside to slow the flash rate down. Not sure what would be required in a zed - although if zeds use 3 pin flasher cans, I have one sitting on my desk for use with LED indicators, didn't fit an Alfa fusebox (typical!)

Both soft springs and soft swaybars will contribute to body roll. Springs are usually rated in pounds per inch, which is to do with how much force needs to be applied to them to compress them. As you corner, the body weight is leaning hard on the outer springs, exerting a given force (combination of vehicle weight, g-force and swaybars, among other factors). This force will compress the spring a certain amount. If you then put heavier springs in, but were able to keep the other factors the same, the amount the spring is compressed will be reduced. I have the thought off the top of my head that a swaybar has more effect on the inside wheel than on the outside wheel - as in, it tries to keep the car level left to right. Its not really strong enough to have much of an effect on how much the cars weight is compressing the outer spring, but it can have a big effect on the inner (unloaded) wheel which is being pushed down by the spring alone. My thought here is that in simple terms (with relation to bodyroll): Stiffer springs stop the outer side of the body compressing down, while stiffer swaybars stop the inner side of the body lifting up. Something I haven't really thought about in detail before, would appreciate anyone elses point of view on this. 2 Alfa club ones I know of in the near (and not so near!) future: http://www.alfaclubvic.org.au/component/option,com_jcalpro/Itemid,67/extmode,view/extid,165/ http://www.alfaclubvic.org.au/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,68/topic,1696.0/

I think the time away from your Zed is frying your brain! A typical fast idle device will have one hose going into the manifold somewhere on the engine side of the throttle butterfly, and one on the air filter side of the throttle butterfly. Its purpose is to allow air to bypass the butterfly, giving an increase in idle speed. If you found it in the A/C section of the manual, it is likely designed to compensate for the extra load when the air con compressor kicks in. In other cars (for example Rover V8s with L-Jetronic on them) it increases idle speed when the car is cold, and gradually reduces the air bypassing as it warms up (In this case, it is fed with ignition power on one side, earthed on the other, and a bimetallic strip inside the unit heats up over time to close it off.) As asked before, is it carby or efi? I don't think Mq patrols had efi, so it will most likely be only for the air con, and will either be fully open (when powered via the A/C clutch), or fully closed (when the compressor cuts out).

No and den! Thats IT!

if its always the exact same 15km amount out at all speeds (ie. reads 25 when doing 40 and 100 when doing 115), changing the drive cog isn't going to fix it. If you say for example you have a rolling diameter of 600mm in your tyre, doing 3000 rpm with a 3.9 diff with a 3.1 gear ratio (random numbers I picked to illustrate the point, but should be close to the ballpark!), you're doing 28km/h. Change the diff to a 3.54, and you're now doing 30.7km/h. Keep the numbers the same except for the gear ratio, make it .8 for a rough 5th gear. With the 3.9 diff, you get 108 km/h, with the 3.54 you get 119. The point is, that at lower speeds, the inaccuracy isn't as noticeable as at higher speeds, because it is a percentage of your actual speed thats not being shown. If you had a 4.1 diff before, a 15km/h difference AT 100KM/H would be feasible, but it would be about 7km at 50km/h. Swapping the cog may get it to read right SOMEWHERE, but it will still be out everywhere else. Maybe if you only drive on the highway, that could be a good fix, and just get it reading correctly at that speed, but otherwise, you need to come up with another solution. My Alfa speedo reads 5km/h low across the board. I just drive 5km/h faster, but if I wasn't so lazy, I would pull the speedo out, and lift the needle off the pin coming out of the mechanism, and move it up 5 km. I did it with my tacho to get it reading about right, but you can actually pull Alfa gauges apart, I can't remember whether you can remove the front off a Zed speedo to get at the needle or not. However, I believe you probably have two problems - one being the drive gear is wrong (not by a heap, maybe its a 3.7 drivegear), and also that the needle isn't quite in the right spot. Check with your GPS again and see if its always exactly 15km out, or whether maybe at 100km/h its out by 17, and at 40 its out by 13? The other thing is, as 260 coupe says: This is an excellent point which we all completely missed - the nissan colour codes you've been given above are likely to be completely irrelevant in this case, and you will have to see what diff ratios the supras had to see whether any other speedo drive options are available! Unless the nissan item has been retrofitted......

Is it 15km out at all speeds, or 15km out at 100km/h (or some other set speed)? If its the latter, and you didn't change the speedo drive gear in the gearbox when you changed the diff, most likely you just need to fit the correct speedo drive cog for the 3.54 diff. If its the former, have a look and see if you can move the needle inside the speedo around on its pin so that it reads correctly. This may result in it reading 15km/h when standing still, but it will be right when you're moving! I did this trick on my Alfas' tacho.

Thanks guys! Still reworking it a bit more, need to check something with Stevo, and every time I read it again I think of some more to add. Hopefully someone will convert a 240 soon, and answer a few of the things I'm not sure about! *EDIT* Hmmm, just found an absolute gold photo of the pedal box in my archives!

Photo dump - Thanks StevoGJ.

Also, the Alfa club is running another sprint down there in December (14th from memory).... You won't need a log book for that.

Firstly, have you read this: Secondly, if you've read that, you should realise you should only need the pedals, and not the pedal box itself - especially since your car is the same body style as mine was (later car). If you stick your head up under the dash, and look at the pedal box you should see a spot where you could hang another pedal next to the brake pedal. Its possible that Nissan had one or two different ones, but I got a manual pedal box with my auto car when I bought it, and compared the two - they were identical, so I just swapped the pedals themselves - much easier (Or cheaper if you are paying someone to do it) Thirdly, I bought my 260 clutch master cylinder from the Z shop in Melbourne for about $60 when I did mine 2 or 3 years ago, and postage would be bugger all. I also suspect they are available from Nissan still.... Further to that.... Do it yourself! So much more fun, and it really is a bolt in conversion when you have the right bits.

I had that thought - i struggled to give mine away from memory! And somebody hurry up and buy this one so I don't.

This depends on the type of fan used - some suck, and some blow (through the radiator). If you use one in the wrong place it won't work much at all, for obvious reasons.

Well, the kanji with the 3 vertical lines before the number 58 is 'yama' or mountain.... Not sure if thats the pronunciation which would be used here though - I'll have a look around... *EDIT* They are from Toyama prefecture. The number 5 in 58 means they came off a car of less than 2 litre capacity, and the '8' part of it could give an indication of time of issue to someone with more idea than me. Up till 1967, they just had a 5 by itself, but when they ran out of number combinations to use in the main plate body (where yours says 39-46), they added a 1 after the 5, and started again. When they ran out, they started using 52, and so on. In 1998 they started to use 3 digit codes (ie. 500). The fact that they are white with green lettering means they are from a private vehicle of more than 660cc engine capacity. The character before the main plate number is to give more combinations of numbers - there are a set number of characters which can be used with the different plate colours (white, green, yellow). Information on other Japanese plates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_license_plates Its quite a complex yet interesting system.

The offending article: Having seen that, I want to get my rangie out at Sandown now! Might have a bit too much bodyroll with the amount of lift it has though

Never came across that before - a VERY special Rover block it would need to be to allow the bores to go that far without coolant streaming past the liners!

That would be nice, but why not a 5.2? Watch the body lift from the torque when he starts a burnout about halfway through.

I would guess (since you haven't given a year) its a late 260, which means it is the same bodyshell as the US delivered 280z, but with our 2.6 fitted, and they've fitted badges + stickers due to that. Or maybe they just liked the US look! Either way, interesting looking car, and a good buy from the sounds of it.