nizm0zed

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270031/Businessman-spent-1m-restoring-Spitfire-scrapyard-10-years-ago-sees-fly-again.html Are you going to spend $1M on this restoration too?

My May/75 has the early latches. Surely somewhere (probably nowhere we can access it) is a definitive cross over date/chassis no. for genuine ADM vehicles? But then as mentioned previously that can go out the window depending on repairs over the years...

That seems pretty dumb on his part, he has now taken a design piece that would have cost a substantial amount of time and materials and limited his potential sale market massively...

the numbers i pulled out were just examples. but, if you want to open up your rim choice, convert to 5 stud. You'll find a LOT of options from skylines,supras,ect anything 5x114.3 that will fill out your flares nicely. Its not a 'cheap' process, but you only really need to do it once. Or use 4 to 5 stud bolt on spacers like i did (dodgy)

Im sure the 70's was quite a haze for a lot of people

I dont mean to sound blunt or rude, so please dont take it that way, but, If you cant afford $2k on wheels, why are you restoring/modding an old car? As Agno said do it once and do it right, i too have cut corners before and its come back to bite me in the ass, sometimes really hard. You really are better off working out your expense and sticking to it. By that i mean, say you decide "Yep, definitely want flares and 10" Wats under it" You cost it up, $500 flares, $2k rims, $1k rubber ect ect, add 20% because of unexpected costs and you come out at $4200 From that point you have a goal to work towards, ask the boss man for more shifts, get a weekend/evening job stacking shelves ect. Keep a pic of your car photoshopped how you want it to look in your wallet or on your phone so you have your 'motivation' close at hand, and before you know it, you'll have the cash you need to get what you want. Anything left over from your 20% unexpected costs fund then gets put in as the start of saving for the next bit, eg paint, interior, hectic turbo ect. If i could suggest though, do it in this order. Get it running and registered, Make it look good, Make it stop, Make it handle, Make it go.

the gauges are 4" for the tach and speedo and 2 5/8th for the centre gauges

for the wiring, its obviously a little different on my car, the speedo is wired up to the speed sender on the gearbox, the tach is wired up to the tach output from the ECU. Considering those wires were already in place for the ECU, i simply tapped both of them from the ECU wiring. The oil pressure sensor screwed straight into the factory spot on the RB block, but the coolant temp required a M12x1.25 to 1/8npt adapter. I havent wired up or calibrated the fuel level sensor, but it just needs to be connected to the original sender in the tank. It can calibrate to its settings.

update time!!!! Its been a while, i have had plenty of other stuff to occupy me. In my few free moments i have slowly worked on installing my Speedhut gauges. So, pictures! First, i removed the stock gauges and removed the innards. I cut off the backs of the metal back shell, making sure i kept the lower mounting tab intact. I left about 3-4cm of the shell, enough for the plastic front piece to mount back onto. Once that was done and all cleaned up, i pushed the gauge bezel into the shell. At first was trying really hard to make sure i pushed them in so they would be straight and level, But then i realised it only needs to be close because you can twist the gauge within the bezel to level it out. The shell for the tach and the speedo are different, the speedo wouldnt push in as far because of the small screw holes stopping it from mounting deeper, whereas once you pop the white screw mount plugs out of the tach it'll push further in. As i discovered later, this doesn't make any difference to the installation. For the front of the gauge, i removed the plastic lense. The gauges have their own lenses, and buttons on the front that i wanted to be able to access. The inner plasic piece comes out, then the lense is removed, then the inner piece is put back in. I glued the inner piece back in, chamfered the edge off it, then bogged over it to smooth it all out and remove the gap where the lense used to sit. After that, i painted it all, then reassembled the metal shell into it. It was a pretty tight fit, so i didnt put the screws back in it. For the centre gauges, i hot glued the bezel to the front plastic part. Obviously i unscrewed the bezel from the gauge, so as not to damage anything. I learned the hard way with one of them that you really need to make sure its positioned correctly, because when i went to screw the gauge back together, once tight the gauge was upside down. oops. Good thing hot glue is easy to remove. The original back metal shell is cut open in order to provide access for the wiring, then mounts back onto the plastic front as per stock. Once done, i mounted the gauges back in the dash, using all the standard mounts. The wiring is pretty easy, with the power and lighting daisy chained together. For the dimmer, i cut the shaft off the old dimmer, then mounted the new dimmer in its place and connected the old shaft to it with a bit of rubber hose. This allows it to keep the stock dimmer knob in the stock location. Sorry, no pics of that, i forgot...

exactly why i am in the process of fitting a BF falcon dashboard, HSV guard flutes, twin 15" subs, pantera hatch with TV moulded into the underside, 22" chrome spinners and 3.8L buick v6 engine conversion with 460LE shift kitted auto box. Personally i think the underbody neons and full length body graphics will really set it off. Its going to be epic!!!

i have a crappy little 121 to drive around as a daily when im not on the bike (i stay on the bike as much as possible) Getting out of that and into our FG falcon was worlds apart, but didnt really bother me too much. I can see exactly why my wife complains about having to drive the mazda because she is used to the power, comfort, handling, quiet ride ect ect. I think you'll find its the same case with most people's partners complaining about having to drive the 'old car'

Carbies suck.... see what i did there?

Do you like the smell of raw petrol? Do you know the difference between an open end spanner, crescent wrench, phillips head screwdriver, torque wrench and feeler gauges? Is your significant other (or parents if your young) accepting of the expense of large, sometimes excessively large lumps of cash on an object that often seems to spend more time in pieces than actually running? Can you accept a cool look and sound even if the price is sore arms, ribs, kidneys, possible general loss of hearing and general body odour of unburned fuel? If you can answer yes to those questions, then a Zed is a perfect first car!!!

Heavier due to a stiffer chassis, so not really any loss there. Uglier interior? the only major difference is the dash and its fairly minor, but i can see your point there. As for worth less, yep, you pick them up cheaper because the 2+2 tends to bring all the 260z's down in overall average price, however the 260z coupe is actually smaller delivered numbers than the 240z, so it 'should' be worth more due to rarity. personally i am of the opinion that if you can get yourself in the position to get a coupe over a 2+2 then you should buy it! However, 'any' zed is better than no zed hands down 8)

I have a box full of Delco stuff, ECU's, throttle bodies, woring loom and plugs ect ect, and a Kalmaker SP3 fully programmable Delco ECU. If your interested i'll get some pics over the weekend and send them to you?

your Irish tyres are a bit wobbly since leaving the motherland. Put some Guinness in them and they will run perfectly. May need to top it up regularly though re, swapping the wheels. If the vibration seems to be felt more through the steering wheel, its usually a sign of the fronts being the culprit, If it feels as if it comes through the seat or frame of the car, its usually the rears. Swapping them front for back helps to narrow down the end you look at.

You wont be tuning carbies every second weekend, unless your the type that likes to fiddle with them and you mess the tune up... Get the carbs tuned by a pro that knows what they are doing and it'll be a once a year thing to keep them in optimal tune, you could even leave it a couple of years if you were real lazy and it wouldn't affect much. So, back to EFI. If you want ITB, you are going to have difficulty in getting a clean vac signal for a MAP sensor. (its not impossible) This means you'll probably need to use an ECU that has Throttle Position Sensor mapping, or uses a Mass Air Flow sensor. (or both ect) A MAF sensor setup will then require an airbox plenum, pipework and the MAF between the plenum and air filter. That will probably take away from the ITB trumpet look you are going for? TPS load sensing ECU's arent as precise as MAP load sensing ECU's as the computer is measuring the engine load from the throttle percentage opening, rather that from the TPS and the MAP sensor. The map sensor gives the ECU a negative and positive, if applicable, pressure reading from the manifold, allowing the ECU to calculate the accurate load of the engine, rather than only what your right foot is feeding it via the throttle. On to ignition triggering. The 280ZX system has two types of trigger. There is the inductive type, looks like a 6 sided star on the dizzy shaft that goes past a sensor. Its a basic yet reliable trigger, It'll send a pulse to the ECU for each cylinder, with no home no.1 signal. Its an electronic version of the old points style dizzy. If the ECU doesnt know where no.1 cylinder is in the cycle it cant fire individual coils or injectors. It fires them all for each pulse. For injectors this is fine, bit heavier on fuel but still works. For the spark, it means you run a single coil and dizzy cap to 'select' the right cylinder. The other type of trigger is an optical trigger. In the standard 280zx its basically the same as the aforementioned inductive type, it has a chopper disc inside that has a lot of slots on the outside to indicate the degrees the crank is at, and six slots on the inner ring, giving a pulse as each cylinder comes up. Its worth noting that the RB30 dizzy is exactly the same setup, 6 uniform slots around the inner ring, with the spark distributed through the cap. There is also the 280ZX turbo style optical dizzy, its physically bigger but works the same as above, with 6 uniform slots around the inner ring. The bonus with that one is the Z31 chopper disc will fit in it, this disc has one of the inner slots bigger than the others, giving 1 big pulse and 5 uniform smaller pulses. The ECU can use the bigger pulse as a home no.1 signal, allowing control over individual coils and more refined multipoint injection. If you do go for the bigger 280ZX turbo optical dizzy, you need the splined shaft that drives it, keep that in mind when your looking for one. My advice? Sure, have a crack at it, you'll learn a lot going in head first, but it wont be cheap and you'll probably pull out most of your hair, trust me on this, been there, done that. If you can find someone selling a complete running setup, buy that, you'll save yourself so much pain. Ideally, you would be best just coughing up the several thousand $$$ and paying a performance workshop to do all of it for you, but where is the fun and learning in that? If you have any questions hit me up, im happy help out and share my knowledge.

hehehe, sounds like my working career in a nutshell

you need to look at your compliance plate. the ADR's on there is the basis of what you car must comply to. Notably, in the case of the year model and emissions rulings, You are looking for ADR 27, 27a or 27b. find out which one is on your plate and go from there. fyi, ADR 27b (the beginning of the real emissions clampdown) began in Feb 76

the RB26 ITB's dont have a provision for the injector mount, you'd need to get that added to the manifold. Not that it would be hard, seeing as the manifold would have to be built from scratch... Another option would be the throttles from a Suzuki Hayabusa (99 model was best i think?) I have seen them in a custom application before, the person who did it said that once they were pulled apart, they stacked together like lego. Obviously you would need to consider the injectors, whether they would flow for your application, or if they are able to be sized up? would be pretty much the same as the Toyota ITB's though, so cost would dictate which path you take. (If you wanted to keep it carbie you could acheive the same with carbie motorbike throttles, but why bother) the bonus with using a DCOE style throttle body is you can use an off the shelf manifold and it looks sort of stock ish.

I have a longnose R160 4:11 VLSD out of a subie tucked away. Would that interest you?

there are other options to welding though. Paper mache, chicken wire and bog would be one. Gaff tape could work too? Or, for the ultimate wtf customisation, stick the US bumpers on there. (you did ask for options )

I dont know the story so im not taking sides, but i ran into Dave (Dingo) the other day. He was telling me that the workshop he was in was shut down by the council because the owner refused to make repairs to prevent sewerage from running down the driveway, the council had been on the owner for a while about it, then eventually had enough and shut it all down.

let me check in the garage, pretty sure i still have mine somewhere (I dont need it anymore)

once you lip the guards it should stop the rubbing, if you use a professional guard rolling service you may even get away without damaging the paint. as for the wheels, do you know the stud pattern? It is most likely 5x114.5 (seems to be common for the 5 stud conversion) It might be easier to find some cheap wheels/tyres from a nissan/falcon/toyota ect and put them on for the trip home. You can always flip them for some coin later when you get your wheels you want.