240z.drago.com.au - Adventures of rebuilding a 1973 Datsun 240Z

Today, I wanted to focus on getting the car safe for driving. Given the work that we did on the tailgate last week resulted in the paint cracking, I don’t want to complete the interior until the paint is repaired. There is not much left on the car to do to make it safe, only the wiper washers, lining up the headlights and a front wheel alignment.

Before we got onto that though, I wanted to fix up the door locks. I could lock the passenger side, but not unlock it and I could unlock the driver side, but not lock it. A bit of a pain to lock up when out on the streets. Luckily, all that was needed was a slight adjustment on the linkages and a slight bend and the drivers side door was operating as expected. The passenger side was a little more tricky. The tumbler mechanism that moves the linkage had rounded out over time (suspect that it was a driver door tumbler as I cannot believe that the passenger tumbler would see that much action). A previous owner had fixed the problem by adding on an extra link to the tumbler. When I put the door together, I did not put it back together correctly and hence the malfunctioning tumbler. When I slipped the extra linkage onto the tumbler, and again a slight bend of the linkage, it started to work again.

We then moved onto getting the wiper washers installed and connected to the washer bottle. This was a pretty straight forward job and with a quick clean of the nozzles and connecting new pipes (the old ones were quite brittle) all was done. We connected a battery to the car to give it a quick test and all was well.

But then, the set back. As Dad was closing the inspection panel from filling up the washer tank, I noticed that the rear reservoir on the brake master cylinder was at MIN. When we parked the car a few months ago, it was at MAX. We hadn’t seen any leaks, but took a closer inspection of each wheel. The rear driver side wheel had brake fluid on it. We jacked up the car, took off the wheel and got the drum off. The shoes were covered in brake fluid as was the slave cylinder. We took it off the car and Dad will take it back to BGT to get them to fix it up. Not what I wanted to see, but at least we found the problem in the garage and not on a corner of some mountain!

Yesterday, Dad found a place that had very small rivets that we could use to secure the metal strip onto the trim that sealed the door windows. First thing up today was to get these seals together and into place. The small rivets worked a treat and the trims fit into place nicely. The windows are quite stiff though, may need to look into why one day.

The next item on the agenda was trying to get the tailgate to shut properly. As hard as we tried, we could only get it most of the way down. And once I put in all of the dovetails and guides, up it popped again. I think I’ll just have to give it the paper test and hope that it is sealing well enough to stop the fumes from getting back into the cabin.

Well, after a long stint of being busy with things other than the car, today we finally got to do some work on her. First thing that we did was to get out all the boxes that we had packed for the move and to evaluate where we were up to.

The main things that I want to do is to get her to a point that I can drive her more frequently. There are two standout things that stop me from doing that: The door windows are not sealed properly as the rubber seal on the chrome trim has not been put in place and the seat belts are the old school fixed length ones.

First up, we had already glued the new rubber seals on the chrome trim, but we need to work out a way to re-secure the metal strip to help keep things together. As you would expect, the metal strip was very rusty, so the first thing to do was to clean it up a bit and put some paint onto it. Once the strip was painted, this task was put on hold (16hrs for the paint to dry).

Before we jumped onto getting the new retractable seat belts in, we cleaned up the chrome trim that fits onto the rain channel. Once we had given it a quick going over with the dry steel wool, we snapped it back into place.

We moved onto the seat belts and gave them a quick try using the anchor points that are standard in the car. They didn’t work as the reel would have to go in on an angle. The type of reel requires that it be positioned straight otherwise the locking mechanism would permanently engage. Based on that, we moved to positioning the reel in the same locations as others before me have, on the wheel arch. We made a couple of reinforcing plates and welded the nuts on them. The belts went in quite easily and a quick test run and they fit perfectly. When on, the belts go over the shoulder and across the lap as the installation guide stipulated. Thanks Hemco!

Today, I took the Z down to Darren’s Muffler & Exhaust Centre to get the exhaust system installed. Dad had visited Darren the day before and got a converter made up so we could put in the old exhaust system just to get her down there without drawing too much attention to us.

But, before I took her down, I wanted to get the old seat belts back in; I just didn’t feel comfortable driving her with no seat belts. This only took a few minutes and I wanted to crank her over. And lucky I tried early. The battery was dead flat. Now, we were very puzzled at this as we had charged the battery before starting her the other day. I pulled the batter out of my daily driver and put it into the Z. I turned the key again and this time she cranked. And cranked. And cranked. And nothing. Not even a sputter. I played with the choke, then I put the accelerator to the floor and finally something. And was it rough. A few days ago, the engine hadn’t been started for over three years, and it started a lot easier than it did today. We finally got her idling okay, once she got a little warm.

I drove her out of the garage and followed Dad to the shop. She drove well all of the way and didn’t give me any troubles. We pulled into the shop and put her onto the hoist. Darren took one look at her and said “We’ll make it 2¼” all the way, put a small hotdog and a sports muffler. Then we’ll finish her off with a simple chrome tip”. Exactly what I was going to ask him to do.

A couple of hours later, I went to pick up the car. I started her up and a smile from ear to ear crept onto my face. Darren built the exhaust to produce the exact note that I wanted to hear. She sounded great. I gave the accelerator a tap and, man, beautiful. This time, I let Dad follow me, and not on the back roads. I wanted to take her onto the freeway to stretch her legs a little. I swept round the round-about nice and slow in second gear and once around, I planted the pedal. I think she had been waiting a long time for that, as she took her cue and tore out of the curve and got up to speed in no time. And the note! Nice and mild up to about 3,500 to 4,000 RPM and then she resonated beautifully. Music to my ears.

Once back, we started to look into a couple of the electrical problems. The first was why the battery was dead flat and the second was why the alternator was not charging the battery. We found that the battery had a 0.5 amp drain on it when the car was off. We found the circuit causing the problem, but not the problem itself. With the fuse pulled, the battery would not drain until we can fix the actual problem. The reason that the battery wasn’t being charged was a simple one. A fuseable link had come undone. Plugged it back in and hey presto, the battery is charging again.

This will be the last work on the girl for a while. Mum and Dad are moving house soon and everything has been packed. But it is great that she’s back on the road, even if the interior is not complete yet.

It’s been a long time between posts, and a lot of work has been done to the girl to get her ready for today. What is so special about today I hear you ask? Today was the day that after nearly 3 and a bit years, the tank was filled with petrol. the battery connected, and the key was turned.

After much cranking, petrol started to fill the petrol filter and finally made its way to the carbies. It was not long after this that she started to splutter into life again. Which was the point that I noticed that the petrol pump was leaking. We stopped the car, tightened the loose screws on the petrol pump and turned the key again. Half a flick and she came to life again. A couple of taps on the accelerator pedal and she was humming as if she had not been idle at all.

After a few more final touches were made to the car (plates and rego sticker), we put in the drivers seat and DROVE her out of the garage. A quick test of the brakes and everything was good to go. At first, just a gentle stroll down the road and back. Felt good. Next time out, a little more go, but still, only up and down the street. With the thumbs up from Dad, I took her around the block. She climbed up the hills with ease and glided back down them. But I think that I need to do a little more adjusting to the brakes (the auto-adjusters haven’t taken up all the slack yet).

The car is booked in to get the proper exhaust system installed on Friday morning. So she is nearly ready for a decent run again. It might take a little bit of time to get used to driving a 30 plus year old car. I haven’t driven one in about 3 years, 2 months and 13 days.