9/24/05
I had verbally committed to buying the yellow '71 in early September. Now I had to arrange to go get it. The car wasn't drivable, so I needed to trailer it. Problem being, not only do I not have a car trailer, I don't own a vehicle suitable for towing one either.
Since I didn't want to have to rent a truck as well as a trailer, I arranged to borrow my brother-in-law's Ford F350. A bit of overkill, perhaps, but easily available. The truck was being used for the next couple weekends, but we arranged to borrow it for the day on Sept. 24.
I called one of the local U-Haul locations and reserved a car trailer for pickup at 7:00 PM the night before the trip. Got the truck, went to pick up the trailer. Note to self - Some U-Haul locations are less competent than others. First they couldn't find any reservation. Seems the person I talked to early in the week was busy, and so didn't bother to actually reserve anything. No name, no notes, nothing. It turned out not to be a big issue, as they still had a couple of trailers available. Got it hooked up, checked the lights (most of which worked), signed the papers and came home.
Then I decided to look the trailer over before dragging it 500 miles round trip. Three of the four tires were 15 PSI low, the fourth was mostly flat. A couple of the wheel bearings had more play than I would have liked, but not so much that I was worried about them. So I drug the trailer down to a nearby station to air up all the tires.
Since we had to get the trailer back to U-Haul by 7:00 PM, we were on the road before dawn, and had an uneventful trip up. The trailer behaved it self just fine. Met the seller, loaded the spare transmission in the bed of the truck, and found the included rear bumper. The bumper was pretty rusty, probably only a few salvagable parts on it. But the rear overriders are straight and could be re-chromed, and those can be hard to come by. Did the paperwork, and proceeded to start the car to drive it onto the trailer.
The battery was dead. No real surprise, we had to jump it when I looked at it weeks before, and it had only been moved once since then. It cranked over just fine on the jumper battery, but didn't start as easily as I had remembered. Once we got it running, it still felt sluggish, and would make a horrible howling noise when revved. Didn't do that last time. I didn't worry too much about it, I just wanted to get it loaded, and get on the road. Which we did.
So far so good. Trailer is still behaving, the big Ford hardly notices the extra load. Stopped at a rest area a little over an hour into the return trip.
Ate lunch there and got back on the road. About halfway home Deanna suddenly says, "We forgot the carbs!" True story. Forgot to load the carbs and manifold assembly the seller had said would go with the car. Too late to go back, so I was going to have to see if he would pack them up and ship them to me. Grrr.
Stopped for diesel for the Ford. Gulp! Diesel is expensive this weekend (just after hurricanes Katrina and Rita), and the Ford uses a lot of it. Oh, well.
Got back home around 5:30. Made decent time, considering. Had to jumpstart the car again to get it off the trailer. Started easier this time, but still doesn't want to rev, and when it does it makes that horrible loud howl. No matter, the trailer must be returned by 7:00. Got the car off the trailer and backed into the garage. Got the trailer returned with 45 minutes to spare. Yay! It's done!
Took the Ford back to its home, found the transmission and bumper still in the bed. Had to load those in the trunk of our main car, and came home to have dinner. While waiting for Deanna to prepare dinner, I (of course) had to go into the garage to look it over. Deanna pops the door open and snaps the picture below, laughing about, "It hasn't been 10 minutes and you're already working on it."
Now the project can really begin.
Battery, brakes and cleaning
9/25/05
First order of business on the first day - get a battery. The picture of me in the garage that first evening home was me testing the battery it came with. No surprise - it was the wrong size, totally dead, 8 years old and wouldn't accept a charge. So the next morning I went to a local parts house and bought a new battery for it. This made moving the car much easier, no more jump starting. But before I decided to trust it totally, I checked the system for a draw on the new battery. As I suspected, the wiring is hosed up and will discharge the battery in short order. So for now, I will remove the ground cable from the battery whenever I'm not working on it. Later I will track down the draw.
Second order of business was to see if I could improve the brakes. At first I thought the master cylinder was bad, but after trying it a bit more I decided it felt more like air in the lines. I recalled that the previous owner said he had installed a rear wheel bearing a short while back. I know that changing the wheel bearing requires disconnecting the brake line, so I thought that was the first place to look. Found that the rear brakes were fairly recent and mostly good shape. Aftermarket steel drums, and new brake hoses, but the handbrake cable was froze solid and disconnected. When bleeding the right rear brake (the side with the new bearing), I found a sizable air bubble. This improved the brakes quite a bit. Not perfect, but useable. Took it for a spin, but was disappointed.
It seemed to stop OK, but I really couldn't tell for sure because the car was still running much more poorly than I remembered from the first visit, and so I couldn't really give the brakes much of a workout. It was still hard to start, very sluggish revs, no power, and that loud howl when I did get it to rev. Plus it was still missing badly. Time to check a few basics.
By pulling the plug wires one by one, I soon determined that the only cylinder missing was number 6. (Found that the previous owner had installed new NGK plugs and new wires very recently.) Going farther, I found that the problem was fuel, not spark. The fuel problem is not wiring, but does in fact appear to be a clogged or otherwise bad injector. Since I plan to remove the injection and re-install carbs (once the previous owner sends them to me), I tabled this and started looking for the howling noise.
So I'd rev it to make it howl and listen. Then repeat. And repeat again. And again. The howl was so bad, Deanna (who was outside working in the yard) came up and told me to let that go, out of sympathy for the neighbors. I knew she was right, so I reluctantly left this problem for the time being.
Looked at the four speed box to see what I had. It turns out to be a type 'A' four speed that is correct for a 240Z of this vintage, and all gears feel smooth. No telling for sure how good it is until I put it in the car.
Grabbed the shop-vac and started cleaning the car. Pulled the seats, inspected the floors and inside the rockers for rust (about what I had expected), and gave it a quick (very superficial) cleaning and sorting inside. Found the original Service and Warranty manual in the glovebox! The car was originally delivered on January 7, 1971 in Butte Falls, Montana. I may try to contact the original owner just for fun.
Surprise! There is a spare tire, and it is also mounted on a slotted dish mag. Looks to be the same narrow 5.5 inch wide wheel as the ones on the front of the car. Says it is a Western Wheel. The rears are a different manufacturer and offset, so I may need to find a fourth narrow one to make a matching set. No jack or tools, though, even though the little plastic tool covers behind the seats are intact!
Put the seats back in, and the rest of the interior back together, and gave it up for the weekend. Spent the rest of the evening looking at catalogs and searching eBay...
