8/16/09
Another bunch of semi-random updates.
Finally broke down and actually joined a club, rather than repeatedly crashing their parties. I am now officially a member of NorthWest Z. I've been hanging out with several of their members pretty much since I started with the yellow Z, so it was time to go ahead and take the plunge.
Drove back up to the Portland area earlier this month, for the Northwest Datsun Owners' Association (NWDOA) annual show at Blue Lake Park. As normal, I visited with friends and looked at other cars. Great weather, fantastic attendance. Had to be at least 100 Datsuns there, probably more. Car got 29.8 MPG for the round trip at freeway speeds, not bad for a 38 year old sports/GT. I wonder how well it could do if I'd bother to swap in a 5 speed?
Since I had a 2 hour drive to get home, I left before the awards were presented, but have been told that I won "Best 240Z" again this year, same as last year. They may decide to not let me come back!
In another long overdue move, I replaced the ugly tailpipe and chrome tip that has been on the car since I bought it. I guess the only reason I waited this long was that I couldn't decide what I really want back there. But while looking for options at a local muffler shop, I found a Monza rear muffler replacement designed specifically for 240Zs.
This Monza unit hasn't been in production for many years. This example shows signs of sitting on a shelf for a long time, but is quite serviceable, especially at the discounted price I paid.
The improvement in looks (after cleaning and painting) over the old tip is considerable, and I like how the twin glass-packed tips smooth the exhaust note even more than before. And it fits the car beautifully. Even so, I'm not yet convinced it's a keeper, as I'm uncertain about the looks of the twin vertical tips. That look is classic '70s for a 240Z, pretty much every aftermarket exhaust for these cars had that back then. But I'm still not certain. Might it not look even better with just the upper tip? The jury is still out.
And today I finally pinned down a lingering ignition issue. Recently, I've found that the car wouldn't pull to high RPM under a load. I'd determined that if I advanced the timing considerably (about 17° BTDC) that the problem was reduced, but that the car would ping noticeably even on the best gas I can find these days. If I ran the timing closer to stock (5° BTDC) it doesn't ping, but the point where it stopped pulling was at a much lower RPM.
Today I started by reverting the entire ignition system back to stock—points, condenser, old coil and all. And in that configuration it ran perfectly. So I started replacing parts one at a time to find the part with the issue. And I determined that the problem is with the recent Pertronix Flamethrower coil. That coil, even with everything else stock, causes the engine to fall off and stop pulling under a load. So for now, I have the Pertronix electronic trigger in the distributor instead of the points, but am still using the original 38 year old coil. And the car seems quite happy that way.
