In February 2014 I removed the calipers from the car. In January 2020 I bolted them up to the car… just as well I’m not getting paid to do this for a living! Before starting this project I would have looked at well used parts and considered them scrap metal. I did in fact scrap a perfectly good exhaust manifold becase it had a bit of surface rust on it… I threw it out! What possessed me at the time I do not know. That exhaust manifold, along with many parts like the brake calipers here, have been eye-opening lessons …
Summer 2020
There are some parts that you just know are abundant but you struggle to find anyway. The transmission crossmember for an early gearbox had eluded me for months and months as I persisted in limiting my search to Australia only. I relented and after posting on Instagram one was on its way from the US in less than a day. In early December I decided to free up some floor space and take the engine in to Stewart Wilkins Motorsport. He has already reconditioned my differential and transmission and I trust his many years of working on these cars will …
Brake Warning Switch
The brake warning switch from the Datsun 240Z is a simple design. It detects a difference in hydraulic pressure between the front and rear brake system and alerts the driver via a warning light on the speedometer gauge. The unit receives the front and rear brake lines from the brake master cylinder. It splits the front between left and right while the rear is sent via one line and is split between left and right at the rear proportioning valve. When a loss of hydraulic pressure is detected at any point beyond the unit’s exit ports of around 13 to …
Autumn 2019
This season I was detirmined to get the car finally back on its wheels. I always feel like I’m working slowly – and I am – but the results are worth it and I can’t see anything changing. This will take me a long time to complete but I am enjoying every hour in the garage. A large piece of the puzzle was the new shocks from Koni made availavble by MSA. The timing was perfect and I took advatage of the pre-order as soon as I could. The fit and finish is fantastic but obviously it’ll be a while …
Rear Drum Brakes
When I took on this project in 2014 I pictured myself assembling factory new parts in a lab like environment and everything worked just as it did in 1970. Reality rarely meets fantasy; it takes time and effort to achieve fantasies. Some of the brake hardware has been purchased over 2 years ago and the rest has just sat around waiting for its restoration. The biggest time waster is finding myself short of a nut or something trivial that needs to be plated which has a month turnaround. Even simple things like painting parts properly has to be executed with …