A stash of gold
When I bought this last S30, I must admit, I thought that the building of the car would be something surreal. I guess having it in the yard makes it that much easier to be accustom to the presence of it. Sometimes I find myself only really appreciating it when I drive up home and say, "shit I really need to finish that".
I notice that this does not really occur with the CB500, when I look at that, I think, "I want to finish that, I also want to live". I guess there is something about driving my current car, knowing that at any moment the transmission can explode into 4000 piece, that makes me want to finish the Z.
With the Z there has been an interesting issue that came to be, the lack of presence from the engine harness. At first to mitigate this I planned on just making the proper connections that I needed from engine into the OEM harness under the dash. The issue with this is that I really want to keep the harness OEM as possible. What's not currently possible is to buy another one, not logistically, I'm sure I can find one, it's just that affording one is a whole other topic that I'm sure my accountant can tell you about.
So I do what I do best, I start searching online for the pin adapters for the OEM harness. (Can't find out what they are) I'm sure however if I walked into an alternator shop, they could find it for me, now that I think about it.) I digress, I ended up finding some guy on Orange County Craiglist that had a 260z with a V-8 in it for sale, email the dude asking if he had the OEM harness, which was then shipped to me with a bunch of other harness parts I thought I needed. (i dont, yay spares)
Thats been slowly getting repaired, after everything was mapped out on the floor of the garage. The previous owner just messed up the flashers and the headlights (still need to fix them to get it 100%) Something else that they did was they snipped off the OEM connectors that go to the accessory, these connectors are impossible to find in the USA, I tried www.vintageconnections.com with no luck, so I slowly started collecting OEM harness parts from cars in junkyards. Voltage regulation stuff was there, and I figure that I have most of the bullet connectors for the smaller stuff, I'll be fine. One thing that has stumped me was the ignition..... Time for another segway.
The engine I bought had low compression, the primary issue was the valve seats. But when I got the engine the size was an L26, just a modified stroke on the L24 block that I have in my other car. After rebuilding, which was it's its own story, man this car already has hella stories to it, When it was time to wire up the ignition I realized that the distributor was was for a L24 Automatic Chassis, which also had dual points 'D614-52' (It helps the dwell period). Now on this dizzy that I had in my hands was messed up by someone, one of the points was removed. BUT to further mess with this all, the coil and ballast resistor was from a transistorized dizzy (non 260, all 280+). So I've been putting it off, telling myself that there are other things that the car also needs, I'll get back to that other stuff as I need to.
So I get though some of that stuff, find myself looking at interior steering wheel plastic covers (new is 250usd). Which once again is out of my price range. I realized that, at some point I recall seeing plastics in the car. I just boxed the parts all together in an attempt to control the spider bros guarding the car. I pull out the box, and I find; OEM wiper motor+ bracket, OEM steering plastics (THEY FIT 12/73 VIN date, parts match with 73 240z), OEM 260z Coil + ballast resistor WITH the harness intact!, ah and an OEM ground cable. I'll tell you what I am stoked.
I hope the rain holds out this weekend, weather application currently says Tuesday. That should be fine.
Anyway, it's 1:10am, my succulent camera just went off again, it's time to nap though.
(that is the electrical harness that sits in the engine compartment, it plugs behind the firewall)
** I just realized I have school on Wednesday. 01/18/2017 **