It’s been a couple of months since I bought my 240Z and I thought it might be a good time to take a step back and detail some of the work that has gone into this project so far. Anytime you buy an old car it’s like that gameshow, Let’s Make Deal where every major system is a mystery behind door number 3, and you never know whether you’ll go home a winner, or. . . perhaps NOT go home, ending up instead stuck on the side of the road. Come along while we open some doors on the Datsun, and see if it’s still a winner.
One of the things that I have discovered after doing a little research on the car is that, while licensed and titled as a 1970 model, it is in fact a ’71. This discover was made by way of the VIN number, which being HLS30-40060 indicates that the car was built sometime between January and August of 1971. Even more vexing is the fact that I made the inopportune discovery that its 4-speed transmission is the later FW471B design, rather than the earlier A, which would have been the factory install.
This I discovered when re-bushing the wobbly shifter. Pulling up the console to extract what I expected to be a straight stick, revealed instead a gracefully curved chrome handle. A little research online showed that a specific repair kit for Chrysler Minivan door hinges would provide brass bushings suitable for the interface between shift lever and clevis, and a far more durable repair than the stock plastic bits.
The fix worked beautifully, but that wouldn’t be the last time I had to open up the console and extract the shift lever, as soon the car’s clutch would go out, and not come back.
As is typically the course for such things, the clutch failed in the parking lot of a Home Depot, a good 3 miles from my home depot. Fortunately, it decided to lunch while in second gear. A carefully selected route home, avoiding stopping (sorry local constabulary), or doing anything more than about 30, got me and the car home without incident.
Now, clutches are pretty simple things, but the fact that they are trapped between engine and transmission usually means their renewal is a bear of a job. Again, research online indicated that the 240Z’s ample tunnel room and easy access to the six (!) bolts that maintain the bell housing/engine neighborliness would make this one of the easiest clutch jobs on record.
Let me tell you, while still an entire day’s job when undertaken alone, it’s still a job that’s pretty easy peasey. Also, kudos to O’Reilly Auto Parts for not only having the Clutch kit in stock, but offering free two-day delivery as well. If you are unfamiliar, a clutch kit typically consists of a disc, pressure plate, throwout bearing, shaft bushing, and – in this case – a handy alignment tool and some shaft lube – hey, stop snickering!
The first step was the jack up the car and then pull the driveshaft out, a 4-bolt affair. Once that was out of the way I used my snazzy new transmission jack to support the gearbox while I unbolted and wonder=barred it backwards in the tunnel. When it first came free of the block, I was greeted by a shower of ball bearings and what I took to be clutch disc material, black fibrous material that filled the bottom of the bell housing. Upon getting the box fully out and to where I could give it a closer examination, I found that to be a mistaken diagnosis.
It turns out that the throwout bearing couldn’t bear it anymore and had committed hari-kari- hence the ball bearings. The thing of it is, there was collateral damage in that it also took out the supporting collar as well. I had anticipated that the throwout bearing was the primary culprit, but hadn’t anticipated the collar’s failure because I hadn’t thought it would have been made of plastic. Land O Goshen!
In the picture below you can see the destroyed collar on the left, still with the bearing backing ground into place. On the right is its spankin’ new steel replacement from the good folks at the Z Store in Orange. Thankfully they were open on Saturday allowing me to purchase and replace the collar the same day.
You know the old joke about how in automotive manuals reassembly is always minimized as disassembly in reverse, but that’s never the case? Well, in this instance that was pretty much was the case. Once the throwout bearing and collar are fitted to the clutch fork and their spring holders put into place, it’s a simple matter to fit the clutch disk and pressure plate to the flywheel and then muscle the gearbox back home. Now, I will admit that I have bruises on almost every extremity from doing so, but with the scissor jack, aligning and sending home the gearbox wasn’t all that tough.
Now the car shifts like a dream, the clutch working silently and with perfect take-up thanks to its new slave cylinder that was an additional might as well addition. I’ve done a number of other updates and fixes to the car since taking ownership, including a new exhaust system after receiving a fixit ticket for the noise, and a lot of work to make the incredibly complicated electrical system work as it’s supposed to do. Those will have to wait for another update, but I can report that the Z is coming along nicely, and its mechanical systems are returning to life without much coaxing. All it takes is time and money, right?
Images: ©2013 Hooniverse/Robert Emslie, All Rights Reserved
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