This 1973 Datsun 240z has a colorful history. Despite being in the hands of several owners it always finds its way back to Z Car Garage. Rob has worked on this Z since moving here to California from Georgia in 1998. Bought new in Buffalo, New York, this Z was originally owned by a doctor named Bill L. Bill had to leave the country abruptly and wanted Rob to sell it for him. Christian C. was looking for a project 240z and purchased the car, bringing it back to ZCG for a bunch of work. We removed the 32/36 downdraft webers and added triple Mikuni’s and exhaust with nice results. Christian was then called to duty and moved to Korea. Current owner Paul G bought the Z and brought it back to us for more upgrades and maintenance, again!
Paul’s Z needed new clutch hydraulics and tranny fluid. A common wear item on these cars is the hole for the clevis pin to operate the clutch master cylinder. Over time the pin enlarges the hole making shifting difficult. We welded up the holes and re-drilled so the clutch pedal feels just the way it should. In the engine bay things keep getting better for this sweet inline-6. The standard Mikuni manifold wasn’t the ideal setup for flow when running the triple Mikunis so in anticipation for more power we installed a TWM manifold:
Here is the old Mikuni setup compared to the TWM:
With the new manifold in place we were ready to extract more power on the dyno, however there was a problem with Paul’s carb linkage making synchronization difficult. The traditional solution is to fix the rather intricate linkage system and move on but we thought why not simplify it? The Z’s carb linkage, like many old cars consists of several plastic pieces, caps, levers, arms and bell crank…all parts that fail or gain excess slop from repeated adjustment and years of abuse. Linkages do look cool (or complex) but a much more straightforward solution is to use a throttle cable.
We are stoked with this setup because it clears up the engine bay, makes throttle response more direct and tuning easier. We are especially proud of this mod because of its total reversibility…one can go back to the OEM linkage setup say for that concours restoration or car show. No holes are drilled. Win-win! More pics of the single throttle setup:
With the carbs sync’d we dyno tuned with excellent mid-range gains and peak numbers of 152hp/172tq to the wheels!
