Well, I just had the most successful weekend of car wrenching I've ever had
and I though I'd share my joy.
I replaced the rear brake cylinders/shoes (to go along with the completely
new fronts installed last fall) and FINALLY the brakes act like brakes
should. WOW, the stock brakes are fantastic!! Then I fixed all the
electrical bugaboos: sidemarker lamps, horn, etc so now we can get her
inspected. Also installed the stock/period EW fog lamps on the front
bumper, next to and inside of the bumper overriders -- VERY COOL!
(Question: Is this the right spot for these fog lamps and were these
offered by Nissan or were they period aftermarket?)
Finally, I had to tackle replacing the bolts (or bolt, as in singular, I
should say!) attaching the front of the driveshaft to the tranny flange.
When we bought the car 2 years ago, I saw that the driveshaft was secured
at the front to the tranny flange by only 2 bolts. The heads had broken
off the other two bolts, but because the nuts were still on the broken
bolts -- and stuck between the tranny flange and U-joint -- I couldn't just
yank those and put in new bolts. They needed to be cut off. The problem
was that the frame X-member crosses right exactly below this point, hemming
in the whole assembly in the tranny tunnel/frame X-member. I didn't
really want to lift the body off of the frame just to replace 2 bolts, so I
decided to cut an access panel from the body to get at the bolts.
I removed the driver's seat and carpeting and using my handy-dandy plasma
cutter, cut a 5" square of metal from the side of the tranny tunnel, right
below the opening for the shifter, being careful to not cut into the pivot
for the hand brake or the bracket right in front of shifter. I then had
excellent access to the bolts and found that, in fact, there was only one
bolt holding the whole thing together. Whew, good thing I got to this
repair now, rather than after that one bolt had broken. I cut off the
offending nuts with the air-powered cut-off tool -- NICE! -- and replaced
with grade 8 bolts and lock washers. Then I took the piece of tranny sheet
metal I'd cut out and cleanly welded that back into place. Done!
In the process, I broke off the driver's side seat belt bolt in its hole on
the tranny tunnel, but I just welded a headless bolt into the hole and used
a nut to secure the seat belt. Man, I love having the right tools to
overcome what used to be weekend-ruining snafus.
Drive on fellow roadsterites--the warm weather is returning!
Alex Avery
'69 2000
'78 280Z
Staunton, VA
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