I randomly seem to stumble on nice stuff by accident. I always dreamed about triple Mikunis for my Z, but i thought that in the current situation with the house project, work and other things going strong, i save them for buying them later, even with rapidly rising prices. Then, lately, i came accross these nice carbs for sale on an Austrian ads website, when i was actually looking for something totally different.
A bit of negotiation back and forth, a payment and they arrived here today:

They are genuine japan made Mikuni (Solex) PHH40 S5 (5-screw) carbs. You might wonder why PHH40? I don’t plan to run any crazy numbers, so the PHH40 should be sufficient according to my calculations. we’ll see. I think i can swap them for PHH44 when i figure out that i was wrong. The deal was too god to say no. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

They have been beautifully restored. Probably will zinc plate all the bolts on the outside, but not sure yet:

It even gets better: They came with a free set of intake side gaskets and beautiful velocity stacks.

After all i’m very happy with my purchase and i think my engine setup comes along nicely with the FET Intake manifold and the Kakimoto valve cover. The whole engine side of things is still on a bit on hold, but when i find good parts like this, i just have to save them for the future 🙂

While having all the grille pieces disassembled, i thought i better take advantage of it and straighten all the pieces before i have them zinc-plated.
So i pulled out my best (nonexistant) panel-beater skills and hammered the parts as straight as i could. A few examples:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:.

Upon closer inspection of the grille, i realized the already some rust has appeared at the places where matal rubs on metal:

So i decided to better have all the non-aluminum pieces completely disassembled and zinc plated. That’s why i remoced all the rivets

While doing so, i decided to redrill some of the rivet holes:

Will have to strip the primer, hammer a few small dents straight and then have it zinc plated with the next load of parts…

While strolling the webs for good parts deals i stumbled upon this:  A  Niles Cigarette lighter with a built-in Thermometer. It’s so useless and so japanese in a way, i couldn’t resist. It was only a few bucks and i found it in greece of all countries:

Btw: Niles is the company that made most of the electronic relays and switches in the 240Z and many other Datsuns / Nissans of that time. So while this item was never sold by Nissan, it somehow gives the whole thing a bit of a period correct OEM feel:

And to be honest, it’s so weird and odd, i just had to have it.

Today i got one of my ebay ad finds: The plastic radiator surrounding Panel / shroud. It’s a bit rough around the edges, has a lot of black paint stains, but overall it’s in great shape and the price was too good to not buy it. Another missing part of the puzzle in storage 🙂

And had to give it a clean immediately before i put it in storage 🙂

Much better already. Not sure if i will use it anyway, since i have the Koyo radiator. But it was only a few bucks and it’s good to know i have all the OEM Pieces to put it together back in original condition if i ever want to. Better get those items now before prices rise further 😉

So since i have all my parts for the grille now, i thought it’s time to puzzle them together. Here we got the single pieces:

First test fir assembly (works nice with a cushion below). Looks a bit out of shape:

I realized then, that the double-fin on top still has a major dent at where one of the vertical pieces attaches to it:

Tried my best hammering skills to get it sort-of straight again:

Second test-assembly. Starts to look nice. Need to sand the edges a bit on the vertacal pieces and then will replace all the rivets, before i put it all back together with new bolts and nuts 😉

Got some stuff today which i found lately for sale online.
First a set of original Nissan Parts manual Microfiches from a German workshop liquidation. So it’s the european Parts manual. Unfortunately one page (body) is missing, but since i have a digital copy already it’s only for completeness sake. and the price was great too 🙂

You would usually need a microfilm / microfiche reader, but i think a scanner with a high resolution should be able to handle those too. I will give it a try. It just was a too cool piece of history to not buy them 🙂

Then i got a copy from an original German User manual for the 240Z:

The colours are wrong since the seller seems to sell a lot of copied manuals with all the same colour sheme for some reason, but still it’s better than nothing and it was a lot cheaper than an original, old, brittly, used service manual that is currently for sale for 130 Bucks on ebay. So i decided a copy has to do it. Also i know the original colour sheme anyway, so i can  create my own copy with th e original colours whenever i want to:

It’s good to finally know all the details:

And it got a wiring shematic too, which is great 🙂 

More parts are on the way, so expect more by next week or so 🙂

Well, the workload on the house / Garage / Workshop project finally slows down a bit, so i have a bit of time and a few bucks here and there to spend on my other, car related projects again. I have found some missing parts which are currently on the way to me, which i will of course post once they’re here. But first i got some parts today from my Buddy Stefan at Cagedude.

Ag ain he was responsible for recreating some damaged parts with his awesome fabrication skills. This time he built me set of 240Z vertical Grille finns, which hold the horizontal fins together. As you can see my original set (black) was totally bent and broken. Super happy and i will have to reassemble my grill soon i guess 🙂