Will

Could be... I'll test it out on a steep hill soon, (plenty of places fit the bill in this town!) but I think it's good to go for now. I'll wait to do more brake modifications until I can track down a 710 at a junkyard so I can modify parts without needing to put my car out of commission.

Got everything together today! 280ZX master cylinder was a pretty easy bolt-in swap... other than some brake lines that needed vise-grips to remove. I needed to shorten the parking brake rods by almost 3", and even then, they were a little too long (I was just barely able to get the cable tight enough to work.) Maybe the 200SX has a parking brake lever with more travel than the 710?

A trunk emblem from Bill Whiten, Birmingham, Alabama? That car has traveled far!

I was watching some Australian crime shows, and this was the culprit's car in a reenactment:

Got the brakes installed today and everything went together pretty smoothly. Stuff I learned along the way: 1. To keep the holes in the disc brake plates properly aligned, I clamped both plates together to use the original plates as a guide when drilling new holes. This worked well, though I'd recommend that the plates be clamped as securely as possible to your drill press. I thought I had clamped them super-securely, but they still moved a little when drilling - that metal is very thick!! 2. It's expensive to get bearings removed and installed - having a hydraulic press would have sped things up a lot, and let this happen for less money. 3. The original drum brake axles look a lot like disc brake axles... they MIGHT be identical, so this swap could be done with even less parts. Brake: installed: Clearance looks totally adequate: Original brake lines can be re-shaped to line up with the new calipers: Comparison, disc vs. drum axles: I needed to get some paying work done, so the master cylinder will need to wait until tomorrow. ...then shortening the parking brake rods will be the last thing I need to finish. (they need to be shortened about 1-1/2 or 2")

I'm not sure where the video was shot, but it's a safe bet that those cars are very close to a salty ocean.

Okay... today I got the new bearings pressed onto the axles and then found myself a relatively level-ground parking spot. Tomorrow morning the new rear brakes and master cylinder get installed!

These rims fit over the 280ZX brakes, so I figured that they'll fit over the 200SX brakes too. ...hopefully that's the case!

Are those Lotus Elite Wheels? Did you need to do any modifications, or is the bolt pattern the same? They look great! (I like the Lotus Elite a lot - it looks like a futuristic Gremlin.)

I pulled the passenger's side rear axle. ...again. to mock everything up before painting and putting on the bearings. It fits!

Today I modified the parking brake levers, and ground off the parking brake brackets from the calipers (they were TOTALLY welded on, so it took some time with the angle grinder!) Tomorrow morning I'll pull off the hub again to make sure everything will fit before I get the bearings pressed onto the axles.

Okay, so the brackets and backing plates have been drilled in what will hopefully be a bolt pattern that works well with the 710's rear axle. (I filled in all of the extra holes to make things a bit more tidy.) Today's schedule includes modifying the brake calipers to work with the 710's parking brake system. I'll need to remove a bracket from the calipers and re-shape the arm on the caliper that hooks up to the parking brake rods.

When you get the 280ZX struts from a junkyard, you can probably pick up the calipers and discs at the same time (if they're in decent shape.) It is a pretty easy swap - you'll just need to alter the spring perches and use your 610 springs or get a set of coilover springs. (I have some pictures of the setup on my 710's thread - should be pretty similar to a 610: http://community.ratsun.net/topic/34485-710-project-thread) Any pictures of the car after it got hosed off?

It was a full day for me to get there and back - maybe there is someone closer to Sacramento?

The interior plastic was very nice actually - the dash pad had some cracks, but the door panels and seatbelts all looked nice. The seat covers were all shot, but it looked more like they were dried-out by the weather than lots of miles, so they could get new life from a recovering. It looked like the car had sat for a really really long time, so it might be musty in there - the seats all had gross covers/ scraps of fabric covering them...and the original fabric was toast under those covers. Carpet & headliner wasn't awful, if I remember correctly. The rear package tray was there, but it had some cracks that would need to be repaired.

They look really similar at first glance, but the arm is longer and the mounting holes are in a different place than the mirrors that I see on 620's. The mirror part is the same, but the arm is different. Here's a picture of the arm of the mirror from a 620:

Yeah - I met them at the 610... when I saw their trucks, I figured that they would be there at the freshest Datsun! The pair of trucks were owned by a nice father-son Datsun team (they got the 610's cylinder head)

Still working on getting the brake swap ready to go. I beat and ground off the old bearings to get at the brackets (ball bearings = durable stuff!) I removed the rear axle ...again... to mark the new holes on the disc brakets, and the rebuilt 280ZX cylinder arrived in the mail today, so hopefully I'll be able to get it together in about a week. I still need to modify the parking brake hookup on the calipers and shorten the linkage a little bit. In the meantime I repainted my mirror and found a passengers side mirror from Australia on ebay. ...Over there it is called a driver's side mirror, I guess. The quality was quite awful (the brand on the mirror was "kingmirror.") -though it looks better after some silver paint! I was having trouble finding a mirror with a longer arm to match the driver's side mirror - I was only finding the mirrors with shorter arms.

I went to Rancho Cordova to check out the '74 710. There were already 2 620s in the lot when I arrived! This friendly guy (not the owner) was dressed to match this 620: There is still a lot of useful stuff on the 610 - it looks like it had aftermarket a/c, though it isn't all there. Other than the seats, and nasty-looking muck in the cylinders, it is in pretty good shape. I took some dash parts, but I didn't hulk-smash the dashboard apart, so there's still lots of useful stuff - if anyone out there needs a blue clock or nice taillights or irs stuff or some black interior panels:

Sorry to read that this happened! I hope it turns up!

I was thinking that the green under the hood looked mighty familiar...

I've seen people leave the thermostat out entirely, but never seen someone break the thermostat and then re-install it!

...though there is a sedan listed in Fresno.

It's a wagon - I've seen it.