go

Luckily TDC Auto did not attempt to connect the throttle cable, as they probably would have drilled firewall or modified the OEM cable linkage mount. One idea was to remove it entirely and weld on a new one.

I found a throttle cable that worked after some modification thanks to Mckinney. I wasn't happy about the cost for something that was supposed to work right out of the box, but it was an easy fix and looked like it was going to work well, utilizing the oem throttle cable positions. I located the stock bell crank in all of the boxes that came with the 24o. this of course was after I had already ordered one from z source. They were kind enough to take back the new one minus a 2o % restock fee as my order was placed over a month prior.

I dremeled off the rivet holding the upper ball in place on the bell crank and cleaned the entire piece. The upper bushing was still inside of the crank and the lower one was on the car, including the locking pin.

With the downpipe in place before the wraping session seen previously, I installed the Mckinney throttle cable, bolting the bracket to the oem firewall holes. I also ordered a lower linkage boot from z source, but haven't installed it yet. 

After cleaning the bell crank a bit more,  and greasing the car side mount, I installed and connected the lines.

It rotates just out of reach of the downpipe.

interim

Not much going on, waiting on parts and motivation.

In efforts to be clean, I didn't want to make due with the old throttle cable. The solution previously in the 280z was to obtain a 240sx cable of unknown vintage and bolt the OEM mounting plate it came with (which looked like it was cut out of the car it came from) to a random location on the firewall near the 280z throttle hole. This then enabled the cable to be fed inside the cabin where the 280z pedal had to be ruthlessly modified to accept a pull type cable end instead of the OEM heim-like joint linkage. It worked well, but I was always worried that it would break at an inopportune moment since installing the 240sx cable also involved excessive amounts of bending.

Firefox for the Mac only lets the tab size get so small before it starts scrolling in the same window. After several hours of searching I was able to identify the required OEM linkage piece, which I needed to connect to the piece that goes from the pedal in the 240z into the engine bay, as a bell crank. I was able to find used ones for sale from z car source in Arizona and they had great customer service.

I also broke down and decided to buy what was left to get the car most of the way to running in the way of parts from mckinney motorsports in California. They make a custom 240z/rb25 swap throttle cable that hooks to the above OEM bell crank. They also make a custom 240z/rb25 2 core, 2 pass radiator with hi-flow fan and shroud with the 240z mounts and rb25 input/output fluid port locations. I'll be downgrading from a 3 core unit but passing the fluid through twice as much. From what I've been told the core's themselves are very large and since it's aluminum it should be pretty light and a very clean install. I also won't have to run radiator hoses across the engine bay using a radiator that wasn't designed for the current engine's coolant passage positions.

I might as well get the correct fan and shroud at the same time instead of dealing with building one or trying to fit another and expounding more pain and frustration along the way as spending the money up front and just having it work the first time. That, and I want to drive the car. Their customer service leaves something to be desired, and apparently my gmail will not receive emails from Mckinney, but my bank account is sure in direct contact. I've heard great things about their parts and I'm excited for a clean, well designed and built product.

The 240z registration came through and the SC DMV promptly refunded my paid taxes for the 280z. Rad.

On a side note, anyone want to go to Burma for a hill climb?