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Member Blogs - Approved

Floor and Frame Fixed Now Cooling System

Finally finished the Floors and Frame Rails all the way up to the T/C Boxes that were completely gone. Lots and lots of work, but the car is much more solid now. Drove it for a week and all it did was run scary hot. Waterpump, thermostat, overflow kit, full flush, and we will see if it helps. Pulled all the AC off the car and that helps a little as well. Will see how it goes after the thermostat housing comes in the mail.

Paint Help....

I have a 1976 Datsun 280Z. I have several paint questions.. Ok, I recently sanded the car down and going to do some minor dent repairs, and then spray primer on the whole car, and then paint it. OK my question is whats the best primer out there for our cars?? Epoxy,Lacquer, Polyester, Urethane Primers ect???? Next, How many gallons will the car take??? What type of paint should I buy? here's two youtube vids i made in the past: Thanks Bro's Laters:beer:

More on Floors

Been very busy with other things, the Z has a layer of dust on it from sitting neglected. I got a 4x4 ft piece of 18ga sheet metal and bent the needed pieces today. I am not real happy with what I have come up with for replacing the section missing between the TC mount and the Bad Dog frame rail. With everything missing from the rust it is making it tough. I placed everything today and secured it with sheetmetal screws to pull it tight. I had some more trimming and hammering to fit contours

Got car back. Things to do with dash out.

Got the car back last thursday. The paint and body work turned out great. Its not all back together yet, so I don't really want to show it off. In fact, its further apart than when I got it back. I took the dash out to fix the one crack in it. That came out well. While I had it out, I've been working on a few things. I've lubed the HVAC control cables. I found that many of my duct work connections weren't really connected anymore, so I've cleaned and refitted them. I've taken the lenses

Update on floor and frame

Not much happening. We were out for a while as we had a wedding in Ft. Lauderdale last weekend and one this weekend as well. I am working on the templates and hope to have them to the metal bender this weekend early Satuday before the wedding. The bent metal will be added to the Bad Dog rails and welded into place for the T/C support. I will try and be nice enough to take some photos. Didnt get to work on the templates tonight, Monster in Law came over and bought dinner, so I had to visit.

My Engines

How All Started Some time in the year 2000 my neighbor gave me a cylinder head (AB7)? It was off a Nissan 4 cylinder L series engine. A friend of his gave me a 1983 bluebird wagon with a faulty carbie. I used the block out of this car for my 1983 Bluebird sedan. In my spare time I ported this head and a manifold that I had. In 2002 I installed the good block from the wagon and the cylinder head into my 1983 Bluebird. It fired up ok took it for a test drive wow it was really responsive. I had

Still Waiting

The car has been in the body shop since the first week of January. Its getting close to done. The floors have been replaced. The right rear quarter has been replaced. Its been stripped, sanded, blocked, primed, sealed and then sprayed with three coats of 115 blue, with three coats of clear. Problem is, the clear has some little specks in it that wet sanding didn't take out. More wet sanding, then more clear coats. Happily the shop didn't even think of passing it off to me, they just calle

Floors and Rails an Unhappy Update

Well the Bad Dog rails arrived late this afternoon and I picked up the freshly bent floor pans from the shop on the way home Friday. I got to work with the new air nibbler. If you dont have this tool and do some light body work and metal modification get one! I powered up the compressor and went to work. I got the passenger side floor cut. The rust was worse than I expected. Went further and left the metal thinner than I thought it would. After today, I am seriously wondering if this car

Progress!

Ordered the frame rails from baddog tonight, should have them by the end of the week. The weather is pretty sweet too, so I should be able to start making some progress and be back on the road again real soon. Floorboards are bent up and the nibbler is ready to take out the rust. Cant wait to get back on the road!

The Plan, Part Deux

OK, I bought the car to drive and enjoy and not have to do as much work as I had with my Z28 street strip car. That didnt happen. New plan for the car: Fix the floors and the frame. Redo suspension: new springs new struts new ball joints new steering boots update sway bar and mounts and redo the rear ujoints. Engine will need a rebuild. Not confident in doing the engine, I have never rebuilt an overhead cam head, so I will most likely look for a replacement long block and swap them out. The

Slow Progress

Progress is slooooowwww right now. Its been cold here in the St. Louis Metro area and my garage is not heated, unless I am down there with the kerosene heater on. Tools are coming together, got my new air nibbler from Ebay in late this week. I plan to use it to help cut out the floorboards to prep for replacement. Need a set of flanging pliers, you know the ones that make the lip on the edge of sheetmetal, dont know where to find one yet. Also got the welder back in house with a new spool

Body Work Status

My floors and support rails came in from Charlie Osborne at Zedd Findings. Bruce the body wizzard calls them patch panels, and not replacement panels. He's got them in, but they didn't cover enough of the drivers side floor, in front. He wishes they would cover more area, but comments that they are good heavy steel, and are a correct match if you want the factory look. He just fabbed up some more metal for the areas they didn't cover. Go Bruce. Luckily the passenger side barely needed any
  • ConchZ

Floor Pan Rust Problems and Question got an Idea?

As I type all of this the car is sitting in the garage, up on ramps. After reading a lot of posts here and asking some questions that had been asked before (its hard for a new person to search the postings because they dont have the vocabulary for the car yet) I went down to check the passenger side floorboard and the floor support. You guessed it, rust. Big time. There really is no support rail and it is rusted right up to the Torsion Rod mounting point on the frame. Dug in and figured ou

The Z and Me

I decided it would be nice to put something together to track the life of this car. I have had a lot of different cars over the years from MGs to Lifted 4x4s. I sold my 1979 Z28 T-top Camaro with 435hp 445lbt/ft after I got a little bored with going in a straight line. I started looking around and found my Z. Its a 72 numbers matching car that I am 3rd owner from what I can tell so far. I should have found this site before I bought the car and I would have know more of what to look for. 4th

How I picked a body shop

Picking a body shop is obviously a big deal. The work is expensive, and if you pick wrong, you end up paying a lot for shoddy work. Here's how I did it. I took the car to four shops. I brought them a list of what I expected done, and what I would do before bringing the car in for work. Mainly, I was willing to remove the interior. I was not willing to remove the bumpers or other exterior parts. More on that later. I also brought them a list of parts and the sources I had found for those p
  • ConchZ

Introduction

This blog will be about the purchase and refreshment of a 1973 240Z. I had been searching off and on for a classic car to drive on a semi-daily basis. After about 2 years, I settled on the 240Z. It met most of my criteria, which were: 1) Low enough cost that I won't feel bad driving it around. 2) Parts and technical information are easy to find. 3) Somewhat rare. 4) Somewhat practical. I found that because Nissan used a lot of the same parts for many years, you can still get almost anyth
  • ConchZ

My car is older than I am!

Hey everybody, My name is Jon and as you can tell I am a brand new member of this sight. Just about over two months ago, I bought my first ever car, a 1972 Datsun 240z. You may be intrigued by my title, well I am 18 years old. You may ask why or how I am interested in z's, most of my friends dont even know what Datsun is! Well my dad had bought a grey 72 240z back in 1973. So as a result I have always been ubsessed with these beauties. At the beginning of this past summer my parents told me tha

Old Journal Entry

This is an entry from my old journal before turning off that module. My Z Created this as a backup to my for sale ad, removed when I finished the project. The bad thing about having a "new" restoration like this is the old parts. It's soo hard to put an old part next to a new part. While I have all of the old stuff around, there are things that you'll want to replace with new or rebuilt. The two engines should be rebuilt. While I took out the operational L24 and set it aside, it was nearly 10 y
  • Mike

z resurection

Hello all I have a chance to purchase a 76 280 z (We are moving and must get rid of our '76 Z car. The engine had been disassembled by our son when in HS 7 years ago and put back together somewhat. We think that all of the parts are there. It has been on jack stands since 1992 in our garage and under car covers but there are several dents in the body due to carelessness in the garage.The engine has about 110,000 miles on it.) As you all can see the car has been on jack stands for 16 years. will

The Header Returns.. Pics included!

My header has returned from Jet-Hot Coatings in Tempe, after two and a half weeks. It looks really nice!! Here is a picture of it.... Header: $200 Jet-Hot Sterling coating: $300 Knowing it won't rust away in a few years: Priceless The installation went a lot quicker than the removal of the old exhaust manifold. Of course I had several weeks to prepare everything as I noted in my previous post. Got a couple new studs and a new set of exhaust nuts at the Nissan dealer. After touching up
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