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hey guys - thanks for thinking of me, sorry i've been so far out of the loop. for the past couple years the z has been running well and i've been pretty consumed with other projects. built a 69 vw bug convertible from a rusty, rotten piece of junk to a decent daily driver, learning how to weld in the process so now i'm pretty dangerous. mark is right: the su's have been soooo wonderful - not a single hiccup and i drive her just about every day, rain or shine, commute is 50 miles round trip. just topped off the oil yesterday, and while i was at it checked/cleaned the plugs and they were all a nice consistent tan. tickle the choke lever in the morning and she starts instantly. best thing i did to that car and i can't see ever going back to all those fussy electronic bits. i did one pretty big z project a few months ago: swapped out the squishy z seats. was going to go the miata route, and found a set of porsche seats that looked like they'd drop right in. turned out to be a major pita - 3 weekends of cutting, welding, re-building. the z seat wells are a goofy tapered shape, partly due to the big tunnel hump with its exhaust pipe lump on the drivers side, and partly due to the horizontal beam at the front. makes for two different height mounting points front vs. rear. at some point i will cut out and re-build the entire floor pan area to make it flat and wide enough to put in normal flat-mount seats. at some point i'm gonna strip the z down to bare chassis, do some body mods (tail lights, valence, grille, shave markers, eliminate panel joint at sugar scoops) and re-paint. that's when i'll probably do the rear wiper. probably a year or two from now, based on the current list of projects in the queue... i do pop in from time to time and read some of the threads - good to see you all are still at it!

Torrential rain in our area all day, kept us from attending a really great car show that I've been looking forward to since last year. So... it was back to the bench to continue work on restoration & refurb projects. Today's output: three inspection lights - one complete with new lens and two others waiting on bulbs and lens.

Got enough of the interior out to get a good visual of the problem areas, here is what I found. Luckily so far I have only broken this one retainer on the RH kick panel, not sure how I could have saved it. Overall I'm not too shocked with what I have found and I won't be pulling much more until I have selected a restoration shop to work with. I want to keep the car drivable as long as possible.

https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/nissan-designer-confirms-next-gen-z-project Please let it be true!

A happy birthday to Jai (redwing). See you in a few weeks.

What's considered an early car, where's the line? Manufactured in '69 or double digits, triple digits? I would consider the first 500 as Carl Beck has previously noted however as time marches on, we see fewer and fewer (and appreciate more and more) of the 1970 and early 1971 model years. We make reference and distinction between the "Series I" and "Series II" builds quite often. I would have to suggest that a "Series I" car is considered an early car. To me, if the car has hatch vents, it's an early car.

You make us all look like sloths...! Wish I was that far along...

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Thanks for the offer - really appreciate it. At this point I’m gonna hold off accumulating any more z parts. The project is pretty far down the road and I’m up to my ears in stuff w/no place to store anything. When the time comes, and I’m actually in fabrication mode, I’ll evaluate if that’s the right solution or perhaps a motor from something more recent.

He even made one to work for my 77 280. Been working for several years now.

Well update time again, not too much to report in a way. Since we've had the car back on the road in the middle of July the car has done just over 1000 miles as a shake down to really dial things in and see where we stand. It's made it on various runs out, breakfast meets and car shows in the interim where it's performed very well. It's just been dropped back to passion engineering with a snagging list to be tweaked to make perfect for now hopefully to collect in time for Goodwood's JDM Sunday all being well. Most notably I took the Z up to JAE with the MR2OC who are great friends and like my second family and had an awesome weekend with them, the car was somewhat stealing the show for a lot of people with people in awe of its condition. Rather unusually for me I entered JAE's show and shine competition as for once I actually felt I had a car nice enough and set about doing some detailing before chucking it in to see what happened. Not knowing very much about cleaning other than clay baring the paint, waxing it and generally giving it a clean up I thought it would be nice to show the car off if nothing else. Despite some amazing competition in the form of a fully restored Fairlady roadster and another 240Z I managed to win the Retro category by 1 point which completely blew me away. Having spoken to the judge afterwards I nearly threw the competition away and lost a lot of points because I hadn't cleaned the inside barrels of my wheels which just goes to show why I never enter cleaning competitions and much prefer driving and picking up dirt instead! Either way I now can claim to own a show wining car and was quite smug having seen other entrants trailer their cars there or only turn up to enter the competition which just seemed wrong to me! After a lot of stress and hassle earlier this year its been amazing to just get out and use it, I never lose that smile whenever I get in and just turn the key and just enjoy it. I still find plenty of excuses just to go out for a drive even if I have nowhere to go. The ridiculous attention continues to flow in, on the way back from JAE a guy in a McLaren 720s and his partner were going crazy next to me, taking loads of photos and shouting loads of compliments and loving it despite being in a supercar nearly 50 years younger. Still making great progress, hopefully more positive news to follow shortly. IMG_7835 by Mark Woodrow, on Flickr IMG_7827 by Mark Woodrow, on Flickr IMG_7818 by Mark Woodrow, on Flickr IMG_7805 by Mark Woodrow, on Flickr IMG_7842 by Mark Woodrow, on Flickr Photo CO Chris Presley IMG_7853 by Mark Woodrow, on Flickr Photo CO Chris Presley IMG_7859 by Mark Woodrow, on Flickr Possibly one of my favourite photos that I've taken of the Z to date IMG_7675 by Mark Woodrow, on Flickr

Mr Irwin makes them for other vendors but you can buy straight from him. Great customer service too. https://www.datsun-240z-upgrades.net/

From what i understand he uses tin. It's not that americans can't do it right. Just look at all those Mopar builds. But with the low prices the Z's had in the US in the past, it just was the cheapest way to repair. Throw a ton of bondo on it and make it look good. Times are slowly changing though. even in the US, the restauration quality for standard Z's are getting better. But not all of them. Mind that most of the cars we see today with much fiberglass and bondo repairs have been done many years ago...

I'm going to assume the best. I think he's enjoying his excellent running, SU fed, 280.

Very hard to patch in the front fenders. They are thin and oil can easily. If I were going to start on that dent. You need to work from the edges in. Also the wheel arch will need to be worked as you work on it. I think what I might do is fasten the fender to the car. Then put a come-a-long with a hook in to the wheel arch right at the dent. Put a little tension on it then start dolly work. When you get the dented arch worked out some, then work the front bulge in some. Repeat... Also I would expect to have to do some shrinking work on a dent that is that large

I bought a ZX motor that had bolts on all of the manifold holes. No studs. I think that it's personal preference. It's much easier to get a nut on the stud from underneath the intake manifold than trying to insert a bolt in to a hole. One argument for studs is that when you put the final torque to it you're spinning steel threads on steel threads. With a bolt it's steel on aluminum. The same when you're removing them. Studs probably help avoid damaged threads. The four big bolts for the intake would probably make life difficult if you replaced them with studs. Never seen big studs used there.

The Jaffe #46 re-creation and the original John Morton find their way around Laguna Seca during the Rolex 2018.