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I worked in a body shop way back in my teens. People would come in about once a week, having gotten a Spray King or a MAACO $150 special (this was the early 1970’s), wanting to get the extremely poor paint job redone. Most left disappointed when we told them the cost to completely strip and start over, and do a proper refinish of their car. Even then, material alone was double or more what the scuff and blow places charged for everything. One woman came in with a 1950’s T Bird. She had just picked it up ad Spray King, stopped at the store for groceries on her way home and walking back to her car notice that the paint had peeled off of most of the passenger side door and fender. She cried when we gave her the estimate. People find out I know body and paint and ask how much. I tell them they can’t afford me, These days material will cost a couple thousand bucks, add the labor and a complete paint job will run $6,000 or more, if you can find a body shop that does complete paint jobs. They make their money doing crash repair. There is no such thing as a quick paint job. Go cheap, and cuss it every time you see it. Spend the money up front to do it right, and cuss it once, then love it for many years to come.

Making the trip from California to C Springs is tempting. A steak dinner at MacKenzie's Chop House topped off with a Guinness Black and Tan at Jack Quinn's would be worth the journey alone 😊

Depending on the rest of the car's theme, I appreciate them all. Black wrinkle, red wrinkle, polished, body colored, and stock can all look great. It's a bolt-on part, so it's a great part to customize.

As an insider that works with camouflaged cars every day, I know it's frustrating to the public to see camo on cars that have had massive ad campaigns already like the Proto Z (I refuse to call it the 400Z as I'm still hoping Nissan calls it the 300Z). At this point, the production car will certainly be close, but likely different in many small ways when compared to the Proto Z. One of two outcomes will occur. Either people will like features of the Proto Z better and complain about how Nissan dumbed it down for production or they will think the production Z looks better and Nissan's big ad campaign will be outdated, It's a no-win situation, so the best thing to do is hide the final details until it's 100% ready. The main reason for the ongoing camo though is that pre-production cars are far from perfect. These cars are not built on the production assembly line and haven't gone through anything close to production quality checks, so if a car "looks" like a production car on the street, people will assume it is and their impression will be severely tarnished if they see poor panel gaps, missing trim, mismatched panel colors or 3D printed parts that aren't quite right. Anything that's plastic would not yet be grained. Manufacturers add graining to the tooling after they are sure the plastic parts will not need to change. In addition, many of these cars started life many, many months ago before the Proto Z reveal, so they never got a real paintjob. Most get a simple black or white paintjob just to cover the metal so they don't rust - think rattle can. They were camouflaged when built, so removing the stickers now would not only reveal terrible looking cars, but much of the paint would peel off with the sticker removal. Depending on the car's intended usage, some parts are never installed and others have been removed or cut up to fit test equipment. Prototypes are not meant to look good. They are built for testing. Some are powertrain calibration, others NVH, Vehicle Dynamics, brakes, etc. The engineers usually don't see what the production car will truly look like until the public reveal. We see the same ugly prototypes as the public.

Seal removal tool

Finished the battery shelf remake. My personal M.O. is to always attempt to achieve perfection, and then live with the results, which are never perfect. Each task is really just practice for the next one. In any case, I can live with it since it'll be covered by a couple of parts. All new sheet metal. The OEM shelf is 18 ga., while the metal I used is 16. Decided to run with the .062 to give me extra metal to sand down for final blending, but forming those 1/4" flanges around the curved cutouts was very, very hard. Reused the vertical support underneath, and decided it too would be bolted in place aot being welded to the shelf. I just had to add some meat to the bottom flange to get it to meet the inner fender well properly. Currently waiting for confirmation of shelf location before drilling bolt holes everywhere.

L Looks scary. Interesting experiment.

Plus, yards of beer at the Golden Bee Pub ...

I didn't read all of this thread completely but there's a lot of misinformation here. Any S30 that had Metallic paint WAS TWO STAGE from the factory. Solid colors (nonmetallic) were single stage enamel. If (where) your CLEARCOAT is gone or peeling off you will NOT get good results trying to buff it! You can't buff basecoat and get a good result. You need to either leave your paint as is or have the car repainted - especially since you're dealing with silver.

The plastic tank was brilliant. It fit the Z with no mods. I'm guessing it was the same guy.

CO, I would be more than happy to test your new “bloats”, but I need the temps to drop below the 117 it is today!! Let me know if you want to send my way.

I'm hoping!!!

Black Wrinkle, then sand off the lines and letters like @siteunseen . If you opt to get any wrinkle coats, use a hand-held heat gun to get the wrinkle finish consistent. I learned this when I used it to coat the triangulation brace.

FYI, The wrap I ended up using was manufactured by Vivid. My son and I wrapped a second car afterwards with Avery material which we liked better due to it's stretch. We made several mistakes with the 260Z and had to go with matching paint on the headlight buckets. Now that we have a little more experience, I think will rewrap the car next year in metal flake red and include the headlight buckets by using knifeless-cut tape. The advantages of a wrap for us is that we can change the color, we can do it ourselves, the color options and special affect vinyl are numerous. Note that the black stripe on my Z was done because I wasn't able to smooth the vinyl out without a wrinkle on the hood. I'm attributing this to Vivid's rigidity and hope to do the hood in one sheet when I go with Avery. Note that the air dam on the car was paint as was the headlight buckets. It is definitely a two person job. Avery offers group classes in car wrapping for around $900. At the end of the class, you get a $900 credit for their wrapping material. I might take their class next year so I can get some training beyond You Tube.

I like them all too. I've got black on my 240 and natual bead blasted on the 280. The black looks good against all the aluminum of the carbs and intakes to my eyes plus it never gets dirty.

Speaking of center finders, here is a new cool tool of that ilk that appeared on the ol’ FB feed today. https://www.centerquic.com/?fbclid=IwAR2qYZtaqWD0fYPMFBh5QQUuivk6HbW9_4nqL0SCk1PHutx-C6B4nT2LYQ8_aem_AZBxVPZMyQBRqlSeY_76rQlEL4s4Lbpu5c3QIw0Efp9DDIcEwJj3dOuf_5xhVlkR5e5Yxr72CvqgWUDoomgqObEK5WAORsFvh2zrzCo13nXQgt05YdcFxIWGmVjZMtXM92Y $168 USD. To click or not to click “Purchase now”…

Now that makes more sense

IMHO, wrap is great for race cars and it's great when done clear as a paint protector, but every wrapped car I've seen has had the same issues which is minor lifting at the edges on convex panels. Shortly after even 1mm of vinyl lifts a hair, dirty water gets under the edge and it starts looking shabby. This will continue over the life and get worse over time. Wrap is a fantastic temporary coating. That's why it's so good on race cars. All of the sponsors and graphics can be printed right on the wrap. A good quality paintjob is still the better option for long-term durability on a street car.

Yes! It does look good 90% of the time. Rock that baby until the tires fall off.

Thanks for all your insight, I really appreciate it! Probably just gonna rock it! Doesn’t look half bad in pics from 30 feet 😂

I’d try some Meguiar’s #7 Show Car Glaze. Really good with old single stage paint, but it can be a work out. https://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/how-to-articles-by-mike-phillips/100613-7-rub-down-technique-mike-phillips.html If you don’t know Autogeek, it’s a great site with tons of good information on detailing and well moderated with friendly people and very little childish BS. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Here are pictures of the measurements from my '70 plus a couple to show the fitment. The shelf on mine is definitely on a slope front to rear but is quite level left to right. Mine measured 8" above frame rail close to the firewall and 8-1/4" at the forward edge. Dist from the firewall about 13/16". It has touchup paint work but no body work in this area.

Got a few updates, was just bs’ing about the car and he ordered one new from the dealer in silver because he thought it was sharp whole story behind it they sold it out form under him that’s how he got the blue one. He loved the blue a lot and somewhat the green but not the most favorite. He has my uncle looking for the vin but very little chance since the month my uncle owned it he got divorced and in a bad accident and didn’t really drive it. He said if he could he search for one and fix it up if it didn’t have rust but i was very pushy on getting the one he had. I found out the wheels that were on it also that he liked so that’s atleast some good news. If we can’t find his I may need assistance finding a somewhat rust free car that could even use alittle work

Wayne, I had looked forward to coming this year but I just can't get all the parts pulled together. It's like a conspiracy or something to keep me from going. But I'm gonna get back one way or another!

@wal280z I wish. While I do live about 45 minutes northwest of Lynchburg, my car won't be ready to drive for a long while. Someday though...

Getting close to the 60 day to kick off..... @SteveJ, @Patcon Sorry to hear you won't be coming. Charles, I had something for you (actually for your boy - a diecast 510 wagon. @S30Driver @Zup, glad to hear the Arkansas Jim's will be there @Captain Obvious You can do IT!!! @ETI4K you weren't zipping around the county roads south of Lynchburg 2 weeks ago?? Saw a yellow 240Z heading in the opposite way coming from Hwy 501

Now on the opposite side of lucky a s s me here's my 240 original paint after a good buff out.

I'm a bored rattle trap that reads everything.

Two words for you my friend- mini split.

If it had clear coat it's not original singal stage paint the original to the early Zs. My 9/76 has singal stage paint. It fades but that's it, no clear coat failure. My cars, my guess is if you have clear coat spots it's not the original paint. Paint it to your taste.

Agreed. There aren't many things worse than a cheap paint job. They tend to raise uncomfortable questions, the most damaging being, 'What's he trying to hide?'.

You can buy them at any auto parts store. No need to wait for delivery, just get them when you need them.

Just went out and measured my 73. The way you have it sitting it needs to be 7 7/8" off the frame rail, close as I could get. The distance from the firewall is 7/8" measured at the front on the flat part, and also 7/8" measured on the square bump out, it appears the tray is at a slight angle for that to happen. Maybe CanTechZ can/should verify my measurements. Hope this helps. Bonzi Lon

It's "Slosh". When the car accelerates, the fuel sloshes to the back side of the bowl, when the car decelerates, the fuel sloshes to the front. This causes the float to change its height slightly. The acceleration also affects the float. If acceleration of water places more at the back wall of the bowl, the water pressure will push the float towards the front of the bowl (put a rubber duck in a bucket of water then spin it on a turntable. The Duck will be forced towards the centre|). It is a very complex physics problem and the key is that it affects both carbs in the opposite way due to hinge location asymmetry.

One of the possible drawbacks of the 90lbs of force or the 4313 cartridge is it requires more closing force than the original lift and at least in my case resulted in the lift support on the body being pushed away and bending. Had to strip the area down and re-weld that support, now the support on my car could have just been weak or poorly welded from the factory, I don't know but for the one lift early cars maybe a 70-80lb lift should be considered.

As a very cool aside, I recently acquired a 3D printer. This is a tool that I absolutely needed so I could make parts that are NLA. Seemed like a good story. Anyway, I needed a new boot for the wiper linkage. Used the one I had, with bits missing, extrapolated where I needed to, and printed it using TPU (first use of TPU). I tried it on for size last night; TPU is flexible, but it's not as flexible as the OEM part. I thought for sure the new boot would blow apart as I stretched it over the end of the linkage. Well, it held and the fit is nice and tight. I haven't checked its fit over the motor yet. I expect that one day I'll unearth it for the purpose of reinstalling it. That'd be a good time to check the fit, I think.

Go ahead and replace it I say. The Exedy is a great choice. I have one in both my Zs. https://www.amazon.com/EXEDY-06009-OEM-Replacement-Clutch/dp/B001B5D7TE