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The label clearly indicates it has some sort of petroleum in the mix, and water is not even mentioned. I'm assuming that the water isn't mentioned because it doesn't have to be. I'm thinking they only had to list the potentially dangerous stuff and water doesn't count. So I'm wondering the same thing(s) as you about the mixing of water and petroleum bases, and my assumption goes like this... The base is mostly water, but it contains some petroleum compounds as well. I'm thinking they are emulsified together in the final product. The (small?) amount of petroleum compounds are held in suspension in a water base? In any event, my bottle is liquid enough to use now and I guess I'll find out in a year if adding all that water was OK or a bad idea.

Well @Mark Maras, I have to retract my previous claim that water won't work. I put a little blob of the dried out compound in a small cup and added a little bit of whatever I could find in the area. Naptha, WD-40, carb cleaner, mineral spirits, acetone. None of them did anything at all even with way more than enough mixing. Just did not want to combine at all. So, since everything oil / petroleum based just ran away, I decided to retry the other (water) camp. And after starting over with a fresh blob, I added a some water and mixed. After a bunch of mixing, it started to loosen up and once it started to loosen, it went quicker. So in the end, water was the answer, but I had to add more than I expected. It was kinda like adding corn starch wrong. You get lumps and if doesn't look like it's going to work. But if you add more water and mix enough, it eventually smooths out. Thanks for the help!!

Glad I found this thread. I re-foamed & upholstered my original Z seats in leather. They look great, but are really uncomfortable & lacking in support. I have lower back issues & sliding around on the seat just doesn't work for me. Since I'm getting a 2006 350Z in a couple weeks to use for a drivetrain conversion in my 75 280Z, I think I'll add the seats to the work. Probably do them long before the drivetrain, actually.

I'm not sure I mentioned it on here yet. A neighbor who is also a car nut noted that a good friend of his up in RI has a 2006 350Z w/6 speed that will not pass inspection due to rust in the rear subframe. He suggested that I would perhaps be interested in the car to use as a donor. That is the ideal way to go, as I will have all the EMS, modules, etc., and everything else that I might need. The price he is asking is less than I would pay for a CD009 trans & VQ35DE motor, and he's going to deliver it in a couple weeks 🙂. Apex Engineered makes a front subframe designed to properly locate the Nissan V6, so I will likely go that route & then fabricate whatever else I need from there.

My old trusty bottle of 3M rubbing compound is almost too dried out to use. It's more like a thick paste now than a liquid. Think more like peanut butter than mustard. Anyone have any tips on what solvent to use to thin it back out again? Old, dried out, and pasty. Happens to the best of us, right?

Disagree! I got a special pair of eyes...!! Jokes aside.. most cars if you can get the past of the car, and use magnets, some special (small) places that are almost always rotted cleaned to the metall, then you cán tell if it's a good body. Also use a endoscope for internal rust! NO no... most people drive on the RIGHT right side! (Just messing with yeh..) It's NOT a problem at all as the chassis is made for both! LHD and RHD! Didn't you see this already?? So it's very easy to put the parts from your RHD on the LHD car..... 🙂 I would think it over as Namerow has a point here.. you never know how big a mess a specialist still can make.. (Don't ask!!! pffff...) When the car is completely ready for a drive on a nice day.. then you will know what it all costed, not earlyer..

I was going to suggest that as well, but this is a 75 he's working on and most of my experience is with the later years. I can confirm the later years used a "Phillips" head hex on the clamp, but I've never personally been inside a 75 AFM. Can you confirm that they used the same hardware in 75 that they did in the later years? It certainly doesn't look like any other hardware I've seen on a Z, but can you confirm? Just for reference, here's the insides of my 77, It's different in a bunch of ways:

I may be completely off the mark here, but I wonder what it would cost to ship a rough-but-solid 240Z chassis from the US west coast to your location in Perth. I'm going to guess US$10,000. Add, say, $2,000 to hire someone trustworthy in the US (CZCC member?) to act as your buying/shipping agent. Add $US 10,000 to buy the car. Let's say, US$25,000 when all is said and done. Using this approach, the car might need a bit of metal work but it should be within your means as DIY work. I wonder if this might prove to be a much faster route toward your end goal? Keep in mind that you never know where you'll end up if you hire a local commercial shop to do the metal work on your current Z. Unknowns: 1) total cost; 2) days/months/years to complete; 3) quality of work delivered; % of work actually completed before either the price goes up or you lose patience). As tempting as it might be to turn your Z over to a commercial specialist, it may just open up a completely new can of worms. It can be de-risked by using progress payments based on completion milestones, but I doubt that most shops are going to be willing to sign such a contract.

Got my 350Z seats re-covered and installed.

Well the uploader finally worked. You can see I had runners 3/16" flat stock from mount to mount and horizontal to go seat frame side to side. That was all welded together to make the mount brackets and of course welded to the seat frame. I need to pull them back out for paint and will take more pics