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The paint shop is done. They sent me a few pictures. They are not high resolution. So, they are all I have for now. Final tally = $14,079. And that, for a car that I paid $8900 for, and then put over 2000 hours of bodywork into. Damn. The hood is not on the car because they said it interferes with the fender bolts. I suspect they are seeing too much side to side play with the hood bolted to the hood hinges. I believe the rubber "blocks" that help align the hood when it shuts will keep any hood to fender bolt interference from occurring. In the end, they couldn't help themselves. Despite my directions, they did remove the doors. Thy did this so they could have better access to paint the door frames and door jambs the way they typically do. Same for the headlight housings and hood - I wanted them painted while in place. They removed them for painting. They also sprayed the inside and outside of the car at different times. They backed out some of the hours it took them to do things their way, (a lot of extra masking) and asked for forgiveness. I don't want to sound ungrateful to their efforts. However, a part of me wishes the effort was more similar to the original factory painting of the chassis. I'm looking forward to bring it back and getting started on assembly.

Hey Mark, had a look at some of the OE fender fastening screws and washers I have and the head thickness is standard for a JIS hex head capscrew. They are M6 and the head is 4mm thick. I did a check and current DIN M6 capscrews also have a head thickness of 4mm. The total height with a lock and flat fender washer is 7.5mm. Here us snippet from the parts book showing the original fasteners: For interest, I decoded the Nissan part number (08110-61210) for these screws to see if the specs match the screws from my 7/70. 08110-61210 BOLT 08 = standardize hardware prefix 11 = Hexagon bolt, low carbon steel 06 = 6mm diameter (M6) 12 = 12mm length 1 = Zinc cadmium coated 0 = filler to complete ten digits Decoding source: http://datsun1200.com/modules/mediawiki/index.php?title=NES_Part_Numbers#Strength Mine were the same as above except the length under the head is 16mm. They do have the number "4" marking on the head indicating low carbon.

Boy, got sidetracked with my daughters wedding, landscaping projects, contract work and life in general. Finally getting back to working on the Z now that all of that stuff is done. I finished the front end, installing the halogen headlights (will install relay kit later) front turn lights and side lights. I rebuilt the headlight holders which were freshly zinced, installing new screws, wire sleeving, new connectors and over shield. Installed the aftermarket antenna. I will post the brand name later as it was a pretty nice install. Added bullet connectors to mate to original harness. everything lined up well. I put in the new threshold vinyl and scuff plates. Also installed the Sparco seats. The rails on the Sparco seats are about half an inch wider than the stock seat rails so I had to drill 2 additional 3/8" holes to accomodate the wider rails. Started work on the fuel system. I mounted the K&N electronic fuel pump on the rear suspension brace after modifying the electrical wires and making a custom mount plate. I added about 8 inches in length and added bullet terminal to mate into the existing harness. Also started installing fuel lines. Should have the fuel system complete in a couple days. Installed shock tower braces front and rear. Will remove protective blue plastic once car is complete...or let owner do that. Will leave on for now to help prevent any scratches. Pics are below.

Success! I made all the changes we talked about, bled the system (again) and now have good pedal feel and brakes. I'm pretty sure, as you all suggested, the caliper issue was the key problem. Thanks for all your help....You Guys Rock!

The quick answer is no, I have not tried these replacement squeegee trims. Years ago I ordered replacements from Black Dragon and faced the same dilemma of paint damage when trying to warp the trim into shape. I ended up removing the rubber squeegee and transferring it to my OE trim. Now you have an alternative from the folks at PRP: replacment squeegee rubber to install to your OE trim. Check out the YouTube video. BTW, this info came to me via our fellow member @zed2

A little closer:

The sunroof and the arse about flare placement with the questionable wheel choice and tacky grille all detract from the car. I would not pay more than $40k USD for what appears to be a slap together car. For what my opinion is worth of course. And 240zGuild has low credibility IMHO. Given his recent past.

Just a thought exercise for anyone who cares to comment: Would "authentic Nissan parts off a period police car" carry a price premium over "authentic Nissan parts off a scrapped 240ZG", or even "authentic Nissan parts of unknown origin"? The way I personally figure it is: the car they were originally bolted on is presumably long-gone, so in my mind they are the same spare part, and therefore worth the same to me, with condition being the primary price differentiator. Other thoughts? But if I daydream a bit . . . If someone had for sale an example of a COMPLETE documented period Japanese 240Z police car with a G-nose - even if it was something that some rural police department had cobbled together in the mid-70's without the Sargent's knowing about it - IMHO yes, absolutely that would be worth paying a price premium for!

Indeed, and I seem to have hit a nerve with the (non) seller because he's picking me out for some specially-dedicated comments. As mentioned before, if you are going to put a car up for auction in a format which allows comments from both bidder and non-bidders then you MUST expect to occasionally get rivet-counting and nit-picking posts along with the - mostly rather inane - positives. Picking the seller up on things that are clearly mis-described ('brake ducts' that are not brake ducts, 'metal' that is actually FRP/composite etc) can actually help the seller - as schroeder pointed out to him. I think we saw a seller who - when it comes down to it - doesn't know as much about the car he's selling as he thinks he does. He countered my (now deleted) post about Japanese Fairlady 240ZG police cars with a link to an IMCD page featuring a movie prop car (which was not actually a genuine 240ZG model or indeed a genuine, even ex, Police car). I think the whole G-Nose 'from a Japanese Police car' story is more probably a tenth-hand misunderstanding of 'this G-Nose is just like they used on some Japanese Police cars', or similar.

The comments continue on that red G Nose 72 even though the auction ended yesterday. Apparently it's meant to be a show car, as The Guild guy inferred earlier. I copied the image before it gets removed as "non-constructive". Kind of feel bad for picking on the guy's car but he doesn't want to let things fade. He's asking over $40,000 for it, so he can't expect no questions asked. What does $40,000 get you? What he should do at this point is put that paper trail together, documentation of it's provenance to remove the mystery, and put it back on the market in the right way. $40,000 is a risk unless you have money to burn. Drama!

I did not have a spare differential band by hand, so i made a temp one myself. See if it holds for now... The Nylon belt isn't so strong either

2000 hours of prep is a lot! Figuring a cheap $50 an hour, adds $10k to the paint job. As long as the shading all matches, I would have preferred that they paint it the way they did. It's not factory exact, but not everything the factory did was the highest standard. It was done for production and these were cheap cars. They're not cheap cars anymore... It looks fabulous!!

Beautiful work.

The vendor made some other comments which are worth mentioning. He said that the Grande Nose parts turned up from Japan "still in their Police livery". If he could show photos of this, it would help his story. However, the only Police-specific 'livery' paint detail on an original 5-piece Grande Nose would be the white & black paint split on the headlamp cowls. The lower cowl panel would be painted black and the bonnet extension piece would also be black. The urethane front bumper on the Kanagawa Prefectural Police highway patrol Fairlady 240ZG is in its normal factory-supplied shade of metallic charcoal grey. Further, Nissan was still supplying genuine Grande Nose components in Japan right up through the 1990s as factory replacement parts. Unlike earlier factory pieces, the later items were supplied in a black gel coat finish. This would make it harder to identify "ex-Police" parts via colouring. He mentioned that the Grande Nose parts languished in US Customs for a long time before being released, as though this was some sort of positive. I don't see how? Is he linking this to their "ex-Police" nature? Seems more likely that they were mis-described in their shipment documentation or that the receiving party didn't know how to deal with international shipment procedures and/or import duties and taxes. Kind of a bizarre detail to add to an auction description either way. He also showed the Nissan parts boxes that the headlamp covers came in, and said that they will be supplied with the car to any buyer. So what happened to the originals that that were on the "ex-Police" parts? Lastly, which particular "ex-Police" 240ZG did these parts come from? There was no mechanism for ex-Police cars to fall into private hands in Japan, and - so I'm told - Police-specific componentry would be stripped out for possible re-use before the cars were scrapped. Yes, stock parts could theoretically make it onto the used parts market, but where's the paper trail? The number of Fairlady 240ZGs used as Police cars was vanishingly small, so which one was it? Here's a photo of a Fairlady 240ZG during its transformation into a Police car at (I believe) Nissan-affiliate TONOX's Tonouchi factory. I believe that this is the same car that is now in the Nissan Heritage Collection:

Thought I would jump in. SteveJ is working on my horns after I quickly became frustrated with their lack of function. I had the parts plated and powdercoated and then reassembled them with a rebuilding kit from a guy in Canada that was available on Ebay. The kit contained Mylar self-stick gaskets and all the nuts and bolts. The gaskets were a bit difficult to deal with after peeling off the backing. I didn't really like that they were sticky-back. Anyway, I thought I had reassembled them correctly, but got nothing out of them in terms of noise or vibration...hence enlisting Steve to come to the rescue. He may regret taking the project on, but I appreciate his kindness...Thanks, Steve...!

Maybe if it could be backed up with some provenance, there might be some kind of extra minority interest/novelty value. This comes back to my belief that the vendor doesn't really know what he's talking about. That would not be a problem if he wasn't making such a big point of the 'ex-Police' provenance in his sales pitch, but he is. Maybe I'm built different, but if I had bought a car with that as a big part of its story (and it seems like that was important to the vendor when he bought the car from Larry Steppe via 'The 240Z Guild'...) then I'd be wanting to research Fairlady 240ZGs in Japanese police use just out of interest if nothing else. Doesn't look like he's built that way... Here's a scan of a page from Nostalgic Hero Magazine, featuring the remarkably original Fairlady 240ZG which was donated by the Kanagawa Prefectural Police to the Nissan Heritage Collection back in the late 2010s. If you look at the lower cowl panel on the nose you can see a special modification which was carried out on this car. Multiple holes have been drilled into the lower cowl corners which are most likely an attempt to help cool the brakes. Such details are an example of the type of things which would be a help to aid provenance of any Police-specific claims:

I wish I had access to that kind of equipment or I would certainly give it a try. Nissan also says to inline hone the cam towers if they are removed and I've never seen anyone do that, I've always had good luck with spinning the cam, taping the towers and tightening the bolts method. People install new cams on old tower bearings all the time, the heads can't be that different from one another, or at least I'm hoping they are not.

That's a first. Should be an interesting project. The cam towers have a lot of mystery attached. Nissan says that if they're bad the whole head needs replacing. You probably have read that. Then, of course, there's the "tap the towers while spinning the cam" adjustment method if they're removed. Haven't seen towers from a different head tried. Seems like it should be possible, if the cam spins freely what could go wrong. Too bad they don't have "tower saver" journal inserts. Maybe you could make some.

Well here's where I'm at. I cut the shaft; drilled, tapped, faced off the ends; made a spacer from some scrap; and used a short section of all thread to piece it all together. This increased the length by 0.29 inches. I'll need to weld the stack in a couple spots to withstand the torque. I'll then weld the regulator back together. If all works well, I have a second one to do. Thank you all for the input.

I finally got my fixed cnc stacks in! They look amazing

Hey Yarb thanks, I really like helping when I can. I have been helped many times from this site and when I can pay back I do.

Yeah, I already bought the rubber squeegee & replaced one - the issue for me is that one of my moldings is damaged & I don't want to look at it, hence the full replacement.