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To digress sightly from the thread's main subject (sorry OP), here's an example of what the cars were going through on rallies: English team Withers Of Winsford entered an ex-Works Fairlady Z-emblemed Datsun 240Z rally car - wearing the personalised UK license plate 'CAL 1' of company owner Mr Cal Withers - in the 1973 TAP Rally of Portugal, driven by hotshoe Englishman Chris Sclater and navigated by Dutch specialist Bob De Jong. The service crew were forced to repair the screen pillar joints - which were parting company - mid-event, assisted by the staff of Portuguese Datsun distributors Entreposto. They took the screen out and either brazed or gas-welded the pillars back together... At that point the car had already taken part in the 1972 Acropolis Rally in Greece and the 1972 RAC Rally in the UK. Perhaps not surprising that the bodyshell was starting to get a little bit 'baggy'...

Thanks bluez. So it definitely looks like between 7/70 and 12/70 they changed the markings from stamped-in to cast-in. Haha!! Another detail to look for on the early cars for authenticity. Stock class judges be aware! "It's got an early style M/C." "Yeah, but it's not an early early style."

Well I’ll be dipped! Reach my hand up under the dash, feeling around for the turn signal flasher, and down dropped these wires, labeled and all! What a deal. I’ll buy a flasher unit and I think we’ll be in business. Thanks all, and hopefully my saga helps someone down the road.

Plastic repair is one of those things I’ve been experimenting with frequently in the last year or so. The usual, interior plastic panels, consoles yes, broken eye glass frames, toy repair, you name it. These are my favorite findings and tools 1. Plastic welding. Basically a wide flat soldering iron with filler “wire” of various plastic species. Melt the substrate, add filler, smear it all over. 2. Wire staples in various shapes, that you heat up and press across a crack that melt then harden into the plastic thickness, binding the two sides together. 3. Build up missing areas with UV cure epoxy resin. This is my new favorite. Also makes a good glue for plastics. Used to buy in small expensive gluing kits (Goggle Bondic) but now UV cure resins are everywhere in the hobby world and are cheap.

Got it. So it sounds like choices to fill that large visible joint after welding was either lead or plastic filler? And they chose the lead.

Glad you found it! You may want to consider going with a LED compatible flashers (blinker and hazard). When I put my car back together the running light fuse was getting really hot. I swapped all the bulbs and flashers to LED and it made a huge difference. Several threads on this. I think I bought everything from Amazon.

Had to get several things squared away on the truck - it's annual state inspection is due. Main thing was the tail lamp connections - since I drove it for a year with no covers over the back of the tail lights, the sockets had all got crud on them, and sometimes the indicators would come on through the brake light circuit and so forth. All indications of bad grounds. I have several new bulb sockets, so I dug those out and cleaned up the connections on the tail light circuit boards. Besides that it was just odds and ends that they would look at as part of the safety check. I got it inspected this evening, no problems there thankfully. Since I didn't have a lot of time, I focused on making a rack to store the wood that I had outside - the tarp I was using seen better days, and wasn't keeping the water off the wood. So I had to clean and dry them all . Figured it would be safe it to store them indoors. I used pieces of tubing from the canopy I had used to cover the X1/9 when I painted it back in 2018, and set those in the angle iron with six of the longer Fiat head bolts (welded in place)

We were at the car show at Zcon. I believe @gnosez posed the question. He asked about the lead at the quarter to roof joint. Matsuo San was a guest speaker and ViP at that Zcon. He said it was to let the car "breathe". We suggested "flex" and he agreed. He said if the car couldn't flex there it would flex at the windshield. He implied that the A pillar could break or the windshield could come out.