motorman7

Bump....any reviews on these? Looks like a better option than Just Dashes. The texture appears to be the same as Just Dashes and not the original style. Hard to tell the difference though unless you get up close pics.

Thanks! The styling matches the front of the house. I am pretty happy with how it turned out. I am guessing my wife may want several more. Since I am using up all the garage space, she wants storage space.

I finished the 'tear down' and will now start sanding the entire car using 80 grit sand paper. I will pretty much sand off all of the paint down to the metal over the entire car. After that it will be off to Miguel's for body work and paint. Tear down went very well and did not break a single bolt. Everything looks to be in pretty good condition, so I am very happy with the hardware. It looks like the car was hit near the drivers side door, so I will be curious to see what that looks like as I start sanding. Will probably be sanding off and on over the next two to three weeks, then we will ship her out. Attached are some pics. Also added a pic of the back yard shed I built.....to store my boxes of car parts of course. And yes, the shed even has a sky light, insulation and drywall per my wife's direction. I guess she wants me to be comfortable if the need ever arises that I need to sleep in there ?.

Yes, that was Genius! I am very impressed. Not that it matters, but I would recommend that you keep the entire system in tact and keep the air injectors on and the smog system operational. I still have this on my '70 and it runs wonderfully, never any problems. Unless you plan on racing the car, I would leave them on. Also, I think it adds to the value of the car. For what it's worth, I have always felt that if the owner had no problem removing the smog system from a car, what else has been modified or changed. It's just the beginning. When looking for a Z that I would purchase personally, I always look for the smog system. If it's gone, I'm gone.

More tear down pics. Got the trans and fuel tank out. Fuel tank looks almost brand new. I wonder if that was replaced. This has really been easy to tear down...not a single broken rusted bolt (I probably just jinxed it with that statement)

My roadster is currently on display in the Petersen museum in LA. There are some nice pics from some car sites on the links below. http://www.turnology.com/news/the-petersen-automotive-museum-is-turning-japanese/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/car-design/a20884634/the-deepest-dive-into-jdm-rarities-youll-ever-take/ https://www.topgear.com/car-news/classic/these-amazing-classic-japanese-cars-are-going-display#3 https://www.hagerty.com/articles-videos/articles/2018/05/25/japanese-auto-industry-at-the-petersen-museum#viewGallery/image-full/38 https://jalopnik.com/check-out-the-incredible-and-rare-japanese-cars-at-the-1826336863

True, seems like there are never enough pictures, and never pics of the exact item you are looking for. I do have quite the library of pics here now. I would bet that I have over 10K pics of 240Z's in some form of disassembly. That always helps.

Continued tear down of the white car, taking detail pics along the way. Definitely had to take pics of the headlight switch and turn signal wiring because you know that I will remember that the white wire connects to the green wire, and the black/white wire connects to the blue/white wire ?. I did get the dash out and heater and fan out. Also nice to see the original heater hoses with the wire clamps on them. Also got the door hardware stripped. Here are a few pics. With another 4 hours I can probably have this completely stripped and ready for sanding.

Will do, thanks!

I'll be there! Just got the plane tix and reserved hotel spot. Wife coming as well since we will be spending time with family out there. Looking forward to seeing everyone....and the Z's of course ☺️

I think it is all in the lighting. The pics below are the same block, just with different light. Also, in the third pic, you can see that the original bracket color matches the block color. I have also sprayed Les Canaday's paint next to the California Datsun color and there is no detectable difference. Pics of the block under sunlight are even lighter.

Looks Awesome! Gotta love that weldment on the oil pan, very unique to the early Z's.

Here is the brake booster pic. Needs to be cleaned up a bit.

Yes...bills are paid, wife is pretty much 'retired' (she volunteers a lot), so we are doing fine. I know my wife's concern is that she feels that I spend more time with my cars than her. She refers to my cars as 'The Mistresses'. I think my wife is OK with me getting the cars because it means she can spend more money on the house. Whenever she wants something done on the house, like a room remodel, new tile, and the like, she just has to say, 'You spent money on the cars, so I want to spend money on the house'. For her, the cars are leverage.

This is a 1972 and I am pretty sure the booster is stock since the master cylinder is stock, but I will double check. Will try and post a better picture of it on Thursday.

So, I am actually starting work on this guy again. Slow, but it's coming along. I was sidetracked for a bit with the 'Deja Vu' project and also had some house stuff to fix up. (I actually built a nice custom shed to store stuff in, like car parts. I will get pictures of the shed later. Very happy with how it turned out.) Anyway, I am starting the tear down as you can see in the pics. I have learned that the key to this is to have nicely marked tubs to put your parts in. Engine parts go in the engine tub, interior parts in the interior tub, parts to be zinced go in the zinc tub. And as always, take lots of pics. I love how original the car is; lots of the original wire clamps, heater hoses, smog hoses, bolts that have never been removed and are in good condition. This has been very easy to disassemble so far. Took out the original antenna and bench tested; it works great. Got the motor pulled out last weekend with the help of @Montezuma. Hopefully, I will have this stripped in a month or two, then off to Miguel's for paint. Here are some pics.

I always use the copper coat on the head gaskets. It's recommended by Les Canaday who does a lot of racing with these motors. Also Make sure the threads in the block are clean (compressed air) and the threads on the bolts are clean (when re-using the bolts). I usually wire wheel the bolt threads and then use a lubricant for the install to help reduce galling.

Here are some of the award links. Would be nice to have a video of the presentation. http://autoweek.com/gallery/car-life/winners-la-jolla-concours Pic # 23 https://www.lajollaconcours.com/2018-winners

Yes, there were some great cars there. Mike Malamut's Mazda Cosmo took first in the Japanese class. His Mazda Rebo and a Honda sport coupe were the 2nd and 3rd place winners. The Judges graded on restoration excellence. The 2000 GT was easily the priciest car in the Japanese class and garnered a lot of attention. I would venture to say that my Z got almost as much attention as the 2000 GT. The show was very busy which blows my mind since the cost to enter is way high at $70. I usually attend the free show outside and peek through the fence at the cars inside. The cars in the show were just insane; Bugatti's old and new, Rolls Royce's and ton of Mercedes, Duesenbergs, McLarens, a 1963 Lola GT that had like an 8 man pit crew prepping it before the show, a charger Super Bird. I could go on and on. Amazing cars and a lot of fun. Glad the 240Z was well received. Oh, one other cool thing happening here: the Petersen Museum in LA ( https://www.petersen.org/) is doing a year long exhibition starting in May contrasting Japanese and US car design styles. They asked if my roadster was available to present as part of the display, so I will be loaning that out to them for a year. Nice to see the Japanese cars getting some visibility. Also nice to get some free storage . I need space

TV clip from the local news channel. KUSI concours video.MOV

Had a great weekend at the La Jolla Concours this weekend. Brought my 1970 240Z and the roadster. This is the first year that the La Jolla show has had a Japanese Class so I had to offer my full support. It was a fabulous show as always and had a great time. The party the night before was epic and way worth high entry fee (The party is an all you can eat and drink affair catered by La Jolla's finest restaurants). Anyway, I was interviewed by the local TV station, KUSI, I will try and find a video clip of that. I also was presented the "Honorary Judges Choice Award/Trophy" which is probably the best award I have ever received. The Honorary Judge has the entire field to choose from and he chose my Z, just barely, over a Ferarri that he liked. The emphasis on the award is preservation so that definitely helped. So, I will try and post some clips if they come available. The Award presentation was absolutely phenomenal. I felt like a rock star with all the people at the drive up presentation and photographers. They talked for about two minutes about the car and the award while the gallery and photographers snapped pics. Was way cool.

Yes, paint is Global PPG

Hi Jim, Paint was paid for in the same manner that I was. Payment was in advance through Paypal. Again,the customer was great with all this. Miguel would let me know when payment was needed and I would let the customer know. I will double check, but pretty sure the paint was all PPG brand. 10. Just for clarification on the paint and body work: The thing that really shows the quality is the work that was done on the panel alignment and the creases and lines along the body and hood. Too often the lines that form the hood bump and the side line (not sure the correct name for those) are smoothed over, rounded or uneven. They typically lose their sharpness when taken to the average body shop. Miguel was very careful with the lines which is what makes the panels look great. They are sharp, even and straight, very nice!

Epilogue: So, this is actually my first ‘contracted’ 240Z restoration (Yes, we had a signed contract). Overall, I would say that it went surprisingly well. The restoration was done within the contract estimated cost of $40K and time frame of one year (almost). The breakdown on the costs for the customer are as follows: Paint: $12,000 Parts and Material: $14,885.28 Labor: $12,476.25 For a grand total restoration cost of: $39,361.53 Payments for the paint were made by the customer directly to the paint shop Payments for parts and labor costs were made by the customer through Paypal. Payments were all made in advance in $1500 increments. When the $1500 was spent, I would send an invoice and then the next payment was sent. This process worked very well and the customer was very prompt with payments and very supportive. The customer was able to monitor the progress through the blog and was very communicative and supportive during the restoration. This was done by e-mail and not through the blog. It was actually a very nice way to do things. For the most part, the restoration went as planned. Below are some of the items that were lessons learned or different than originally planned or expected. 1. Initially, the plan was to restore the car to what Hagerty’s would consider a Condition #2 car, similar to my orange Z, which I consider a condition #2. However, after the paint job, the project was kicked up a level to where the car would be in the Condition #1 category. As I mentioned earlier, paint and body work quality is a huge factor in a restoration. https://www.hagerty.com/apps/valuationtools/1972-Datsun-240Z 2. Quality paint and body work is expensive. I was hoping to get the paint done for $5-10K. This is what I discussed with the customer. I got a number of quotes and even considered Maaco (they did a nice job on my yellow Z, not on my silver Z). However, I had seen Miguel’s work and really wanted a great paint job so I went in that direction. The total cost of the paint job was $14,000. The customer paid $12K of this and I paid out of my labor cost $2K. The reason I covered $2K of the paint job was that I had told the customer $5-10K for paint, and obviously we blew way past that. The other reason is that I charged labor for my early prep and body work, all of which was removed by Miguel. So, no fair to charge the customer twice, so the right thing to do was to pick up some of the cost. On the next car I do, after I remove all the parts, car will go straight to Miguel for paint. No need for me to do any body work, although stripping most of the paint would not be bad. 3. One more item on paint: I would consider my Orange Z a condition #2 car, primarily because of the paint. This orange Z that I just finished is about 90% in the Condition #1 state. As you can see from the valuation tools page, the price difference between the 2 conditions is more than the total cost of the paint. Aside from the paint, I would say the cars are almost exactly the same. If I had to do it over, I would have taken my orange car to Miguel. I think the ROI is worth it for the paint. 4. Scope creep: Every engineer has experienced this. There were a couple of things that we added that were not part of my initial restoration plan. Originally the car had the slotted mags. The customer and I discussed the pros and cons of putting on the steelies and hubcaps and eventually we went in that direction. That was a bit of a cost hit over the original estimate. Polishing the mags would be about $300. Getting a set of nice steelies and hubcaps was over $1K when all said and done. Also, we ended up going with a nice reproduction of the original OEM exhaust instead of just replacing it with an off the shelf system. The OEM reproduction came out great and looks and sounds super.. Nice choice on both items. I will do this same system on my white one as well. (Special thanks to Carl Beck for bringing this to our attention). 5. Organizing everything in large storage boxes by section works out great. I had an engine box, an interior box, and an undercarriage box. This makes finding parts much easier. 6. I do a lot of my own zinc plating, but when doing large projects, taking stuff to the plating shop is the way to go. There were several times I brought a lot of parts to the plating shop and just paid the minimum $75 lot charge. This is a nice way to go as it is quick and they do a nice job. Powder coating is also relatively cheap. 7. Time wise, paint took a lot longer than I was expecting. I was thinking 1-2 months. I think it took 5 months. Fortunately I was able to do the engine and some undercarriage items during this period. 8. Parts are starting to get hard to find. It has been very helpful to have the support of the classiczcars.com site in hunting some of these things down. Thanks everyone! 9. Not sure if I could do another one in a one year time frame. Need to take into account, Vacations, Birthdays, weddings, car shows, home maintenance etc. These are some of the items that stand out the most on the restoration. I will add more as things come to mind if they are significant.

Hi Guy, The whole project was actually pretty enjoyable (for the most part) and educational. I think the most important thing I learned is that if you have a decent car to start with, then pay the extra money for a great paint job. That being said, I've actually started stripping and boxing the white car parts. I will sand it pretty bare, then send it off to Miguel to do the paint work, same as the orange car. For the orange car here, I will do a summary here at the end and quote costs, labor, lessons learned etc. I will probably continue the white car blog but not in as much detail. Good to hear from you again. Best regards, Rich