motorman7

Yes, I would agree too that the judging was very fair except for the write down on the oil pan weld and the lack of air cleaner decals. This is the way my low serial number car came out of the factory, so to be marked off for that is wrong. However, since I was nowhere close to 270 points, I won’t say much beyond this.

I think it is not so much pain as it is disappointment in what is considered important in judging. It’s the whole Pam Anderson debate: do you like the original or do you like the new modified version. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the ZCCA judging tends toward the later while I prefer the former. In the case of ZCON judging: 1. A seat with new upholstery with the wrong or modified pattern would score better than an original seat that sags in the middle 2. New carpet with the incorrect pile would score better than the original carpet that is faded. 3. An air cleaner that is painted an off color orange would score better than an original with a scratch. 4. An engine with fresh decals and a later model oil pan (no welds) would score better than an original (low serial number) car that had a welded oil pan and no decals on the air cleaner. That’s what is disappointing to me. Unfortunately, that is the way the cars are judged. There are no bonus points for having the original 40 year old parts on your car. Bring on the silicon implants and liposuction. Just my thoughts…Peace out

241 Total: -11 on exterior, -21 for engine, -27 interior. 40 year old carpet and seats didn't help the interior points.

I finally got the judging sheets in the mail for my car from the 2012 ZCON, which I think was about 4 months ago. Not sure why it took so long, but nice to finally see the sheets. In general, I am not too disappointed with the assessment. Most of the write downs can be attributed to the fact that the car is 40 years old, so point deductions for wear are a given. I thought I had the car pretty dog gone clean, but there were still some areas that were marked off for dirt. Will have to do a better job with the detailing. Should have had my daughter there, she details the car much better than I do. There definitely is a difference in judging standards among the three judges. The Exterior judge was quite generous. The Interior and engine judges were much more hard-line. The interior judge deducted points without even saying what was wrong on half the items. He did catch a couple small things (on the few that he did comment on) that I was not aware of, so that is good to know. The engine judge filled in all the comments and deducted a lot of points for dirt. Not much I can say about that, I thought the motor was pretty clean. He took off points for the original factory weld on the oil pan. I guess your supposed to trash your original factory oil pan and buy a newer one? Anyway, that's my only beef. Otherwise, good job guys!

Slow going. spent too much time making small updates. Got the oil pan nut on the wrong side. Need to fix that.

My bad....was speed reading

Looks like it has a buyer. I phoned owner and he said someone gave him a deposit for the car. I told him to give me a call if it falls through. Sounds like it was pretty original, with matching numbers motor. Oh well, hopefully it goes to a good owner.

UUuum...it's $9,500. Not 1K. It would be in my garage right now if it were 1K.

This one looks interesting CLASSIC 1970 DATSUN 240Z ORIGINAL CONDITION! SERIAL # 646!!

Hi Carl, Nice commentary on the plating. The only item that seemed off was the ‘dull silver’ of the plating and the yellow chromate making it shiny. In my plating experience, dull silver will result in dull chromate. If it’s not shiny coming out of the zinc plating bath, the chromate will not make it shinier. Additives to the zinc plating bath allow you to adjust the ‘shiny factor’. That’s the nice feature about doing this at home. Also, to get the ‘rainbow’ effect, I use a short 20-30 second dip in blue chromate before the 1-2 minute dip in the yellow chromate. Warm DI rinse after this and heat dry and you are good to go. A couple other comments on the whole bolt thing: 1. The easiest way to go about this is to order new nuts and bolts on line as a number of others have noted. Unless you are going for a ZCON gold medallion, very few people will notice that your bolt heads are off. Only the few of us anal retentive Z-junkies will notice. Just make sure they are quality parts. 2. If you do send your parts to a plating service, they will throw all of the parts in a big bucket and leave you to sort these out. Even with great pictures it will be difficult to get the correct bolt in the correct hole for final assembly. Just something to consider. If you install the wrong bolt in the wrong place and try it in several other places, now you have worn your plating off. a. Another issue with sending out to plate is you may not like the plate job. Parts could come back dull, too dark, etc. (That’s why I started doing my own) b. If you go this route, make sure you have all the parts you want to plate in that batch. Will cost time and money to go back for second and third plating batch. c. If you don’t do your own prep work, this gets expensive as you will pay by the hour for them to wire wheel/sand blast your parts. Also as stated here several times, GIGO, the parts have to look good and clean before they go to the plater. d. No guarantee you will get the parts back that you sent in. You may get some additional, may lose some. 3. If you do choose to do your own plating, it will cost about $500 for a decent set-up. I personally use the Caswell product with a B-K power supply. ‘Blue’ has a very good write-up on the whole plating process which would be good to read before moving in this direction. a. Only go in this direction if you plan on doing this on a number of cars, otherwise it is not very cost effective. b. The beauty of this is that you can plate whenever you want and get your parts done same day if needed. You can also make adjustments to the system to get the exact finish you are looking for. c. Also, I use the zip lock baggy method and label all parts in small batches. When I plate, I plate one baggy at a time and keep them organized. Makes assembly much simpler and saves time searching for parts. Zip-loc’s, one of the best tools in my tool box. Anyway, just my thoughts and good luck. Best regards, Rich

Yes, it will fit in well there. We took it for a drive today....very nice car. I am sure my Z would smoke it though.

It has the 1.8 litre motor but 2.3 muffler. PO said it wa a straight swap. Nice sounding motor and very nice ride. My son is just thrilled with it. I love the styling of the CRZ but was a bit bothered by the visibility. Ended up getting an Elantra that gets 40 MPG...uh oooops, 38 MPG highway. Nice lines as well. Didn't want to deal with the batteries. The original Honda CRX is epic.

Interesting, it was not intentional. I think it turned out that way because the weather was cloudy and overcast.

Actually, my son bought the Z, I just co-signed. And obviously, it's a Z3. Very nice looking car and runs great. We did a little detail work and took some pics with the yellow 240. Sweet cars

Hi Mike, Thanks for the feedback. It's nice to see the progress. The more detail that gets added, the better it looks. The head is a bit of a challenge. Lots of crevices. This is fun as long as I do just an hour here and there. More time than that and it starts turning in to work. It will be way cool when we can start assembling the major components. Best regards, Rich

So many details on this thing. Slowly coming along though

Finally have a little free time to work on the model again. Added some more detail to the block. Getting the head and valve cover started as well. May even get to some suspension components over the holidays. Ten days off, Wooo Hoooo:laugh:

Oil Pan update. Added the stiffening rib. Weldment will be a bit of a challenge. Not sure how much detail I want to add here. There is a lot to do.

Got a series 1 oil pan modeled.

Started working on the block. Attached is the basic form but it still needs a lot of detail and clean up. Block.zip

Grrrrrr.......like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa ..........I know, I know

Just went through the pictures again. That interior says 8K miles. Very little sag in the seats, clean wood on the steering wheel as well as the black paint, although it may have been touched up. The foot pad on the floor mat is intact and it looks to be the correct carpet. Radio knobs are very clean. Very nice interior indeed. In spite of the muffler discrepancy, the chrome in the muffler area is very clean. On my ’70 with 97K miles, the exhaust has definitely effected the chrome finish and rubber in that area. The chrome and rubber finishers look to be very clean on this car. Now, how to explain the engine? So many scenarios here. Owner could have used an engine cleaner on it and not rinsed thoroughly before running motor hot. Car could have been kept in a coastal environment with salt in the air. Maybe in an industrial area where dew point would cause water to be slightly acidic. These last two might also effect the rear muffler. Hard to say. Would really be nice to have a set of eyes trained eyes look at this and report back. Sometimes pictures are very forgiving of a cars faults.

i'm betting the throttle linkage on the silver was refurbed along with the carbs. I think the smog rail is a better indicator of mileage.

It would be nice to see some undercarriage pictures. That is always pretty telling.

Mine has the 2k mile limitation as well s the "limited in driving to and from show's or events and not used for daily driving". Works for me