inline6

I thought your car was silver? You have more than one?

It's been a while since I posted an update. I went on vacation for a bit. However, I made some progress this weekend and a bit last as well. I put the heater box back together. Some of these pics are old, as I sand blasted and painted the heater box early on in the restoration. And, I worked on getting everything back in the dashboard. For the side vents, I purchased NOS chrome ones, and managed to track down vent housings that have the vertical "rib" that keep the chrome vents from rotating all the way sideways. Both vent directors fit nice and tight. I also installed an aftermarket glove box. Some are better than others, and this one is a nice. The original had an R on it, written with what looks to me like a white grease pencil: Putting the steering column in was a pain! For a while, I felt like I had been beat up, as all the hard and sharp edges of the seat brackets and weld flange on the top of the rocker panel were digging to me. Next time I have to spend time upside down on the floor I am adding some temporary padding!

I am planning to have some carpets made. I'd like to find a good heel pad I could use. And am looking for some donor pieces that could be used as reference - condition not that important. Anyone have any original 71 carpet pieces you'd be willing to part with?

I see that this was a hot topic back in 2008:

Getting closer to the point where I will need carpets to finish the car. I find the carpets in the Green BAT car to be different than the common loop that is available: I think that looks like the carpet that I got off of eBay a while back: This is what is commonly available: The hatch floor piece I got off of eBay looks to be original. I examined it closely, and it is loop. However, the loops appear to be more densely situated and the pattern looks to be more uniform than what I see commonly available. This looks a bit more uniform, but still looks different. This looks closer. It can be easier to see the pattern when looking at lighter colors: Anyway, I am pretty certain I have found all the available options. I hope I can get some samples of what I found to see it in person.

Modify by hand? That is, put in a drill and use files to shape the cone end? https://trumontsupply.com/products/12329_mm

I have been using this gun to spray adhesive for my restoration project. https://www.yourautotrim.com/aespradspgun.html Unfortunately, it fell off my work bench the other day (it is rather top heavy and I wasn't paying enough attention). When it hit the floor the brass fitting that connects the gun to the cup broke. Searching online, I haven't been able to find anything like this fitting. I will try to determine the thread size today, but I know it is not pipe. The nut on the right threads onto the brass fitting and can travel the full distance of threads. It is a lock nut. To secure the paint gun to the cup, the brass fitting slips through the nut on the left until the flat part at the bottom of the cone seats inside the nut. Then the lock nut is threaded on. Then the brass fitting is threaded down into the tube/cup portion of the gun. Then you tighten and lock that nut. The you tighten the large nut onto the gun and the gun seats against the brass cone. I hate to have to buy another gun because of this. Let me know if you have ideas for a solution.

It is critical to get the setting of torque on the front pinion nut right. When you put the flange and nut back on, do not just torque it to the factory setting and be done with it. Look for information in factory documentation regarding what torque setting to use when reusing all of the bearings on the pinion gear. it is a different (lower) specification than when replacing the bearings. I recommend pulling the carrier out of the case before installing the flange and the pinion nut. Then use the low end of the torque specification. After setting to the low end of the torque specification, check the amount of turning torque required to turn the pinion shaft - you are checking pinion shaft turning resistance at this point. There is a factory manual uploaded to the resources section of the forum. You need to get the turning resistance to be close to correct specification. If you don't do as outlined above, you are taking too big a chance at setting too high a pre load on the bearing stack on the pinion shaft. The weak link is the pinion bearing - the front most bearing. However, with a damaged pinion bearing, it only takes a low number of miles to damage the ring and crown gears also. Garrett

Thanks for the info! I called them today. They said turn around time is about 6 weeks, which I am thrilled with compared to 6-7 months from Ogden. Tri-City is only 4.5 hours from me, so shipping will be less as well. They quoted $2100 for a complete set of bumpers - front and rear including all the bumper guards. My NOS rear bumper will be a good reference for them as they finish straightening the original rear bumper. I will have them re-chrome both rears, along with the original front bumper, and the front one from my track car as well. Or, maybe I will skip sending the track car bumpers... and buy these instead: https://zcardepot.com/products/front-metal-chrome-bumper-240z-70-72?variant=39614505648241&currency=USD https://zcardepot.com/products/rear-metal-stainless-steel-chrome-bumper-240z?_pos=15&_sid=adfb2aae4&_ss=r

I will contact them. When did you have yours done and about how much was it?

I talked with https://www.ogdenchrome.com/ this week about re-choming my bumpers. Here is what I told them and what I found out: What I told them I wanted: Two front bumpers, one from a AZ car that has been straightened and has a lot of surface imperfections from doing so, and one that has some body filler and has been painted Two rear bumpers, one that is NOS and one that is from an AZ car and has been straightened somewhat but needs more One set of front bumper over riders One set of rear bumper over riders They said that straightening is easy for them. I think they use hydraulic presses based off what he said. He said 240z bumpers are thin, so they only do their "show chrome" option on them. From what he described, it sounds like they coat them with quite a bit of copper. Pricing: $1400 for each front bumper, $1600 for each rear bumper. No discounting the price for either the low rust, or the NOS bumper (no discount for good condition). $200 for each bumper over rider. Current wait time is 6-7 months. That is quite a bit more expensive than I was thinking and the wait time is way too long. So, I will be checking with https://www.pulidoplating.net/ next.

This past weekend, I rebuilt the side vents - the ones that are opened/closed via the knob underneath either side of the dashboard. The rubber parts that seal around the edges of the disc that moves to close/open were dry rotted, but intact. I thought about installing them as they were, but when I poked at the rubber, it crumbled easily. These vent mechanisms are actually pretty difficult to remove/install, so I decided to rebuild them. I have some thin rubber sheet I got from McMaster-Carr some time ago. It comes in handy for making gaskets, and applications like these. For each vent, I had to first remove all the old rubber material. Then, I cut two semi-circular pieces a little over size so that the edge would fold over seal against the ID of the housing. I then used the contact adhesive I have been using to glue them into place, one on one side, and one on the other. To finish up, I cut some 1/8" this open cell foam which seals the vent housing to the car body. I also cleaned the cowl drain tubes and installed those: Before I can glue other diamond vinyl pieces into the car, I needed to make replacement cardboard supports for the rear strut areas. I had good luck using the cardboard from old three ring binders in the past. This time, I was able to look online for a suitable material, and I found "Upholstery Cardboard Panels). These (I ordered a pack of two) look to be identical to me. Using the original ones as templates, it is a simple exercise to mark up and then cut out using a metal straight edge and a sharp blade in a box cutter. I use a piece of soft aluminum (3003 I think) as backing for the cutting part of the exercise. I experimented a bit with folding the cardboard. Scoring the surface layer helps to create a smooth outside corner. I found that on the inside corner, it helped to remove about an 1/8" wide channel of the surface material. Not that it is needed, but the core material was accepting of folding to 90 degrees and back many times without tearing or getting noticeably weaker. So, the inner material has some resilience. To finish these up, I will coat them in a black rubberized spray paint.

Thank you @grannyknot, very kind of you to say. At the age of 15 and 8 months old, I got my first car, a Datsun 510 4 door. My dad chipped in $500, which was the amount that he had given my brother for his first car a few years prior. That $500, plus every dime I had ever saved came to about the car's purchase price of $1200. As a single mother, my mom worked two jobs to pay for what was needed and little else. Needless to say, we were not a rich family. My dad convinced me to take it to the shop that worked on his car to go through it and "do everything it needed". That cost another $264, and my dad started to record what I owed him in a little black ledger. A couple months later, one of the rear wheel cylinders developed a leak. That cost another $100 to fix at the same shop. With each additional repair, it became obvious to me that I was going to either have to learn how to do some things myself, or I would just keep incurring a larger amount of debt with my dad. So, I asked for a Haynes manual for Christmas (1985). With that, my learning how to work on cars began. When I was in my early 20's, I partially restored/modified the 240z that I now refer to as my track car. I experienced a lot of firsts restoring that car. And I drove it for a lot of miles. Over many years, I upgraded and reworked several areas that I had previously given attention. For this 240z, my goal was (and is) to apply to a complete restoration... all I have learned from my prior experiences of working on my first 510, "restoring" and modifying my "track" 240Z, and repairing a few wrecked Honda S2000's. And, in addition to a full restoration, I would like it to be to a level that makes this car worthy of consideration by those who would know, those who are experienced with rebuilding and restoring cars... that this is "one of the nicest" 240Zs around.

It turns out that Steve's kit has two of the pieces which are second from the right most piece in the pic above. One is rubber and one is a hard plastic. I used the plastic one. I could substitute the plastic with the rubber one. I also see now that the point tip I bought for my antenna is larger than the original. Bummer. I bought that one off of eBay. I will have to replace it at some point - I don't like that it is too big. I got another thing out of the way today that I was dreading doing: gluing the jute to the tunnel, and gluing the original vinyl to that. I realized when reviewing some pictures that the tunnel jute and vinyl go into the car before the firewall padding. Since I already installed the firewall padding, I had to pull it up at the bottom edges to get the jute and vinyl tucked under. It wasn't too difficult to left up the fire wall padding a bit. I poured contact adhesive into the spray gun, and I was off and running. I temporarily fit the jute and marked a few places at the top center with a paint pen so I knew where to place it after spraying both the backside of the jute and the tunnel with adhesive. I think I ended up with good placement: After gluing in the rear jute section, I glued the front section in place. Then, I retrieved the original vinyl trim for the tunnel. To start, I sprayed glue only on an small area at the top edge of the tunnel and the vinyl (third pic): I had the fiberglass center console available for this part of the process because there were impressions made by contact of the console in the original vinyl. I used those to determine where to locate the vinyl vertically on the tunnel (third pic shows some of the impression). After I got the top part of the vinyl glued in place, I rolled the vinyl upwards to expose the side portion of the jute. Then I sprayed that and the rest of the vinyl with adhesive. The vertical location was already set, so all that remained to do was to roll the vinyl downwards over the sides of the tunnel and press down firmly everywhere. At the rear of the tunnel (second pic), the vinyl rolls up against the rear face a touch. As far as I can tell, the vinyl appears to be in the correct position everywhere. Hopefully that is the case. With the tunnel jute and vinyl in place, I now can install several items including the heater core, the fan, the steering column, and the dashboard.

Near the end of my time in the garage today, I started to put the antenna on the car. I started by finding all the relevant parts from 240zrubberparts.com: After some trial and error, I got things assembled, but I do not know where this seal (first pic of three) from the antenna mount kit goes. It kind of fits inside the top, plastic part of the ball, but kind of doesn't either. It appears to have threads on the ID, but they don't match anything. Also, the ID is too large to make sense anywhere that I can see. I sent an email to Steve at 240zRubberParts to see if he knows. I ended up leaving it out for now. The antenna doesn't fit very well to be honest. Where the antenna goes through the body, it is very much an angle. As a result, the round metal concave/convex washer that seats on the grounding strap contacts the underside surface of the quarter panel before the nut on the outside is fully tightened. This causes the plate with the sharp points (other end of the grounding strap) to not seat properly on the underside surface of the quarter panel. Unless I am missing something, I will likely take it apart again and do some grinding on the concave/convex washer to create clearance where it is hitting the body. That will allow the stack to tighten properly, and should allow the plate with the sharp points to fit properly (flat against the underside surface of the quarter panel for its full circumference). For most of the day, I battled with the bumper and the bumper brackets. I had already put many hours into the front bumper because it had some damage. Here is one of the pictures from when it was on auction at Bring-a-Trailer: And here is one I found from the disassembly stage: The impact to the bar looks superficial at first glance, but in addition to the dent, the bar was pushed in a bit for a considerable portion on either side of the dent as well. So, in addition to straightening the dent, I had to pull the bar back forward. And some heat shrinking was necessary as well. Anyway, where I picked up today, the bumper was fitting snug on the right side of the car and too far out on the left side. Every time I bolted the bumper to the brackets on the car, the bumper was slightly offset to the left side of the car. I determine the cause to be that the slots in the front of the bumper brackets were limiting the side to side movement of the bumper. The bumper studs were ramming up against the sides of the slots. To correct, I had to remove the bumper brackets from the car and tweak them in my vice so that the slots "moved" toward the right side of the car. Shifting the slots to the right side allowed the bumper to shift to the right as well. I also used a hand held belt sander to improve the fit of the bumper uprights to the main bar. After several hours examining, bending, straightening, grinding, a little more hammer and dolly work on the bumper, etc. I got it to this point: Finally, the bumper is centered and I don't have to apply excessive pressure on the left side of the bumper to bring it to its proper mounting location. I have a bit more work to do on the rear bumper, and then I can package all of the bumper pieces up and send them off for re-chroming.

Amazing. I wish I could find someone that good.

So, he was able to blend new silver paint onto the old and match it? I didn't think that was possible.

That plate with the hole in it is a spacer that goes between the transmission metal mount and the transmission isolator mount. Those grommets look like aftermarket. Might be suitable for the heater supply and return hoses where they go through the firewall.

This past weekend, I only had a few hours available to work on the car. I finished up the kick panels and I installed the gas tank. Installing the gas tank by oneself is quite the challenge. Since my main fuel hose is 53 plus years old, I had to heat it with a heat gun to get it to be flexible for the installation. Heating it, and then trying to lift the gas tank into place and secure the tank straps... is difficult to do by oneself. On the third try, I was successful! And, since I knew from previous experience that without protective padding in various places, everything gets scratched to hell, I made sure to protect everything by taping into place (covering the bottom edges of both the tail light panel and quarter panel) pieces of thick padding. This protects from bumps and scrapes while attempting to maneuver the tank where it needs to go to feed the inlet to the main hose. The finished kick panels - note that the factory finish is flat black - not semi-gloss black: Gas tank:

At first I was going to say aftermath of Mt St Helens, but that looks painted on instead of deposited from above. And big eruption was 1980. Maybe a movie set? I see something interesting on the Z. I have never seen it before other than on my first Z and I thought it was something added by the owner - not a factory item. There is a rubber seal or weather strip just above and in contact with the the window frame of the door.

The 3M website says "Fast-curing formula offers a 10 to 20 minute working time". I found that it starts hardening that quickly, but I would call the working time more like double that.

I installed my windshield just days ago. If you look closely at the picture in the factory workshop manual to see where sealant is supposed to be applied, it is on edge of the downward turn from the outside surface of the car body, not on the pinch weld. In theory, when the weather strip seats, adhesive flows to both sides of that corner. A couple of pictures from my install, and yes, it was a complete mess, but only on the outside, and everywhere that any that got on my gloves migrated to as well. I used this 3M adhesive. This 3M adhesive remover removes it easily without hurting the vinyl or paint.

I did run into that recently. My seals were OEM, and sourced by the previous owner of the car back in the early 90's. I was hesitant to cut them off, so I just dealt with them, but they were troublesome to deal with. Ultimately, they just sort of, pushed outwards where the frame sat against them, but didn't stop anything from fitting properly - for me.

Spending $7.00 at the local Home Depot, I picked up a "tempered hardboard" which is much closer to the specification of the original kick panel. Like the original, it has a textured side, and a smooth side. In under an hour, I was able to cut a new one from the board I bought, using the original as a pattern. I used my X-ACTO knife to score the smooth surface. Then I used my Bosch jig saw to cut it out. Though not planned, I found that scoring the smooth surface aided the cutting. The jig saw can leave a more jagged edge than is desired, but the scoring facilitated making the edge "crisp". After cutting, I used various files to adjust the edges to final shape and finish. As this type of board acts like a sponge, and expands over time as it is exposed to moisture/humidity, I will spray the back side and edges with a rubberized spray paint such as this. For the smooth face, I think Krylon semi-flat black should replicate the original finish well. I may attempt to replicate the slots and holes in the panel with my Dremel tool. I'll see if I feel like spending that time on it.

I saw that in the Z's on Bat and other places collection thread the other day... and it is low miles, all original! Looks like it is in amazing original condition.