Paulytunes

That's awesome! Did the new Z feel larger than the S30? My 280Z makes my WRX look like a small SUV. It's ridiculous how much cars have grown in size and weight over the decades. I'd also be curious to know how the new Z drove versus your 240Z.

I found my Z's twin! Same color and everything, just built 4 months earlier: No Reserve: 1976 Datsun 280Z 2+2 4-Speed for sale on BaT Auctions - ending December 20 (Lot #131,317) | Bring a Trailer It will be interesting to see how much it sells for, and I wonder what those floors look like under that carpet?

Me three. The process videos look like he stuck his video camera up to the view window of a commercial CNC machine. Not unlike some of the machines we have at work, which can easily cost up in the six figures and sometimes seven. The videos are also very well produced, as others have already mentioned.

Thanks for sharing this, it was an intoxicating watch. The first video exemplifies what I love about these cars - that those of us with above average mechanical aptitude can take these cars apart with a good metric toolset. Putting them back together, well, that's what the FSM and thousands of digital photos are for.

Yikes! I've tapped around quite a bit on my floor boards. After watching your video, I'm scared to do the same to my rails. But, I do need to know the full extent of the rust so I can get rid of it.

Done and thanks! It was $23 today as a black Friday deal. It'll be here in a week. I concur with all that I still have a lot of work to do. I want to angle grind away the areas in front of the pedals and clear out what looks like surface rust. Sorry about the quality of the photos - I guess my phone isn't the best for taking photos in the garage.

Thanks! From what I can see, the rails still look solid. No dents, and the driver side has the flanges intact. It's harder to tell on the passenger side - I'll need to go and take a closer look. From what I can tell from looking under the car without a lift, the rails look to be complete. I'm sort of on the fence now about the work. I've shown photos and talked to a few friends who have done their own hobby auto work. They have encouraged me not to be too afraid of trying to learn how to do some patch welding if that's all that is needed. I did do some welding many years ago I was on the mini-baja team years ago at UMBC, so I am not a complete welding virgin, ha ha. Still, I may reach out to Tim - Thanks for the contact info!

davewormald, I couldn't agree with you more. Touchscreens are a very poor substitute for well placed, tactile buttons that you intuitively learn to reach for without looking at it - my previously and currently owned Subarus and Toyotas (and 280Z, of course) seemed to do this pretty well. The Golf Mk8 is likely the shining example, in my opinion, of one of the most poorly executed infotainment and vehicle control systems, but BMWs are pretty bad too. I agree there is much irony in the fact that operating one of these poorly designed control systems is not considered distracted driving because takes more time and focus than a terrible driver would expend upon trying to check texts or make a phone call on their smartphone. Unfortunately, we can only defend ourselves against those who don't take driving seriously. Maybe the solution is putting all of them in driverless, automated vehicles. Being a Mechanical Engineer, I have wondered often where the high point of analog/mechanical excellence is in automotive design and at what year we reached that plateau. We've certainly passed that point now, and I guess you could make the argument that when EFI entered the picture, that may be where the line is drawn. Still, my fuel injected 280Z gives me feedback that most modern cars have filtered out. Even though most vehicles now on the highway accelerate faster, the modern metal just doesn't have that visceral feeling that mashing the accelerator, the throttle linkage extending, and the L28 roaring in response. Older cars have a sense of urgency and connection that has been lost on modern cars, in my opinion. I guess that brings us into the car manufacturers getting into adding fake features to modern cars. All I want to ask is why would they choose this route? To me, this is providing a half-assed solution that no one is really going to want or respect, akin to adding silly modifications that provide no performance value, yet the installer will swear up and down that the car has more horsepower because they added a silly yellow sticker. I hate the fake exhaust sound pumped into the cabin because it is fake and serves no purpose other than to fool the passengers. If you want me to feel more connected to the road, make me a car that has an analog dash, ergonomically well placed controls, and that I can work on myself as needed. Unfortunately, no one will ever make a new car with these features, because too few people would by it. "The world has moved on," as Stephen King says.

At this point I am wondering if I should just bite the bullet and buy the set of 280Z floors and frame rails or if I should do a little more uncovering to see the full extent of the rust?

Yeah, I need to get under and take a more detailed look. My initial glances are that it appears to be solid, and the mechanic that looked at it for me when I bought it didn't see anything when he had it on the lift. I am looking into getting one of those portable lifts (maybe tomorrow if there are any good sales) so I can get under and take a look. If not, I have four decent jackstands and just need to verify the jacking points are in good enough shape to support the car. Of course, this will be after all of the requisite holiday festivities, decorating, and other activities. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, BTW! I am happy to be part of such a great Z community and keeping our cars and hobby alive!

Thanks! Driver side has some rust and a few perforations. Passenger side appears to be in decent shape.

So I had some time this morning today to try the dry ice method to remove the tar mat from the floors and get a better idea of the extent of the rust and other non-welded repair work. It was definitely easier than just scraping, but was more work than some of the YouTube videos would lead you to believe, unless I did it wrong. Still, I was also able to turn it into a science lesson for my kids (who were off today for Thanksgiving break) to demonstrate the difference in thermal properties of differing materials. My son seemed to think it was cool, but my daughter lost interest pretty quickly. It looks like the driver side is the worst, especially at the front. The passenger side appears to be localized along the rail, and it looks like there was a bolted repair performed on the rail. They had put in more Maxwell House coffee cans along the passenger rail with some sort of rubberized coating, tar mat, and what looked like some Bondo. Despite the holes, the floor feels solid in most places. I guess I have some grinding to do now to get rid of the rust and see where I need new sheet metal.

I'll still take a crappy rental over a driverless car any day. I agree gas will likely only get more expensive, especially if the Government and auto industry pushes us to electric vehicles. I'm still on the fence with those too. Although the instantaneous power and torque provides almost unmatchable acceleration over gasoline powered combustion engines, I have still yet to see one that excites me enough to want to make the leap. I'll argue that there is no current electric vehicle that provides the same fun-to-drive factor as the few remaining performance cars still being offered.

Not much with new cars now is serviceable. With all the integrated infotainment and computer systems that look like slapped on iPads, there's no easy way to even upgrade the stereo anymore if you want better sound or other media features. And when you have to remove a lot of plastic nonsense to even get to the serviceable engine parts and need special tools to do any work, why would you want to?

Unfortunately, this is the future I think we are heading towards. To that I say they will have to pry my steering wheel out of my cold, dead hands. I enjoy driving, even in traffic, far too much to give it up, much less to an automated machine. It's only a matter of time before they become self aware and determine our fate in a microsecond. Of course, I also hate the digital dashboards, touchscreens, and all the driving nannies that most modern cars come with now. I guess I'm getting old. But, I am likely in the shrinking minority. I think my wife and daughter would welcome being chauffeured around by AI, I'm holding out hope that my son inherited the driving pleasure gene from me. That's what I got my 280Z for, to pass on my knowledge and passions to him.

I sort of suspected that there may be a difference. Nissan seemed to like to change parts in some cases almost yearly. I found that out the hard way with my 1983 810/Maxima. I'll keep at removing the tar and the repairs to get a full assessment of the damage. I did pull out the rear seats, and everything to the rear of the first front seat rail appears to be solid and in good shape. I guess I won't fully know until I pull up all the tar though.

Point taken. I guess I tend to forget just how old these cars have become and how old I am getting. My intent is to drive the car and enjoy it but treat it as a classic. I always keep it in the garage, avoid bad weather whenever possible, and not to drive when there is a threat of snow and MDOT pretreats the roads with copious amounts of road salt and other chemicals.

Thanks, it's nice to know that all these parts are available. I guess what I will need depends on the extent of the rust, so I guess I really do need to keep removing the previous repairs and find out where the rust ends and the good metal begins. Hopefully, I don't end up with an undrivable Flintstones cruiser. It's odd that one of the POs would drill an extra drain hole, I don't understand why they would do that. I did notice some of the parts you referenced were for the 240Z - I assume they were the same for the all the S30 models? Mechanically, I have run into differences between model year 280Zs on certain parts.

So I made a little more progress today and found more coffee can bottoms. It's clear that the more I chip away, the more suspect repairs I am finding. I'm scared to rip out whatever is inserted into the passenger side frame rail, which appears to be some sort of rubber strip and long pieces of metal, held together with Bondo or something else. Looks like whichever PO did this repair decided that no welding was the way to go. Searching on YouTube for non-welding floor pan repair also yielded lots of other interesting results, although I have yet to see someone recommending coffee cans or a similar circumstance to my repair. I am also struggling a bit with looking at images of the floor pans in Grannyknot's link and other ones on Amazon, eBay, Z Car Depot, and Motorsport Auto and comparing them to my floors. It looks like the drain pan holes are in the wrong places. I assume that the end that bends up is the front, and would replace where the second coffee can bottom is on the passenger side photo at the top of the image. Is that correct? I guess the other question that I have is what can I do from prevent this from happening again once the rusty metal is replaced with all new sheet metal? Is the root cause of the rust years of rainwater getting into a body seam, weep holes getting clogged with debris, water pooling and eventually causing rust formation? Is the best and only preventative measure to avoid any precipitation and keep the Z in the garage, or is there something else I should be doing to eliminate the source of water infiltration?

Those look great! I may just have to get myself a pair.

What it looked like before I started digging and realized something was amiss:

I was looking for this thread. When I pulled the carpet to look at my floors, I found some evidence of rust. On the driver side, on the exterior underside, one of the PO's screwed a square piece of aluminum into the underside of the floor pan to cover up a rust hole. On the passenger side, presumably that same PO filled the rust gaps (where the floor pan had separated from the rail) with a mix of tar mat, bondo, rubber, and wait for it..... cut up and flattened Maxwell House Coffee cans. SMH. I'm scared to dig deeper to see what else I am going to find. I think I will just replace the floors and rails instead.

After performing more minor surgery and digging deeper today, I concur. It turns out the reason the passenger side looked so uneven was that the floorpans were indeed rusted and separated from the rails. One of the previous owners used some pretty sketchy techniques to perform the repair. On the driver side, there is a thin square of aluminum that was screwed into the rusty floorpan, to cover up a rust hole. On the passenger side, they used a combination of tar, what looks like rubber, maybe some bondo, and wait for it... a cut up Maxwell House Coffee Can!! I guess the repair really was good until the last find! This has got to be one of the worst repairs I have ever come across. It's funny, I was talking to a fellow Cub Scout Parent at Camporee this weekend, and he was telling me about his Mustang that he bought to restore and his rusty floors had been replaced with road signs! I guess this was a somewhat common quick and dirty rust repair for owners who wanted to hide rust from unsuspecting future owners? SMH. Looks like I will be buying new floors and rails. On a postive note, the same Camporee Parent is a professor of Automobile Mechanics at the local community college, and he recommended a former student that does rust repairs, so I will be reaching out to him.

I got one too. My wife and kids saw it at Hallmark and bought it for me.

Made some progress today before I had to deal with another automotive emergency with the family minivan. I pulled up all of the loose pieces and vacuumed up the small pieces of rust. I didn't get a chance to get much of the tar mat up.