26th-Z

Beck got dooped! Somebody didn't get the memo that Beck was buying these and tried to snipe them. Carl says he is going to make repros with them. I guess, as of yesterday, the price of the repros will be fairly steep! What can I say about Burt, huh? He's drowning in his own inflation! Poor guy.

I read that add as some guy's mom trying to get rid of it. I feel for her. Port Charlotte is a wreck. The Aircraft Edition has to do with the blue / silver paint and T-tops and corresponds to the red / silver / t-tops "Santa's Ride Edition"? We need a 280ZX guru around here. None of us know nothing 'bout no damned ZX!

I have heard about a baking process that burns everything off and I think someone in the club has done it. The dip process is a real godsend for me. Wauchula is only an hour from here. I think there is a dipping place in Jacksonville, about five hours from here. Dipping is the only way to get 100% rust free inside and out and I really want to be able to say the car is rust free. This process is going to take out all the body sealer and if you look at how the body was welded together (some spot welds are 3" apart) replacing all the seam sealer will pretty much seal up the inside metal, but I still plan to spray some sort of sealer inside what I can reach. I think the garden sprayer is the way to go. The wand will bend and the spray can be adjusted. Just throw it out when you are finished. Let all the primer / sealer just drip out of the seams and make a big mess. I'll have about three weeks to seal the car up before the metal starts to surface rust. The "alkaline electrolytic" solution dries to a white powder that covers the metal for a while. Thanks for your comments, Enrique. Gives me some new ideas about this.

Absolutely. I agree with everything above. Buy an old Z. Try to find something in the $3,500 range - the price they were new. Spend all your earned money on it and work on it all the time. It is a real easy car to work on - extremely simple - and will teach you the good old basics of car wrenching - great skills you will use the rest of your life. You will aquire tools you will have for the rest of your life. And you will gain a deep appreciation for performance automobiles. Your fingernails will become permanently black and you will develop wounds on your hands that will scar. You will be proud of this. All your guy friends will think you are totally cool yet crazy. Your girl friends will think you are wierd and mumble something about POS. You have developed a taste for crashing and you must understand that hitting anything gets you disqualified and thrown out of the game. Driving is about control - it involves feel - and crashing demonstrates that you don't know what you are doing. The 240Z is an excellent example of car balance and will teach you one of the basic control feelings you should have for above average driving skill. Again...this is a perfect car to teach you the basiscs - simple yet sophisticated. A 240Z is a sports car. Sports cars are expensive. That is just a fact. One of the reasons a 240Z is so popular is that it is the cheapest sports car around. There are tons of aftermarket parts available and plenty of people get creative with their cars. Its quite fun to see some of the things people do to their cars. If you want a cheap daily driver, buy a pick-up truck. Buy a pick-up truck anyway. You will need it to haul car parts, tools, and tow the Z. This could be the great experience of your teenage years and give you fond memories you will carry into your future. It could also be a disaster, but it depends on how you approach it. Hang out on this site and you will learn a great deal about these cars. Have fun and don't hit anything.

Hey Bill- We have these little humped back bridges over all the canals and waterways around here. Years ago, I got 26 completely unweighted over the top of one and put her backwards into somebody's bushes in their front yard. Didn't hurt the car. Mowed some bushes down, though.

Yep. Of all the low VIN and early car guys I know, the crowd leans to the side of guys restoring parts rather than buying new replacements. People like me tend to buy a couple of each item with the intent of selling the spare when we finish the restoration. I will re-chrome several sets of bumpers, for example. Bumpers I bought for $35 realizing what the re-chrome effort was going to be. It won't be very long (5 years) before there aren't any new parts and the resto parts are going to be this expensive. At least for the early cars. I also want to say the eBay is NOT the only place to find this stuff and that it tends to be the most expensive solution.

I'm with you Enrique. The trouble is that a new part at the high price is still less expensive than restoring the old part. I have just a little less than $300 in each of my restored hub caps.

I didn't think to save pics of the lighter. It was 25330-E4100 in the old red-white-blue box. I can take a picture of the clips I bought from Chloe for $6 if you like.

Evidently, supply IS that short Carl. I don't know what spell has come over some of my low VIN friends, but I'm glad to see my reputation as "Richy Rich" fade into the sunset. Did you see the $250 cigarette lighter? Or the $200 inspection lid clips? If they don't wear G-strings to hold the dollars, where do you "stuff" them?

Thanks - I'll discuss it with them. At the moment, we were thinking of using a garden pump-up sprayer with the long plastic wand to spray primer / sealer inside some areas similar to the "Zeibart" process. I recall Escanlon talking about long spray gun wands some time ago and I hear Eastwood sells something. I don't expect to get it all, but I should be able to get a little better protection than original.

Greetings! I thought I would tac on to this thread to share my experiences. As ya'll may know, I am dipping Her Majesty the 26th to remove the rust and prepare her body for restoration. There is a business in Wauchula, Florida that dips car bodies and parts in an alkaline electrolytic solution to remove rust. An electric DC current is passed through the tank (with submerged car body) and the "ferrous ions" - rust - are separated from the metal - completely. Her Majesty is there awaiting the magic spa and I expect her nude return in March. Revivations is charging me $1,391 for the body shell - priced at 158 inches long. Here are some pictures of the facility. You will see a 1600 body shell in line ahead of me along with a T-bird, Jag, and some trucks. Trucks seem to be quite popular these days. The car will be placed on a cradle and lowered into a tank full of degreaser and paint stripper for approximatley two weeks. Then it will be pressure washed to remove the seam sealer, insulation, glue and other goo. This process does not harm the lead filler or some of the plastic coatings like around the wiring harness ties. Then the car is submerged in the alkaline solution and de-rusted. It sits in that tank for another week. Ed, the reason I am doing this is because 26 is rusting from the inside out. There is no coating of any sort in the "hard to reach" areas you are talking about. Looking inside the rockers, fender wells, roof, etc. you will see bare metal - no coating. I have seen some signs of zink plating in some areas of the rockers, but the rest of it is bare steel. Well....rusted steel. We are going to try a process to coat the inside of these areas using a primer / sealer, but I put this to you - it took 35 years to get this bad. I don't really worry about coating it. Should last another 30 years, easily. The last picture shows a VW pick-up next to the electrolytic tank. There is a cradle in the tank. I don't know if the VW is going in or coming out. There was also a Pantera and another Jag in this building. So here we go! Big step for me and the project. Wish me luck!

Here is a great example of why I like to look at VINs. Jim Oppenheimer brought his Nissan GTP ZX Turbos to Sebring last weekend for the HSR race. I didn't have enough time to drool properly and I forgot to look at the VIN so that I would know the car's history. Now I have to wait until next spring and hope he brings them back!

Kats is around. He wrote me some time ago and said he was taking a breather. He'll show up again. Soon, I hope. Nice shots, Alan, thanks.

They have a catalog 888-409-4647 and most of the rubber parts are for American cars, but you will find many things that will work just fine on a Z.

Hey. We'll see...Huh? I still think I have THE "gross-out pig" winner! 26 went to the strip and dipper this weekend. Should be back bare metal in March. They had a Cuda sitting in the lot when we dropped 26 off. Somebody restoring one. There was a 1600 roadster there, too. Couple of T-birds...and old pick-up trucks are real popular now. Old pick-ups, Bill. That's what you need to get in to. You can get laid in an old pick-up!

Those look like girly toes.

Will? You are getting a little close to fight'n words, my friend. Yea, 27 would have to be pushed to the show at this poiint, (probably win the "gross-out pig" category hands down) but I wouldn't be caught dead in Harlem driving a slow '72 I look at serial numbers all the time as part of my routine looking at cars. In fact I'm a little pissed at myself for not checking the number of a GTP ZX Turbo I saw Saturday to see which car it was. A lot of people have been asking about the real ZGs from Alan's Sagamiko gallery. The VIN tells all, doesn't it? Most of the guys I know who collect cars have a subtantial amount of knowledge about their cars. I also know plenty of guys who buy and sell old cars as a hobby - buy a car, dabble with it for a year, and sell it. You have to put the serial number thing in perspective - it's just another conversation item - it won't get you laid. :classic:

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If I remember correctly, I bought one from Nissan for $140 about a year ago. The starting price is closest to correct.

I have never seen anything like it, but I'll remember this thread and ask around.

The strapping is back threaded through a set of rings for adjustment. Zink plated... The extra slack length of black nylon strap is held with a black plastic ring. I see them on eBay quite often. They come in different lengths because the later series cars with tool bins forced the straps to be shorter. In other words, make sure you buy the long ones for the earlier cars. Of course, you could always have new straps made. Quite often, you see the hardware fairly rusted (go figure) and it all has to be re-plated anyhow. In most cases, I would just buy the cheapest ones you can find with decent hardware and have it all redone.