goonfan

You mean "foot hill" driver, right? Theres' no mountains in San Jo, lol. Just put what you have in the car on the car and see where it takes you from there. There is no stopping point until you decide to stop.

A Carfax is about the price of a six pack.... Anyway if you have found reason to think it's been hit then it probably has, IME anyway.

Price?

i love me some double bacon western cheeseburger! I'll try to makethis but it's my lady's last weekend in town for a long while and I might not be free.

Got that hand numbing feeling going on from constant tool use. Figured I'd post an update while I take a break. Now that I'm using a single stage 60 gal compressor that doesn't keep up with constant angle grinder usage I have to take little breaks while the compressor catches up. I got started before snapping any pics but you can see in this picture some of the little circles the spot weld bit leaves behind. I've taken to grinding them down with the 90* angle grinder and a 3" wheel so I can get more control. Here's the lower core support ground down. In this area there was a ton of weld from the body shop. Something like 2x1 3/8" tall, there was even some mig wire that punched through and was just hanging in there inside the frame rail. i had to use my big grinder and got a little too aggressive. I'll need to fill in the areas that are too thin or that I punched through. After I ground down the spot weld remnants I used the wire wheel to clean up around them. I'll need to fill in a few that punched all the way through and some others will need a little filler where the bit left some score marks. I cleaned this area up but before I do any welding on it I'll need to straighten it out. Pic is hard to make out but look close and you'll see it. There are a few areas my wire wheel couldn't reach so i'll take the smaller drill mounted one to those before I weld up any weak spots. After I had filler I'll most likely have to knock it back down. I've also got to go through the same process on all of my patch panels before I can do any fitment tests.

I fell ya, it's been a struggle, super long last couple of weeks. When I woke up this morning I could barley get down the stairs and my hands felt like swollen meat bags. With all those crazy hours you put it in a work you owe to yourself to take a lazy day.

Third time was a charm! It's charging now.

Jack all for progress so far... My compressor motor fried so I've been getting my back up and running. Thought i was good to go buying some extra parts but I'm not. Now I have to head back out to the store, argh.

If you decide you want to ship let me know.

That sucks. I'm up north a few hours but will keep an eye out.

Is that twist lock belt popular down under? We use them on equipment over here to reduce vibration like on a table saw. I've always wondered if they would work in a car.

lol, I just realized how silly that post reads with me describing the car and then posting a picture.... I found that picture later and added it without saying "I found a picture"

lol, once that group buy got going a lot of folks jumped on it. IMO that brown 240 is fucking nasty. It looks like it's about to go 4 wheeling to me. I mean look at that rear wheel.... ugh so grose. To each his own though. A few years back I used to hate slammed z's with stretched tires. I dig it now and know there are plenty of people who don't.

Man do tastes in cars change over time.... I used to be all about 17's/18's and even one car with 19's but now I think S30's look like complete shit with 17's. Don;t know what has changed, I've always thought I had a good eye for balance, maybe I didn't.... i hate hate hate 17's on a Z Okay, now for the not an ass I'll help you out part. On Hybrdz there was an RB-R group buy, you've probably seen it. It has a ton of fitment within. It also happens to have the only S30 (stock body) that actually looks good with 17's. I can't recall the guys name but it's a white 240 with black wheel well vents, air dam and spoiler.

So here is a quick little run down of how I made the plates. Not much in the way of anything new or fantastic info but it gives me a way to show off some of the tools I have access to, lol..... :( access doesn't mean ownership. To make the plates for the strut brace I first had to pull one camber plate to use as template Next step is to clamp it down to some scrap 1/4" plate and scribe out layout marks. I just traced out it's circumference and used a center punch to mark the 6 mounting holes every 60*. It's hard to see in the pictures, oh I also scribed in some cut lines to trim he pieces. Punched out the holes on the drill press. It's equipped with a rotary table so it makes this sort of thing 10x faster then clamping it down 14 times and re-centering each time. These aren't perfectly center, one of the holes is off by 0.015" from center, I over sized the holes so it should be fine. The center holes are so I can back purge when I weld in the strut brace, they are stainless and as such need back purging. On to the green monster! I refurbbed this 60's era band saw a couple months ago This thing is BA, it has a transmission and the speed is easily adjustable on the fly. Well there is a trick to shifting, one of those only I can shift it sort of deals, love it. All that and I cut these nasty ass lines?!.... I was in a hurry and didn't adjust any settings before I kicked her on. Still, I was sloppy..... In any case here are the finished parts. That's all the updates for tonight. I'll patch up the pitted section from my donor 260z and get started on the straightening shortly after that. I'll post up some more progress tomorrow night.

Cool! LMK if you need a hand, we can talk about this mystery L16 you got a line on.

Son of a bitch! My big ass progress post got erased, arghhh. I'll pull the front suspension tomorrow to take some weight off the front and make it easier to get in and do work. The next step is to drop her back on the ground. Hopefully be enough friction to keep the car from dragging when I pull the upper frame rail over, I'd say it needs to come over 1/8-1/4". If the car does drag then I'll go with plan B and park my 5,000lb pick up in the side yard to act as an anchor. Before I weld in the new sections and after I pull it in place and mock up the fenders and hood (I'll have to use a scrap hood, you'll see why in a few days) I'll weld in a strut brace to keep things square. Because I don't have stock strut towers and my camber plates are aluminum I had to fab up a plate to weld the strut brace too. I'm going to sandwich my strut tower between the plate I made and the camber plates that are installed. Once I've welded in the strut brace I can tack in the patch sections. I'll measure, measure, measure and then finish weld. At that point I'll put the lights back on drop the motor in and take her for a test drive. I don't have a bumper, air dam, valance, or side valance extensions.... but you know. There is still alot of work to do even after I get the car on the road again but that is a huge mile stone I hope to get to this weekend.

Yeah.... Hey I thank you in my edit! That was bogus though.... I was trying to be all mister nice guy and not cut the car up to shit, lesson learned. At least you got to see my mad skills with a sawzall first hand, lol. Seriously though, thanks! If you need a hand with the tuck swing by (or I can roll out) for a few hours and I can help you out.

Here is where I'm at now.... BARLEY WINE..... 11.3% ABV FTW!!! Back on topic. I'm really thinking what I'll do is cut out everything that's just in front of the strut tower and patch in the new section. Here are some shots of the parts that I took form he 260z, spot weld cutters kick ass! The upper core... I won't be using this anymore. Instead I've decided to go with this upper core that has the webbing still attached.... This was from a 240Z, the inner fender and upper rail of the 240Z were no good. Big thanks to TristinGrind for helping me pull this part! I have very little time I can dedicate to her but today I got things a little further along and pulled out the upper core and webbing that was still there.

So I'm gonna do this lazy style and C/P a few things from my frame advice thread, here, I'll add in a few things too. Like this coolness.... I just opened a bottle of Stone's Old Guardian barley wine I've been saving since 2009 and it's AWESOME! I love beer... Here's some background, this car used t be totally BA. It has a N42/E88, head is shaved and ported big time, I wanna say 1.8" intake ports, 11.7-1 CR, bronze bushed polished rods, domed pistons, huge ass cam at 306 advertised 286 @ .050", .512" lift, 106 LSA, tripple 40 webbers w/ 32mm chokes, 6-2 header etc etc.... It got hit a long time ago and I had a local shop do the repair work, they completely sucked but in my arrogance/stupidity whatever I didn't really take notice until a couple years later. It's been sitting for a loooong time, shit kept happening and I never got around to it seriously until this spring. A few pics from the other thread. Basically my passenger side got smashed up and it pushed my strut tower over. The lower frame rail is good and so is teh lower core support. I've already cut out most of the stuff I'll be replacing in these pics. Jacked up upper rail, I think it pushed up a bit, mostly it's pushed in towards the motor. To fit the fender on I've been pulling the rail out and slightly down using a come along tied off to my truck, that's what that big hole is for towards the front of the rail. You can see how mangled the upper rail is here. In this shot you can just make out the crack where it's all bent and fatigued. It starts getting complicated here. The piece that the fender mounts to was from my car so I left that in place, look at the giant ass holes I had to make to get the tacks out in the one area where I could actually drill them out. Lower frame area is not going to be much of a challenge, still needs to be preped a bit more though. It's a little ugly here, I can work this out though. Here are some shots of what i cut of of a 260Z, late model.... I'll need to cut out some of the extra bracing but that won't be too hard. What I'm a little worried about is the pitting on what would be the inside of the frame rail. This IS the best patch panel I could find, I've been at all the local JY's over and over for months. Cross section of upper rail from the donor car. Top view with fender mounting tabs.

Wow this is going so slow. I decided I would not bother with the adjustable strut brace for now. None of the ideas I had were ones I wanted to keep, I have a unique camber plate setup that limits my options. What would best is for me to change out my plates for the weld in type. Literally just the plates, I could then weld tabs onto the plate and mount a FSB that would be much more solid. For the frame work I did make some plates that will bolt to my existing plates and I can weld a brace on to those. I took some pics and will get around to posting them at some point this weekend. Also cut up some 1x3 and 2x3 tubing to make my pulling anchors. I don't think I'll have to pull very much though. Everything is actually lined up right now. The fender still sits a little high and there's about an 1/8"-1/4" gap between the upper frame rail and the hood that's NOT there. Once I pull that 1/4" out I can weld the strut brace in than relax the tension, hopefully it will hold. If it doesn't I'll weld it with the tension pulling. I also need to patch that pitted section of the donor piece. Wish me luck! This is the weekend to get it done.

Yeah I got back and was wiped out. Hours in the sun at the jy will do that I guess. I owe ya! There is a chance I have gasket, I'll check and let you know.

Can still use an air dam. LMK

It looks really good now! Don't even stress you'll be rolling deep at Canby.

For a chick she is not badbad, I was waiting for her to say she likes the cars with the speakers that go boom. Think Romy would tear her up though, I have no idea if she can battle so maybe not.