My Swiss 1972 S30 240Z rebuild project

[Eagle_Adam]

i can only do about 3 days no sleep, then i need a corner to crawl into for a few hours..... 

[Homeboyx]

Holy crap! That place!!! IS that real life? lol

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Spent another two hours with the lady today and i'm really happy with the progress of removing random small parts from the engine bay and dash area:
1) First the Pedal box :)


2) And on the other side the master brake cylinder with brake fluid distributor:


3) then those two air vent valve-thingy's (haven't realy understood yet what they're  used for)


4) The footrest rubber thingy:


5) A lot of random wires from the engine bay to the dash area, from left to right:
- Hood latch cable
- Antenna cable (from the dash to the trunk area)
- What i believe is the Choke cable
- Speedo cable


Starts to look pretty empty in the engine bay area:


As well as inside the car. I don't mind :D Next step ist the interieur vinyl stuff and Wiring.

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Spent some 90 minutes sweatin' at the garage at today's hot fall day :) And im seriously happy with my progress today, because i'm almost done with everything above the floorpans :)
1) First ripped out some interieur stuff:


2) Then removed the engine wire harness:
1) First ripped out some interieur stuff:


3) The interieur wire harness plus the fuel tank sensor harness:
1) First ripped out some interieur stuff:


4) removed the windshield (ony my own, without breaking it :D)


and this is how it looks now. Next will be removing the doors, sound deadening mats, and everything below the floorpans (suspension, footworks, Differential,...)


Also i found something great on the net wich will probably change my plan completely. will maybe have some updates soon :)

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Just a small update: Spent an hour at the garage removing random small parts from the trunk and then a ton of sound deadening stuff:


well until my right hand looked like this. then i decided it might be a good idea to complete it another day :P

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Well hello there :D People keep asking me what's going on and you might have noticed i'm currently working hard on finishing my EK9 project. But anyway, this is what happend with the 240Z's lately:
First a friend told me about a great retored 240Z body in germany. took ma a while to get in touch with the owner:


what looked to be a great deal first turned out to be an US-imported model with a weird badly executed widebody conversion with modifaight taillights (even worse than my white shell). so it's useless to me. Too sad.
Then found another car for a reasonable price which was sold in germany but then i figured out the ad on Autoscout was a scam and some people tried to trick me sending them some money. i'm happy i was smar enough and didn't get fooled :)


So why am im telling you this? I thought having a cheap good shell istead of restoring mine would make everything faster and cheaper. but turned out this option seemed to be a bit of a dream. so i think i'll just proceed with my initial project after this little dream-break :D Watch out for news soon :D

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Update time (finally again :D). Yeah it has been a while, but im back and trying to posh the project with a slightly new timeline. I've set the goal to bring the body to the bodyshop next year istead of this year so i can save a bit more money and get it all done in one istead of doing it partially. this also gives me a bit of time to get some smaller parts restored. like this:
Got my Kakimoto Valve cover repainted and just picked it up at the industrial painter a few hours ago:


It's DuPont Colour #RAL5005 (Signal blue), applied in a special technique to get this wrinkle-paint look which the Kakimoto valve cover originally has (mine came withe some rattle-can paint from the previous owner!!). They also added some paste to make the finnish slightly more "Matte" - and i'm pretty damn happy with the result :)


I still have to block down the Highlighted textures and polish them to get Original look :)


This was the reference picture from the Kakimoto Drag machine i used. Colours slightly vary depending on the picutes, but i liked this one and i think i got really close to it:


Also i changed my heating system from Oil to gas. With the now removed huge oil-tank, and soon-to-be removed old heater i have a lot more space in my hobby-room which i just used to add some extra storage space for my Z-parts which i really need to keep me able to move around in my garage :)


Mhh, nice :)


Oh and that isn't all. Have a lot of planning and stuff going on for restoring small parts. and i'm pretty exited about another package on the way from japan, containing a few damn rare parts for the ol' Fairlady :) You'll see next week and hopefully some other updates this weekend ;)

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Here we go! Could'nt wait to get the textures on the freshpainted valve cover sanded down, so started straight.
1) Added some protective paint and stared with 240 grit sandpaper and a block:


2) first results visible. Because the 240grit paper leaves some scratches in the soft aluminum i changed to much higher grit paper once the paint and primer was removed:


3) three hours later: DONE!! Absolutely love it! can't be happier!


Just need to polish the textures now and do a minor touch up, but nothing big.  Did i mention i love it?? :)


4) Next on the agenda was removing thepaint from the old mirror stakes / bases. Before:


After adding some industrial paint stripper and waiting a few minutes:


and first layer of paint removed. this thing has been repainted a few times so i will redo the process once they've dried, until all the paint is gone :)

 

[banzai510(hainz)]

looks like a ""Jim Cook Racing" widebody kits

[JDMjunkies.ch]

yeah, you might be right! Thakns for the input

[JDMjunkies.ch]

On we go, spent an hour with the mirror bases / Stakes again and some agressive industrial paint removere and a wire brush and finally all the paint is gone - ready for some new paint in the original Charcoal flat colour - Anybody has an input about the exact colour?


oh and you guys asked for a picture of the Kakimoto underside - here it is:

 

[mantas]

Vavle cover looks great!

[Eagle_Adam]

coming along!!!!!

 

that blue is tits

[JDMjunkies.ch]

haha thanks guys, i absolutely love it too :D

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Whoop Whoop! You know it's gonna be a good day, when a new hot UPS-chick shows up with this:


So What's inside this long-awaited Japan-delivery? Let's see:
1) Tomei Powered Cam wheel. Not really important yet for the build, but i wanted to secure a few parts which are out of production and only last stock:


2) Same for next item: A high flow L6 Oil pump by tomei powered:


3) and now to another Holy grail to come on this Car: A set of Ultra rare (many don't even know these exist :D) Hayashi racing Aluminum rear brake drums :)


Many people don't know but Hayashi racing (famous for their wheels) also do brake drums (usually for Daihatsu Copen and these kind of cars) but thanks to a shop called half-way / kuruma they also made a very limited run for the 240Z and what you see here is the last item in stock i got. Bang :)

have another small order on the way here and im planning big updates again soon :)

[Eagle_Adam]

im always a little giddy when i see this thread bumped!

 

 

good lookn pile of metal u have there :) 

[Busta Nut]

This project is off the heeezy!!!! :thumbup:

 

I need to get over there with Adam.....

 

We'll take shifts going through shit.......

 

 

:wub:  :wub:  :wub:  :wub:  :wub:

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Thanks to a great review post by Dailydatsun i thought it would be a great idea to update my Alternator mounting bracket to a better fixed and more solid version from Futofab so i ordered one a few days ago and here it is. Pretty nice litte piece of craftmanship :)

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Thanks to this great thread on JNC i thought a H4 conversion for my 240Z headlight would be something useful. But as a real JDMjunky i was looking for a Japanese version istead of the german Hella headlights and therefore i measured my headlights and they're 180mm (7 inch). But when measuring i figured out one of my cars already had a Hella H4 conversion:


but they're slightly rusted and aged and some oldschool design, so i still want to replace them. Now what i'm curious is the Hella's have a small positioning bulb:


The other car also had some H4 conversion by an unknown manufacturer, but it seems without positioning bulb:


I found some replacement H4 headlights by IPF japan. Available both with and without positioning lamp. LHD and RHD design also available :)


Now can anyone tell me what Kind of headlights the original z's came with? H4 or closed oldschool design? With or without positioning light? Thanks for your help!!

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Finally got some work at the chassis done.
1) Removed all the sound deadening and tar mats. this is what the car looked before:


what i removed:


and  how it looks now. You can see the common rust-spots in the floor mats and at the battery area in the firewall:


Also got the wheels removed and did a lot of small stuff. Also cleaning up the mess in my garage, so hopefully i'll go to the garage more often now again :P

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Yeah it's getting around 0°C here so that's the perfect time to start the garage season :D I did something long overdue and cleaned up the garage:
1) Removed oil from the engine. also removed the oil filter and created a big mess inside and outside my garage. spent an hour cleaning it. But that's another story :P


2) This made it possible for me to move the engine Nr 2 on a trolley. Well it was a cheap trolley which actually bent a lot right after putting the engine on it, but yeah, it was only 16$ and works fine for moving the engine once a year :)


3) after that i finally was yble to clean up the garage. still not done, because i ran out of time, but at least i can move around free in my garage by now :)


4) Also started with the removal of the steering rack stuff, but as i said, ran out of time. more next week hopefully :)

[Eagle_Adam]

cleaning my garage seems to take as much time as wrenching in it does....

 

 

 

i feel your pain 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

haha yeah, specially in a small, dark, cold and messy garage :)

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Well started to remove the front axle stuff today. can't show you a lot of progress because due to a lot of rusty bolts i wasn't able to complete it yet. still soaking stuff in WD40 :)

1) Completed the garage-cleanup and sorted all the tools and labelled the drawers. Much easier to find stuff now :)


2) Then started with the removal of the steering rack / tierod end links, but not complete yet:


3) Next was the stabilizer bar front, almost done but not complete :P


3) Same for the doglegs, almost done but not complete :)

Hope to be able to remove the entire front axle soon ;)

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Finally i got some stuff completed :D Removed the doglegs first:


And then the stabilizer bar:


As next i disconnected the brake-lines


The removed the front axle :)


Out it is :)


And this is how it looks now :) Hope to get some more stuff done during christmas days :)