J260S Posted June 16, 2013 Report Share Posted June 16, 2013 Hey, all! I'm Josh, I'm 19, and I live in Nashville, Michigan. A little back story: I've been working on cars and motorcycles for many years with my dad. We built his 1980 El Camino up to 550 horses. I have a 68 Beetle that has around 120hp. We build custom motorcycles out of our garage for a living. Anyway, this past Wednesday I picked up my first Datsun, a 1974 260z. I'm not going to lie, it's fairly rough in some spots. Like the Flintstones floor holes haha It was sitting for 15 years, and it hadn't rolled over in 5 years and the PO thought the motor was frozen. I wasn't concerned, worst case scenario I swap motors. We get it back to our house and start tinkering on it. Tear the starter off and pry the flywheel and the motor breaks loose quite easily. A little later that day we had it cranking over. The next day I picked up an electric fuel pump because the stock one was screwed, and an hour or so later she's spitting and sputtering, but for not having ran in 5+ years I was SHOCKED we got it even rolling over that quickly let alone running. In the past two days we've gotten the front brakes mostly working(really worn pads), and the rear brakes are blocked off for now because the driver side rear is missing the drum entirely lol Since then, progress is kind of at a stand still until I figure out exactly how I want it. I'm going back and forth between rebuilding the L26 that's in it, because it's the original motor, or building a 350 Chevy small block to get it some nice horsepower. What are your guys' opinions? I do want something that'll get up and go, but I'm not sure how much hp I could get out of the stock motor. I was looking at some performance cams/headers/etc. for it, but I'm still on the fence. I'll upload some pictures as soon as I figure out how lol Quote Link to comment
Dirttrack510 Posted June 17, 2013 Report Share Posted June 17, 2013 Posting pics is easy.... Go to photobucket.com and create an account, upload pics to photobucket, then click on the "img" code for the pic you want to post, then paste it in your reply. Thats all there is to it. Now get to work and welcome to Ratsun. :) Quote Link to comment
J260S Posted June 17, 2013 Author Report Share Posted June 17, 2013 Just a test to see if this will work. Quote Link to comment
J260S Posted June 17, 2013 Author Report Share Posted June 17, 2013 Awesome! Now, I'll upload the rest of my current pics Quote Link to comment
J260S Posted June 17, 2013 Author Report Share Posted June 17, 2013 Here is how she is sitting right now. I've been doing a little reading and I'm debating on just rebuilding the L26. he general consensus is that upgrading the cam, the heads and the headers it should be able to produce around 200hp, which I think should suffice for the time being lol Quote Link to comment
Dirttrack510 Posted June 17, 2013 Report Share Posted June 17, 2013 Looks good, nice job on the photos too :) The car looks pretty clean inside and out. ;) Do you have a front bumper? Quote Link to comment
Busta Nut Posted June 17, 2013 Report Share Posted June 17, 2013 Sweet man!! I'm diggin' the custom latch for the passenger door. :lol: Lookin' forward to the progress. Quote Link to comment
J260S Posted June 17, 2013 Author Report Share Posted June 17, 2013 Yeah, I have the front bumper, but I saw some pictures of them without the bumpers and I thought it looked sweet. Between that and how heavy they are, I think I may remove them. Haha, that door latch took months of fabricating! Months meaning like 40 seconds lol Quote Link to comment
J260S Posted June 18, 2013 Author Report Share Posted June 18, 2013 Got the 260 up on the hoist today and checked out the underside more thoroughly. It's not bad. Better than you'd expect for a car that's been sitting for 15 years. Got the tank out of it, i thought I might be able to clean it out myself, but after scraping the bottom of it and seeing it has about a half inch of gunk built up, I'll let pros deal with it lol cleaned out some of the fuel lines as well and tested the fuel gauge and made sure that worked. I'm very surprised at just how much of it has been in good shape so far. The only major component that has to be replaced is the starter, and even that just needs a few taps and it'll crank it over. Quote Link to comment
J260S Posted June 20, 2013 Author Report Share Posted June 20, 2013 I found a place in Lansing that can clean the gas tank and reseal it. So, tomorrow that's going to get done. From there, I'll be moving on to the floor pans. And, they need some.... serious love hahaha Quote Link to comment
its_karl Posted June 20, 2013 Report Share Posted June 20, 2013 Cool project, welcome to ratsun. Do make sure you visit the ratsun members motorcycles, and post some pics/work there too. =) Quote Link to comment
J260S Posted June 21, 2013 Author Report Share Posted June 21, 2013 Cool project, welcome to ratsun. Do make sure you visit the ratsun members motorcycles, and post some pics/work there too. =) Thanks, man. I'll definitely be sure to check it out Quote Link to comment
J260S Posted June 21, 2013 Author Report Share Posted June 21, 2013 Got the tank dropped off today. And, after checking out the floors more thoroughly, they just need to be patched. So I cut away the rust and cut out some new metal for it. I was going to take some pictures for the forum, but my stupid phone broke. So, I've got to get that fixed tomorrow. Along with picking up the tank, I'm going to go to Autozone and get a gallon of undercoating and spread it all over the inside on the floors. Quote Link to comment
J260S Posted July 13, 2013 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2013 I FINALLY got the gas tank back and I can start making some progress again. Got that back in the car, replaced some of the fuel lines and had it running again. And, I'm VERY happy to say that after sitting for 15 years, she has TWO successful trips down the road under her belt. Of coarse there is the one trip that we don't talk about haha Quote Link to comment
Work280 Posted July 13, 2013 Report Share Posted July 13, 2013 First off nice find its great to see these cars coming back to the road. And on the ?? Of doing a v8 swap Iam in the process now. If would say if your on a budget I would say redo the l26. The v8 swap requires a lot of extra time and money plus all the additions of beefer parts ie springs, diff if its not a r200, swaybars. I liked my l series until disaster struck then out of the blue came the cheapes v8 trans Combo so I said what the heck . 2k into it and still going strong. I would say stick to the L give it a tune and drive it until you get a wild hair than rethink about it. The L are stronger than you thing it's a lot of fun. Good luck Quote Link to comment
J260S Posted July 16, 2013 Author Report Share Posted July 16, 2013 First off nice find its great to see these cars coming back to the road. And on the ?? Of doing a v8 swap Iam in the process now. If would say if your on a budget I would say redo the l26. The v8 swap requires a lot of extra time and money plus all the additions of beefer parts ie springs, diff if its not a r200, swaybars. I liked my l series until disaster struck then out of the blue came the cheapes v8 trans Combo so I said what the heck . 2k into it and still going strong. I would say stick to the L give it a tune and drive it until you get a wild hair than rethink about it. The L are stronger than you thing it's a lot of fun. Good luck Yeah, that's what I decided to do. I'm going to stick with the original L26, and just give it a small build. After getting it on the road, I was pretty impressed with it, and it hadn't even worked all the crap out of the system yet lol Quote Link to comment
J260S Posted July 16, 2013 Author Report Share Posted July 16, 2013 Went up to Hudsonville today and picked up some air cleaners, a brake drum and some headers for the Z. Got them all for $150, which I feel was a pretty good deal lol And got a new starter ordered for it, should be in tomorrow. After tossing that on and getting the rear brakes hooked back up and working she'll be getting some more miles on the clock Quote Link to comment
Slowpoke Posted December 20, 2013 Report Share Posted December 20, 2013 Hows the progress on the 260 going? I was looking for local Z's. Not too many up here in Michigan. Quote Link to comment
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