Project THESEUS: A '74 260z

[Noll]

Been a while since I updated this. Won't be any progress till the spring, but I have some sheet metal coming from a couple parted-out cars in the states, so should get this looking like a car again before too long once the weather is nice again.

 

The Z is temporarily leaving for a couple days. The guy who purchased my 240z parts-shell also wants the 260z's wheels for his 510 (and I'm planning on different wheels, so win-win). One or two of the lug studs is stripped, so he's bringing it 15 min down the road to his shop to get the wheels off and then stick some random wheels on for me. I'll get the car back in a couple days.

 

 

[Noll]

While I can't work on the car throughout the winter, I have been plugging away at the various removable bits that I can work on indoors.

 

I finally finished refinishing the taillight surrounds; when I got the car they were covered in overspray and the wrong paint. Much sanding, steel wool, putty, more sanding, primer, and paint later, they look pretty decent. Not perfect, but just fine in my opinion. The paint is driving on the other side, then I'll assemble that one too.

 

 

 

Compared to before, I'm really happy with how they turned out:

 

 

 

I also did some patchwork on the dash centerpiece; one of the bolt holes had snapped off. The fix - a 3d-printed part, grinding, and some epoxy. It's not perfect (the cracks are still visible), but it is functional again. Sometime in the future I may putty and paint it, but it's fine for the time being.

 

 

 

Next up I'm going to have a look at the center console, as it has some cracks.

Edited January 17, 2019 by Noll

[Noll]

After a few weeks, the 260 has returned with some different wheels. I really need to put a tarp on this thing now, although I suppose snow rotting the floors doesn't matter much when the floors are already trash.

 

 

 

I also finally got a new phone (was rocking a 7 year old galaxy S3), so going forwards pics should be better, especially when in lower-light situations.

[Noll]

So, I'm on a roadtrip currently (Ont to FL and back), and figured I'd post up on a datsun FB group to see if anyone along my route had any parts that I may need.

Lo and behold, I now have a pair of mostly-rust free (couple small spots but nothing major) rear quarters! As an added bonus, they have the outer section of the inner rear wheel tub and the side-pockets that mate up to the rear floor, so that saves me a decent amount of time and $ (on top of the fabrication time and money saved by not having to buy patch panels and instead just redoing everything at once).

I still have to drive 1900km to get them home this week, and wait for the weather to warm up to get cutting/welding, but now I have a good chunk of the parts I need to make this car rust-free!





They fit in the back of this with about 1" to spare:

[AtomChurch]

1 hour ago, Noll said:

So, I'm on a roadtrip currently (Ont to FL and back), and figured I'd post up on a datsun FB group to see if anyone along my route had any parts that I may need.

Lo and behold, I now have a pair of mostly-rust free (couple small spots but nothing major) rear quarters! As an added bonus, they have the outer section of the inner rear wheel tub and the side-pockets that mate up to the rear floor, so that saves me a decent amount of time and $ (on top of the fabrication time and money saved by not having to buy patch panels and instead just redoing everything at once).

I still have to drive 1900km to get them home this week, and wait for the weather to warm up to get cutting/welding, but now I have a good chunk of the parts I need to make this car rust-free!





They fit in the back of this with about 1" to spare:

If you cut the fender off a 521 by cutting the core support close enough to keep the headlight buckets so maybe 2 inches of core support. And you take it home in the back seat of a four door five ten.. It will dent your doors.

Sometimes it is just better to use the roof rack, if you got it.

[Noll]

9 hours ago, AtomChurch said:

If you cut the fender off a 521 by cutting the core support close enough to keep the headlight buckets so maybe 2 inches of core support. And you take it home in the back seat of a four door five ten.. It will dent your doors.

Sometimes it is just better to use the roof rack, if you got it.

 

 

Good to know haha.

 

Yeah,  I had considered using the roof rack, but it's only really mounted at 3 corners currently (front pass. side bolt has pulled out), so I didn't really trust it. The way they're oriented inside there's not much that should be able to be damaged, and the sweatshirt on the back is additional padding.

[Noll]

Well, I made it home with the quarters! 2500km of solo driving, but I'm finally back. Probably going to cut some some spot welds to remove the bits I don't need over the next week or so.

 

 

[Bleach]

Those look like a good set of rear fenders.

[Noll]

Just now, Bleach said:

Those look like a good set of rear fenders.

Yeah, I'm really happy with them, especially for the price I paid (400$ for the pair). They even have the outer half of the inner arches (which I need) and the interior cargo area pockets. Saves me a ton of $ vs buying all the little patch panels separately.

 

There is a little rust (doglegs + gas flap area), but that's pretty inconsequential. I'm debating if I want to just cut lower on the pass. side (as my gas flap area is fine), or stick with the plan of drilling all the spot welds out of the original panel, replacing with these ones as factory, and then using the good section of metal (on the quarters currently on the car) to weld in to repair that area.

[Noll]

Figured I'd update the thread title to better reflect the number of bits I'm sourcing off other cars.

[Noll]

Aw yea. Can't wait for spring, this will be great.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Maschinenbau]

My jaw literally dropped as I scrolled through those pictures of rust, bad body repair, and that inch of filler...just...wow. Good score on the quarters.

[Noll]

18 minutes ago, Maschinenbau said:

My jaw literally dropped as I scrolled through those pictures of rust, bad body repair, and that inch of filler...just...wow. Good score on the quarters.

 

Yeah, this car has definitely lived a hard life, here's hoping I can give it a proper 2nd chance.

 

The quarters are a godsend, and I will have some other body cut-offs coming before too long (rear valence/taillight area, inner rockers, other misc), so once I get all that and buy repro floorpans/seat mounts I should have all I need to make the car properly 100% rust-free.

[WAGON JON]

Project from the nether region. The great thing about a Z car is most of the body panels are being reproduced. Power to you!!!

[Noll]

55 minutes ago, WAGON JON said:

Project from the nether region. The great thing about a Z car is most of the body panels are being reproduced. Power to you!!!

 

Thanks!

 

Yeah, it is pretty lucky, unfortunately most of what I need is not being made (inner rockers, rear taillight area, etc). For the floors, seatmounts, and subframe rails though (which I will need in the coming months), it's great.

[Noll]

More progress! Spent some time removing some of the parts I don't need off the d/s quarter, as well as drilling out more spot welds to get closer to being able to separate the outer skin.

 

Most of the stuff I took off was just the leftover flanges from when the quarters were sawzall'd off the car, so they had no use.

 

 

Next up, separating this seam:

 

 

Will need to buy doglegs, but I knew that already.

 

 

Also discovered an old dent in the arch that was bondo'd up; It'll be pretty easy to massage back out once the inner arch is separated from the outer skin.

 

Edited March 4, 2019 by Noll

[Noll]

Alright, got the outer skin separated! Little crusty under the bits that were hidden, but that's just surface rust that comes off with a wire wheel. I need to remove the doorjamb plate, then have the outer skin sandblasted, then I can paint it and weld it on the car when the weather gets a bit warmer.
 

The inner arch is in much the same condition. Will need to do a little patchwork at the front, but the vast majority of it is solid.

 

Edited March 4, 2019 by Noll

[Noll]

Alright, looking for opinions. Trying to decide if I want to replace the rear quarters in their entirety, or to just cut where the green line is and preserve the spot welds in the rear hatch surround (I'm thinking it may be cleaner to leave that with the OEM spot welds). Thoughts?

 

[Noll]

Progress at long last! Got the car into the garage today, which was quite the process given that the rear brakes seem to be half applied. Easy enough to tow, but nigh-on impossible to push the last bit into the garage.





With that done, I wasted no time doing a preliminary cut into the rear quarters. Obviously the final removed section will be cut much higher up, I just wanted to see if any more rust was lurking behind there.





1st order of business will be to remove this shoddy patch and weld in some good metal.




This will need replacement too:



Conveniently I purchased a similar section for my Niva that I didn't end up needing, so I'll re-purpose it for this:



I'm going to 240z bumpers, so the bumper mount (already rusted out and hanging by a tiny bit of metal) went too:



Similar cut on the other side:




 

[Bleach]

wow, those are some big cuts!

[Noll]

30 minutes ago, Bleach said:

wow, those are some big cuts!

 

Yep, and more to come! I didn't want to remove ALL of the rear structural integrity just yet, but I'll be drilling out all the spotwelds and replacing the rear quarters mostly like factory. Just wanted to get a preliminary idea of if there was more sketchy work hiding back there 1st.

 

 

---------------

 

Only had a couple hours shop time today, but made some progress.

Started by replacing a section of front inner wing that was pitted all the way through. Not my cleanest work, but it's strong and will never be seen regardless.



I then wire-wheeled the d/s inner wing to get it to bare metal. It's not that bad, all things considered:



Some pinholes here to fix:





I also started scraping the undercoating off the inner arch, and it is in surprisingly OK condition.



Next up will be to finish getting it all to bare metal on both sides, then I will replace the rockers, and do all the patches necessary for the front end (rocker needs to go on 1st so I know lengths of some parts).

[Noll]

Had some more time in the garage today.

Discovered this wonderful bit of handiwork:



All cleaned up. With the majority of the undercoating scraped off, next up will be to wire-wheel it all back to bare metal, then start on repairs.



Cut the driver's side floor out. This was way easier than it should have been, as it was only tacked on in 7-8 places, instead of being actually welded. Still, ,made it easier to remove the shoddy work.





This is a truly odd place for rust to form, can't say I've ever seen this in all the build threads I've looked through:



Wasn't AS bad as I thought though. Will drill out the seatbelt mount, then make a new section after fixing whatever the box-section in there is (I believe it may be part of the swaybar mount, which would be a pain):



And cleaned up the inner rocker:



I'm thinking I may cut like so and make my own lower section:



Plan is to cut the outer rocker off tomorrow, get my replacement to fit, and make all the panels that need it as a reference point.

[Atomic]

Wow, that's a lot of rust! 

[Noll]

3 hours ago, Atomic said:

Wow, that's a lot of rust! 

 

 

Yeah, and some of it is in truly odd places. Still, the car looks better every day I cut more rusted metal off, and I should be able to start adding new stuff back on soon.

 

------------------------

Got the dash and steering column out today. Went pretty easily, the only exception being the bolts on the steering coupler by the rubber bushing.



I need to decide what to do with the dash - clean it and put it back in as-is, have a go at fixing the cracks (hard to get that factory texture though), or save up and purchase one of the reproduction dashes that started production recently.





I also removed the gas pedal and sanded the pivot to remove rust (It was rusted to the point that it was overpowering the return spring), so it's back to being functional now. Nothing picture-worthy about that though.

 

 

 

[BrothersGarage]

Check out this build thread about repairing and refinishing your dash - page #7 starts it, and then he redoes it.