Project THESEUS: A '74 260z

[Noll]

Was going to take a break from the Z today, but as often happens I ended up in the garage anyway. Didn't do any major work, just welded on a section to fix the end of the drip rail.

[Noll]

Got quite a lot done today. Finished making the new dogleg panel and welded it on:










As you can see I decided to weld up the leading edge of the dogleg to eliminate the visual seam between the two parts. I know there are those who will (and fairly enough) say that deleting seams like this makes it look like the rocker was built out of bondo/some other issue, but I wanted to clean stuff up a bit and I never plan to sell this thing so it's a moot point. Plus, even if it got sold at some point for some reason I have pics of the underlying structure to show that all is well 🙂 .


Next up, yet another rusty subframe section. I had initially thought that this was just surface flakiness, but some investigation with a hammer showed that that wasn't the case.




Cut out the affected section:




Floor had some pinholes too so made a new section and welded it in. Still some more weld cleanup to do.




And started making a new section of rail. Will use the bit of tubing lying to the left to recreate the vapor hose passthrough in the rail, dunno where it came from bit it's the right diameter so that's nice.

[Draker]

That dogleg patch panel looks great. One piece of metal to form it? I'd guess 2? Explain the magic 🙂 

[Noll]

2 hours ago, Draker said:

That dogleg patch panel looks great. One piece of metal to form it? I'd guess 2? Explain the magic 🙂 

 

Thanks! I'm rather happy with how it turned out. 3 parts total, pic below of the joins. Was easiest to form the bends/curves just right that way. Welded everything up from the front, then another layer of weld at the back of each join, cleaned each face up on the front with a 60-grit flap disk then radiused them till I was happy with the look (the extra welds at the rear give me the metal thickness to do this properly).

 

Not really visible in this pic but I also made the inner-arch patch panel to match the curvature of the dogleg, then stitch-welded it to the dogleg - welded to the rest of the inner arch once the dogleg was welded on for good too. Will of course seam seal all the inner joins once paint happens.

 

[Lockleaf]

Its looking great Noll.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to go a little crazy with the seam sealer before I button everything up on my quad cab.

[Noll]

32 minutes ago, Lockleaf said:

Its looking great Noll.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to go a little crazy with the seam sealer before I button everything up on my quad cab.

 

Thanks! Yeah, it never hurts - better safe than sorry when there's lots of weld joins as is the case on both of our cars. I plan to epoxy the seams (inside and out where possible), use brush-on seam sealer, 2nd coat of epoxy, and then after the car is painted (to avoid contaminants leaching thru the seams and causing paint issues) I'll be wax coating all the interior cavities too.

[Skib]

I'm having coffee as the sun comes up, reading this thread to hopefully motivate myself to go work on my Zs body 😂

Hope the weather cooperates as well, the garage is occupied by other shit atm unfortunately. 

 

The way your going that body will be around another thousand years lol

[Racer X 69]

19 hours ago, Noll said:
And started making a new section of rail. Will use the bit of tubing lying to the left to recreate the vapor hose passthrough in the rail, dunno where it came from bit it's the right diameter so that's nice.

You’ll find out what that bit of tubing is for after the job is all done and it is too late to get it back.

 

And it will be one of those really important parts that isn’t available anywhere, for any price.

😂

[Noll]

10 hours ago, Skib said:

I'm having coffee as the sun comes up, reading this thread to hopefully motivate myself to go work on my Zs body 😂

Hope the weather cooperates as well, the garage is occupied by other shit atm unfortunately. 

 

The way your going that body will be around another thousand years lol

 

Coming from someone who did this stuff for a living that means a lot! I'm not going to claim any of the work I've done is perfect but it's a lot better than the rust at least 🙂 . Here's hoping, longevity is the goal; want to not have to worry about the shell ever again after this other than if I do mods to it or need to re-paint something because of damage or whatever.

 

4 hours ago, Racer X 69 said:

You’ll find out what that bit of tubing is for after the job is all done and it is too late to get it back.

 

And it will be one of those really important parts that isn’t available anywhere, for any price.

😂

 

That does seem to be the way stuff goes haha. In this case I think it's one of the tube passthroughs that are in the rear floor by the taillights (in this case a spare one off the section of 240z floor I got for the bumper mounts a while back), but worst-case it wouldn't be too hard to recreate it if it's for something else.

[Noll]

With the work pictured below, I've hit a pretty big milestone. To the best of my knowledge, barring some misc. stuff like brackets and bolts snapped off in holes, all rust repair is complete for the chassis. There's still more work to do as far as the aforementioned misc. stuff and more bracing/reinforcement, but the time of cutting big chunks out of the car to replace with new/homemade sections is DONE. Only took ~4 years 🙂 .



Finished making the replacement subframe section and welded it on:






Didn't aim to make the join seamless, leaving a bit more meat on the welds to ensure strength was more important here IMO, it'll be hidden by the fuel tank etc anyway.




Moved onto the very last subframe section, this area which had rusted through from the inside. Cut out, cleaned up (not pictured), and welded in a new panel from 14ga.









I then finished scraping the undercoating out of the trans tunnel, all remaining undercoating  now will be dealt with when I flip the car the other way.

[Draker]

You deserve an award for this. That’s a huge hurdle cleared. Great job!! 

[slowlearner]

2 hours ago, Draker said:

You deserve an award for this. That’s a huge hurdle cleared. Great job!! 

 

People have been sainted for less than this. 🥇

[Lockleaf]

Pretty huge milestone! Congrats!

[Racer X 69]

15 hours ago, Noll said:

With the work pictured below, I've hit a pretty big milestone. To the best of my knowledge, barring some misc. stuff like brackets and bolts snapped off in holes, all rust repair is complete for the chassis. There's still more work to do as far as the aforementioned misc. stuff and more bracing/reinforcement, but the time of cutting big chunks out of the car to replace with new/homemade sections is DONE. Only took ~4 years 🙂 .
 

 

Awesome feeling, isn't it?

 

There is a young guy down in Australia with a severely rusted Z doing a similar build. He has a YouTube channel.

 

Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHZhre0vm7sL2Kl7hUQFVkg

 

{Stoopit new forum software thinks it is a video link and tries, then fails, to embed it. I tried using BB code to embed the url as a link in the last sentence but the stoopid forum software ignored the BB code.}

 

Anyway . . . . 

 

Pretty cool to see another generation fixing up cool old(er) cars.

Edited March 21, 2021 by Racer X 69
Stoopit forum software is stoopit.

[Noll]

20 hours ago, Draker said:

You deserve an award for this. That’s a huge hurdle cleared. Great job!! 

 

18 hours ago, slowlearner said:

 

People have been sainted for less than this. 🥇

 

15 hours ago, Lockleaf said:

Pretty huge milestone! Congrats!

 

4 hours ago, Racer X 69 said:

 

Awesome feeling, isn't it?

 

There is a young guy down in Australia with a severely rusted Z doing a similar build. He has a YouTube channel.

 

Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHZhre0vm7sL2Kl7hUQFVkg

 

{Stoopit new forum software thinks it is a video link and tries, then fails, to embed it. I tried using BB code to embed the url as a link in the last sentence but the stoopid forum software ignored the BB code.}

 

Anyway . . . . 

 

Pretty cool to see another generation fixing up cool old(er) cars.

 

Thanks all! It is pretty awesome to have gotten this far, looking back at the start of the thread to now is a huge difference (in a ton of ways, not least in me actually knowing what I'm doing lol. Definitely was in over my head when I got this car, but persevered).

 

Racer - thanks for the link, I'll check out their videos tonight. Always cool to see how others have done stuff.

 

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

 

Whole bunch of misc. stuff and bracket replacement today.

Cut this off from just behind the diff retaining strap mounts; not sure what It's for but I'm assuming possibly exhaust hanger mount? Ground the old captive nut off and welded in a new one, then welded it back on.









Next up, this rusted bracket:






Took this one off to as there was some rust jacking underneath, and ended up making a new one.






Temporarily took the fuel tank strap bracket off to hammer it flat again as it was pretty mangled. Doesn't really show how bad it was in the pic.






The rear brake/fuel line bracket was toast, so I decided to grind it off and replace it with a captive nut. Will be using that to install a bracket of my own design here.







On to the front end, welded in some more captive nuts to the upper rad support (for possible future intercooler mounting), as well as a couple of wire harness holders:






The last thing I did for the day was basically just a bit of insurance. As the rear valence is 3 panels welded together it'll need a bit of filler, and I don't want air going under the car at higher speeds and possibly flexing the rear valence, causing cracking. As such, welded in a 16ga strip in the most 'oil-canny' bit in the middle, stiffened it up a lot.

[slowlearner]

5 hours ago, Racer X 69 said:

 

Awesome feeling, isn't it?

 

There is a young guy down in Australia with a severely rusted Z doing a similar build. He has a YouTube channel.

 

Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHZhre0vm7sL2Kl7hUQFVkg

 

{Stoopit new forum software thinks it is a video link and tries, then fails, to embed it. I tried using BB code to embed the url as a link in the last sentence but the stoopid forum software ignored the BB code.}

 

Anyway . . . . 

 

Pretty cool to see another generation fixing up cool old(er) cars.

 

I've seen some bad Z's and some bad rust in Australia, but I've never seen anything like this thing @Noll has been working on. 

 

[Racer X 69]

5 hours ago, Noll said:

 

Racer - thanks for the link, I'll check out their videos tonight. Always cool to see how others have done stuff.

 

 

He isn't very far along yet, only been into it less since last September.

 

His build thread is here: https://www.classiczcars.com/forums/topic/64416-240zbuiltbyme-1971-240z-hs-001063-project-sheena/#comments

 

 

Edited March 22, 2021 by Racer X 69

[Noll]

Got a free R160 today; person who gave it to me said it was locked up and couldn't remember the gear ratio. In the end it just ended up that the input dust shield had rusted to the housing, spun it with an impact and it's like butter now. Even better, after popping it open it's a 3.9:1 diff, which was exactly what I was looking for (and conveniently the ZX 5spd I have already has a speedo gear for a 3.9).

Cleaned it and the old R180 up a bit so it'll be a less messy job to swap parts over (it'll get paint too ofc):






I then pulled the old diff apart to confirm the ratio (like I thought, the stock 3.36:1 or whatever) and get a better idea what the diff buttons look like that I'll need to swap.








All the info I've found about the internal swap has been little bits and bobs from various forum threads scattered all over the internet, and no one "how-to" writeup, so I think I may as well make one to help people out in the future. My Z stub axles are the correct spline count for the subaru diff, so it should just be a case of figuring out how to get the spider gears out of the R180, swapping the threaded "buttons" over,  and swapping the driveshaft input flange over to the R160 as well.

Just need to do a bit of research as to how the spider gears come out, and the rest should be a piece of cake.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Noll

[Homeboyx]

Super pump on the progress!! 👌

[Noll]

22 hours ago, Homeboyx said:

Super pump on the progress!! 👌

 

Thanks, and me too haha! Getting there, it should be on its wheels before too terribly long I hope 🙂 .

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

 

Did the diff parts swap today, went great. Info below, if anyone thinks it's worth its own write-up (as all the info about it is bits-and-pieces in old scattered forum threads throughout the internet) I can do one with torque specs etc. It's not a complicated swap to do by any means.

Pulled the diff cover and side plates off the Z R180:






On this diff, the pin that holds in the main crossrpin is peened into place. Tapped the hole round again and drove it out with a drill bit:






The ring gear stops the pin from coming out, so pulled that off and slid the pin out.






Tapped the buttons out and reassembled the diff. Didn't bother with torque specs as it would need to come apart again to be used (to put the buttons back in) anyway.





on to the R160, had to pull off the diff breather to get at one of the bolts:




marked the side plates before removing, so as to not mess up the number of shims or the orientation:




In the subaru diff the pin holder is a rollpin, easier to remove than the other diff.






Marked the ring gear and carrier before unbolting:




Took the crosspin out and rotated the spider gears so I could take them out:






Removed the old circlips by squeezing them in then dremelling it in half, too much spring tension for me to remove it otherwise with the tools I have:




Buttons onto the side gears, required a decent amount of force with a hammer to push them into place. Clearance is tight but it's there.






Put everything back together, and swapped over the driveshaft flange, as well as the rear mount studs (not pictured):




And complete and axles bolted on. Obviously I still need to clean and paint the diff and axles (as well as possibly new gaskets for the diff), but it's a 100% bolt-in setup as it is right now.




3.9:1 rear and the 5spd should be a nice combo 🙂 .

Edited March 24, 2021 by Noll

[Noll]

Back to welding today, made some jack points in the middle of the rockers to more easily so stuff where the whole car doesn't need to be lifted (don't want to have to take the front spoiler off to get at the front xmember jack point etc).

Started with a brace plate:




And the actual jack point:




Welded it all up and boxed it in. I intentionally ran those welds along the sides to act as a safety measure against a jack sliding off the side of the plate somehow.




Also welded a reinforcing plate to the rear seatbelt buckets - more than anything this will ensure that the water drain section won't get crushed if this is used as a supporting point if the car ever goes up on a lift.




I think that's about it for jack point reinforcement unless anyone can think of something I should add. The front jack points are the frame just behind the t/c boxes, or the front crossmember, and the rear ones will be the rear diff, rear diff crossmember, the above seatbelt mounts, or the subframe just behind them.



Next up, on to front bracing, and then I might be done as much as I can with the car flipped this side.

[]2eDeYe]

So this is where all the wins are hanging out. Nice work.

[docbainey]

On 3/23/2021 at 11:08 PM, Noll said:

3.9:1 rear and the 5spd should be a nice combo 🙂 .

 

Noll, Your tenacity on this project is awesome!

 

The 160 diff??? 510s tear those things up all the time. How long do think it will last before it becomes a steel blender?

[Noll]

44 minutes ago, docbainey said:

 

Noll, Your tenacity on this project is awesome!

 

The 160 diff??? 510s tear those things up all the time. How long do think it will last before it becomes a steel blender?

 

Thanks!

 

Regarding the diff, I've heard both sides of it - some say it'll blow, but others say they've beaten the hell out of them in rally cars and ka/sr swaps with no issues. When I made a FB post last year to gather info about the diff parts swap someone posted up saying that they'd been launching a 4.11 r160 in their 240z for quite a while with no damage (and provided a video lol).

 

I'm just going to run it, if it goes it goes and I'll figure something out (or pay 65$ for another r160 and repeat lol).

 

I'll also be sticking a lsd center in it eventually which should help as I'd imagine the weak link is the spider gears when doing a one-wheel burnout or something.

 

Might be more of an issue once I turbo the L26 and am making more power but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it

[slowlearner]

8 hours ago, Noll said:

 

Thanks!

 

Regarding the diff, I've heard both sides of it - some say it'll blow, but others say they've beaten the hell out of them in rally cars and ka/sr swaps with no issues. When I made a FB post last year to gather info about the diff parts swap someone posted up saying that they'd been launching a 4.11 r160 in their 240z for quite a while with no damage (and provided a video lol).

 

I'm just going to run it, if it goes it goes and I'll figure something out (or pay 65$ for another r160 and repeat lol).

 

I'll also be sticking a lsd center in it eventually which should help as I'd imagine the weak link is the spider gears when doing a one-wheel burnout or something.

 

Might be more of an issue once I turbo the L26 and am making more power but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it

 

It's up to you... but the first thing I did when I got my car was find a Subaru R180 LSD. I saw a torsen LSD on market place for $300 the other day! If it hadn't been interstate I'd have grabbed it as a spare. The clutch style LSD I have in my car is rare (only in particular JDM STis) and I've probably spent $AU1500 on it. However, there's torsen and viscious LSDs available for not much cash from import wreckers.