New guy with a 240Z, a plan, and some questions!

[ThatOtherGuy]

Hi all. I’m new here. I found it while researching Z restoration, and lurked for a week or two reading everything I could get my hands on.

A good friend of mine’s dad has had his 1972 240Z sitting in the garage for years, and my buddy has been making noises about restoring it for as long as I’ve known him. Neither of us has worked on cars before, but have both wanted to get into it for a couple years now.

I've got the Hayes service manual, Wick Humble’s “How to Restore Your Datsun Z-Car”, and Tom Monroe’s “How to Rebuild your Nissan & Datsun OHC Engine”, and read them all, as well as spending most of my spare time browsing Classic Zcar Club and HybridZ forums, especially on the body & paint sections.

The car is 1 owner, originally in Hawaii. Brought to Michigan in 1989, parked in the garage in 1990, and left (Fluids and all) in the garage since then. We rolled it out onto the driveway, and went to town poking it with screwdrivers, trying to get a decent idea of how much damage there is on the body. The mechanics assessment will have to wait until we pull them out, but brakes for sure, transmission (4spd man) is probably fine, engine might need new gaskets but probably fine (Besides needing a thorough cleaning), as it was running well when it was parked. Radiator and hoses looked fine, no cracking on any of that rubber that we could see.

After a couple hours, the total tally is more than I was hoping but less than I was expecting. The fenders are looking fine, except for the lower rear corners near the runners. The runners are rusted to the point of nearly falling off on first poke. The lower sections of the rear quarters (Seen them called doglegs, I think?) are rusted through, and possibly the flares too. The bumper’s chrome is shot, but they aren’t rusted through – I’ve seen at least one Zcar with painted bumpers instead of chromed, and it didn’t look too bad, so I figure those are save-able. I’m not sure what the official name for it is (Valance?), but the ‘chin’ of the car, under the bumper/grille, is rusted completely out. Floor pans are almost gone, completely. Frame member under the battery is about ready to fall apart. Exhaust is understandably rusted out.

Our aim for this project is to ‘refresh’ it to fairly stock-ish. We have a decent budget, between my friend and his father, but we’re not interested in dumping endless piles of money into it to turn it into a show car. We’re hoping to do as much of the work as we can ourselves, as it’s going to be cheaper (and way more fun) to get the tools and learn to do it ourselves.

My primary concern at this point is getting a good plan together for rust-proofing it as thoroughly as possible - For anyone who has driven on the Detroit area roads, you know what we're up against. Tons of potholes and small debris, road salt and nasty weather galore.

If there’s something wrong with the plan as posted here, make some noise. I’d rather find out before we start tearing it apart that we’re going to be in trouble than after!

1. Strip down car to shell.

2. Clean with Wax & Grease remover

3. Grind/sand/cut-off rust to bare metal everywhere

4. Weld in patch panels (Tabco) and frame repairs/Floorpans (Zedd Findings)

5. Spray inside of all frame members with Picklex20

6. Apply Eastwood HD Anti Rust (16017 @ eastwoodco.com) to inside of frame rails (Probably with their undercoating system, unless someone has a better suggestion, No. 16003)

7. Clean with Wax & Grease remover again

8. Spray down the rest of the car with Picklex20

9. Spray 2 coats of Zero Rust (Existing/repaired panels and replacement panels both)

10. Spray epoxy primer (Probably Sherwin Williams Automotive – There’s a store of theirs down the street from me, easy to get to)

11. Under-body protection

12. Fillers/smoothing

13. Primer coats (2 + guide coat), and all the associated sanding

14. Color coat 1

15. Sanding w/ 500, wet

16. Color coat 2

17. Buffing/polishing

After that, reassemble the mechanics (once they are all rebuilt/cleaned/ect)

When painting the engine compartment, is that a place where we will still want to wet-sand before a second coat, or is that a place where it isn’t going to matter?

From what I’ve been reading on the HybridZ forums, a nice solid primer with light truck bed liner makes a nice coat for the bottom of the car?

-TOG

-a.k.a. Andrew

[Ed]

Sounds like a pretty good plan. Your doing your homework and it seems like you know what to expect. Don't get discouraged because in the end it will all be worth it. One thing on your plan I'd change is taking it to have it pressure washed first. Get as much crud off as you can to start with.

Good luck.

Here is what my undercoating looked like when I was done.

[Ed]

Oh yea, one more thing. Get or build a rotisserie.

[ThatOtherGuy]

Holy... >_< Them things are bloody expensive! How critical are they? $500-800 + shipping is not insignificant!

[Corganx33]

if you know how to weld you can buy the supplies for ~200 or so and make it yourself..... Its all steel stock.

Thats what most people on here do. Also If I can find it, there is a guy in Texas that will build them for people for around $450 shipped. I'll try to find the link

[ThatOtherGuy]

Hmm. Plans would probably be better than buying one built anyways :/ Going to have to pay for shipping on enough large steel parts

[zman525]

do a forum search i brought this up before and got a whole drawn out plan and alot more info

[greg_lambiguit]

that's a pretty good idea buddy, just be sure to dismantle everything to pieces to have a good shot then after working on the top and sides better turn the shell upside down. Carefully weld support on solid sides. Then you are prepared to work on the belly. I suggest you use same color all over. Also its good that you also re-chrome the small parts, bolts, hinges and the like. Above all, have patience and passion.

Hi all. I’m new here. I found it while researching Z restoration, and lurked for a week or two reading everything I could get my hands on.

A good friend of mine’s dad has had his 1972 240Z sitting in the garage for years, and my buddy has been making noises about restoring it for as long as I’ve known him. Neither of us has worked on cars before, but have both wanted to get into it for a couple years now.

I've got the Hayes service manual, Wick Humble’s “How to Restore Your Datsun Z-Car”, and Tom Monroe’s “How to Rebuild your Nissan & Datsun OHC Engine”, and read them all, as well as spending most of my spare time browsing Classic Zcar Club and HybridZ forums, especially on the body & paint sections.

The car is 1 owner, originally in Hawaii. Brought to Michigan in 1989, parked in the garage in 1990, and left (Fluids and all) in the garage since then. We rolled it out onto the driveway, and went to town poking it with screwdrivers, trying to get a decent idea of how much damage there is on the body. The mechanics assessment will have to wait until we pull them out, but brakes for sure, transmission (4spd man) is probably fine, engine might need new gaskets but probably fine (Besides needing a thorough cleaning), as it was running well when it was parked. Radiator and hoses looked fine, no cracking on any of that rubber that we could see.

After a couple hours, the total tally is more than I was hoping but less than I was expecting. The fenders are looking fine, except for the lower rear corners near the runners. The runners are rusted to the point of nearly falling off on first poke. The lower sections of the rear quarters (Seen them called doglegs, I think?) are rusted through, and possibly the flares too. The bumper’s chrome is shot, but they aren’t rusted through – I’ve seen at least one Zcar with painted bumpers instead of chromed, and it didn’t look too bad, so I figure those are save-able. I’m not sure what the official name for it is (Valance?), but the ‘chin’ of the car, under the bumper/grille, is rusted completely out. Floor pans are almost gone, completely. Frame member under the battery is about ready to fall apart. Exhaust is understandably rusted out.

Our aim for this project is to ‘refresh’ it to fairly stock-ish. We have a decent budget, between my friend and his father, but we’re not interested in dumping endless piles of money into it to turn it into a show car. We’re hoping to do as much of the work as we can ourselves, as it’s going to be cheaper (and way more fun) to get the tools and learn to do it ourselves.

My primary concern at this point is getting a good plan together for rust-proofing it as thoroughly as possible - For anyone who has driven on the Detroit area roads, you know what we're up against. Tons of potholes and small debris, road salt and nasty weather galore.

If there’s something wrong with the plan as posted here, make some noise. I’d rather find out before we start tearing it apart that we’re going to be in trouble than after!

1. Strip down car to shell.

2. Clean with Wax & Grease remover

3. Grind/sand/cut-off rust to bare metal everywhere

4. Weld in patch panels (Tabco) and frame repairs/Floorpans (Zedd Findings)

5. Spray inside of all frame members with Picklex20

6. Apply Eastwood HD Anti Rust (16017 @ eastwoodco.com) to inside of frame rails (Probably with their undercoating system, unless someone has a better suggestion, No. 16003)

7. Clean with Wax & Grease remover again

8. Spray down the rest of the car with Picklex20

9. Spray 2 coats of Zero Rust (Existing/repaired panels and replacement panels both)

10. Spray epoxy primer (Probably Sherwin Williams Automotive – There’s a store of theirs down the street from me, easy to get to)

11. Under-body protection

12. Fillers/smoothing

13. Primer coats (2 + guide coat), and all the associated sanding

14. Color coat 1

15. Sanding w/ 500, wet

16. Color coat 2

17. Buffing/polishing

After that, reassemble the mechanics (once they are all rebuilt/cleaned/ect)

When painting the engine compartment, is that a place where we will still want to wet-sand before a second coat, or is that a place where it isn’t going to matter?

From what I’ve been reading on the HybridZ forums, a nice solid primer with light truck bed liner makes a nice coat for the bottom of the car?

-TOG

-a.k.a. Andrew

[Nigel1943]

Don't want to pour cold water on your optimism but before you do anything I would recommend you have a more thorough examination of the shell. If the visible items are shot as you suggest then there's a fair chance the usual hidden Z nasties are going to rear their ugly heads.

Take the front outer fenders off and check the "tubes" that run on top of the inner fender. Check the inner fender itself for rot. Thoroughly check all the frame rails, inner sills,trunk floor, inner rear fenders. There are others but that's enough for now! A lot of these items are no longer available and you may find out your patches are bigger than you anticipated!

The reason for my apparent pessimism is that here in the UK we have pretty similar road conditions and nearly all our Z's have had extensive body rebuilds.

[ThatOtherGuy]

Well, we're going to be restoring it one way or another, extensive patching or no. We're waiting on his dad to clean out the junk from the garage before we have a place to start ripping it apart - I'm just trying to put together a good plan before any disassembly starts. This (For me) is really going to be a practice refresh, as I plan on buying myself a decent condition Z (probably from elsewhere in the country, damn Michigan roads) and refresh that for my own vehicle. The more I can learn to repair now, the better I can do on my own car :knockedou

[Nigel1943]

Don't say you were'nt warned!