restore or wreck this 240z

[curtis 240z]

After four years I finally managed to convince the owner to sell. she is complete and is all original and matching numbers including original Datsun keys and owners manual which matches the car. The car is rusty but i'm not sure weather to restore it or use it for parts for my other 240z. I would like to get your opinions on this?

The first photos are before I picked it up.

[curtis 240z]

Also the fire wall is rusty along with both floors and parts around the door frame.

[Mr Camouflage]

Well. Anything's restorable. Just looks a HLS30-26 & 27. If you do the work yourself it's a lot cheaper.

I'd stick it in a nice dry shed somewhere if you have the room. and decide later. No point wrecking it just yet. Would make a nice retirement/long term project

If it is for sale, Dibs on the owners manual handbook folder and contents

[Walter Moore]

The sad news is that the rust you can see is only a fraction of the rust that this present.

[sblake01]

Judging from the pictures, I'd say, part it out. It's not a low VIN so it's not anything special and even if you do the work yourself, I doubt if it would ever be worth what you put into it if that's your goal.

[Mr Camouflage]

You also have to take into account that the car is located in Australia and there aren't many 240z's left down under of the 3500 or so that were sold here.

You wont really know how rusty is it until you strip that chassis. It does look pretty bad, but rust repair sections are available for most parts of the S30. Put it in the garage and strip the panels and interior and see how bad the rust really is.

In the end, it's your car now, so do what you like with it.

What year and chassis number is it? Looks like a late 70 or 71 car to me.

[sblake01]

Oh, that Ballina:) I guess it would be rare in Ireland also.

[26th-Z]

Restore it. 26th wasn't that bad but 27th is worse. The big ticket is going to be body welding but it can be done - believe me! Restore it because it is a rare car in it's location.

[Mike B]

I vote to part it out. I am debating whether HLS30-00331 is worth trying to save now. I took a lot of pictures of it yesterday and will post a separate thread to get some opinions on it, but sorry to say that yours looks even worse than it. It looks like the roof on your car would be a real challenge to fix, in addition to the more standard rusted areas that we can see from the photos (floors, firewall, doors, quarter panels, etc.). I would bet that once you strip the interior out and take a close look at the underside you will see that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

-Mike

[lonetreesteve]

If it were an HLS30 and you lived in North America, I would say to part it out. But since it's an S30, I would try to restore the car.

Edited September 1, 2008 by lonetreesteve

[psdenno]

To help us help you decide, how about a little more information?

How much storage space do you have?

Do you have the skills to fix it yourself?

Do you have the budget to support the needed repairs - known and unknown?

As others have said, anything can be fixed. But, is it worth the cost & effort?

Dennis

[Six_Shooter]

I was looking at the first picture of the firewall, thinking to myself, where's the throttle linkage through the firewall, why does that look like the battery on the right?

Then it hit me, from the discussion about this car in the other thread, this car is located in Austrailia, right hand drive ::

Just looking at what can be seen in the pictures it's too far gone for me to even consider purchasing, let alone trying to restore it. As stated above, what you can see is only a very little bit of what you will find.

Now, you have to keep in mind that I'm located in Canada, and there were hundreds of thousands of S30s sold in North America so it's a little easier to just look at another one to purchase.

The condition of the car looks to be a little worse than what Mull (on hybridz) started with, and his car is basically a new fabricated chassis, under a somewhat original shell with some repair patches.

The killer for me, is that roof rust. Repairing a roof is never fun, I did it once on my 1985 GMC Jimmy, where I had to replace the corner above the passenger side windsheild, all the experianced body guys said to me, when I asked them how they would do it was: "Good luck with that, let us know how you did it when you're done".

looks like there will be some salvageable parts, like glass, gauges, pedals, but I would say that chassis is just too far gone.