My two swiss S30Z Fairlady Restoration build thread

[JDMjunkies.ch]

So everyday i try to spend at least 30minutes in the basment in my little Home-workshop assembling parts. But honestly progress is allways slower then i was hoping for, because it needs just so much time figuring out all the bolts, nuts and how everything belongs together. But better do it only once, but slow istead of rushing and messing everything up
1) Yesterday i got som industrial grade Superglue from the office to glue that rubber-stopper that is mounted on the steering rack Assembly. Before:


And after glueing it back (I reused the old rubber piece because it's not available anymore and after a bit of cleaning it looked nice). Should be bulletproof now


2) Had some sparetime after t hat so i decided to use it and prepare the Seatbelt-mounts for sandblasting and powedercoating. Before:


And after. Mounts removed. Note sure about this seatbelts. it's a swedish brand so definitly not Genuine Nissan. Probably installed by nissan switzerland upon import due to different safety regulations here. But they looked like a nice solution so i think i keep them if i don't find any better thing


3) Today i started with the Front subframe. Started like this:  


Then after a few small fitting-works installed the Front Lower control arms (LCA's).
Click here for a great writeup about how to install them! This was very useful!


Here we go! Front LCA's temorarly installed. Haven't tightened the nuts yet because i want to be sure everything alignts befor tightening stuff...


4) Then installed that rubber-stopper-thingy on the Steering rack:


And then couldn't help myself but had to install the steering rack to the front assembly temporarly just to get me the feeling about how it will look soon. Somehow satisfying seeing all these puzzle-parts come together:


5) And of course, Yves my bodyshop guy keeps me updated almost daily about progress. But i will visit him and my fairlady again tomorrow so expect some nice fotos
Note these are work-in-progress Fotos of the front Firewall / Battery tray area (which is usually rusty from leaked battery-acid). So the final result will look better

 

[HaZmatt]

Wow I can tell already this is going to be a beauty! So much detail in your work, keep it up!

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Have wanted to visit my Fairlady and Yves at the Bodyshop for a while, but sadly i never really found time. That until last thursday. Just wanted to talk about the "Master plan" regarding the chassis and see the work he did so far. As usual great work from what i can say. But i'll let the pictures talk:










So Far the front-right Corner almost is done...
- Battery-tray area fixed (battery tray will be sandblasted, primered and welded back in soon)
- New Rocker panels created from sheetmetal and replaced old ones.
- Inner side sills repaired
- Frame rail rebuilt and partially replaced with the NOS one i brought him.
- Complete front inner wheel well repaired
- Front air channel repaired and rebuilt from sheet metal
- Firewall below Battery tray replaced (Work in progress)

Next steps will be replacing the floorpanels with replacement panels i brought him, as well as completing the firewall on the passenger side. Then the work will move to the passenger-backend of the car.

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Currently i'm working in my little-basement-workshop almost daily trying to get all the small details right. So here's an update on all the small things i did lately:
1) Zcarnut over at the JNC Forums pointed out that my Steering rack spacer was mounted the wrong way. After checking a few pictures i could confirm. Why you wonder? Because the drawing in the exploded-view and Manual is wrong. Damnit However i've corrected that now:


2) Added those washers that are mentioned in the manual as well but did not fit properly and were not installed on both cars originally. But somehow i like the look of these and think it's better to not have the nut directly on the rack so i like this solution and had them reworked to fit my needs (Not torqued in the pictures so thats why it looks loose )


3) Next i installed the Kameari Engine mounts. Before:


Specs from the Manual:


And done - love how everything comes together slowly


4) I'm currently preparing a load of parts for powdercoating so i decided while i'm at it i will also put the Diff mount baseplates into this even if i'm not sure yet if i will reuse them or replace them with something like the "technoversion Diff mount kit".  Before:


And after:


5) And last i felt like my last Steering colum disassembly somehow was a bit of a fail. Lucky me i have two sets of almost everything (the advantage of having to cars to choose parts from ) So i repeated the whole thing with the Second steering column and this time used proper professional tools (aka the Spanner-extension-bits and a wood hammer, as seen on the Top). Worked way better this time without any damage:


6) I wanted to remove the bearings from the Lower part of the colum as well but this item is not ment to be removed i think... There is nothing mentioned in any manual about how to get this thing out.. so i tried on my own..


But ended up with a damaged bearing and cover cap. (See right). So i decided before destroying the nice one (left) as well i might get this sandblasted carefully and repained i stead of powdercoated. because powdercoating needs a lot of heat to burn the colour in and this woud destroy the bearing-rubber-seal and by using paint this probably would be possible. Have to check this but so far this is my best solution...

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Today i had a super-productive day in my opinion Had a day off from work so i thought i'd do as many things as possible. I have some big car related news (not this car) soon, so i want to complete a few things here. More to come.
1) However, the day started like this: Bought a cheap Jigsaw (see below) And went to the garage where Z Number one (the white one) is still standing around. The other one has a bad spare-wheel well so i wanted the bodyguy to weld this one into the other chassis:


After 30 Minutes of cutting the well as nice as possible with the new jigsaw, The dremel Tool for hard-to-reach Areas and the Angle grinder it looked like this:


Out it is:


2) After Dropping off a a few parts for the Anodizing company (parts for the EK9, will post about this soon) I Went to the powedercoating company To dropp of the battery-tray-mount which Yves (the bodyshop guy) gave me, and the Spare-wheel well To sandblast and get it primered so these parts are ready to get welded back in at the bodyshop:


3) Also had these set of parts dropped off at the powdercoating company for a sandblast and Powdercoat. (Original doglegs, Steering colum parts, Original steering knuckles, Pedalbox and Pedals, Seatbelt mounts and Differential-belt mounts):


Btw: This is how the powdercoating company looks from the inside. they're specialized in huge parts (like crane-pieces and stuff) so it's a seriously big undustrial complex and a automated powdercoating cycle:


4) And while i was on my parts-delivery tour i Visited my good friend Nadya, who works at an industrial paintshop and delivered the parts from the second steering colum for painting. The reason is powdercoating needs to be burnt-in at high temperatures but because i still have the rubber-seal and the bearing inside i wanted to have it painted without any heat. Also i know Nadya very well and was happy to explain he rin detail what i need. While the Powdercoating company works on a totally unpersonal way and i'ts hard to get special wishes done right.  


Hope to complete a lot of things as soon as these parts return from the various shops

[JDMjunkies.ch]

I knew my Parts will be back from the paintshop and powdercoating company soon so i wanted to make sure as much as possible is ready for assembly when the parts are here.
So ever since i read about it on the internet. something i wanted to do is clean and refurbish the steering colum bearings..
Before (everything nasty and filled with old, dirty grease):


Here i have one of them pulled apart and cleaned all the balls (30 total) and shells and the securing ring. I have a total of 4 bearings because two from each Steering colum from each car, in case you're wondering.


I reworked all four of them because that gave me the opportunity to choose the best two at the end (to the right on this picture), rather than replacing the Bearing balls with some generic bearing balls as some others have done before..:


While i was at work in my basement i decided to finally hang my 1/50 limited Starroad picture with the Inoue-san (from starroad) handsign on the wall as a bit of motivation and inspiration:


And then my friend Nadya at the Industrial paintshop sent me this photo of my steering colum parts drying and told me i can pick them up on friday again. Seems like i have some work for the weekend

 

[240260280z]

Great info on the bearings! You and Capt'n are a great resource!

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Last few evenings i've been working on the assembly of the steering column. Started with the delivery of the freshly sandblasted and painted housing parts:


The steering colum mount still had the old glue inside so i tried a few methods to clean it but figured out the "solvent cleaner" (which is actually an industrial grade label-sticker remover) works brillant compared to the dremel-and-wire-wheel method


this wass the result after wiping it a few times. see before picture above:


Next was glueing the old and cleaned rubber insulators back in. they where still quite nice and soft and no new ones available so i decided to reuse them:


Put the plastic piece from the steering lock and the two bearings into the fridge to get them minimized a bit and at the same time put the housing on my radiator to warm and expand it slightly for a few hours:


After that it was quite easy to hammer the bearings and the plastic piece back into the housing carefully with a wooden hammer and the professional tool (aka the big wrench nut and expander)


After cleaning all the small bits and regreasing them i had them back into the housing as well (thanks to the help of my girlfriend, because it's impossible to compress the spring and at the same time install the lock-ring - trust me. i tried for about an hour


The result:


So  here we have the steering colum minus the mounting bracket:


but i've installed that shortly thereafter thats it for today. Have a last small bit of work tomorrow and hopefully more coming soon

 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Seems like i do a little bit on my car every evening lately and that's so much fun
1) Went to the local hardware store and picked up a few 10.8 grade bolts for installing my JDM three-five Pillowball mounts:




Of course i had to install them directly after coming home. One more part instaleld on the front subframe




2) Today i went to the Sandblasting / Powedercoating company to pick up my parts. The battery-mount and the Sparewheel-well only got a sandblast and primer so the bodyshop can weld them in and the painter paint them:


The rest of them got powdercoated RAL9005, Satin black. I don't need all of the parts but i thought while i'm at it anyway why not throw in a few spare-parts? No big price difference anyway. Most important is the pedalbox and -parts. But more on that soon


3) And last but not least i went to the local rubber-shop and had them replicate that rubber-insulator between the steering colum and the firewall according to my shitty template i made from the old seal. howefer, the result fits niceliy and it was cheap so i'm happy

[bartsscooterservice]

  very nice work !

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Spent a few hours in my Basement-workshop and at the grage yesterday. but let's begin with a parts delivery from MSA. Sadly they forgot a few small bits so i have to wait for the rest. Mainly pedal parts and aftermarket tierod-endlinks in OEM-design. Just because of the fact that my NAGISA tierod endlinks are not street legal i ordered These to install for for Registration testing purpose

 

Of course i had to install the Rubbers imediately to my fresh powdercoated pedals - Looks so nice

 

Then decided to enjoy the beautiful spring-evening in front of my Garage and disassemble the doors from Chassis Nr. 2. I plan to bring some bodypanels (Fenders, doors, hatch and Hood) for paint removal to a specialized Company next month so i want to have all the parts ready. Before:

 

And approx. an hour or so later. Second door followed. I figured out that various bolts and parts where missing on each door, so someone did a horrible Job Assembling them in the past..

[Red7]

What a great thread, I've really enjoyed reading it, keep up the good work, I find it fascinating what you're doing!