My two swiss S30Z Fairlady Restoration build thread

[Yarb]

Looks like they are no longer there. Search on z story Sean Dezeart and look at his posts.

[JDMjunkies.ch]

So, i thought i'd pay the bodyshop another visit. i was a bit suprized to see the car looked tmore or less the same than last time on the first glance.
But upon closer inspection i realized they have worked on a lot of details. They finished the welding of the front area. added some threads where they were missing on this version of the parts i had (some have minor differences to my original ones, since they might come from a different year version, despite being factory parts). Also the firewall area behind the bedals was completed.

The floor pan and seat mounts were removed and the inner side was replaced with the KFV part.

Including the additional einforcement plate:


Luckily i brought my USB-stick this time so i could get the pictures which the panelbeater made while in progress. he also repaired the lower section of the inner-inner rear wheel arch

As well as the tool storage area behind the driver seat: You can also see the lower "Dogleg" area behind the driver, which got replaced.

Some small items had to be made by hand, like this rear inner wheel arch lower corner (behind the strut area). Meanwhile the whole section is closed again.

On both sides the Mud / Dirt panels got test fitted to see if all bolt holes and stuff lines up.

I agreed for a next visit in 1,5 weeks, and i'm hoping for the floor panel area to be done and maybe the outer side skirt (incl seat belt mounting reinforcement, etc..). So far i'm really satisfied with the work they do and also their attention to details which matter at the end.

Oh and i need your input. Behind / Outside the LH floorpan, we found some kind of reinforcment plate, which extends to the seat mounts. It looks Very much like factory spot welds from the inside, but i couldn't find anything about this piece in my parts manuals, nor does it make any sense to mee. the area was heavily "repaired" in the past. but this particular piece looks to good to be a repair. No we wonder if we should fabricate something like that and weld it in on the replacement floorpans, or just leave the floor pan as it is?

I have a shipment with very rare and cool parts ready to be s hipped out in japan, but since seafreight is quite expensive atm. I guess i'll wait a bit and collect additional stuff before i send it out.

[240ZBUILTBYME]

On 5/26/2023 at 12:59 AM, JDMjunkies.ch said:

Oh and i need your input. Behind / Outside the LH floorpan, we found some kind of reinforcment plate, which extends to the seat mounts. It looks Very much like factory spot welds from the inside, but i couldn't find anything about this piece in my parts manuals, nor does it make any sense to mee. the area was heavily "repaired" in the past. but this particular piece looks to good to be a repair. No we wonder if we should fabricate something like that and weld it in on the replacement floorpans, or just leave the floor pan as it is?

I'm quite sure this is a stock reinforcement plate, I have them on my car, ill see if i can find a photo

[240ZBUILTBYME]

not the best photo but you can see it pretty clearly 

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Aha. it seems so. thanks for the input. does it expand underneth the floorpan or is it "just" at the rear?
Do you have it on both sides of the car?

[240ZBUILTBYME]

So i have outlined the whole plate, it does extend underneath and is on both sides

Edited June 2, 2023 by 240ZBUILTBYME

[JDMjunkies.ch]

A few days ago i got this lovely package just in time for my birthday. Since long i had the idea that it would be nice to hang my collection of various Z-steering wheels on the wall, as they make a nice decoration. But i wasn't able to find any useful solution to hang them nicely with the pins.

So i aske din the Datsun Europe FB group if anybody had a solution. Nobody had, but Robert, One nice guy from Austria offered me to design them and print a prototype, as he would also use a set for himself.
We (he) played around with different designs and mounting types.

But we (he) ended up with this solution. It's simple, comes including installaiton hardware, fits the original two pins and three screws on the backside and can easy be removed once hung on the wall. It's also extra slim, so it can be shipped in a padded envelope and not as a package.

So today i finally hung my wheels on the wall (note, top right wheel requires a different mount, which i found on etsy)


Fitmend, design and everything is excellent. at the end, he even printed them himself 🙂

And made some nice product photos 🙂 If you're interested. contact robert via this facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/el.bichelino

Oh and robert also sent me this Sticker from a central-swiss Datsun Z club from the old days, which was in his car when he bought it 🙂
Thanks again for the excellent work and happy the wheels finally found a nice place.

Edited June 8, 2023 by JDMjunkies.ch

[SteveE]

Hi

Would like to get one or two of these.  The facebook link is not working for me.  How can I get in touch with Robert?

Thanks

Steve

[JDMjunkies.ch]

20 hours ago, SteveE said:

Hi

Would like to get one or two of these.  The facebook link is not working for me.  How can I get in touch with Robert?

Thanks

Steve

@SteveE. Sorry, i guess i put an internal link there. you can find him here: https://www.facebook.com/el.bichelino

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Soo. time for another update from the bodyshop. After the floor pans got prepared and made sure that everything fits:

They got welded in and attached to the frame rails:

Next then was the inner rocker panel: Along with the rear rocker extension the seatbelt mount and seat rails:


And the rear section of the floor pansl. Looks really need. and completely differnt to the RH side, where we used the older type of floor pans and lots of homemade panels.


What is missing now is the little factory reinforcement piece (see previous post from the bodyshop). and the outer rocker panel. there we currently have a little fitment problem and need to find out if it's the replacement panel or something else is misaligned,

Overall i'm again very happy with the work and attention to detail. I always expect more progress when i go there and then i'm disapointed when i see it looks more or less the same than 1,5 weeks ago, but then i start to look and realize all the small details they had to fix, paint, adjust, test, modify, etc. And then i think about the time it took the previous bodyshop to do the same (in a less good result) on the other side and then i'm super happy again. Overall i'd say that already more than  1/4 of the work is done, and that in only roughly 5 weeks. so if the continue like this, it wil be definitely ready in fall. Nice

[JDMjunkies.ch]

It has been a while since i got something new to read, related to the Z(X) topic. but a few days ago i found not-so-well advertized 280ZX Book for sale. The pictures didn't give a lot of information about the book, but one photograph showed a Rallye 240Z and it was super cheap. That was enough to start my interested and buy it. And this is what i got today:


It's an english book about the 280ZX from 1978. A mix of brochure, Catalogue and information about the 280ZX. It shows how it was developed:

But also how it is being built, tested and so on:

It also doesn't forget about the ancestors of the S130 and shows the S30 in various specification interestingly also covers an Austrailian and european Spec car:

It also shows the Z's rallye heritage and success:
 

But only at the end i realized this is a fanbook. but not by 3rd party company, but by Nissan itself.  I'm not sure at what occasion it came out, but being the same age as the 280ZX itself, i guess it was some kind of advertizing / marketing material for guys that bought a 280ZX, or guys that were thinking of buying one. Very nice nontheless and a great add on to my collection 🙂

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Well it's  holiday season. First i was away for two weeks enjoying the sea, now my bodyshop us running on low flame, so the recent progress is a bit slow. Also because they have to finish another nice project for another customer first.
Here's what happened in the last few weeks. The inner wheel tub has been repaired on the inside and outside visible part, as well as  LH inside trunk area which my previos bodyshop messed up a bit. The rusty swiss-cheese bit which you still see is the part from the rear quarter, which will be replaceed completely with the NOS piece in my posession soon.

The main task is to rework the KFV side sills before putting them into the car. Generally their part is as close to OEM specs as it gets and fit really excellent, but these are somehow quite off in all directions. We made several templates to compare them to the OEM ones and nothing fits. so my bodyshop has to rework them. I'm a bit surprized as their stuff usually is really ace, but these not, on both sides. I tried to reach out to them with many pictures and measurements but haven't got any feedback, sadly. So the only thing we can do is rework them. Any bodyshop will anyway tell you that usually not a single replacement panel is a straight-on swap, so it's not a big deal, but some extra hours. And he had to go to a different shop which has a longer metal-scissor long enough to gut this pieces:

On the already finished part, their in-house paintshop had the finished area sanded down and primered so it doesn't start to rust in the summer heat.

That's it for now. I expect a pallette of goodies from Japan here mid-august and i have put an eye on a nice collection of parts, but negotiation will surely take a bit of time. wish me luck.
And i hop in the coming weeks the bodyshop speeds up things a bit, when the yellow VW Bus in the background is completed (only small damage repair).