My two swiss S30Z Fairlady Restoration build thread

[240260280z]

those hands will toughen...

Keep it clean and wear gloves for a while when working.... don't stop.

[EuroDat]

If you cant remove your ring while working then you should where gloves. If it gets hooked on something it can cause nasty injuries.

Chas

PS: you shouldn't be complaining about warm weather, but dont worry, in a couple of months youll be freezing your a*# off in that garage when is close to 0degC.

Edited September 10, 2013 by EuroDat

[JDMjunkies.ch]

@ Eurodat: i do wear mechanic gloves while working. this happened with gloves

Well hello there People keep asking me what's going on and you might have noticed i'm currently working hard on finishing my EK9 project. But anyway, this is what happend with the 240Z's lately:

First a friend told me about a great retored 240Z body in germany. took ma a while to get in touch with the owner:

what looked to be a great deal first turned out to be an US-imported model with a weird badly executed widebody conversion with modifaight taillights (even worse than my white shell). so it's useless to me. Too sad.

Then found another car for a reasonable price which was sold in germany but then i figured out the ad on Autoscout was a scam and some people tried to trick me sending them some money. i'm happy i was smar enough and didn't get fooled

So why am im telling you this? I thought having a cheap good shell istead of restoring mine would make everything faster and cheaper. but turned out this option seemed to be a bit of a dream. so i think i'll just proceed with my initial project after this little dream-break Watch out for news soon

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Update time (finally again ). Yeah it has been a while, but im back and trying to posh the project with a slightly new timeline. I've set the goal to bring the body to the bodyshop next year istead of this year so i can save a bit more money and get it all done in one istead of doing it partially. this also gives me a bit of time to get some smaller parts restored. like this:

Got my Kakimoto Valve cover repainted and just picked it up at the industrial painter a few hours ago:

It's DuPont Colour #RAL5005 (Signal blue), applied in a special technique to get this wrinkle-paint look which the Kakimoto valve cover originally has (mine came withe some rattle-can paint from the previous owner!!). They also added some paste to make the finnish slightly more "Matte" - and i'm pretty damn happy with the result

I still have to block down the Highlighted textures and polish them to get Original look

This was the reference picture from the Kakimoto Drag machine i used. Colours slightly vary depending on the picutes, but i liked this one and i think i got really close to it:

Also i changed my heating system from Oil to gas. With the now removed huge oil-tank, and soon-to-be removed old heater i have a lot more space in my hobby-room which i just used to add some extra storage space for my Z-parts which i really need to keep me able to move around in my garage

Mhh, nice

Oh and that isn't all. Have a lot of planning and stuff going on for restoring small parts. and i'm pretty exited about another package on the way from japan, containing a few damn rare parts for the ol' Fairlady You'll see next week and hopefully some other updates this weekend

Edited October 17, 2013 by JDMjunkies.ch

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Here we go! Could'nt wait to get the textures on the freshpainted valve cover sanded down, so started straight.

1) Added some protective paint and stared with 240 grit sandpaper and a block:

2) first results visible. Because the 240grit paper leaves some scratches in the soft aluminum i changed to much higher grit paper once the paint and primer was removed:

3) three hours later: DONE!! Absolutely love it! can't be happier!

Just need to polish the textures now and do a minor touch up, but nothing big. Did i mention i love it??

4) Next on the agenda was removing thepaint from the old mirror stakes / bases. Before:

After adding some industrial paint stripper and waiting a few minutes:

and first layer of paint removed. this thing has been repainted a few times so i will redo the process once they've dried, until all the paint is gone

[HS30-H]

One thing to note about the Kakimoto cam / tappet cover on an S30-bodied car is that the very front edge can rub on the inside of your bonnet / hood as the engine moves around a little under drive and engine braking.

The solution is to fit engine mounts with uprated rubber ( like the Kameari units ) and lower the engine slightly by slotting the mount brackets.

There's plenty of space in the S130-series body though ( as in your pic of Kakimoto san himself )....

[240260280z]

Nice work and detail! I saw those valve covers only a few times and wondered. Nice to see one up close. If you have a pic of the underside please post!

Keep going!!!

[JDMjunkies.ch]

One thing to note about the Kakimoto cam / tappet cover on an S30-bodied car is that the very front edge can rub on the inside of your bonnet / hood as the engine moves around a little under drive and engine braking.

The solution is to fit engine mounts with uprated rubber ( like the Kameari units ) and lower the engine slightly by slotting the mount brackets.

There's plenty of space in the S130-series body though ( as in your pic of Kakimoto san himself )....

Thanks for the input, will remember this when installing the engine! Upraded engine bushings where planned anyway and lowering it sounds like a good idea Thanks! your knowledge is incredible

Nice work and detail! I saw those valve covers only a few times and wondered. Nice to see one up close. If you have a pic of the underside please post!

Keep going!!!

Thanks mate! I'll make a picture for you and upload it within the next days

[JDMjunkies.ch]

On we go, spent an hour with the mirror bases / Stakes again and some agressive industrial paint removere and a wire brush and finally all the paint is gone - ready for some new paint in the original Charcoal flat colour - Anybody has an input about the exact colour?

oh and you guys asked for a picture of the Kakimoto underside - here it is:

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Whoop Whoop! You know it's gonna be a good day, when a new hot UPS-chick shows up with this:

So What's inside this long-awaited Japan-delivery? Let's see:

1) Tomei Powered Cam wheel. Not really important yet for the build, but i wanted to secure a few parts which are out of production and only last stock:

2) Same for next item: A high flow L6 Oil pump by tomei powered:

3) and now to another Holy grail to come on this Car: A set of Ultra rare (many don't even know these exist ) Hayashi racing Aluminum rear brake drums

Many people don't know but Hayashi racing (famous for their wheels) also do brake drums (usually for Daihatsu Copen and these kind of cars) but thanks to a shop called half-way / kuruma they also made a very limited run for the 240Z and what you see here is the last item in stock i got. Bang

have another small order on the way here and im planning big updates again soon

[Patcon]

I was hoping you had a picture of the hot UPS delivery lady... now I'm disappointed. The drums are pretty cool though. What makes them superior to standard aluminum drums?

C

[JDMjunkies.ch]

Thanks to a great review post by Dailydatsun i thought it would be a great idea to update my Alternator mounting bracket to a better fixed and more solid version from Futofab so i ordered one a few days ago and here it is. Pretty nice litte piece of craftmanship