Rust - under fender area

[EuroDat]

Good to hear your making progress and goodluck with your finals:classic:

Like to see your photos. I post my photos in my album in my profile. In the forum they seem to get lost amongst all the other post and hard to find.

[skillinp]

I put most of them in two albums: http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/member25697-albums.html

[skillinp]

I've decided that not all parts are worth the effort of wrapping, for example, I just rattle-canned the grill in flat black, and it seems to work just fine. I might have to touch it up every now and then, but that'll save me a lot of trouble since the wrapping would be a huge pain in the butt.

Something of note for anyone who wants to wrap anything: don't start out with the hood. It may be flat-ish, but the fact that it's so big and actually not very flat at all makes it good to do once you've figured out the rest. I'm going to re-wrap the hood, now that I sort of know what I'm doing. Instead, start out with the inspection lids. Those are the smallest and flattest. If you screw them up, it won't put you back 15+ square feet. Then move on to the doors, fenders, roof and rear quarter. I still haven't done the headlight scoops because they are going to be a major pain, so I'm just putting that off as long as possible.

[bartsscooterservice]

With that amount of RUST where it is - one has to wonder what the inside of the frame rails look like, or what is under the tar mats on the floorboards, Wonder how much RUST is in the rear dog legs and rear wheel arches.... I've dismantled a lot of 240Z's and haven't seen rust like that, in that area on any of them.

Hate to be pessimistic - - but the deeper you dig - you may find a lot more problems exist than you can afford to fix.

College Student Budget. Start saving your money and buy a far better condition example to begin with. Sell that car to someone that has the metal working skills necessary to fix it ... Don't throw good money after bad..

Just my opinion..

FWIW,

Carl B.

I'd share Carls opinion, " once your start digging ".. ( but I think even the nicest Z has hidden rust in there.. ) you could still have fun with the car, and repair the bad spots, by cutting out the rotten section and weld in new metal, but you need to have some skills for that.

[skillinp]

My roommate actually helped me out with this one, we dug pretty deep, though not as deep as we could have gone (we didn't do the floor panels or underbody) but we did take out, seal off and repair the metal under the fenders, along the front of the roof, along the rear of the roof, where the seals met the metal (and replaced all the seals)... it's not quite done, but I have a lot of pictures uploaded with the process documented in two albums you should be able to see on my profile. I know this won't keep rust at bay forever, but it will buy me a good amount of time before I need to do a whole body strip down and repaint from bare metal or a new car or whatever.

[skillinp]

This will probably be the last update for this specific issue that I will write.

The car is basically finished. Everything is wrapped, and tonight I'm reattaching my fiberglass bumpers which I painted glossy black. In a few days, I'll be getting the rest of the interior body panels put in place with plastic rivets, though I'm not really sure if that's what I'm supposed to use... I guess it was what was there before so it should be fine.

The driver side door is hanging kinda low, I tried a couple things, but none of them fixed it

I need to clean it both externally and internally, there is some grease and silicone on the outside that will be fun to remove.

I somehow lost the right hand fender light (turning signal I guess?), so unless I find it soon, I'll be ordering a new one.

Same with the plastic bit that connects to the rod for the passenger door's door handle and the latch.

I used this 3m spray that's supposed to be good stuff, but it left a mess all around the areas I used it, and it doesn't seem to hold the weatherstripping in place like I had hoped. I might need to reapply something else instead.

The hatch lock isn't in place correctly, but I'm not too worried about that since I'm going to re-key all the locks soon anyway. That'll probably be the next step, actually.

After that, maybe some new tires and wheels, or brakes, or an MSD ignition system... maybe even fender flares and an BRE spoiler.

Anyway, here's how it came out:

[Bonzi Lon]

Tip on the interior panels: Do not put the rivet centers in until everything is lined up and perfect. No need to ask how I know this.

Bonzi Lon

[EuroDat]

Looking good now its back together. Sounds like you might have a problem with your door hinges. If you open the door so it just clears the car, you can try move it up and down to check play in the hinges.

Thats a bummer with the turn signal unit. They can be hard to find in good condition.

Gooluck on the final touches