Not thee Wick Humble? Of 'How to Restore Your Datsun Z Car'  if so, I owe you a big thank you sir, I have been through my copy of your book so much I had to buy another one and have the binding Shurlock so it wouldn't fall apart again. I have most of your book memorized by now but go back to it often even so.

Nice job on the fender/sugar scoop, very clean. I'm thinking about doing that on this Z I'm working on but if it is not done perfectly it can look terrible. I'm sure that seamless look is the way the Nissan designers wanted it to be but the bean counters said 2 pieces where cheaper to make then one complicated piece.

is it running yet 

  On 12/1/2016 at 5:38 PM, Careless said:

is it running yet 

It was running, it will again maybe 8-9 months from now if all goes to plan then I can find out if the exhaust is going to be way too loud. Right now I'm trying to salvage my fenders and sugar scoops, bloody rust.

Nice fabbing...!

those fenders aren't nearly as bad as 182, i tell ya hwhuuuutttt.

  On 12/1/2016 at 11:55 PM, grannyknot said:

Right now I'm trying to salvage my fenders

Didn't realize the replacement fender had rust, too!

  On 12/2/2016 at 1:25 PM, Namerow said:

Didn't realize the replacement fender had rust, too!

oh come onnnnnn. rust was part of the design spec on these cars. they sprayed them with muriatic acid right after they came out of stamping. 

Came across an interference today between the stock washer fluid bottle and the Tilton 3/4" Clutch Master so had to remove the hanger for the washer bottle and shorten it a bit so there is enough room for the clutch line fitting.

Every air chisel I have ever seen or used has a double bevel on the chisel, both sides are ground toward the center. Now maybe it is physics or maybe Murrphy's law but when parting two pieces of metal that are spot welded it is always the metal that you want to keep that gets torn up by the chisel, every time. The flange for the washer bottle was tight in there and I couldn't get the spot weld drill in so used the air chisel and of course the good side tore, then I started thinking about wood chisels that you can 'steer' so you don't have to gouge too deep. One side is ground flat and the other is beveled to the flat side. I grabbed an old chewed up air chisel and re ground it just like a wood chisel and damed if it didn't work like a charm, I had complete control. Now maybe this is something that everyone else knows about but it was new to me.

You can see the top spot weld was cut with the double beveled chisel and tore a piece off of the side I wanted to keep, the lower spot weld was cut using the modified wood chisel shape.

I manged to remove all the rust from the sugar scoops but some of the metal was so thin you could push it in with your finger, got lucky though, my daily check through craigslist and kijiji paid off with a pair of perfect metal scoops with out a single dent, $75 for the pair

nice find on them buckets! is there gonna be enough room to put a 90 degree fitting for the clutch line?

re: air chisels... imho, the best way to get good and repeatable results with an air chisel is to not use one. i've actually never used one to remove spot welded parts though. interesting method. looks like the modification paid off well.

güd stuf

  On 12/6/2016 at 4:18 PM, Careless said:

re: air chisels... imho, the best way to get good and repeatable results with an air chisel is to not use one. i've actually never used one to remove spot welded parts though. interesting method. looks like the modification paid off well.

Yeah, not my favorite tool but sometimes they are a godsend.

Because this engine is so tall and close to the hood I don't have room to install a shock tower brace bar, so I am going to weld in some bracing that will be hidden under the fender that will help keep any flex to minimum. I'll have some pics of that in a couple of days but here are the only visible part of the stiffening.

Fab work looks great

So, I'm not trying to be critical.  I've followed this thread from the start and think you're doing great work...

Do you have any concerns about where those braces might go in a front end collision?  Can you notch them so they'll collapse without giving up too much rigidity?