Hello everyone,

My name is Clay and I bought a 1970 Datsun 240Z (HLS30-01121) about three years ago.  My intention was to drive it on the weekends and save up some money for a full restoration.  I am stationed in San Diego, California and found the car on Craigslist.  After talking to the owner and inspecting the car on FaceTime, I bought a plane ticket for the next day.  I took the car for a test drive and it performed well.  I handed over the cash and started the 650 mile drive from Redding, California.  

Before I left town I stopped at a place to get the oil changed for the drive.  I went down below the car and noticed that the passenger side frame rail was in bad shape.  I limped the car over to a muffler shop and had them weld a support pipe from the front of the frame rail to the rear of the car (i didn't know what else to do at this point).  I slowly made the trip to San Diego and got home safely.  My dreams of driving this car on the weekends were shot because I did not feel comfortable driving this car with the frame rails in such sad shape.  I parked the car in my garage and started it weekly.  

It has been in there for three years.  It starts every time with no problems, it is almost asking me to drive it.  It has killed me to leave it in this state for so long but I have read so many blogs about restorations that take so long that the owner looses interest.  This would not be me.  The time has come to start and I would like to document the progress here.  Any and all comments are welcome.  I would like to thank you for the inspiration that allot of you have provided for the past three years without ever knowing.

 

I believe the car had some work done on it before.  Whoever did the work left signs by not doing a very good finishing job imo.

Edited March 30, 20168 yr by CHL240Z

I get lost sometimes when looking at floor pans and frame rails, but it looks to me like somebody replaced your floor pan, but didn't finish the job with a new frame (chassis) rail.  Found a couple of internet links that show what I'm talking about.  You floor pan is very flat and featureless, probably custom-made.

http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/107012-i-know-its-another-dumb-floor-question/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjUJmDtKxyk

Zedd Findings and Bad Dog parts both sell rails, and Zeed sells floor pans.  This thread has some comments from gnosez, who is Bad Dog.

http://www.datsunzparts.com/

http://baddogparts.com/

Looks like its more than badly damaged.. its gone from the firewall backwards. Kudo's to the shop in redding for even attempting to make that more safe to drive.  Hope you got this car cheap(er)

Looks like that quarter was repaired at Bruno's hack-n-pack auto emporium. You probably have other questionable repairs elsewhere, but it's better than having a rust bucket.

If the floor on that side has no rust, you can just have a new frame rail welded in. That should make the car safe to drive... unless the other side is like this too.

So, the first thing i  would do is remove  that tar on the underside and pull the carpets and check the floors for rust.

 

Edit: I'de look at that quarter panel repair more thuroughly. Did they just replace the outer quarter skin or did they graft in sturctural members too?  i.e. strut tower and rear frame rail.

 

 

Edited March 30, 20168 yr by hr369

Hi Clay, welcome to the forum, I agree with ZedHead, that passenger side floor pan has been replaced but they didn't add the rails  like they should have. Don't despair, it doesn't necessarily mean the car is junk or anything like that. You need to get the car up on jacks or a hoist and have a body man check it out throughly.

The repair may have been done 20 yrs ago, it may have been done badly or maybe not.

If you can post a lot more detailed pics of the the undercarriage  and the inside of the car with carpets pulled up so we can see the metal underneath we may be able to give a much better idea of what has been done to it.  There is a lot of very experienced guys here who are more then happy to give you a hand, don't despair.

Chris

Zed Head - I think you may be right.  I think someone did a DIY job on the passenger floorpan.  There are no drain holes and the metal is very thin and flimsy compared to the driver side floor pans.  I have recently ordered new floorpans and frame rails from MSA, they have not arrived yet.

hr369 - I agree it is pretty messed up, thats why i have not really driven it in 3 years.  I think I'm lucky that I found the car I wanted (1/70) that was not in to bad of shape.  I have seen allot of early Z's that were in worse shape.  

Chris,

I appreciate the words of encouragement.  I definitely see the faults in this car but after such a long time planning and reading about what I want to do, I see what it will be rather than what it is.  More pictures to come soon.

Clay

Here are a few pictures of the repaired floorpan on the passenger side.  It looks like they just cut out the floor in front of the seat rail.  On the bright side, I found out the original color was Safari Gold 920.  That helped solidify the decision to go back to the original color.

Clay

Started disassembly the a few days ago:

Have I said how glad I am that i discovered the true color on this car???

The transmission tunnel insulation is on there pretty good.  I was expecting it and enlisted the help of my wife. LOL.  She is actually awesome.

Thor wants to see whats going on with his humans.  He is a 11 year old German Shepherd Dog.  I actually think he wanted some of my wife coffee LMAO.

These windows came out really easily.

Its current state.  I will start again on Friday and see where we get.

That doesn't look too bad at all, VERY restorable. The gold is a great colour too.  Does the engine number match the plate riveted to the passenger side shock tower?

Chris,

Unfortunately i think that is the side that has had some work done to it before.  The plate that would normally be mounted to the shock tower is missing.  I have done a bit of research and have concluded to the best of my ability that it has the original engine (L24-4147).  I hate to assume anything but I am basing this on the production date as 1/70, using the Classic Z Car Registry located at zhome.com my engine # falls within the range of the other cars produced the same month.  If there is another way to track this down I would love to know so I could continue the search.

 

I think you have yourself a diamond in the rough there.

Looks like a great car to restore!

And lucky you it's a safari gold car. Love that color.

Keep posting your progress!

//Andreas 

Edited March 31, 20168 yr by moelk