Hey everyone,

Just wanted to take time to share what I have been working on lately and tell the story behind the project.

Long story short, I bought this Z around the same time I met my soon to be wife. I'm a huge Nissan/Datsun fan to begin with and I have always loved the early S30s. When I hired on at my current job, one of the guys figured out I was a Z fan. He told me that a guy he knew was selling a 1970 240Z and asked if I would be interested. I was blessed enough to have hired on with a sign on bonus that happened to be sitting in my bank account. At the time that money was going to be used for a dry sump system for my other project (S13 240SX w/ VK56DE and 370Z 6 speed). I could not pass this up. I went to go look at the car. It looked great, but wasn't perfect, but pretty darn good for a 1970 Japanese vehicle. It ran well and drove well, but would get hot. Work picked up and life happened and it sat patiently waiting for me to take care of it. 

My fiance and I both love the car and after I proposed I got to thinking. The wedding is really more for the bride than the groom. You do things like go to bridal shows and they try to convince you that $30 per plate of finger food is a good deal and that 8 hours in a barn with no air conditioning is worth $10,000. You taste cake, you talk to food venders, dj's, videographers, photographers, "do we need a photo booth?", is 300 people too much?, and worry about burlap and lace. You want her to be happy but stay reasonable for the day. In the end you sort through all the wedding propaganda and find the real deals that you both want for a realistic price... but in the end, this is all a means to the end of pleasing the woman you love on your special day. I'm fine with the lace and pretty things, but I'm a car guy at heart. I have a few cool cars, but the coolest by far is this Z. I have to leave my own mark on this wedding some how. And that's when it hit me. I'm going to make the Z our getaway car!

So, here is the car:

Went to a local car show. The gas cap was broken off, I have since fixed that:

Had a shop for a while:

And a local road near by:

The group:

My garage at the time:

Then we moved to our current house:

 

And that got us to where we started working on the car to get it ready. 

Because the car would over heat, I decided to go ahead and replace/update the entire cooling system. So out came the dash, the old heater core, the old radiator, t-stat, t-stat housing and hoses and in with the new. 

Also I wanted to upgrade to a newer electronic distributor so I tracked down a local guy that had a 280ZX sitting around and got his tach and distributor and distributor base off him. 

Through the help of this lovely forum, I was able to find out that the distributor was bad and wound up ordering a reman that will be here this coming week. 

I also went with an MSD blaster 2 coil.

The wheels and tires are coming off of my drift car. They have had a rough life and needed some tlc. I searched high and low for a local wheel refurbisher to no avail. The plan was to make the blue wheels match the gold ones and fix some lip damage. No one local could do it. So since I don't have a lathe I can't fix the lip damage but I can strip the paint and polish the lip. The wheels were profiles from sand blasting, but after a few hours of stripping, sanding and polishing, the paint is gone and the lips are almost a mirror. I have ordered the paint to match the others.

Some paint stripper and 2 stages of sanding:

Fully sanded and polished:

Then I took a minute to get a brake from the polishing compound fumes to see how well the car will clean up, so I did some polishing on the nose of the car:

Things are coming along!

TLDNR: This is going to be our getaway car at our wedding! Neat, huh?

 

Edited June 4, 20168 yr by YoshiDori

Sweet FB! I just picked up an '85 GSL-SE. Rockin little car. Oh, and nice Z too.

Instead of cans, have your friends tie all the old parts onto the Z. A couple of distributors and the old radiator would be funny. 8^)

YoshiDori

The paint looks like it will clean up good. It may not hold the shine very long but it will look good on the big day. You're doing great on the wheels. I have a set that is very similar I need to work on in a similar manner.

@Griff Thanks man! On both accounts! Mine is an 85 GSL... :/ Diff broke after a rally x and drift event so it's sitting right now. I need a new rear end for it... You wouldn't want to sell me your rear end and front struts would you?  that way I could go 4x114.3 instead of 4x110. It's a street ported 13B six port with dellorto side drafts. Neat little car and has a whole other story behind it haha.

@siteunseen haha that would be funny!

@Patcon Yeah, I figured the paint is kinda on it's last legs and could use new clear. But like you said, I can buff it up nice for the big day and worry about that later. And thank you for the compliment on the wheels! I have never polished aluminum that wasn't already shiny to begin with haha so it's been a learning experience. It's not hard, just tedious and time consuming, but the results are definitely worth it! 

Also, update! The distributor came in today. This morning I had to go put coilovers on a customers car and do some welding for a friend. When I came home, I had a nice little box from rockauto! After a quick nap I ran downstairs and put it all together and just set the distributor to center spec for now, will time later. After sitting for almost 2 years, it only took about 45 seconds of cranking and it fired right up! With the choke open too! It stumbled for a bit, then smoothed right out. Revs nice. I can tell it needs timing adjusted, but it's RUNNING!!!

Also ran a dummy wire to the tach to make sure the 280zx tach works. I swapped the internals of a 280zx tach into the 240Z housing with the 240 faceplate so it would work better with the electronic distributor. It worked GREAT! Super smooth and consistent. 

I'm a happy dude right now!

Z update! Painting wheels today. I found the perfect color match paint to the original enkei gold through a company called grimmspeed. As you can see in the picture, it's pretty darn close! Once these are painted, it's oil change, fan switch install, coolant fill, and running there tach signal wire at least today. Then need to run wires for the fans, figure out why dash lights don't work, then put the interior back together. From there, wash and polish, and possibly brakes. 

As far as the truck goes, I recharged the AC, just need to top it off.

I took a video of the car running that showed the wheels on the car. I'll have to get a picture tomorrow.

After my video earlier, I went out to check the mail to see that the trunk seal came in. So ran to the store to get some seal adhesive. When I came back, I installed the seal and dove into the wiring for the lights. Thanks to some good wiring diagrams, I was able to pin point the problem to a "rheostat" that acted like a dimmer for the lights. Since the lights are so dim anyway, being from 1970, I bypassed the dimmer and then I had gauge lights! Only had about 3 burnt out bulbs. Going to the parts store tomorrow to get replacements. After that, I tackled the wiring for the fans and got that done. I also went ahead and started to assemble the intake/filter housing. I am missing the hold down wing nuts, so I'm going to the parts store tomorrow to pick some up. All that's left is timing the engine, putting the interior back together, torquing the wheels, wash, polish, wax and DRIVE!!! While driving I can fine tune the temp switch for the fan.

TLDNR:

Here is the stuff I did today:

Painted wheels
Installed wheels
Changed the oil
Filled the coolant
Ran tach signal wire
Wired the electric fan and switch
Installed new trunk seal
Installed backing plate for filter housing
Fixed gauge cluster lighting

Things to do tomorrow:

Replace burnt bulbs for gauge cluster
Get new wing bolts and install filter and filter housing
Assemble IP and Center Console
Torque wheels
Wash, polish, wax
DRIVE!!!!

SO CLOSE!!!

So it happened!!!

The car looked and ran great!!! No issues other than some minor fuel leaks at the gas tank when parked at an angle.

 

 

Definitely watch the video! Worth the watch with a few cool shots of the Z!

That's great!

Very cool!  Love it.

Thanks guys!

Great ! Live it man !

 

 

About the gas tank leak.. when you have the time drop it down, and replace all the hoses, that's the problem.

Thanks man! I'll do it!