Restoration of 71 240z

[Clay C]

Got the steering Rack cleaned up and painted. The plastic grease fitting was broken off and thanks to help on another thread it has been identified and replaced with a Zerk fitting. I decided to leave the steering shaft joints alone. They move fine but I did notice and its hard to see in the picture that the lower shaft has a slight bend towards where it connects to that rubber coupling. That's probably not ideal, I would think that would cause a slight bit of tension in the steering. I probably have another one I may swap out. 

[7tooZ]

Finally got back to your posts. I am interested in seeing how you handle how the header fits with your SU’s. I had to abandon mine after seeing how close the header fit to the hose on the bottom of the rear SU..

[Captain Obvious]

Now THERE'S something you don't see every day!   

1 hour ago, Clay C said:

 

[Clay C]

1 hour ago, Captain Obvious said:

Now THERE'S something you don't see every day!   

 

Im trying to talk them in to putting it on the front of that 50's Ford in the background. 

[Clay C]

1 hour ago, 7tooZ said:

Finally got back to your posts. I am interested in seeing how you handle how the header fits with your SU’s. I had to abandon mine after seeing how close the header fit to the hose on the bottom of the rear SU..

Well I didn't know that would be a potential problem but I guess I will burn that bridge when I get there. Still got a bit of a wait time on getting the carbs back in, Last I heard possibly late June early July. 

[siteunseen]

1 hour ago, Clay C said:

I guess I will burn that bridge when I get there. 

 

[Clay C]

This is the worst build thread ever! I cant get my iphone to connect to my computer and import the pictures so I have to email them to myself and do it that way. A lot has been done but here it goes:

There are 2 different cars in a few of my earlier pictures. My whole front clip was in fairly rough shape. It had been hit at some point previously and very poorly put back to shape. Battery area rusted!....Front left frame rail was crunched...inner fender liners were all banged up. I looked for a while for a 240 front to use but never found anything usable for a 240 (at that time....now of course one showed up on Ebay I saw the other day). I did however find a junkyard 260 that was in pretty rough shape everywhere but the front. It was reasonably priced so I trailered it back to the shop. I figured it would be slightly different but at the time I was ready to move forward and build a damn car. I didn't realize quite how different they would be. 

This is the 240 below as the front is being removed.

Edited August 26, 2020 by Clay C

[Clay C]

[Clay C]

Most of the firewall from the 240 was fine except the area right around the battery box, so we cut that firewall section from the 260. Of course the only whole in that section is the wiring harness grommet hole.....not the same! All of you more than likely know all of this but I have had to learn the hard way. 

[Clay C]

Im sure a bunch of other stuff happened I didnt take pictures of but here we go with the body work. I guess Everything went pretty well for a bunch of guys who have never had/seen/worked on a Zcar before. After the paint comes later its clear that the body line that runs down the length of the whole car isn't perfect but honestly until I read Inline6's thread and saw him working so hard on his I would have probably never noticed. 

My plans were never to flip or sell this car ( I would lose my arse if I did) but to enjoy and drive it around and try to get 20 something women to honk!

[Clay C]

[Clay C]

This is what I didn't know....Those areas are definitly not the same as a 240! The original metal is there it is just covered up with other metal I can only assume was changed for some sort of crash rating law changes in 74-75? Of course the radiator support vertical panel is wildly different to go around all that mess.

It is such a bonehead move on my part to spend so much time, money and effort trying to keep this thing as original as possible and restore this car back to normal. I really just picked the wrong car from the start. It looked good but I didn't know what I was looking at and the crap body work from the previous owners covered up a lot of problems. The interior was also in such good shape that I thought it was a good platform to start with. I'm sure people have done more with less and maybe its not so bad but the thought of me having cut a 260 front off and put on this car makes me want to throw up a little now! In hindsight I should have bought a better car but whats done is done and I aint starting over!