1977 280z

[wheee!]

I'm glad i used a media blaster for mine.... the few parts (flat panels) that received paint stripper were a real chore...

[Namerow]

I have read the following tips about using paint strippers:

• Results can be noticeably accelerated by laying cling-wrap over the treated areas.
• Using the cling-wrap technique, the best of the modern-formulation automotive strippers will get the job done nicely after an overnight soak.
• Keep the stripper application away from panel edges and seams (the stripper seeps into gaps and will re-surface later to ruin your paint job).  Keep the stripper at least 1-1/2" away from these 'porous' areas.   Use good-quality masking tape to protect them.  After your final wipe-down of the chemically-stripped zones, remove the masking tape and use sandpaper (power and manual) to remove the remaining paint.  For the aforementioned reason, the engine bay surfaces do not look like good candidates for chemical paint stripping.

[Zed Head]

Don't the lacquers used on these cars come off with a heat gun and a scraper?  Just asking.  Might work away from heat sensitive materials.

Some of the aggressive paint stripper chemicals are still available in pure form, at hardware stores.  MEK, maybe methylene chloride (that's the good one).

[HDAtom]

1 hour ago, Namerow said:

Keep the stripper application away from panel edges and seams (the stripper seeps into gaps and will re-surface later to ruin your paint job).  Keep the stripper at least 1-1/2" away from these 'porous' areas.   Use good-quality masking tape to protect them.  After your final wipe-down of the chemically-stripped zones, remove the masking tape and use sandpaper (power and manual) to remove the remaining paint.  For the aforementioned reason, the engine bay surfaces do not look like good candidates for chemical paint stripping.

This is hilarious. Good thing I covered my entire engine bay with it hahaha. I will have to take some extra time and water or something else to make sure I remove all of it.

I probably should have used paint stripper for the car. I think there is a layer in between the paint and the metal as @240zadmire suggested. I have also seen people go to bare metal with these cars and other not ?. I hope bare metal will give me better adhesion for the paint and all that. It may rust easier, but with proper primer it should be ok. I am going with some quite high quality stuff and will be careful on prep.

 

1 hour ago, Zed Head said:

Don't the lacquers used on these cars come off with a heat gun and a scraper?  Just asking.  Might work away from heat sensitive materials.

I know my car has been repainted at some point, so maybe? The sanding gets the metal quite hot and it is still very very adhered to the surface, maybe more heat, but I would be scared of warping it.

I am about half way done sanding so far, so I will probably bring the whole thing down to bare metal for consistency. All or nothin haha. 

[Zed Head]

These cars did not get any protective coating on the metal before priming and painting.  That's why almost all of them have rust spots and bubbled paint, underneath what appears to be undamaged paint.  Today's cars get a protective coating and are "electrocoated" so that every piece of metal is covered.

http://www.ppgecoat.com/Markets-Applications/Automotive.aspx

 

[Patcon]

Do not overheat your panels!!! They will warp

[HDAtom]

1 hour ago, Patcon said:

Do not overheat your panels!!! They will warp

Yup, I have been paying a lot of attention to this! I make sure not to sand in the same area too long and move around, though I doubt that the temperatures that sanding causes is higher than parked California summer sun temps.

 

[HDAtom]

I will do a little Financial Friday thing so people can watch my wallet deflate and the inevitable selling of my soul to the devil. This is where I am at right now!

I am doing quite well with my budget up to this point, although the only thing I have done is sanded the car and put tires on, so not much to say there...... We will have to see how this progresses into a dumpster fire fueled by $100 bills....

Here is the file if you are interested in where all this money went or what things you may have to buy and haven't thought about... Datsun280zcosts.xlsx
 
The base price is what I purchased the car for and the "legal" is registration and title transfers and such.

 

9/18 Update:

I discovered some body filler stuff on the driver side fender, no big repairs, maybe just for repainting (no pictures as its gone).

I think the black stuff I have been finding is rust, I don't know much about rust, but under all the rusty areas is this black stuff. Maybe this is because of the stuff they sprayed on it, maybe this is just how rust looks after the top layer is sanded... I may be cutting a chunk of the roof out and replacing it with 18 or 20 gauge metal, maybe something stronger as that is probably rust

It is quite hard to take picture with the plastic everywhere.

Waiting till tomorrow to deal with the engine bay...

I am probably 60% of the way done with paint removal, I still have to take out windshield and hatch glass, but I was leaving in to minimize dust in the car.

These rusty areas are not as bad as I originally thought, I could probably just fill in the holes welding, but I think I will cut out a decent chunk here and just replace it, probably with 18 gauge, maybe 16, to add some strength as it is very very flimsy here and I don't like that it bows so much. Although that would increase weight at the furthest part of the lever arm for lifting the hatch, so maybe not... I will have to do some testing.

Edited September 19, 2020 by HDAtom
removing duplicate pictures

[Mark Maras]

The unknown black areas are or were undoubtedly rust. The black may be from a previous rust conversion using something like phosphoric acid.

[Patcon]

I would not try to use thicker metal for patch panels. It makes the welding more difficult

It is much easier to get a donor roof panel. That panel is hard to replicate without an english wheel and some experience

[Racer X]

On 9/17/2020 at 6:19 PM, HDAtom said:

Thanks for the tips Mark I will definitely try and implement those.

The guy from SW said he would print off instructions for me for every part and I intend to follow them down to a T.

9/17 Update:

I am not sure if I will keep doing daily updates, I feel like I am just going to put too much junk on here, we will have to see. Maybe someone would like to see the daily struggles of this and how slow progress really is...

Anyways I was only able to sand for about an hour as I could not make any noise for a while (event near my house), but here is what I got done.

The dewalt sander shown in this first image has been absolutely insane, this thing just throws the paint right off and has a vacuum attachment, though it doesn't honestly work that well and there is a lot of dust created. I would say it catches maybe 40%... 

I was able to get the stripper on the other half of the bay and covered it this time, I feel this will work much much better



I was able to strip a bunch off the other side, but didn't spend too much time on this, there were other parts I was excited to work on... Some areas were bubbly, but most is not, hopefully covering will fix this for the other half. I used a brass scrubber thing on my drill to get that stuff off. I will need to sand out the scratches later so this may not be the best method...

I got a bunch of sanding done on the roof and WOW, the roof is soooo thin, is this normal? Can this thing even kind of support its weight upside down? A pillar bar over windshield? I will figure it out later.

 

 I found this weird stuff on the roof, it is quite hard to getup and it looks like it is raised, not sure what it is. ?‍♀️ hopefully I am not using too low of a grit for this...

 

It looks like the car was repainted at some point... I was really confused on why some of it was orange and some of it was red. The colors have been so weird. The passenger fender was orange on top and red on the side. I feel like it could also been from exposure...

 

These rusty spots down here also dont look too bad, which is very exciting.

I feel the need to comment on your process. 

It appears that you are going to do a complete restoration of the body and paint.

But.

The car isn't completely stripped of everything. The glass needs to be removed. The fenders need to come off. The wiring harnesses, brake and fuel lines gotta come off. Anything that can be removed must be, to protect it from damage by the stripper and sanding. And when you start cutting out rusty metal to weld in new, you won't want anything in the way that will be ruined by cherry red slag balls flying from the welding splatter.

You mentioned the tube nuts on the hydraulic and fuel lines were damaged, so you just bent the lines aside. Get a double flaring tool, tubing cutter and new nuts, and repair them. In the meantime, remove all the tubing from the car so it doesn't get damaged. If any of the lines need related, they can be used as a pattern to build new ones.

Good luck on your restoration.

 

Racer

 

[HDAtom]

21 hours ago, Patcon said:

I would not try to use thicker metal for patch panels. It makes the welding more difficult

It is much easier to get a donor roof panel. That panel is hard to replicate without an english wheel and some experience

I agree with the patch panel part, it would make it more difficult and probably isn't worth it. For the roof panel, I was thinking that if I targeted just that small rusty spot, I should be able to do it with a square patch and it isnt very big. I don't think a new roof would be worth the time, nor do I have the time or the space to store a new car or things like that. I also don't love the idea of cutting the roof off of another car just to save this one with this small rust damage.
 

4 hours ago, Racer X said:

The car isn't completely stripped of everything. The glass needs to be removed. The fenders need to come off. The wiring harnesses, brake and fuel lines gotta come off.

I actually intentionally did all of these things. The glass is on there to keep a lot of the dust out of the interior of the vehicle, this is working for the most part. The fenders are still on the car while I am sanding them as I dont want to misshape them by sanding off the car. The wiring harness is inside the car, which I am ok with because I am not painting the interior. I will do patch painting where I weld new panels, but I don't personally find much value in sanding and painting the interior. It will be almost impossible to see and as the exterior paint fades, this paint won't, so it wont be a problem to revisit in a few years. I don't plan on selling this vehicle, though I am trying to keep is financially good to sell it part way through and still not lose money.

4 hours ago, Racer X said:

You mentioned the tube nuts on the hydraulic and fuel lines were damaged, so you just bent the lines aside. Get a double flaring tool, tubing cutter and new nuts, and repair them. In the meantime, remove all the tubing from the car so it doesn't get damaged. If any of the lines need related, they can be used as a pattern to build new ones.

The fuel lines only had to be bent a few degrees to be completely out of the way. Same with rear brake lines. I plan on redoing all of these lines with new lines that I will build myself. The lines are also extremely simple in this car so I am not too worried about needing a shape to stick to, but that is the other reason I am just leaving them. All brakes will be replaced so new lines there too.
 

4 hours ago, Racer X said:

Good luck on your restoration.

 

Thanks a lot!