Suspension Cleanup and Refurb

[davewormald]

Happy birthday to me and my car. I wish I could say I'm 50 this year, like the car, but sadly ...

According to the car's engine stamp, it was built on April 9th, 1971. I'm conveniently assuming it was mated with the rest of the car on the 14th so it lines up with my own birthday. I have no idea how long those steps would actually have taken.

Luckily a lot of "gifts" arrived for me and the car today. A few of them in the pic, and a lot more are ready for pick-up after having been shipped across the border yesterday. Lots of fun in the next couple of weeks!

[davewormald]

I did eventually get all this done, I just neglected to update the thread. I've attached a few pictures:

I really only reinstalled the suspension so I could get the car outside to start to clean up of the wheel wells. You can see some signs of initial experimentation that proved it wasn't a good job for the garage. There seems to be a solid, stubborn layer of dirt over undercoating, over paint, over primer. I believe (aside from the dirt), it's original (factory primer and paint, and dealer undercoating). It's going to be quite a job to clean it all up, but there's a real mix of conditions. In some areas, all layers are intact and solid. In others, I can see paint and in a few areas there's rust. The small reinforcement panel above the point where the TC rod connects to the frame has rotted through on both sides (you can just see the left edge of the hole I knocked through it in the first picture). I've hammered away elsewhere and haven't found any other soft spots in the wheel wells, but I think it makes sense to remove everything and re-coat the whole thing. I took the passenger fender off and things aren't too bad there. No paint or undercoat (and not a lot of dirt). There's rust mostly on the horizontal surfaces under the top of the fender. It isn't so bad cleaning these parts up. There's another rotted bit at the lower front of the outer rocker panel where I see the cowl drain conveniently dumps water. I'm not a welder, so I'll have to have these repaired by someone who knows what they're doing.

On the positive side, the car started up instantly after the winter. It's running very rich, but that's for another day. It's fine for moving it in and out of the garage, although the clutch engages very high, so I'll probably have to have a look at that. It seems to disengage at a reasonable point, which seems like a weird combo to me. Like I said at the beginning of this thread, this will likely be a multi-year project!

[davewormald]

I've moved on to the rear suspension at this point. A couple of weekends ago I pulled both sides out and I'm now dismantling and starting the cleanup/refresh process. Thought I'd post a couple of pictures of the rear stabilizer bar setup on the car. Is this an aftermarket installation, do you think? All the pictures I've seen of these cars with stabilizer bars seem to have the clamps and bushings on the outer ends of the crossmember that supports the rear transverse link mounting brackets, rather than in the middle like mine. Did all 240Z's come with rear stabilizer bars? The Safari Gold '71 for sale on BAT at the moment, for instance, has no sign of one. Looks like it has the same "Series 1.5" parts collection as mine.

I was a little surprised by the fact that the driver/passenger transverse links are the same part with one flipped over. I'm not sure whether this is genius or extreme cost-cutting. Seems like water would collect in the driver's side.

 

[davewormald]

On 8/18/2021 at 10:00 AM, davewormald said:

Thought I'd post a couple of pictures of the rear stabilizer bar setup on the car. Is this an aftermarket installation, do you think?

Yet another Safari Gold 240Z recently sold on BAT and I noticed a couple of pictures in the listing that caught my eye. The serial number is HLS30-38780 and mine's 29817, so they're relatively close in terms of manufacture date. The first picture shows the rear stabilizer bar attachment (from a weird angle), but it looks like the same setup as mine. I'm getting the impression that the cars built around this time didn't all come with rear stabilizers, so this is probably just one way they attached aftermarket versions?  

As an aside, I'd been feeling a little depressed about how long it's taken me to clean the rear suspension up, but looking at the original state of it all I'm feeling a little better!

The second picture shows the engine compartment of the same car. I noticed the short air intake, which is exactly the same as the one on my car. No elongated intake, and no winter/summer switch.

I'd decided a previous owner had cut the intake off mine for some reason, but this one looks the same. Was there some reason people would cut these or did some come with shorter intakes?