Hi Everybody!

First off I have to say, what a great site this is and thank you to all who contribute to it.

I stumbled upon this car in January of 2021 while logging my neighbors property about 1/2 mile away. The owner, who moved here in 2003 to help his aging parents on their small ranch, brought this with him from the Seattle area. He offloaded it here in the woods, and it remained there until he showed it to me. He kept mentioning something about the darn squirrels and mice getting in a car, and he was kind of sad about it. "What kind of car is it?" I ask. Oh, "It's a Zcar". Hmmm, I remember those in high School in the late 70's, my friend had one. Let's go look at it! So off through the forest we go, and wow! this is cool!

I opened the hood and was immediately in awe. Then, when I opened the inspection lids, This is really cool. He started talking about side draft carburetors and I was lost, but he thought they were amazing. Life on the ranch became overwhelming and time just got away from the gentleman, he is now in his mid 70's and it's been 18 years since he parked it. He tells me he found it on Vashon Island completely buried in blackberry bushes, along with an old VW, back in the late 1990's. So he rescued it, got it running, and his wife drove it for 2 years before it ended up here. I went home, did some research on 240z's and couldn't sleep. I had to save this car! I went back the next day to work and made a deal with him, brought it home. What did I just do?

Along with the car, he had a few things, books and a few parts. Back in 1999, you could go to a Nissan dealer and pretty much still order anything you want for these cars.

After getting it in my shop, I started removing things, carpet, etc and at first glance, being naive as I was, Wow, this car has no rust! I didn't know that what I was looking at was painted tarmat at the time.

But, it looked pretty good. Water continued to run down the passenger side floorboard for several days, where is this coming from?

He had a homemade speaker box in the back and when I removed it and the spare tire and found what he was talking about, MICE!

Is it a 1971 249Z? I see a clutch pedal with low wear, a sign that it's low mileage. Must be a manual transmission. Any more details?

Looks like a fun project. There'a thread on the forum, I think it's called "waking the beast" or something like that. You should find it and read it before even spinning the engine. It's possible that it might not be too rusty inside. But unlikely. One of those bore scopes will tell you a lot. Good luck.

Edit - found some details on your profile.

Edited April 10Apr 10 by Zed Head

I looked at the book I got with the car "how to restore your Z-car" and said to myself, I am not doing that, way over my head. So I got some polish and my girls started helping me shine it up.

That's when I started noticing some rust. I started reading more and more and learned how deceiving these cars can be.

Time to attack the interior a little more.......Okay Wow, the dash isn't even cracked! 🙄

Look at the sweat on the dash finisher. Time to remove the dash. Went to town and bought a bunch of labels for marking wires, as per suggestions on this site.

oh, here's the interior as I found it.

more evidence of mice

Glad I pulled the dash, look at this! He wasn't kidding about the mice. I believe they got in through the fresh air vents, because later I found it stuffed with pine cones.

Fortunately, no wires were chewed under the dash or in that vicinity. They preferred the firewall pad, glove box liner, vents, jute, they had enough to nibble on....This is when I found Junkyard Jenny used parts, send me a heater box, fan, etc. About now was when I realized I'm looking at tarmat on the floor, not the floor....Went to town, got some dry ice, what a pain it was. Took 2 days to remove it.

It wasn't too bad, the worst being passenger side footwell, which turned out to be much larger than I first saw. It's close proximity to the battery tray area.

This car had some moisture, condensation from sitting in the weather all these years. Hot summers, cold winters, all kinds of weather. It was at this time I got one of my favorite tools, a harbor freight blast cabinet which I upgraded to a foot pedal etc. More tools included a spot weld cutter bit, a welded for welding thin metal. I have welders, but they're for heavy logging equipment, not this.

As I took the car apart, I carefully bagged up the parts in separate labeled bags. About this time, I started reading Motorman's "the Orange" and "Deja vu" threads. It really inspired me to think "hey, I can do that!" But then realized to get parts plated, I needed to throw everything into a box together. Now my memory isn't that good, and getting worse every year, so, I decided to measure and record everything. It took days. The thickness and diameters I measured with a micrometer, lengths in millimeters. I wasn't to familiar with metric....so if these can help anyone, here they are. I had a couple shipments to Sav-On plating and parts of another car in these. As far as clear zinc or yellow, in some cases I may have gotten it wrong as these things were powdery/rusty color. I think this car was pretty much unmolested.

datsun invent 6 001.bmp

Engine bay: Carbs were done by Ztherapy in 8/2000 and cylinder head was done in 2002

The inside of the doors were a bit under the weather, the belt moulding rubber was toast, all the rubber on this car was past it's prime. I decided to treat the doors with POR.

Close up of passenger side floor

I guess I gotta keep going....

Did you notice? Junkyard Jenny said it's wearing a 72 bumper. also 1 rear finisher clip is broken.

meanwhile, while studying up on these cars, I realized most of this car was here! Except the 2 things that most of them are missing, the wheels and hubcaps and radio. About that time I get on Craigslist, "I never get on Craigslist" and did a local search for 240z. what? here's one for sale near Kalispell. Funny but sad story attached to it. So I notice it's a 1/70 car wrecked and wrecked again but it had topy wheels. I ask if there's a radio somewhere, he sends me a picture of a box of parts with a radio, I said I'll be right down. 60 miles later, this thing is actually 2 cars welded together, the front of a 1/70 and the rear of an 11/71 judging by the unused spare. But, a couple rims were dated 12/69 and 2 were 5/70 and it had a nice bullet tip antenna. I bought it for the radio. Got my money back selling the rims and got a complete engine too and many other parts.

Now I think all I'm missing are the correct dated rims and D hubcaps.