bkelly

I was told never to use chemicals to strip paint because it gets absorbed into the metal. It's one of those things that down the road will cause problems. I took a DA and 80 grit sand paper to strip mine. On parts where bondo is thick, use a flap disc and a grinder.

I bought two wheel cylinders a few weeks ago and they sent the wrong ones. They're the 73-76 style. I have a 70. PM me if you want them.

Best car sound ever- Ferrari F1

This pretty much sums up how I feel about euro sounds-

I think it's funny how people in CA will take a car like that to the junk yard. Around here that would go for ~$1500. I wouldn't doubt that car is in better condition than the one I'm restoring. You don't want to see what's in junk yards in NY.......:dead:

Yea, it will give you a good buzz if you're not in a ventilated area. I took some pictures of what I did yesterday. I was going to powder coat my suspension, but decided against it. If you get a chip in powder coat, you can't just fix it. With paint, you can just touch it up. If you look at the back of the suspension picture, you can see how glossy it is. There is a reflection of the ports in the head in it. edit- looks like I missed a spot on the spare tire anchor. Damn high res cameras......

This is a far better option than POR-15/Eastwood Rust Encapsulator. I used RE on my rear undercarriage. It worked good, but in some spots it flaked off. This required scuffing and another application. When it dries, it's a flat finish. That means it's going to get dirty and stay dirty especially on the underside of the car. I wound up going over with rustoleum. On another Z I'm working on, we used the SEM paint. I liked how it performed so I bought a gallon for myself. Aside from the STRONG solvent smell, it's better in every way. It's half as much as RE and less than half the cost of POR. Application is very smooth, it spreads easily and dries perfectly to a nice flat surface. The finish is glossy so it won't hold dirt/grease. Where's I'd go over POR/RE with some Rustoleum, this can be used as is. I just painted my hatch area with this a few hours ago and it turned out great. I plan on using this over the entire interior, underside, wheel wells, and inner fenders. After doing the hatch area, the level in the can is only down ~.5in, so a little goes a long way. This is a specialty product and would most likely have to be ordered through Car Quest/NAPA. I have a wholesale account at an auto body supply warehouse which is where I bought mine. Retail for this product should run ~$75/gal, which is still much cheaper than the other options. When you figure in S&H you save even more. It's also available in quarts for smaller jobs. I hope this doesn't sound like a commercial, but this works that good and it's so cheap!

I just saw that also. Ebay has a spindle pin puller for $120, but when new ones are ~$50 less, what's the benefit of leaving them intact? Normally I would have left them in, but I have poly bushings and have spent so much so far that another $50 doesn't mean any thing any more.

When I was taking out one of my spindle pins, the punch was a little too small and went in between the threads and the bushing. The threads got ruined. Does anybody have any pins on a parts car I could buy?

Does anybody make seals with out the chrome trim? I hate chrome and don't plan on putting the trim back in. If I could find one without the trim channel, it wouldn't look like something is missing.

I was told things like that are not worth the money vs your increase in performance. There are other things you should do first before you go that extreme. I just ordered my suspension set up and this is what I got- Poly bushings, strut bars, sway bars and coil overs w/ illuminas. That should be more than adequate for normal driving and the occasional autoX track day. If you've already done everything but the control arms and still aren't satisfied for some reason, then it makes sense to spend the money on them.

This is what I've been thinking of building. I'm not too big on low RPM's with lots of torque, I love a screaming engine at high RPM's. What rods are you using with this build? A few weeks ago I bought Bob Leitzinger's cylinder head that was used on his 280ZX race car. It's a HEAVILY modified E31. I've been looking into building an engine to match it. I'm not sure if I'd use it in my 70 project or save it for future use. It's a back burner project as all my efforts are going into finishing up the car. I'd still like to know what else to buy so I can snag it if the part pops up.

I don't know how many time I've said this, I HIGHLY recommend not selling it on ebay. I just got done selling one of my cars on there. Here's what will happen- You'll get 25+ emails from tire kickers/low ballers. The problem is you have to take each one seriously and reply with the info they want. It takes a lot of your time up. After (If) it's sold, you'll get more emails offering to buy it at a lower price or if the deal doesn't go through. The guy who bought my car is a total ahole to put it lightly. He bought the car blindly with out asking any questions. Then started making demands, none of which I would honor. He sent me and out of state bank check which takes 2 weeks to clear. He would literally call me twice a day demanding the title. I told him not until it clears. Then one day I get a call from a trucking company to pick the car up, again before the check cleared. The driver was pissed but I told him there was no way that car is going anywhere. Then with 2 days before it would clear, he sends me a threatening email saying he's going to call the police if I don't send him the title out the next day. I got the feeling he was trying to scam me and wound up being out smarted. Had I known all this BS would have gone down, I would have never sold the car in the first place. Since I'm self employed, responding to numerous tire kickers on top of dealing with this wack job cost me ~$1000 or more in productivity. This is what can happen with ebay. Save yourself the headache. First try to sell it through the Z forums, even try contacting some local Z clubs to send an email out to it's members. I can give you the email of the pres. of my club who can send it out to over 100 people. You have a beautiful car, not some piece of junk. You should have no problem finding a decent buyer quickly....after looking at the pictures, I would buy it if I wasn't in the middle of a restoration. I would only use ebay as a last resort.

I've started to paint everything not seen with Eastwoods Rust Encapsulator. The underside of the rear hatch is done and looks great. Today I started on the front inner fender area, skipping the floor pans which need to be cut out still. On the passengers side there was a bubble of rust. I'm using a polisher with a wire cup to remove any scale and when I pressed against it, it went right through. There is about a silver dollar size hole. This obviously needs to be cut out. My question is, what's behind that panel? Since it's rusted through, I don't think the inside will look pretty either. What I'm planning on doing is cutting the panel out, sand blasting any rust behind the panel, and welding a patch panel over it. I've always wanted to try to weld and this is a good spot to play around with out having to make things look that good since it's not seen.

Well, my e-brake cable is officially destroyed. The brackets up by the "Y" were rusted so bad they welded themselves to the clip. The cables were stuck on the car. I wound up cutting them out. If I wasn't such an anal arse I would have left them in, but everything is being removed and zinc plated. It would drive me nuts to know that I left something rusty on the car after spending what's going to amount to over 1000 hours restoring it. If I do decide to go disc, is there an ebrake mod? BTW, anybody have an ebrake cable? Figures what is wrecked they don't make anymore.......

I've got the complete rear end dropped out of my car getting ready to be blasted/painted. Before I but it back together, are rear discs worth it? I'm going to have ~$250 into redoing the rear drums, and only $200 or so more for discs. That said, the master cylinders still work fine, drums/shoes are new...it really only needs springs. The car might see some track time once a year. I feel more comfortable working on discs, I've only worked on drum brakes once in my life. Of course, I can always convert it later.....

Yuck. That's a high price of admission to the low vin club. That thing needs a total restoration. I've always wondered this- what makes a "true" low vin? Triple digits or less? What about vin 1000, is that worth less than 999? It's kind of ironic when now a days you're told not to buy a first year car because of all the issues they might have, yet 30 years later they're collectible.

I'm sure WingZero will have a picture, he's the God of Ansa. I'm thinking about selling mine that I bought off him because I'm going with twice pipes. I don't have the staggered/slashed tips, but they're stacked/round. Let me know if you're interested.

I like to wait 30 days for the paint to fully out gas. If not, the solvents in the paint can cause the film to discolor. More important than that is to make sure the surface is properly prepped before it's painted. When you have to lift the film up for what ever reason, if the paint is not adhered correctly it will lift up.

From my experiences, I'd stay away from the mat type sound deadening. Moisture likes to collect on the aluminum surface. My fathers car has the mat type in it and when I had to remove the door panel for an unrelated issue, the aluminum looked like someone misted it with a spray bottle. I like Liquid E-Dead from Elemental Designs. It's a spray in/brush on sound deadener. It's a bit messy and much more expensive, but it won't trap moisture like a mat and will never fall off. Because it's sprayed, you also can get into smaller areas much easier giving you more complete coverage. I used this on a Ranger that I had. The interior was gutted except for the dash, everything sprayed and put back together. When I was done it was as quiet as a Lexus. Here's a link to their page- http://www.edesignaudio.com/index.php?cPath=1_24

I've already got a spook lined up locally, if that falls through for some reason, I'm putting one on my car so I'll just order one. The guy is also putting on a BRE rear spoiler so I'll be able to design the 1/4 panel contact area once it's on the car.....maybe in a week or so, we just prepped the hatch for paint today. How popular is the MSA air dam?

The price will be in the $200-$250 range, most likely $250. A lot depends on how much I can fit on the smallest width film. If everything will fit on 18in it should be closer to $200, if it has to be bumped to to 24in, then it goes up. I'm going to break up the price into an upper and lower. Like I said, these are being designed for end user installation so hopefully you won't need to pay extra and have it installed for you. I'll be making a video and putting it on you tube and giving out my phone number for tech help. I'm also including all the installation tools with an order.

Nice car, but it's really just driver in very good condition. Even though it claims rust free and "professional paint job", you don't know what quality the body work is under it. Unfortunatly, the only way to tell is if there were pictures, you believe the owners word, or you take all the paint off. Still, I can't believe it's doing that much. My 91 Mustang GT with 19k on it only did 8600 last week.

Just and update- All parts of the standard Z are done and are going to put into the computer over the next few days- Headlight buckets, valence, valence corners and the hood. Once I can get my hands on a BRE spoiler that will be designed as well as the area on the 1/4 panels that are under the spoiler over hang. Next step is test fitting and final tweaks. If there is demand for other pieces (different air dams, rocker panels, etc) I will design them if I see fit. This is not cheap and very time consuming to do. I have left a loose tolerance on the edges due to the fact that many cars have been through restorations and other things that may effect the shape of the metal. My goal is to have a pattern than is user friendly and can be easily installed with out having to contact a professional.

I love Infiniti's. You can't go wrong with any high end Japanese car. I do work for all the high end German cars, while I still believe they are "better" than a Japanese car, they're only "better" when something isn't wrong with them. German's can't seem to make an electrical system to save their lives. I was going to buy a G37 over the summer, but when the salesman popped the trunk, I almost cried. There was no trunk!!! The M has a trunk but no stick.