motorman7

Got the valve cover back today. Just have it resting on motor for now. Will clear coat tomorrow and then install. Will also trim those silly tabs off of the valve cover gasket. Whatever happened to the old fashioned cork gaskets? These new ones are funky. I would actually be interested in picking up a couple of the cork/brown ones if they were available.

Started back on the motor assembly now that I have the engine bolts plated. Installed the timing chain cover, oil pump, water pump and oil pan. Will send the valve cover out tomorrow for the bead blast. Once that is done, the motor should be looking pretty nice and about ready to install when the time comes.

More updates from the paint shop. This is looking really nice.

Hi Dave, The '71 will be fun to work on. Looking forward to it. Got the first batch of Yellow zinc parts back. They look so pretty! Pics are lousy though, flourescent lights are the worst for photos. Also got new flat and lock washers in from Belmetric. It's not worth the time to wire wheel and plate washers since you can get most of these for 6 to 10 cents each. Much cheaper and simpler to go this way for the washers.

Hi Jim, Darn near impossible to get those fittings out in a clean manner. The list of items I utilized over the last week and a half include, PB Blaster, Kroil, Muriatic Acid, and a high temp torch. After all that, and using a 14mm flare wrench, I could not get those things lose. Anyway, I am glad they are out and fortunately I have a nice one to put on. Hopefully I will get that today with fresh plating. It's pretty exciting with all the stuff going on and things are progressing very quickly. Body is coming along well at the paint shop, dash is at "Just Dashes", sent the carbs and intake manifold off to ZTherapy last week (insured UPS shipping was just $28), and parts are being plated just down the street. Will be nice when this all comes together. Thanks for the words of encouragement. Best regards, Rich

The inspection lights are multiplying . I cleaned up the original for this car and sent it off to the platers along with the engine bolts and other parts to get the yellow zinc plating. Should get those parts back tomorrow. Can't wait to see them. I will drop off the silver zinc parts when I pick up the yellow parts. Still had a very hard time getting the air galley off even after soaking the air fittings for well over a week. I was not able to salvage the air galley that came with the exhaust manifold, but I was able to get out all of the fittings in tact, mostly. Five I was able to unthread using vise grips and a hammer. One I had to drill and tap, so not to bad. Tapped with the 1/4 BPST tap. I will run the tap through the other five ports just to make sure they are all cleaned up. Then I will send this off to get ceramic coated. Pics are below

Updates from the paint shop

The two orange ones are kind of worn out, but they came with the Caswell plating kit. Caswell lists them as a 'Nylon abrasive wheel' with no grit specified. Since they were worn, I got the blue one at Home Depot. It is designed for a drill, but I drilled out the center drill shank with a 1/2" bit and sandwiched it between the two orange ones. Seems to work pretty well. I don't know what the grit is but it originally looked like this. https://www.amazon.com/Dico-541-784-4-Nyalox-Wheel-4-Inch/dp/B00004YYD9/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1492481361&sr=8-3&keywords=Abrasive+wheel 240 grit is about right.

The Plating Process: Spent several hours yesterday (before Easter activities) prepping parts for plating. The plating is a very involved process and prep is the most important thing. Since I am doing a large number of parts, I will be sending these out for plating where they can plate these in large barrels. I have my own set-up, but it is better suited for low quantity work. The first step is to clean the oil and gunk off of the original parts. Usually I will do this by putting the parts in my paint thinner/lacquer thinner mix, using a brush to clean off the parts. This will remove most of the oily stuff and loose junk. Then I will dry the parts on a cloth. The parts need to be free of oils or they will contaminate your wire wheel. Once that is contaminated it spreads to all the parts, so this needs to be clean. I also intermittently clean the wire wheel with lacquer thinner just for good measure. After the parts are dry, I remove all the rust, paint and plating using the wire wheel. This can be a bit tricky as most of the parts are somewhat small. Typically I will wear a leather glove on my left hand and thin latex glove on the right. Goggles are a must as the little wires will occasionally fly off in addition to the debris and occasionally the part itself. A small breathing mask is also useful due to the dust. The part needs to be completely cleaned of the old material or the new zinc will not stick or look good. I also use a fiber wheel for cosmetic purposes after the parts have been wire wheeled. The fiber wheel makes surfaces super shiny which will also make the plating super shiny. Usually I will do the bolt heads and other very visible parts on the fiber wheel. At this point the parts need to be plated fairly soon or they will quickly rust. The parts are essentially naked at this point. Some people prefer to sand blast parts before plating. This is convenient for tight spaces but results in a somewhat dull finish. This is a fairly laborious process, but it's the little details that really make the car. Pics are below.

Did a little more clean-up on the engine parts. Cleaned and painted the oil pan and front pulley. Cleaned and put a light coat of high temp aluminum paint on the front timing chain cover. Parts are just loosely attached to the block since I don't have the nuts and bolts ready for plating. Hope to have those to the plater this Monday so I can start actual assembly soon. Will also get the valve cover glass bead blasted so that looks nice and pretty. Got a nice E30 Exhaust manifold with air galley off of e-bay (replaces the N36 that was installed on the car in 2013 and not original). Will douse the air galley fittings with Kroil and let them soak a bit before I try to remove. The air galley is in nice shape so I would like to try and preserve that. Pics are below.

Yellow zinc plating

Got the head on and torqued down. Put on the timing chain with number one cylinder at TDC and aligned the shiny links to the dots. Adjusted the valves, .007" gap intake and .010" gap exhaust. Put on the oil sump. I think this was all the easy stuff. Now it's time to attack the oil pan and exhaust manifold. I got a semi-new air galley for pretty cheap on e-bay so I will install that once I get the after market air galley off. That will be a bit of a challenge. I have been soaking the air nozzle fittings for about a week now in PB blaster with little progress. I am almost thinking that the easiest way to get this off would be to drill and tap. Anyway, things are moving along Oh, and I cleaned off the 'KAR' from the front of the head with lacquer thinner. Not sure what that was from.

Got the pistons in with new rings and rod bearings. Did final torque on Crank and rod bearings. Crank bearings torqued to 38 ft-lbs, Rod bearings to 23 ft-lbs.

It's overcast here, but you can see the difference the lighting makes. Also, here is a picture with the alternator bracket with original paint from the same motor. Pretty close given the bracket paint is about 45 years old. As I mentioned before, my only issue with the paint is that it seems to be on the glossy side. It should have more of a satin finish.

Hi Carl, The pictures above are a bit dark because of the lighting. I just double checked the color using the CDM paint on the lower left flange and there is no difference. I will take a pic of the block a little later today in natural lighting. The blocks below are the exact same color, just the lighting is different.

And more paint shop pictures. Looks like we are going down to bare metal on the hood. Looks like the hood has been orange, yellow and red in a previous life.

Yes, have that cleared already...I use that a lot. Pretty much all metal on the car needs to be painted or plated. Only metal that may not get some clear or plating would be some of the aluminum motor parts.

There is really a lot going on with the car now. We are in full production. The body is at the paint shop, the dash is at 'Just Dashes', and I just got the block and head back from the machine shop. The head was leaked checked and the rubber seals were checked. It was in perfect shape and the block only needed to be honed. They did a mild clean on the block also. No significant scratches in cylinder 1 which had the cracked ring. That worked out well. After I got the block and head home, I wire wheeled the block and wiped it down with phosphoric acid and then lacquer thinner. After that I painted the block. The paint was from California Datsun and looks to be the same color as the previous blend from CDM. I think the only difference is this paint appears to be a bit glossier, but I think that will be fine. I also got the freeze plugs in and the crank, crank bearings and rear seal. Before and after pics are below.

Coincidentally, I was actually at Just Dashes this morning dropping off The '72 240Z dash. Shipping is pricey (that's why i dropped it off) at $179 each way. Cost is $1750 for standard black. Lead time is 10-12 weeks. First payment to be made when they start which is about 3 weeks after they receive the dash. ..Oh, and I taped over the Kanji..and mentioned the importance of that to the guy at the front desk.

It's gone.....didn't think that would last long.

Good question, I will have to check and get back to you on that. Here are some of the latest body work pics. Miguel wanted to remove some of the previous paint work, so he has done quite a bit of sanding. Looks like the hood may have had three paint jobs so he is removing most of that. Nice progress in short time.

Will take the head and the block to the machine shop tomorrow. The head should be fine, but I want the shop to check the valve seating just to make sure. For the block, I am hoping that we can get away with just a cylinder hone to knock of the glaze. Also want to get it hot tanked to clean it up. Piston ring in cylinder one was cracked. Not really a problem as I will get new rings, but it explains the gritty material in the bottom of the block.

Didn't notice that when I was looking at the ad....just saw the pictures. Yes, would be nice to know why it was salvage.

I would probably pick this up if I had space. Looks nice from the pictures. I love the flat tops and the many original parts in the engine bay. Even the plastic cover for the regulator is there. '73s with the original flat tops are getting rare since everyone changes these out to the round tops. Still kicking myself for selling my silver '73. Wish I had that one back. https://sandiego.craigslist.org/esd/cto/6066092298.html

Thanks Zup, I will make sure I have the kanji taped off so it doesn't get painted. Nice to know. Thanks Captain, no plans on switching parts. I will clean these up and re-install....eventually.