DaveBonds

Wow. I'm not much of a v8 conversion fan, but I will say, any car that runs that E.T. for less than $5k is robbery. I don't care if its a Subaru brat with a worn out 350 and a ford 8", for that kind of money, that is fast.

Nice build! Hayashi also made race bike parts. They made nice exhaust systems for them. Are you going to stroke the engine, as per the designation on the Kakimoto cover? I believe the reason people bought those was for the 3100cc designation and simplification of wire routing, etc. I love the emphasis on vintage aftermarket parts going into the build. It makes a notable difference on any car's heritage and a lot of people toss the idea out the window, outside of typical US built classic cars, and even then, it is becoming rare. Nice to see some thought going into it!

Seems like a nice paint job, but the under hood disassembly and preparation were nill. If the seller had taken the time to do a little more work, it would have gone a long way in value. Its silly, how much paint means to people.

Is that a dash out of a ZX? I'm confused. I'd part it for everything RHD on another shell if it were mine.

Some go under the radar. I guess it depends on the ones saavy on shipping or going long distances for their car, but if that's the case, for those individuals hunting ebay, going into different cities Craigslist classifieds where they are willing to venture and check them as well as locals.

Why not ditch the rail and mechanical pump for an electric and start from scratch? Gets the line completely out of the way. Get a good line bender, a double flair tool and start with some 5/16". Summitracing.com has stainless line for cheap.

I agree. Keep the water jackets free through the intake manifolds, MSA header is good, but not entirely necessary. You won't see much performance gain in one on a stock engine, especially in the lower rpm range. A header will require a bit of exhaust modification. In order for the header to bolt to your exhaust system, it needs a different flange that will be a completely different type, size and location on the exhaust. It will require an adapter from the header collector flange to neck it down to your stock exhaust size, or you can go with a new, bigger exhaust system.

I am doing a similar modification on my car, but I'm taking it a step further and rerouting fuel lines, eliminating emissions and fuel feedback vent lines (making a new gas tank) as I have no mechanical pump in the front of the engine, as well as completely dumping my entire emissions setup on my '72. The water lines have absolutely nothing to do with emissions equipment, such as your air pump. You can also modify your exhaust manifold to eliminate the air pump fittings and rail by heating it up with a torch and taking the fittings out to replace them with plugs, or at the very least, trimming the tubing from the inside of the manifold and do some port work. The manifolds on these cars are actually designed very well for exhaust flow. The only thing you need is a way for your crankcase to vent. You can ditch everything that the air pump hoses are attached to (red), all the way to the exhaust manifold and air cleaner assembly and replace any lines with plugs on the balance tube of the intake, with the exception of the power brake booster line on the back, if you are keeping power brakes (as most of us do). Your intake and carburetors have a water passage in them, so if you do anything to them, be sure to drop antifreeze from the radiator first. Here is a really crude hose ID that I slapped together- The others not tagged are either breather lines for the float bowls of each carburetor to the air cleaner, a brake line, choke cable or something else that is irrelivant to this modification. Hope this helps

Your Plymouth Fury is a great example of what I am talking about. When I see a car come into our shop that hasn't been restored, I am greatful if I see all of the rust because it's honest! My friend has a '67 Sport Fury 2dr hardtop that has never been restored and it wasn't without it's due rust. Classic cars = rust, bad weatherstripping, leaky seals and bad paint. If not, you are in luck and if it looks good, without pictures of before, durring and after, it might as well be the prior. Here is some interesting fodder, regarding the asking bill of this guy's 280... http://denver.craigslist.org/cto/1912587617.html http://denver.craigslist.org/cto/1842931650.html http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sgv/cto/1915667854.html http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/cto/1905517777.html http://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/cto/1841791326.html http://phoenix.craigslist.org/cph/cto/1837379082.html http://racine.craigslist.org/cto/1910720443.html http://houston.craigslist.org/cto/1856122231.html http://houston.craigslist.org/cto/1853214988.html http://miami.craigslist.org/mdc/cto/1866356360.html This was less than 5 minutes worth of my research. All are current and mind you, these are all currently available, meaning that nobody has picked them up and these are asking prices.

Hmm... wow, that is certainly a project. Not a bad car to start with, IMO. His quote to do the work that you are talking about is CHEAP. The truth about your quarter panel is that even with the best rust repairs made to the original panel, a full replacement panel is ALWAYS the best repair. It may or may not be the most economical way to repair rust and/ or body damage, but without a doubt, will always produce the best finish results. How economical it is to replace a panel is subjective per scenario. I have made panels for cars from flatstock sheet steel and aluminum, but I did it because I had no other choice. It is expensive to contract this kind of labor and it takes a lot of patience on both the technician and customers part. Again, it can be done, but weather or not it is economical is subjective. I know exactly what your bodyman is doing. He is weighing the two types of repair on your car against eachother for the best possible final product, and when you can eliminate welding, bodywork and filler in any situation, that option will always be chosen, unless somehow, for whatever uncommon reason it becomes impractical. I restore cars for a living. Last week, I stripped the quarter panels on a 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass, to find fiberglass repairs and enough body filler that it necessitated a torch and a chisel to remove it all from the metal before sanding the rest off. We charged the customer for my time (one days worth) to strip both quarter panels, only to find that they both had rear collision that wasn't repaired properly underneath the body filler, along with the rust. I came to the conclusion that if it were one or the other (either body or rust repair) it may be economical to repair the existing quarter panels, but it wasn't worth the time and his money spent to have to repair both rust and body damage. We spoke with the owner and have made a schedule to replace both panels. Just about every bodyman knows better than to remove a body panel without having the potential replacement panel on hand to compare and measure against the original. Even if this replacement panel has the incorrect C pillar and rear bumper shapes, adjustments can be made to a replacement panel much easier than repairing rust, because the technician has access to both sides of the body panel without obstruction, to use a minimal amount of body filler in the adjusted areas once the panel is in place on the car. A replacement panel also allows the technician access to rust and damaged areas underneath that would otherwise be inaccessable. You would be amazed at the amount of dirt that can become trapped in a quarter panel. In some cases, I have removed quarter panels from cars, even if I plan on reusing them, just to repair underlying rust and do what I can to treat and prevent further rust, before reinstalling an original panel. I am removing a quarter panel on my mothers car that is in need of collision repair and rust repair that I will likely never find a replacement for. I can probably repair the damage on the vehicle, but the end result will be much better if I remove the panel to repair the damage and then reinstall it. There are a lot of things to take into consideration when you are having bodywork done on a car. It sounds to me like your bodyman knows what he is doing. The likely scenario is that he is going to use the '70-'71 or '71-'73 quarter panel with minor adjustments to work properly on your car. This is exactly what I would do if I was presented with an economical replacement panel like he has, if I were working on your car.

Upholstery padding can be made of just about anything from high and low durometer foam to burlap (made from palm tree ) If you find anything at a fabric store that suits the density and thickness you are looking for, you can use just about anything, but I would not use felt, as it doesn't have a very consistant surface when adhesive is applied to it. I'm a bit confused about your inner door panel being metal. The door shell is metal, but the inner door panels that finish them are usually made out of mold formed or flat masonite, insulated with a spray cement and a thin layer of soft foam, with a cloth covering of some kind. Sometimes they will use stamped sheet metal or plastic in conjunction with or in place of the masonite for shaped areas, like the top of the window channel area of a door panel. New cars have injection molded plastic door panels that are foam and cloth covered. The insulating foam is commonly used in lots of fabric industries. You can find it at fabric shops for cheap. As far as paint colors go, I will say that Candy Apple Red is a Ford color, but is commonly referred to as a tint of red. I would suggest looking through House Of Kolor for custom, deeper or more eccentric color tones with or without metallics and pearls. They usually have a less expensive custom line than just about any other major manufacturers color selections of the same nature. If you want a deep red, I would suggest a tri stage of some kind.

You might consider finding other cars in similar condition to his on Craigslist in other cities and email the listings to him. I guarantee that nobody will be asking what he is asking for the a 280 or even 260 in that condition. I think $600-$700 would be a considerably fair price for that car in it's condition, seeing as how I paid what I did for my 240 that drove home. A bit of advice from someone who restores cars for a living; If you buy an S30, you can expect rust. Don't let it scare you. Get a decent MIG and practice on some old body panels. Go slow. Don't stitch more than one inch at a time and move around the panel. I use a cold, oily rag to quench each weld and if needed, hammer on dolly on the weld area until it's in the desirable shape before moving on to prevent warping. The floor pans in these cars are coated in this sound deadening insulation sheet that was adhered to the floor pans themselves and then painted over. The adhesive breaks up over time and the sheet of insulation material creates pockets between the floor pan and itself for condensation and other sources of water to become trapped in. In pictures, it looks like the insulation is part of the floor stamping shape because it is painted over in body color. This can cause problems with the frame rails at the area where they attach to the floor pan. Without high resolution pictures of both the top and bottom sides of the floor pan without carpetting, there really is no good way to determine how rusted a floor pan is. The good news is that floor pan patches are cheap and probably some of the easiest rust repairs that anyone can make. The gauge of steel is lower (thicker) than the outer body panels and it all gets covered up anyway, so it doesn't have to look perfect if you're not enclined to make it so. Personally, I wouldn't trust a supposedly rust free original car without having some knowledge of it's history, primarily if it were garage kept or not. I would actually prefer to repair rust over having an original rust free car, because I know that I can do a better job at preventing it from rusting again than the factory did.

Not to attach value to his 280, but I paid $750 for a running and driving '72 240, a little over one year ago, to try and put things into a realistic spectrum, throwing bargain hunting and sentiment out the window. The only time something has monetary value is when both people can come to an agreement in price and strike a deal. The reason for values gathered is not important after the exchange. And such are deals that fall through. It doesn't matter why you disagree, the point is; you both couldn't come to a conclusion with an arrangement to exchange. It doesn't matter if it is logical or illogical. Hell, it doesn't even matter if it's with or without reason. It's all water under the bridge. To answer the initial question of this thread, I would personally offer $500 cash if an open title was available. I believe any running and driving car is worth $500 or more, with fewer repairs needed to be road worthy. Should he want to sell the car for less than his asking price of $1,500 or keep it, he'll figure it out on his own terms.

I guess I'm a grave digger. Sorry about that. I don't quite understand how I found this thread, now that I am looking at time stamps. Aside from the typo above, a good carburetor shop or manufacturer should have most of the settings within range of easy tuning for the end user. I did all of the cosmetics on the carbs myself, but that has nothing to do with their performance. It doesn't take much to learn how to rework a set of these the right way. I've rebuilt a lot of carburetors and I have to say that these are by far the easiest ones I have worked with. If something is wrong with them, it's usually a simple mechanical adjustment or a part replacement.

On average, just about any car with multiple carburetors will run you $600+ for new replacements, but be careful when replacing your carbs. These carburetors get blamed for a lot of problems with these cars, because they aren't understood well. A lot of mechanics will vote to replace them simply because the new ones will be in tune and they know it. I would ask your mechanic what exactly is wrong with the carburetors before having them replaced. If he knows them well, he should be able to tell you without hesitation. If he says that they are just old and worn, ask him which part is causing trouble. I had to replace one of mine, because the throttle body was warped and it wasn't allowing the piston reservoir to mount square with the bore in the throttle body. This was causing the piston to jamb before it reached the bottom of it's throw. The prior owner who had "rebuilt" the carburetors didn't catch this problem and didn't do proper research before going through them. I found a ceased needle, one bent needle and a few missing smaller parts along with the warped throttle body that was causing the problems he tried fixing. I don't even know how he made adjustments to the balancing screw or remember if he put the pistons back into their respective pots that they were precision machined for. These carburetors are exceedingly simple, compared to almost any other design by any company. The truth is, they probably just need rebuilt with minor hard parts replaced, if any at all. Each carburetor has it's own set of problems, even in truly matched sets will have issues if they have been improperly cared for. If someone has gone through these carburetors, that alone would raise a red flag with me and I would check a few simple things first before calling them junk and getting new ones. I have about $100 in my set, that was spent in another pair to take parts from, combined with the ones that I had- If you check a few simple things with these, you can potentially save yourself hundreds of dollars by doing some research and a little tinkering yourself. His quoted prices are about spot on with tuning and installation for a new set, but after seeing what I could do with my set for a benjamin, I highly doubt you need all new carbs.