Namerow

I'm really surprised by this (astonished would be more like it). Whenever I've spray-painted in an open garage, everything ends up covered with a light paint haze afterwards. It looks like this guy doesn't cover up anything in the garage before he gets started. I can't believe that that little window fan is generating much in the way of an air exhaust rate. I wonder if wetting the floor does more than just keep down floor dust? Or maybe your painter has mastered his gun settings to the point where overspray is only a minor issue?

Car guy, too... "George began his slide playing using the casing of a Sears-Craftsman 11/16ths spark plug socket wrench, rather than the traditional glass or steel finger tube."

Pardon my Weber-ignorance, but what's the difference between a '27' and an '18'?

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If the adjustment suggestions don't work for you, I have a good pair of hinges that I'll be happy to sell.

FWIW, I followed the recommendation of another CZCC member and used HVAC aluminum tape to replace the peeling factory plasti-chrome. I did this two years ago and the job is holding up nicely. The blue plastic 'rib' substrate has to be thoroughly cleaned and degreased to ensure a good result. The tape surface does not respond to polishing, but it has (and retains) a near-chrome sheen. I think you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference from the original unless they were placed side by side. I was very pleased with the results. The challenge with this job is that the blue plastic rib has a highly convex surface contour. Before using the aluminum tape, I tried a 'chrome' tape with a peel-off backing strip that I found in my local auto parts store. It's about 20% shinier than the aluminum tape and would probably be indistinguishable from the OE chrome. Unfortunately, the tape is made from plastic and it's a bit stiff. This is especially noticable across the short dimension of the tape and it wasn't happy being asked to form and lay down over the contour of the blue rib. The adhesive just wasn't up to the task of holding the long edges down and they would almost immediately start to lift. The aluminum tape is metal rather than plastic, so it formed very easily over the rib and there was no 'memory' effect trying to make it go back to flat.

Impressive, to say the least. I just took a quick look at their Facebook site and discovered more offerings that will interest CZCC members... like complete and partial firewall panels, for example. The detailing is very impressive. I have a suspicion that they're dimensionally accurate, too. Customer reviews (there are lots on the site) will probably tell the story on that point. Would you care to share with the rest of us the price you paid for the rad support kit?

GK is correct. That strip is fused to the main vinyl sheet and can't be removed. If you decide to use vinyl paint to change the colour, you'll need to mask off the strip carefully. I've had good results with vinyl paint. However, you'll need to be meticulous about surface prep. Like most paints, it doesn't tolerate surface contamination and will 'fish eye' badly if it encounters residual detailing products like ArmorAll. Aside from its vinyl color-coat product, SEM also produces a couple of surface-cleaning products specific to vinyl paint applications. Be sure you use them. Surfaces with creases (like the Z's 'diamond'/'quilted' trim panels) are particularly difficult to get completely clean. For some of the panels that I painted, I had to repeat the cleaning process 4 or 5 times before I got clear of the fish-eye problem. Door cards can take a fair amount of abuse, so your paint application will need to be really well done to be effective over the long term. Any peeling or lifting will be particularly noticeable, what with the underlying tan colour being so high-contrast with the new black cover coat. To go from tan to black, you're going to need to apply several (as in 4 - 6) thin color coats of paint @ ~ $20 per To do two door cards, you're going to need several cans of paint (my guess would be at least 4). Along with the surface prep products, you'll probably end up spending ~ $100 on materials alone. Then add a day's worth of your time. Given that your chosen color is black, I wonder if you might be better served by just buying new door cards. They're available from several of the well-known suppliers.

Try loosening the nut with an impact wrench. Sometimes the combination of shock and vibration is effective in backing off a Nylok nut.

My depth gauge 'pointer' is actually a metal strip measuring about 3/16" across, with a square profile at the end. As someone else has pointed out, the bottoms of the holes are conical rather than square. That means that the tip of my depth gauge would have sat slightly short of the very bottom of the hole at its centre. If you use a piece of wire as a depth gauge, you measurements may come out 1 or 2mm longer than mine.

There's nothing like a good mystery story... As luck would have it, I have in my workshop a fully-reconditioned, stripped-down L24 block sitting on an engine stand. I also have a depth gauge! What I discovered is quite interesting... The block has 7 head-bolt holes along each side. The depth of all of the holes along the passenger (right) side of the block is 26.5mm Things are much more interesting along the driver (left) side. Numbering from front to rear, the hole depths are as follows: 1. 32.0mm 2. 29.0mm 3. 25.5mm 4. 32.0mm 5. 26.5mm 6. 32.0mm 7. 28.5mm These measurements should be considered accurate to +/- 0.5mm. Nevertheless, there's a substantial variation along the passenger-side. Why is this? I'd have to look at the head casting (not convenient). However, I expect that height of the bosses for the head bolts have variations as well. You also have to take into account that there are three different lengths of head bolts (the parts manual calls them 'S', 'M', and 'L'). They may have different threaded lengths, too, but I don't have a set conveniently available to check this. It seems to me that -- properly assembled -- each head bolt should end up with relatively full engagement of its threaded length. If you get their locations of the S, M, and L bolts mixed up, you may end end up with problems. I can't find any info in the L24 FSM. It only offers this cheerful note: 'Three different types of bolts are use (So be careful when in installing).' My Haynes manual does have a bolt diagram -- although it says there are only 2 different bolt lengths - 'Short' (S) and 'Long' (L). With that noted, Haynes says: Passenger Side: all 'S' Driver's Side - from front to rear: L - L - S - L - S - L - L Maybe Tom Monroe's book, Rebuilding Your Nissan/Datsun L24 Engine' offers more detailed info. Unfortunately, I've misplaced my copy. As a first step, I suggest that you use a depth gauge (or a 'calibrated' piece of wire) to ensure that all of the hole depths in your block are about the same as my measured depths. I'm pretty sure that they will be. It seems inconceivable that just the tip of a bolt would break off at the bottom of its hole. If one of these bolts snaps off, it's going to happen at the top of the threaded part, not half-way or three-quarters of the way down, so you should be able to clearly see the top of the broken bolt sitting at or slightly beneath the top deck of the block. BTW, all of the bolt holes are blind. That is, none are open at the bottom to some other water/oil passageway.

Perfect. Now I have the full picture!

Interesting. It's promoted by 3M as a cut-off wheel, although they say in the spec sheet that it's suitable for cutting and grinding. There are 4 sizes (diameters) offered, each with its own centre hole size. The 3" disc you're apparently using has a 3/8" centre hole. Does your die grinder have a 3/8" chuck, or do you use a step-down mandrel to adapt to a 1/4" chuck?

I don't think you're likely to be able to source these new as stand-alone items (unless Zeddsaver comes through). Instead, they'll probably come in the form of used items from someone with an unwanted, beat-up seat. If I were such a person, I'd offer to either sell you the whole seat for $25 (you pay the packaging and shipping, so add $100) or I would invest my labour to recover the clips and dispose of the rest so that I could sell you the clips for $25 (you pay the packaging and shipping, so add $25). Alternatively, @zKars probably has a cache these (used), ready for sale and instant delivery. My guess is that his price will be $25 .

@240dkw That wire sounds intriguing. Unfortunately, it looks like the manufacturer only offers it in 11-lb spools (Cdn $130 plus tax & shipping from KTS Tools). That's good for commercial shops, I'm sure, but it represents a lot more welding than I need to do (or at least a lot more than I'm hoping I need to do ). Other members with more ambitious build programs may want to try it out, though, so thanks for the tip.

@SledZ Can you be a little more specific about the '3M weld grinding wheel' that you use? They have dozens of products that fall into the weld-grinding category. Do you have the 3M product number or name?

Make sure the threads on the studs and nuts are clean before you start. Maybe also spray lightly with WD40. The easier you can get those nuts to finger-tighten, the less annoying this job will be (and it can be really annoying).

Not me. However, the VIN is within 400# or so of my own 5/70, so I'm more interested than usual. Low-miles (perhaps) and looks 'rust-free-ish' (perhaps). Driver's seat look very good. Original? Dash pad appears crack-free, but I suppose it could be a cap. No under-car photos, so there's potentially a lot left unknown there. The thing that caught my attention is that the car still wears 90% of its braided hoses in the engine compartment (even the heater in-out and brake vacuum hoses -- and that's rare to see). The upper and lower rad hoses didn't make the cut, of course.

I guess I assumed that he performed the head 'rebuild' work without removing it from the block. If not, it would indeed be hard to understand how the broken bolt wasn't spotted the first time the head was off. Of course, there's always the possibility that it was spotted (and ignored) -- or that it was broken during re-assembly (and ignored) -- and that's why the car burned 2 quarts of oil in 100 miles. For the time being, though. let's give youztheclue the benefit of the doubt and assume that the bolt was broken by someone else.

I can't help but wonder whether this situation would respond better to big heat and big torque. As in, welding a nut onto the top of the stud and then putting a wrench on it. IIRC, @grannyknottalked about this in another thread a couple of years ago when the topic was extracting a snapped-off manifold stud out of the cylinder head. Something about the merits of using an oxyacetylene torch rather than a MIG? The difference here is that we have a large-diameter stud (bolt shank) that's seized inside a cast-iron engine block (vs. a small-diameter stud seized inside an aluminum head). Whereas it's the galvanic action of dissimilar materials that typically creates problems with steel fasteners getting stuck in alloy castings, for a head bolt it's steel-in-iron so I would think that the causes for the locked threads would be simple air (oxygen)-generated corrosion (unless the block has a micro-crack and coolant (water) has leached into the stud threads -- but let's not talk about that). In my (limited) experience of removing cylinder heads from high-mileage L24's, the head bolts take a lot of torque to break free and some of them really pop when they give way. Looking at the threads after the bolts came out, they appeared 'sooty' but not really crusty-rusty. I think that part of the problem with these head bolts getting stuck in the block is that they were installed at the factory without any lubrication so as to get accurate torque readings during tightening. Having said all that, I will repeat another story that I wrote about previously. In my area of the world (on the fringes of a 7-million pop. Canadian city), I discovered a contractor who provides the new-car retail industry with specialist services for extracting frozen fasteners from customer cars. That's all he does. He told me that there a certain model years for certain higher-end car brands where a key fastener (e.g. suspension mount) is chronically frozen, hard to get at, and often snaps off during attempted removal. That's where he makes his money. I hired him to get the snapped-off studs out of my Z's cylinder head (still mounted on the engine, in the car) and it was one of the best $120 I ever spent. He came to my house, rolled a tool caddy out of his truck, sized things up, and had the job done (without using any heat) in 10 minutes tops. Cheating? Maybe. Depends on your threshold for potentially-painful outcomes. You might consider looking for a comparable specialist in your area. The service managers at your local Benz, BMW, Audi and Volvo dealers might be able to help you find one.

Maybe I'm missing something but, from your photos, it's not obvious how that trim piece can achieve any left-right position other than what's determined by the two mounting screws. That suggests that what you've got is the way it's meant to be. Maybe a 280 owner can verify. Are you sure that the HVAC lever assembly has been correctly installed/aligned?

I think I might have the answer for you... https://www.belmetric.com/stainless-castle-nuts-c-3_558_1376/cn8ss-castle-nut-stainless-steel-p-8342.html?zenid=3j9n5fjlbd4p3hntj7jub44nl5 Looks to be a lot shallower than what you bought, although maybe not quite as shallow as the Nissan OE item. I've bought from Bel-Metric before. Good vendor, good products, great catalogue. BTW, if all else fails you should maybe pay your local Nissan dealer a visit. This might be a PN that's still available.

Lots of useful info. Thanks very much. Now to the next question: What processes and/or chemicals do you recommend to prepare the welded area for primer and paint?

What are members' recommendations for tools and abrasives to dress down MIG weld beads? For reference, I'm talking about stitch welds on sheet metal. The typical combinations I've seen suggested are: 1) angle grinder/flap disc 2) mini die grinder/2" sanding disc Abrasive grade recommendations I've seen are 36-grit to start and 60-grit to finish. I'm curious to hear thoughts on which combination(s) works best.

That was an impressive amount of bondo on that door. I suppose someone considered it easier than trying to align the door with the rocker and the door pillar. There's an interesting build thread on the Ferrarichat website that details the restoration of a 275GTB that had been bought for $$$ and was being restored to make it worth 10 x $$$. The 'before' photos show a car that looked ready to compete in a concours. However, when the shop started to strip the body for a re-paint, they discovered that the entire nose are had been re-sculpted with bondo. Almost an inch thick in some places! The work of an artist, to be sure. Re your Zkars replacement door, are you going to replace the metal in the mirror mount area? That seems to be a chronic corrosion area for these doors.