grannyknot

I thought the reason the narrow side of the shaft was towards the wheel was for clearance with the sway bar, now I see that neither your red or white car has a rear sway bar so maybe that's why it was working being switched end to end. I'm not 100% sure that's the reason but maybe.

Hey if you have the time to spend to do the job right then sure you can buy boat vinyl fabric and have a go. Do you still have the original vinyl that you can use as a pattern? I guess you could use the shag carpet for your pattern in a pinch.

These is from a previous Z,

I don't think Nissan used any glue but certainly they would have packed all those joints with seam sealer after the welding. I believe my panels just had weld through primer on them, then epoxy primer, seam sealer then paint and clear.

The clutch is working! https://youtu.be/dVW8Qbv8208

Absolutely, that's a plug weld. With perfect prep the 3M panel bond might work well but personally I think I would have to weld those pieces together. I would just be afraid that if that bond did lift off or crack the repair job just got a lot more difficult, with welding you know the job is done once. Z cars consistently rust in those two spots on either end of the deck lid and I'm sure it is because the rain gutter on either side stops 3-4" too soon so all the water that drains off gets dumped right on to the deck lid. Those corners also slope back a bit so standing water can sit there until it evaporates. While your in there you might consider adding a couple of small extensions like this that will take the water off the car completely. At least the next restorer 50 yrs from now won't have to deal with the same problem.

You might want to clear those inner passages with compressed if you can or at least be able to see solvent passing freely from one to the other.

Not much resistance in the return line even with the fuel injected Z's but 2 clamps on either connection should give a wide safety margin.

I've tried to do the same thing, to get the deck off without cutting spotweld holes through it but there are some welds that are so close to the tail light panel that I just couldn't do it. I ended up drilling the spotwelds from above then when all was repaired plug welding the deck back on and grinding the weld flat and a smear of filler over top.

Okay, the car was running a Pertronix with a bypassed ballast resistor and upgraded coil. @Dadsun sorry for the bad advice, I had forgot my car was modified.

I would cut back to fresh unrotted metal on either side of the line and bridge it with flex fuel line with double fuel injection clamps on either side, that will get you back on the road safely while you decide what to do.

With your finger? and solvent when you can't get anymore out with a cloth.

When I was working on my 70/240z I drove for weeks without a tach and that is what my previous statement was based on. The tach is picking up the signal and converting it to a visual aid, how can it prevent the engine from starting?

I'm too cheap to by new, I just get them at the wreckers, I think I paid $10 a piece for them. There are a few universal type weather seals that could be made to work.

Beautiful, reassembly is anyways the best part of the build. How did you get it on and off that trailer?

As you know these are noisy cars even when completed but from your description it sounds like you still have a few seals that need replacing, that quarter window seal works well on any Z 70-78. It may or may not be original to the early 260's though. You could try the paper test on the hatch and doors to see how tight the seal is, open the hatch and place a sheet of 8x11 paper on the seal where you think it may be leaking air or water, close the hatch and see if you can easily pull on the sheet of paper from the inside. You could loosen and adjust the hatch bolts and the catch so the entire hatch is sitting lower and squeezing the seal better. I'm using a Kia Sportage door seal for my hatch seal and it works great, there is a join at the deck lid and the profile of the pinch weld isn't a perfect match for the Kia seal but it does work well for me.

I have one of those tumblers and if you have lots of time and somewhere to put it where you don't have to listen to it all the time, it's quite loud, then you can gets good results. There is a learning curve on all the different kinds of media you can use, whether or not you add liquid ... Hard to beat a HD wire wheel for speed though.

Congrats, and welcome to the forum. Yes you can unplug the tach and it will still run, in fact you can remove the entire dash and all the instruments she'll keep running. It looks very nice, how many miles on the clock?

Or what do you charge to restore a Z? Is it charged out by the hour or the job? I don't often pay others to do automotive jobs for me so I don't know what the going rate is and when I do a job for someone else I usually low ball it because I'm doing it for someone I know and feel weird asking for too much. Would like to hear your opinions. Thanks

I got the seized drum off, have a look at the white lettering on the brake shoes, the front of the car is to the right in this photo.

Unfortunately, I don't own that car anymore, I just went through the resto photos and can't find anything definitive but just from memory I'm very sure there was just 3 lines, main, return and brake line.

Thanks @CanTechZ, okay, so then I don't know if it was a UN car or not, all the pollution controls had been removed by the time I got it.

It's always a good day when the freshly plated parts comes in, never gets old.

I'm not familiar "UN", what does that stand for? How would you know if a Z was UN or not?

This, Roll back up to the drawing at the top of the page and you can see in the later "better" position that the front of the diff is being supported forward of where it is supported on the earlier configuration.