blitzkraig

Hitchhikers

I spray PPG paints at the auto shop I work at and I can tell you that pearl whites are more difficult than your typical basecoat/clearcoat jobs. The thing is, there is no base pearl white. White paint will hide any pearl that is in it, so you have to spray this job in three stages. First you lay down the white base coat, when that's fully laid out you then spray the pearl coat which is basically a clear binder with pearl mixed in. This is the difficult part because you need nice even coverage over the entire car. Each part must have the same number of pearl coats or it won't match. Once you got that done all ya gotta do is clear it and yer home free! Practice on some large panels and see if you can pull it off. If you can't get it then I highly recommend finding a painter who is experienced with three stage paint jobs. Good luck!

Well, first of all you need to remove all the rust from the area. Otherwise it will just keep eating your car. So you can do this two ways. One, cut out the diseased metal and have some new metal welded in (cut some sheet metal and form it to match the cut out contour on the car), and then finish it off with bondo. Or, you can sandblast all the rust until there's just shiny metal and fiberglass over the affected area, and again finish with bondo. As for the bondo finishing itself, ya gotta sand it down to the contour of the car. Start with 40 grit sandpaper and end with about 120 grit. Primer follows. Good luck and feel free to ask more questions if you need.

ACK! one of my turn signal assemblies ended up in the trash at my work and was off to the dump before I realized! I need these to 'complete' my car! These are the exterior turn signals on the front of the car.

Perfect! Thank you so much! I actually managed to dig up my 'how to restore z' book and it says some stuff about reinstalling these parts so I'm going to try and get that done today. Thanks for the pic!

I tore out my headliner and pillar vinyl to redo my interior and now I'm not sure how to proceed to reinstall the pillar and front windshield vinyl. I remember tearing out some welting along the inside flange of the pillar but I don't know how to get it back in there. Also, how the does the vinyl above the windshield meet the side vinyl (is it folded over?). I know I should have taken pictures, but now I'm so close to reinstalling the windshield I need to get this overwith. Thanks.

Ya, I'm definitely down for a meet somewhere. We should find out who all will show up and who lives farthest north and south to pick a spot in between. I know about another two guys by me with 280s that would probably be interested.

Are you guys going to the Z car nationals? It'd be great to meet up along the way down and start a train of Zs!

I'm definitely down for a big Z meet in Norcal. I'm in Santa Cruz, and my Z shall be "done" in about 2 weeks. I think we should move this thread to the regional forums though.

I had read on the Z garage website that sometime the stock 240 tach doesn't work with the dizzy upgrade. So while I was at the junkyard I saw a 75 280 with a good tach so I pulled it out anticipating that my stock tach wouldn't work.

So I swapped in the 280zx dizzy on my 240 and my stock tach works just fine. Before I did the swap I pulled a tach from a 75 280 (gauge looks the same!) in case my stock one didn't work. I have the dash out right now and am swapping everything over to a restored dash and am just wondering if I should put in the 75 tach or keep the stock one in since its so convenient right now? Thanks

Dude that reallly sucks. It seems like one of our Zs gets stolen once every three months or so. Is there any particular reason these suckers are so easy to steal??? Or is it talented people doing the stealing? I'm definitely going to be looking for some security systems before my Z hits the roads again. Hope good news gets to ya soon Vic

I just ordered a grand worth of stuff from MSA to finally finish my car and I have to say I'm rather disappointed with some of their products. For example: New Center Console for my 71, is made of fiberglass which is fine, but there is visible cracking in the tray and the thing looks like it has been horribly sprayed with rattle can black (doesn't match the dash). New window channels, unlike the quality window channels I usually install in cars at my work these are cheap foam strips made into the correct shape to fit in the channels. Weatherstripping, now from thailand, which I haven't used yet and they may be great, but come on, where's the good stuff???? And now that I've done the body work on my car I realized the air dam I bought from them 5 years ago had a nasty crack the sucked in the paint around it so you could see it! I'm very happy with many of MSA's products though, but I really would like to see some consistency here!!!!! At least warn us when a product is no longer available from a quality source and the item may look like crap! ........ Sorry, I just had to vent. Has anyone else had this problem??:tapemouth :tapemouth :tapemouth :tapemouth