Murph

I'm currently doing mine using a knotted wire wheel on an angle grinder. My tar is a little harder (quite new though) so it works quite well and takes off the old undercoat. Still takes a fair bit of time to do. Just make sure you wear excelent eye protection, and dust mask isn't a bad idea and I found out the hard way, wear a shower cap! I now have a scalp covered in bloody tar!

inline4: How much is it costing you to both buy the new floor pan sections and have them welded in?

Yeah no worries.....meet ya there in 2 hours.

Two or three hours drive.....I wish! I'm in Townsville.....try 15hours! Make that 16 from GC. Maybe I can I can send you on a drive to the prev owners house at burleigh heads. Jokes... Thanks for the offer anyway.

Sorry took so long to reply guys....missed a whole heap of posts! The car's definantly a 260Z. Just damn hope that it's not a write off. A guy from one of the local bodyshop/restoration places will be taking a look at it soon to give me an idea of the cost to fix it and IF it can be fixed. Sorta starting to wonder as I've found the left rail is pretty dinged up too. No rust tho. Also looks like a foot long section at the back of the left rail has been cut out and a new section welded in (just tack welds) at some point. Also there are other sections of the foor that look like this. There is a place with the chassis rails (full rail from rear of car to the radiator support), but we're talking AU$550 for one rail! They also have floor pan sections for $140 a side. At this rate I might just need a whole new floor and two new rails. Basically I am hoping that the dings in the left rail aren't so bad that it needs to be replaced. As for the floor maybe just strip the sound deadener, clean up any rust then treat it with POR15. Get the right rail replaced, then a few years down the track when I've finished uni I can fully strip the car and do it properly. Or do it properly now and be in debt forever. Alfadog: Where bouts do you live? Thanks for all the support guys.....makes me fell a hell of alot better about it all.

Just had a chat to a solicitor. Basically I have no legal ground to stand on when it comes to the previous owner. However there is a possibility with the workshop that did the roadworthy, as it is because of their dodgy report that I have incurred a significant monetary loss, or more to the point, that the car was not worth anywhere near what I paid. We'll see how it goes.

I just discovered that at the front of my left hand rail it was full of bog! ****ing bog! The rail appears to be fine apart from being a bit dented.....they've just made it look flat again with bog. Would you imagine this would be a big problem? Also, can anyone give me a rough idea of how many $$$ I am looking at to have a rail cut out, a little rust work and a new rail welded in? Btw I should have details on where to source the rails in Australia by the end of tomorrow.

Thanks Joeseph. I'll check out all z when I ring around looking for rails later in the week. (tied up with uni atm) With this POR.....is it something that can be removed easily? Atm, I just need something to put on between now and when the car goes in to have the rust cut and the new rail put in. So I'd like somthing that they can remove easily where required.

It appears to be ok.....but ya never know. I'm really busy with uni atm so haven't touched the car in days and wont be able to till the weekend. Gonna attack it with a wire wheel, then we'll see exactly how much rust is there.

Spoke to my mechanic today as he has a 240Z himself. He said there's a place down south that sells the rails, and it's my best bet to buy one from there, then take it and the car to a body shop and get the rust cut out and the new rail welded in. He's getting the details of the place that makes the rails for me tonight. I've been advised by the ACA to get in contact with the office of fair trading in my state to see what my rights are concerning action against the previous owner. So hopefully should have some more to report tomorrow.

Thanks there. I'm pretty sure POR is available. I'll have to have a look around tomorrow.

Now that I'm taking it back to bare metal under the car, should I be putting something on there to stop it rusting?

Thanks for the offer there. Might just take you up on that. I wont be able to do the actual fabrication and welding part of the repairs, but I'll be trying to do everything else myself. I'm pretty busy at uni atm so don't have too much time to work on it. I'm also looking into the legal side of things atm, both the previous owner and also the workshop that gave it a roadworthy.

I'm just about the head out and continue to scrape the deadener off. Here's a pic of the blob of metal/rust with the wires coming out of it.

Pics time... http://users.bigpond.net.au/oceanz/z/zrooted/ 1. This is the first thing I saw. Not happy Jan. You can see where I've been scraping back the deadener in all the shots. Note that there is metal under the deadener, it's only rusted on the broken edges. 2. Behind the rear break. Notice how smashed up the floor and chassis rail are. Also the gouges in the floor. 3. Looking from under the car at one of the gouges. 4. The front break. On the right side is the radius rod bracket. The actual break is just under the front of the bracket, however you can see how displaced it is. (15-20mm) 5. A good overview of the broken section looking from the side of the car. 6. Close up of the rear break. Note all the bog used to make it look flat, and that once you scrape of the surface rust there is metal. A few new observations. -The radius rod is slightly bent -There are a few tiny rust holes in the footwell area. Only a few mm across. -There appears there may be a few gouges on the other side of the car too.

Nope....not them. It's further forward than that and they are irregular in shape. I'm borrowing the work digi cam tomorrow morning. I'lll have pics posted by lunch time.

My current thought is that it isn't rust that's caused the problem. It looks more like it's been crash damaged, then rusted around the sections that have broken. Then of course someone has done a dodgy repair then sprayed over it. Under the foot well, the holes there don't look like rust holes. It looks like the holes have been gouged into the metal, then it's rusted a bit around those edges. Go just a mm or two back from the edge and it's good metal. Scares me to think I drove that thing 1500km home on the highway.

I've just spent the past hour scraping away at the sound deadeder. Basically there's a 50cm long section of the chassis rail that has broken away from the rest of the rail and body at both ends. This section goes from the front of the radius rod braket back to the bottom front of the drivers foot well (RH drive). Under the whole foot well area it's all dented as if it's taken some big blows under the car, or been dropped on it's guts in that section. The chassis rail behind the break isn't rusted at all but rather than being flat on the bottom it is concave. Under the foot well there is some rust and a fair few holes, but they don't appear to be rust holes. I may be wrong, but it looks like holes that have been gouged there, then they have rusted. They've put an extra sheet of metal in the footwell under the carpet so you don't notice all the holes. Also, i dug a chuck of rust out of the rear crack in the rail, and this chuck of rust/metal has a whole bunch of what looks like 1-2cm long bits of wire coming out of it. A few of them have little blobs of metal on the end. Any idea what the hell they are? So my guess is it's been crashed in some way, maybe run up a gutter as that would cause the radius rod to put alot of force on the chassis rail right there. After the crash it's probably just had a dodgy repair done and all the damage sprayed over with tar. Or maybe the crash caused it to crack there, then the crack has rusted, been sprayed over, then my hard braking yesterday finally broke it. Any ideas? *I'm trying to get my hands on a digi cam asap as ours is getting fixed. **On a positive note, i haven't found any rust anywhere else under the car.

Glad I'm not the only one. Pity I can't weld and I have no money to pay someone else to do it atm.

Driving home this avo in the zed, some little wanker on a bike rode out in front of me. I hit the brakes suddenly and the car swerved hard right and locked what I think was the front right wheel. Now the car pulls to the right reasonably heavily and when I apply the brakes it pulls very hard to the right and you get sorta shhh shhh shhh shhh shhh scrubbing sound from the front right wheel. Anyhow, I've just had a look under there expecting a problem with the suspension or brakes and found something much much worse. The chassis rail on the right hard side where the radius rod connects to it, has totally seperated from the body! It's all quite rusted and is displaced about 6mm or so from where it should be. Looking down at the chassis rail in the engine bay it's quite buckled. The reason I had never seen the rust before is because the car has a fresh layer of tar sound deadening (by the previous owner). Now I know why. :mad: What can be done? Can it be cut out and replaced? How many limbs am I going to have to cut off to pay for it?

There is hope yet. Hopefully they wont require much modification to fit. We'll see how it goes.

Well if it isn't Alfadog! Hmmm doesn't sound too good bout the extractors. I had a feeling they may not fit due to fouling on various underbody bits. Oh well... I'll have to check these things out in person and see if they'll fit. There shoud be no problem attatching to the head tho, right? Btw... bloody PF has been down all day. Looks like I'll have to hang out in "your" club now.

Will extractors for a datsun 240K fit onto a 260Z's L26? Just met this guy tonight that has some brand new extractors for a 240K that are just sittin there taking up space, so he said he'll sell em for $150. Sounds like a bargain to me...if they'll fit.?