charliekwin

Here's a video of the run: The production on video itself is rather terrible, but watching the speed climb on the run is unreal: 300+ and it's still pulling. Bonkers. I don't know how many people here are NHRA fans, but this thing is hitting top fuel speeds. Just crazy.

Get a few pounds of dry ice. Let it sit for a couple minutes, then smack it with a hammer. Works great. Fun, too. Goof Off (not Goo Gone!) will take off any residue. It's one of the stronger solvents you'll find on store shelves, take proper precautions.

Some movement: the insurance company estimated repairs for the Z at ~$1900. After the deductible, I got a check for $900. I like knowing that I've done all the work on the car, and there's no way I'm finding a shop to repair it for $1900 (let alone $900) so it's DIY job. That check should cover parts and materials, plus labor ...at about 10 cents/hour. I got the fender support mostly straightened out and haven't given up on the fender itself. They're harder to find and none are for sale locally right now, so I'm seeing what I can do. 50/50 right now. Headlight bucket is a goner. Meanwhile, I got this: It popped up on Craigslist, was close, and low priced. L28s, like everything else, seem to be going up in value, so I grabbed it even though nothing will happen for a while. According to the seller, it's from an 82 or 83ZX that he was going to swap into his car until it was totaled (fun coincidence: the vacuum tank and thermostat housing I picked up from the junkyard a few years back came from the seller's totaled ZX). The engine sat for a couple years, but it turns over freely and has everything. I figured if it turns out to be junk, I could probably sell off enough stuff to make up most of what I paid for it. Disassembly so far has been painless. Not a single stuck nut or bolt. All the accessory pieces still spin. The exhaust manifold has a big crack, but that's the only part so far that's properly damaged. I pulled off the valve cover and oil pain and the internals I can see look good to my relatively unknowing eyes. The head looks better than the one in my own car. I have a pile of stuff here that's pulled off. The stuff on the right is headed for the trash. Most of the stuff on the left I don't really know what to do with. Is there any market or interest out there for things like an alternator, AC compressor, injector blower that aren't seized but may not work? I don't want to throw things out that are valuable (or even useful) for someone, but garage space is at a premium and I don't want to fill it with junk, either.

The Z accident is a bummer, but I'm not really angry about it. That kind of thing happens; we're all human. The G tweaks me. No note or anything, there was *plenty* of space, and I'll probably be out a $500 deductible to get it fixed. Lots of things I'd rather spend that money on.

Got to dig into my situation. Preliminary assessment: One good dent on the hood. Wish it weren't so close to the edge. Bad photo, but there's very small break on the opposite side that I don't remember seeing. If I can avoid repainting the bottom of the hood too, that'll be a win. Bumper buckled on the top and bottom. No scrapes or dents anywhere, though! Not sure the best way to get it back to shape, but seems doable. Bracket got pretty well twisted. Probably need to remake at least one of them. Air dam took a little damage from the bumper and one of the holes isn't looking great. I can clean up the bumper recess with body filler. It's not a super-visible piece, so maybe I can get away with touchup paint instead of repainting the whole thing. Headlight needs a massage. Grill was mostly unscathed. As does the hood hinge and the fender support piece on the front end. Best news: no damage to the area around the radiator core support. Feel confident that there's no frame or structural damage. The headlight bucket is wrecked. The fender isn't much better. Gotta source a few parts. Not sure what I'll tackle first. Even though everything here is about the best I could've hoped for, I'm kind of unenthusiastic about it all right now. Oh, and when I came out of the gym last night, I found that THIS happened to my other car in the parking lot. You gotta be kidding me....

The other party was in Jeep Compass. They were in a rental (I think some kind of private party rental) and looks like it just got their bumper and some trim. I filed a claim with my insurance company mainly just so I don't have to worry about any of it. No determination of fault yet. If I get anything from my insurance company, great, but honestly, it's the time and work that's hung over me more than any of the costs. Assuming everything looks good after I pull it apart, I'm probably at ~$500 in parts, paint and other materials. I'm with you guys on the fender and headlight. I'm still just coming to terms with having to re-weld it again and don't want to think about it :) Passenger side hood hinge was tweaked; same with the front of the fender support (at least). Hope nothing too bad happened to the hood -- they're harder to find. And the bumper's stainless, which I assume is easier to fix than one that's chrome plated. Buddy of mine suggested that the vanity plate might be a little too on the nose. Next time maybe I'll pick something way more positive and hope it's similarly prophetic 😄 (I dunno...maybe LTRYWNR?)

No injuries at least, so that's something to be grateful for. Peeked under the hood and didn't see anything that worries me. You're right about the fender and headlight though. I'm dumb enough to at least try to fix it, but almost certainly will need to find new ones. If I do it myself and if I only have to paint the hood and fender, that's not so bad. I had flaws in those panels that nagged at me anyway. There are other flaws that nag at me, and will try hard not to think re-painting the whole care would somehow be a good idea.

Car pulled out of a driveway across multiple lanes of stopped traffic to get into the left turn lane, which I was already in. Stood on the brakes, but wasn't enough. I'll tear into it tomorrow after the adjuster comes, but it looks like the hood and air dam are probably salvageable. Bumper is bent, and maybe fixable too. Door looks fine so far, so I'm hopeful there's no structural damage. Haven't decided how I want to deal with any of it yet.

Well, today's drive sucked:

As my only car? The new one. As a second car? S30.

It's still ugly now ? This is stolen from a Jalopnik commenter who says he spent 10 minutes on it, and it's definitely an improvement: All in all, it's not bad --not at all-- but I can't help but think it presents like a 370z that got a bunch of work done (given the situation at Nissan, that'd make sense). It doesn't jump out as distinctly new and exciting. Can something just be "whelming?" Because this car is very "whelming." If I were shopping for a reasonably priced sports car, I'd put it on my list, but it doesn't make me want something I didn't before.

The grill and front fascia is a big whiff IMO. Looks like it should have "FPO" in big letters...maybe the designer got stuck and forgot to come back to it! Headlights aren't doing it for me either. The rest looks pretty good!

I'm about 2 miles away from the Bobcat fire. Homes aren't immediately threatened (so far), though many people around here have been told to prepare to evacuate. We've been lucky with this fire with respect to location and weather. Air quality is the biggest issue. Wednesday was tolerable, but by Thursday my house smelled like a campfire. Woke up Friday morning and couldn't even see the mountains a mile or so away. Not gonna lie, I'm kinda glad I'm not up on the hills right now (I was a firefighter once upon a time) -- this year is shaping up to be as bad as any I can remember.

It's just a couple tabs that are spot welded on. I'd imagine they could be left out if someone's doing a production run. If not: 30 seconds with an angle grinder. Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk

You're talking about what Nissan called the "sight shield" right? It's been years since I took mine off, but I seem to recall having to bend it upwards quite a bit to get a spot weld cutter in there. Mine had been in a collision, so I wasn't trying to preserve it or anything, but I think it'd be tough to take it off without doing at least a little damage.

I made my own brackets for front and rear, so spacers weren't necessary. But like siteunseen, I didn't want anything rubbing directly on the paint, so I cut up a bike tire tube and used that on the rear on the bracket and side mounts.

I covered the roof entirely in Dynamat...needed a flat surface, like you said. Was a mistake to do that before I did body and paint, but you're doing it in the right order ?

My approach was to remove all the stock tar mat, then small Dynamat pieces on large flat panels, and finished with mass-loaded vinyl with closed-cell foam backing. I picked that up about 7 or 8 years ago when I was active on DIY Mobile Audio and is what SDS was promoting as well. There might be a new hotness these days, but I've been very happy with it. I didn't do any decibel readings before/after (should have), but it's considerably quieter --and cooler!-- than it was. I'm not a fan of using Dynamat sheets on the whole panel; I don't think the cost and weight is worth it. Plus installing (and removing, if you need to) that stuff is a real PITA.

If you don't care about originality, you can remove the reflector entirely and just paint the housing white. That's what I did.

Well I see it's been <checks thread> over a year! since posting anything (mods, you can move this to Build Threads), but life has been busy. I finally took the time to restore the computer with most of my photos on it and came across some of the small projects I photographed inconsistently --and poorly!-- so here are some of the things that happened: Fixed my grill. I'm not sure what it had ever done to anyone, but that person apparently got their revenge. I found on in good shape for sale for ~$100, but took the far less sensible approach and set to fixing mine. Drilled out all the rivets, sanded off the old paint and rust, and beat them into shape as best as I could. Finished with leftover epoxy primer, some filler, and painted with Dupilcolor wheel paint. Put back in without even thinking about the after picture. Also not pictured: I sanded off the old baby blue paint and hit the whole area around the radiator support with black Rustoleum, which will stay until I paint the engine bay. Then I cleaned, repaired and remounted the horns. No horn pad yet, but at least they work. Ordered and installed 240 bumpers! These came from Vietnam. There were some delays in shipping, but finally arrived after about 6 weeks and a number of emails. Some people have reported fitment issues -- especially with the rear bumper -- but mine fit fine. The mounting tabs needed a little bending to get into position, but that wasn't a surprise. Biggest complaint might be that the supplied hardware was a bit disappointing (I picked up some nuts and bolts at the hardware store), and the mounting tabs for the side pieces on the rear had comically oversized captive nuts (M10, maybe) that required drilling bigger holes into the body than I would have liked. Hardly a deal breaker. I didn't buy brackets, figuring I could just make my own. Front seemed easier, so tacked that first. Set the bumper in place with things in the garage (an aside: nothing I've done on the car has made me more nervous than moving the bumpers around, as I was convinced that I would drop them and ruin the bumper, the paint, or probably both. Disaster was somehow avoided, though not without a couple close calls.) then made a cardboard template and copied that to some thin steel. When I had what I thought was the right shape, I copied it to 1/8" steel; the thinnest available at the hardware store. The brackets might outlive the car. I whiffed badly on the positioning the first time and had to fix both brackets, but I got to use the welder, so it worked out. They came out nice, and the fit is excellent. Same idea on the rear: cardboard first, then a ton of fussing to get all the gaps right. I'm sure they were cut and re-welded 5 times or more. I still had a few ounces of paint left from the car, which I used for the brackets and the bolts. One regret: I didn't realize the holes for the bumper bolts on the rear quarters are different between the 280 and 240. I needed to drill new ones and would have closed up the old ones when I did the body work. Same goes for the cutout in the rear valence and a couple of the mounting holes in the back. The bolts are color matched, but would prefer to not have them at all. Ah well. The bumper looks good. Those rear lights could use some help. I got a ride home and a new fuel pump back in January. And replaced the blower motor with a Kia unit because the old one was squeaking and rattling. What a great upgrade! Now I'm in a bit of a holding pattern. Putting audio into the car doesn't seem like a good use of funds, especially since I've switched to full time remote work and barely drive anymore, so I'm mostly watching Craigslist for L28 engines.

I was thinking about this the other day. Here in Los Angeles, we've been shut down as long as almost anyone in the US, so there has been a lot of time for reflection and introspection. Some of the things I've thought about in the last few weeks, at least on the personal side: Reflection and introspection itself is worth a lot, and it's something I didn't allow for myself previously. I've been reminded how appreciative I am of my family. There's a lot of pieces out there about being cooped up with people you don't get along with or being left alone. Our family has been forced to have more time together, and that's been a good thing. Work, chores, hobbies, errands, everything else was often higher on the list before. I think we've gone on more family bike rides and walks in the last 3 weeks than in the last 13 years combined. The first night when LA was shut down, my wife and I were a little too worried/preoccupied to do much of anything, let alone cook dinner. My 5 year old daughter wanted In N Out. So that's what we got, and she was so happy about it. It's a small thing, but it's stuck with me so far. These circumstances have been a stark reminder of the value of both luck and preparation. We're not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but we've saved aggressively, made good decisions, and had good fortune. I'm just under 40, but could weather a storm of unemployment for several years if things got to that point. It would undo years of work, but I also know there are people who are worrying about paying for rent or food after missing a paycheck. I'm extremely grateful to be where I am, but know that in many ways I don't deserve it more than anyone else, and hope I can help out others who haven't been as fortunate. We're more conscientious about, well, everything. I've made two loaves of banana bread in the past two weeks instead of throwing the old overripe bananas out. There are other things, but somewhat more trivially, while I miss going to the gym, at least my cardiovascular fitness has improved! I've hit some PRs on Strava segments that I've run dozens of times. That's cool. Don't want to know what my deadlift and squat will be like when Gold's reopens! Hard to know what the new normal will look like, whenever it comes (ideally by summer; we have plans!), but I hope some of the good stuff will stick.

Nice!!

I'm in the wrong line of work....

I had similar problems with mine due to worn hinges. Replacing the bad hinge helped, but it still had alignment problems. In the end, I just took out the torsion rods (guess that's why the PO had removed them). That might not be an option for you, but it worked for me.

Christmas came early. A box of shiny stuff came last week. A little hiccup or two in shipping, and more thoughts coming after I do the rear. Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk