charliekwin

I suppose if we want to get real technical, the sudden transfer of energy to the person is what's really to blame

Counterpoint: meanwhile, on an average day in the US, ~100 people are killed by non-self-driving cars: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview Also, keep in mind that less than 10 years ago, self-driving cars were widely considered to be an impossibility for the near future. This stuff moves fast.

Kept working on the rear this weekend. Had to persuade the rear quarter a bit to get it back into position (it worked!). The area around the bumper hole was one I was worried about, but it worked out alright. The rest of the rear, I think body filler can take care of. Tried using a heat gun as Mark suggested, but no luck with it; maybe the metal's just been worked too much. I never expected to be so cavalier about cutting holes into a car, and now I have something to work on next weekend.

Guess it's about time for an update. Kind of slow going lately -- I've started up a new business with a partner of mine (anyone out there in hospital/physician marketing? message me!), kiddo started playing baseball -- and pulling dents just isn't that interesting to talk about. I think my original goal of getting this thing back on the road before summer is out the window But little by little, improvement! I bought a profile gauge just to see how bad the rear quarter was out of shape, which was a lot. Not finished yet, but the worst areas are only out by less than 1/8". Fun stuff: I made my first patch panels and started plugging up some holes. Passenger side bumper: Tail light panel: Antenna: Driver side door: There's still some work to do on that last one, but it turns out that welding in patches is super satisfying! Also: old filing cabinets from the office basement are a great source for sheet metal. The bottom behind the wheel is kind of a mess. It too had a bunch of holes drilled into it for the body filler to grab. Despite my best efforts with the stud welder, it does not want to go back to something like the original profile and it's turning into Swiss cheese. I am very strongly considering cutting the whole thing out and welding in new metal. Thoughts?

The high-water mark for a 280z on Bring a Trailer is $36,000: https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1976-datsun-280z-3/ Based on the photos of the engine bay, this car looks like it's in better shape. $36k was an outlier, but if the rest of the body and interior matches, and originality is important to you, then anything under $25k may be a bargain.

Jeff, somehow I missed this thread, but YouTube's algorithm picked up the slack and your videos popped up in my feed a few days ago, and I've been following along since. Great work and great videos. Oh, I spent nine years as a firefighter as well!

San Gabriel Valley here. Let's make something happen. My Z is a little, uhh, out of commission right now, but whenever I can get it put back together, I'm just a few miles outside of Angeles Forest. It's a great drive.

Hardly an expert here, but I bought the Lincoln Handy MIG. It's budget-friendly (~$300) and runs on 110V, which is all I have in my garage. It won't weld anything over 1/4" but I'm not doing any of that anyway. Tank and gas was about $225, plus another ~$100 at Harbor Freight for a helmet, gloves, magnets, and some other bits and pieces.

Speaking from the experience of having just bought a baby MIG welder, you (rcb280z) should totally buy a MIG welder! I'm very happy I got mine, and I've only had it for a couple weeks.

More progress here and there (I can't help myself, I tend to bounce around from one thing to another, especially if things start to slow down) over the weekend. I feel pretty good about the hatch right now. It needs filler in a couple places, but not much and I don't have any loose areas in the panel. Don't want to push my luck. I moved on to pulling out the dent at the bottom right of the license plate, which has not gone especially well. There's no access from the back and the curves make it hard to re-shape. It's better, but still fairly mangled. I'm strongly considering just cutting it out and welding in a new piece. The big dent in the rocker is coming out nicely, though. It was over 1" deformed and I got that down to about 1/4" before my back go too sore to keep at it. And one choice that I'm sure not everyone will agree with, but I'm going with a body mod: no more seam on the headlight buckets.

I never would've thought to use the stud welder that way...great tip, thank you! Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk

Looks like saving the hatch won't require as much work as I was worried that it might. I'm getting my money's worth for the stud welder I bought. And these pictures are terrible. Can anyone give me a little insight to this bit here? It looks like the hatch sheet metal should rest against it to provide some support, but unless I've got the overall curve of the metal way wrong, it seems to be too short. Is there a rubber piece or something that should be in between?

Oooh, purdy!

Now down to $5200, and with fewer pictures: https://inlandempire.craigslist.org/cto/6454850426.html Probably a basketcase, but someone here might be able to strike a deal on a big project.

Productive afternoon today: all the holes on the body panels have been filled up. The rear quarter was a little more work than I was expecting when I got started (thanks, guy who didn't see any body work that couldn't be done with just filler!), but that just meant more opportunities to practice. Blew through a bit a few times, and the flap disc cleaned up the ugly from most of the others, but a handful of the welds came out just right on the first try. Those were satisfying. USPS delivered my new shrinking disc this afternoon, so I know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow.

That's good advice on the hinges, thanks. The door alignment gets better at the bottom, but it is still off. The other panels seem to align pretty well, at least. The car's been in at least one collision, and I know the headlight bucket and hood are both donor parts (though the fender looks original), so there may be just enough out of whack all over the place that getting the door to align by adjusting the fender may be a lot tougher than just grinding down the hinge. I have a shrinking disc on the way right now and am eager to see how well it works. The YouTube videos look encouraging. And I finally welded something! The only scrap metal I could find were some old angle brackets, and it seemed to go...alright. So armed with my newfound experience from doing 5 whole welds, and knowing the hatch is already a mess, I gave filling in the holes a shot. Ugly, but mission accomplished! Of course, now I have to do it on all the good panels.

Making some tentative progress on the easier bits of body work to get a feel for what I'm doing (beyond just banging away with hammers -- fun though it might be!). I think I'm happy enough with the job I was able to do on things like the fenders, hood and my big dent in the roof. The "before" was a lot worse! Speaking of fenders...the driver side fender has never lined up properly with the door. The door sticks out and I can't see any way to fix this by adjusting the hinges (they don't allow movement in that direction). I could try to bend the fender into shape but that seems likely to make things worse instead of better. Am I missing something here? Things I'm not looking forward to dealing with: the roof and the left rear quarter kind of look like the lunar surface, and fixing what looks like collision damage down by the bumper hole has been a...challenge. Also, Merry Christmas to me! Just need to get some gas so the fun can start!

The seller's been trying to unload that car for a while now and no one's bitten yet, so yeah, the price it probably high. Here are some recent BaT results for cars that look comparable: https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1971-datsun-240z-26/ https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1971-datsun-240z-28/ https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1970-datsun-240z-11/ ~$5,000 is probably a reasonable offer, assuming there's nothing horrific that the photos aren't showing. Even assuming the best, you'll probably spend 2-3x that much to make it look good, if that's your objective. Depending on your ability and appetite for a project, I'd echo the advice to find something in better shape.

I'd probably go with the Lambo orange, but the pearl is nice too. BMW third. Not a big fan of the half-red/half-orange choices.

It's gonna be about 80 down here today, and the garage fridge is stocked with beer. Come on over Mark! [emoji3] Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk

Well it's about a month later and most of the paint's been removed. A bit tedious, but it's been hard to find even one uninterrupted hour in the garage lately, so progress has been slow. Still, I'm happy to go through the effort just so I know for sure what I have to work with. I think my next step is to take on some metal work: fixing the easier-to-work-on panels that need attention and filling in some of the holes. Probably start with the quarters/fenders and doors. Then the hood, roof and hatch. At least some of the previous work makes it easy to spot the areas that need the most attention.

Welcome fellow Southern Californian! I don't know what your garage/tool situation looks like, but every time I've finally broken down and bought a tool that I'd been making do without, the only regret I've ever had is not doing it sooner. Assuming you already have most of the basic tools, some of the things I'd never want to do without: a vise, drill press, grinder, heat gun, air compressor, impact wrench, multimeter, clamps.

About a week ago, I posted this thread: And the responses there and combined with not really knowing what I'm getting myself into gave me the confidence to get started. So that's what I did on my Thanksgiving break. I've been removing as much paint and body filler as I can with a heat gun and razor blade and have worked through about 2/3 of the car so far. It's pretty quick and doesn't make a mess, so I'll keep going like this for as much of the car as I can, then switch to a disc and/or sander to finish up. Lots of bad work uncovered, but thankfully, I haven't come across any true horrors yet. Most of the car looks like it's been resprayed twice, except for the roof (I think once) and hood (looks like a donor). Thick layers of body filler all over the place to -- I think -- try to fix some oil canning on the panels, like on the lower doors. Some panels have filler that looks like it's there just to change the shape. Some dents that were filled instead of reshaped. Probably pretty normal for cars like this. The rear hatch is definitely in the worst shape (so far).

I went through a lot of the same trouble you did...I painted mine.

I know how much I hated dealing with that stuff, and that was just on doors. Wow!