charliekwin

Been kind of a while without an update. Mostly dealing with some little things here and there whenever I can find some time. The throttle linkage had been giving me minor problems for a while, so I cleaned, straightened, spray painted, lubricated and adjusted everything and it's much better. Flushed the cooling system and added the coolant temp potentiometer. Also made a few interior bits. The B-pillar/dog leg pieces and the hatch finisher had all but disintegrated over the years. I always think I take plenty of photographs while I'm working on this stuff and then find out later that I usually don't even get a good before and after, so take my word for it that they were in rough shape The dog legs took two tries; the first go around I used the old one as a template without removing the vinyl since I didn't want the whole thing crumbling. That didn't fit well enough, so I made another pair (no vinyl on the old one this time) that fit significantly better. The hatch piece actually took three tries. The first one wound up on the roadside somewhere between home and the office when I left it on the back window. The second one went in the trash, because it turned out that that piece isn't the simple rectangle that I thought it was. Third time's a charm! Everything was covered in the same vinyl that I used for the scuff plates, which is the closest to the original stuff I could find at Joann's. And then the center console. The one I have is pretty well beat up -- aside from being dirty, it had some bad paint on it, the armrest was broken, ashtray rusty, etc. -- but I don't really want to spend my limited budget on a new one right now if I can get it to Good Enough, so that's what I did. The ashtray I cleaned up as best as I could with a wheel and sandpaper, then sprayed it with the wheel paint I used for the tail light panels. The sliding cover got a coat of Rustoleum. The armrest was cracked along the middle, so that was glued and fiberglassed together. Someone covered it in the past with some foam rubber, which I left, but the studs for the screws had all been split open or broken off. Those were glued back together. I also stumbled upon a way to replace ones that were missing entirely: acid shop brushes dipped in ABS cement and cut to length. The rest of the console got a thorough cleaning to remove as much of the old paint as possible. I glued/glassed some cracks back together and tried to fill in the choke slot, which was only a modest success. I sprayed the whole thing with Krylon Fusion and am hoping it holds up alright. It looks decent (and way better than it did), so if it lasts for a year (or even until I can do the dash) then that's good enough.

The spring's going to have the same amount of compression no matter which way it's installed, so all else being equal, the orientation shouldn't make a difference. One the 280z, I recall the indentations for the end of the springs on the upper and lower seats being the same, if they're different on the 240, then turn the spring whichever way fits best.

1/2" silicone tubing, which has been holding up fine. I got it on eBay, but any brewing shop should have it as well.

That and I was worried about the possibility of noise from metal-metal contact (I figured all the more modern cars I've worked on that have something between the spring and the supports must have that for a reason). I'm not sure it makes any difference, but I'm not taking it all apart just to find out :)

I don't think so. I installed them with the lettering facing up, but other than that, there didn't appear to be any difference between the top and bottom (or lack thereof).

Do not use acetone or Goof Off (a mix of primarily xylene and acetone). The outer dash skin is made of a plastic that's similar to ABS and either of those two will melt it. You can actually get some color and shine back by wiping with acetone, but in this case you're probably more likely to get the oversprayed paint to further embed in or bond to the dash. I would take it back to the shop and tell them to fix it, but that's not super helpful advice, so I think your best bet here is a scuff pad and elbow grease.

Back to color, there happens to be a guy in my area who just posted his car for sale. It's painted an orange metallic, and looks pretty good. I grabbed a couple screenshots:

Sounds like you have 3 problems, all of which by themselves are going to make you fail a visual inspection. In order of importance: 1. No catalytic converter. That, at least, is an easy fix. Take it to a shop and have one installed for about $300. No smog station will ever pass you without it. 2. Missing EGR. You'll have to replace it somehow. Like the cat, not having it is major problem; you won't find a place that'll pass you without it. Its absence is -- I'd guess -- what caused the tech to notice #3. 3. Headers. Like I said the other day, there are no CA smog legal headers for the Z. It takes a lot of time and money to get CARB to approve something. Major aftermarket companies with big markets like Stillen will (sometimes) deal with it. No one's doing it for the Z. That said, if the rest of your car's in good shape and you don't give the tech a reason to start looking for problems, they may let headers pass or not even realize what they're looking it. But with your other issues. you never even gave them a chance. I'd venture a guess that if your car passed CA smog in its current state, it was because the PO had a friend and/or slipped him a couple hundred bucks.

Just to pile on some more...his ad's been up for 2 months; it's obviously not worth $2000. Z prices are going up, but quite nice ones are still selling for only $15-20k -- they'll need to get quite a bit higher still for people to start paying for rust buckets. With the market where it is now, I think he has a parts car and he should be happy to get half what he's asking. Also, he sounds like kind of a jerk.

I'm on the fence with the Porsche graphite blue...looks like something that belongs on a Singer Porsche or maybe a 1937 Concours car. That said, it might work. Neither of the grays look that good to me. Maybe they're better in person. The orange and blue metallic would be a coin flip. Both look quite nice.

Regarding question 2: MSA only sells one foam kit for all the cars. The kit MSA sells is made by Distinctive Industries. I'd wager everyone's probably selling the same thing.

Not sure if you've seen this or how much help it'll be, but here's a guy on HybridZ that put in the HVAC from a Miata. If you give a mouse a cookie... http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/124965-frankenterior/

$400 sounds more than fair. Buying the hog rings and pliers, foam, glue and other miscellaneous stuff is $50 alone. It's definitely a DIY-able job, but took the better part of two weekends (strip, clean, prep, paint on the first; reupholster on the second) to get done.

I've found myself thinking about the same thing when I'm at my desk, a fair distance away from all the actual work I have to do on the car And haven't come to any kind of decision that I'd want to live with for years. I've seen a couple cars that were painted the GT-R gray. Sometimes I really like it, sometimes I think it looks like the right paint on the wrong car. Kind of feel the same way about single-stage urethane vs. multi-stage paint jobs. The former looks more right for the car, but just isn't that visually exciting when compared to the metallics. It's not one of the options you listed, but I'm pretty sure that nothing's ever looked bad in British Racing Green. Of the options above, though, I'd probably lean towards 918, the GT-R orange or Aston orange, depending on the budget. Oh, and I can't get behind matte paint. I think by 2018 it'll scream "I got a paint job in 2014!" the same way big wheels have screamed "I bought rims in 2004!" for the last few years.

I bet most of them probably don't even know what the stock one looks like  I had an aftermarket Y pipe in my old Maxima that was way more obviously a problem that headers on a Z would be, and that passed smog every time, too. Some techs looked at it more closely than others, but I always get the sense that many won't fail you unless you're give them no choice.

Yup, was about $300 to have the cat in mine done last year. I'm no expert, but I think headers are only smog legal if they have a CARB number, and AFAIK, there are no 280z headers that have been approved. The person doing your smog check may not notice or care, but I'm pretty sure they'll fail you if they do. Good job, California!

I'm not sure what year you have, but if you have a later one like mine, you'll also want to make sure the corners of the cover don't get in the way of mounting the seat rails. I believe the earlier years have a different style where it isn't a concern. I did hog ring the front of the seats but didn't do the sides. If you cut the foam down, that might be something to look at doing to tighten things up.

It might be worth a shot. The biggest potential problem I could see would be an odd fit of the cover...there might be some slack on the sides when cinching it down. Of course, if it doesn't work you could just glue the slice back on with a bit of contact cement.

Rock Auto: http://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=5997639&cc=1209260&jnid=412&jpid=5 As best as I could tell, ACC is making the kit that all the vendors out there are selling, so if you want molded it makes sense to buy on price.

Slowly but surely the interior is getting pieced back together. The seats are back in and look pretty great, but I do miss having the extra headroom that I used to have! At about 6'2", things are a little more cramped than they used to be. I hope the new foam settles in over the next few months and I can get maybe an inch back. I got the remaining quarter window trim and the overhead trim covered and reinstalled, so the back half of the car is almost done now. The overhead piece sags a bit on the edges, partly because of the vinyl wrapped around the underside, but I don't know if it bothers me enough yet to pull it out. It looks good from the inside, though. Yesterday's little project: the dome light lens has totally fallen apart over the years. I had some acrylic sheet left over from an old project (mild hoarding proclivities pay off yet again!), so I cut that to fit housing, then roughed it up with sandpaper. The push switch doesn't work anymore, but that switch wasn't working anyway, so no functionality is lost there.

They're onions, Cap! The flash made them look worse than they actually are, but yes, they're pretty shabby. I think they're "real" sun visors - not something a PO pieced together - which doesn't speak highly of the quality of those things. I'm not sure if restoring is a good option. They might just be something that's better to remake from scratch.

Knocked out the seats and the headliner over the last week! I'm really, really happy with the way the seats came out. I ended up not pulling the cover all the way down on the reclining mechanism side. That meant I didn't have to cut anything, and I figure if something comes loose, I can always go back and pull it down. Everything got a coat of black, including all the bolts, and the seats look better than new -- not bad for my first upholstery job. Only blemish is the missing mechanism cover. I may try to mold something at some point. And the headliner, for all I was dreading it, actually turned out to be not that bad. I made my own from perforated headliner fabric that I backed up with 1/4" foam. I was too busy running around to take pictures during installation. But what I did was masked off an 8" strip down the middle of the headliner from front to back and the matching strip on the roof, then sprayed with contact cement. The middle of the headliner was marked with tape, that I used to center it in the car. Applied the headliner from the middle out, stretching any wrinkles along the way. Then I just let the edges hang down, sprayed glue on the headliner and roof on the passenger side and continued working towards the edges. A panel removal tool tucked everything under the edges. Repeated the process on the driver side. Sweaty and uncomfortable work, sure, but nothing that's going on my Never Again List. Tomorrow, seats go back in!

If you're going with molded (vs. sectional), then I think ACC is basically the only one making the molded kit, so buy on price. Rock Auto was cheapest (~$175 IIRC) when I got mine a few months back. Sectional gives you some more options, but I can't speak to those.

Looks great! I just finished my seats yesterday. Only been able to do a test sit in my office, but they're so much better than the worn-out mess that they replaced. Installation's not too hard if you put some plastic around the seat to help the covers slide on. If you're using the seat foam from Distinctive, you might want to consider a little extra padding on the top of the headrest.

I suspect the success or failure of the standard foam and epoxy approach is highly dependent on the state of the dash itself. There's some people out there that have reported great results for several years, but I put new cracks in the plastic on my dashboard just giving it a thorough cleaning. There's no way my dash would hold up, and I won't even try: I'm going to put down a couple layers of fiberglass instead and work from that. I'm basically echoing Zed here, but if you're concerned about the dash re-cracking, you probably want to go with something more structurally sound than expanding foam insulation.