AlbatrossCafe

What do you recommend then? I have plenty of space - about 10" long and 6" wide that I can work with. I'm down to try something different and even try a different shape.

Well I hope between my coilovers and fully adjustable TTT control arms I will be able to figure something out. The last thing I want to do is tear up the fenders of this car! I'll post my results after some experimentation.

Welp that's good to know. Potentially saved me $80. Once my coilovers come back from welding (hopefully by this weekend) I'll test fit and see how close it is. Now I'm kinda wishing I got a similar wheel but with like +5 offset. Might have been able to avoid touching the fenders that way.

Got my new Continental Extreme Contact Sport tires mounted on new XXR 527 "Chromium Black" 16x8.25" +0 offset rims. I went with 225/50/R16 tire size. I got my tires for $99 each with free shipping. I am very happy with how cheap these very highly rated summer tires were! I am even MORE happy with how they turned out! Freakin gorgeous! I don't even wanna put them on my car, I just wanna have them in my room so I can stare at them all day! I am pretty sure I will have to roll my fenders before these will fit on my car. One of the hardest things with my 280z so far is finding a fender roller I can borrow for an hour... -.-

Took out the old K&N air filter that the previous owner had installed. Don't even wanna bother cleaning it lol. I'll get a new one. Don't think this thing has been cleaned/changed since he did the L28ET swap back in 2004. On one side you can kind of see the K&N red poking through. The other side is just black.

Low-budget wins! I figure it can't hurt to try them first - don't want to swap something that works. I just wasn't sure if it would damage the pads or something. Aside from the rotors, I plan to brush/sand the rest of the assembly and hit it with that "rust conversion primer" and then black rustoleum paint.

I just bought some 280z struts that I am gonna use for a coilover conversion because I cut mine too short. I plan to clean up the rest of the assembly later, but I need to know what to do with the brakes. They have new wheel bearings/studs but the rotors are pretty rusted up since they have been sitting for a while. So I'm wondering, what is easier? Clean up rust on rotors and use new struts Swap existing "clean" rotors onto new struts If I clean off the rust, how thorough do I need to be? Is it a "shop should resurface these" thing or can I just use a wire brush and call it good? Or better yet, will the brake pads just do the work for me on the first drive? "New" Struts: My existing clean rotors:

I'm headed that way. I'll pick up the "new" hubs next weekend. The shop did a great job welding the original ones... they would be great for someone who wanted to lower their Z car 2.5+ inches. Just PM me with what you are thinkin'

'76 280z front hub is same as '78 one right? I know the 75-76 years and 77-78 years go together normally. I found a 76 assembly for $200 with basically new wheel bearings and rotors.

That is the plan for the back, but it seems there is no way to cut the adapter off the front without destroying everything with that narrow of a space right at the inside of the hub. Unfortunately, the shop did the cutting/welding for me and I didn't keep any of the leftover tube but it sounds like them sourcing some new stuff won't be too expensive. I'm gonna try to haggle this guy down to $150 or so but it sounds like I shouldn't be too upset if I have to do $200.

I did exactly that. Problem is, I cut them too short. i have to run car lowered 3" or more the way I cut them. I'll never make it out of my driveway at that height. The rear I can fix by adding some tubing, but the fronts I have to redo completely. See:

DOH! I just threw away my strut isolators off my 280z. They are long gone now Semi-unrelated, but on that note, I have 2 spindle pin hardware kits (http://www.thezstore.com/page/TZS/PROD/classic20n01b/23-4240ki) that I didn't end up using in my recent suspension install if you are looking for a replacement. PM me if interested. I'm missing a nut or two but otherwise I have no use these parts.

Dude locally is selling front hub assembly off a 1977 280z for $200. He says that rotors, wheel bearings, etc. are in good shape. I need them to cut for my coilover conversion so I don't care about the strut itself. Is $200 a fair price? https://seattle.craigslist.org/tac/pts/d/240280z-parts/6514563435.html I saw them in the bottom left of this pic:

Here are some pics just to add some clarity to this post. I unscrewed the adapter sleeve from the coilover, and you can see how small of an area was holding it on. It was 5 threads which was about 3/8 of an inch: You can see the adapter sleeve has about 2 1/4" of threads inside the tube. You can still adjust the coilover below these threads depending on how much tube you leave inside the bottom of the sleeve. I left about 1" in my case. According to SakuraGarage, you don't really have to leave any, however, as long as you can center the adapter on the strut tube. This is clearly not enough lol. Anyway, the diameter of the tube is about 2". I lowered the coilover into the adapter sleeve so that about 1.5" of thread were in there. This should be enough. With 1.5" of coilover into the adapter sleeve, I was lowered about 2" in the front, and a little more in the rear. I will need to add about 2" of strut tube back to bring me near OEM height. I may be in the minority on this site, but I can't stand having the car so low haha. It will just scrape on everything and it is impossible to fit the jack underneath!

This changes the shock travel range, right?. I don't want my shock to be almost topped out because I crank the preload up or I use really long springs.

Welp, after some discussion it sounds like I accidentally included the top pillow mount of the stock strut in my measurements. When converting to camber plates, you don't use that pillow mount anymore. That thing is a good 2-3" thick, which explains why my car is so much lower than I expected. DOH!! I either need stock strut tubes welded back in for extra length or some new hubs. I'll talk to the shop I used and see what they are capable of. You can see in this pic that I have the length similar with the pillowtop mount still on the OEM strut. I should have put the top of the coilover tophat at the bottom of the pillow top. Lessons learned for next time...

Yeah, I have been trying to call since I ordered parts through him. Seems like I just needed to cut my struts a couple inches higher than I did since I don't want my Z to be lowered 4-5"... hmm....

If you look at their website, it says "The damper threads into a weld-on threaded adapter tube, allowing for adjustable right height with no loss of travel." http://sakuragarage.com/products/datsun-suspension/ can see in one of their pics that the threads start to be seen in the sleeve itself. Mine are still way above that cutout. However, these pics are a couple years old and appear to be using difference sleeves so...

@Zed Head you are confusing me lol. I feel like all 3 of your posts have different understandings. Let me try to clarify... I didn't realize that Stance may be weird. I had measured length of stock coilovers beforehand and thought that I had cut at the right location. The welded part is fine. I left length of the original strut tube inside the bottom of the adapter sleeve. The problem is at the TOP of the sleeve where I need to screw in the top part (the part with the spring/shock) of the "coilover". Here are some pics of the adapter part only: In this picture, the red arrow show the collars for adjusting the spring height. The blue arrow points to the collar that locks out the adjustment for the total height of the coilover. The top part (spring + shock part) can screw into that bottom collar. I assumed that the blue arrow part was for adjusting ride height, and that adjusting at the red arrow would be for adjusting preload. Wouldn't adjusting at the red arrow raise the resting point of the shock up and reduce your down-travel?

I have FINALLY finished just about everything for my coilover conversion in my 1978 280z with Stance coilovers. I also have TTT control arms. I am at the point of dialing-in the ride height. Stance gave me four 6" threaded sleeves. I had them welded right to the hubs in the front and 3" above the hubs in the back. I was hoping to maintain stock height or maybe 1" lower than stock. Well after getting everything on and lowering the car, it looks like the front was lowered around 1" and the back was lowered around 2". I would like to crank the rear up another inch. The problem is, the threaded sleeve is currently only on by about 5 threads in both front/rear. I am afraid to crank it up in the back because I feel like the coilover will sheer off if I go any higher with so few threads holding. So my questions are... How many threads are "safe" when screwing the sleeve into the coilover? I have not done anything with alignment, track width, etc. Will any of these affect my ride height? What are my options for raising the car if I can't unthread the sleeves anymore? Can I use a top-plate spacer or something?

Finally finished installing the aluminum steering coupler from TTT. Holy hell that was a process... trying to get everything to line up properly and fit with no room to work was not the most enjoyable experience. Hope it is a noticeable improvement.

For my car, the rear struts were right at 3" taller than the fronts, both on the car and off the car (as measured with a tape measure). Not sure what coilovers you have, but my STANCE coilovers came with four 6" adapter sleeves, which means I had to cut the rear a bit higher compared to the front to keep the offset/rake similar to stock. I plan to keep it at stock height or lower it maybe 1" - 2" at the most, so I didn't need them to be cut super low.

HOT DAMN!! I'm finally getting near the end (I'm probably gonna say this on 3 more posts - everything takes longer than I expect). I took my struts to 425 Motorsports along with my new coilover adapter sleeves. They disassembled the struts, tossed the old stuff, cut them (1" above hub in front, 4" up from hub in the back) and slid the adapter sleeves on so they fit 1" over the old strut tube. These guys may not be the cheapest, but they are well renowned in our area and definitely do great work. You can tell by the quality of the welds alone. Took a bold leap and started drilling/cutting into my strut towers to make room for my camber plates. Fronts were manageable. The back is a PITA so far. Especially with the Z up on tall jackstands (it might as well be on 37" tires at this point), it is hard to reach those towers in the rear. I think I will have to climb in there to cut those out. Since the towers are not perfectly flat, I added a couple washers in the back (in the front so far) to allow the "vanity plate" (as Sakura Garage calls it) to sit a little more flush on top. Looks great so far and my short test fit with the coilover top hats is looking good. Lastly, I test fit my spoiler after painting. Who knew a generic silver would be such a pain to match. From far way I can tolerate it, but up close.. well that's what I get for blindly ordering paint off Amazon I bought different paint and will try it again. Tomorrow I think I will take the day off and try to get the coilovers finished and actually on the car so that I can get it back on its own wheels again.

Replaced my suspension with TTT stuff and coilovers. I'm selling the original arms and tension rods. They would make a good candidate for refurb. The whole car had lots of undercoating so these are mostly rust free. Rear control arms do not have the big bolts that hold the bushings on. I had to reuse those. Front control arm ball joints are both shot also. Tension rods don't include the bushings (they were so destroyed anyway). Located in Bellevue, WA 98008 if you are local. Front Control Arms: $75 shipped in the US Rear Control arms: $90 shipped in the US. Tension Rods: $30 shipped in the US Front LCAs: Rear LCAs: Tension Rods:

Is it paint? Or is it like a chrome-ish vinyl wrap? It looks too mirrored for paint. Interestingly enough I searched "Chrome wrap 240z" and your pic was the first one that popped up