26th-Z

I especially enjoyed the battery conversation, Alan. You, young lad, evidently don't remember the Normandy landings! So consider that the Hitachi expert went searching in junk yards for a replacement battery. As Bugs Bunny used to say; "What a buffoon".

Thanks for all the great replys. I drove 26th for years before I took her apart to restore. I consider her 'my car' and as such do not intend to restore her to stock because I intend to drive her. I have 27th to restore stock. That's the plan. Both cars are originally 907 racing green with tan interiors. They will be restored that way. 26th is going to get my competition 5 speed and some other nice period correct do-dads like headlight covers and Watanabe wheels. I'm toying with the idea of recreating the tan interior for 26th in leather. Something like what Len Welch did. So today I have a tale of two radiators. I had the radiator for 26th re-cored some time ago and it has been sitting on a shelf in storage. I took the radiator out of 27th to find it damaged and had it repaired last week. My, what has happened to the price of copper and brass! The radiator for 27th also needed a replacement bottom and before I knew it, the radiator for 26th had a new bottom pipe replaced. All painted and cleaned up. New overflow hoses and I have ordered repro decals for both from Banzai.

Kats, I finally took a picture of my clear hatch glass.

When I was judging for the ZCCA, there was a well-defined judging manual and description for the stock classes. I recall that batteries were overlooked for authenticity. Normally, judging evaluates the car on everything you can see from one knee on the ground and up. It was a 300 point system broken down into areas of the car - engine bay, interior, body, etc. Points were deducted for cleanliness, originality, and condition. I usually dinked a car one point for cleanliness, five points for an incorrect part, but hardly ever ten points unless the item was junk. I recall that a minimum score of 280 got into the "medallion round" when the car was re-judged by a selected team, pretty knowledgable guys. Anything over 290 (ten point deduct) got the ZCCA's highest award, the Gold Cup or the Gold Medallion. Frankie, I heard, scored a 295. As I said in the BaT comments section, I can think of several equitable cars. Most of them are Gold Medallion 'stock' cars and some are Gold Cup 'modified' cars. All the Vintage Zs fall into this category. And I think the low VIN cars do too. In all cases though, the car has to really sparkle. I agree as gogriz91 pointed out, that green car looked tired and dirty.

rturbo 930, Well, it IS a big deal. Its a Gold Medallion car, the car used for Mr. K's induction into the Hall of Fame, restored by the guy who wrote the book, detailed by a leading authority, and campaigned heavily. It will forever be the Franklin Mint car and will draw a crowd at car shows. Its called provenance. I personally share your thoughts, but the provenance thing is ruling (like the idea of value for a car Steve McQueen once drove).

Gav, See if you can find an electronics / TV repair shop in your area. I took all my radios and the tape player for inspection years ago. They are not very common anymore, unfortunately.

The engine is going back together without the emission control hardware. I have an exhaust manifold without the air injection ports and the non-emission intake manifold. I happen to really like the Hitachi carburetor design, have worked with them during my British car SU days and will use Z-Therapy rebuilds (perhaps slightly modified). I decided to paint my valve cover wrinkle black as a throw-back to my racing days. I'll post more pictures of other completed components soon. I have to start taking pictures!

Yep, that's the place. It was called Revivations at the time. While all this body stuff was going on, I took the engine up to a machine shop in Tampa run by a guy named Tom and his son, Tommy. A real dirt track racers place, these guys were good machinists. The engine was cleaned and checked. The cylinders spec'd to standard bore. The crank shaft, fly wheel, and front pully were balanced together and Tom told me that I would notice the difference. The engine was way out of balance. The connecting rods were weight balanced and the original pistons were reinstalled with new wrist pins. Now, in spite of what you might think of my stockafied approach to what is correct and what is not, I'm not a huge fan of the "stock" HLS30 / 240Z. Great starting point, but... The engine was assembled (new freeze plugs) with a Schneider (mild) can and an Arizona Z adjustable timing sprocket. The combustion chambers in the head were cc'd and equaled. A competition front pulley was installed along with a competition oil pump. The early engines have an odd assortment of head bolt lengths and I was fortunate enough to find them new from Nissan. I'll bet they are all gone by now. Blue paint came from Banzai.

Finally the whole chassis was sprayed in a continuous primer. I started to place the sound deadening "tar mat" sections, but didn't like the material and that's about the time that the economy fell on it's ear and my income went to hell.

To insure that the interior chassis areas would not start rusting again, etching primer was sprayed inside the body panels with a garden pump sprayer and a long plastic wand. All the seams had to be sealed. The complete body had to be wiped down with a metal prep etching wash. This was all done on a lift.

Then the welding started. What was once rust was just a hole in the metal and 26th got new floors, one new frame rail, dog leg rocker panels, and some other areas.

To make this "build thread' complete, I should rewind for a moment and discuss how I got to this point. Much of this has been posted before, buried in the archives somewhere. I bought 26th in 1984 from the estate of the original owner. Rob bought the car new from a local Datsun dealer and I remember when he bought it. 26th was imported in Jacksonville Florida and delivered in May, 1970. When Rob passed away, his son who is a very close friend asked me if I wanted to buy the car from the estate. I drove 26th for several years and decided to do this restore after dealing with rust issues on two separate occasions. She was literally rusting from the inside out and major work was needed. There is a place in Wachula, Florida that provides a complete rust removal process called reverse electrolysis. The body shell is immersed in a big tank with electrodes and a sacrificial anode to remove all the iron oxides resulting in bare, rust free, metal.

I have been encouraged to start a build thread about my restoration of HLS30U-00026 so here goes. I started many, many years ago, as most of you know, and got sidelined during the depression in 2008 which lasted for me until 2014 or so. Although I managed to carry on with my involvement in the Z community over the past decade, the cars have been pretty much sitting in storage and very little work has been done. Then about a year ago, I got back into it and started sorting through my stuff, creating little projects and slowly stepping back into the restoration. A month ago, I talked to the guy who is doing all the paint and body work for Steve / Twin Cam Sportscars. Steve's business / shop is right around the corner from my shop and I have known Steve forever. You may recall that Twin Cam Sportscars helped with the restoration of Classic Motorsports magazine's Lotus Elan that appeared at Amelia Island. I started the work on the chassis years ago with another body shop that associated with Twin Cam, "Beautiful Bodies", but he went out of business during the depression. Now its Kim / After Hours Racing who agreed to take on the partially completed chassis. And here is where we are today...

From my fellow Z colleague Alan T.

What do I do? Set up a 26th-Z thread on the build topic?

Oh thanks. I have been collecting parts for many, many years anticipating my restorations that I am just now getting to. I was well on my way with 26th when the economy fell apart in 2008 and everything went into storage. Now I'm back on track and spending time organizing my parts stash. 26th is on a rotisserie and I'm expecting her green before the end of the summer. Just now starting to take 27th apart. As I restore components for 26th, I'm pulling parts off 27th to restore at the same time. Just finished two perfect radiators from my collection of three. Will start posting pictures soon.

It IS rather a clown show, isn't it Mike?

Hmmm...I'll have to see which one I have. I liked your post on de-mister hatch glass Kats. I thought I had a new piece of vertical de-mister glass too. So I got all my glass pieces out to see if I had the same tags as yours. Such a surprise to what I had in storage. I have a collection of clear glass, four pieces, and two of them are new. Will post pictures.

I cannot see your picture, however the trapezoid shape is correct with the long length to the bottom. The antenna control as Dennis described would be correct for your model year.

I go through it every day, Steve. Both of my 1969 builds are titled as 1970 model years. My sympathies.

If a 240Z (HLS30) can hit six figures, this is one of them. I saw this car at the convention in Syracuse.

In the United States, the hand throttles were supposed to have been removed before the delivery of the car to the purchaser. Blank statement - all cases. NO cars sold in the United States came with hand throttles. Now, having said that, there is some credible evidence that some cars made it through the dealer prep and were delivered with working hand throttles. Hand throttle systems were sold through the parts department and plenty were sold (in both styles). By all evidence, HLS30s were not imported, distributed, and sold in any sort of sequential VIN numbering. Thus, it is in error to say or imply that only the lowest VIN cars escaped the ravages of dealer preparation and came equipped with hand throttles.

The OIL cap, as Jim pointed out, is the correct cap for that valve cover. Both of your's are not correct.

Completely agree. Inspection marks, messages, part ID / process ID, a number of different things. Not, in my estimation, related to chassis VIN. Is it my eyesight, or are the arrowed numbers in Blue's gauge pictures reversed?

I seriously doubt that the script "No" means 'number' in the language of a Japanese factory worker. Thanks for the pictures.