26th-Z

Hey I don't want to hear a peep of whining from the S30 guys. It is shameful how few S30s showed up and entered the car show. Hi ZRush! I made it home in the rain! We had a spring storm in Sarasota Sunday. The flooding was so bad that I couldn't get to my shop until this morning!

Hey Gus! Post some of your pictures for the classic guys. http://www.sfzcc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=949 WARNING - - - 350Z Content - - - WARNING

Great poll! Keep it going!

I think "theme" is good word for the topic. I just spent a day looking at "themes". Themes are more prevelent in the modified categories. ZRush is a perfect example of a "theme" car, and one of the most outstanding in my opinion. I will be doing some correct period modifications and if I had to put a theme to it, that would be something similar to the Fairlady Z-L look. I am going to use my headlight covers and Watanabe wheels to highlight the Japanese bumper look. I may use the mesh grill - I don't know if I will like it. Inside, I will add the rally clock and the foot rest to the passenger floor. Custom steering wheel.

Well, that was a blast! Did you have a good time, seerex? What a weekend! The weather forecast was pretty bad, but there was hope that the rain would part long enough for a car show on Saturday. I drove up to Orlando Friday afternoon in the rain. A trip that would normally take me two hous was just under four that afternoon because of all the traffic. Sure enough, Saturday morning was cloudy and breezy, but it turned into a very nice day and warmed up for t-shirt weather. I worked the car show and let me tell you what a LOT of work that was. I didn't really get to see much. We arrived to an empty parking lot at 6:15. Within an hour - instant car show! Two large tents, three of more smaller ones, signs, banners, sound system - poof! Parking worked out really well and the schedule of events didn't lag more than half an hour throughout the day. We judged 98 cars and the total turn-out was around 130 cars. I would say half of them were 350Zs. Very large showing of 350Zs. By dark and the awards party, everything was taken down and it started raining just after sunset! Too bad the autoX was cancelled, huh? It rained all day Sunday. I only caught a glimps of the car polishing tech session and missed the FI tech session all together. How was the road rally? I missed that also. Everyone watch for Z-Fest next year. This is a large growing event and a lot of fun! Great cars. I met a BUNCH of people.

Hi Kats! I must look to see if my emblem is marked R or L. I took this to the convention last June and asked Matsuo san about it. He told me the same thing; hand made early emblem. Great to see you have one!

Thanks Kats! Great photo!

I would like to contribute a few observations being retired from the SCCA myself. Racing is about winning. I think if you are not on the track to go as fast as you can go and make every attempt to win, then you are blocking traffic. I don't see many Z cars beating Porsches here in Central Florida these days. Could be just here. People, in general, like to talk about how much money they spend. Usually, and I say usually, people who don't spend much money on their cars have a slow and ugly car. Generally, I agree that spending a ton of money does not necessarily get you into the winner's circle. It d o e s take some talent.

Thanks Greatwhite! Watching Michael and Ferrari make history has been fun. We'll see how it unfolds this year.

I can hardly wait. What do you think of the new Renault?

Victoria British http://www.victoriabritish.com/ and Motor Sport Auto www.zcarparts.com Probably the two most plentiful parts resources.

Hello Dave - everyone! Nice conversation! Great job on the oil pan. The place I am using is called Revivations and they are in Wauchula, Florida. (You should have seen the town after the hurricanes got through with it). They have a big metal building with two fiberglass tanks and a big rolling chain hoist down the center. The floor is drained for liquid recovery. Cars are brought in on fork lifts and set in the hoist baskets. The first tank is some sort of water soluble paint stripper solution and the car sits in the tank for around two weeks. Then it is pressure washed with hot water and inspected. If more crap needs to come off, it is dumped back in the stripper tank. Otherwise, the car is submerged in the electrolytic tank for several days. I think they rotate the car in the tank a couple of times. After it dries, they blow the car with high pressure air. There is about a six week time frame to seal the metal up before it starts rusting again. This process does not harm plastic or the lead fillers in the body shell. My avatar is Her Majesty the 26th sitting in the field net to the metal building. She should be back in March and I am spending $1,400 for the body shell. I may take the doors, fenders and such depending on what my bodyshop guy thinks when we get to that point. I had a wheel cleaned by them and I had them strip a set of hubcaps before I sent them off to be re-chromed. Electrolytic is the way to go as far as I am concerned. I'm lucky to have this place so close. Try cutting down a plastic 50 gallon drum to use for a tank and experiment with the size and placement of your anode (?) sheet of steel. Make sure the solution concentration is correct. Try rotating your pieces and leaving them submerged for different periods of time. The cleaner the piece is before the electrolytic process, the better the results. Even though the piece may not be in direct sight of the anode (?), the derusting process is still happening. Just at a slower rate. Direct sight is important, but the process is still working. The acid dipping process is what the hydrogen in the metal controversy is all about. Not the elecrolytic process. Long exposure to phosphoric acid is what makes the metal brittle. Even though the plating process is the same as this in reverse, different solutions are used. Eastwood sells kits for plating, including a kit to plate in the golden cadmium / zink for our Datsun hardware. I think the kit is too expensive. I'm sending my stuff out. I think this IS the ultimate solution (no pun intended) because it will get the rust completely out of the body shell. The trouble I have with 26 is inside the shell structure. She is rusting out from the inside. Now, I don't know where you all live, but in Sarasota, $1,000 is barely enough down payment for a small hot tub.

Serious thanks for going through all the trouble to write that piece! That right there, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what I am up to for rust removal during the restoration of my cars. A degreaser / paint remover is used to strip the part clean. Then the solution I have been describing as alkalyn is used for the electrolytic process. Great discussion and excellent references.