madkaw

Welcome, you might see this Z around Bloomington, it's my daughters. She is attending IU. We used to live in Bloomington and plan on moving back someday-great town. Her car has only 92,000 and she loves it. Did you get your car painted in Bloomington?

Heres what my set-up looks like before it has been run. Those pretty carbs would look great next to a ceramic(shiny header). Be advised, I was told by a friend and verified thru research that you don't want to dial in new carbs with a freshly coated ceramic header. A bad fuel mixture will dull the finish of the ceramic and never come back. I wish I could get some Z therapy carbs, but my carbs are almost new-plus I got some mikunis for after break in. Good luck with your carbs!

It did help a lot to give me an idea of space constrictions. I just left all the tags on them and took them back(the ones I didn't cut) for my money back. You are also limited on your selection of turns. Great place for tubing http://www.mandrel-bends.com/catalog/ Good prices for kits. I bought from them when I did my daughters 280zxt 3" exhaust. The pipe I bought for my 240 came from Stahl headers-mild steel.

Dave, I like your tank option-I didn't think of that. I would hate to venture how much time I put into changing out tanks. I am using a CJ-5 plastic tank. It was square and fit in there nicely. It is a lot of work to make the 2 pipes out the back-I hope we are both happy with the results:classic:

The garage runneth over with Z's and my wife is fu%#*ng thrilled. Actually she will get her center spot back by night fall. Greg, I haven't forgot you, Rachael will be getting lots of attention very shortly. My car is the red z and my daughters is the ZXT. The yellow is a customer. Too many Z's and not enough time-I guess that's not all bad.

Dave, I've done the same thing on my car, but I cannot attest to the results since my car is now just going back together. I like the idea of the muffler with the built is X pipe, I didn't think of that option. I just fabbbed my own. You probaly be done before me , so I can't wait to HEAR it. I share a few pics of my set -up, which is also 2" all the way.

Here are the original brochures for the AC

Well the car sat in my garage for 3 weeks before I even looked at it because I was trying to get my daughters ZXT going. The last couple of days was all about my Z since the daughter has hers back. It was actually a great 2 days since things smoothly and no damage on the new paint---------yet! I hated to deal with those brake lines , but the underside has to be done first so the firewall can be completed to a point to get my engine in. The brakes lines are all new(ordered off of ebay-kit) and the the fuel lines I just painted. I also had to hand rub out the engine compartment first to take care of some overspray-that sucked, but worth it. I can't wait to get the engine in !!!!

I was just having a discussion with my wife the other day about San Antonio and the fact that she is going there for a conference. She was asking if I wanted to go with her and I was thinking what could I do in SA and then I see this thread and I didn't even know about Z con. Too bad her conference is in Feb. 2010, it looks like a great show. I guess I could go and scavenge the junk yards for Z stuff while she was conferencing-she would be mortified:classic:

Look on hybrid z, I have posted a whole write up on the 17X8.5 rotas on a stock 71(actually 1" lowered". There are lots of guys running the size you are talking about.

You just have to take your time and do a little bit at a time. Don't glue a whole bunch at once and try to make it all stick cleanly. Work from the center out and make sure you center your piece in the fabric or you will come up short on one end. Make sure you clean all the old loose material from the old panels. A roller maybe be helpful, but I just used my hands-good luck!

That body is pretty rough, but not suprising if it is a Indy car. If you decide to redo the suspension bits there is a place on the west side called Gails enameling that will give you a good price for sandblasting and powder coating the suspension stuff. I hope you have a mig and some patience for all that rust. I am getting ready to replace floor boards on a 71. Good luck.

I had the same issue and it was the float bowl fuel line was kinking. Just a thought.

Yes, the wildwoods are under there somewhere;)

Pictures can be decieving. The orange peel is narly in spots. I think the problem was clogging and maybe too large of a tip----throw in some humidity and inexperience and bingo. The color is great though and so is the shine, plus there is over a gallon and a half of clear on that car. I could sand forever and never break through. I think it will be great in the end.

Well Bo, I have had this car for about 15 years -so I know what you mean. Plus paint is so expensive-even if you do it yourself. Plus when you start down that road your car is out of commision for a long time. I can't wait to see the finished product too.

Brandon, I wish you could have here to give some pointers or just tell us that we are screwing up! My friend a difficult time with the clear. First mistake was not using the fish eye reducer. Secondly, we had some kind of reaction or some spray gun disorder. We are using a hvlp -don't know the brand name. Not sure on the pressure, but I would assume according to instructions. Probably waited an hour between the sealer and base-also according to instructions. Base went on pretty smooth, just the urethanes we had the issues with. I think at first he had the wrong tip on the gun-too big. Needless to say I will have a lot of wet sanding and polishing to do. Any hints on doing this? How do you avoid swirl marks from the polish? What grit do you use for final sand before polish? Wool pad? I love the color and with all the blacked out trim it should be great. These pics the sun wasn't out, so the color is much brighter and lighter then the pics show.

We almost had her done today until the spray gun starting throwing fits with the clear. It was a day of high anxiety because of the unknowns and the high costs of failure. I had never used a sealer before and it was a white tinted sealer to boot. Then there is always the issue of dirt and bugs and spider webbing and runs and ect... Well the sealer went on weird , but settled out smoothly later. We had a few small runs in the sealer that really didn't show up until we painted the base coat. The base went on well with some weird spider webbing, but we were able to smooth that out too. We(my painter and best friend) were pretty happy by this point because besides the few small issues, this was going pretty good with hardly any dirt at all in the paint. Then the clear was sputtering and causing bad orange peeling, so my friend gave up for the day. There was a bad run that also needed work, so he said enough until he figured out the issue. Now we will have to wet sand the clear and start over, but I am still very very pleased with how this is turning out-especially the body work-this will be nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! By the way, the red pics are before clear

Well my buddy and I spent about 7 hours wet sanding and finishing any minor bodywork that we missed. We are about 4 or 5 hours away from painting-besides the day it will take to clean the garage before painting begins. It is truly amazing the amount of work that is involved in a complete paint job like this. The guys that complain about the cost of a QUALITY paint job, just try it once yourself. My buddy and I were talking about the cost of labor and materials for a paint job of this caliber and we figured 8k+ It will be nerve racking until that final coat of clear goes on, I might have a stress attack before this is all over:nervous:

That's funny you said that wingzro, because a train is exactly what I am waiting for:classic: In my case-- I am driving the train today! Are you on the way out to Indy?

It is 0425 August 6 and I am the only one on CZCC-it seems so lonely:) I've never logged on when no one else was showing on the list, where has eveyone gone? Is all the Z'ers sleeping. I guess I will play on CZCC all by myself, but that doesn't sound like much fun does it. I guess I'll come back later when someones here.

Well I posted those pics of the jam work being done-atleast we thought. After taking a second close look the painter(my best friend) and I decided that there were some discrepencies. Since we are just painting in a garage the lighting isn't the best and that cost us. We had found some areas that just didn't get covered well enough. I hated to complain about a "free" paint job, especially to a great friend, but he knew that he kind of blew it. So he basically shot everything over again, what a difference! If the outside turns out as good as the jam work, we will both be estatic. This weekend is slated for the final work. We promised ourselves that we would take our time and triple check everything, and clean everything 20 times and get this right the first time. At 150$ a quart, you can't waste this red stuff.

600$ was probably just for color, then you have clear, primer , sealer, wipe clothes, reducers, fish eye reducers, sandpaper, buffing pads, rubbing compounds,...........................................................And people wonder why paint work is so expensive.

Carl(clubvet), aren't you up in Fishers? I'll be up there this week-end for my son's swim meet. Arne, my first Z was Porsche guards red, which i loved and this Mazda color is similiar- and way expensive-ouch! My buddy(and painter) plans on putting a ton of clear on this thing, I hope I can "step" into this paint job it will be so deep. E-ticket-that sounds like a great color for this car-good luck!

Carl, I just couldn't decide on a silver that wowed me, so i went back to my original choice and the color of my first love(Z) and that is RED. I drove around with my son to the new car dealers and looked at colors the other day since my painter was telling me-PICK A COLOR DAMITT- and went to the Mazda dealership since I like their colors the best. I looked at the true red on the Miata and it just popped out at me-I love that color. It looks bright when the sun is in and even brighter when the sun is out. Sorry to the purists that I didn't use a Nissan color, but their red is boring. I am also going to try and make the paint pop even more by using a white sealer underneath, so hopefully it will really pop. A couple of pics, but hard to really see the color well. Also keep in mind that I have blacked out all the trim with powder coat Matte black. So there will be no chrome or SS on this car, except for the tail light trim-and I might change that to.