madkaw

Geezer, thanks for keeping me in mind. I am actually suprised someone hasn't started a part# thread. If some of these are available at the dealerships, it would benefit all the member to access this info. Maybe we could just ask Reddat, since he is always selling these OEM stuff on ebay:cheeky: If folks did supply numbers we would make sure that they are valid and they actually recieved their parts using those numbers . I would gladly pay a little more to have OEM parts, and some of this stuff is only available at Nissan.

Well I have a 9/71 and I need to replace all the rubber stuff. The rubber that is not easy to narrow is all the various plugs; example, firewall plugs(A/c lines)1&3/8" size,hatch plugs, door bumpers, floor plugs(I've seen 2 different #'s for these). Cowl panel drain hoses. Door panel fastner receptacles. just some of the stuff for now.

Thanks for the help. Right next to the key number there is usually a smaller column that is either 01 or 02 with each having its own part#. I was looking at rubber plugs and drain hoses for the cowl panel. Maybe sometimes it corresponds to left and right? I am actaully suprised I haven't been able to find more of these #'s just searching on this site. Example-all the different size floor plugs and hatch plugs.

Hey guys, I am trying to put together a list to take the dealer for some various parts. I am using my Zcar microfische and have a question on how to decipher the correct part#. Almost every part has 2 part #, so which one do i use. I will find 2 part numbers that correspond to one picture, they have a 01 or 02 part #, what does that mean? Any help would be appreciated.

Excuse me for just wanting to vent, but it kind of makes me mad when people are rude or inconsiderate in their e-mail interactions-primarily with the classifieds. It seems that folks don't worry about any obligation to finish a transaction, or more likely a conversation ,when it comes to selling or buying. Their are some that post for sale ,or are buying, that don't respond when you contact them , or they respond once to barter, then never heard from again. You wonder if these people would be like this in person. Would they go in a store and ask about a product, then as you are descibing it ,they would just turn around and walk away? That's what happens all the time in the classifieds. I know I shouldn't be suprised ,or I be more thick skinned, but I always try to be polite, and considerate, and conclusive, when making a business transaction. I was even told once that a gentlemen would not sell to me because of my pushy nature. I guess if you don't get a response in a week or more, you should just figure it's sold-even though in this case it wasn't. It turns out he was having personal problems-which is very reasonable-but how was I to know this. Now I an black listed from buying from him because he said"our personalities will clash". Are you kidding me!!!! Or you get the guy who asks you to give him a description and pictures and a shipping quote, and he never gets back with you. How about 'I'm not interested anymore" or "I have found that item cheaper" or "thankyou for your time" . You can't tell me that your life is so hectic that you can't have manners. I have always tried to answer any messages or e-mails especially when concerning to classifieds, and if I missed anyone i apoligize. Maybe I think because the folks on here are fellow Z'ers we would be more considerate to each other(and sometimes it might lead to clinching a deal), but i guess reality is that when it comes to money, nothing ever changes. It's a dog eat dog world out there

IMHO I think you could spice up that 260 to a point that it would keep you happy as far as performance, and not spend a ton, and have something different other then a new nissan. You could get a better flowing head and better carburation(maybe triples), and better gearing(5 speed with 3.7 or 3.9) and improve your 0-60 greatley. These engines are really tough on the bottom end, and though Carl is right that the bottom end rebuild would get you max HP, I think you could just do a top end and be happy and it would run good for a long time. If you already have a nice looking car, you have already covered a big part of the cost of fixing these cars up. Do the suspension and the top end and then make the call for a newer car or not. Good luck

The exhaust sounds great. So how are you going to deal with MSA on the exhaust leak? I wouldn't let it go since you paid good money for a coated header that doesn't have a coating on it anymore(atleast in that spot). It's a shame that you had to go thru that much work on a system that was made for your car. I am glad that I did all the work that I did to make my own because your dilemma would have been very, very frustrating. I am suprise the tail piece was suppose to come out horizontal instead of vertical. I think your suggestion will look good though. Good Luck

Did they tighten the header correctly. That header(that is exactly like mine) is built with a slight bend in the flange. The header needs to be installed using the center bolts first and tightening them first, then the outside last. If not, the flange will not settle on the head correctly, thus not sealing in the center. Granted, i have not run my engine yet, but the flange was the first thing I noticed taking it out of the box and I made the call to MSA, and this is what they told me. So don't quite give up on that header yet. Make sure it is clearing your SU's, if that is what your running. Don't take the shops word for it, go over and look and ask them to retighten the header. Did you use the header type gasket? hope this helps

Thanks guys for the info and help guys, but I hacked her up anyway. The brackets are alright and I have tried every type adjustment. Arne was right and the bumper was wacked on the front which made her spread out. I just cut her down the center and what a difference it made. The bumper wanted to fit now. Since this is going to be a painted bumper I wasn't concerned with being able to hide my work. It only took a little more then a cut-off wheel width to make a huge difference. Now the bumper ends are attached with a rubber washer for a spacer. I couldn't be happoer to get this out of my way- to the paint booth very soon:)

I think I am going to cut a slit on the top and bottom of the center so the bumper will collapse further and give me the ability the custom bend the correct V on the bumper. Then i will just weld it back together. Wish me luck!

Arne, thanks for the pics. I guess I was in denial thinking that my bumper was even close:stupid: I believe that my bumper was slightly bumped in the center since I can draw down the ends ,but then they are spring loaded-badly. I guess I need to rework my bumper so it's not so spring loaded-if I knew how to do that. It doesn't help that my fender was tweeked before in an accident, it doesn't take much to screw up an alignment. I am aware of the rubber ends , but some reason I thought there was a spacer also.

Hey Guys, please look at my pics and evaluate the fitting of my front bumper. I am concerned with the ends especially. I know that there was some kind of spacer between the bumper and the fender, but I can't recall the size and the proper gaps. I know mine is probably wrong , but it will probably be a bit of compromise since I have had passenger side fender damage at one time. I can't seem to get the ends to pull in symetrically and I am not sure how tight the ends are supposed to pull against the fender. Please give me some feedback!

I am jealous RX sleeper, now that is a "shop". I just have a 3 car garage that I try and use effeciently. I actually have 3 cars in there now. My daily driver which is a 2005 Subaru Baja Turbo and my wifes car a 2005 Subaru Forester Turbo(don't know why I got her a turbo-she never uses it). And of course, last but not least, my 71 Z. I probably have a whole another Z upstairs in the garage attic, plus a mini barn with more Z stuff. Usually when the weather breaks the Subies get kicked out for projects like the one I just finished on Derks 71Z. Hopefully the projects keep coming so my garage always looks busy and impressive:classic: Side note: the next house will have a detached garage -no exceptions. My last big gargae was 24X28 detached and I wish I had it back. I never heard statements like ,"what's that awful smell-have you been painting or something". I can't do anything chemical with an attached garage in the winter-it sucks!

I'm sure he thought that Carl. In fact his comment when he saw the car after being painted was something like" I didn't think it would turn out this nice". She was pretty rough when it came to us ,and the owner hadn't seen the car in a year and a half so I think he was pleasantly suprised. I am really getting an appreciation for the folks that do the full blown restos, it is almost beyond description in a thread, it has to be experienced. It will probably be 5 years when I get mine done and it won't even be show quality.

Thanks for the comments guys. I'm glad to hear some more from the Midwest guys. I would love to think I would have time to do this as a full time thing, but I don't think it would pay the bills. I have a good friend that helps me ,and is the painter, and we both hope we can continue to do this for enough years to support our car hobbies. I would prefer to always do the Z cars because they are SMALL ,and fit in my garage nicely, and I am really getting to know my way around the 30 series. I will work on about anything though. I worked on a 1969 911e early this year, that was a sweet little car. I might have a 1971 dodge demon coming to thee garage shortly also.(big and ugly according to the wifeLOL) Actually there seems to be work then time right now, I better get my car done soon or it will be constantly on the back burner .

I have had good luck with duplicolor and they do have a vinyl paint thbat works well on plastic. Sems makes good stuff too. In fact I used both on my dash repair. The duplicolor finish was almost to glossy for me and I dulled it with a little 00steel wool rub down.

I guess I will end this thread with some more pics of the finished car-or atleast as I was finished with it. Jim has probably more money in this car then what he had planned. There is probably 8k$ in it now. Then if you figure interior and engine rebuild, I can see why the resto shops want so much to restore a car. At least the rest of stuff he can do and keep it on the road. So if anyone is looking for a "shop" in the midwest, drop me a line, I might be interested in helping you out. My car goes to the paint shop this winter so I will be itching to do something this winter. I would also like to thank all the CZCC members for their help on these forums-what did we do before the internet:D

Pretty much have finished my dash resto and I am happy. I used the NAPA repair stuff and finished color was duplicolor vinyl black. The duplicolor has a lot of shine so I should only have to wipe off with rag when it gets dusty. Only thing I wish I did better was the sems texture paint. Don't try outside if there is any wind since you have to hold 20" from the object your painting. I was able to sand it until it looked pretty uniform. I will happy if it does't crack and if it does it will be cover time. I spent a lot of time polishing the chrome and I was pleasantly suprised how well the chrome came back to life. Use some 00steel wool and you will be amazed how well you can get the finish back. I also polished all the gauge plastic. Here are some pics

The stage was the suspension and steering. I put the car up as high as I could and started ripping everything out . meanwhile the owner ordered me an urethane kit and some KYB's. I told Jim that I could refinish the suspension bits in POR-15 or have the parts powder coated for a bit more. We decided to have the parts all powder coated. The guy that runs the powder coating shop has a 350z, so he really takes care of me. I replaced all the bushings, even the steering coupler with urethane. The rubber option was there, but was on back order so we decided not to wait. I believe I also changed out the ball joints and tie rod ends. My logic was that if the suspension is that far apart, I feel the ball joints should be replaced and also the rod ends. I also told the owner that if he sprung for the undercoating I would spray the underneath of the car while everything was out of the way. When it was all said and done, the car looked better from underneath then it did on top. What a difference once I got to drive it with the new suspension bits. I even got the front end aligned pretty close:classic: Now on to the body work. i needed to replace the the dog legs and the rear valence panel, and fix some rust damage under the hatch before it went to the painter. No real story here, but I will say the MSA rear valence panel was junk!! Unless you have an english wheel to finish out the curves on the panel, you are in for a lot of work. I would recommend a stock one cut off of another car if you can find a straight one. I had the car for about an year working on it part time. I was pretty proud of the amount of work I got done in that time for just hitting it when I had a few days or hours. I am fortunate that my job sometimes affords me blocks of time to do this. I can't imagine a more fun part time job! I would love to do this all the time- too bad most of the decent cars are out there on the west coast.

Carl, As far as "how much" is a low budget, I charge strictly on the hour to hour basis, so every job is different. Eventually I will show everything I did to his car in this thread, which involved about 100 hour worth of work. I only charge 25$ an hour, so even if I was slow, the customer still does alright. I only use this money for my car, not to make bills, so I'm not interested in braking my back or anyones bank. Hell, I have a daughter in college now, I don't have any extra money anymore:cry:, so I have to earn it. The exhaust was good to go , now rebuilding the carbs and cleaning the tank. The Z therapy video is a great tool to set up the carbs before installation. After i put the carbs on and put the gas tank back in and checked for fuel pressure, I attampted to start the car. The fired off so fast and easy it blew me away. I sent the video you see here right after that. That video was only the second time I started the car, notice the smoke. It started out as a blue smoke ,which was all the oil in the cylinders getting burned out, then it turned to a white smoke as time went on. I ran the car for a while to get some heat in the engine to hopefully get some better numbers on the next compression test, plus I planned to change the oil again to play it safe incase to many things loosened up after sitting so long. Fortunetly for Jim, the numbers did come up and got better after every run. Now it was time to see her roll down the road. I went thru the brakes from from front to back. I replaced the MC and the front calipers and brake lines and wheel cylinders and brake drums-the whole deal. I was able to sell Jim everything from my car which was in great shape since I was upgrading to Wildwoods all around. I couldn't even salvage the drums because someone had beat them(probaly trying to get them off) to the point they were unsafe. The car rolled fine , but the obviuos was true that the suspension was shot. http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y9/_mad_kaw_/?action=view&current=JimDerksZ072.flv

After getting the valve train in it's proper place the compression reading were from 90 to 140 and anywhere in between. I figured that wasn't too bad considering the 20 years idle. Well I needed to get this thing running to improve that situation. I had already ordered a SU carb kit from Z therapy and a video on 'everything you wanted know about SU's and were afraid to ask'. The carbs had come off and went to the carb solution, but what about the tank. Years of solidified gas in that tank along with the rust-I didn't even want to know.... WHAT, someone had thought enough to drain the tank-bone dry.:surprised It still needed to be cleaned , but the tank was very usable and it could have been much worse. Now onto the exhaust for an inspection there. Well the down pipe is shot and the rest behind that is... well ..kind of gone. Actually Jim had given me a bucket of parts with the car, along with a complete exhaust-minus the down pipe, that he had bought but never put on. Since the down pipe had to be replaced, it was time to strip everything off the head and replace that gasket to. I wasn't going to fight those rusted down pipe bolts on the car ,when I can pull it out where I can see it. Of course this meant some broken studs, and a little drilling and banging and a lot of PB blaster penetrant. As I was pulling that off, I noticed the bad corrosion around the thermostat housing, so it came off too, and more broken bolt removal. A side note: I told Jim that I was restoring my Z at the same time and that I would be modifying some items and upgrading others. I told him that some of my used was better then his stuff and I would sell those items to him cheap. Such as the down pipe, which was perfect on my car, but i was going with a header. In this way we helped each other out a little. Jim wanted to save where he could, he didn't necessarily want new. After getting the head stripped it was time to clean up things up a little. For 30+ years the engine was pretty clean, but I wanted it squeaky clean so I could trouble shoot any leaks-plus I don't like dirty engines After cleaning things up and fighting the old down pipe off the manifold, it was time to fit the exhaust. The exhaust wasn't to bad of a fit but did need modifying for a good fit. A cut here, a weld there and more fitting and what do you know, a slick little Ansa looking system.

First off, I believe those are Ansa knock offs, but they do sound great. The car is loud because there is no insulation or carpet in the car, in fact when i drove last it had no seals either. I went to Evansville to see the car(about a 3 hour drive) before i made a deal with Jim. A great guy with a car that I thought had significant potential because it was so solid. I felt the need to go down there to see him before he brought the car to me ,since he and I were committing to a long expensive project. After meeting Jim ,and seeing in person a car nut, I decided that this would be a good customer. I actaully felt more obligated for him to meet me then the other way around since he was going to paying me via the mail. I wanted Jim to trust me and I told him I would send many pics. There are so many details I know i can never cover them all. The car came on a trailer on July 4th and it wouldn't even roll. It was a bitch pushing it UP my driveway. The car had never run since Derk had bought it and the registration was dated 1989. The body was dinged and dented at every corrner. but no collision damage. The body lines gaps were all good. The car was a Texas and CA car, so the under carriage was as solid as could be. The body panels had some kind of battery type corrosion that had eaten thru the paint and started on the metal. The engine turned over but no way it was going to start. The compression test showed bad news and you could imagine what the carbs were like. The suspension and anything rubber was dry rotted. I was suprised the tires held air as dry rotted as they were. The interior was amazingly original with the ashtray(this is a 8/71) in perfect condition. The glove box had all the original warrant stuff with a Datsun warranty card. I started with the engine because there had to be a starting point. Plus Jim was concerned we would have to rebuild.I told him that we should give her a go and see what we turn up. I was told that there had been some oil put in the cylinders and it was turned over every once in a while. I squirted her down some more and after buying a battery I spun her up and she turned over easy. Time for a CR test. 2 cylinder showed 0-no good. I took the valve cover off and just what i suspected, the valve stuch and the lash pad was off center. So i put the 2 that came off back on and retried the the CR. This post is gona get big so i'm going to break it up with all the details, to be continued......by the way, the speedo is 85k

Well I dug this thread up just to get a grip on time and to revisit when I first made contact with Jim derk. I took delivery of Jim's car on July 4th ,2007, after working out some details on the work he wanted done to his car. It was a long road, but what a great guy to work with. I tried to keep Jim up to date to the minute of the progress on his car and sent him probably a 100 digital pics so he could visualize everything I was doing on his car(since he was too far away to just drop in). After the car had sat for 20 years, I was able to get his engine going again-strong as ever. It started out with 2 dead cylinders and low CRs,but after getting some valves back on track, we came up with 6 strong cylinders close to 170crs. The engine showed NO leaks when it left and I did NOT change any gaskets-amazing. I proceeded onto changing out all the worn out suspension bits and powder coating all the suspension parts. Next I fixed the rusted out stuff-there was very little of that-nice solid car. Then the car went to my buddies house for paint. For a low budget resto, I think Jim was happy. The car is far from a total restoration, but Jim has a good looking Z and hopefully a reliable ride. By the way, the shop will open for business after the New Year-I can't get enough of this Z stuff:classic:

Listen to the voice of wisdom(Carl), you will get fustrated with a total resto right off the bat. It is many years of work and $$$$$$$$. Welcome to the Z world.

Hey guys, sorry I didn't finish up the thread but we ended up purchasing the 903 blue poly which does have some metallic in it. We went to the paint shop and looked at the color and it definetly had some metal in it, though not as much as the 115 metallic. We should be painting tomorrow and I will post some pics. "it's always something"