SHOTIME

What drives older car prices is the seller. These cars are no longer made, so the ones that have them control the market. If everybody that had a restored Z wouldn't sell it for less than $25k, then they dont sell for less than $25k. The problem is there is enough people willing to part with their cars for less, thus driving down value. Why pay $25k for yours, when joe blow is selling his for $15k? If somebody wants a certain car bad, they will pay for it. I've wanted a Boss 302 for years and am shooting myself for not buying one 4 years ago for $15k. Now they're hitting $34k. By the time I buy one, I expect to pay $45k. The moral is, hold on to your cars. With the way the classic car market is, these may be with $30k or more in a short period of time.

If it sounds to good to be true.............. I have literally tried every type of wax there is. In terms of gloss and longevity, Collinite is the best. It's a little hard to take off but it's worth it. (www.dccarcare.com) Of course waxing is useless unless the paint in clean. So before you wax, you should use clay and then follow with a polish. Also when waxing, use a damp sponge. It will put on a thinner coat. Thickness doesn't matter because you're filling up microscopic blemishes. A can of wax should last 80+ waxings. I go by this- wash- at least once a week wax- once a month clay, polish- every 4 months buff- once a year The oldest car I have, aside from my 240 which in in 1000 pieces, is a 97 that looks brand new. Regardless of brand of wax, unless you prep/maintain your vehicle, nothing will look good.

Victoria British has hardened seats/guides. They're cheap themselves, but its putting them in that's expensive. Because everything has to be taken apart, you might as well rebuild the head.

You have to replace/refinish your rockers also. Each cam puts a wear pattern in the contact patch and running just a different cam can really screw everything up. If you're one of the "while everythings already apart" type, you might want to replace your valve seals depending on how long they've been in there. The fine tuning can be confusing if you've never done it before and you can really screw the whole engine up if everything isn't precise. I'm not taking a chance on this and after I put everything together, I'm sending it out to be adjusted.

You can have the whole thing done with a high speed buffer in 10 min if you know what you're doing. I start with 600 grit then 1200 and finally 2000. You have to use at least 2 more polishes of increasingly finer grit after you've compounded to get everything 100% smooth. I usually buff a car 5 times and don't leave any swirl/buffer marks. I can't imagine getting out wet sanding by hand. If course, I do this for a living, if this is your first time you can really screw your paint up.

I copied this from my rebuild spreadsheet- Gasket set $79.95 Piston Ring Set, Std $39.95 Main Bearing, Std $49.95 Rod Bearing, Std $39.95 Oil seal, timing cover $4.95 Oil seal, rear main $8.95 These are just parts. Since I made a list of the parts, I've decided to add new rod and main bolts but haven't entered them yet so I dont have a price for those. Add this to the price of tanking/machining and assembly if you can't do it yourself. All shops charge different for machining but I expect to pay about $1000 total for the short block.

I'm getting a Griffin aluminum radiator with electric fans along with a Ford Racing oil cooler that has a fan mounted on it. It all depends what you're doing to it. I'm going to race mine a little which is the reason for the oil cooler, but for daily driving just an aluminum should cool things down enough. I've used Red Line watter wetter before in my daily drivers and didn't notice much difference, but I was also using the stock gauge instead of a more precise one.

What a tool. In a car that old you can easily find more things wrong that have to be fixed when doing a repair. He even states he knows nothing about cars. I work at a dealership and we have morons come in like that ll the time. They know nothing, yet they know nothing is wrong with their car.....:stupid: That's also a far stretch saying the car is worth $7k with the visible rust.

I'd air hammer that SOB. Otherwise, do as stated.

Spend the money upfront and buy one in decent shape. They should go for around $5-7k for one that doesn't need a resto. But it all depends on what you want out of it. If it's going to be heavily modded, don't buy "the best", most likely you'll replace parts that don't need replacing. I got a little hosed on mine and paid $2500 and I'm doing a full resto. I should have bought one in worse shape because I'm replacing everything anyway. Anyway, I'm glad to see someone think of a Z as a small sports car instead of a Civic.

zcarcreations.com had a set of front/rear tube suspension a few months ago and now they're gone? I had some spare $ laying around and was going to buy them, only to find them not listed on the site. Anybody know what happened or where I can get a set?

Also remember that Republicans held the majority in the house while slick was in office. And before you claim any more liberal BS, we have most of the same equipment we had in the first gulf war under Bush. The military, FBI and CIA under willie was an absolute joke. Lawyers were fighting wars. As stated, 1mil Rwandans were slaughtered, I thought bill was for blacks? All his treaties (palistinian and korean) are broken. These liberal rantings don't bother me because it makes them look even dumber than they are. :stupid: Liberals are trying to find any credit to claim victory now that everything that they were opposed to is over. Pathetic.

I'm buying a bunch of those and painting them different colours so I can decide what I want. Infact, I'm heading to Wally Mart shortly.

The smoke may be normal. I took one of my cars out of storage a month ago and it blew smoke for the first 5 min. I saw an old Galaxie that wasn't started in more than a year look like a diesel with all the black smoke it was spewing. It did just like you described. Once the engine ran for awhile and it was driven around, it stopped. But I did say MAY be normal. As for shocks, I belive Koni and KYB are the two most popular choices. I have no preference over the two but I'm going with Koni when I get around to my suspension.

I'm in the same boat you are. My head looks like the lungs of a 4 pack a day smoker. So far paint thinner, alcohol, alum. wheel cleaner, various solvents do NOT work. If I don't find something relatively soon I might just have it removed when I have the machine work done.

Not buying a 100% French product is one thing, buying a partly owned product is another. Yes, Nissan is owned partly by the French, yet it is still owned partly by the Japanese and both Japanese and Americans are employees. You aren't so much hurting the French as you're more hurting the workers of the companies, in Japan and right here. Now a bottle of wine that is produced by France by the French and shipped to a liquor store here that also sells other wines is different. I stopped buying French wine but also buy US wine at the same store. They aren't loseing business because of me doing that. I don't mind a boycott, just one that makes sense. With that said, if you give someone enough rope, they will eventually hang themselves. The French will eventually get what's coming in the end. As for the protesters, most of their demonstrations are organized by socialist groups, a pretty name for communists. So take that for what it's worth. They have a right to express thier opinion, yet at the same time that also opens them up to critisism. Free speach works both ways. Nobody WANTS war. After seeing the celebrations today, I think war was more than justified.

Where's the fuzzy dice?

Definatly get quality tools. Get at least Craftsman. I prefer Kobalt (Lowes) for lower priced tools. They're made by Snap On (from what I can tell they ARE Snap On) but don't have the selection like Craftsman. All my tools are Snap On. They're expensive but if you buy one tool a week it adds up. It's a good habbit to buy at least one tool per month if you can. Ebay is a good place to buy tools for next to nothing.

Audi A6- Ford hired the guy that designed the new beetle. Now most of Fords newer cars look like an Audi, inside as well.

How's this one- Ford FiveHundred-

From the A pillar back it looks like the Ferarri, forward it looks like a Jag.

My harness, like the rest of the car was cut up by a hack. Everything worked before I tore the car apart but I don't want to risk a fire with a restored car. I've found out there's no new harnesses so it's either find one in good shape or buy a universal one and figure everything out. If I have a weak point it's, wiring, I'd rather rebuild a tranny. Any suggestions?

I wish my floorboards looked like that. Mine has a 1 foot round hole in it.....something like Fred Flintstone would drive.

Thank you, at least someone here understands economics.

Where are the frame rails available from? I have the beginning of the problem he had and I might as well take care of the whole thing. I'm already replacing damn near everything but the roof, what's a little extra. Thank God I can weld.