Bought it! '78 280Z

[70 Cam Guy]

There's a pretty big crossover between the burning man "mutant vehicle" builders and the "art car" people, who think it's silly to just show off your work a couple of weeks a year.

Interesting perspective, I never would have thought that. I like the mutant vehicles description, it's perfect

There's supposed to be a old school car show on Treasure Island on July 18th. I would take my 240 but I'll be driving back from vacation that day (from Portland).

http://japanesenostalgiccar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5112

[scalveg]

Aw man, I'm going to be out of town that weekend for work. It would have been perfect to see some ideas of how to fix up my 280Z!

[scalveg]

PROGRESS!

I sorted out my problem with the windshield wipers. Basically the problem was: bad auto parts store. I looked on yelp.com for a better store in my area, and found one down in the nearby town of Alameda. Lee Automotive Supply. Excellent service and inventory. I look forward to much future business with them.

I also got the rear louvers open so I could wash the FILTHY rear window. Looks like I need one of the little fasteners that goes back there. Previous owner had bodged up a terrible combination of fasteners that really didn't work.

But the big improvement was I got it over to my local alignment shop where they balanced the wheels (two of them were over 2oz off! No wonder freeway driving was so exhausting.) They also discovered and replaced a bad wheel bearing, and did an alignment. The results are AWESOME.

Instead of driving a shaky rattly old car with lots of nagging problems, I was able to drive today a fun vintage sports car that some owner was probably amazingly happy with when he or she bought it off the lot. The 75-series tires would not be a popular choice today and still feel weird to me, but at least it's not the weird of the steering wheel trying to tear itself out of my hands and the rear louvers vibrating to all kinds of deafening harmonics. And of course there are still many things that need doing to improve the enjoyability of the driving experience.

I also thoroughly inspected the car, took a ton of photos, and made a detailed list of all the things I want to get done. If anyone's curious I put it up for download on my web site at http://www231.pair.com/factotum/projects/280z_Priority.pdf but watch out, it's almost 40MB (26 pages with lots of hi-res photos). My plan is to keep a detailed record so that I can look back and remind myself how far I've come.

But I didn't need a reminder today; a cruise around with a proper-handling Z was just amazing.