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Welcome to my project, for whatever reason named "Hugo"
This story begins somewhere here and there. "There" being the first time I saw
Darius bad a§§ 240z tearing up the streets. Guess he's to blame anyway. A friend
in Sydney, Australia, is to blame as well. Got acquainted with his first 240z
when visiting aussie-land for a 4 month long vacation. That Z was pretty much
stock. Orange. Sweet enough! After me bumming around the country for a month
or two - George (that's the Z-holics name) - let me know that he'd sold the 240
and gotten... Another 240z. This one sporting custom wishbones, a V8, custom
fuel cell, etc etc. How could I not be hooked?
I just had to get one of my own!
This is where I ran into problem No.1 - There aren't any 240z's in Sweden.
Well, there are - but they're pretty rare and don't often come on sale, and if
they do, they're a bit pricy.
What to do? Import of course. Me and Ebay are friends, so that's where I headed.
Found me a black 1971 240z that I thought would be an ok object to start out with.
I bought it and had it shipped to Sweden. While in Gothenburg harbour, some smart
a§§ ran a forklift into my Z
This dented the hood, crippled the right front fender and light bucket - breaking
its cover. Yay! Or maybe not. Anyway. I got the car back to Stockholm, after
driving it there (about 350 miles) at 25 mph due to the transporter not performing
its very best...
Then came the tear-down. Lots of interesting materials were found. Not much of it
was metal. Tons of bondo, fiberglass, epoxy, etc. The floors had been patched up
with pieces of sheet metal - riveted and screwed (regular philips head scres) to
stay put. On top of this mess was fiberglass.
The car had lived its life in Missouri, and it was probably happy to see Chicago
and a way out - cause man, this Z turned out to be pretty rotten (which was funny
cause the ebay auction said "NO RUST").
I'm a bit tired, writing this, and I'm sure most of you will just skip straight
to the pictures and vids anyway - so I'll keep it pretty shirt from here.
The body was stripped and send to sand blasting. It came back from sand blasting.
It went south, to Swedish Composite Engineering (www.sce.se), where the likes of
Michael and Richard were to bring the Z back to life. You might think "What the
heck has 'composite engineering' to do with panel beating and rust repairs?".
The answer is that Richard also works as a sheet metal worker (mostly doing roof jobs -
church-roofs/details, etc) and therefore pretty handy with fabricating parts
and welding. Later on SCE will support the project with custom carbon fiber parts.
For instance, the dashboard has been restored by permanently glueing a dash cap
to the original (which looked like utter crap) and then sanding out the major
differences in height - after which fiberglass bondo was added, sanded down and
a little more bondo was added, and sanded down. And so on. It's now ready for
paint - in order to make a mold - to make a carbon dash.
More parts, like the rear hatch, hood, center console, etc - will hopfully also
see molds and carbon fiber copys made. Still a bit of time before the project
gets that far.
I'll keep the car looking pretty stock - keeping the side skirts, front air dam
and hatch wing that came with the car. Rear flares will most likely be added to
accomodate a wide set of 18" tall rims/wheels.
Not much else will be left stock. The plan is to switch all gauges from original
to Autometer Pro Comp Ultra Lite. Throw out the old engine/gearbox and replace
it with a RB26 with a RB25 gearbox. How original eh?
This is part of the recipe: Modified RB26 N1 block. ARP studs for head and bottom
end, modified cylinder head, Crower billet rods, wiseco pistons, Nismo bearings,
N1 oil pump, N1 water pump, HKS steel gaskets everywhere. That's the start of it
anyway. Responsible for putting the engine together is my sponsor, Performance
by Z - pretty appropriate name eh? More to come on the engine. Project is still on
rust repair... Speaking of which - special thanks to POR-15 Sweden for hooking me
up with paint! And speaking of rust - after sand blasting - there wasn't much of
a car left (as you'll see in the pictures).
Yeah, well... Bla bla bla. Check out the movies (they'll STREAM) and have a look
at the pictures to get an idea of where the project is at now.
Cheers
/Philip
——Pictures (some of 'em)——
1: Car arrives in Gothenburg
2: Teardown
3: Somewhat... Stripped
4: Sand blasting
5: Not much Z left
