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Hi All! I've owned a few s30's in the past and finally decided to build one. My car background is a lot of JDM cars including Supra's, AE86s, S13s, Skylines, a Stagea 260rs, etc. I have always loved the style of the s30 (don't we all), the aftermarket support for it and the random people who would stop me and tell me about their "Z" story. The story of this build started over a year ago when I purchased this 1978 Datsun 280z. The story behind the car (that I know of) was it is an American car that was brought to Washington and held at a speed shop awaiting restoration. Then was bought and stored in a heated warehouse for years in BC before i bought it. A little side story, I originally purchased a 1971 240z from the same person and they also had the 280z for sale but was well out of my price range. I would have loved to restore the 240z but unfortunately the amount of work it needed was well beyond my budget and experience just to get it to a useable condition. If you looked at it funny, rust would fall off the car. Mistakes we made. I was sold on what it could be but not what it will take to get there. almost a year later the 280z was still for sale, and the price was a little better. With some luck, i was able to convince the owner to trade back the 240z and cash for the 280z. Success!...Now, it seems the 280z was re-sprayed a British racing green but wasn't done the best and was flaking so i believe that's why it originally underwent the restoration in Washington. The car was just a rolling chassis, the front end had been primer epoxy'd and luckily had everything in boxes and labeled like "driver door guts", or "Rear hatch slam", which was nice to see. Now the goal of this project was to be a fun drivers, resto-mod car. It will be getting an RB26 from an r33 GTR, an RB25 transmission, DBW for the factory ITB's, Techno Toy Tuning full suspension, brakes, differential swap kit, running a Haltech S3 ECU and Wiring Specialties Harness, Poly fuel tank with an r32 skyline Radium hanger and Hellcat fuel pump. The bigger ticket items like turbo/manifold, radiator/fans, and then some smaller things are missing but most of the project is there now. I do plan of re-wiring the whole car considering I'm spending money in every other area. Now, just like anyone, I did set out with budget but considering since I last built a car, prices have gone up for parts which I stupidly didn't account for. Also a lot of, "well if i'm already doing this, then i might as well do that", and "since i have this off, i might as well get that." So the budget has been blown....but at least I'm happy! (maybe). BUT as it stands, the suspension and diff swap kit is in and the car is currently at the body shop getting the sunroof hole patched as well as some of the smaller trim holes plugged and a few small rust spots taken care of. Here are some pics throughout the build and as it stands. Any questions, advice or help for some "gotchas" will be welcome!

Great work so far! I’m sure this will be an awesome build. I suspect you will be running fender flares or a wide body kit seeing as your wheels are poking out a bit?

Time to update the build threat again. Things are moving slow at the moment but none the less progress is being made. I have contact with two local body shops in the area for the frame rail repair and to measure the body to see if it’s twisted in any way. One of the body shops is specialized is classic car repair and restauration but will probably be quite expensive but none the less a representative will come by to look at the car this week. The other body shop is a more generic one that also does a lot of classic BMW’s and has done some paint work for me in the past. There hourly rate is a lot cheaper, I know they deliver great work and I know they sometimes are willing to do cash work. To save money on the body shop hours I decided to bite the bullet and order a bunch of parts from Apex Engineered which should arrive somewhere next week. Deciding what to buy was quite difficult as the shipping rate varied a lot but in the End I got the shipping down to $284. I all I bought the frame rails, front fender braces, front and rear control arms, steering knuckles, front crossmember and the rear strut brace. As importing stuff from the US is pretty expensive I decided to place a bigger order then what I strictly needed to maximize the value for my money. As the car needed to get welded anyway I ordered the front fender braces as well to reinforce the front of the car as they weren’t that expensive and seemed to me as a worth wile upgrade. As for the control arms my main reasons for buying those was to delay any major body repairs. If my body turns out to be twisted repairing it would turn into a full on restauration project. I do plan on restoring and repainting the car some day but not now, so as a temporary solution the adjustable control arms allow me to tune the effects of a twisted body out a bit. At some point I would like to get the full Apex Engineered Retro Mod suspension so this will give me a great starting point to work from anyway. To save some more money at the body shop I will strip down the interior and remove the fuel lines myself before sending the car of for welding. But before doing that I still have a chance to fix some small stuff surrounding the engine. My backorder from Zservices in France finally came in together with a used Bosch AAR from a Porsche 944 as my original AAR turned out to be broken. So last week I took the valve cover off to adjust the valves and replace the gasket as it was leaking a lot of oil. Good thing I did as the valves where very out of spec. The adjusters where a pain to get loose but after that adjusting them was very easy. I put everything back together with some new NGK spark plug wires and started her back up. Even with near freezing conditions the car started right up and idled better then ever before. The engine still runs very rich at idle and I suspect it might be an injector issue but other then that the engine runs great and the emissions are within the limits so I will place that issue on hold for now. My plans for the coming weeks are to strip down the interior, remove the fuel lines, front fenders and doors. This will also give me the opportunity to clean and inspect those parts of the car for more hidden surprises. I will also repaint the fuel lines as they are full of undercoating and try to restore the dashboard as with any Z mine is cracked. As for the doors I want to rebuild the door hinges and maybe try and reupholster the door cards as mine are actually of a 2+2 and have a giant hole instead of a second door latch. I’m hoping to get the car back on the road after this so I can finally start to enjoy my 280z this spring. Video van WhatsApp op 2025-11-24 om 10.58.36_fab92d46.mp4

11-25-2025. My new fender and hood came in from Resurrected Classics today. I quickly hung the fenders on and took some pics to show how well they fit. Very impressive. High quality parts. The box does say "Made in China", but they are VERY nice pieces. I also went ahead and got the front tires mounted on to the front wheels. The wheels are 16X8 with 0 offset, the tires are 205/55R16.

Hey, the new Speedo looks great! I just installed a set of cheapo Amazon gauges in my dash and it was also a bunch of little, fiddly, time-consuming work. The supports on the back were the hardest parts. Great work!

Ya il be running fender flares but not with these wheels. because i went 5 lug, these were all i had to roll the car around, although they do look good hhaha ya the T3 stuff is amazing, it all fit without any issues so I was surprised with that. I had a L26 with a big cam, carbs and and exhaust and I loved it in my old 260z but this car came with nothing so it was an easy choice to go RB!

I just got a new job and will be moving, so I haven't made a ton of progress. But before I pack up all the tools for the move, I worked on getting the new gauges in a better looking dash that will be installed with the new EZ wiring harness. I started with a dash pulled from the parts car. The gauges weren't fully working and the previous owner wired in a sound system and some other "upgrades" in a way I didn't like. So I gutted the dash of all the stock and aftermarket wiring from the previous owner. This car won't have a sound system and I have a new harness so I didn't need any of the old stuff. Next, I busted the new Amazon cheapo gauges and started mocking them up to see if they would fit in the stock dash. They were quite a bit different, so I had to rip the old gauges apart and combine their guts with the new gauges to get them mounted in the dash. I tore apart the old gauges. I removed the old gauge mechanism, but kept the small and larger housings. I'm not sure what they are actually called. I cut out small circles from some sheet metal that had with an i.d. for the new gauges to screw and tightened onto, but also an o.d. that would matches the inner housing on the old gauges. Then I screwed the inner housing into the larger one. I did this for both the Tach and Speedo. Next, I mounted the gauges into the dash. The old gauges were much larger and held in by screws and bolts. I mounted both as best I could with zip ties. I'll think about a better permanent mounting solution in the future. They are obviously smaller than the stock ones, but for less than $200, I'm happy with how they turned out. The smaller gauges were both easier and harder. I tore the old ones apart and threw away the gauge guts just like the big ones. However, there was an inner metal ring that was perfect to screw the new gauges onto after I trimmed them a tiny bit into a circular shape. It saved a lot of time, but the original gauges had like plastic rivet, type things holding it together. They were easy to drill out, but I had no way to easily reassemble with the new gauges. So, I glued them, clamped them, and let them sit for a couple days while I packed my house up. After I got everything glued up, I installed the gauges and they are obviously smaller than the stock ones. But I don't think they look that bad. For $160 and a couple evenings of modifications, I think they turned out really nice. I had to modify the old mounting system on two of the smaller gauges to keep them in place and had to use some bolts for the third because it's old gauge was set up differently. I got all five gauges in the dash and they turned out better than I expected. I have a set of the Speed Hunters adapters for their gauges, but the adapter set costs just as much as I paid for all these gauges. This kit also came with the sensors needed and a voltage meter that I won't be using because I have a voltage meter/ phone charger in the car right now that I really like. It was another cheapo Amazon purchase. I installed it on the hole for the old cigarette lighter in my current dash, and that's what I'll do again. There won't be any progress for a while, because I'm moving back to Ohio and starting house shopping so I won't have to move again any time soon. But the next thing on my list is making a plate to go on the hole where the climate controls and radio used to be and mounting a phone holder there. I have that in the car now and it's really useful. Then I'll be installing the new dash and EZ wiring harness. Assing I can do that, the gauges all work, the alternator puts out more than 13 volts, and the car still runs and drives that'll be the last major thing done to this car for a while. After that, I think I'm gonna get started on the "parts car project." Please let me know if you've seen any silly mistakes I've made or anything that would make my install easier or better. Thanks!

Impressive work! I have most of the T3 stuff and their brakes but I bought bit by bit over many years so I'm always a little bummed I never got to lay out all my suspension like you have. It's fun to see all the shiny new parts in one place RB was my dream too before I had a deal too good to pass up on my L28ET. Love to see it

Your work looks great. There isn't as much activity here anymore, but some of us are still watching closely. I really like the battery bracket. The more spread out the support is, the more secure you can make the battery without damaging it. I've always disliked the common OEM-style hold down bar.

11-20-2025. Well on the 260, interior, especially dash is a LONG way down the road, but all these black Friday deals going, and talking to speedhut they cut me a great deal, I went ahead and got the gauges I wanted for this car. They will go in my dash with a full cap, and the center section will be a blocked off plate and will house 2 gauges from speedhut along with some switches. At any rate, The gauges are going to be "Gulf Racing Blue", in modern script, and show black with orange lit numbers at night. I have some pics here but they don't show the "z" script I am having added to the faces. it is just the thin black outline of the original "Z" badge. Anyway, here is what they will look like, without the Z, there is a pic of the script at the end. These things are crazy expensive. I love that the speedo is GPS. Pics:

As listed in the post above I did order those parts. Shipping is indeed expensive but that’s not Apex’s fault, they use UPS and when you fill in your address you just get a direct calculation from UPS. I don’t know where you live in relation to Apex (Milwaukee Wisconsin) but I know that shipping across Europe can reach the same prices. As for me my shipping came down to $284,50 which is a lot but still respectable. Unfortunately I also need to pax an extra 4,5% import duty and 21% tax on top when my package arrives at customs. The kits don’t come pre assembled but they do have great product installation videos on their website which make installation basically a step by step tutorial. I don’t mind at all, installing car part is basically a very expensive version of adult Lego.

Today I picked up some sandblasting and powder coating from R&S Powdercoating here in Colorado Springs: And......you seem to always find hidden damage once everything is stripped off, huh?

@tube80z - so I have done what you suggested here: I put lips on the battery tray to keep the battery from shifting at the bottom: The battery hold down "plate" has a couple of jog bends to capture the angled bracket that the tank mounts to. I just need to secure this plate I made (what I was referring to with the red outline above) to the main plate to finish this up.

After many nights thinking about it, the current Black Friday sale and optimizing my order for the most value for my money I finally decided to pull the trigger. Maybe it’s because of the size and weight of the total order but the calculation of the shipping was a bit weird. As the parts will need to be shipped to the Netherlands I knew the shipping would be expensive but my shipping came down to almost $600!! By combining some stuff I got the shipping to drop down to $280,- while still giving me the stuff I wanted and basically a free rear strut brace. Here is a list of all the stuff I got: - Front fender brace - Frame rails - Rear strut brace - Front control arms - Steering knuckles - Front crossmember - Upper steering rack clamps - Rear control arms While weighting my options Apex dropped there Retro Mod line of suspension which allows you to keep the stock R180 or R200 long nose differential, axles and spindles. I really wanted to get the new rear suspension and subframe but found it to be too expensive for me at this time. By dropping the rear subframe I got to order the front crossmember, control arms and steering knuckle and still be a lot cheaper off. Weirdly ordering all the front suspension bits separately was almost $300,- cheaper than buying the Retro Mod front suspension kit. Seeing as I don’t need the tie rods (and the steering rack, you need to buy that separately) I’m even cheaper off. I’m hoping to get the frame rails and fender brace fitted over the winter and have the car ready before next spring.

SEMA SHOW-Complete Early Model 240z and All Aluminum Body Panel 240z This After Show will give you details about the latest news of Early Model 240z Body Panels. The First will a Complete Assembled Sheet Metal 240Z manufactured in China. Jiansu Juncheng Vehicle Industry Company makes Toyota La Madzand Cruiser 40,60 and 70 series,Land Rover 90/110 series, Ford Bronco1966-1977 Nissan 70-74 240Z, Volswagen T1, MadzaRX-3,and ToyotaAE86. Individual Body Parts(Doors, Hood, Fenders, Grilles,etc besides complete Body Assemblies. Right Front View 240z Interior View 240z Engine Compartment Pic 240z Front Wheel Well 240Z Right Inside Door × 240Z Interior Compartment Front Core support Interior Compartment Seat Mounts Toyota A86 Interior Compartment These pics taken of their brochures. This is a page from their catalog. It shows the individual 240Z Body parts which are available. My opinion is they should try to sell the body parts that other than what is presently available. Parts like inner body panels, whole floor pans, inner fuel compartment, etc should be sold. Parts that are commonly needed to fix corrosion prone areas. After all, they already made the panel molds. Also, I have another comment about their body parts. Their Firewall does not have a Vehicle identification Number stamped on it. Without a manufacturer identification number, vehicle registration maybe difficult in most states 240z individual body panels Their Price List shows the Full Assembled 240Z costs $1500 arrived at Port of Los Angeles. Let me tell you my Automotive Background -I was a ASE Certified Automotive Mechanic and also ASE Certified Automotive Collision Repairman and Painter before I give you my opinion about these Chinese Body Parts. I gave this 240Z a good inspection and asked a lot of questions concerning the manufacturing of these parts. Their Sales Team was not very informed about the actual process of manufacturing of the body parts. So I had to go with what I could see and feel for this opinion. The parts seen to fit together ok but without a Frame Measuring Gauge( Tram Gauge I could not determine the Frame Squareness and Length. The biggest problem with these parts is their Corrosion Control Methods were lacking. They should be at least be coated Epoxy Primer before welding the car together. Nissan factory cars are completely immersed in tank of primer. This method insures primer covers even boxed sections of the vehicle. This a pic of the Storage Compartment behind both seats in the car. No Primer-Corrosion already on surface Maybe the Manufacturer was rushing to get the 240z into the Sema Show or maybe this is normal. This company was still looking for someone to distribute their parts in North America so we have wait and see. For more information- email this address Next-All Aluminum Panel 240Z manufactured in Japan