MONZTER

I dont want any filler, so I fit each part perfectly with a butt joint, dolly it out where possible, then grind it flat and smooth for an original fit. before any welding I prime all parts on the back side and pinch points with weld-thru primer the arc and inner rocker are new in this picture then the rear of the rocker, putting back the spot welds in the OEM position Some more primer to look super clean and blend in tot he original rocker which was perfect everywhere else Finally fit the outer skin and tig it in small steps so no warping Some more smoothing of the welds and original spotweld locations used Just a small skim coat of filler on the upper weld seem, but making sure to leave all the factory spot welds to show through the paint. Other side is the same, so on to the front fender next

Been busy working on the body of the NA car. Overall in really good original paint condition. But of course the common areas still need to be replaces even in a low mile California car. So I got busy cutting and welding. The KF parts are really nice but I only want to replace as much metal as trulely needed, so instead of just replacing the entire part, I grafted in what I need to keep it as original as possible. Here are some pics of the first dogleg What is hiding inside you ask Surprise cut it all out start fitting rebuilding from the inside out as how it was originally done Blast it all clean and start TIG welding

Even if 100 people commited to purchase, its still tiny small numbers vs an OEM production. Its got to be done out of passion and at least not to lose money. This is why this is such a huge acomplisment for someone like Derek, We are fortunate the passion runs deep. I cant imagine the hours of "un-billed" time

No English version I could find, but they show some pictures of the concepts they are working on

Has anybody else seen this video yet? It's JMC announcing more new cylinder heads for the L series. The FIA/Safari head a twin cam head, s20 head and another L series head. what do you guys think? I wish they did a LY head, with modern chambers and ports

You’ll lose nothing in my opinion, Fuel injection has a tunable acceleration feature just like a pump on the Webbers. I ditched mine for fuel injection and it was way better everywhere and no hundreds of dollars to make a jetting change, just a few click on the keyboard to make changes and tune it. I would never go back.

In the past when I would bench and smooth out casting lines in parts you would always see the smooth ground areas in contrast to the original casting finish. What I would do is blast it with a heavy 36 grit aluminum oxide to add even texture on the entire part, then Vapor hone it to brighten it up. It looks great, almost as if it were originally cast like that. So something to consider vs just glass bead if you decide to smooth out any of the maching marks and go with a more classic cast look.

Looking good to me, lets see some detail shots of the machining that you are not happy with. Are you going to bench it down? Whats your plan for filters?

The quality looks great, so good way to do it. The cost of materials in the USA, particularly in California, makes it uncompetitive even compared to other parts of the country. It's likely that the material costs alone here are as high as what you paid for the finished part. Its why I just make parts for myself anymore. I have to justify the time and cost with love of doing it as a hobby

I still check in once in a while and still work on my cars all the time, but it bumms me out that its so quiet around here anymore. Im not a social media guy or have time to produce youtube videos for self promothion, so I just quietly enjoy my projects and keep busy. Seems all the forums for cars and motorcycles I use to participate in are pretty quiet. Times change, but not all of us follow along. Thanks for all the help along the way

Ahhh, I thought you were programming and maching it, I was going to say nice work, not an easy part to program. Are you paying them based off 1 part? I assume the time to program and tool is a bigger expense than machine time? I'm in the same boat, I wish I could find a nice set-up for my NA car but nothing makes me happy. I might have to make one myself as well.

Here are some final assembly pics of the NA car Rear brakes. I had to take the OEM Z31 backing plate and cut the spot rivets holding this parking brake cable guide on. I then had to shorten it and weld on a new front mounting point. I ground the welds all nice so it looked OEM and then replated it in Yellow Zink. In the second picture you can see where I press fit in some stainless steel rivots, just sitting proud of the surface. This is where the "feet" on the parking brake shoes hit, and a little dab of grease should keep them smooth and quiet without worry of wear on the aliminum I next had to make a custom boss that will screw in to the new backing plate. This is the pivot and load point for the parking brake shoes. So I turned it out of 4140 steel, Yellow Zink plated it and threaded it into the backing plate with Red Loctite. Then I could re-assemble the stub axle and companion flange. These parts came out nice with a Zink plating on all the mating surfaces and powder-coating everywhere else. They should stay nice for a while. You can see the mounting bolts for the new backing pates. This is what the caliper looks like mounted with the Z-31 rotor Installed the parking brake shoes, springs, adjusters, ect. All fit up just like OEM Some final shots of the plates all assembled. I think they came out looking cool, kinda morphing from the struts hub shape to the mounting ears of the calipers. The look will be very clean IMO

Those look nice, whats you plan for MAP sensor, Brake booster, ect. Are you going to build a "log" to tie all the cylinders together?

Finally finished both L&R of the new rear Backing plates for the NA car. These are adapters that allow me to use a Z31 parking brake system and z31 rotor with Z32 aluminum 2 piston calipers and bolt it all on to a stock 240z strut. Yep it all works. For fun I took some pics of the machining steps to show what it took to make them from billet and finish them up. This is the first operation that mills the side to mount all the parking brake shoes and hardware. Comes out of a 8"x8.5"x2" thick piece of billet. Some detail of the surface machining and stepover of the cutting tool to make for a smooth finish After the first operation is complete the part needs to be flipped and held to machine the backside. I made a simple fixture plate that held the part by registered with 3 mounting holes and a single center screw to hold it down. This is the fixture plate. And this is the part after the first OP held tot he fixture plate ready to machine the second OP This is the part after the second aoperation is complete. About 2 hours of run time. You could go faster, but I wanted small step-over lines so it would not need any hand finishing After washing it and prepping it for a Alodine finish, here is the part as machined Final finish is a 5 second dip in the Alodine which gives it a goldish iridescent finish, then I sprayed it with a clear Cerakote to keep it looking good and easy cleaning And this is the final part. Next need to make a few small parts and the parking brake cable

I agree, I like looking at a chunk of billet and thinking anything I can imagine is in there, I just need to figure out how to get to it.

And some final shots of the assembly, along with a comparison to the Turbo car set-up shown previously

Here are some pics of the calipers I got from Ebay Japan. I ended up doing a complete rebuild with a nice Tungsten grey Cerakote finish and post machined Nissan logo. New pistons, seals and all freshly replated hardware with Stop-Tech pads

For the NA car I decided to go with Z-32 calipers, the nice aluminum ones for 30mm rotors with the Nissan Logo on them. I did some research and saw many people were using a Honda rotor with a caliper adapter, so this was my initial direction. Since I’m making everything myself I figured I would make these as well and started modeling it up in Solidworks. I started to notice some issues given the size of the Honda rotor. It looked as if the pads would interfere with the original caliper mounting point on the strut, possible causing the pad to bind. So I went a different direction and after scouring for drawings and modeling up different rotors I found a rotor from a Jeep Rubicon to be perfect. It was a little bigger at 302mm vs 296 for the Honda part. This offset he caliper just enough to keep the inner pad away from the strut/caliper mounting point. So I designed it in Solidworks and 3D printed a rotor and caliper adapter bracket to test fit the Z-32 caliper. After dialing it in for a perfect fit I went and CNC machined them. Finishing the adapter brackets in a Alodine finish with a clear Cerakote to keep them looking nice. The Rubicon rotors were available in Brembos premium line of OEM rotors with a nice anti-corrosion coating and big open venting. Because they had to be re-drilled for the Datsun bolt circle and the ID opened up, tooling was needed to get them all perfect. I even went as far as designing an adapter plate for the inside of the rotor to fill in the original holes and provide a nice clamping surface for the hardware Pics below of the adapter bracket and some steps of machining it on the CNC, also the 3d part vs the machined part

Some of the CAD models I built to make sure all fits as well as the models needed for the CNC work

Again going with AP, the front rotors are 325mm vented and drilled with custom 7075 hats I designed and build to make it all line up. Im super happy with the way it all came out but a little over the top for a 2200lb car

Just finished up on the front brakes for both cars. In the typical way I have been developing parts for both cars, the Turbo car will get the over the top treatment and the NA car will continue with heavily modified but OEM looking components. Since both cars will be using 16” wheels – SSR/Watanabe RS8s for the Turbo car and Panasports for the NA I wanted to keep the brakes fitting withing the 16” rim limit. Having the ability to build whatever I want for adapters the Turbo car is getting AP 4 piston calipers CP5000-42S4 - It’s a racing caliper and surprisingly light given how big they are. One of the benefits is the radial mounting, which makes more a low profile caliper and allow for larger 325mm AP rotors to be used and still fit in the 16” RS8s Here are some pics of the front calipers and adapters

Next up on the list of things to do it the strut housings. Both cars will use coil overs and have already been cut for previous struts cartridges. The NA car had Tokico BZ 3099 struts and the turbo car had Bilstein P30-0032 re-valved 300/100. Both now unobtanium I had problems with the Tokico struts blowing up with stiffer springs and the Bilsteins were a bit much on the street. So I decided to go with Konis - The 8641 1198Sport for the NA car with 300 pound springs front and rear - The 8610 1437Race for the Turbo car with 300 pound springs front and 325 rear Getting the ride height correct with the droop travel is important so I cut the front struts to 340mm measured from the bottom inside of the strut housing to the top of the threads and cut the rears to 380mm measured the same way. The fronts will drop right in with no spacers but the rears need to have a spacer made to go underneath the strut cartridge to get them in the correct location. Both cars will get biscuit style camber plates from DP Racing as I won’t be changing camber all the time and I could not bring myself to cutting the bodies I thought I took pictures of the struts and spacers before I assembled them, but I can’t find the pics. So only shots of the finished assemblies Pics to follow soon:

And these are the front hubs from the Turbo Car. Again Z-31 Turbo parts with 5 lugs. The extra offset let me integrate the new brake mount adapters to act as a labyrinth seal for the hub bearings

Here are some pics of the actual strut assemblies for the Turbo car. You can see on the rear how nice the Z-31 hub, bearings and stub axle integrated into the 240 strut as well as looking proper with CV flange.

The NA car is using stock rear axles and the stock front hubs with 4 lugs and has been fine considering the 235HP of the L-24 motor. However, the Turbo car will have most likely double this HP and everything needs to get beefed up. I handled this in an interesting way as I like to try and keep everything looking OEM and even using OEM parts when possible. Far from stock, but stock looking. My idea was to use all Z-31 Turbo parts to not only get the beefier stub axles and 5 lug hubs, but to also change the hub offset on the car so that it would use 25mm offset wheels the same as the Z-31 Turbo car. I accomplished this by literally cutting off the rear axle hub from a Z-31 control arm, turning down the diameter to remove the weld and inserting it into the 240z strut after boring out the step for the smaller 240 bearing. Press fit it in and did a perimeter weld all the way around. Now I could use a OEM Z-32 axle, bearings, spacers CV flange ect. This is what it looks like after cutting it off and turning down the weld. The diameter is near exact to fit in the 240z strut. I mocked it all up in CAD first. The outer bearings and diameter of the axle is considerably larger than the 240. Here is a cross section of it installed into the 240z strut I thought I had some other pics of them before I finished them up, but I could not find them For the front hub I also used a Z-31 Turbo hub. It actually bolts right on with only minor cutting of the outer lip of the grease seal. So again 5 lug and the same offset wheels as a Z-31.