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Dingo

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Everything posted by Dingo

  1. I know i'm bumping an old thread, but I just purchased the Tanks Inc. setup to copy what you did. Thanks for the pics and info about the setup!
  2. So i'm jumping back in the saddle again. Nothing too major this time around, but started patching rust on the driver side front fender. I bought a panel from Tabco for this section. I'm not going to fix the minor rust on the inner fender by the tire, since that will be cut away for fender flares eventually. The last two pics is the fender back on the car and flipped upside down. It's a little easier to work on at that height. After it's welded in a little more solid I'm going to have to hammer the excess over the lip to match the factory seam. I've never done that before, so we'll see how it goes...
  3. Some work and some fun pics. I haven't had the fenders on the car in maybe a year and a half? I put them back on to mark bolt holes that were removed during rust replacement and to just check out the ongoing work and make sure it all lines up. I also had to reweld the tabs that hold the inspection plates, so the fenders, inspection plates, and cowling had to be in place and lined up. Next I added support bars under the fenders. Each end of the bars are welded to angle iron, and then the angle is welded to the body (like you would do a roll bar/cage). I've seen a couple build threads with those bars added, and I had the scrap that fit perfectly, so why not?
  4. These are just some follow up pics. I've sprayed primer on everything so far. I'm pretty happy with the way the rear hatch corners came out. Too bad they are probably going to get covered up by a BRE type spoiler Also, two bonus pictures! The autopower roll bar kit came in today. I'll get that mocked up soon, welded in, and then hopefully start working on the new seat mounts. I went with Sparco R100's for both the look and the price. I've read about some possible fitment issues with those seats in the 280 chassis, so I put the LS1 and T56 back in the car for now so there's no questions about cutting into the transmission tunnel.
  5. I've done stuff, but haven't posted in a while. This is the finished driver side dogleg. I was able to get the contour fairly close by eyeballing it. Considering this will be sorta kinda on the bottom, I'm thinking it's "good enough" for my amateur attempt Spraying primer on it helped give me a better idea of how close it seems to be.
  6. That piece was complicated. It has two curves, a slope, and 3-4 angles. I tried to make that as a single bent piece, but ended up making this long rectangle that became too strong to manipulate . I ended up making that piece as 2-3 individual parts and welding them a piece at a time onto the car. The pictures are: 1) Top most piece cut out 2) Bottom piece cut out 3) Bottom piece replaced with slope running down (I assume for water run off) 4) Top piece remade with several bends, and cutouts near the fender side so I could bend it to the S shape. After looking at the pictures again, I think I made the top piece as two separate pieces, and welded the S shaped piece onto the multi-bend/flat piece. I hope that makes sense. I don't have stretcher/shrinkers or an english wheel, so I worked within my limits. 5) Everything welded in place. I also left a small opening at the bottom of the sloped piece, because the factory had that too (Again, I assume for water runoff). EDIT - I added two more pictures. Both after I had smoothed the welds and sprayed self etching primer on it. It's not the prettiest piece, but it will be entirely covered by the fender so I wasn't too worried about it. I still have to drill holes and weld nuts in two spots to mount the fender.
  7. Absolutely! I followed the directions I found here: http://imgur.com/a/2X4n2. Instead of adding 11" of new material I went with 12". It was a pretty easy modification, you just have to be sure that both stands are level to each other once it's done. I added the brake rotors for counter-weight later on, because the bumper mounting points on the stand make it top heavy since it's not vertically mounted 50/50%. I could always rotate the car by myself, but with the counter weight added I can do it much easier/safer now. As you can see in the pics, i'm using the factory bumper shock mounts. So far I've not had any trouble with this setup and personally feel that it is safe.
  8. I'm eventually going to buy this kit, https://technotoytuning.com/nissan/280z/complete-r200-r230-rear-end-conversion-z-car, and I can bolt in the Q45 diff and brakes. As part of the kit I send the Q45 axles to T3 for reworking/rebuilding them. The Q45 R200 is a VLSD and uses the same size axles from a Z32TT, so pretty stout.
  9. Oh, and I almost forgot! I pulled the rear subframe out of a 1996 Q45 for the brakes, axles, and differential. A couple hours of work and $150 later, I'd say this was a great success.
  10. This is the driver's side rear quarter panel/dog leg. It was in much worse shape than the other side. I took a step-by-step picture of this along the way. I had to keep cutting as the rust went all the way to the internal rocker panel. I haven't finished this piece yet, the last picture is how it sits right now.
  11. This is the passenger side rear quarter panel/dog leg. After cutting out the outer body panel, the underside wasn't bad at all. I patched the body panel then sprayed Eastwood Internal Frame paint liberally down inside that area. This patch will need surface filler added and smoothed out to match the contour. I don't really have any tools to make contoured pieces, and I figured something this small would probably be fine smoothed out.
  12. I think the hatch corners and tail light area is tentatively "done". I test fitted the brake lights to see how everything lines up, and I forgot just how much those lights cover up. It looks like everything fits just fine. I still have to drill the holes where the lights attach on the top lip. I also didn't take a final picture of the passenger side hatch corner for some reason, but it's all done too.
  13. Thanks for the compliments, but let me fill you in on a little secret.... Youtube! Almost everything you see is the first time I've ever done that particular thing. I have been buying tools along the way, and just researching whatever comes up. I also like to look at other rust pictures to get an idea of what i'm getting into before I start cutting.
  14. Driver side hatch corner done. This is my first "visible" exterior body panel repair. I did some research on how to do this, and I think it came out pretty good considering it's my first attempt. I tacked the piece in place, then planished it with a flapper disc, more stitch welds, more planishing, rinse, repeat. I sanded it in small batches, making sure to not heat the metal up with the grinder, and tried to take off the minimal amount. There's also a contour that slopes down from the hatch to the corner I had to take into account. When I made the top piece, I ended up cutting off the side since the compound bends would be hard to manage. I welded the inside/side piece corner on after and smoothed it down.
  15. Final pics for the driver side hatch lid/plate. It came out pretty good overall. There are a couple of pinholes to fix, and I'm not entirely pleased with how some of the smoothing of the welds came out. I may be too critical though, since a good bit of the upper portion is going to be covered with weather stripping and seam sealer. I am really happy about how the weather stripping lip came out though. That one was an interesting lesson in finding creative ways to hammer the shape into place.
  16. Hatch driver side corner rust. I'm going to break this down into multiple parts, since it's sort of related, but close by. Both corners on the car are rusted all the way through. I tried to cut out the minimum (which was still a lot), and also cut it out as square for ease of rebuilding.
  17. Rear hatch striker plate/lid rust. So this area was the most obvious rust spot when I purchased the car. The rust hole all the way through to the interior of the hatch. Part of it was so rusty I didn't really have a good reference on how to rebuild a couple of spots, so I half way just winged it, and used the other side as a guide. It's not finished yet but I'm close.
  18. Drive side rear window (between B and C pillars). This one ended up being a bit worse than I expected. There were 3 layers total, and I was able to clean up the bottom layer without needing to replace it. The second layer, and final top layer were completely eaten up underneath. I also had to fix a couple of small holes around the curved/swooping part of the window.
  19. Passenger side A pillar rust. I saw a couple patches of rust stick out of some areas, but nothing had penetrated or made any obvious holes. Just to be sure, I started by cutting off the top of the A pillar support to take a peek. Lo and behold, there was some wicked surface rust in place. Since this side was in better shape than the driver side, I gently removed the piece so I could salvage it for a pattern. After it was all said and done, I ended up reusing the same piece I cut out after it was cleaned up. Once it was in place I sprayed inner frame paint up the A pillar, then flipped the car upside down and did it again so it would run down towards the roof. Edit - I wanted to say, on one of the pics there's a bunch of black dots. I put those in place to identify the spot welds I need to cut out as I'm going along.
  20. Driver door rust down to the rocker panel. This looks like rust that set in under the weather stripping. Fortunately it didn't extend too far and was a fairly flat and simple piece to put back in. That curve at the bottom of the door is formed perfectly around a 4.5" grinder disk I think I posted before pics a few posts back.
  21. Next up, A frame pillar rust. There was a couple of small pin holes and some surface rust visible. I started removing the top most piece in small pieces, to see where I could stop cutting, and ended up removing the entire piece. I thought the entire A pillar section was rotted out. Fortunately, after a heavy wire wheel session, it was all surface rust and actually not that bad. I fut out a piece large enough to inspect inside and then fixed the small pin holes. After I remade the top plate portion and welded it down. Next up is the rust down the inside of the door frame.
  22. Got the bead roller up and going, and out of the box it wasn't very good with 18 gauge sheet. I had previously read about the cons of it and what others did to fix it, so I modeled some of the improvements. The first pic is the roller, second pic is where I welded a bolt on top of the tensioner bolt (easier than a ratchet over and over), third pic is the reinforcements I added to the frame, and the bolt I added to the adjustment on the back. I tested out a couple of the dies with some scrap metal then tried my hand at the real piece. The 4th pic is the comparison of the factory piece vs. my piece, and if I may say so it came out pretty good! Next few pics are test fitting the piece, and then everything cleaned up and primered.
  23. Driver side under cowling pics. This is where I'm at right now. I ended up buying a bead roller last night (finally... wish I had one since the beginning! ) to finish up some of the contoured pieces. The inside area of the under cowling, where water runs into, has a lot of heavy surface rust. I can't find any areas that are completely rusted through (silver lining?). My plan is to just clean it up as best as I can and paint it with a rust converter/encapsulation paint, and really try to get all of the nooks and crannies. If anyone has an opinion on what to use I'm all ears, as I have yet to buy the paint. POR15 seems like a good option but I understand it has some potentially heavy health risks and can be quite nasty to apply. Eastwood sells some products in spray cans that would probably work, and some of those have remote hoses you can attach (like their interior chassis spray which I've already purchased).
  24. Next up, and kind of an area I've been dreading is the under cowling support. Again, the more I hit it with a wire wheel the more that showed up. That's probably a good thing though, better to find it then miss something. I will come back later and add nuts to the areas that were broken off here. I'm thinking nutserts will probably be good and easy to put in once I line everything back up.
  25. This is under the top fender area on the driver side. The more I wire wheeled it, the more holes popped up. I cut it out in stages so I would have some templates/reference to go by. There was rust underneath as well which was eliminated. I ground down the welds (since it seems like water can run off in this area) and primered this as well, but didn't get an after picture for some reason.
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