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My pretty long weekend has come to an end and I’m pleased to say that I accomplished a lot in those four days. I started off with finishing the installation of the interieur. Because of the Apex Engineered rear strut brace I had to make some modification to the floor board, carpet and strut covers. This took a bid more time then I had hoped but I managed to finish the interieur within a day. Me and my girlfriend are still slowly working on the seats and the door card but we will probably end up installing those last. Next came (for me) one of the more exiting parts, starting work on the rear end! So it was time to put down my QuickJack’s and take the wheels off….. Never mind, the previous owner installed locking wheel nuts on all four corners and all four lugs at that! So a trip to the parts store for a lug nut removal socket and some angle grinder lathe action later (and about 3 hours) the wheels where finally off. If you told me the rear end was still factory fresh then I would have believed you. All the bolts where incredibly stuck and most of them where cross threaded (thanks previous mechanic). Not to mention all the rubber bushings where pretty worn out. Luckly with some heat, penetrating oil and a hammer all of the bolts came out. The threads there even still usable, lucky me! Before the reinstallation I did retape all the threads and cleaned up all the nuts and bolts. Before reinstalling everything I took my time to replace the differential gasket and change the differential oil for some new Motul 75W90. I also replaced the mustache bar bushings for polyurethane bushings. Removing the old bushings went pretty smoothly with a saw, some fire and a bit of patience. The only problem I had was during reinstallation of the mustache bar. The only way it would fit back in was by rotating the bar 180 degrees, may explain the difficulty removing the bar in the first place. I don’t know if this is the correct orientation but it wouldn’t fit any other way and I can find many pictures online of the bar in both orientations. I decided to leave the bar as is and finish up by finally installing the Apex rear control arms. Man it feels good to finally make some upgrades, the car feels more and more my own. The refresh of the rear end took a bit more time then I initially thought (two days) so before starting on the front, knowing I couldn’t finish it this weekend, I decided to take on some smaller jobs first. The bodywork on the car is a bit of a slopy mess with some signs of surface rust all along the lower edges of the rear of the car together with fading powder coating / paint on the fuel tank. It may be a bit unorthodox but seeing as I have a rust converter spray / paint that’s pretty close in color to the car I just took a sander to the edges and sand away the rust and knock down the body filler on the bottum edge. I also sanded smooth the fuel tank and used the last bit of remaining texture spray to hide the imperfections on the fuel tank. And even if I say so myself I’m pretty pleased with the result, at least the rear of the car is now less of an eyesore. During all the work on the underside of the car I noticed a small oil leak coming from the speedometer pinion gear. A quick search online showed it had an o ring sealing the pinon gear so I quickly popped it partially out and replaced the o ring inside. Another small job of the list! As I still had a bit of time left in the day I tried my luck at removing at least the front control arms. And I don’t know what magic was used but this was the easiest disassembly ever! A little spray of penetrating oil and a quick tuck on the wrench and out came the bolts by hand. Even the front ball joint and tie rods came right out! All in all it was a very productive weekend. I just placed an order for some small stuff like a few new rubbers, normal lug nuts and two new horns (mine have underseal in them) and will be continuing my refresh of the front suspension next weekend. That will be a bit more tricky as I need to replace the oil pan gasket and the front crossmember. Also I know you guys probably find my work space pretty interesting so enjoy!

I remember when you were selling your car (I think everyone was saying "Don't do it!"). Welcome back, and thanks for keeping your webpage going....I always enjoy perusing other's sites; and usually get some good ideas for my own projects. Cheers!

thanks for the photos and description. It may just be the factory had more variation than we'd expect from modern cars but the 70s where a rough time for the automotive quality so its possible. I do also understand that I am mixing two different brands on to a 50+ year old car. With the T3 drop downs being billet they do not have any forward or backwards motion so the width of the arms need to be pretty spot on.

I finally got around to refurbishing the rear end and installing the Apex rear control arms. I checked my control arms and they too measured in at 15,5” inches. But the funny thing is is that they where the same length as the original control arms!! Anyway the install went smoothly except for the fact that I had to rotate the mustache bar 180 degrees as I couldn’t for the life of me install it another way with the new bushings. That said the bar was incredibly difficult to remove in the first place. P.S. the T3 spindles do indeed appear to be shorter than OEM so adding the extra spacer seams like a good choice.

05-17-2026 ATLAS Z UPDATE: Short day in the garage, I went ahead and pulled the pedal and swapped in the correct one that had dried overnight from painting. I made sure to lube the bushing end with white grease and installed. it took a few tries, but I was able to make the push rod just the right length. Then I went ahead and wire wheeled up the clutch pedal, got it all cleaned up and painted it. I then took some time and got the bracket I made for the throttle by wire gas pedal for my engine/ECU setup from GM installed. I found that I had to cut the pedal shaft and drill it so that I can custom fab up a pedal rod that will clear everything and work right. After I made the mods to the pedal assy, I painted it and then isntalled it. A bit of work left to do in this area now, but got to a real good stopping point. PICS.

It was messy, but axles are put back together. Overall pretty easy with the correct parts, probably spent more time cleaning up all the grease 😂.

They did send me another set of control arms which was nice of them but they are also a bit short. I did make some modifications to make them work. the kit is supposed to use 8 washers per side but i needed more to align the toe adjuster up, I do have T3 spindles so that may be part of the variation I was seeing. So I machined some spacers because stacking 15 washers was not my favorite design. The spacers tightly fits over the spindle and then takes up about an inch of space and allows 5 washers for "adjustment" The guy from apex did called me and we chatted for a bit about some other design concerns I have. Which was great and he took it well. Apparently they just aren't good at measuring things. They said they are going to try and make me a shorter set of front control arms aswell because the front setup at its absolute max shortest setting is still .375" wider than the stock assembly which doesn't allow me to use any of the roll center or control arm adjustments with my wheel and tire combo. I was hoping to correct geometry with everything being adjustable but that's not the case since the crossmember mounting points are wider than the factory one so I had to max everything out to its shortest point to even fit. With that said I have been plugging away at stuff, brake lines are ran, rear suspension is in, engine is assembled. adapter kit for the trans is machined, body panels are getting put on. started on the interior, everything takes so long. painting brackets and hardware and aligning everything but i am very happy with how its coming out. I was told the car came with a 240sx diff, its actually a j30 diff so it has a 3.91 gear ratio. That may be a slight advantage so not to mad. Anyway, after all this reading. enjoy some photos.

05-16-2026 ATLAS Z UPDATE: good work day got quite a bit done. I started with cutting out the center of the tire cover panel portion of my Skillard rear floor, and then did the same with the area for my Snow Performance Water Methanol Stage 1 Braided kit. I used some shelf brackets I got off of Amazon, and bolted the tank to them and then bolted the tank to the rear floor with the spigot and hose attached. Then I worked on my dual catch can setup. I used some 16 ga. steel and lined out a good size for both of them, and then drilled the holes for mounting them, and painted it in body color and mounted the catch cans up. I will mount it later inn the future, and moved on to pulling the brake pedal, which i mistakenly mounted as the clutch pedal....so while out I moved the hole for the brake cylinder rod up 1 inch for more leverage, since I eliminated the brake booster, and then wire wheeled it up and painted it. Last for the day was the exhaust. I was able to cut a piece that made the bottom pipe a straight and level cut to the floor, then cut the 90 down and did the measuring and cuts so now it can be welded and polished. Oh, I also cut a piece out of scrap pipe, drilled a hole in it and bent it wo where I wanted it and it will be welded on for a hanger to help support the pipe down low. PICS:

Might be a month or so before I get to it, but I’ll post updates. Figured I’m moving all the guts to the carbon fiber doors, why not see if the auto stuff will work. Played with one of the axles last night, fitment seemed good and went together really quick when they are manufactured correctly 😅.

Part 12- The Rear Suspension is being finished, The Rear Major Structure was fabricated and tied into the existing frame and roll cage. The installation of the Rear Air Bag Suspension will complete this effort. This project still has to fit the Mercedes Engie and Transmission into the car, do the electrical wiring, install fuel tank, complete front steering and suspension and do the bodywork and paint. All these things done in less than 4 months to make the Sema Show.

interested in the power window kit, my cage makes my window crank a bit of a challenge so i was considering a window kit aswell.

05-13-2026 ATLAS Z UPGRADE: I picked up my intercooler piping from the fab shop and dropped off at J&S Polishing to be all done up except the exhaust.....I have to finish the other half of it. The welds really look nice. My Braille Battery arrived to go with the Skillard battery hold down bracket. I went ahead and mounted the battery and the disconnect switch behind the passenger seat. I took the time to paint the areas in the foot well behind the seat, and painted the sides of the passenger seat and began putting things together for good. Pretty good for just a 3-4 hour break in the garage. PICS:

New axle shafts came in today, woohoo. Now that’s how the snap ring is supposed to sit. Hopefully I can put them together this weekend. Also got some other goodies, push to start electronic locks and window kit.

Me three!

I would be down for that!

What's the word Z heads!? When is the next run of apparel going out? my Fat A outgrew my OG shirt and hoodie and would like to order some HybridZ goodies 😁

Great progress! The car's underside, as a whole, looks really good. 👍👍 Sorry I don't recognize that little L-shaped bracket -- it may be custom, from a previous owner.

It’s been a long week where in a lot happened, including me getting engaged to my beautiful girlfriend last week! But personal stuff aside we are here for the Z. The body shop couldn’t wait any longer and with my permission they ended up modifying the passenger side frame rail to fit. All in all they did a great job and the end product looked great and above all was very strong. As an added bonus they even gave the frame rails a new coat of underbody spray and drilled two holes in each rail to coat the inside with wax and prevent condensation buildup. This meant I could finally pick the car up last Friday after being over 4 weeks stuck in the shop. By coincidence I was free from work that day so I even got to start the reassembly of the interior starting with the dashboard. And I also quickly strayed the Apex fender braces silver to match the rest of the car. I finished reassembling the dashboard during which I had a little bracket left over. I have studied every possible parts diagram and video but I can’t seen to find where this bracket came from. It was stashed together with all the dashboard parts and bolts but unfortunately I wasn’t smart enough to take pictures of the disassembly. Does anybody know where this little bracket belongs? Anyway I decided to continue the reassembly of the dashboard and reinstall the dashboard into the car. This went rather smoothly even though installing the dashboard all by yourself is a bit of a pain. I immediately tested all the electrical components to see if all the light (which I replaced with LED’s) and gauges still worked. Everything fortunately worked except the tachometer backlight which turned out to just be a reversed polarity, which isn’t an issue for halogen bulbs but is for LED’s. This was easy enough to fix by switching two pins inside the tachometer connector. I’m now at a point where the dashboard is complete and the carpet is mainly in. Because of a national holiday I will have a four day weekend starting this Thursday. This means I can finish the interior of the car and start installing the Apex front and rear control arms, steering knuckles and front crossmember. I really hope these don’t contain manufacturing faults or else they own me a really big apology.

05-11-2026 ATLAS Z UPDATE. So I had a little time tonight before the sun set so I went out and taped the edges of the carboard I cut out in the pattern of the real cover (with the center cut out larger than the hole needed) and then cut cardboard into pieces and pushed it up to the fuel cell and taped them down all the way around. Then, by lifting carefully I was able to remove the whole thing, and....after putting blue tape on the aluminum cover, I used a Sharpie and drew the outline. Now I just have to cut it out and clean file/touch up here and there and it should drop right on!

Flatout got a set of control arms that were made too narrow and don't fit. Apex seems to have been sending things very slowly lately and then having a low rate of good parts when they do send them.

I've noticed that refreshing the page when it hangs seems to help. I can go down the main page and open new tabs with all the threads with updates, and some will load right away while others won't. I refresh the ones that don't load, and then they seem to come up. It isn't a 100% success rate because sometimes they fail to load again, but it's almost like some queries get lost and sending them again kicks the server into gear.

Most of the Apex kit has been good, a few minor fitment issues on some parts and that front bracket to attach the subframe with the hidden carriage bolts was a PIA to get in. Getting these axles has been a mess. I ordered the rear kit 8 months ago and still waiting on parts. Luckily I’ve got lots of other things in my build to work on, but if I didn’t I’d be really upset.

05-09-2026 ATLAS Z UPDATE: I finished installing the Apex Engineered rear strut bar and then went about cutting the floor pieces from my skilard floor and got it to fit all back together. Then I installed my rear license plate light and got everything all wired in at the rear of the car, and finished running the fuel cell breather hose down and cleaned the whole area up. Then I started on the venter of the console. I used some thin gauge aluminum plate....making templates out of cereal box cardboard and then cutting the aluminum to fit. Then I drilled holes and mounted the 2 pieces for today, masked it off and painted it in matching Rustoleum glossy black hammertone....matching the dashboard. I took some cardboard I had left over and made 2 templates of the rear cover plate, and then cut the center out of the first one, so I can begin the process of taping in pieces to get the hole cut out just right, then I can cover the aluminum skillard cover with blue tape and draw out the pattern and cut it out. I am also going to be installing the Snow Performance Stage 1 braided water ethanol 3 quart tank back there, but I haven't decided on the spot I want yet. All teh wiring is now ran up and down to the floor behind the passenger seat. PICS:

engine looks great. Really loosing confidence in APEX parts.

Apex said that batch with the new vendor had the groove to short, they are sending some new ones. Glad it wasn’t me, was racking my brain trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. Go the rockers and intake on today, engine is getting close to done.