My plan is to make a dedicated track car. I spent some time making by build list before I bought the car, and the more I dug in the more I wanted to do, and the more the build costs were going up. My timeframe is a realistic 1-2 years, so at least I can spread out the costs of parts over time. I'm mechanically inclined and did everything on my 370Z myself, but I'll be tackling a lot more on this build and will be learning a lot as I go. I've got my Dad helping too, so this will be a fun project together.

So this is what I have, 1972 Datsun 240Z that has already been modified for the track somewhat. It has a full rollcage, fuel cell and a Ford carbureted 302 motor. The car runs, but the brakes seem shot and the only gauge that works is the tachometer. Lots of wiring inside, and for the motor are pretty shotty, so she needs a lot of TLC. Below are my plans so far, we'll see how far down the rabbit hole I go.

Purchased or Ordered So Far

Apex Track Attack Front Suspension Kit

Ztrix IMSA body kit with fender vents, custom front bumper and origin dash

ZPowerSteering Electric Steering Kit

Fuel Lines, filters and Pressure Regulator for a fuel return system

Planning to Order Soon (Black Friday Deals)

Big Brake Kit - Possibly 6 piston front and 4 piston rear

Holley Sniper 2 EFI kit

Holley EFI 12.3" Digital Guage and various sensors

Heads and Cams

Rest of Build

Apex Track Attack Rear

Wavetrac LSD

Rear Wing

Front Splitter

Wheels and Tires

I bought the car last week at auction for the decent price of €20.500,- kind of on a whim as this has been my dream car ever since I first learned of there existence (thanks Wangan Midnight and the Devil Z, I know its cliché). Yes €20k is a lot of money but a mid-condition one sells for over €32k here in Europe nowadays.

(You can see which side I tied up and which side my dad tied up 😂)

What drew me to this car was the paint (absolutely not perfect and needs a repaint at some point but looks good enough for now), the goodies like new wheels and tires, new wooden steering wheel, factory 5 speed gearbox, R200 diff and the claim that the engine was rebuild 10 years ago. Although when picking up the car it turned out there was no documentation what so ever.

The car runs and drives and is in fairly decent condition but currently has no valid inspection (called APK in the Netherlands) as the previous owner stats it’s because of the car running rich. Of course it has a cracked dashboard, some small surface rust forming and is missing bolts all over the car but these are all thing that can be fixed over time.

For now my main goal is the fix some little stuff and get her on the road so I can start to enjoy the car. So naturally I placed the car on my Quick Jack lift and ordered a bunch of parts from Z-Services EU in France.

There are a few thing I like to address before taking it in for inspection. The hood doesn’t open as the cable brackets are missing, the door hinges need rebuilding as the doors won’t close properly, some general maintenance and fixing some sweating oil seals around the car.

    It's been well over 10 years since I last participated in this community. I'm excited to share that I still have both of my 240s and have recently started working on them again. In the past, I faced some obstacles due to limitations in my home garage and other life commitments like family, job, and finances. Thankfully, I stored the cars instead of selling them, knowing that one day I would return to them. It would have been disappointing to lose them.

    A few years ago, I left my previous industry after 30 years and ventured into my own business, but it wasn't as enjoyable as I had hoped. Dealing with the day-to-day operations and working alone didn't suit me well. Fortunately, I found a great position in the Aerospace industry with a company that I enjoy working for. This new job allows me more personal time for my hobbies. I was able to keep my shop and equipment from my business venture, transforming it into an amazing man cave, fully equipped for building custom cars and motorcycles.

     Around six months ago, I started working on my cars again, with the goal of getting them on the road within a few years. Both cars are 1972 240s, one being my old autocross/track day car with its original Safari white paint that I've owned for 20 years. The other one, which I bought back in 1984 when I was 15 years old, has been stripped down to the shell and will be converted to a turbo configuration. Both cars have solid shells, with the turbo car in particularly great condition considering its garage storage and origins from Atlanta. The NA car has some minor rust starting on the lower doglegs, which I plan to replace and repaint from the lower body line down, while preserving the original paint and its nice patina.

I thought it would be fun again to document and share my progress on both cars with the community, as well as seek suggestions and ideas from all of you. It's been a while since I've been involved, so I'm sure a lot has changed over the years. I appreciate any help and guidance you can offer.

Thank you all for your support.

monZter

Has anyone been able to use an automatic transmission on there 240 1jz build, and if so how did you make the connection with the wiring harness? I was hoping to get a complete wiring harness but can't find a supplier who makes them for automatic transmissions.

I searched far and wide in the north east, USA looking for a quality candidate. Unfortunately rust made that a challenging feat. Randomly a friend of a friend posted a 1jz for sale and my friend had a suspicion that it meant he was giving up on the 280z he had been trying to build for 10 years. I reached out. showed "interest" in the engine. showed up and talked him into selling the whole deal. 

The chassis has some really "questionable" work done but overall the chassis is a super low mileage fairly clean car that i wont feel bad modifying and making a track oriented build. 

The deal ended up being a package deal with:

1jz-gte with 350z trans

a pile of T3 suspension parts 

R200 short nose conversion

fortune auto coilovers

300zx front and rear brakes 

Universal wiring harness

bunch of misc parts. 

wheels not included, I planned on going 5 lug so they where not use to me. 

2006-2008 Honda k24a2 2.4L vtec

Cd009 Nissan 370z transmission 

Efr8474 twinscroll turbo 

Haltech elite 1500 Ecu.

This is my first attempt to do a build log. 

My first project car is a 1973 Datsun 240Z. Like many cars, it was mostly stock with a lot of rust when I bought it around 5 years ago. I taught myself to weld and did all the rust repair. I replaced floorboards, frame rails, and many small patches in the fender wells. Then, I rebuilt the braking system and replaced numerous broken or rusted-out parts. Next, I re-gasketed the engine, drained the fuel tank, and cleaned the fuel system. I took the car down to bare metal and tried a DIY paint job. After that, I drove the car for about 3,000 miles around town and on a couple of road trips. I had my fair share of trouble. I had to replace a fuel pump, the alternator only puts out about 12.5 volts, and the wiring harness is starting to show its age, and the previous owners that created a rat's nest. 

Recently, I purchased another project car that came with a lot of parts and swapped them on. I added TTT coilovers all the way around, Arizona Z Car lower control arms front and rear, Arizona Z Car tie rods, upgraded front sway bar, new front valance, fender flares, and trimmed fenders for clearance, Watanabe wheels, and Toyo R888s (215 front and 235 rear.) I also cleaned up the interior a lot with new door cards and interior trim pieces. Recently, I replaced the billet diff mount with a new polyurethane one, fixed a lot of my early welding, did a full engine service, got the door handles working promptly, and modified the exhaust because it hung about four inches too low. After this, I put about another 2,000 miles on the car. All this work has the car in pretty good condition, but there are still a few things left to have a true daily driver quality car: 

1.) Fix the exhaust. I got it tucked up nicely, but between my poor welding and previous owners, there are several leaks, and it sounds terrible. 

2.) Rewire the car. I have the brake, reverse, and running lights working. However, I have never been able to get the turn signals to work, and the gauges work very seldomly. I have purchased a 21-circuit harness from EZ Wiring and will rewire the whole car in the next month or two. https://www.ezwiring.com/product-page/ez-wiring-21-standard-wiring-harness

3.) New gauges. EZ Wiring sells new gauage kits. I'm not sure if the 50-year-old gauges are broken or if the wiring harness is bad. So, I think I'm just going to replace the gauges with a set I know will work with the new harness. https://www.ezwiring.com/product-page/shark-mechanical-gauges

4.) Re-attach the skid plate. I had cut the plate off because the bolts were rusted and stuck in the car. I fixed the plate by welding some washers on the bolt holes, but I need to drill out all the old bolts and tap for new ones. I don't have the car lowered that much, so I'm not too concerned about it, but it would be a nice piece of mind. 

5.) Alternator. Ever since I have owned the car, the alternator has not worked properly. Recently, I had the alternator rebuilt with quality parts and bench tested. I know it works, but the car is only putting out 12.5 volts when running. I have played with the wiring and got the alternator to put out 14 volts, but then you can smell the wires burning from too much juice. Like I said, there is a rat's nest from the previous owners. I am at least the fourth owner, but I don't have a full history of the car. I have an FSM, but the wiring guide no longer matches because of all the other owner's work. This is why I plan to replace the whole harness. I'm hoping the new harness with better relays with fix my charging issue. 

6.) Alignment. After I put the new suspension on, I did a garage alignment, and it is pretty good, but I would like a professional to take a look. I have that scheduled for next week. 

7.) New Dashboard. My current dashboard is pretty rough. It has several cracks and looks pretty bad. I have a newer, crackless dashboard. When I rewire the car, I'm hoping to swap the new one in and put some sound deadening behind the dash while I'm at it. 

I'll post my progress if anyone is interested, and I'm sure I will have a couple of questions. I know the last finishing touches take the most amount of time. I'll also answer any questions anyone has, but I'll warn you that I'm a hobbyist. My full-time job is as a lawyer, and I'm by no means the best mechanic in the world. My welding has also gotten a lot better, but it surely isn't that good. 

Thanks!

So here's the car as it sits now:

(I personally love the overflow tank, it looks like a loose tooth to me. It's getting moved soon)

And here's the engine currently:

I've been slowly working on removing unused wires lying around, making things a bit neater, grinding off brackets that aren't being used, etc. When I got the car it had the earlier N47 intake manifold and not the stock intake J pipe. Instead it had several pieces of pipe hacked together with multiple couplers... so I installed the turbo, intake, and pipe off of my spare L28ET engine. I'm going to change that valve cover soon...

Notice anything missing in those pics though? Here it is:

I was working on cleaning up the wiring one day, and I'd pulled the battery out in order to gain some room to work on it. While it was out I realized I had plenty of cable length to just put the battery in the passenger foot well... So I did it. It moved approx. 20lbs down by more than 12 inches, and inboard a good 6 inches. Win win win right? No worries, I'm going to move it to the back and get it sealed up sometime this summer, probably when I make my dash:

That's some spare stainless my dad had lying around, so I stole it and brought it to my place. I'm not sure if it's enough, and if I've got the dough I'll just order some ali instead.

Also in the near future I'm going to get around to installing my rust free doors:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b346/Gollumandsmeagol/280Z-Helen/DSCI0699.jpg

Which have now been painted the future color of my car - semigloss black w/clear. Should cost me about $75 in rattle can supplies. I might be driving around with some nice doors before I get the rest of the car painted at my current rate....

I really want to get my dash started soon though, because this wiring has been a nightmare, leading to patch work such as this:

I just keep telling myself it's temporary.

I also need to get all this damned dynomat crap off the car. I don't care about noise that much, and it's been a pita getting it off. It's leaving it's goo behind:

So that's that for my first post. The car is my daily driver when the weather is good, and when I'm driving it (instead of the 280ZX) I tend to work on it a lot more, so this summer should bring lots of improvements. The car isn't forever going to be my daily driver. Eventually it's just going to be a fun car that I'll be building to take to HPDE events once I've got the money to pursue racing as a serious hobby, not just working on potential cars... This isn't a SCCA racer, an autox car, just a fun car. I don't want more than 250 wheel HP with this engine, and if I do ever want more I've been toying with the idea of the LSx engines since they do everything so stinkin' well.

But first things first. I need tires BAD. Then I need to make the wiring safe. Then I need to dump some money into good struts, springs, and bushings everywhere. Then I can start talking about power.

Luckily the only rust I'm seeing is the drivers door.  But it has a dent in the rear quarter, drivers side, around the taillight area.  

The car was sold as running, but I wouldn't say that is entirely true lol.  There is a fuel delivery issue that I'm trying to track down.  It will run if I manually fill the bowls, but that's it.  Once the holiday season slows down, I'll throw an electric pump at it and see what that does.

There are all kinds of vacuum lines broken, plugged, and dangling everywhere.  So I'll need to track those down and may need some help identifying what goes where.  There are also a few sensors that have broken wires coming out of them, but if the engine fires up without them, I'm assuming they aren't critical.

The interior is pretty crusty.  Dashboard has more cracks than Keith Richards.  Wires hanging everywhere.  But hey, the seats are in decent shape, except they are in permanent Tupac-mode and recline as soon as you sit in them.  

It has brand new rubber lines to all 4 brakes and the clutch.  New master cylinder for brakes and clutch, and new slave for the clutch as well.  

My plans are to get this thing running and driving safely.  Brakes, lights, fuel delivery issue first.

Then it's gonna be tackling the interior, POR15 all over the place, etc...

Because this isn't a numbers matching car, it opens a lot of options for a powerplant in the future.  I'll take the L28 as far as I can, but if I get bored, I won't feel as bad throwing an LS in here.

can achieve 37mpg, reliable and rather stock exterior.

S30 body aint designed for low end torque and i can feel something going on, yea sure its best to bring whole body apart and do an rollgage.

So strut bars to front and back and lets talk about that rear suspension, there might be something which could to better

engine bay

i took shape from the hood so i can see clearences, there is some room.

I picked it up in primer with a rebuilt engine but not really knowing too much about it since all I had were photos and the owners word.  The previous owner used it for autocross. The entire interior was missing and it had a rats nest for wiring. I remember it had a switch to manually turn on the fans. It also had a full radiator support and driver side frame rail replacement from a donor Z. I got lucky that this was done really well, I have had no problems getting the car aligned over the years and it drives straight! 

I saved some money and got the car painted in black, the car was originally a yellow car. The painter actually welded in floor boards and frame rails and closed up the wheel wells from where they were cut for the ZG flares. The rear hatch had to get replaced since it had an inch of bondo over the key hole. Luckily, I was able to track a hatch from a 240Z in the junk yard (when is the last time you have seen that haha). I added sound deadner to the interior and then took the car to an upholstery shop to get the interior put it. I also added some nice gauges.

I was able to source some cheap Watanabe 16 inch wheels from yahoo auction Japan. They were different colors but I ended up paying around 900 usd after air shipping them spent another 300 getting them powder coated. I also picked up my Recaro seats from Japan. To this day I have no idea what car they came from but they are one of my favorite parts of the car. 

The SUs where swapped out for a triple Mikuni 44s. I drove with those and even had them tuned but they were too finnicky at altitude. During this time I got into flipping carbs for resale. 

I didn't want to deal with the Mikunis and decided to swap to fuel injection. I ended going Jenvey ITBs on Haltech. This setup actually worked great for about a year and even made it to the main page of my local Cars and Coffee.  Around that summer I started to develop some running problems where I was running too rich. On my way to the tuner the worst thing happened. The car caught fire. From what I could tell, the itbs backfired and caught the fuel line on fire. If anyone is running itbs on an L Series, I highly recommend an airbox. I got really lucky since a guy like 2 cars back behind me had a fire extinguisher and that the radiator hose blew and stopped the fire. 

I sent the car over to my tuner/builder and waited on my insurance adjuster to visit the car. I was able to get a full payout through Hagerty and that kickstarted the funds to get my Z back on the road again. I knew I was done with L series. I never really wanted to build something that close to race car since I mostly drive my Z on the streets and occasional canyons. I wanted to stick something Nissan that could remain relatively stock. Something I could start up and just drive.

In the past I almost swapped VQ35HR motor and have always had that build in the back on my mind but I noticed that the engines were almost the same price as the bigger brother VQ37.  So I went with a VQ37 out of an automatic AWD G37. The reason I chose that engine was to avoid 370z's had been driven hard and the auto engines were cheaper with less mileage. The only change to the block that I needed was a lower oil pan from a RWD VQ and its bolts.  I sourced a transmission directly from Nissan since at that time it was actually only about 500 dollars more compared to a used transmission. I looked recently and it seems like the transmission have doubled in price since 2021 when I bought mine. 

Here are the photos of when I got her back. We ended up putting some flake in the engine bay since I grew up loving lowriders. I also installed a GTR intake conversion. It ended up being a bit of a hassle since the custom fuel rail didn't clear the injectors. We had to extend the fuel ports on the fuel rail to make them taller so that it could clear. I added a catch can since the car is set to vent to atmosphere. I pulled the headers and stripped them and cerakoted them also. The custom hood didn't make it out of the fire so I went carbon fiber. 

Next I ended up getting the intakes extended to the front of the car to make it a true cold air intake. I recently took the Z engine harness apart and reloomed it and fixed one of my turn signals. Come to find out one of the wires was cut off. With the help of Dave Irwin, I was able to track down all of my missing grounds and also why both lights would blink at the same time (bad switch). I had an extra parts turn signal switch which I harvested and was able to get everything to work out.

I recently tackled getting my horn to work. I have never got it to work since my entire ownership. The guys at classiczcar forum really helped me trouble shoot it. Come to find out, my only horn didn't work and for some reason my steering rack wasn't grounded. This is pretty much where the car is now. I took her to a local car meet today and I am hoping to just get more seat time with her. 

If anyone has any questions about the car or the swap feel free to message me. 

1. Complete chassis restoration, rust removal, minor chassis strengthening

2. Stock VQ37VHR (using ZFever wiring harness and McKinney engine mounts)

3. CD009 6-speed transmission (using McKinney trans mounts)

4. Complete suspension overhaul with coilovers and TTT or Apex Engineered front and rear pieces (either a R200 or Ford 8.8)

5. Complete re-wire of the rest of the car (simplify the wire harness, Honda wiper and blower motor)

The past few weeks have been reserved for completely stripping the car, finding damage and rust, and getting it ready to get sandblasted before going to my body work guy. I decided to avoid doing any sort of write-ups or videos on the chassis stripping because for the most part this is a pretty easy to disassemble car, but if you've got a rusty Z I suggest having a good deal of your favorite beer nearby and be ready to snap at least 25% of the bolts on the outside of the body.  Interior removal was pretty smooth and can be done easily with simple tools and buddy to help with the dash and glass. GET A GOOD ORGANIZER BIN AND A TON OF SMALL BAGS TO KEEP TRACK OF BOLTS! One of the Z parts websites sells bolt kits, but having the originals well organized makes it easier if you plan on reusing your bolts and screws.

Here is my Z sitting in the garage before starting the work. As you can see I have a pretty basic workstation, but my buddy who owns the garage has the other wall lined with toolboxes and equipment. Got the VQ37VHR sitting on my engine stand there on the left (Only 25k miles, pulled running from a rear end totaled G37, pretty lucky find)

Old Engine Removed. At this moment I still have the engine for sale and will probably post it here soon. It's a running L28 with ZTherapy SU carbs connected to a 4-speed trans.

Some bad rust on the front main frame rails, both sides. My floor pans and their respective frame rails are also kinda garbage, so I got a new set of floor pans from Zedd Findings and I am about to order the Baddog Frame Rails and rear subframe connector soon.

Got the interior pretty much stripped down. Still need to remove glass, headliner, and steering column, then strip and remove the doors

Fenders off. Need to find a way to modify that cowl drain, who designed it that way????

I have meaning to start up this thread for long time.  In the past 10+ years I have learned quite a bit about building and racing early Z cars.  So I decided to take all my knowledge and build the "ultimate" racing Z.  But of course that is a relative term.  More precisely, an early Z that is built loosely to the IMSA GTU rules of 1978 and legal for vintage racing.   This actually allows quite a bit of modification, so my attempt is to apply lessons learned from 40 years of racing into a car than can compete with muscle cars from the late 60's.  Both HSR and SVRA group the GTU cars in with typical 60's early Trans Am V8 American monsters.  So handling and cornering speeds are critical because HP is a losing fight.  I have a pretty good idea where I want to be in terms of performance, so power to weight is priority #1.  I doubt a Z can ever be the dominate car in this class, but hopefully it can be competitive with the guys that are build to the rule book.  A 800Hp 180mph Duntov Corvette is just another animal all together.

With that in mind, I have become obsessed with weight.  The shell I started with weighed 500 lbs, and I took some more out of that.  I would love to come in at 1800 or 1900 lbs dry, but time will tell.  There is a 3L limit to this class, and I am confident I can get 300+HP to the wheels based on previous builds.  However, the engine is the last thing I will be working on.

I have a library of photos from what I have already completed and have a goal of finishing all this up in the next 12 months. I am starting out this post with pictures of the shell I started with.  It was built up by Chris Leone in Orlando does race car prep for a living and builds a pretty mean cage.  He was going to build a V8 based car and ran out of desire.  I had originally bought the wide body kit he had for this car and have since sold it and decided to go with an unusual kit I purchased from a dude in Tampa. Anyway, he offered it to me for a very reasonable price at a time when I did not have the money.  He also had it for sale on Hybrid forums.  Some kid in Daytona ended up buying it and drug it up there without really knowing what it would take to finish it.  Months later I saw the kid had it listed on Craigslist for the same price he paid.  I ended up buying it for more than I could have paid Chris earlier, but also got an engine and tranny thrown with the purchase.

It is actually a fairly early 70 240 and I will post the info when I can dig it up again.  I think most of its history is just rust.  Even the small amount of original car that is left has multiple patch panels welded in.  I guess it goes to show no matter how bad the rust is, you can still build up a race car. 

Needless to say, this car is not a project for the timid.  It needed practically everything but the cage.  But so far nothing has really thrown me off yet.  

For those reading, the intent of this car is not to build a show quality car, or a performance monster; just me trying to apply all the things I've learned and been reading about for the last 7 years of trolling around online and staring at build threads and S30 pictures. It's also a learning experience for me, since I bought it dirt cheap and it has some rust issues and all that jazz I'm not afraid to tear into stuff.

Pulled it home with my dad's tiny little Toyota pickup he uses as a daily to get to work about 3 minutes from home.

This is the first problem I have to address with the car. And probably the only reason I got the car for $300 (Some people lack both patience to do things right, and the resources to pay someone else to do it right)

The spare wheel well was cut out (very poorly) and a different tank was installed off some unknown car from a local junkyard. They didn't even bother to get one with a feeder line on the side, just went with what they got and left the fuel inlet hanging to the side. On the bright side, they did wire a nice Walbro fuel pump to it. Unfortunately that was jimmy-rigged too. The cables were attached after the fact and went straight to the battery and a switch in the cabin. The setup works for running the engine, but it's totally unusable. I'm not too bummed though, I'll probably be picking and buying the fuel tank from my brother-in-law's F-body Camaro. 

I removed the fuel pump switch and wired it to the stock connections. Worked perfectly and engine ran smooth. No idea why they didn't just do that the first time. Much easier. I removed all the old breather hoses from the mystery tank to clean things up, cut some of the excessively long fuel lines and started properly cutting the spare wheel area (on the bottom right of the pic you can see how much metal was left hanging down) so I could rig up the tank as it is while I work out other things in the engine until I get my hands on the Camaro tank and do a proper job. 

Pardon the long post that was catch-up/initial thoughts on the car. More to come from today's work in the next post.

Here are pics of the car in its current form:

The car clearly has had some cosmetic restoration work done to it during the course of it's existence, and some have expressed to me that it is "too nice" to do to it what I have in mind.  But it really isn't all that nice.  The paint job looks OK from 20 feet, but in reality it is a cheap respray with over spray on bumper rubber, glass rubber, and many other places.  Also, the engine is just....tired...and it feels like it is putting out about 80 RWHP.  And finally, it is an automatic....and I have trouble believing that first gen Zs were even sold with autos....so out of character for the car.  In a nutshell, I have no hesitation to strip it down and start over.

The plus...I cannot find any rust...anywhere.  I think the car spent it's life in the Mojave desert.

The plan (subject to evolution) is to make it into a pure track car that is still street legal (barely).

I will try to keep regular updates.  I have just started dismantling it. 

I have had this build over on Ratsun for the past few years, but think you guys would probably appreciate it more at this point. I was going to try and edit these more, but the original text gives you a good sense of what's going on in my head at the time.

But first, we have to go back! to the wet cold months of 2012, Enjoy!

I expanded my search and felt that a field trip was bound to happen to get a solid car.  I ended up talking with a nice older gentlman from Seattle (Kent) Washington that had an all original car that he had owned and maintained meticulously since 1990.  After talking for about a week, I decided that was a car worth purchasing.  I flew out to Seattle in June and took a chance at driving a 37 year old car on a 1,700 mile trip back to Minnesota.  

And so the journey begins....For those who are intrigued by pictures, my photobucket link is below:

http://s176.photobucket.com/user/StockCarMafia/library/LS2%20280Z?sort=3&page=1

I made it back with no issues.

The interior is in great shape with the typical fading of the black carpet.  The dash has no cracks and the driver seat has a small tear.  The body has been repainted but it was a quick spray with no bondo used.  It is really faded and flaking off in some spots.  

The only signs of rust on the car is one spot in the back hatch area, where I assumed water was sitting and then in the battery tray as well. 

After the long trip, it definitely needed a bath!

And so begins the epic journey to go from rough unloved 280Z to a resto-modded RB25 equipped super car.  I realize I’m not blazing any trails that haven’t been traversed so I will benefit from anyone’s input as this project progresses.  I’m starting with a ‘78 280Z and a series 2 RB25.  With the size of the project I’m sure I’ll be all over the place in the beginning until I can get a solid plan worked out.  My initial plan is to get the current L28 running so I can sell it and the 5-speed tranny as operational component.  Once I have the engine running I’ll pull the engine, all associated wiring and ECU and transmission to make room for the RB25.  I have already acquired the RB and started the process to convert the forward sump oil pan to a rear sump.  Once the rear sump conversion is complete I’ll drop her in to mock up mounts.  I know there are kits out there for this but I prefer to utilize factory RB mounts so I’ll mock up new engine stands for my subframe.  If possible, I’ll also look to move and modify the existing transmission tunnel/rear body mounted structure aft to permit a more symmetrical rear crossmember/mount.  Once the RB is mocked up in the body I will switch my focus to restoration of the body.  I plan to go with retro-spec Carbon Fiber front fenders, headlight buckets, hood, BRE style front spoiler, cowl, rear hatch and BRE style rear spoiler.  I will also retrofit 240z bumpers with no rubber or overrides.  

I have no illusion, this is a huge project but with support I hope to get through it.  When I purchased the 280 it appears to have been sitting for at least 25 years and it’s mostly unmolested.  It has some rust in the usually spots but is not a total rust bucket.  I believe I am starting with a base car that is worthy of this project.  I’ll post a couple pics and try to do regular updates but I travel a lot for work so I’m sure there will be times when updates are further apart.  For now here are some baseline photos.  I look forward to loads of input from experts here!

Last summer, I installed a set of coilovers/HTS dampers from Beta Motorsports, and a fresh 3.36 NISMO Comp. LSD center section, along with a rear disc brake conversion (280zx). A stock L28E and 5 speed was dropped in as well.

Last week, BRAAP offered me a scorching deal on a BMW S52 drivetrain... http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=150131

Why?... I've built/driven/campaigned a number of V8Z's. They're loads of fun. Fast, affordable, and effortless to maintain. However, the silkiness and refinement of the Z was lost in every case. I love the smoothness and aural qualities of the L6, but the L6 is so technologically challenged that it requires an incredible amount of money, time, and talent to build generous, street-able power. Some modern alternatives include the JZ and RB. Each has merit. So does the S52

Stock trim is 240HP, with a fat torque curve. 250-260HP is 'easy'. 300HP is not unreasonable with some effort. A street-friendly 9-10lbs/HP is looking feasible... N/A. And boosted results have been very respectable.

I've wanted to tell the story for a while.  I think it's worth telling.  It's been a monumental undertaking, considering we generally have one evening per week dedicated to working on it.

The project is ongoing and making good progress.  Petr and I both greatly appreciate having this opportunity to get together and make it happen.  I'm finally getting around to organizing photos, reliving the journey and telling the story.

And so the story begins...

My son (Petr) and I were talking about a project to do together.  My friend Larry has been building and racing Z cars for many years and his wild enthusiasm was infectious.  So we started casually searching for a car.  We were looking for a 240 but couldn't be happier about what we found, given all that we've since learned in the process.

I was looking on Craigslist and there she was, a '77 280Z in Reno. This was late October 2017 and I think the seller was asking $2000.  I forwarded the post to my son, who lives in Reno, to see what his reaction would be.  He drove over to the seller's house immediately and looked it over pretty carefully (or so it seemed) and called me up.  We talked about it and he offered $1500 with no title, and the seller accepted.  So we took a leap of faith and purchased our project car.  I rented a trailer and drove up the next day, loaded her up, and took her back to our shop in Gardnerville, NV.  It was apparently all original, with 93k miles and a sticker on the license plate from 1993. The seller had found it covered in dust in back of his friend's shop and similarly couldn't resist the temptation.  He was planning to get it running, but it ended up just sitting in his garage, undriveable.

There was a small box of parts in the back, with license plate from Alabama, with a sticker from '93.  We did a title search and 1993 was the last issued registration for the car. Alabama is known as the easy  place to get a replacement title, but the starter had a sticker from a motor rebuild shop, in Alabama and we discovered later that the EGR port on the intake manifold was disabled by packing it with mud that could only have been from Alabama!  At the time of the purchase, Nevada had made it the responsibility of the civil courts to award vehicle titles... oh boy. While not impenetrable, we were not looking forward to going through a court procedure for old Donna. Miraculously, two months later it was announced that, come July, it would once again be the responsibility of the Nevada DMV to award vehicle titles. As it should be! After a bit of back and forth with the Title Research Department we were awarded a bonded title.  And a good thing too as we had already stripped her down by that point (more on that later). Something tells me there is no way we would've found a car like this for $1500 if the seller had known he could've nabbed a title for it so easily only a few months later. Timing is everything!  The seller also knew things about the car that we had not yet discovered.

We weren't entirely sure how far we were going to go with it but have ended up on a fantastic journey, much much more to come.

Here she is, as we found her: