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Thanks for the replies and comments. Time is always an issue, however Im at the age now where my daughter is 26 years old and working full time. Been married 30 years so the wife is obviously understanding of my hobbies. Hopefully continuing to make progress regularily. Hoping more people come back to the forum and participate in the community. Here is a picture of me and my daughter when she was probably 2ish years old, same car Im working on now. I need to get her back in the shop for a new photo - Time flies

Been spending alot of time getting the chassis on the NA car cleaned up and ready for paint. Its a super clean almost a no rust car, so I want to strip it completly bare, metal prep it, straighten the floor pans which are really clean just slightly dented from wrong jack points. I started out by stripping everthing off and making digitized and CAD files of all the tar flooring. You can still buy it from Nissan. I have a laser cuttter so I will use it to cut all the replacements. It is an original paint car, so it was hard going in on it. Next I put it on my rotissary I built for the Turbo car and got to work on stripping all the factory undercoating. Using a heat gun, scraper and some mineral spirits did the trick but it took a long time. All super clean original metal under the car This is what it looked like under the front fenders BEFORE cleaning, so super happy and even under the cowl all original paint

Almost got it done. Such a pain in the as* I probably should have started over, from my old ecu to this ecu wiring.

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.

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.

Hello everyone. I have a Jan 1971 S30, purchased by my father new. The car was a garage kept, California daily driver. Every day it made a 10mile round trip to his work, in the windy road, wine country hills of central California. I learned to drive on this car back in the 1980's. My brother had it for a spell but after moving to Germany 15 years ago it fell into disrepair. It's back under my care because the Dr. is in. Cheers

Amen to that. Just donated, will try and create the time to re-engage my build thread and the forum en large. Thanks everyone for chiming in, glad to see there's still some fire left!!

I started my build thread on here for that same reason. Builds, conversation, and sharing the car culture passion. Unfortunately, it seems most of that is gone with most forums. I have a couple real niche cars so the forums are a few old heads that want to keep that alive but everybody just ends up on social media for the instant gratification or whatever. It would be nice to see a little more activity. I think its worth just a small comment when somebody makes the effort to post something. it makes a difference. A comment, a question, some feedback (keep it positive is possible) This forum has so much information imbedded into it which Im sure these social media people use when google brings them here but as soon as they get what they need, they are gone. not realizing that someday that action will lead to the information going away. The 240sx world lost Zilvia recently for this same reason and that really hurt. I'll keep posting until i can't.

I miss the old days of humble build threads, great comments and passion for building. All the FB and You Tube stuff seems like "hey look at how special I am, I can weld metal... ect" then people just talking shit how they suck and how much better they are. Just self-promotion for one’s self over passion for our cars and community. I think the Me/I generation is the problem mixed with ADD for anything longer than a sentence and complex thought. To ask for help is to say you dont know everything and today that is death. So yes I am an old guy now so look at me just like I used to look at my parents when I was young HA. Ill keep posting here, at least it is one thread that follows my project for anyone interested. I appreciate the comments, critisim, and help.

Another week has past and another weekend of work has been completed. Luckly the orders I placed where send out pretty fast so I got all the rubbers and bushings I was missing ready to head to work. I started off with finishing the work on the transmission. As the speedometer gear had been leaking, and I didn’t know how much fluid the transmission had lost (or was even serviced the last time), I decided to change the transmission fluid for some Redline MT-90 transmission oil. That was easier said then done as Redline MT-90 is pretty hard to find in Europe. But it appears I was in luck, one performance parts shop here in The Netherlands had a few cans in stock and send them out for me that same day! Even though the transmission mount and crossmember bushings where is decent shape I still decided to chang them out as a precaution. I used a OEM style rubber transmission mount for vibration reduction but polyurethane bushings in the crossmember for added stiffness. Next came the most exciting but also the scariest part. Replacing the front crossmember, engine mounts and oil pan gasket. I wanted to leave the crossmember for last and start by removing the oil pan. To do that and have easier access to the bolts I first removed the steering rack which I gave a quick clean and paint job while I was at it. I might have figured out why the oil pan was leaking in the first place, it turns out about halve the oil pan bolts where loose! Other than that the process was pretty straight forward. Removing the oil pan did give me a pretty interesting look into the engine which felt pretty weird so I quickly reinstalled the oil pan with new bolts. To remove the crossmember I had to find a way to support the engine in the meantime. For this I created my own, incredibly sketchy, engine support bar together with a jack under the crack pully. Even though it was incredibly sketchy it was surprisingly sturdy and stable. But still I hurried as fast and as careful as I could to remove the old crossmember and install the Apex Engineered crossmember. This went surprisingly smooth with the only difficult part being reinstalling the bolts into the new engine mounts. But with a bit of help of the jack and some patience I got them all in and everything safely secured again. Next came the most difficult part of fitting the Apex crossmember braces. The passenger side went without a problem but the drivers side not so much. There the crossmember brace didn’t fit as the car had aftermarket headers and signs of body damage to the left side of the car. The headers where interfering with the brace and the brace was sitting much more forward then the passenger side. This required some modification of the headers (with a hammer) and a few spare washers as spacers to fix. To modify the headers I had to take them off the car which I really hope I won’t have to do a second time as the bolts are really hard to reach. To finish off the weekend I got a call from the body shop telling me my doors and cowl where finished painting! So I immediately got in my car to pick them up and install them back on the car. The installation went pretty good but I didn’t get the doors to sit perfectly flush, the back always sticks out a bit. This may be because of the weather stripping which I assume to be cheap aftermarket. After the doors came the fenders and the rest of the bodywork. As I was missing a lot of bolts around the car I ordered a nut and bolt kit from ResurrectedClassics a while back. During the previous “restauration” (if you can even call that) they just left damaged bolts out or spot welded panels in place. As I absolutely hated that I took my time to retap all the holes or install rivet nuts wherever I could. I also replaced a lot of the bolts with nice plated bolts from the kit. All of this nearly has the car ready for one of the final inspections of it’s life (as they aren’t mandatory anymore after 50 years). I just have a small list of things left to do. - Reinstall the door cards - Reinstall the seats - Set a rough alignment (enough to get me to the shop) - Install the wheels - Install a new set of horns (existing ones have underbody coating in them) - Repaint and install the front grill - Install the new fender mirrors - Install the rear speakers (for now optional) - Replace the pre fuel pump fuel filter (for now optional) And of course clean the car!

I'll echo a couple good points in this thread. I came to this board in 2013 after a good run over on Ratsun, but getting deep enough into the Z specific stuff that I was getting more interested in here. Back the, Hybrid Z was already a place of "SEARCH" and "BAD GRAMMAR MEANS YOUR POST IS INVALID". Some very loud voices kept the general discourse to a minimum, even back then. I think generally, as the cars have gotten rarer and more expensive, a lot of the old guard who liked them for the chassis "cool and cheap" moved on. Facebook rose, and HybridZ has been relegated to a reference item. Lots of other thoughts, COVID, the death of Photobucket etc, but on and on and on. I will say, the forum as a model is not dead. I recently joined a Lotus board, and wow are they busy over there! My Tundra too has quite a bit of forum activity. I've said this in other threads of a similar ilk. Be the change you want to see. If you want more content here, post the content! Make it happen. And tell the youth about the resource that is here. There's quite a bit going on out there in the big wild world still.

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!

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 😅.

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.

APEX said they would have a set made up by friday but haven't heard from them. Added a photo showing the APEX control arm length issue. Other bushing is lined up and its about 1/2" short. Put the rest of the rear together so i could sit it on the ground with the wheels and tires. T3 r200 short nose kit and rear sway bar. Got my tires in so got them mounted and installed for some motivation. Since I am using 300zx rear drum ebrake. I decided to use a 240sx ebrake handle (since I have this combo in my 240sx). Modified the handle to fit in the stock Z location. Mounted the cable holder thru the floor. Made a couple small brackets to hold the cables in the correct spot. Adjusted and works great. Also added a couple photos of the brake setup.

I finally found some hours to start making the wiring not look like a rats nest. Instead of fuses and relays, I am using a small PDM. So that complicated things, I am also using a buss plug for 5v sensors and all ground wires.

When I installed my cam, I had the engine on a stand with heads off, and used a dial indicator to find top dead center as accurately as I could. Once I found TDC on the #1 cylinder, I made marks between the rear flange of the crankshaft and the back of the block. Later, when I went to install the harmonic damper, I verified that #1 was at TDC, and that the timing marks were properly aligned with the timing indicator. They aligned perfectly. I'm using a Romac Balancer on a Ford 5.0L Stroker. The factory balancers have a rubber ring between the hub and the outer ring where the timing marks are located. The rubber fails and then the outer ring slips relative to the center hub. After that the timing marks are arbitrarily located and no longer consistent. Long story short: Find and verify TDC, and make sure the balancer marks can't slip.

It's been a while. I moved from NC back to OH for work. My tools and vehicles have been locked up in a storage unit while we are in the process of buying a home. I took the car back to my parents' carport to try to get some work done. However, there were a lot of little things to do. There is a fuel smell on refills, exhaust fumes leak into the cabin, the carbs need tuning, and my shitty rust repair needs some work. Because there was so much to do, it made sense to me to pull the engine. Since I was pulling the engine, it made sense to me to just swap in an RB25. So I pulled the RB from the parts car, pulled the L24, and started fixing all my previous work. My welding has gotten a lot better, but it still has a long way to go. The thicker sway bar and improved suspension was tearing the frame rails apart where the sway bar attaches. So I drilled and tapped some thicker steel and 3/4 boxed the frame rails to try to prevent the same damage in the future. I scuffed up the engine bay, threw some primer at it, and painted it the same white as the rest of the car. I also pulled the dash, stripped the paint, put on some rust preventative paint, and added sound deadening. Next steps: I need to drop out the stock rear end and get an R-200 with an LSD in it. I have a new universal harness to go in it and new gauges in a crack-free dash. I need to figure out what brakes I want to upgrade to. I also need to figure out if I'm going to reuse or replace all the brake lines, fuel lines, and gas tank. I also need to chose what ECu I want to use. Right now, I'm leaning towards a Haltech Elite 1500. Finally, I need to rebuild the RB25 with the oiling upgrades and get it and the RB25 transmission thrown back in the car. I'm spending more hours at work in my new role, but I'll try to post updates. Photos-3-001.zip

These parts came off of another Z I stripped for parts 10 years ago. Never got around to installing them on my car, and time to find a new home. I'd be happy to re-sandblast anything that has surface rust and throw some paint on if asked. Calipers: S12w (or whatever, the bigger 4 piston) toyota calipers, 280ZX (Maybe maxima?) rear calipers (powdercoated gold), at least (3) sets of rebuild parts for each. Caliper brackets: TTT Front spacers, OEM? steel adapters for the rear calipers Pads: Powerstop pads for the toyota pistons, whatever I could find on rock auto 10 years ago for the rear calipers Rotors: R1 concepts and stoptech rotors, and rock auto ZX rotors. At least when I bought it, the 280ZX and/or maxima stuff was HARD to find. I'm not really sure how to price this - $600 for everything? Make an offer. Located in Charlotte, NC.

Welkom! It’s good to see you posting here as well.

05-27-2026 ATLAS Z UPDATE: Today I began the process of attaching the carbon fiber skins. Long way to go. the edges will be taped off and sealed in with a layer of black caulk, then peel the tape off so it will be a thin very smooth line. PICS:

Glad it worked. I'd recommend hanging on to the Temporary account for a little while....just long enough to ensure that DrFeelGood account continues working without issues. It's no problem from an admin perspective. Cheers!

@tube80z Thank you everyone for helping with this! I appear to be in and as a result, please feel free to delete @Temporary

Done. You may also want to post in the "Parts Wanted" section, as well.

sir, your SoCal is showing, what a clean chassis, starting with a chassis that clear sure would be nice. up here in new england we certainly dont get that. I browsed thru a couple pages. Great work. I'll have to make it thru all of them when i have a few minutes. love the design, prototype, create, mentality.

That’s a bit of what I am trying to do with my own build thread. It’s mainly just a log for myself to build a timeline of everything I’m doing to the car but I also like sharing my discoveries on the forums to hopefully help somebody out in the future. And no I’m not some old sentimental person but just a guy with a love for the S30 body style and L series engine (who will be turning 26 in a little over a month).

Forwarded it to admin page for further help.

No. in my opinion that’s the definition of passion and commitment!

Here for my weekly update. Engine and transmission are in. Whole drivetrain is in for good. (hopefully) Finished welding up the turbo manifold and added a tial 44mm wastegate. Need to header wrap it and install for good. Fuel cell is in. need to secure all the panels in, make filler neck, run lines and wire pumps/sender Started making up some oil and coolant lines for the turbo. Put in the radiator and intercooler assemblies. Welded some fitting to a modified factory coolant wrap around tube to hook up the heater core. made a little -8an line to connect to the heater core block. Throttle cable is in and mounted to the pedal. Finished 240z tail light conversion with some new "euro" style tail lights with a carbon 3 pc surround. Got the two door latches in so they stay closed on their own.

Just like all classic and especially classic sports cars they end up sharply increasing in price once they approach 50 years in age. I always loved the look of the S30 Z cars and I really wanted a classic sports car as a hobby/project car. For me the only affordable option was the Porsche 944 coming in at €10k to €15k for a somewhat decent example. But even those shot up in price the last few years to the point that the price difference between those and S30 Z’s (280z in particular) became pretty low. I ended up paying €22,5k for my 1977 280z at an auction (including auction costs) and put around €4,5k into the car. Mainly comprising of the Apex Engineered suspension parts, body shop (welding frame rails and repainting the doors) and some long overdue maintenance. And yes I overpaid a couple of thousand on my car but at this point I really don’t care anymore as I plan to keep this car for the rest of my life!

While I wish there was more activity there are still people posting and following/commenting. I’m building a ford 302 for my 240Z right now, hopefully dropping it in this summer and I’ve gotten some good tips from members as I work on my build, saved me some big headaches. Someone else is doing an atlas swap. Unfortunately the S30s aren’t cheap anymore and parts are expensive. That’s certainly a factor when people are looking for a project car.

Hi everyone, I am at a good point with my build and wanted to share its history since its one of the few running and driving VQ37 swapped Zs in the country. I am going on over a decade of ownership. I originally bought the car from New Mexico and brought it over to Colorado. Come to find out, it was once a Colorado car also. 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.

I bought my 1977 280z in august of last year and afterwards started looking around at all the available forums and other information sources. This let me to here, the ClassicZcar forum and the WhatsApp group from my local Z/ZX club (Holland). Each I use for a different purpose. - HybridZ: Modified Z projects, technical information, inspiration and keeping up a build thread (mainly for myself). - ClassicZcar: General information and information about stock/original parts or details. - The local Z/ZX club: Meets / rally’s, used parts and local knowledge (we have a few S30 restauration specialists in the group) As the S30 Z is pretty rare here in the Netherlands (and Europe in general) my only option is to use the internet and figure everything out myself. Parts are also hard to come by as my only options are used parts (when they appear online), Zservices in France or importing parts from the USA. As for car culture in general I do agree that it’s slowing down a bit. The cars are becoming more modern, parts are becoming more expensive and complicated and less people have the option of owning two or more cars. In general I’m seeing the economy slowing down and people watching there wallet. That said there are still a lot of interesting S30 Z projects going around. Yes turbo builds are pretty common as they have become easier to make power with and are a relatively cheap power source. But NA or NA ITB builds are also pretty common still among them being the V8 swap. Personally I’m keeping my L28E and will probably end up going the NA ITB route once I upgrade the stock injection (yes I’m keeping the injection and no I don’t want carbs). I do like the sound of the V8 swaps but I also think that they don’t really belong in the S30 Z’s. The Z’s being Japanese cars I find them more suited for inline 6 (NA or turbo) engines. And I just really love the sound of the L series engines. But hé, that’s just my personal opinion.

The rear control arm length issue might just be a factory issue as my stock control arms measured in at 15,5” inches just like the Apex control arms. Up to know my parts have been of great quality (passenger side frame rail excluded) with excellent and tight tolerances. That said I will be installing the front crossmember and front control arms next weekend and will probably update my thread next Tuesday. That said I do believe they might have a slight quality control issue with their suppliers, as for example my passenger side frame rail was plainly bent the wrong way by the supplier.

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'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.

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.

Doing some housekeeping and realized my dumb 240z site was down. It's back up now for whatever that's worth.

05-08-2026 ATLAS Z UPDATE. My Snow Performance Stage 1 Water-Methanol kit with braided lines arrived and I have started the layout of it.

Seems like half the time the site isn't even accessible. What's going on here? If money is needed, then I would suggest starting a fundraising campaign with its own separate thread. In the past, they've done well. Maybe another merch run if Cockerstar is up to it. The site is slow as it is due to the decline of forums. If this site becomes regularly inaccessible, it's probably going to kill off the remaining activity it has completely. Forums these days are mostly running on momentum, site problems kill that.

I’m feeling closer and closer to getting the car back on the road!! The car has been dropped off at the body shop almost 4 weeks ago now, which is at least some good progress. Wen I went to drop off the car they already had a lift ready for me so we could put her in the air right away. There we unfortunately found out that one of the Apex Engineered frame rails had a manufacturing mistake. The passenger side frame rail had been bent the wrong way! I immediately contacted Apex true email as somehow international calls weren’t getting trough to them. The responded the next day (+7 hour time difference) and told me they would send me a new pair once they got there new shipment in the next week. Unfortunately they were later then expected with sending out the new pair and I had to fight of the body shop from reproducing the frame rails locally as the Apex once where on there way. This might have been a mistake time wise as 1,5 weeks ago they finally arrived in the Netherlands afterwards they where hold back (and still are) by customs. They said the paperwork was unreadable/missing, the HS (material) code was missing and customs wasn’t agreeing with the declared value of the package, even though I already paid the fees, which shouldn’t be necessary as it’s a warranty item and I technically didn’t pay for it. So while waiting for the frame rails to come in and for me to get the car back I decided to get to work fixing the interior panels and the dashboard. During which I also participated in one of the meets organized by the Z ZX Club Holland and got to ride along in this amazing 3,1 liter stroker 240Z producing an amazing 320ps to the wheels! While working on the interior my girlfriend decided to get involved and make me a custom set of door cards. These will be complimented with custom seat covers and a reupholstered center console. Please not the picture of the door cards is still a early work in progress and we both have never done something like this. I don’t have many before pictures of the interior pieces but I do have photo’s of the finished result. Almost all of the plastic pieces had cracks in them and the center console was even broken in two, but all in all they weren’t too bad for almost 50 year old plastic. I used a plastic welding kit with steel wire inserts to repair and reinforce the damaged sections before sanding them smooth. I roughed up all the pieces with sanding paper before spraying them with plastic primer, black paint and matt 2K clear coat. For some pieces (like the glove box, center console, upper dashboard trim and the rear taillight panel) I used a texture spray to reapply some texture and/or match them to the repaired dashboard. Fun fact, while writhing this and looking up some terms I realize that my interior taillight panel is from a 70-74 240z and not from a 280z. Bit weird but it fits. *First picture is just wet semi-gloss black paint and doesn’t have the matt clear coat yet, the second picture of the center consol has clear coat and is fully dry. To restore the dashboard I followed some good old YouTube video’s and sanded down all the damaged area’s in a V shape before filling them in with a 2K polyester body filler and sanding the dashboard back to shape. The body filler I used bonded really well to the dashboard foam and was easy (with a ton of elbow grease) to sand back into shape. To seal and strengthen the top layer of the dashboard, and help make it smooth, I decided to use UV (3D printing) resin which I applied in layers using a brush and hardened with a UV lamp before putting the dashboard in the sun for a few hours. It was a bit of a gamble but I was pretty pleased with the result. The resin created a strong, hard and naturally very UV resistend layer reinforcing the dashboard. After sanding it smooth, primer, texture spray, paint and matt 2K clear coat the dashboard was done and now looks pretty good if I say so myself. As a finishing touch my girlfriend even customized the dashboard Datsun 280z badge for me using a chrome and a green inlay! I hope to have my car back soon so I can reinstall the interior and install the Apex Engineered control arms. My goal is to have the car road ready before the end of the month.

Welcome to the forum! I’m in a bit of te same boat with my 1977 280z which I’m trying to get back on the road. I would love to see every little step of your journey with the car. In my opinion all possible information is welcome online as some information is pretty hard to find. O and as you have seen the Initial D anime you might also enjoy Wangan Midnight, might even give you some inspiration for modifying your Z. 😉

05-03-2026 ATLAS Z UPDATE: I started the day with cutting out of sheet metal a cover to close up the trans tunnel behind the shifter, painting it with rustoleum and installing it with TEK screws. After that I jumped on the center console. I cleaned it up and painted it with SEM Landau Black interior paint and then cut and modified a Skilalrd radio delete plate and drilled holes and mounted it to the console. I painted it in matching glossy black hammertone to match the rest of the dash work in the past and got it on. I then went about screwing with TEK screws and washers some of the carpet down and then screwing the conodal down in the back. I then worked on trimming the carpet kit I got from the company in New Jersey (the name escapes me) . I drilled out and cut the plate for my shifter lever and painted it silver and installed it. It was cool the way I did it, as I was able to hold it where I wanted it to be, mark it then go to work. I then pulled the rear deck panel and marked and cut it for the strut tower brace from Apex International, and also cut the relief section for the wiring to get through. I then cut the section out of the car, and painted it up. I also painted the upholstered areas with the SEM Landau paint, and it came out looking brand new! I ordered the Braille Battery 2105 and battery box kit powder coated black from Skillard and I am awaiting arrival. I will be mounting in behind the passenger seat along with the battery switch later on. I mounted my Momo Steering wheel and that went very easy, I like it. I have a blue horn button and a black one. I decided to try the blue first. I like it as it ties in the blue paint outside and the gauges and the shift knob I got from Speed Dawg Shift Knobs.. I went with the Blue Swirl. I like it. What do you think? Should I use the black horn button? Then I removed the Skillard rear floor, and mounted up the Apex Strut tower bar, and cut the sides of the Skillard floor so that I can cut them to form fit and re-install. I got with Skillard and ordered the extra brackets, and they have always been awesome to deal with. Then the most important part....standing back with a few Coors Banquet beers and taking it all in, and letting my brain brainstorm. Coors Banquet are the very best beers a guy can drink. Things are going pretty well, I think. Cheers!~PICS.

Hehe! I've been told visitors to Norway enjoy the nature and scenery. Living here I don't think much of it. And finding other places in the world more exotic🙂

Wow it’s been over a year since my last post on here. Again the insane time toll that work is taking on me, mixed with some family and personal health the past year has really made it hard to get much done on the car. Boy turning 30 hits hard doesn’t it. I also reached a point where I realized I just need to build a rotisserie because 15min doing any work on the floor pans these days has me walking like a 80yr old the next day. I have decided that I am going to bite the bullet on a ZTrix Subtle Z body kit because I like the stock body style more than flares, and want to be able to have room for a good set of 245 rims and tires. This should also speed up some the body work I dreaded most which was going to be trying to get the rear quarters looking good without buying full replacement panels, and my car has genuinely never been in good enough shape to be worthy of keeping the original body metal.

Long week number like 200 but happy with the my progress. Made a tweak to a color based off a cadillac cts5 v blackwing. Its a bit more "copper" tone of orange than I was picturing with the modifications but I am very happy with it. As soon as I started pulling the masked off areas and was seeing the contrast with the grey I loved it. Did get some fisheye on one door so I'll have to fix and respray that at some point and a couple sags/runs in the clear to sand out, but I can make some serious progress on the build now. did get the engine stripped down as well. Bearings, rings, valve springs and a gasket kit have been ordered to freshen it up. but otherwise everything measured out good and seems like a good starting point.

Hi everybody, long time for updates. Been quite busy with kids and a very nasty divorce going on. The good news is my garage and cars are still intact and I am still making progress, although very slowly. Car is very close to track testing. I decided to have a new pair of steering arms machined to match the front geometry. I will post more when they are finished. In the interim, I took the time to catch up on some side projects I wanted to do. With the advancement of AI, some of the projects I considered impossible a couple years ago have turned out to be quite easy now and very inexpensive. Based on Arduino technology, I have integrated a motion sensor into my data acquisition system. I use a Race Technology DL1 Club box which is limited to 8 analog sensor inputs, but can decode an almost unlimited amount of CAN signals. So I built a circuit that decodes the motion sensor and outputs a CAN signal. I now have 3-axis roll, pitch, and yaw angles along with speeds and acceleration live data. It will all be packaged in a small box that mounts in the car. Next is a infrared tire temperature monitor. A 16x4 temperature array sensor once again combined with Arduino and CAN output board. I am trying to package this as small as possible so it can be mounted on brackets roughly 4" above the tire. Again real time data of inner, middle, and outer tire temps while driving. Hopefully saves a lot of time when dialing in the camber and pressures. More to come...........

Found another RSX seat. It's not an exact match. The stitching pattern is different b/w the seats, and the plastic trim in the headrest area is a different color. Obviously I'm not going to fix the stitching, and I'll just paint those plastic trim pieces black and be done.