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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.

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...........

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.

Hello fellow enthusiasts! A family man from Norway here. I got into full-size cars late in life and have been part of the vintage Porsche scene here in Oslo, Norway for around a decade. A project I recently completed is a 5-year nuts-and-bolts bare metal restomod of a 1985 Porsche 944. But now I got myself a 1973 Datsun 240Z. For a long time, I've been Japan curious. Dreaming of visiting the country. Enjoying Japanese cuisine, Studio Ghibli films, various Asian art, the Initial D anime, and following Larry Chen and other Asian car culture YouTube channels. But being in my fifties I am not identifying with huge turbos, vivid car liveries or oversized exhausts. Eventually landing on an older icon. The 240Z. I am a self-taught car restorer and mechanic. And everything I know I've learned from online web forums and old static web pages. I am establishing this thread on Hybridz as I feel a desire to give back and contribute to the continued hub of knowledge and insight in car culture in general, and to the Z-car community in particular. I want to share a full journey, that is readable as a full story. I find that the continuity is harder to do properly on Instagram, FB or similar. But I am planning on sharing updates both here and on Instagram. The car I am now the owner of was first registered in Switzerland in June 1974 and has all the features of what is described as a "Final European Spec". I do not have any written documentation on the Swiss registration. But I -do- have what looks like an original dealer sticker in the rear windshield. And the letters "SWI" written with a crayon on the glovebox mount bracket. The car has lived in the Netherlands since 2001. And now it has moved to Norway. I have little written documentation on the cars life, but the dealer told me it has been sitting for several years, before it now was put on the market. Tires were like hockey-pucks, hoses are dry, bushings are worn, shocks are shot, seatbelts are missing, and there are some rust issues. The car is now red, and the original color is orange 918. But the car is what I describe as "complete". Most the original components are there, apart from the front lip. And it has not been "wrenched to death". I am really looking forward to a long journey with this car. Here are a few images of the car when it was delivered to me. And from today's visit to have the car approved and registered into the Norwegian vehicle registry systems.

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.

looks like a great starting platform for whatever direction you decide to go with it.

Welcome! Always great to have a new member and another project. What kind of modifications are you planning?

Did I see you putting anti-seize on your spark plugs? YOU HEATHEN lol Looks great so far. I am impressed how low the atlas ended up sitting. Though too bad the hood still needed modification ( I am guessing it is the length versus the point where the hood slopes down faster? That's what I kept running into when I was sizing swap options. A few people doing other swaps pulled their engines into the cabin, but... I kind of want to minimize cutting. That chrome paint did a really good job.

03-25-2026 ATLAS Z UPDATE: I got some of the fittings in I need for my crankcase pressure to catch can to intake setup. Also tall of my carbon fiber panels have been cut, final polishing on roof section then ready to ship to me and bond them on! Then make the borders shiny!

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.

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 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.

05-16-2026 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:

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 😁

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.

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. 😉

I’m currently also waiting on some replacement Apex frame rails as the passenger side one had a production fault (was bent the wrong way!). They were also a week late with shipping the new once and even more annoying they are now held up by customs as they are unhappy with the paperwork and declared value of the package. All in all my car has been sitting idle on a lift at the body shop for two weeks now, I hope they won’t charge me too much in storage fees. 😢 I also have the Apex rear control arms and almost there entire front Retro suspension kit lying on the shelve waiting for my car to come back. I really hope I don’t have your issue with the rear control arms being to short. Would you be able to measure both the stock and Apex arms for me? That way I can check mine while I’m still waiting on my car.

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.

Welcome to the forum! We visited Norway a few years ago: Oslo, train to Bergen, boat to Rosendal (beautiful place that looks like a Jurassic park ) Norway is probably one of our favorite places in Europe.

Congratulations on your new purchase, and welcome to the forum! The car looks like a really clean original example -- interested to see how it unfolds as the project progresses. Thanks so much for sharing; and I hope you enjoy your Z-car as much as we do ours!! 😜

Thx! I don't really know at this point. I do enjoy restomod builds. But I am not sure where this 240z is going. Firstly I think I am going to get the car roadworthy and drive it a bit. And see where that takes me. I just received a large box of parts, mostly related to cooling, fuel, vacuum and brakes. All rubber hoses are dry and brittle. And there are small drips on the floor, under all areas where there are fluids in the car And I need seatbelts. The tires are replaced already. The import and approval process is going smoothly. From the road authorities I have now received a confirmation that the car is formally imported and entered into the Norwegian registry systems. For now linked to the VIN only. Next step is to get insurance and register the car to me, and getting the Norwegian registration number. The process is much simpler when transfering cars within the EEA (European Economic Area) system, than from US or Asia. As the EEA states are aligned and following the same processes and regulations. Hopefully I can have the first little test drives on the road within days.

Ill take a set of the doors if your selling. I have me a custom cf wide body but its very subtle. everything will be painted too.

Got all the suspension bits unboxed and layed out. Have a combination of APEX and techno toys. Choose parts based on what I liked the designs features of and the car came with most of the techno rear bits. I am currently working with APEX to find out why the mounting points on the rear control arms are 1/2" shorter than the stock ones so they aren't a bolt in deal with the techno drop brackets. I actually don't think they would work with a stock setup either so assuming there is a defect so well see what they say. I can modify them if needed but for $500 id rather not have to so well see. Machined a ridiculous set of caliper brackets. I was talking with a local motorcycle racer and he said hed had some large pieces of titanium hed donate if i wanted to make my brackets from Ti. So a little redesign and a good amount of machine time later we have these ridiculous caliper brackets for the wilwoods.

What intake gaskets do you intend to use? I like the FelPro 1262S3 or 1250S3 depending on the intake part size. The S3 version of the gaskets are much more durable than the standard Felpro gaskets. I also apply a really thin smear of Right Stuff RTV around the water jackets when I install the gaskets and lower intake.

finished stripping and cleaning the underside and inner wheel wells and sprayed with some raptor liner. The raptor liner is popular around the youtube builds and I can see why. sprayed nice, covered nice, cured up nice and looks great. Taping up the fresh paint was a pain but came out great.

Thanks. Interior is gonna be, black carpet in the front half. (unsure on door panels based off what will fit) Rear half will be a combination of the semi gloss charcoal grey that the cage is and some black with the raw aluminum bead rolled panels around the cell. May carpet the wheel tubs for a more "finished" look. The color goes real well with gray/black.

spend tons of time last week doing body work. I am TIRED of sanding. Saturday got the whole car in epoxy. Spent 13hr sunday, and 5 hours monday, block sanding and some final little body work touches. Weather got cold for some reason so taking the next couple days to dial in the last of the little details and hopefully later in the week get some color on this thing. I thought i had a good size garage until I need to hang 16 things from the ceiling for painting. A friend let me park my truck at his house. My 240 i just keep moving in and out of the garage. and have the dailies living outside in the driveway during this process.

Back out in the garage this past weekend. I made some progress sectioning in one of the repair panels: I used the new drill press and a hole saw to cut the drain hole in the replacement section. It is a tiny bit undersize, so I will use a die grinder to open it up the last bit to get to the correct diameter. I also used the "shrinker" die that I got from Mittler Bros back before the holidays They were running a Black Friday special. I also used the sheet metal brake I got from them at the same time. I am pleased to be getting some use out of these new tools. I should be able to finish welding this repair section into the right side floor soon. After welding and grinding down the welds, I will be doing some shrinking with an oxy acetylene torch to get the floor panel flat and eliminate any "oil canning".

Trickflows are a great choice. I have a turbo 351 so not a direct comparison but when I switched from GT40s to 11r 190s it made a massive difference. Unrelated to the engine. I weighed my stock 280z door today. Its gutted so I can paint them. so no glass, regulator, handle, lock, hardware, window frame ext. just a empty door shell. 34lbs.

Axles finally came in. Didn’t have much time this weekend, but cleaned the top of the motor and bolt holes and got one head installed.

Been a long week but got everything completely stripped and got some epoxy primer layed down on all the metal surfaces. have plenty of body work to do but atleast its sealed and protected now. Hopefully in the next week or two i can get the bodywork done and get some color on it. I did talk to john and his comment is "I don’t claim to be an expert on bonding. But in my experience cracking at a bond line is often due to inadequate surface prep both the underside of the fiberglass and the underlying metal), poor bonding agent, not enough bonding agent, cheap body filler, and/or excessive flexing of the unibody. On the other hand, I know a lot of guys who do the bolt-on installation. For performance applications, it can be an advantage for working inside the wheel well". With that said I think I will spend the time to make the fitment as good as possible and make a last minute decision based on how well it fits/looks.

Always an inspiration Mark! A lot of what you do is well out of my abilities, but seeing your project still being refined after so many years keeps me motivated on mine.

That has got to be the best balance of Form and Function of a Datsun that i have EVER Seen!! Absolutely amazing!!

Just from those photos, I'd say you've got an R180. The 200 has a much more "bulbous" carrier case and rear cover. This video does an quick and dirty job illustrating the differences and distinctions: https://www.google.com/search?q=identifying+r200+vs+r180+with+pictures&client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=b960a84cc5c43ab2&ei=haU1afOCFb_m5NoPmuGuoAY&ved=0ahUKEwiz2Zen7auRAxU_M1kFHZqwC2QQ4dUDCBE&uact=5&oq=identifying+r200+vs+r180+with+pictures&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiJmlkZW50aWZ5aW5nIHIyMDAgdnMgcjE4MCB3aXRoIHBpY3R1cmVzMgUQIRigATIFECEYoAEyBRAhGKABMgUQIRigATIFECEYoAEyBRAhGKsCSOYbUNoGWOUZcAF4AJABAJgBdKAB5wqqAQQxMS40uAEDyAEA-AEBmAIPoAKQC8ICChAAGLADGNYEGEfCAgUQIRifBZgDAIgGAZAGApIHAzcuOKAH0zGyBwM2Lji4B4ELwgcIMC4yLjEyLjHIBz2ACAA&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:1284de3c,vid:s3egG-klPBg,st:1151 For a more detailed and in-depth discussion of the technical differences between differentials, see this Pinned post here: Just as an FYI -- you have posted in the "FAQs" section, which is typically reserved for posts of an informational/educational nature. Kind of like a repository, or library, of technical information. I would suggest moving this thread to the "Drivetrain" section down below: https://forums.hybridz.org/forum/11-drivetrain/. These sub-forums are intended for open and freeflowing discussions. You can move the thread yourself; or I can do it for you, if you prefer. Your choice. LMK if you need any help. Hope this answers your question. Cheers.

3 years later... took ages to find a good painter willing to take on the project. These days insurance jobs with small panel fixes seem to be more profitable. Luckily I found someone willing to do it in the summer months of this year while the insurance workload is reduced. Prepping... Overall quite happy with the result. Couldn't contain myself and started puzzling together the undercarriage the first chance I got. Pulled lines in the trans tunnel and assembled the suspension component. On the wheel first the first time since 2017!

It has been a while... no real excuses more than waiting for the body to be completed. The car was recently taken off the table and put into the lift to fix the remaining structural items. This is mainly the rear of the floor and the floor supports with extensions back to the rear axle. Rockers + inner / outer wheel wells replaced + rear beaver panel (think that is what it is called). Same exercise on the right hand side. Rust had found its way into the quarters at the hatch close area (both sides). This was cut out and replaced. Floors have also been replaced extending up a bit on the foot well firewall - there were small rust damages, almost like Morse code, along the transition edge. I decided to replace the frame rails (completely shot) and the radiator support. Floor supports remain to be installed together with the frame rail reinforcements. The car had a or some front ding(s) at some point in its life - evident by the massaged areas on both right and left side shown earlier in the thread (sand blasting section). The right side was worse though, but decided to get the package to replace it all at once. In terms of body repairs and improvements the list is slowly coming to an end and the expectation is that the car is back in my garage early this summer. In the meantime I worked a bit on the engine and gearbox situation. I have two five speed gearboxes that came with the car. One has been in storage for a very long time and has damage at the end seal area towards the drive shaft. The one that was installed in the car cannot keep 5th gear and pops out under load (allegedly). Through some research I'm inclined to believe the bolt that holds the 5th gear in place has come loose (if someone has another idea let me know). Anyway, my plan is to install a 240SX gearbox in the car to get a bit more up to date equipment in this respect. I managed to source a used rather low mileage FS5W71C gearbox from a salvage yard - from my car I have 2 old FS5C/W71B gearboxes from which I can use the bell housing. I intend to follow the instruction posted by Steve Heimsoth on zhome.com. I also need to source a new early 240z driveshaft - anyone have a spare one laying around or know someone that does? Should be the early FS5C/W71A style driveshaft which is about 5cm shorter than the later FS5C/W71B gearboxes. FS5W71C as it arrived. After a bit of soda blasting. The 71B bell housing which will be machined to fit the 71C gearbox. That's it for now - it has been a dormant period now for quite some years. I'm hoping that I can pick up the pace as the car returns home.

So... Another session of holiday and car tinkering is almost over.. Oh well, I tried to be productive. I've been trying to sort out someone willing to do the body metal repair work, but the availability in South of Sweden seems to be very scarce! Best offer I got so far is to start working on the car earliest this Autumn. Worst case I'll have to extend the search a bit farther, but I'd like to keep it close buy and with people known in the area. Luckily I can spend the time sorting out other stuff not directly related to the body. To be productive I decided to work a bit on the seating solution. In the end I have chosen to keep the Cobra seats (Paddy Hopkirk) that came with the car rather than buying new seats. Probably I would come off a bit cheaper buying new ones, but I really like the idea of having them specially made buy the local guy in Town. He has pretty free reins but will take inspiration from the original seats. Quite excited to see what he comes up with! In addition I worked on collecting and prepping all items that I want going to blasting and powder coat. I've broken down all of it to its basic Components and sealed off any sensitive areas like e.g. the bearing housings in the struts. Hopefully it can go out to the shop within a few weeks. This is the latest Picture I have, but since this was taken everything has been further stripped down. Found the front differential mount is cracked in the one of the plates.. Not sure if it was hit somehow because it looks like it has got a dent close to the source of the crack. Is this weld repair worthy, or a must scrap and replace? I was pondering whether to send the complete differential for blasting and powder coat as well. In the end I decided against it due to risk of sand entering the seals. I'm also not keen on breaking the diff into pieces and I'd rather have it assembled as I don't think there is any issues with it. Instead I went at it with a wire Wheel and a can of paint. With the car I got two differentials, one R180 installed and a loose R200. I had no idea what the ratios were so Before choosing which diff to use in the car I opened them up. - R180 - R200 - R180 - 3.9 - R200 - 3.54 Plan is to go with the R200 as I like the aspect of reducing crusing rpm slightly. Previous owner stated the RPM at 90 km/h is 3000 which he thought was a bit too high (I have a euro spec 5 speed) and I tend to agree with him. After a few hours of wire wheel work it went from this to this After first coat of paint (hammerite). Until next time.