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Been a while since I posted any updates. Been moving along. For the Turbo car I decided to build my own wheels. Ill CNC machine the center sections myself and have the lips and barrels spun for me. I really like the old SSR RS8 wheels but finding them in the correct bolt pattern, offset, and caliper clearance is impossible. I fould a set close, from Japan and had them shipped over. Since this car uses Z31 hubs and such, the spacing is out much more than a standard Z so I need a bit more positive offset. I dissasembled the wheels and scanned the center section into my computer and reverse engineered the shape. Next I re-assembled them and had the 245-45-16 tires Im going to use mounted. I test fitted them to the car, and close, but not good enough. This is the fist time this chassis has been rolling on its own wheels in 27 years. Its been on a cart or a lift. Felt good to see some progress now that the suspension, brakes, and cross-memeber are finally complete Scanned this complete assembly and put it in CAD. Now I have the exact shape of the tire on the rim. Cool cross section of it. Finally I scanned the side of the car, put it into CAD. Now I can adjust my wheel center offset for caliper clearance, and adjust it to work with new Lips and Barrels I will order for the proper offset and fit to the car. Having it in CAD alowed me to look at it from every angle and check all clearances, for calipers, springs wheels lip, ect. Even compressing the suspension to make sure I have fender clearance at full travel Final wheel spec is: Rear - 5 lug = 245-45-16 on 8.5" width rim- 27mm positive offset, 2.25" outer lip on the rim Front - 5 lug = 245-45-16 on 8.5" width rim - 31mm positive offset 1.75" outer lip on the rim Next I need to find some time to program the CNC and start cutting chips. But I got distracted on the NA car, so that update is next.

Three weeks until I'm home and properly working on the car before a long road trip. I've been creating a detailed list on some Google notes of everything I hope to accomplish. I'll update once I truly get to it, but for now just wanted to share my excitement for my new brakes. Was in Utah about two weeks ago for a handful of days for a music conference and my brother was kind enough to let me borrow his truck to drive up to Logan just for one evening to have a quick dinner with the siblings up there and I took a quick trip to my folks' place late in the evening and opened up some of the parts to keep my motivation haha. Also had a big box of new seals from Resurrected Classics. They were kind enough to give me a steep discount on their weatherstripping kit when I asked if I could get it without the door seals since I had already purchased the S30 world seals before they released their kit. Looks like they were kind enough to give me the discount and kept the door seals anyway! I'll be making a thorough comparison of it against the Precision kit I have, mostly to see if it's truly far better for some of the worst fitting parts.

I have two heads in stock as I type this so the head can actually be purchased. I can't help that you can't afford it. That's a feature not a bug. For the very beginning my goal was to provide the components so that talented engine builders could make the decisions on the types of components they wanted to use. Based on what I've seen and taking the pricing of the relatively simple L6 head as the baseline I highly doubt it. I'm not really sure what I did to put a burr under your saddle but you remind me of the guy that starts a fight in the line to get into the club because he can't afford the cover charge. Just get out of line and go somewhere else.

Next order of business was electric fan and shroud, and radiator hoses. I chose the 2016-2019 Camaro single SPAL 18" fan. it will be PWM controlled and is a very popular choice according to the internet as it can flow 5000CFM. Although I cut up the factory shroud to "work" I felt like I needed something fancier. modeled up a base to start working from and had my friends at laserbros in NC laser cut and bend it up. Should have gone one or two AWG thicker so added some bracing as well as some mounts and very happy with the final product. Cut down the radiator and inlets and outlets on the engine and welded on some -16an bungs, made up a couple hoses. in the last photo of the "hose installed" you can see the end of the pipe for the intake I welded into the chassis I mentioned in the previous post. Also decided to move the alternator to the other side of the engine to get it away from the heat. When i pull the engine to paint the bay i'll design and make a bracket to permanently mount it over there.

I just wanted to share something pretty exciting in my world. 5 weeks ago I overheard a friend talking about how hard it was to get any machine work done. And it hit me..... I know how to rebuild heads I just need equipment. Did some research and found that 4 of the main shops in the area have sold out or retired. Told the idea to my father in law. And was just spit balling with him. I dont have the cash to start anything and it was just an idea.. well he gave me and my wife a rather large gift and I have now bought a storm vulcan 85b blockmaster and a winona van norman Ph-2000L valve ane seat machine. Still need a valve grinder and obviously tons of tooling. But im excited to see where God takes this. Been 25 years since ive done and work but am excited to get back into it. Plan to get the surfacer going and try to drum up some buisness to make some income to buy more tooling. I onoe they are not the best machines bit they are functional. Just wanted to share

Hi,guys, after one year off with other work, i put back the engine with reground camshafts, and ready for new start !😅 Wait and see ,and Happy new year

My custom made 3d printed aero hood latches are mounted.

Went out for some Auto-x this weekend, and had a proper blast. Highly recommended for anyone here who still hasn't gone to try it. Enjoy a slow lap, some V8 noises and straight cut gearbox whine. I have a handful of things to think about and address moving forward, but overall I'm very happy with where this sits. Next up is OnGrid at the Ridge in late July for more testing, and maybe, just maaaaybe a little redemption.

Good progress over the long weekend. Paint, bondo and fiberglass is mostly a waiting game which is pretty annoying. Got the duct glued together and painted so it looks like something. Trimmed it up a little and we are in great shape! The holes in the hood are a little bit large, but that's ok, and will likely get solved with a new hood (fiberglass) or something on top. Also got the transition piece painted which is exciting! This will help blend the splitter into the air dam, and will get taped onto the splitter once I put some trim on top of it. Need to get to work on the new intake pipe as well, going to put the filter over near the wheel for now. In the future, I'll flip the manifold and pull air from the cowl/wiper box area, but that's a bigger lift in terms of fabrication. Can't tell you how excited I am to have a metal fabrication project after 10 months of composites.

Meh, he's a paid supporter of the site. I figured I'll give him his moneys worth

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.

Got it off Amazon: https://amzn.to/4aS32Br And picked up a male pigtail off eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/134129914749 I actually replaced the wiper arms too. I used 93 miata arms which bolt up to the stock datsun wipers mechanism. Passenger arm is a little long so I may shorten it. For wiring, I followed this guide: https://www.electronixandmore.com/resources/automobiles/datsun/index.html Note this is very specific to the later wiring for 1978(maybe 1977 too) and would not be applicable to earlier years.

Hi All! I've owned a few s30's in the past and finally decided to build one. My car background is a lot of JDM cars including Supra's, AE86s, S13s, Skylines, a Stagea 260rs, etc. I have always loved the style of the s30 (don't we all), the aftermarket support for it and the random people who would stop me and tell me about their "Z" story. The story of this build started over a year ago when I purchased this 1978 Datsun 280z. The story behind the car (that I know of) was it is an American car that was brought to Washington and held at a speed shop awaiting restoration. Then was bought and stored in a heated warehouse for years in BC before i bought it. A little side story, I originally purchased a 1971 240z from the same person and they also had the 280z for sale but was well out of my price range. I would have loved to restore the 240z but unfortunately the amount of work it needed was well beyond my budget and experience just to get it to a useable condition. If you looked at it funny, rust would fall off the car. Mistakes we made. I was sold on what it could be but not what it will take to get there. almost a year later the 280z was still for sale, and the price was a little better. With some luck, i was able to convince the owner to trade back the 240z and cash for the 280z. Success!...Now, it seems the 280z was re-sprayed a British racing green but wasn't done the best and was flaking so i believe that's why it originally underwent the restoration in Washington. The car was just a rolling chassis, the front end had been primer epoxy'd and luckily had everything in boxes and labeled like "driver door guts", or "Rear hatch slam", which was nice to see. Now the goal of this project was to be a fun drivers, resto-mod car. It will be getting an RB26 from an r33 GTR, an RB25 transmission, DBW for the factory ITB's, Techno Toy Tuning full suspension, brakes, differential swap kit, running a Haltech S3 ECU and Wiring Specialties Harness, Poly fuel tank with an r32 skyline Radium hanger and Hellcat fuel pump. The bigger ticket items like turbo/manifold, radiator/fans, and then some smaller things are missing but most of the project is there now. I do plan of re-wiring the whole car considering I'm spending money in every other area. Now, just like anyone, I did set out with budget but considering since I last built a car, prices have gone up for parts which I stupidly didn't account for. Also a lot of, "well if i'm already doing this, then i might as well do that", and "since i have this off, i might as well get that." So the budget has been blown....but at least I'm happy! (maybe). BUT as it stands, the suspension and diff swap kit is in and the car is currently at the body shop getting the sunroof hole patched as well as some of the smaller trim holes plugged and a few small rust spots taken care of. Here are some pics throughout the build and as it stands. Any questions, advice or help for some "gotchas" will be welcome!

Great work so far! I’m sure this will be an awesome build. I suspect you will be running fender flares or a wide body kit seeing as your wheels are poking out a bit?

11-01-2025. 260Z work. I got the engine compartment sanded down after the glaze and then cleaned up the crossmember and rack with cleaning solution "g@s" and a toothbrush, and then steel wool, etc. Then I vacuumed out the cowl and primed it with rustoleum rust primerand top coated it with gloss black paint, then painted the engine bay with filler primer. Once dry I will use some spot putty I picked up on the areas that need it, hand sand it smooth and filler primer over that. Once it is good, then I will progress to color and then clear. Busy day! Pics:

Yes, still working on then, just have not posted anything. Bought some expensive components that take time to recover from. A blank PAMS head, that I then designed and has DelWest make me titanium intake valves, Inconel mnemonic stainless steel exhaust valves, also MoldStar 90 seats and guides. Had it assembled, and ports cleaned up for some nice flow numbers. Also purchased a Nismo 6 Speed Trans that was also strengthened and modified by HPI in Japan. I take some progress pics soon.

Picked this up from local hot rod shop for my 240z SBC 350 project about 13 years ago. Circuits: Electric fan relay Fuel pump Radio and amplifier Power windows Summit Racing/parts store etc probably have this fuse box.

Got the sensor figured out. It is idling around 130-140 F. Should be OK. I have to post a video. Sorry but I think this thing sounds bad ass. I have an insert in the exhaust so I dont need earplugs.

Update: after speaking to Cortex and getting some spindle dimensions from them for CAD mockup, looks like I’ll be using their Radial X spindles. Very exciting stuff, I am a bit weary about using aluminum spindles but the car is a track car and last weighed at ~600# over each front wheel so I think I’ll be alright. Thanks! Excited to share my progress with you guys. I’d eventually like to make my work/design open source and see what more talented suspension engineers can do with it. If I didn’t just buy one of these yesterday I’d offer to trade you a complete kit for one of them KN20 heads XD. A bummer indeed, just another bump in the road! Funny you mention Stock Car blade-swaybars. It’s basically all I’ve been looking at for switching over to that design. Plus the parts are pretty cheap & standardized. Thanks everyone.

This is awesome. We haven't had a good engineering project on here in a while, so this is a good to see.

The hairlines weren't that bad, it was the handful that were going through the edge of the rotor that I was worried about. Friday marked my first return to the track in almost 2 years. Knocked off a bunch of rust, the car worked the whole time, and I made a couple changes that were impactful and improved the car. I went pretty slow, so y'all could enjoy some v8 sounds for longer than normal

It was a good idea not to wait on rebuilding the 3.54 diff. The new LSD arrived weeks after I expected it and there's no shot I would have been able to swap it into the spare R200 before my trip. I'm excited to get this together in the winter though!

Some of their stuff is good and some is hot garbage. Max the owner doesn't stand behind his product and has a tendency to try and blame "modifications" to your car as the reason. I have a lengthly (4 page) post on classic z car about my problems with his door assemblies. Resurrected Classics door problems I have their door weather strips and their fuel filler neck and the are excellent. My advice is no matter what you buy test fit as soon as it arrives and go from there. The doors were so bad that I ended up not using them. Max refuses to refund my money so I make sure to take the time to tell people about my experience. Do not trust what he says as he says whatever he needs to to get out of doing the right thing. Caveat Emptor with this guy for sure.

You should really just post on FB because they love trolls and useless posting there

I track my Ford powered 260Z. My personal experience is that transmission gearing is extremely important to getting the most fun on the track. In Florida, you will most likely be doing track days at Daytona and Sebring. Both tracks have very fast sections. Before doing track days, I autocrossed the car. In autocross, you only really need second gear if you have the right differential / tire height. I used Hoosier 275/35-15 tires and have a 3.36 rear end. With a 1.94 second gear in a T-5 and 6,500 rpm, 2nd gear was good for 73 mph. When I started doing track days, I needed all the gears. I had replaced the stock 1st through 4th with G-Force gears and shafts, but fifth gear was still stock. With that set-up, these were my gear ratios. 1st 2.95:1 2nd 1.94:1 3rd 1.33:1 4th 1:1 5th 0.59:1 Worked great until I needed 5th gear. that big a drop absolutely killed the fun (no acceleration in 5th). After my first time a Daytona, I changed 5th gear to 0.81:1. The .81 gear absolutely transformed the car. Now 5th gear is warp drive. The transmission that you show probably doesn't have a good selection of gear ratios, and probably won't hold much power. If it were me, I would get the new TKX with the close ratio rears. That transmission will handle the power and maximize you fun on track. If I didn't already have so much invested in my T5, I would get a TKX. This is the TKX I would get: https://www.speedwaymotors.com/TREMEC-TCET18084-TKX-Close-Ratio-5-Speed-Ford-Manual-Transmission,452007.html?srsltid=AfmBOoq-x1paVSDoNvgI38myLy79UBWXzZFW-QeQ4bK1_vWnSHM7bEEJ Gear Ratios 1st - 2.87, 2nd - 1.89, 3rd - 1.28, 4th - 1.00, 5th - 0.81

For a street car I think the rails make sense. For a race car that has a cage perhaps not. For a similar amount of weight you can triangulate the cage with tubing on top of the floor that extends to the suspension pickup points.

So.......it's been 7 years since my last post. The car basically sat in that drive way for a few years then pushed it in the garage for another4 years where the mice got to it. The gas in the tank and lines went to shit. I replaced the fuel pump and got it kind of running again. Obviously having the car sit outside for so long it pretty much ruined everything in the fuel system. This is where a project goes to die .....you lose interest and end up selling for cheap because it doesn't run. Well ......not this time. Last year the house where I was storing it had to be sold so I needed to find a home for it while getting it road worth again. My best friend who lives in Rochester, NY (I'm in Massachusetts) told me to trailer it to his place and we can work on it together. I know that the carbs need to get rebuilt so I decided to send them to Kyusha House. Here is the before pictures. And after Taka's absolutely amazing work.....

Looking GREAT!! 👍👍 I really like the metalwork....makes you look like a skilled Italian craftsman (whereas mine makes me look like a one-armed monkey with a rock and a baseball bat.)

Dash cap is on! next is gauges and center section install. run the wires so once installed the wires are right there and can be easily wired. Speedo is GPS. Speedhut gauges. Made in USA, cost is like sending a kid to college

HybridZ is now 26! It's too old to remain on its parents' health insurance plan, and now needs a real-job, with benefits and maybe even a 401K plan. Anyone left here, who started working on their V8 Z project back in the 20th century, and is still wrenching on it? Anyone?

Got the rear calipers on today. A few challenges getting this to fit for the 240Z. Tight tolerances between rotor and caliper, needed some washers to align it right. Also getting the pad clips on were tough, some clearance issues with the wheel well as the pins go in from the back, but got it eventually. I love big brakes 😍.

Hello everyone and welcome to my 1977 280z project! I will be using this thread to document my journey with this car and all the little thing that will be done to it to ultimately restore and modify it to be my dream car. I bought the car last week at auction for the decent price of €20.500,- kind of on a whim as this has been my dream car ever since I first learned of there existence (thanks Wangan Midnight and the Devil Z, I know its cliché). Yes €20k is a lot of money but a mid-condition one sells for over €32k here in Europe nowadays. (You can see which side I tied up and which side my dad tied up 😂) What drew me to this car was the paint (absolutely not perfect and needs a repaint at some point but looks good enough for now), the goodies like new wheels and tires, new wooden steering wheel, factory 5 speed gearbox, R200 diff and the claim that the engine was rebuild 10 years ago. Although when picking up the car it turned out there was no documentation what so ever. The car runs and drives and is in fairly decent condition but currently has no valid inspection (called APK in the Netherlands) as the previous owner stats it’s because of the car running rich. Of course it has a cracked dashboard, some small surface rust forming and is missing bolts all over the car but these are all thing that can be fixed over time. For now my main goal is the fix some little stuff and get her on the road so I can start to enjoy the car. So naturally I placed the car on my Quick Jack lift and ordered a bunch of parts from Z-Services EU in France. There are a few thing I like to address before taking it in for inspection. The hood doesn’t open as the cable brackets are missing, the door hinges need rebuilding as the doors won’t close properly, some general maintenance and fixing some sweating oil seals around the car.

I got a little bit of garage time today. Removed the old fuel cell and got the new one in. I still need to build a frame for it, but it can sit here for a while. Rear subframe bushings came in yesterday, I’ll try and get the rear end mounted next weekend.

The access panel is to get to the fuel filler neck. I think I got the panel from Allstar Performance. I wish the panel was just a little bigger so that I could remove the filler plate though the opening. The one I have is just a little too small...

I just found this site as i started building my Z, and will be following along as you finish up this project. We are on somewhat similar paths so this will be fun to watch it come together.

Lower than 100kpa at WOT could be elevation too, if this log happen to be somewhere higher than your used to logging take that into consideration aswell. Id think where you have the filter should be a good spot for air. unless the aero is really creating a negative pressure spot for some reason. If thats not the case id think your on the right track with looking at valve train stuff. But don't rule out the sensor itself or the hose feeding it.

Got a lot of the rear track attack kit put together today. It went together pretty well, their videos are very helpful. Only minor issue was these lock washers being too big, just ground them down a bit.

I don't know how you have the engine placed, but I would offset the engine about 1 inch toward the passenger side. The drive shaft angle is easier to minimize with the engine shifted in-line with the pinion. This also makes the weight distribution a little better when you are in the car.

The two areas "1" are a great place to attach tow hooks.

The dyno chart for that was from my old 331 stroker: Stock Roller Block (4.030" bore) Eagle 3.25" stroker crank and rods Mahle 4.030 Pistons Custom Hydraulic roller cam (.571" lift) AFR 185 heads 1.75 Long Tube headers 30# injectors I scattered that engine at Daytona My new engine is a 347. Dart SHP Block (4.125 bore) Scat 3.25" stroke forged crank and H-Beam rods Custom Hydraulic roller cam (.625" lift) AFR 185 heads Long Tube headers 42# injectors I use Megasquirt MSPNP 2 to tune both engines.

Heat wave going on here +27 in the shade, had to test how hot this can go on normal driving. that small 10" fan goes on 87celsius and it can keep it cool in the city, second large CFM fan goes 92celsius. oil coolant pump goes on 85celsius and highest i saw was 92celsius, 96celsius goes coolant fan

Also not a facebook user here, but speaking in generalities: 1. In 2025, I would think seriously about the value proposition of buying a Z. Some of us have been dabbling in this hobby/affliction for nearly 30 years, starting back when these cars were cheap, plentiful in junkyards, and blank-canvases for modification. And today? Completely different game. Hard to tinker with a 50 year old car, just as a tinkering-car. Even harder to get the performance out of it, that was the stuff of our dreams in the 1990s. 2. These cars are becoming expensive. Even woebegone projects are becoming expensive. For the less-familiar, it's a costly trap!

it can seem like the page is dying off.....but we actually get new members every day, and if you scroll to the bottom and look at the numbers, we get a lot of visits daily.

Once, you installed the Differential and Cage with the Support Bracket into the Two Vertical Mounting Bolts, the Two Forward Differential Mounts can be installed into the Transmission Tunnel. Left Mount Right Mount Note-Earlier 240z has mounting bolt holes close together so drilling an another hole maybe necessary(call Vlamir for assistance), Important Fact------My New Ford Motorsport Super Duty 8.8 Differential came with the Large Aluminum Pinion Flange so I had to fabricate a New Crossmember for clearance problem. I decided to modify the Original Nissan Differential Crossmember. Pic shows Sonan Adaptor on the Pinion Flange. Pic of 8.8 Differential with the Old Style U-Joint. Note the Close Clearance between Flange and Incredible Extreme Crossmember already. Original Nissan Transmission Crossmember taped and marked for metal cutout on top area. Cardboard Template of Aluminum Flange marking Side Cutout. Using 4 1/2" Cutoff Wheel to cut out Top Section of crossmember. Top Section of Crossmember removed. Both Side Sections were cut out to form the Lower Round Shape. Finished Crossmember Side View View of bottom of Modified Crossmember. Finished and Mounted Crossmember. Next-Modified Driveshaft and Driveline Alignment.

Well, winter was quiet! Spent most of the winter skiing, rather than being cold in the shop, but spring has sprung and we have some exciting progress on the car. Since the car is in good mechanical shape, the big to-do's have been cosmetic. Mainly the air dam! It's such a cobbled together thing that I knew I had to make some improvements. To that end, I bought a 3d printer, whipped out my iphone and got to designing some new end areas. I'm keeping the same spirit of the airdam as before, but symmetrical sides (just flipped this piece and printed again) meant that I can be confident in the tolerances that I'm working with on both sides of the car! Pretty impressed how well this lined up fresh off the printer, and from a medium quality iphone photogrammetry scan of the front end. I opted to use the PLA as a core for the fiberglass layup, we'll see how that does long term. People have issues with PLA as a finished surface as the "glass transition" temperature is pretty low, and normal temps for sunny car parts will result in significant softening. I think inside 5 layers of fiberglass it should be just fine. (Glassed, sanded down and filler primer. It's easily the nicest part of the airdam at this point!) There is a pretty good gap between the bottom of the air dam and the splitter, so I printed up another whole piece that I will use to pull a direct positive part from. I don't want this to be super heavy duty, so I'm not going to encase the PLA core. (printed and glued) This piece had some scaling issues, even though I modeled it from the same references as the airdam pieces. Oh well! Final bit was that I really needed to make the car all one color again, and install some of the fun stuff I had made up before the winter. I had aspirations of painting the car, but when that plan met with the reality of budget, I opted to go back and vinyl wrap the front end again. The hood might get a re-do, but otherwise I'm rather happy with how it all turned out! Hoping to have the car mostly back together this weekend, and then aiming for an auto-x event at the end of June to shake out the cobwebs from car and driver!

Let that ship sail! Find another decent body for a few grand and save yourself a ton of time and money. I've seen many "resto plans" dye on the vine after the joy has passed, months and years go by and the person doing it burns out. Just my ywo cents!! Good luck.

Looking again at the pics.....if you don't want to dip it, no sense in really even trying to restore it. It needs it so desperately, you should do it, or just find another Z car IMHO.

Work on this has continued: I went over the whole engine, looks great now: All metal work was finished Most bodywork was finished # Interior Painted Engine Bay Painted Underbody Painted Back on its wheels Full body will soon be in paint.

yeah, Bad Dogs I hear are good, and that you can put them over the factory ones, but if the factory ones are rusty, then they need to be repaired/patched first or removed and replaced with these. I I think they way blok did his with thick heavy steel is probably the ultimate (the youtube link I posted earlier).

I don't know if you have ridden in modified Z cars, but 240Z's are LIGHT. 320 to the wheels it's basically a widow maker. Overkill on power is overkill on power. You reach a point where more power is useless, as you can't put it down, and the car is already dangerous as-is. It's a street car. With the power level you are talking about, additional bracing is necessary in the subframe and rails. Do you like reliability? Stock=reliability, modifying it for 40-50 horsepower could take away the reliability. stock 370Z engine is fine power wise bone stock for a 240Z. A lot of the modern cars with all the horsepwoer....that's in a car that weights OVER 4000 pounds. 2 tons. Completely different deal. Your weight is about half of those. Be sensible. Live Longer. And this setup....stock brakes are NOT good enough, nor is a stock suspension.