deja

Thats pretty cool. I wish I still had my frist car... well maybe the second one. I am completing my '77 280Z with an LT1. I did go with AC (vintage Air) but there is one problem. The compressor will not fit in its stock location because it will hit the steering rack. You will either have to make a bracket to mount it on the other side or do what a couple of us have done and get http://www.bowersrodshop.com/info_pulley.htm. But even then there is clearence issues with the strut tower. As far as PS goes, good luck. Some have converted to PS but from what I have read it isn't the easiest thing to do seach on the suspension threads and you will find some info. I gutted the LT1 PS pump and kept it on the engine as a pully for the belt. Good luck on the swap.

Sorry I didn't see this sooner. No clue why they call them guitar amp or electric punches but we use Greenlee punches for electronic chassis fabrication. Anything made by them should be fine for auto sheet metal punching.

It looks very professional Wayne. I have no idea how you're gonna get all that in there considering how crowded my LT1 is and I don't have near the stuff hanging of it you will. But knowing you, it will get done.

It might be the same stuff but not 30 years old. Somebody might have put new in later for some reason. My 77 had the same stuff everywhere and it all chipped off pretty easily. You can try a heat gun and a scrapper but its going to get messy. I've heard dry ice works but I've never tried it.

I snagged a MSA BRE type fiberglass rear spoiler on EBay. It fits perfect and with little touch-up sanding required its ready to paint and mount. It came with some long sheet metal screws which I assume it what they intend for mounting but there were no instructions. I'm pretty sure I can do this without real instructions. But if anyone has some mounting ideas I could use that would be cool.

Take some plastic wrap, push it into the can until it sits on top on the leftover paint and drapes over the top of the can, put the top back on. If you don't do that and plan on using it quickly, like 1 day make sure you clean the groove in the can and the lid completely or it will NOT come off. If you don't do that and there's like a half can left when you open it you will discover a rock hard hockey puck! I buy it by the pint so I don't have a lot left over from a small job. I have had to pretty much destroy a can to get back in. All this is on POR-15's website. This stuff is tough, I call it poor man's powder coating. I painted my baddogs with it, but not the insides, don't know what welding would do to POR-15 or what fumes would be produced but I wasn't going to take that chance.

That's good to know. I need to "adjust" mine for my AC lines but have been reluctant to cut even a little out of it. I remember when Batman cut the top of his out for his cold air setup people went crazy saying he lost a lot of structural integrity. Of course he did cut out the top rail, not just the side sheet metal.

30+ year old wiring is just an never ending source of problems. It was always a lottery when I got in the car to see what wouldn't work intermittently. Datsun runs its wiring though so many connectors you could have corrosion anywhere. This is why when I did my LT1 engine swap I completely rewired the chassis with my donor Z28 harness. After the old Datsun harness was out I started pulling connectors apart, it was scary to see all the corrosion, cracked wires and wires that had just been cut by the previous owner and left to hang. You need to follow the wires coming off headlights back to the switch and check each connector they go through. Odds are you've lost a ground connection somewhere. Get some circuit cleaner (you can get that at Radio Shack) and spray in in all your connectors (remove the battery first) and if you can try brushing the connector pins with a small brass brush to remove any corrosion. Just because you can't see it does not mean there isn't corrosion. You might want to spray and brush your fuse panel too. I was shocked to see how bad mine was.

I feel your pain. My car came off the road on Jan 27. Since then its been up and down the street only one time about a month ago for a short 5 minute test. With the dash finally in I can see light at the end of the tunnel. Whoever said "double you budget and triple your time" wasn't even close for me, LOL

Thanks Ryan. The sterring wheel is on the list. I want paddle a shifter and that will force into a different wheel anyway so I'm waiting until then to swap.

In my head this was going to take about a week, LOL. Its my first attempt at any fiberglass work, it did get very tedious and I really hated all the sanding. The building part was fun, the finishing was not.

Looks like a great start. Are you concerned about how much of the radiator frame you cut out for the air filter? I thought that was a pretty critical part of the unibody support for the front end.

Wiring the gauge cluster was easy since I'm using the Z28 harness. Of course changing form a Camaro gauge to a Firebird gauge made me switch out the connector and 34 wires! The rest caused some spinning for sure.

Wow. that is a really nice install, looks factory but much, much cleaner.

http://cgi.ebay.com/How-to-put-a-Chevy-V8-into-a-Datsun-Z-240-260-280_W0QQitemZ170165121513QQihZ007QQcategoryZ13561QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem

Oh yeah, I forgot about that little quirk in the design. What the hell were they thinking, LOL?

And don't forget to support the hatch when you pull that strut. Trust me one strut will NOT hold up the hatch!!!!!!! The string idea is a good one. I used a coat hanger to get the wires back in.

If I remember correctly you'll need to remove the plastic trim on the roof. But to do that you need to remove the side trim first and to do that you need to remove the trim piece on the shock tower and to do that you need to remove the hatch strut on the passenger side. Because of the overlap its very difficult if not impossible to do it any other way. PITA!

Congrats, can't wait to see it fired up. BTW the paint job is awesome.

Thanks, that is the Z from a Z28 fender emblem. That part of the bezel is a lot of flat area and needed something. I thought the Z would add some "cool factor". I painted it the same as the bezel so it doesn't stick out too much.

Thanks, I've never been one to be satisfied with what everyone else has. Sometimes that gets me in trouble, LOL. The hardest part of this was getting all those parts that don't belong in a Z to fit, toughest was the Z28 light switch. One thing I did over look was the two bolts that hold the dah in behind my gauge bump-up are very difficult to get back in. And I totally forgot about the VIN # tag until the dash was already back in. I ended up mounting it on the trim piece for the defrosters. But it looks like it where it should be.

It only took me 2 months to complete this thing. What was I thinking? In my head this didn't seem like all that hard to pull off. But I was in new territory for sure and learned a lot about metal fabrication and fiberglass. I'm still very much a rookie at both. Is it perfect, oh hell no, but for a first attempt I am pretty happy the way it turned out. The plan was to modify my 280Z dash to use a Trans AM gauge cluster as well as a totally new center panel. I basically stripped the dash to the sheet metal, removed everything, tossed the old dash pad, heavily modified the sheet metal and then covered it with fiberglass. I was debating about how to cover this thing when I read Rigez's post on cheap dash repair alternatives. I followed the instructions using plastic prep followed by 3 coats of SEM textured black paint, 3 coats of SEM black trim paint and added 3 clear coats over it all. I opted to use a complete '94 Z28 donor car's chassis wiring harness since the 30 year old Datsun harness was so hacked up by the previous owner. I mounted the Camaro fuse panel in the driver's end of the dash, used Mustang AC vents, my Pioneer stereo, the Z28 headlight switch from my donor car, a +12v accessory plug from a VW, a pushbutton start switch from a Viper, an aftermarket ignition switch and a Greedy fuel pressure gauge. The AC controls will be mounted in a custom console I have not made yet. Here are some shots of the dash installed, I still have to finish trimming out the light switch and ignition switch modules and make a glove box door. The center section and the gauge cluster bezel are painted a metallic black. I didn't realize how filthy the interior of my car is until I looked at these pictures! Too many months sitting in the garage with all this fabrication going on.

Cool, punches and flares in one operation, much better than a standard chassis punch. I'm gonna bookmark that site, thanks.

You can find these punches on EBay all the time. But search for chassis punch, Greenlee is the best.

When I bought my 280Z it already had a 350 in it with some long tube headers. But the headers were pretty much shot (broken at the flange) so I decided to use the ramshorn manifolds rather than messing with new headers. I was thinking this was a daily drivers and the headers wouldn't really make that much difference on the street. But the engine had some performance work done on it including a rather hefty cam (no clue about specs) before I got it. There was a noticable lose of HP with the ramshorns. But that could have just been because of the engine, if your's isn't too radial you might not notice any change going to headers. It will be hotter and noisier with headers.