Whittie

Pharaoh, I knew someone would pick it! That was the catch can to get past scrutineering 2 weeks ago. The ally one is in now, but I don't have any new engine bay shots just yet. Luseboy, I'm not quite sure what the conversion is. It's a Mitsubishi unit tho, if that makes a difference? The previous owner did that mod. The setup works very well tho, no trouble with it at all

Hi Folks, I wanted to do a big intro here, but I really think I should keep it simple. There is a lot of good reading in other parts of the web (linked to, of course) if you would like to investigate. For now, I would like to share my car with the world. What started 9 years ago is finally complete and I can't think of a better way to celebrate than to share it with you all. In 2003 my father and I purchased a 260z - my first car - and so began the love affair. In 2008 I thought I had reached the end of the road, I even made a thread about it: http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/71666-dadson-racing-a-legacy-aka-my-car-is-basically-finished-d/ A few years later and I graduated university and scored my first real job, then came ACTUALLY finishing the car. I also started another thread: http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/91610-dadson-racing-2010-revival/ It's been 2 years since I posted on this forum; time, money and motivation all ran low and it looked like the car would not be complete in time before the inevitable move to Houston, TX with the company I work for. Realising this, in 2013 my old man stepped in and took over the job of putting the car back together for me. It worked well, I paid the bills and he put the time in. He kept a VERY extensive thread going on the local Australian zed forum (35 pages and 42,000 page views attest to its enormity): http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,6991.0.html After 4 years and many times the budget and timeframe expected when I set out, I am honored to announce that the car is done. The photoshoot is complete and the car is ready to race. More interior and engine bay shots to follow, the photographer is still doing his final edits for the magazines, along with underbody photos. The quick specs on the car: Engine Bay: Nissan L28 Triple 45mm Weber Carburetors 60 thou over bore Polished, Ported and Port Matched Intake and Exhaust Oversized Valves F54 Block shaved below piston height P90 Head shaved lots Custom grind cam shaft Lightened and balanced bottom end MSD Digital series 6 ignition MSD 6 blaster coil 9mm Ignition Leads ATI Harmonic Balancer Pointless distributor Crow Cams double valve springs Flat top pistons Custom 2 1/2" Mandrel exhaust Custom 6-2-1 equal length extractors PWR Aluminium Radiator Davies Craig dual 12†thermo fans Nissan 300zx 70amp Alternator Xenon HID H4 Headlights ARP bolts and studs all through Arizona Zed Car ally baffled sump AZC lightened flywheel AZC button clutch Beta Motorsports dual non-boosted master cylinder kit Driveline: Nissan S14 5 speed gearbox NISMO clutch pivot NISMO 4.375 R200 diff gears with S15 viscous LSD centre Wolf Creek Racing CV Joints Suspension: Adjustable height coil-over shock setup Koni adjustable shocks King custom springs Techno Toy Tuning on-car adjustable front control arms Techno Toy Tuning on-car adjustable Torsion/Compression Rod Techno Toy Tuning Roll Centre Adjusters Techno Toy Tuning on-car adjustable rear control arms Custom Cro-Moly Tie-rods 22mm Front Swaybar 20mm Rear Swaybar Complete Urethane Bushing set in all suspension components Relocated Cross member front control arm pickup points Brakes: Front: XR8 2 spot vented front brakes DBA 4000 Rotors Project Mu race pads Rear: Nissan R31 skyline single piston solid rotor rear brakes DBA 4000 rotors EBC Red race pads Rolling Stock: Track: 16x8 +4 Rota RB race wheels Yokohama Advan 225/45/16 Semi-slicks Street: 15x6.5 3-piece ultra light weight aluminium multispokes 14x5.5 Nissan 260z fully restored factory rims Bodywork: Ground-up full bare-metal restoration with all rust removed – 1300hrs HSV Voodoo Blue metallic paint – 9 coats pearl, no base Underbody sound deadening and heat-insulation Custom Fiberglass front spoiler Fiberglass BRE type rear wing Headlight Covers Fiberglass front and rear bumpers Fiberglass Bonnet Fiberglass Hatch with Acrylic window Winding Acrylic driver and passenger windows Holden GTS guard vents ‘gills’ Interior: Sparco TEC driver and passenger seats Momo Suede steering wheel NISMO S15 solid shifter NISMO Leather shift knob Full Alcantara re-trim Flocked trim pieces 3†6-point Race Harness Retractable seatbelts Acrylic winding windows Redback Central Locking and Immobiliser All original and working gauges, including clock All new rubbers through-out Stereo: Triples Webers and 7500rpm Awards and special thanks: 3rd in Production Sports 2009 Regularity Series 2:55 Lap at Bathurst, 245kph down Conrod. Fastest street-class z in 2008 and 2010 Numerous Speed Event Series, VSCC, WASCC, Corvette Club First in class and outright trophies Big thanks to Dad for support in building and racing the car and an ultra-special thanks to Tus and the guys at Osborne Park Service Centre for looking after the car and building one cracker motor. Of course, this would not have been a successful project without the invaluable help of all our sponsors: Carline Mufflers Northbridge for a super exhaust system John Fowler Automotivee for full suspension adjustment and alignment at/between events John Whitfield Real Estate Look, enjoy, comment. Thanks, Tom.

ohnein: I'm offshore at the moment and the net is crazy slow, so I can't find the pictures but I'll get back to you on the product. It's a bitumen based product, I do know that much. 78z, It's only something I'm likely to do once, but she'll be worth it when it's going again. Work is likely to try and ship me to Houston in the next couple of years, what is zed ownership like over in Texas? I know next to nothing about the states, so if it's different to where you are I wouldn't know, but are there many around, reasonable dollars? I'm thinking that I'll get an LSz that's already been done and use it as my daily. Something a little different to what I have now

3,500 views and only a few replies! I'm a friendly guy, I won't bite any heads if you reply, surely some of you feel like replying, I wouldn't mind the feedback!

23 June 2012 Well ladies and gentlemen, it’s true. 13 months since the car was last on a tow-truck the zed has again had a trip on a tow truck. “What? Who? How is that significant, you’re not making sense†I hear you say, well, the zed is home!!! Indeed, the second chapter of the story is complete and the third chapter has started, it’s time to put it back together. Of all days to forget to carry my camera, it was today. And of all days to have the backup camera go flat, it was also today. So, not many photos, but plenty of significance none-the-less. I won’t bore you with my words, on to the photos: Will had the car siting in the yard waiting for our arrival, out in the sun for the first photos of this paint-job in the sun and WOW does it look good: Colin showed up not long after us and meticulously loaded the car on to the trailer. This is the highest the car has sat in a long time, but still the nerves were high making sure there was no damage. Eyes glued on the car, me making sure everything was going OK: And so the car was loaded on to a truck for the trip across town and back home. Massive thanks to Will for what has not been finally counted but is at a best guess ~1200-1300 hours of love spent on this restoration. It really has been a labour of love. About 45 minutes later the car came to rest back in its nest. And so folks, the next stage starts and it’s time for me to put hours into the car again and get it going. Today consisted of making space in the garage to fit the car in and tomorrow will mark the first day of rebuild, starting with fuel hoses and wiring loom. Stay tuned, the pressure is on to have the car going as soon as possible so that it can be shaken down in time to jump on a truck to Philip Island for Easter 2013 and the NDSOC nationals.

10 June 2012 Hi Folks, Well, not really a huge update, but a very significant one and subsequently a LOT of photos. I apologise in advance (no, not really, I’m just being polite) but the car is BACK ON THE GROUND! The car was first delivered to Will on Saturday 28 May 2011. 12 months and 13 days later, I have the following to show you: That’s right folks, it’s ALMOST DONE!! You have no idea how good this feels. Actually, I’m sure there are plenty of people who do, but I can guarantee that if you haven’t ever rebuilt a car you have never felt this good. It’s simply amazing and I’m buzzing, waiting for next weekend to come so I can bring it home Ok, so, theatrics aside, this is how I found the car when I arrived: Still, not bad. Will had the cowl panel off waiting on me to deliver the wiper motor and all the wiring and pipe work, but I’m going to do that later after I get it cleaned up and presentable, however, chek out the bonnet locks: I couldn’t help myself and so started snapping away with the car on stands: Rear tow hook, also in Monaco red: Unfortunately, we’ve had category 2 cyclone winds today here in Perth and the result was the the power blacked out after I’d only taken 5 pics. Not to be disheartened I asked Will to take the car off the stands so I could take some better pics. I tried to get a little creative using a torch to try and get the sparkle in a photo. I had not seen it before, but in the dark under a spot light the car just looks INCREDIBLE!! I know a lot of these photos have looked good, but WOW. The paint starts to have a bit of a purple tinge and HEAPS of pearl comes through. This was the best I could manage: The lack of light couldn’t hold me back, Hell, that’s why cameras have flash right!? Sit back and enjoy: The wheels now fit inside the guards: Compare this to when I first mounted the new rims over a year ago: Front: Rear: I kept going in the dark and the arty me tried to come out, despite being severely hampered by my extraordinarily poor photography skills: For some reason I just can’t get enough of this photo: And here I was thinking that the suspension was looking in good nick, I swear it did! Will just makes it look bad in comparison! Looking above the front bumper and under the bonnet at the bonnet hinges that have been shown some love via nickel plating: And the engine bay ready to take the L28 that Tus and the boys at Osborne Park Service Centre are building for me: Like I said folks, not a big update (aside from the 17 photos) but a significant one. Will tells me he’ll have the car ready for me to put on a truck next weekend so that I can bring it home and get started on the slow process of putting it back together. For now, stay tuned and enjoy. Fun facts: 20,383 words, 351 photos, 77 pages in raw format in Word, 12,040 individual views on AusZcar

27 May 2012 Well, as the drilling world works, you never know when you’re going to start or finish until you step on to the chopper. I’ve even heard of people being asked to step OFF the chopper, so maybe not even then. Anyways, I got another couple weeks in town before I have to head off. You’ll know when I make it on to the chopper because I’ll probably have posts for 3-4 days about the incredible sunsets out on the open ocean, followed by how crap it is being stuck on a 100mx100m square floating box jammed in with 120 other unfortunate souls with nothing to do but work 12 hours a day, go to the gym, eat and sleep. It sounds nice, but it’s not…. Anyways, back to the car. I went to see Will today because I had a weekend gifted to me so thought to make the most of the chance. Not much of an update really, I just like to take lots of photos I hope you like photos too, because here is a bunch now that the car has panels on it and almost looks like a real car again!!! All painted, notice the Monaco Red tow hook (yup, Ferrari relegated to the tow points). It wasn’t even my idea; Will has once again taken the initiative to make sure the car looks tip-top everywhere he’s been Front all done in matte black. In my opinion Matte black should only be a highlight, not a main colour and I stand by that: Underneath the cowl panel: Will also took the time to install a nice steel rod jacking point to the radiator support. This was heavily bent when I took it to Will thanks to some dummy who worked on it in the past trying to jack the car and instead just bending things. Now, the next dummy that jacks the car from the front at least won’t bend it again!! Engine bay It’s the little things I stumbled across the paint tin so took the lid off. Check out the FX all settled out in the tin! And the obligatory “Straightest roof ever†photo:

16 May 2012 Welcome Back!! Well I went in to the shop the Sunday after the last update (18 March) and the car hadn’t been painted. That was a shame and then I was told on the Monday that the next morning I was booked on a 430 flight to catch a chopper offshore for a couple of weeks. That was just plain terrible. None-the-less I still managed to get my hand on a LOT of pics thanks to Dad in the time away and even had a few emailed in from admirers at Will’s request when he had visitors stop in to the shop. Without further ado, here is a (small) collection of photos of the paint progress. Will tells me it was just a matter of ‘Squirt it on, that’s the easy bit’ yet I think there might be more to it….. Here is the body in paint: And a shot of some of the FX additives in the paint. I counted the invoice (it was LONG one) and got to a total of 9: What the colour looks like in transient from full sun to dark. The over exposed white is just the camera struggling, but the colour does ACTUALLY go from that green right through to a dark blue. It looks SENSATIONAL in the light. The most expensive ‘wind chime’ (as it was described by a friend) I’ve ever or will ever own: The car: The hatch and bonnet finished pre polishing: The interior painted on 16/5/12. Unfortunately there was still masking in place whilst Will was polishing the body. The floor, transmission tunnel and firewall were finished just enough to cover, but the roll cage and rear that MAY (I’ve not decided yet) may be exposed. That’s right folks, full colour in the hatch and around the wheel well just in case I decide not to trim over it! The best looking engine bay in the world (totally impartial, of course) The front of the radiator support is going to be painted flat black so that when viewed from the front, with the other black trim on the car, the car looks tough and a well thought out image. Long shot of the finished product pre polishing (with lots of compound smeared all over it) A view in daylight of the depth of colour: From the front with the clean refelction of the front of the shop. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a shot in the full sun with the colour change effect because the battery in the camera went flat. One last shot (promise, for now) of the finished and polished guard and its perfect reflection of the Buick that Will is almost finished with too. I thought I was hurting with a 1000 hour build, that thing has taken 3, plush EVERY ITEM on that car has been HAND BUILT. I’m not kidding, EVERY last part has been hand built and manufactured as a one off. Talk about commitment! 2 amazing cars, one incredible manufacturer: And that brings an end to this update. Will has to finish polishing the body and doing final touch-up jobs on odds and ends around the car and then it’s time to bring it home. I stopped in to see the guy that is going to do the brake lines on the way home today and together we decided that the car is going to get dual master cylinders, doing away with the booster, along with a locking hydraulic handbrake, so that’s the stopping system sorted. I spoke to the mechanic and the engine shop are sick of the motor taking up a stand, so it’s going to be out of the engine shop as soon as they get off their backsides and order an oil pump drive and then it will be straight in to the body. Things are really coming along nicely; expect to see some more regular updates soon! (ps, offshore again for 2 weeks from Thursday week, so perhaps don’t expect an update too soon )

Cheers mate It is really a nice surprise every time I go to his shop. Will keeps pretty brief records of what he spend the day doing when he records the working hours, but every time I go there I find something he's done that he never mentioned or wrote down that just amazes me. I need to get some photos, but a classic example is the little winglets he installed on the front guard to mould the shape of the spoiler into the guard better. There are hundreds of little things like that going on that are a pleasure to find. He really is a master craftsmen, I guess I kind of knew it, but waiting 12 months to get the car in his shop and now having it spend 12 months in there when I could have gone elsewhere and had it finished with 18 months ago, it's starting to pay off. I'm going to see him Sunday with the camera. I got a call yesterday telling me that the car is on stands and the rotisserie is no longer needed and is cluttering the shop. That means it's painting time!!!

4 April 2012 G’Day Folks, Well, not may words this time (Thank god!) just some more pics. The car is pretty much 100% ready for paint and with any luck will see some colour over the easter long weekend! For now, some raw photos: I walked in to the shop today and saw a beautiful sight, hanging panels! The inspection lids have had the welds ground off of the vents and are ready for primer The doors are getting some more attention fixing those little faults that you don’t see till the end There turned out to be some bad rust around the radiator support. Will didn’t think it would be much, but after taking the surface rust off it turned out to be a cut and replace job. Looks to me like it’s brand new! Here is a good shot showing the flaring on the guards, any other angle and you just can’t tell because they are that well integrated! And the body back to being fully mounted on the rotisserie ready for paint The spoiler has seen some final touches before being sent to the fiberglass shop for moulding. I did mention above, but these will be for sale after I’ve had the mould made and will be a very reasonable price. I’m not out to make money on these so you can guarantee that you’ll get top quality for your dollar. The weather has been perfect for painting the last week or so and as such Will has ordered the paint, which he painstakingly reminded me about 15 times in one breath costs $480 per litre just for the colour (!!!!), not including clear and that I need 8 litres of the stuff….. The under body is getting done in proof-coat first, then the outside and engine bay in body colour and then finally the inside and cage get done in a matching 2-pac. I’m off for the weekend, but I’ll be checking in on Will and hopefully a painted car in about 2 weeks!!! 11 April 2012 Well, I haven’t been this excited by a car for a VERY long time. Well, F1’s were probably better, but I’ve never been this excited about the zed, nor this rebuild. I wasn’t home over Easter, but Dad managed to get down to see Will over the weekend for another update on the zed. WOW does not begin to describe what I think about this car! Will has got the underbody coating on the car and finished. It’s a PPG product and is a stone guard type product. I don’t know what it’s called, but it is super hard, light-weight, stone and heat resistant as well as being a sound deadener. It’s black magic, put it that way. It’s what new car manufacturers use these days, just to keep in theme with the modernisation of the car. Will also installed a couple of beams/braces around the car for jacking points so that the floor/sill/chassis doesn’t get bent by lazy mechanics (ie, me and Dad ) looking for jacking points. As well as these under the floor, there is also a bar welded on under the radiator support so that it can be used as a jacking point without bending it, as happened before. Will has also finalised all the last touch-ups on the primer and body and almost finished blocking the car back. The PRIMER is shiny in some places, it’s that smooth! Check out the roof! To show off the lines of the car, Will put some water on the quarter panel to get a nice reflection. Ignore the smudges/streaks, that’s just the water. How amazing does it look! That’s all for this one folks. To quote what my Dad said “The workshop needs to be cleared and prepped, then it’s paint time. Expect to see it finished next weekend†Stay tuned for colour after I pop in on Sunday to check out the progress. I’m expecting big news and will have literally hundreds of photos if the car has been painted! Out (18,751)

18 March 2012 Hi folks, Well, as promised, I have plenty of photos and some more updates from the last 2 months. Bear with me on this one, it might be a little disorganised as I try and remember WHAT exactly went on over the last 2 months, it’s all a bit of a blur for me. Here we go: 27 January 2012 Well rusty, bent and disfigured guards are still the star of this visit. They are coming along nicely but the offshoot to making sure they aren’t filled with bog is that bucketloads of time is required to get them in to good enough shape that they can just be painted without being touched up. Here is how they look now in the raw: The flare doesn’t look like much in the photos but looks TOUGH on the car The vents have been shaped to match the curve of the guard, welded in place which buckled the entire guard and then hammered back in to shape again: You can see here the amount of heat-shrinking that was required to ‘de-bend’ the guards after they were flared. Will is never shy to remind me how thin the steel is on this car which makes it almost impossible to work on. It was designed back in the day to be light for a fast car, but they were only ever designed to be stamped out of a mould and as such any heat from welding in new parts or even using stiffer steel welded in place plays havoc with the shape of the panels and makes it very difficult to work on the panels and maintain the shape of the car. This is not a new discovery by any means for anyone that has read about restorations on a zed before, but it makes the process painfully slow. Here you can see how the vents have been shaped to the guards: About a month ago Will finally had the internet connected at his shop and as a result discovered this thread and the celebrity that comes with being featured in so many photos. As such, Will requested I put this photo up on the net for him and mention that any interested ladies can contact me for his phone number 19 February 2012 Well we’re getting to the pointy end of the panel beating part of this rebuild, but it’s dragged on so long that other customers of Will’s have started throwing their weight around and pushing for work to be done on their own cars. As such, things on the zed have sat on the back-burner for a little while. Not to worry, I still have some more photos to show off the finished and primered guards: 15 March 2012 Will has been working hard lately and sent me these phone happy snaps of the front end of the car in primer and ready for paint! I don’t know about you but I am VERY excited about this project now! 18 March 2012 Well it’s been a month since the last visit but things are moving along with the car. All of the fiberglass panels have been fitted and shaped to the car, the bonnet pins have been installed, all steel panels are in primer ready for paint and the car is ready to go back together! Here are a few sneak peak photos of the car as it stands today: Bonnet: Hinge pin cut-out Fiberglass parts More fiberglass: I don’t think I’ve spent a lot of time emphasising the fit of the panels on the car, but here is an example of how the headlight buckets fit: These have ZERO bog on them. It’s hard to get an absolute perfect fit on such intricate angles, but I must say, for no bog, that’s a pretty damn good fit. My favourite part of this now has to be the vented guards, here they are installed on the car in all their glory During the trial fit a couple of days ago Will tells me that the point of it is to man-handle the panels and simulate some of the forces they will encounter during racing. As such, a couple of seams and creases have cracked a little bit and require some more work, but here is a quick snap of the fit of the guards from the engine bay side of the car: As I mentioned in my last post, Will has spent a lot of time working on the customised front spoiler and so I will be having a mould made up and copies will be available for sale. I haven’t spoken to the fiberglass shop just yet, but Will had a quick few words with them and it looks like $300-400 should be a good indication of what they will cost to make up if you’re interested. More details will follow in the next few weeks, for now here are some close-up photos of the front spoiler ready for primer: Until next time folks (18,059).

10 December 2011 Well, I went to see Will again today, I even decided it would be a good idea to do the 47k return trip on my push bike in 30 degree weather, and I have no photos because there has been no progress. It’s been 3 weeks since the last visit and Will has been busy with other projects and tells me he needed a break from such a long and drawn out car. I think this has been his longest rebuild to date and he’s a bit sick of working on it. None the less, I’ve been promised the next 3 weeks exclusively so I’m sure there will be some good progress next visit. Unfortunately, Will has found quite a few flaws with the fiberglass parts on the car. He showed me some spider looking cracks in the gel coat and he says that usually when you see this, rather than just coating it, it means that the part needs more work or to be re-done. I didn’t pay much for the parts and Will tells me that these sorts of issues are why you can’t charge a lot for parts. If the parts had come in ‘Ready to be painted’ condition then they would command a premium price and would be true ‘paint and go’ material. Not to worry, Will will be sanding back the gel ever so carefully (It’s see-through in some parts!!) and then going over it with bog to fill and fix all the imperfections. Will’s mate over the road, who is a fiberglass specialist, will also be having a look at the panels and devise a method of how to ‘roll’ fiberglass guards. I have a feeling it means cutting out a section of the panel and re-moulding a piece that the wheels will fit under. 8 January 2012 Well, we’re now into the New Year and the project is coming up to a year late on my ideal finish date. However, soo much more work has been required that the original goal for finish was never going to be achievable without an army of people and a bottomless pocket. Believe it or not, despite the build to date, my pocket is not bottomless! It’s been a month since the last update on the diary so here is a recap of a few visits: A little bitter-sweet really, the car is approaching being finished and yet at every turn more rubbish previous repair work is found. Read on to discover the next chapter: 24 December 2011 I went to see Will today, he’s been working hard and will be over Christmas so the least I could do was drop in a carton to help it through it. No photos, I left the camera at home, but WOW do I need to get some photos ASAP for you guys! The fiberglass man and Will had a look at the panels and the decision has been made that it would be far too difficult and expensive to do what I wanted with them and it would be easier and cheaper to just use steel guards. I really didn’t want to use steel guards on the car, but having talked to Will at some length, it’s going to make the whole process much cheaper. I dropped the panels off a week or two before this visit, in their ‘virgin’ heap-of-a-condition because I hadn’t stripped them as I was never planning to use them. Will has got them back to bare metal and tells me they weigh at least half of what they did with all the bog/tar/rubbish on them. At the end of the day, it’s not ideal for weight loss but a much better solution overall. I like efficiency and this is it playing in full. Pics next visit! On an even less exiting note, on this visit it turns out that the reason the fiberglass guards didn’t fit on the passenger side is because of the accident it had way back when by a previous owner. About 6 years ago Will replaced all of the front chassis rails due to a near roll-over in the sand I had caused them to crack as they had rusted through. These repaired parts of the car were straight but the dodgy repairs from when the car was hit in the front meant that the entire passenger side of the engine bay was bent. The rails are straight, but the reinforcing bar at the top is bent and therefore the panels don’t fit…. Yay???? So much for a good body, Will now has to spend a couple of weeks cutting up the front end, pulling it straight and welding it back together. 29 December 2011 The Christmas rush is over, I finished moving house for the second time in 8 months and I managed to fit in a visit to go see Will! The guards are coming along well, but like the rest of the car, they were in TERRIBLE condition and it’s taken a fair whack of time to get them going. Here is a pick of the drivers side: Looking AMAZING!!! Oh, that’s right, I forgot to mention that using the steel guards means that I can now have the vents that I originally wanted, they couldn’t be moulded in to the fiberglass, but you can weld them in to steel. I didn’t get the weight out that I wanted by using fiberglass, but aero efficiency is back on the agenda for this build. Yeah baby! The passenger side has also had some work but isn’t finished yet: And the inside of the passenger side guard before venting and rust replacement but after Will has ground all the tar off: 2 January 2012 The second day of the New Year and parts are going back to Will to be installed on the car! This is a pretty momentous occasion; the car is going back together! I had nothing more to show than the wheels and suspension loaded up in the car waiting for delivery to Will: He’ll be using the stuff to work out how much the guards need to be adjusted to get it all to fit. It could be an interesting discovery, another to add to the list at least. Keep posted. 7 January 2012 I popped in today to see Will and to keep him motivated with some of the cold hard stuff. Progress is going well and the front end is finally straight and fits together! Dad took the last photos and so this was my first trip to see the steel guards: Wow was I impressed or what! I was greeted by this site on walking in to the shop: It looks AMAZING in the flesh. The other side of the car is not looking as good tho, here is the passenger front guard: Rust More bogged up rust from previous repairs: More rust: VENTS! Some of the rubbish cut from the guards alone: Will spent a lot more time over the last week straightening the front passenger side of the car. He tells me that the rails were straight (he did rebuild the front rails 6 years ago, so that’s to be expected) but forward of the suspension towers the entire front end had concertinaed on top of itself and was pushed downwards. Will measured it all up, got cutting and welding and now it’s straight again. Not an ideal situation, but I’m super happy to know that at least the car is now perfectly straight, free from Bog, super light-weight and rust free! Here are a couple snaps I managed to take of the remnants of his hard work on the front end: Behind the headlight bucket: It’s all now dead straight, check out the gaps: Considering that 2 weeks ago the panels wouldn’t even fit and allow the bonnet to close, that’s one hell of an achievement right there. The passenger guard is not rust free yet, but here are a few pics of the rubbish that came out of the driver’s side panel, including remnants of SUPER dodgy previous repairs that were just begging for rust to set in: The headlight bucket is not bolted in place and I snapped this pic before Will could position it where it will end up, but check out the gap on the guard, how amazingly straight! The next job is to finish the rust in the guards, mount the suspension to determine how much work needs doing and ‘pump’ the guards to tuck the wheels. That was it for this last visit, however I got home today (day after these last pics) and I have a missed call from Will from this afternoon, so I’ll be getting back to him in the morning but hopefully it’s good news for a change and not more completely f’d body/chassis notifications! Oh, the interior is in primer and now Will is just working on rusted guards and then paint!

7 December 2011 Wowsers, why is it that 5 weeks always turns in to 3 months for me! If it wasn’t clear from the last post, I was on an aeroplane. Not any aeroplane, Dad and I went to Europe for a month. The trip was a belated graduation gift with a catch: Get first class honours in chemical engineering and I would earn a trip to France. To drive Formula 1 cars! Well, short of the long and we were on our way to France! This really was the trip of my life. A day does not go past where I do not think of the main day of this trip. The whole trip was fantastic (London, England, France, Holland, Hong Kong) but that 1 day in France. The best day of my life. Bar None. The in car videos showed up and however irrelevant to this build thread (blog/life story) it’s going to get a mention. Have a view here, just unbelievable! Tom Incar: John Incar: Well, enough of the self-promotion and on to the car-promotion! I’m in a strange spot here at the moment because I remember all of the last 3 months like it was yesterday and yet so much has happened that I haven’t written down. For starters, my last visit was 3 weeks ago and will had logged 515 hours on the car… Yup, 515 hours of professional restoration. And he wasn’t even finished!! More on that later tho. I guess the best spot to start is the first visit after the euro trip. THE euro trip… As always, Dial-up is pointless and I do not apologise for the onslaught of pictures because I can almost guarantee that is why most of you are here regardless of how good (or bad, probably…) my words are. 30 September 2011 My first day back in town and stop number 1 after dropping my bags is to see Will and how much he’s done in the last 5 weeks since the last visit. A lot (I think, time is merging here for me). Will has put 4 solid weeks in to this car since I left and the rear end is fully in primer and starting to really look good. You can also see some good progress on the inside of the rear wheel wells. I didn’t just take this photo to show off the job he did of rolling the guards, I promise!! The roof is also looking better since the last visit and from the outside you would never know that it was ever removed in the first place. Unless of course I showed you pictures of it before/after, which I have… Will keeps all the rust he cuts out of cars until the end of the project. It might seem strange but it’s actually a fantastic guide to just how much work has gone in to a car. Here is the pile as it stands on this visit: I would normally talk about where it came from and how hard it was to remove and replace, but to be honest I can’t place it at all. I just know it came from my car…. The cowl has finally seen some love and is looking fantastic in a thin veil of primer: Will has also finally spent some time working on the doors, which were probably in worse shape than the rest of the car. Or actually, maybe, just similar shape to the rest of the car… 01 October 2011 Well, there are a lot of things I wrote down on my “To Do†list when I started this restoration. There are also more than a couple of things that I most certainly DID NOT put on the list. They either didn’t make the budget (HAHA!!!) or I decided that they weren’t necessary because they were already upgraded and I couldn’t justify spending the money on them (BAHAHAHAHAHA!!). I would list the list of “not necessary†upgrades, but most of them are already covered in the above 50 (yes, 50) pages of the word copy of this diary/life journey and so I won’t bother you. 1 thing that I was ADAMANT I would not touch, however, was the suspension on the car. That was until one fateful day. One this day, some time ago now (or not, I’m still confused by dates) I was unpacking my draw to find all my tax receipts. In this fateful draw was my last car registration paper. Normally these are not exciting pieces of paper, least of all because all of mine generally seem to have a bill of $500 attached to them. This one, however, was special. It wasn’t because of any reduction in the bill, infact that probably went up, or any changes in the colour of the paper used (works for some people I’m told). No, this was special because it was the first I’d actually ever interrogated. If it weren’t for the fact it was tax time and I literally couldn’t find enough things to waste time on then I would never have read this unassuming bill. However, I did read the paper, even, including, the fine print. WELL, wasn’t that a delight worth reading!! Listed in a little box near the bottom of the form is a ‘notes’ section and what do you know, it has something in it…. I know, I know, “GET TO THE POINTâ€, I hear you scream. This is worth it, trust me. Listed in this box are the greatest words I’ve heard about this car in a long time: “Personal Import. Exempt from compliance to Australian Design Regulationsâ€. That’s right folks, EXEMPT from compliance to Australian Design Regulations!! This probably rates as close to, now, the second greatest day of my life. Bring on a history of being able to do whatever I like to this car without risk of B-Reg or getting yellow stickers that can’t be removed. I present, the (almost) un-defectable zed!!! It’s not defect proof, but as close as one can get. Armed with this new-found glory I got a little carried away and paid a visit to one Stewart Wilkins on the recommendation from my primary sponsor, Wheels World. Stewart and I talked for a while and 2 weeks and some pay-cheques later I brought home a little treat: That’s right folks, Adjustable coil-overs. Totally unnecessary and yet totally appropriate. 250Ib fronts, 300Ib rears, 300zx adjustable koni yellow shocks all-round, custom top-plates to lower the car without sectioning struts, weld-on sleeves. What Stewart calls ‘The ultimate zed package’ and now I cannot (I believe, yet to be proven in court) get defected for it Talk about win-win. For reference here is a shot of the old springs and struts (which are available for sale for anyone interested by the way, just PM me…): 22 Oct 2011 Ok, time to get this diary/blog moving again and hurry up. On 22/10/11 I went to see will again. Now that the zed is his sole source of income he’s actually getting some work done on it. Another shot here of the cowl, not sure why I took it, but it looks good: The doors are now smoothed and in primer, looking fantastic. Will has also, through-out the whole project, been going back and touching things up as he progresses. One of the many areas to feel his gentle caress is the fuel filler cap, which now actually fits the car: That was all really for this trip. It doesn’t look like much for 2 weeks work, but I’m told there has been a lot of ‘going over’ that will pay dividends in the final product that don’t look like much now. 28 October 2011 Well, only 1 week since my last visit and that’s, unashamedly, because I was late for a progress payment…. Will has been busy as always (working 7 days a week, he really can get stuff done!). This time I was VERY surprised to see some real progress. I wouldn’t say I was happy, more shocked. Here is why: That was a floor and rails once!!! What is happening to this car?!! After my initial shock died down and I got myself composed I was able to appreciate the work that was being done. I even managed what I would call an artistic shot (by my standard anyways): I call this one “Inverse manufacturing†owing to what was once a lack of a roof and is now a lack of a floor… Here are the left-overs of what was cut out of the floor. You can see just how bad the car was and how masked it was until Will cut it apart to reveal the true Frankenstein: The ‘floor’ that Will insists was done by ‘the apprentice’ (He has said this about most of the car, especially considering the poor state of repairs when it was back to bare metal last time) Here is the crushed in part of the engine bay where the battery tray used to be. It is understood that this car had a front end bingle that resulted in the wheel crushing the metal underneath the battery tray. (15,000 words ) That was it for this visit, a very insightful indication of the low quality of repairs done on this car in the past. However, given this car was an English resident in its first life, with all the salt roads and snow, it’s really not that bad! 20 November 2011 Almost a month since the last visit and things are still moving along well. Will has spent most of the last month re-doing the work some ‘apprentice kid’ did to the car in the past, along with fixing up all the damage that Dad and I have done to the car in the past 8 years. No, we didn’t do dodgy repairs or have an accidient: The forces we have exerted on the car have stripped threads and torn diff and gearbox mounts. Will has spent a lot of time remanufacturing the sway bar and diff mounts in 1/8†steel to ensure that they don’t bend again in the future: Old mount vs new steel used to replace it: Not only that, but it turns out that the Bad Dog frame rails are useless in this build. The whole point of the Bad Dog rails is that you cut off the original rails, leaving a ‘tab’ to weld the new rails to. Unfortunately for me, the old rails were so rusted that even with 1/8†steel the Bad Dog rails would have been even weaker than the rails on the car due to the poor state of any tab that would be left to weld to. (Unsurprisingly, I have a pair of bad dog frame rails sitting unused in perfect condition looking for a new home. Make me a silly offer, they are worth nothing to me sitting in a box). Here are a couple shots of the new rails that Will bent up himself for me: The floor is also back together and looking like a factory product that was meant to be there: Will really knows how to please a man and is making me very happy showing off his skill and proving just why he is panel-beater of choice for DADSON racing (This is his third project for us). He even got around to the front wheel wells and that busted battery tray: Despite how vehemently will detested having the car on a rotisserie, you can see by the burn marks just how much he’s been spinning the car around whilst working on it. He really can’t help himself Also note how a replacement floor should look, none of this bendy flat plate nonsense, only the best will leave Will’s shop. Here are a couple photos I took of a couple spots of work I spied that Will never pointed out to me: Will has also still been keeping the ever growing pile of rusted metal of the car. Here it is at the last count: Just notice how bad some of the metal in the car had been eaten away by oxygen: Today is the 7th of December and I am a week late for seeing Will (ANOTHER late progress payment ) and so I’ll be stopping by his place this weekend to get a progress update. When I left on the 20th October he was promising that the engine bay would be done, he’d be starting on all the fiberglass parts and that he’d be doing another round on the car with bog to get the final shapes correct before some more undercoat and then a round of final colour (Which is still a secret I believe, you’ll just have to wait to see it!!). Bonsoir friends, my glass of red wine is empty, my warm bed is waiting and the sleeping cat in my lap and dog on her bed are all telling me it’s time to call this one to an end and check back in another time.

4 June 2011 9 days until the next update, that sounds more like a project getting back on track! I like where this is going My new goal is to have the car ready by Christmas. Aside from certain religious and social implications of that time of year it also happens to be the latest that I can enter into motorvation, Perth’s biggest import and aussie car show. I entered several years ago after I had the motor rebuilt however this time will be slightly more significant and so I would really like to make the end of the year! So, since the last update the car has indeed been delivered to panel beater! Success! Hooray! Happy Dance! And so on and so forth You read that right ladies and gentlemen, after 6 months in an idle state in a driveway collecting dust, the car is now sitting in a panel shop, idle collecting dust… Not to worry, despite the panel beater being busy this last week, I haven’t had that luxury and work is progressing. Not to get ahead of myself tho, we will return to the scene of the crime 7 days ago: I got some pictures off of dad that he took of the car on its final day in silver and so I figured it would be a good idea to post them up for sentimental reasons. Silver was never my favourite colour; however it worked well, was individual in regards to colour choice’s in Perth and was remarkably cheap to buy in a spray can for touch-up jobs…. Here is the ‘ole zed on its final journey to the panel beater. Goodbye old girl, bring on the rebirth! On arrival at the delivery location, dad and I… well… dad, worked hard to get the car mounted on the rotisserie. Whilst one of us was working hard, I broke out the camera and managed to grab a couple of pics: Go you good thing! … That was all well and good, however on close inspection of the under body by a foul mouthed, disrespectful panel beater Silver Bullet was left heartbroken at the diagnosis: “It’s a pig. You need more than you want to spend, it is FAR too rough to get finished on that budget†… :,( None the less, we continued on the inspection, with Will giving me a real no-holds-barred inspection of the body. Here he is in full swing: Despite many negative words, it didn’t go unnoticed by the onlookers that Will was excited at the prospect of having a rotisserie to work on again after so long working with jack stands. I will apologise in advance to boyblunda tho, the rotisserie may come back with patches of odd-coloured paint itself. This body needs a good blasting and avoiding the rotisserie is hard. None the less, the rotisserie is simply a tool and what a fantastic one at that. With the car positioned as it is I was more than able to rotate the car myself with no assistance and no bias towards top or bottom heavy, talk about infinite adjustability working to an advantage! So, today I got up at 630 to get an early start on the car. About 3 and a half hours after convincing myself that it was actually a good idea to get out of bed (it really wasn’t!) and cycle 23k’s to the shop, I finally arrived! Hoorah! … It might not seem like much, but that was probably the hardest part of the day those few hours getting ready, making lunch and cycling in what felt like sub zero temperatures. Don’t worry, I checked the Bureau Of Meteorology website and it was actually more like 10 degrees. But that’s beside the point; it was just damn freaking cold alright! 12 hours after getting up I finally arrived home again, but I have to say, I had a pretty big win today. Will had some super-dooper paint stripper made of all sorts of extra-ordinarily environmentally harmful chemicals that worked an absolute treat on the car. Will himself exclaimed that it shouldn’t have worked so well and he was stumped at what crap quality the paint was… Again with the bad words to the poor girl! None-the-less, 7 hours later and I had the entire engine bay stripped of paint, back to bare metal. Will passed his experienced eye over the metal and the job I’d done… The words used are not possible to spell, so I’ll just summarise as “needs plenty of attention†Now is the point where I would happily show off the hard work I’d done all day, however, I couldn’t fit my camera in my bag. Honest. nothing to do with forgetting it despite charging it the night before or anything like that! So, no photo’s, however, rest assured that the car is coming along well and that the engine bay is ready for some new metal, welding, grinding and painting to make it look ship-shape again Wow, all this makeover work makes me I feel like I’m in the middle of a nip-tuck episode Almost as expensive too… I’ll be spending next Saturday at the shop too and this time I’ll get photos to update on how things are going. I suspect Will will have done little-to-naught on the car by then, however, I’ll keep going with paint stripping and with any luck I’ll get most of the rest of the car back to bare-metal in another day’s work. As a present to all those following this thread, as I promised in the last update, here are some pics of the rotisserie mounts. A massive thanks again to dad for manufacturing the mounts and even going to the effort of getting them plated so that they won’t rust. Without his help, this project simply would never have left the phase of ‘pipe-dream’! The front mount: Here you can clearly see how the horn mounting points are utilised and also the vertical bolt that has been installed in the front of the frame rail to hold the weight. The bolt holds the mount to the car and the horn mounting bit basically keeps the square tube from deflecting from vertical. It works an absolute treat and although some temporary modification of the chassis rails is required, I would highly recommend this mounting procedure. The rear mount: The rear mounts are very basic, using the rear bumper mounting points. These points are bolted to the chassis rails from factory so they are super strong and amazingly simple to produce brackets for mounting. Hopefully these pics are helpful to others who are looking to build rotisserie mounts. With the car connected at these points and with the center of rotation about 4 inches’ or so above the mounts the car is perfectly balanced. This is with a cage tho, so a standard zed might be a little bottom heavy. None-the-less this is a VERY simple way to mount the car out of all of the methods I came across when trying to build blue-prints for this car. 31 August 2011 Well, I think it’s the 31st at the moment. According to my laptop it’s 12:56am on the 31st and according to the little screen in the back of the seat in front of me it’s 5:56pm on the 30th… These 32 hour days are just bizarre and hopefully you’re all as suitably confused as my body is at the moment. Not to worry, I have 3 hours left in this forsaken seat so I figured that was enough time to finally sort out the next update so that’s good news for everyone who has been waiting for the next update. At least, I hope people have been waiting eagerly for an update, it would certainly be a shot in the motivation if nobody was…. Either way (please be the former!) Ladies and gentlemen, I present The Rebuild! It’s been the better part of 3 months since the last update and work has finally started on the car, 200+ hours of it in fact. The panel beater has been hard at work and the new car is starting to really take shape. I will apologise in advance for the onslaught of photos, but I really feel this rebuild deserves it. Or is it that the wallet demands it for justification? I’ve sorted through the photos I’ve taken on multiple trips to the shop and I feel the best way to present them is in chronological order, so that’s how I’m going to tell this story. Without further ado: 2 July 2011 This was a painful day. Almost exactly one month since dropping the car off for work to start and we’ve hardly started. I spent a weekend working in the shop with Will and a bucket of ammonia based paint stripper (I really advise you don’t play with this stuff, it’s REALLY nasty, however amazingly well it works it’s SUPER nasty!) and came away with the engine bay and roof back to bare metal: 23 July 2011 Roof! That’s right folks, a new roof! I will finally be able to enjoy a drive in the rain with the rain staying on the OUTSIDE of the car! Also, did I say that the car now has a roof?! A roof! It’s even made of metal! A metal roof, who would have thought that I would be putting metal into this car considering all the plastic coming it’s way. Perhaps I should have used carbon. Hmm, that’s an idea… Actually, that’s a ridiculous idea, this is a 70’s classic and it deserves METAL: Roof aside, Will has been busy with a sandblaster and taken the rest of the body back to bare metal so that we can get the work really going. By going back to bare metal Will can fully assess the shape of the car and get down and dirty with it. You’d be surprised at how bent the car is too Here is the car as I found it in the shop on the 23rd: How the engine bay turned out: You can quite clearly see the work that Will did on the car 5-odd years ago when he replaced the entire length of chassis rails from the firewall forward, note the different colour of the metal. Surprisingly, not too much rust in this part of the car which is fantastic to see, a couple of holes that need patching, but nothing too major. Cowel: Door: Other door: Note how some dodgy bugger has ‘repaired’ previous accident damage: Sand Dog leg rust: Did these cars come with rust as standard?! Quarter window: More previous accident ‘repair’ at passenger side lower edge of windscreen: So, what was a month ago now, the car was back to bare metal and the roof was in (METAL!). In talking to Will and assessing the work to be done in the future I got motivated and ordered some Bad Dog frame rails for the car. There are a LOT of bent things under the car, such as all the sway bar mounts and the chassis rails are collapsed due to be used as jacking points so there will be a heap of work required under the car as well as the body. The Bad Dog frame rails are awesome and will be several kilo’s very well spent on the car. They are 2-3x thicker than the standard rails and should be fairly simple to install due to the way that they weld in onto the current rails. You sort-of take an angle grinder or similar to the current rails and leave perhaps 1-2cm of frame rail protruding from the chassis which you then use as ‘tabs’ for the Bad Dog rails to fit over and weld to. It’s a very simple concept really and for something like $250 delivered from the states is also great value. 7 August 2011 What do Rust, bog and dodgy rebuilds have in common? They’ve all occurred in the last few weeks on this car! Read on: Another trip to the panel beater and another clue to the history of this car has been uncovered: It’s been back to bare metal before! I don’t know who did the work, but for the whole time I have owned this car, going 8 years now, it was NEVER apparent that this car had had any decent work done to it. I can guarantee the previous owner of 10-odd years didn’t do it either; however I do know he did a dodgy respray a few years before I bought the car. Well, I suppose decent work isn’t really the word to use here anyways, seeing as the fool who did the work used acrylic primer, which I’m told is porous and hence the car continued to rust and as Will tells me, it looks like the apprentice worked on the car: Good intentions, but massive short-cuts seem to be taken. Here is a great example of what I mean by that. I present exhibit a: Rear drivers side quarter panel. When it was painted, nothing could be seen, however without paint there is a pretty suspicious spot of bog: Will knows what’s hidden here, despite my ignorance and so grabs the sander to prove his point: The same story is repeated along the doors and the rest of the rear end of the car. It will take Will a week to go around and clean and PROPERLY repair the dodgies that have been done to this car. But hey, it’s all part of the fun of restoring these old cars and it’s good to know that when I’m done this will be one of the nicest zeds I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing. The roof is coming along with every visit: And every visit this car is slightly more and more rust free, but there is still a long ways to go yet. You can see here the rust that was cut out of the passenger side quarter window: How it looks done properly: The driver’s side was not quite so bad, but this is a great shot to see Wills work process: Sand Blast, acid wash, cut, repair, reshape. It’s a whole lot more work to get it done right than I thought it would be but the result is fantastic Acid killed rust around the passenger door frame: You can see in this photo how Will is allowing the body to oxidise after he’s cleaned all the paint off. He assures me this is all part of the process despite it being backwards to me! Allegedly it’s a fantastic trick to show up any blemishes in the metal work and you can see here what the bare steel looks like under that light coat of rust: More dodgy repairs: Here it looks like the ‘apprentice’ has tried to braze the split panels back together instead of properly shaping and welding them back together, hence why they split again. This seems to be the result of someone backing the car into a curb, under the big patch of bog on the right of the picture is a big, dead straight, buckle. 20 August 2011 Rust gone! That’s right folks, 2 weeks since the last visit and the majority of the rust in the ‘body’ of the car has been removed. Lots of pics: Fixed rear panel, done right this time: The rest of these pics are pretty self-explanatory and probably don’t need any more explanation than the 1000 words inherent to each of them: The sum of the parts: Bring it on baby, yeah! 27 August 2011 Body smoothing. This week seems to have been all about finalising the contours of the body following all the good work that’s been done on the rust. First point of call tho has got to be the newly rolled rear guards to clear the new wheels with the extra track that I plan on giving the car: Body straightened back up after will gave it the ‘ultimate’ fender roll. Allegedly he’s given it around an inch of clearance under the guard and that any more without splitting the quarter panel will bend the body panels too much and ruin the body of the car. You’d never know anything had been done here if I hadn’t told you, would you?! That Buick in the background is a car that Will has been building for a customer for the better part of 5 years now. It’s been a full custom build because the entire original chassis in it was falling to pieces when the owner brought it in to Will for his expert care. Rear Panel: The straightest roof I’ve seen in a long time: Will tells me that despite things looking pretty bog covered at the moment that by the time he has finished shaping the panels with a hammer, touching them up with bog and then sanding it all back to a final product that the car will have less than half a tin of bog ON it in its entirety. That’s less than 1kg of bog over the entire car… Sounds like a deal to me! Well folks, that’s been one hell of a long update and it’s time for this plane to land (quite literally) so hopefully that’s been enough to tie you all over for the next 5 weeks before I get back to town and can go see the car again. With any luck the body will be in primer, the chassis rails on the car, the fiberglass parts fitted and the entire car ready for paining. Time itself alone will tell, but here’s to hoping!

21 Feb 2011 Well, still waiting on the panel beater. I put that at 6 months now…. Well, to be on with it: I realised the other day that whilst the car is still doing nothing that it would be a convenient time to measure up the suspension to work out how much needs to be taken out of the struts when it goes back together. The car was bottoming out on the front suspension REALLY badly over big pot-holes, so I pulled the suspension out of the car and found that it had no bump stops… Well, that’ll do it!! The rear suspension had bump stops tho, so I dunno what the previous owner was doing to the car, but that seems a bit weird… Either way, I purchased new urethane bump-stops from MSA as part of the rubber kit I purchased and so I have 4 of them to go on all corners. However, if I’m adding bump-stops to the front I need to allow that I have lost the thickness of the bump stop in free travel, so I need to shorten the struts to the point that the chassis hits the ground, plus the uncompressible thickness of the new bump stops. Working out that bit will be a bit of black magic, but for now, PICS The first thing I did was jack up the rear suspension to check the clearance of the new rims to the guards: The tyre JUST hits the inner lip of the guard at what is a ridiculous suspension travel length, but not bottomed out. So, roll the guards nice and simple and the rear wheels will fit a treat, just like expected Whilst I was taking the springs out to measure the max suspension travel, notice the difference between front and rear springs, front on the right, rear on the left: Rear definitely needs to be stiffened up! However, for now I’m not expecting rear binding issues, so that is good An idea of how close the engine cross-member comes to the ground, I think this will bottom out first: The clearance of the front tyre to the chassis of the car with the suspension fully compressed: also notice the rusty brake disc from lack of use And a few happy snaps of the car sitting on its ****: And an idea of how small these cars are when dumped, this is a photo I took standing upright with the camera held above my head, perhaps just over 2m above the ground: So, I haven’t measured anything before I ran out of light, but I’m thinking 50mm section on the struts is required, This is a guestimate of 30mm travel till the chassis rails hit the ground and 20mm uncompressible thickness of the bump-stops. I have thin strut-tops for the rear, so that is the 20-30mm till it hits the ground and so I need to take only 20-30mm out of the rear struts. So, 50mm out of the front struts and 20-30mm out of the rear plus the proper strut inserts and I should have the suspension sorted I’ll put the car back together and see how the rear springs go, if the car is under-steering, then I’ll get some stiffer springs made up, but for now it was a pretty well sorted car. Got camber… 26 May 2011 Another 3 months between updates… This is getting to be a habit these long breaks… Well, for my sanity’s sake I really hope it doesn’t continue! On a positive, my car goes to the panel beater this Saturday 28 May!! I have booked the tow truck, mounted the rotisserie, adjusted it to find the center of gravity of the car and am all ready to go! Let me just stop you for a minute tho and say that things have actually still been moving slowly in the background and so I apologise in advance for the flood of pictures I have taken in the past 3 months. You have been warned Rotisserie? Yep, that’s what I said. I put up a post a few months ago looking for a rotisserie to buy/borrow and a VERY generous boyblunda offered to purchase a rotisserie and let me use it! The catch? I had to fit it to the car and I’ll have to demonstrate to him how to use it… What could I say but yes! Another big thanks to boyblunda, this generosity has really made my project for me. I’ll be happy to catch up any time now the car is on the rotisserie and demonstrate how to use it. The rotisserie is an Ebay unit, which from my understanding is built in Australia. You can pick them up for about $1000 delivered to your local courier depot and they are amazing value! You get a fully functional, constructed, hydraulically jacked rotisserie with almost infinite adjustment. Rated to 1000kg they are more than capable of holding on to a zed shell without a worry. The small amount of work I had to finalise on the car was made MUCH easier with the aid of the rotisserie and for such good value I couldn’t recommend them enough to anybody thinking of doing even mildly serious under-body work. Here are a few pics of the rotisserie when I got it: And what is inside this wonderous black box: Several hours of trying to work out what goes where, why I was short on a few nuts (I wasn’t, I just lost them on the ground for a while ) and I present: The ultimate blue twister! A couple of days later and the ever faithful hand, I mean Dad , had managed to construct a set of mounts and had them plated. The front mounts bolt to the front of the chassis rail, where the horns mount and the rear mounts bolt to the rear bumper mounting points, which are attached to the chassis rails. Unfortunately, I only managed to find 1 picture of the mounts, but I will get more I promise! Unfortunately this turned out to be less than ideal on the first trial lift. Check out the deflection of the rotisserie on the front of the car in this pic! Indeed, that is not a normal angle! So, it turns out that even tho that is frame rail there at the front, the captured nuts are actually only welded to some 1mm plate steel and this plate just bent something chronic when any load was put on it. Needless to say, some more work was required. So, it was back to the drawing board and the man that is came up with another idea: The same mount, but this time with an horizontal plate that bolts vertically to the chassis rail itself and some more bracing on the mount to minimise sheer forces on the welding holding the vertical plate. Just imagine the same mount in the pic above with a horizontal plate butting up to the radiator mount and a bolt through the chassis rail holding it against the top of the chassis rail. Unfortunately it requires drilling the chassis rail, but that’s an easy fix with a welder later compared to some of the rust on this car… I didn’t grab a pic of the new mount, but I will on the weekend after the mounts have been re-plated. Regardless, the new modified mounts work a treat and it wasn’t long before Dad and I had the rotisserie sorted and were spinning the car like a game wheel. But enough ramble, time for some more pictures! (I did warn you…) The underneath: The rear: Super human strength! Also about the best reason for having a sunroof So, the car was up in the air and everything was going great, well, until I realised that now I had much better access to the underneath of the car and all the tar that still remained on it. Back to my favourite game of all time; Heat Gun & Spatula vs tar (no, not anywhere near as exciting as it sounds!): Bald spot!!! … I’m just gonna go and huddle in the corner now, don’t mind me…. I’m back! Not to worry tho, Ashley & Martin didn’t get any of my zed fund And the greatest achievement of last weekend: NO MORE SUNROOF!!! The hole is also not too bad. The roof is a little warped, which will probably require some of our best friend ‘bog’ to get perfect, but the new roof is in fantastic condition so it is certainly salvageable. I’m honestly surprised how little rust there is given how dodgy the install was considering the sunroof installer couldn’t cut more than 5cm at a time in a straight line! On a side note, I have a perfectly functional, reasonable condition LE VAN Sport T Top twin window sunroof for sale if anybody is interested, just drop me a PM and I can send through some more pics. So, that brings me (and you too of course) up to date with what honestly seemed like a neglected rebuild thread. I’ll be dropping in on the panel-beater weekly to keep the pressure on so expect PLENTY of photos over the coming months as the car is transformed from a rust-bucket to what I envision to be a real show stopper. After the panel beater and paid labour, the fun starts all over again with the reconstruction of the car. I managed to bag and label every screw into small sections such as “fuel filler cap†or “pedal box†and take over 500 photos of the car as I stripped it, but somehow I still think that won’t be enough when it comes time to find where all those screws go after so long since taking them out! However, that’s a story for another day. For now, Tom out. PS, to anyone who has followed this whole thread to date, Congratulations! You have just cracked 10,000 words (10,412) , or 35 pages, lovingly typed by yours truly Hopefully you enjoyed all of them! (10,429).