OlderThanMe

Well my little brother will possibly be getting a car soon. My Dad found this car and it looks like a great project. It will probably be a hybrid just for the fact that you can't get a rebuilt hudson motor. Dad is thinking thinking a 350 chevy will work but I think that is overkill since he does not want to go fast at all. I was thinking Ford 2.3 Turbo. This car will not be hotrodded. It would probably have an airbag suspension and a few other nice things like A/C. It would be a testbed for my brother's artistic skills. I' of course, would weld in the new rear 4 link or whatever suspension and do almost all of the suspension work with the air compressor and other stuff. He wants it to be "old school" looking but does not want to go fast in it. That is probably a good thing since this car weighs about as much as two track prepared Z cars. I would have to fabricate a new front bumper and grille sionce those are missing. In fact this car may have the paint rolled on.

Just got back from a trip to the mountains. Thanks for the replies guys! the scuffed would be nice and I may do that but I wil still need to cover it because of the face angle of the dash. I think the dash is too large to anodize effectively. I may get the little cover piece that goes over the center of whatever covering material anodized or powdercoated. I have a few ideas bouncing around. I may get a hybridZ logo powdercoated onto the center piece. That would be pretty cool.

oh big phil...you have taken the rustoleum idea and run with it. I am going to roll my engine bay now that my motor is out. My only problem is that the lower portion of my ca's body has been in at least two wrecks. One in the mid to late 70s and once in 86. It has had impacts at all four corners. I don't really care what the body looks like too much and that is why I am doing rustoleum. I just need to build my motor now. Not the greatest project for a kid that just blew a wad on suspension/clutch/flywheel and is now poor and going to college not working a job...go figure. At least I have rustoleum and rollers! Beating a modern car is fun too. Beat a vette with more than twice my displacement and horsepower...400hp, $50k car vs. a ~190hp $7k 33 year old car. Unfortunately wrist pins can't take too much of that...oh well. time to make it a $13k 300hp car... "function over form" is the way to go for sure.

yeah. I am sorta doing a two tone. My worklog has some more pictures of my painting process. I just pulled that thick junk back off. I did a little wetsanding on my red paint using 400 grit to get it level and then on the next few coats I'll move up to 1000 and 1500 grit to make it smooth.

each coat dries in about 4 hours to where you can put another coat on it. About 10 hours wait before you sand it. If you don't thin it down multiply drying time by about 4. the paint is VERY wavy when applied with no or little thinner. here is only 10% thinner here is another shot. here is the proper wavyness with thinner. here is a reflection to show how wavy it is. No wetsanding here. This is really thinned out like 25-30% you can see my roller strokes on the hood because I was in a hurry. hope this helps. *edit* all of this paint was over bare metal except the hood. I got too lazy and not want to strip the paint off the entire hood efore I went to the ZdayZ car show.

I was actually contemplating using black shag carpet as a headliner...a long time ago...

hmm... that is a good idea

crinkle is a good idea but I want the cover to be removable... *edit* is there crinkle coat powdercoating?

Unfortunately the face is angled back at just the right angle (30 degrees) that the face and top both reflect. The top just reflects on the windshield making it impossible to see out.

I have a few options for covering my aluminium dashboard. I tried driving around with it uncovered but that is pretty insane at about 6-7 in the evening as it reflects through the passenger window and off the aluminium and into my face. I want to cover it and it look nice but be able to remove the covering for shows etc. Attached is a pic of the dash covered in black felt and my center cover piece. The center piece is to hold down any fabric so that it stays tight. I have also thought about using oiled dark brown "tool" leather. The felt will be hard to clean I think. The leather can be re-oiled to keep it protected from the sun plus it has a nice smell. I may end up making several covers so I can change the look in just a few minutes. I will be using a 3"x10" Dakota Digital guage cluster behind the steering wheel. Here is a pic of the bare dash Ideas, comments, questions?

good luck! I just pulled my motor and tranny and had teh same problem. I just took a rope and tied it to the chain and then wrapped it 1.5 times around the transmission. It worked OK for pulling the motor by myself.

last night I removed all of the cylinder head bolts from my engine. Unfortunately 3 broke off half of their threads in the engine so they will have to be machined out. It was really hard to get the engine onto the stand because teh stand can't get close enough to the hoist to just bolt it up. I had to remove the flywheel/clutch setup and then swing the engine over to the stand about 8" and then have my dad put the bolts in. I'll pull the timing chain off when I get a chance to work on it next week.

say hybrid! They had to take off the dumb looking spoiler to add that "more functional" wing...

allright...you asked for it...I'll out-do your half-done camo job...think real camo...

you don't want to know about me and camo...I play as a sniper in paintball so I have my own ghillie suit that I hand made...

sigh...I think I'll just rattlecan the whole car olive drab just to keep you from saying CAMO!!! NO CAMO ON MY Z!!! lol...J/K...

blahahaha...right...he wants a car to drive every day...he is not even going to get the frame straightened...lol I thought my front end was off...his is like twisted 3/4 of an inch... I like the move over sticker. I may put that on my car... unfortunately he gets 23mpg with his 2.5 turbo and I get 16-17mpg on my 2.6 NA

You want the one with the elbow. Maybe someone better versed in turbos could back me up but that is what I heard.

I would not use it for calipers. I have some caliper paint and I think it it says 1000* safe...I think the calipers get hot enough to where it would affect your paint. Not sure though

They did ask for two lengths no bottle...you have to listen for it. They said we had the faster car with no spraying. We had drag radials and they had huge slicks! The advantage of the Z is that it squats...

my brand new engine lift and stand I purchased yesterday. the pretty side of the engine...

yeah... I have some friends over there. They say that S30Zs are pretty rare.

HF is a great place toget stuff that won't break. A hammer for example. $5 and you have a good hammer that will last 3-5 years. $120 and you have a hammer that will last forever but for $30 you can have enough HF hammers to last you well after you die...I would not buy anything over $100 at HF just because it WILL break and you will be sorry. Tools that aren't an investment (a hammer) should be cheap. A tool that is an investment ( a welder) should be expensive... $600 and up but not $350 for a welder that will last a year or two...

The engine and transmission are out. Soon I will disconnect them and have the engine on it's stand.

why 0 offset? surely you aren't running a stock suspension. That rim will stick out more than an inch on stock fenders. I know because I have 15x8 wheels with 4" backspacing or 0 offset. I bought mine to clear stock springs but I now have coilovers. and there is plenty of space.