2ManyZs

PM sent, I'm not working right now so I'm home most of the time.

I do, complete ones straight off a parts car with lower control arms and all. I only took them off to get the stub axles, which I do want to keep for spares. If ya want them, come get them, and get them out of my way. Might even try to sell you some other parts while you're here....

Actually guys, that's pretty mild compared to what the winters were like in Northern NY back in the late 60's and thru the 70's. I can remember winters when the temps wouldn't get above 0 for a month or more at a time, and we'd never see bare lawn from Nov thru March or April. With the unpredictability of the jet stream now, and the milder temps overall, anyone living near the Great Lakes is going to get hammered with snow any time a cold front comes across the open water of any of the lakes. I don't know if Dave grew up in Rochester, but if he did, I think he'll agree that overall the winters are nothing like they were when we were kids.

If you want some more pics, I put mine in my gallery.

I've got a few pics of the car at the show in Syracuse in 04 while staring at it. And I was wearing a bib to keep from drooling.... I know they are on the computer somewhere, I'll see if I can find where they are hiding and post them up.

If you aren't sure of the e-brake, it may be that it isn't adjusting the rear brakes tight enough. I've never trusted the e-brake to adjust the shoes, I've always drilled out the hole in the drum to 1/2 inch so I could easily adjust them and actually see what I was doing. If you're not sure, take a ride around the block and pull the e-brake up one click, hit the brakes a couple times and see if the rears try to lock up or get hotter, if they do, the shoes aren't adjusted tight enough and should be done by hand. If one click doesn't change anything, try two clicks on the e-brake (since it might be so far out of adjustment). Another thing is, what kind of shoes are you running in the rear? The shoe compound might be part of the problem as well if nothing else is wrong.

Don't get pulled into thinking those log home kits are cheap. My ex-fiancee (she who thought I would obey her...NOT!) looked into many log cabin kits after I hauled a few and the end result was they were as much as a new home. Most don't have any electrical done, no plumbing, no HVAC etc... add that to the improvements you would have to do to a bare lot, water, sewer, foundation etc..... you get to see the point. A friend of mine put up a two story sectional home and the upstairs wasn't finished, he did all that himself after they moved in. He put it on a bare lot and by the time he paid for a well, septic, driveway, foundation he realized he could have purchased an older home for about the same price and remodeled it to his liking. It then took him 6 years before he could afford to build his dream garage. Probably the best thing to do for a first home is to buy a "fixer upper" in an area you like, you can find a lot of bargains if you look for them. Foreclosure sales, estate auctions etc.....The money you save can go for remodelling and building on to what is there, and you have a place to live in the meantime. Oh, and don't complain about GA real estate, when I picked up a Z in Stockbridge a couple years ago, I drove thru a new development that had 3 bedroom homes w/2 car garages advertised for under 225-275K, and that will barely buy you a cramped duplex here 100 miles from DC.

What I found interesting is that they used modified stock control arms and not specially made tubular control arms. I guess that shows that sometimes people are trying to over engineer things when the KISS principle will work just fine. But I'd say the most impressive part is the front sway bar that goes thru the frame rail and the steering rack mount. I was kind of surprised that it looks like they did nothing to the rad support, except for some well placed bracing behind it to the strut tower and a stay rod in place of a strut tower bar. I guess the next question is, how many people are going to go buy a Lotto ticket tonight just so they can pick up a piece of Z history... IIRC correctly one of the other NTPI GTP cars was for sale for around 350K a while back, which means if they are asking 275K for this car, I'd hate to see what kind of price he's asking for the GTP car he has listed.

I've been trying for 2 years to buy a pair of old frame jacks from the local Dodge dealer but the *&%#%*^&%^%# won't sell them. Sure would have been nice to be able to weld up a rotisserie adapter to them and bolt the to each end of the car, hook up the air hose and raise the car to whatever height I wanted and lock it in place. Would have been like having the benefits of both a rotiserrie and a post lift in one. I'm waiting for the day they forget to lock the gate to the open shed where they keep them.... One of the guys on another forum that I know used to sell a rotisserie in kit form, all you had to do was weld up the pieces, but I think he has gotten too busy with his new job to do it anymore.

Personally, I'd replace it. Rust on a Z is like an iceburg in the ocean, what you can see is usually only a part of the problem. Rockers and frame rails and other areas will normally rust from the inside out, when it becomes obvious on the outside, there's a lot more hiding inside.

You're right Tony I did use the wrong word, instead of fogging I should have used flooding when talking about the MSA covers. But I still don't see where I stated that the OEM covers had any type of water tight seal, but compared to some of the MSA covers I've seen, anything would be an improvement. But as far as the rest of your reply, well, this isn't ZCar.com and this isn't some noob you can try to intimidate with insults.

I've used the Metal to Metal filler some and I second Ernie's caution about the dust. This dust is almost like trying to wipe off NeverSeize:eek2: . If you use it you'll be running for the shower soon afterwards, I had to wash my hair twice to get it all out of my hair and I only have half the hair I had when I was younger. One other caution to remember, work it out as smooth as possible before it hardens as you can't knock off the high spots easily with a cheese grate file like the run of the mill polyester fillers. This stuff is nearly as hard as a rock when it hardens and will require a lot more sanding than any other filler you're likely to use. So, if you don't have an air file or other air powered sanding equipment, be ready to get a work out.

Well, I dunno how the fiberglass "trim" ring would work if you used the lenses patterned after the OEM cover since they don't sit inside the headlight bucket opening like the cheaper MSA units do. You'd have to make it pretty strong in order to get the lens to seal to the headlight bucket or you'd end up with fogging like the MSA covers are prone to. Possibly the easiest way to use the lenses from the MSA covers would be to take some thin gauge aluminum sheet (something easily bent and shaped) and cut out a trim ring using the lens as a pattern with maybe an inch overlap on the lense and the headlight bucket, then lay carbon fiber over the aluminum trim ring for a final dress up. Then you could always use some of the 2 part epoxy like they use in a body shop for attaching trim panels and mate the trim ring solidly to the lens. Then all you'd have to do is decide how you want to attach the trim ring to the headlight bucket and perhaps put some kind of thin rubber to seal the trim ring to the bucket.

The part number for the OEM covers are: 63900-E4126 R/H 63901-E4126 L/H Don't worry Pete, there's a car sitting in my garage that's going to wear them as soon as I finish the body and paint work athough, it's taking a lot longer than I had planned. I know a guy locally that could probably make them with little trouble, but he's not interested in making large numbers of parts to sell since he's a couple years behind in orders for other handmade parts. He used to work for Boyd Coddington and he was building a house and was way behind in his shop. It might be possible to make the MSA lenses work, but they wouldn't look the same as those lenses sit inside the bucket and these are a bit larger, which means you would have to make a wider trim plate in order to mount both the trim to the bucket and the lense to the trim. There is one guy on CZC who was trying to have duplicates made, but I don't know where he's at with his attempt. The lenses are the easy part, it's the trim and gasket that are going to be the difficult part to fab. It's going to take someone with some fantastic metal working abilities to fabricate the SS trim with it's U shape and the compound curves.