Z-TARD

Maybe tether the rat trap to something so the injured rat can't drag itself away? Or use one of those live traps with the swinging door that closes when the rat enters it. Would be a shame to kill another Z enthusiast, even if it is a rat Mike

For that kind of power, I'd concentrate on adding strength somewhere other than the stock frame. A cage would probably be your best bet, and could be done for not too much money if you can weld and bend pipe. Sounds like a cool swap, keep us updated when you can. Mike

Also check the inner fender well towards the rear of the front wheel well were the inner fender meets the frame rail. There is a small reinforcement patch spot welded there that tends to trap moisture and rust out the frame rail. A lot of 240's rust out here, but most 280's are Ok. The car looks pretty good though, if you can get it for $3000 or less, I say go for it. Keep an eye on Ebay as well, sometimes you can get lucky and score a Z for pretty cheap, look under "parts cars" as well as just "Z series", sometimes you'll find more cars that way. Mike

280's with minimal rust can be had pretty cheaply if you have some patience. From your description, I'd probably pass on that car, especially for the price. Rust on the inner fenders and frame rails is death for a Z car, unless you are willing to put lots of time and money into making new frame rails and welding them in place. Keep checking ebay, sometimes you can find a dented up Z that is otherwise Ok for pretty cheap. I got one last month for $260. It needed new body panels for pretty much the entire front end and passenger side, but was completely rust free on the undercarriage. Body panels are cheaper to replace than structural sheetmetal, so try looking for something a little banged up maybe. Hope this helps, Mike

I might be wrong here, but I think you can do this without a SCUBA cert. because the air is supplied from a line going back to the boat. This has been on my "List of things to do before I kick it" for years now. the dock where they leave is like 4 miles from my apartment too, I was thinking I'd have to go to Australia or South Africa to do this. It'll have to wait until the Z is finished though. A guy has to know what his priorities are Mike

Stumbled across this while looking at possible vacation ideas. How friggin cool would this be? http://www.greatwhiteadventures.com/guadalupe.html Mike

Very cool. I can't even imagine what an undertaking it would be to design/manufacture an entire cylinder head from scratch. Probably more work involved in that head than many of us have in our entire cars. Depending on price, and availability of components, I would be very interested in buying one. Looking at the design, it is very similar to the Toyota 7MGTE out of the Supra, which is another option I'm looking at for my 280Z. Anyone know of plans for production of this head? Mike

Wow, #17 sounds like a pretty invasive procedure Mike

The 260 was kind of a stop gap measure between the 240 and 280. The L26 engine it came with is the lowest HP motor out of any of the Z cars if I remember correctly. Nissan upped the displacement to try to gain back power lost to emmission controls, and it didn't really work out. If the car is pretty much rust free, grab it, and then ditch the engine as quickly as possible The early 260's do however have many of the desireable body characteristics of the 240Z. Smaller bumpers, front turn signals mounted in valance rather than in the grill. The 280 Z had a much stronger chassis than the 240, and I'm not sure if the 260's had this or not. If the frame rails under the floorboards run all the way back to the rear subframe, it's the 280 style and provides much more strength than the 240's which only go back as far as the seat. The suspension on the early Z's can be made to handle quite well. I don't know of anyone that makes a genuine coilover shock conversion for the Z, but Modern Motorsports has what is probably the best coilover adjustable sleeve conversion available for these cars. You can pick from different spring rates to get whatever level of performance you want pretty much. Anything from daily driver to setups so stiff you have to pee every time you drive over the bumpy stuff. Mike

A buddy of mine had a 56 ford pickup (Ute, for you Australian guys ) that he converted to camaro front suspension by swapping the entire front clip. The camaro he used was a mid 70's era car, and the suspension components were all quite "beefy". There are also quite a few companies that make drop in cross members to convert older cars like that to Mustang II front suspension. The same friend was also converting the rear suspension of his truck with a Jag IRS setup. Very cool design with dual coilovers, built to withstand quite a bit of abuse. My only concern with the Jag setup is that it uses the halfshafts as the upper arm in the suspension, so they are not only under torque, but have quite a bit of side loading as well. It seems to work for them though, as I've never heard of one failing. The Jag front suspension can be removed completely intact on it's own crossmember as well, much like the rear suspension. Using the jag stuff front and rear would take care of any brake bias issues that might otherwise show up if using a mix of components from various manufacturers. Another possibility would be a late model T-bird or lincoln Mk8. They use the same IRS setup as the SVT Cobra's with an 8.8" rear end (lots of gears available) The only difference is that the Lincoln has aluminum suspension arms and differential case (that would be really cool polished up under there ) Anyway, let me know if you need help finding Jag or Ford/Lincoln suspension parts, as the junkyards down here are full of them. Mike

I'm gonna continue to be the lone voice of insanity here. From the pictures it looks like the metal of the floorboards themselves looks to be intact for the most part, just the rail is eaten away. I'd check the rail forward of the floorboards as well just to be sure. If there is rust in the engine bay frame rails, run away. Obviously you'll have to pull up all your carpet in that area. There is a lot of underbody coating as well on the floorboards, like sheets of asphalt kind of. A heat gun and paint scraper will have them out in a few hours. No more stuff to burn inside the car The rails under the car are welded like everything else on a datsun, lots of little spot welds. Once the undercoating on the underside of the car has been chipped off as well, you'll be able to see where the spot welds are, they'll look like little dimples every few inches. They make a special drill bit to cut them out, if you can find one. I've found that a dremel with a 1" abrasive disc works pretty well too. when you grind through the first layer of metal, you'll see a well defined circle appear. watch carefully for this or you'll end up grinding right through the floor after all the spot welds are cut, make some cuts at either end of the frame rail where it attaches to the subframes, and it should pop off with a little elbow grease and a chisel. The floorboards on the 280 aren't really level from front to back, there are a few depressions, etc. so you'll have some gaps between the floorboards and the new frame rails. spot weld any part of the floor that touches the new rail. I suppose you could even hammer the floors flat to weld the entire length to the new rail, but I don't think it would be worth the effort. And, no, you won't be able to do this in a day, but it IS possible to do it while still being able to drive the car. Count on this taking at least 4 days. Anyway, the voices in my head have told me to stop typing now. My head starts to hurt when I argue with them...... Mike

How bad are the floors in the car? If the floors are intact and fairly rust free, I think you'll probably be OK. You could cut the floor rails out in one day, just drive it easy after that. Tape up the opening to the forward frame rail to keep out moisture and debris while you drive it. Grind/cut off the existing rails, and fab some new ones out of appropriate sized square tubing (I think 2"X2" would work). Chip off the underbody material for about 2" on either side of the rails, put something heavy on the floorboards and use a bottle jack to force the new rails against the bottom of the chassis. Spot weld everything in place about every 6 to 8 inches, keeping everything lined up. Once everything is spotted in, just add more spot weld until the whole thing is welded. Trying to run long beads on the floorboards will most likely just cause a lot of burn through and holes, and warp the floors quite a bit. You could probably spread it out over 4 or 5 days: Day 1, remove drivers side rail and prep area for welding. Day 2, fab rail, weld in place. Day 3 and 4 same for passenger side. The car should be OK for a while without the rails, obviously they aren't offering much support right now in their present condition. I've always questioned the need for the rails under the floor pans anyway. The 280 rails probably add some degree of chassis strength, but the rails on the early 240's were very thin, and only came back to the area just under the seats instead of all the way to the rear frame like the 280 rails. These could not possibly add a significant degree of strength, but the 240's drove around with them like that for 30+ years. To summarize, I say go for it Mike

Here's a pretty good TIG machine if you're on a budget. TIG is always kinda pricy, but I've used one of these before and they are definitely worth it. Plus it runs on 115 Volts so you can weld in your living room A google search for Miller Maxstar 140 might be able to come up with better prices as well. http://www.jandrweldingsupply.com/store/Maxstar140.html Mike

For any kind of pipe work, I'd recomend at least two pieces of equipment: Chop saw (like a radial arm wood saw kind of, but with an abrasive blade for cutting metal), and a combination disc/belt sander. Chop saws are great for making thin cuts (1/8") in thinwall exhaust tubing, although it does leave a lot of ragged metal on the ends of the cuts that needs to be ground off. This is where the sander comes in handy. You can also use it to fine tune the fit up of an exhaust system by removing small amounts of metal to make all the angles on a joint line up. The "pie wedge" style cuts are actually called miter cuts, and any manual on pipe fitting should have a detailed section on how to lay out and fabricate bends using this technique. Done correctly they should flow pretty well, but not as good as a mandrel bent pipe. An example I've seen of this was on saltwater piping on a ship for an engine cooling system. An emergency repair was done on an elbow by using a miter cut section of pipe. The pipe was welded with an internal argon purge to prevent oxidation of the weld on the inside, so there were no protruding weld deposits on the inside to resrict flow. After installation on the system the pipe only lasted for 3 weeks before the salt water had worn its way through the pipe on the backside radius of the miter cut bend. Later we were able to use a mandrel bent section of piping for a legitimate repair. Under the same PSI and flow rate as the miter cut section, the mandrel bend was still holding up fine over 2 years later. I realize that engine exhaust flows with just a tad less resistance than saltwater at 150 PSI, but it does put into contrast the flow resrictions imposed my miter cut bends. I think the difference would be much less significant on cars exhaust though. You'd probably never notice it unless you were racing at high engine rpm's for long periods of time. I also can't stress enough the importance of using stainless tubing for making miter cut bends. Regular aluminized tubing will lose the aluminized coating anywhere within about an inch of where it is welded, so all of your sweet looking welded bends will end up looking like pooh within a short period of time. Other tools that might be nice: Tubing notcher (like a combination drill press/hole saw) Hand held electric grinder (for making "fish mouths" with lightning speed) Hope this helps out a little, Mike

I can't believe that they actually cashed the check for $1.17. Having worked with sewage quite a bit, I can think of a few other choice items to put in the change basket Mike

Lots of stuff in mine. If I had the energy I could probably dig up Jimmy Hoffa in there, along with the classified CIA report on what REALLY happened to JFK. Mike

Awsome work man, I hope mine looks even half that good when it's painted. What did your other Z get hit by? Knocked the fuzzy dice right out of the car! Mike

Not sure about the SCCA requirement for it, but TIG welding will definitely give you a higher quality weld, better penetration and less porosity. I would think that TIG welding would have to be acceptable for SCCA sanctioned events. If not, they're retards Mike

Now every time I see a post from Tim, I'm going to see that in my head.... Glen, mind if I send you the bill for all the therapy I'll need now to erase that image from my mind? Mike

Very cool. Any pictures showing how you piped everything in? Mike

Be sure to put some oil in the strut tube before you drop in the new strut as well. It won't make any immediate difference, but years down the road when you have to change the struts again, the old ones will just slide right out. Wear safety glasses when you put the new struts in with the oil in the tubes too, the displaced oil has a tendancy to squirt out the top. Mike

Shelby Series 1. Corvette suspension/drivetrain, Olds Aurora motor, Aluminum chassis, $175,000. Better off with a Vette Z06. Cool hood though Mike

This uses the porsche transaxle and LS1 combo. I seem to remember it topping out at around 230 Mph IIRC. If you look at where the seats are in relation to the rear wheels though, I don't think this would work on a Z as you are already almost sitting with your back against the rear wheel wells. Note the low front end though, no gaping hole of a grill to create lift there..... If you set the engine back far enough, you can still get an effect close to this on a front engine car. I hate to use this as an example, as I absolutely despise this car, but the sculpting of the hood area is about as good as it gets for high speed areodynamics. A hood/airdam like this could be made for a Z with a little effort and engineering skills. Notice that the body lines of the front fenders are already pretty close to those of a first gen Z..... Mike

I think the subframe connectors are a good starting point. They provide a lot of reistance to lengthwise compression and expansion along the chassis. They still allow a lot of stress to be carried by the roof area of the car though, which tends to come apart at the upper portion of the rear hatch where the pillars are welded together (right above the rear quarter windows). If you could connect the front and rear wheel wells together with a long bar, it would help quite a bit. Access in and out of the car would be ala Dukes of Hazzard, so you'd have to compromise and run a bar from each wheel well to a point on the floor near the side of the seat. Braces from the front strut towers to the firewall would help a lot too. Of course there is always the option of going with a full cage as well. All depends on how much $$$$$ you want to throw at it. Mike

Shift through all the gears while spinning the input shaft by hand. The input shaft will have a little side play in it, normal for most standard transmissions. Pull the drain plug and drain the fluid from it through an old white t-shirt, after it's drained check the t-shirt for chunks of metal that came out with the fluid. Some of them will also have a small magnet attached to the drain plug on the inside, check that for metal shavings as well. There probably will be some metal floating around in there on a car that had 80,000 miles, normal as long as there are no large chunks. This is about all you can do to check it without popping off the top cover. If it cycles through all the gears and doesn't have gear teeth come out with the fluid it should be OK. Mike