Dershum

Excuse me for a moment...I need to be alone after seeing that.

Holy crap! While this is incredibly awesome, and I'm just twitching at the idea to try it, I think I'll probably go with re-mounting the suspension with spacers. Something tells me I'd kill myself trying to do this. Speaking of spacers, would something as simple as a 6" (or so) section of PVC pipe, slid down over the current strut be long enough and strong enough? Or should I just go all-out and get some sections of iron pipe?

Could it be moved with just struts and no springs? Or would it sit too low or cause damage?

I've accepted a new job about 320 miles away, so I need to move my Z in just under 2 weeks. I've got a place to put it and work on it when I get there, but right now it's down to a body shell and on jackstands. I've been working on a rotisserie as well, which I'll get to in a minute. I've got a trailer and a truck, so the part I'm trying to decide on is how to get it off the stands and onto the trailer, safely drive it 300+ miles, and then back OFF the trailer, without the involvement of half a football team to pick the shell up and move it by hand. One thought was to simply finish the rotisserie, which is based on two engine stands that already have wheels. Then move the car onto the trailer that way. I'm probably about 8 hours of work away from finishing it or so, if not less. I'm not sure it'll work well though, since I've still got to get it all the way mounted, move it, and probably drop the body back off the rotisserie before transport. Something tells me that trying to drive it at 60+ MPH that far will be too much for the body/stands and it will either break lose or bend the hell out of it. The other thought was to simply use a few dollies. Drop the body down onto four furniture dollies, strap it onto them, and move it that way. Problem is that I don't think the dollies will allow the body to clear the ramps on and off of the trailer. The final option is to simply try and get the suspension back on the car. I've got the front and rear suspension off the car but they're largely intact. The the hubs, brake discs/shoes, etc., are still all together, and there are still struts in the tubes, but the springs are off and long gone. If I can get a set of struts/springs and put them back together, and get them back on the car I can just roll it on and off the trailer. The front cross-member and steering is all back together, I just have to attach it back to the car. However, if I do this I want to be able to take the struts/springs back off sometime later this summer so I can clean all the crud off the strut tubes, replace bushings on the rear suspension, etc. It's a little pricier to go this way since I'll have to drop 500 bucks on a set of springs/struts, but I'm starting to think this is going to be the best option. Of course, I have to get ready to move in all of this, so time is something I don't have a lot of. I figure putting the suspension back together and on the car enough to move it is probably an 4-8 hour job. As where putting the body on dollies and rolling it around is about a 20 minute job. Anyway, I'm looking for opinions, or to see if anyone else has done something like this before that might be able to give me some advice.

Awesome...one less semi-rusty set of body parts to repair

Gorgeous! Love that color! Question for you...with the front air dam (Xenon, right?) do you have to retain the turn signal buckets/valence behind the air dam, or do those come off?

If I can do it, anyone can. I just started with little "art projects" to practice on. After 2 or 3 of them, I kinda got the hang of it. I wouldn't call myself a master, but I can lay down a weld that I'm not (terribly) afraid will result in my death

Not to bump my own thread, but I'm making some more progress on this, but I'm trying to figure out if I need to offset the front/rear mounts at all. Here's kind of what I'm up against. I've got the car level (at least based on the front frame rails), and at it's current height on jackstands, both the front and rear bumper mounts are right around 27". In most designs I've seen, the front mounting point is much lower than the rear, so the crossbars (A) that connect to the front bumper mounts are about 10-12" lower than the rear mount. But if I'm measuring this right, the front and rear bumper mounts are at nearly the same height when the car is level. I'm hoping that someone might have some insight on this. Oh, and the Z is a '71. Thanks much!

Progress continues apace...got the front crossbar started and holes for the mounts drilled. I'm going to cut some small plates out of 3/16 thick plate and drill holes to match so I can sandwich the body panel between the crossbars and the plates. I had to cut off the mounting bolts that were there...two of them were so siezed up (after the bolt broke off) that I sheared off a bolt remover trying to get one out. This was after liberal applications of PB Blaster and heat. Also I'm going to cut some triangles from the 3/16" plate and weld them in the corners where the crossbar meets the bars connected to the body. One thing that I'm still working on though. Based on my measurements, the front crossbar is (currently) 27" off the ground. I've got the car what I believe to be level, and the rear bumper mounts are at 27" (give or take) as well. In most rotisserie designs I've seen, the front is offset from the rear, presumably so that there is a straight and level axis down the length of the car. However, if I'm measuring this right, the front mount and rear mount are already on a straight level axis. I'm thinking I can just mount the crossbars directly to the (modified) engine stands and forgo the offset on the front mount, but I wanted to run this by you folks and see if you had any thoughts on the matter. Oh, and that engine stand isn't modified yet...I'm just using it to help hold the crossbar in place while I got it measured and bolted.

This is possibly the most noobish question I've ever asked...but when I was reassembling the front crossmember the other day started lubricating the steering rack and had a really odd thought. When do I know when to stop? It never really occured to me, I can't really see anything since there are new bellows on the steering rack etc, so I can't see how much grease there is in there. Then the thought came to me regarding other "lubricatable" items such as ball joints... So how do I know when I've "greased enough"?

Not to drag my own thread back from the dead, but I started (finally) working on this. Got the 2nd engine stand and all the metal pre-cut from SpeedyMetal, and I'm starting to extend the length (height?) of the engine stand uprights. Not a lot of progress, but a little feels good Also wouldn't mind a little critique on my welds...here's a couple closeups.

I've read this over and over again in just about every forum, and I'll back it up with personal experience (I'm about a year in now restoring my 240). Start small, get it running, and then figure out what you want to do. Unless you have an unlimited budget, and have 40+ hours a week to work on it, and a LOT of experience. In my case, I have none of these, so I took it slow. I enjoyed it for the summer (last summer) and drove it, now it's sitting in my garage down to a body shell. I'm taking things one project at a time, but even then it's a lot. I'm going back stock with mine (or close to it) with the only major mods being a complete engine rebuild, some frame rail extensions, and stiffer springs/shocks. But I want to spend as little time and money as possible to get it to a "base" level, and then mod from there. If you can get the motor running soundly, then drive it and work on the interior/exterior. Take small bites, and eventually it'll add up.

Mine's already down to the body shell...so I have the benefit of not having to remove the carpet. Also, I figured it was cheaper and easier than trying to find replacements for the missing or rotted out rubber plugs to simply hole-saw some plugs out of 16 gauge and weld them in. And something tells me that if the car floods to the point I've got to drain water out, I've probably got bigger problems The other thought I had is that it _might_ (and I'm no expert on this) provide just a teensy bit of stiffness to the body.

Seeing these new pans brought up a question I keep meaning to ask. I was planning to weld plugs into all the little holes in the floor pans, trunk, etc. any reason I shoulnt do this?

What about the mirrors off something like an MG or Austin Healy? When I was at Carlisle a couple weeks ago, someone had a few pairs that I was looking at. Granted, I haven't seen the Fairlady version up-close, but they look very similar from the pics I've seen. http://www.victoriabritish.com/features/sm/SMMI2.htm

I looked through this pretty extensively in the past and also emailed back and forth with a couple members here on their designs as well. After I kicked it around in my head for a couple months, I decided to go with the simplest and cheapest option I could come up. I figure I probably won't be using the engine stand again as a body rotisserie (at least any time in the next several years) so I wanted something that I could disassemble from the stands and still use one of them as an engine stand and probably just sell or store the other once i take it back apart. Of course, I suppose cutting up the second stand for scrap metal is also an option, but I'm also pretty tight on extra storage space. What I really need is an extra garage bay

I'm also using a pair of harbor freight stands, but I already had one of the 1k lb stands (looks like you've got the heavier ones) so I just got a second. I'm tying the front crossbars onto the body via the bumper mounts, and a simple crossbar across the back connecting the rear bumper mounts. So I think what I'm doing is very similar to what you've done. I'm basing a lot of it on this pic/diagram from at atlanticz.ca. About the only modifications I'm making are increasing the overall height on the stand by 12 inches (I'd only need to do about 7 based on this design), and I'm not making the height adjustable. Also I'm going to weld in some bracing triangles wherever the rectangular tube meets at a 90 degree angle for extra bracing, and I'm probably going to add some underneath the heads of the engine stands

So I'm working on building a simple rotisserie out of a pair of engine stands, and as I was checking measurements I realized that the heads on the stands aren't level. They're slightly inclined, which I'm guessing is so that when the weight of the engine is on them, the deflection would level them out. Is this the case, or are they just designed so the engine is at a slight angle? The reason I ask is because I want to find out if i need to level out the heads or if I should leave them alone and allow the weight of the body to deflect them a little?

Bump on this...I'm interested in this as an option as well, since I have to replace my front and rear insulators. A full set of front/rears runs about $250 new, and a much less expensive option would be very nice. My application wouldn't be on anything fancy, just on stiffer springs and probably a set of tokico blue's.

Thanks for the info! It's interesting that they only have the drivers side...from what I've read (at least in the past) the right side was easier to find, so a lot of folks were running two right-side inners with two right-side outers. I suppose the same thing could be done just using two left inners and two left outers (using these). I think for now I'm just going to try and re-use the inners and see how it goes. Speaking of which, does anyone know what oil/lubricant is used on the ball end of the inner tie rods? There's a little packet of it with the inner tie rods I have (which I'm returning) and looking at the old one there's an oil there that isn't the normal grease that's used to lubricate anything. It's much thinner and yellow/brown. I'd rather just get a bottle off the shelf than have to use the packets from the new tie rods and not be able to return them.

Love the color...what blue is that?

I've checked just about every parts site I know of (z-specific and other), and run through 20+ pages of several different searches and I'm still having trouble finding a source for these. MSA lists them on their site, but they're N/A...so far those are the only one's I've found. I'm mostly searching on terms like "tie rod" and "inner tie rod"...is there another name for these guys?

Nice...looks just like mine. Of course, mine's in pieces and on blocks, but nice nonetheless

I'm rebuilding the front suspension and steering on my 71 240. The PO had two new front outer tie rods, and one front inner tie rod...or at least that's what they told me. However...when I pulled the front tie rods off this is what I found: Something tells me these aren't the tie rods I'm looking for. So I went ahead and ordered a new pair from RockAuto, however they were the exact same length! So the question begs...do I have some bizarre mutant steering rack, or does RockAuto not know the correct inner tie rods to use?

That's what I'm planning to do at this point. I've got an email with with Hobart to see what they recommend I do as well.