capt_furious

Nice Zanardi line there, guys...all three of ya. Must've fixated and followed the first guy in hot at the top of the hill. Got any footage of Brad Frisselle's Z? I was there Friday.

That's Auxilary's car. The airdam is a Xenon urethane 280 piece (no marker light holes), and yes, MSA does sell one. I may have an unpainted and marginally used and somewhat saggy (see this pic, it can be braced up and reinforced easily) 240/260 version come available soon, I have work to do on my BRE style airdam first.

Gave the green light to the bodywork and the paint today, it's getting the primer and guide coat this week, and should be painted & ready by Tuesday. I chose BASF Red 511 over Chrysler 'Cool Vanilla'. I'm getting the red as a stripe over the top following the hood bulge and ending halfway down the hatch, just short of the hatch button. Reason for this is that I'm going to be putting on a spoiler and don't want the stripe disappearing under it, or having a bit of red peeking out below it on the back edge of the hatch. I've got a load of trim pieces to clean up / paint / refresh in the next week. Taillight panels, lenses, markers, etc. I'm tinting the taillights and have already shaved the DOT lettering and wet sanded out all of the factory undulations in the plastic. Tonight I'll be doing final wet sanding and polishing. The chrome surrounds are going gloss black with the trim panels satin black(the chrome on the surrounds is shot and replacements are stupid expensive). The experience with this shop so far has been positive. They're getting the work done fast and letting me know when they need me to check things before proceeding.

She's in jail! I'm now pedal-powered, looks as if I'll be getting in shape for the next three weeks, at least. It's a good thing that I live less than 3 miles from work!

A little bit of everything, actually. I started with chemical strippers and had a tough time getting down to the metal due to 3 layers of VERY stubborn paint...the top white layer would come right off, but there was a layer of blue beneath that and over the factory blue that would resist both aircraft coating remover and a scraper. Some of the old primer on there was pretty stubborn, too. So, I picked up a Bosch side grinder, put a 7" 80 grit sanding disc on it and started going bonkers on the thing...and it STILL wouldn't get all the way through in some places. I finally broke down and picked up a wire cup brush with some seriously aggressive bristles and managed to get through the paint and down to the metal. I've got a bit left to do today, mainly on the right headlight bucket. The left is composite and I don't want to destroy it by grinding on it as the steel 280 bucket I picked up to replace it was a full 1/2" too long(stuck out past the hood) and wouldn't bolt on straight. If it was in better shape I'd be REALLY tempted to go the Jimmy Shine route. As it is, I picked out the Japanese national racing colors from the '60s. Should look good.

It's going under its own power. I've been working on it and driving it at the same time. I'll be removing a number of parts once it arrives. Areas that aren't ground down to metal have bondo and I left them for the shop to figure out. The glass will be staying in. ...and it crossed my mind that a complete sand & buff to metal would be cool, but there's just too much damage to make that look right.

Going into paint jail tomorrow.

...sick minds think alike. I was about to suggest that myself.

You know, I could be wrong. I found something that looked exactly like what he's got, but he could have done that himself.

auxilary was showing me Owen's car last night. I like it, it looks great and it's probably VERY effective, but it's a lot of work blending it in, and the vents themselves are pretty expensive...I managed to find the manufacturer(name escapes me). I'll probably end up waiting until after the car is painted and whip something up with a friend that does fab work on aircraft (he build his own press forms and stamps aluminum). It'll be a cut and rivet, and I could anodize it or polish it, maybe get color-matched rattlecans and paint them. I came across this last night and though it was a decent method of putting in a factory-looking vent without having to do too much bodywork. Feedback on other forums is negative, though. Consensus here on working vents seems to be that they should be positioned farther forward on the hood than the '76 and later factory vents. I suppose a tape-and-yarn yest is in order to find the right spot.

I'm late to this thread but I'm coming up on painting my car in a few weeks and need to figure out my options for vents / extractors. The evil genius in me is telling me to make 'H' cuts close to where the stock 280 vents are and pull the front flap up and push the rear down, fiberglass and bondo the sides and leave it at that. The resulting front 'lip' will create the low-pressure vacuum needed for extraction and the following indentation will smooth flow into the boundary layer. The idea is similar to MSA's urethane vent inserts, but those babies are pricey and I'm on a pretty tight budget. ...or I could just get a set of vents from Reaction research and cut / drill. I like the idea of making something myself, though. Any ideas as to the proper placement or better execution of this crazy idea?

Stealing from another thread, it might be worth the effort to mock up the front setup from the early factory Works Zs.

I'd like to see this reproduced, maybe with a wider airdam that spans the width of the front wheels. This is the first I've seen of the Works Zs, the BRE Zs seem to get far more attention. I'm a bit of a purist, so seeing historical precedent that fits the findings and theories rising from the HybridZ tests is good news. I'd imagine that the fasica shown would be easy to reproduce in fiberglass...since the bumper's removed, one might be able to use the factory mounting holes for the bumper brackets to mount it. That'd be a pretty solid install and would hold up well at speed. Extending a duct back from the fascia opening and fitting it to the radiator opening would be a fairly simple affair.

A direct link: http://i.pbase.com/u39/baracu/large/25639763.808DCP_0337.jpg If you've viewed it once, your browser will pull it from cache and show it. I pulled the Hyundai rear pigtail connections and bulb fittings for all four units(more than one car in the yard). The front markers have a plug and pin setup that's hard to get out(putting it mildly...I was yanking on them like a madman). The rears on the Zs are a direct plug in, looks as if the fronts will be a cut-and-solder job, unless there are pigtails hiding under the shrink wrap in the harness. The stock Z units are nice and bright due to a large bulb and metal reflector. They'll cast quite a bit of light on the median wall when in the fast lane. The Hyundai units, on the other hand, have a small bulb and a black plastic housing. Can't imagine they're very bright. Davy, do you notice a significant difference with them?

...nor for me. Looks as if the server has referrals disabled. Copy the URL and view it in a new browser window.

Just a quick something to add to this: I just replaced my driver's door handle and fixed the lock mechanisim that had fallen off into the inside of the door. while I was in there, I spray-lubed everything I could possibly get at. The door, lock and handles work GREAT now. Prior to lubing everything, I'd have to slam the thing 2 - 3 times to get it to shut, and the mechanisims were 'grunchy'. Try this before modding anything, it's an easy fix and the resulting smoothness of the handles and locks are really satisfying.

Greetings! First post. I'm a friend of auxilary and DavyZ. I bought Mike Dennis' white 260 in 2004. The car is essentially how I bought it still, with exception to parts from both aux's and DavyZ's cars. They've both bailed me out numerous times when my irresponsibility / neglect lead to eventual failure. Excellent friends to have. I forget who I heard it from but Hyundai Excel side markers supposedly are good replacements for stock Z markers(and a search here shows that a few of you have done it)...so I grabbed a set while in the junkyard today. They're wider than the Z markers. Which means I'm going to have to do some cutting...I figure it's going to be a quick Dremel job & re-drill, unless there's a better way to go about it. I'd rather not cut into stock panels, but it's rather trivial in the big scheme. I'd just like to do it right. So, sugestions?