Zetsaz

Been slightly unmotivated with how things are developing, but I've chunked away at a couple things. Done so far: -Welded large bumper shock holes (still debating if I want to weld the inner ones... I'm getting better, but they're dimple died and will be barely visible under the bumper) -Cut out and welded a small patch where there was a puncture on the valence. So difficult to get them even with the slight curvature of the valence on top of having overlapping metal on the outer holes where the bumper shocks went through. Will probably even out in the paint process down the road, but I might try to grind things a bit more even to use the lease amount of body filler possible. It's also amazing just how thick paint gets. you can see the uneven edges on the puncture repair just from grinding through the respray and original paint. There's also some slight pitting along seams, which goes to show that even the most "rust free" examples like this one have had issues. Next debate is whether or not I use the first year 240z lights (which will require a bit more cutting/welding) or stick with the 280z lights. Have always preferred the early style, but the later ones grew on me and surprisingly, a lot of friends are voting for the latter.

Well... all schools in Washington are closed starting this Tuesday through April 24th. This is pretty unprecedented. Based on current info, I don't see it affecting my paycheck, but I will have a lot more time on my hands regardless. The car may be moving sooner rather than later. I've found the chassis harness. Was sitting in a plastic bin covered up by my roommate's stuff he'd put in the storage room. Considering the amount of time I'll be home, at a bare minimum from this Tuesday through next Sunday, or more depending on what kind of work the district will require from us, I've ordered a lot of items I need including jumpers and resistors for megasquirt, Eastwood internal frame coating, more 3M undercoating, and other small misc things. On the to-do list for this week while I wait for things to spray the interior with Lizard Skin are: -Weld rear valence holes and small puncture -Possibly cut/drill/weld for 240z tail lights -Drop rear suspension to more easily bend fuel lines -Fix more poorly applied seam sealer on floors -Wire wheel, clean, and tape interior to be ready to spray interior Once the interior is sprayed with lizard skin I'll be able to properly start the wiring process without worrying about redoing it all. If I have any leftover I'll also wire wheel and spray the fuel tank area. At a minimum I'll be wire wheeling that area and spraying it with 3M undercoating.

What did you rewrap the harness with?

The Aston Martin definitely seems about as close as you can get, but it seemed a bit lighter to me. Like you said though, it's SO hard to tell from pictures and video. That being said, I knew it was something other than 115, but it's a really nice and similar color when properly cared for.

Ideas were percolating last night... A lot of people upgrading to standalone always put their ecu on the passenger side. I always wondered about that, but remembered they mostly have 240s. I decided to make a mount to adapt the megasquirt into the stock location to keep my wiring close to the original. Someday in the distant future I might rewire, but my chassis and dash harness and all relays are in great shape and proven working so I'm leaving things close to original where I can. The gauge metal I used wasn't stiff enough to have really long mounting tabs that I felt comfortable with, so I made it the same dimensions as the factory ecu. I carefull opened up the mounting holes on the MS box and tapped them M6x1.0 so I could use the same bolts pretty much the whole rest of the car is held together with. Will probably get the shortest M6 bolts I can find soon, so they're not sticking up too far. The MS3X is noticeably taller than the factory ecu, so I'll be using some rubber isolators between the mount and the brackets in the footwell which will pull double duty as vibration isolation like the original rubber screw grommets on the MS mounting tabs were for.

Is that confirmed? I love the color and would love to match it. Of the OEM colors, 115 blue metallic is my favorite.

Not against it, just don't want to make any more holes underneath than I already have on the frame rail. I can have two going in opposite directions for the feed and return off one bolt, but I don't want to add another set of holes for the brake line. Tempted to just run it returnless for now and dead head at the fuel rail for simplicity since I have a built in regulator on the retrofit pump and don't need boost reference right now.

Some progress today. Now have more parts ready to go including header/exhaust. Before I could get to work, I had to remove a broken stud in the head. Spent a fair amount of time degreasing what I could and scraping off as much of the old gaskets from the manifolds and thermostat housing as I could. First I used an extractor... and then it promptly broke off in the stud. Took a lot tries to get it to come out, but enough heat cycles from welding and I think the metal annealed and was finally sticking after I turned up the heat. strangely the extractor came out first and I had to reweld the stud and do the same thing again. Once that was done I started test fitting things so I can start wiring soon. Had no place for a battery. For the cost of what the past owner was using I decided it'd be more cost effective to use the stainless zcardepot tray that I had and the OEM Batter tie down sitting on my shelves since it'll make it easy to remove the tray and clean occasionally to avoid rust. I drilled and tapped holes in place. Not trusting that the tapping would hold on such thin metal, I also put some nuts on the opposite side of the bolts just to ease the amount of stress on the couple threads actually present in the sheet metal. Engine is currently starting to come together. Purchasing a battery this afternoon and probably using regular line clamps for the fuel hardlines until my cousin comes up with a 3D printed solution to be able to clamp down feed, return, and the 3/16" brake line.

What IAC valve are you running?

I'm incredibly jealous of how clean your diff is. I thought mine was decent until I saw this

Looks good! What's with all the hybridz pics all over the site uploading in super low resolutions though?

Would probably be less work and similar cost to just get something like the T3 kit to mount the short nose. Just like with engine swaps, it's all the tiny little things that start to add up and drain you. I would stay on the lookout for a good R200 longnose LSD. $1200 seems very high unless it's been rebuilt. I was lucky enough to get mine for $800 with a finned cover and rebuild for much less, but I had also purchased a lot of other random parts from the seller. I'm sure you could find a good deal on the datsun parts and needs facebook page if you're patient. I've seen maybe a half dozen pop up for less than your price in the last 2-3 months.

They seem to have some pretty accurate restampings of tricker parts. I'm excited for it and hoping they're successful. A lot of American classics you can almost rebuild from next to nothing, but we don't have quite the same luck with the Zs. Slowly getting better and better though.

Progress updates: got the fuel pump assembled and installed in the tank. The inside is so clean that I've opted not to bother with a coating since the last attempt failed spectacularly and I'm more concerned about the tank or pump gunking up if it's poorly done. Will probably still do a coat of POR15 down the road just to clean it up and protect it from more corrosion on the outside from small rocks and other damage. $$$ spending updates: I bought some parts! Not fun parts though, just stuff I've really needed to actually get it going. I've been overthinking the whole thing and the scope creep was getting overwhelming considering my current mental state. Especially since having my grandma pass away, I've been motivated to work as a distraction, but anything involving power was becoming increasingly expensive and a headache to think about preventative measures to avoid breaking things. I have the most important engine specific parts to go turbo for whenever I want, but for now I've committed to staying NA and not bothering with power upgrades or engine work of any kind. Since I don't have the option of just working overtime to make more, I've decided to just get the thing moving in a way that won't risk breaking anything so I can enjoy it sooner and without the risk of it being out of commission for another long while if I need to upgrade expensive parts that might break. Once it's running and is a comfortable place car to drive, I'll be slowly working from the back forward, starting with CV axles. More updates to come as soon as my parts arrive

Looks fantastic

Sweet deal! And in my favorite color. My first recommendation as someone who's had a project way too long... don't make it your own just by chasing power haha. Get that thing running well and then "upgrade" or refresh things you find along the way in small pieces. I enjoyed driving even my old rust bucket of a 76 that wouldn't rev past 4k more than I enjoy my daily. Excited to see more updates. Welcome to the forums

If you're looking for other mount ideas you can check my thread too. The recent few pages have how I mocked up 1x1 tubing. I'm sure there are sturdier ways to get the right fit, but I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out.

Nice to see all the progress! Pretty exciting that you have it on the road. If things go well, I might just take mine to Utah this summer, and even if I don't we'll have to meet up for a quick ride!

Thanks! Added pics. They're at slightly below stock height, but a similar angle front to rear. Driver side trans tunnel looks more banged up than in person due to lighting I think. It was bashed in slightly for whatever racing seat the last owner had intended to use. Maybe when I'm swapping to 5 speed I'll even it out slightly, but I'm not terribly concerned since it'll be covered eventually unless space underneath becomes an issue down the road.

Spent a bit of time this weekend cleaning up some poor work I'd done on the seat rails. I was working in poor light and pretty tired when I first "finished" them and didn't clean them properly and couldn't see some pieces of the welds. Wire wheeled a lot of spots where some surface rust had devolped in the shape of my finger prints and over welds. I spent a long time cleaning them, then I sprayed them with etching primer to seal. The welds are still not great considering I rarely weld anything, but a bit of grinding to clean up the worst offenders for bad looking welds and some test hits with a mallet to make sure they're holding strong gives me comfort they'll at least be functional for now and if they really bother me down the road it's always possible to redo. Whatever seam sealer was used over the redone floors was either not very good, or the seems weren't cleaned as well as they should have been before it was applied. I wire wheeled some seam sealer off and sprayed those areas with heavy surface rust as well. Still not sure how I want to seal them. Will post some pics soon. Currently debating if I want to bother with turbo stuff, or just put a 2.5" exhaust to the stock exhaust manifold and focus on everything but power. For the time being the next step will be installing the fuel hardlines and getting the tank in.

@seattlejester, update your thread! The car sold, we were just talking about it in December.

I'll be running the fitech 340lph that came with the kit. I think the Bosch 044 is 320lph? 300? Details get foggy on parts that aren't specific to the S30 since, as a hobbyist, this is the only car I've worked on to this extent. Yes, stock fuel sending unit. I did a bit of measuring and eyeballing to make sure that where I placed the pump wouldn't interfere with the OEM floater. I bought a new one that isn't 280z specific since the old one was very worn out and rusty, so it doesn't actually have the third wire for the low fuel light that the 280z had. Doesn't much matter since I still have Speedhut fuel gauge from when I was running the F body tank in the other shell.

What was the solution you found for the rubbing issue? Even if you figured it out, it's nice to have certain problems that can come up for others archived in case someone else has the same issue.

Had a small burst of motivation today since some plans got cancelled and I took the time to finally swap the oil pump and spindle to the ones I need to run the turbo distributor for MS3X. Got the engine set at TDC on the compression stroke, but I think the spindle might be one gear/spline offset clockwise. Will retry tomorrow in better light by using vise grips to hold it in place since I did most of my work in the dark today. I have a nice carport, but no garage and poor lighting along with early sunsets in the Pacific Northwest make for difficult time working the way I'd like. I have a decent LED work light, but I think my next paycheck I'll be buying the strongest work lights I can get on a budget.

It's not impossible, but currently Utah isn't a great place to teach. Varies greatly district to district though. More likely I'd switch to a middle school job closer to Seattle where I'd have more evenings off. I did my student teaching with middle school and loved it. The combination of band camp, football, basketball, extra rehearsals, split concerts due to how many groups we have that already double my concert load compared to other music teachers, and spring trips/tours all start to wear you down. Middle school job and getting my master's degree would be a lot of personal time gained and a huge bump in pay.