Sanchez
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Everything posted by Sanchez
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@Gumiho3 Good to hear about Hexa Garage, I’ve been speaking with the owner and will probably get my harnes done in 1-2 months. You can use 16ga if you want, the stock is 18ga though for floor pan and firewall metal. If you’re good at welding and lap the patch it shouldn’t be difficult. I’m sticking to stock metal thickness throughout my repairs and doing the strengthening at specific stress points on the body later.
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Flares that fit tight to the body and do not need welting
Sanchez replied to fusion's topic in Body Kits & Paint
I just got a set of Marugen Shokai flares and the fit is great and shouldn’t need welting like some flares do to sit flush with the body, but I would definitely suggest some kind of welting behind it. While the fiberglass seems good quality and tough any kind of chassis flex back there will slowly but surely start to pull pieces apart, crack it, or spiderweb whatever coating you put on it. -
If you plan on selling your car then for sure follow @grannyknot advice. Next owner may decide they want a bumper. If it’s going to be your life long car than smooth it and make it how you want it. I agree with @rturbo 930that a totally shaved and smooth roll pan looks a little plain. My plan for my roll pan is to make it from a new sheet of metal and have a buddy use his CNC machine to smoothly cut out the letters “DATSUN” in the back and put a lighted backing behind it to give it some character. But I don’t plan on selling my Z until it becomes impossible for me to drive.
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Metal Magoo's 280Z Resurrection
Sanchez replied to MetalMagoo's topic in S30 Series - 240z, 260z, 280z
Good luck to you! Not saying that sarcastically, genuinely good luck. I agree we need to try and save as many Z’s as possible, and while that one is a big old mess those pictures make it look like somebody started to work on it a decade ago and gave up. Most of the rust looks surface too so it may not be too far gone, but I can tell you that you should definitely keep an open mind about looking around for a parts car otherwise you’ll be buying a lot of the missing pieces one by one and that will add up fast. You didn’t mention your auto mechanic skill level, but if you’re a quick-learning amateur like myself then plan on this being a lengthy project to get it the way you want. If you’re a pro building a race car then feel free to disregard everything I’m saying. Since it’s been in a field and looks like it’s been sinking into the ground get it down to just the chassis ASAP and start by taking it to a good shop that can check the straightness of the body, if it’s tweaked from sitting at weird angles they can get it straightened up and if you start welding with a tweaked body nothing is gonna line up right at the end. -
Firewall/kick panel coming together. Anybody else attempting to work this area I would definitely suggest breaking it into sections and not trying to make this as one piece. There’s just too many bends, folds, flanges required unless you have some industrial metal working tools.
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@Racer X 69 Thanks for the suggestion I’ll look into it. I’m gonna be grabbing some POR15 for the insides of frame rails, and have some weld through primer I put on these pieces for metal to metal and lap welds.
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Took a small break from the frame work to deal with some small areas that were bothering me like plugging holes from the factory and PO that I wasn’t going to need.
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@Sadeem28 My buddies and I have a YouTube channel and Instagram for the garage we work in. Haven’t updated much on Z because they’re moving along with their own projects and do all the editing and filming. I posted a YouTube link to the sandblasting video on the first page and our Instagram is: https://www.instagram.com/thecherrygarage_/
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@Rpm260z The ZeddFindings floor pans are great but they will require a lot of shaping to work and don’t include any of the kick panel leading up to the firewall so if yours are shot like mine it will take a bit of extra work. I would suggest not trying to take the easy route or use butt welds unless you are very experienced. When I go to my driver side I am going to cut the seat mounts out first, then do some test fitting and tracing of the replacement to get everything ready to go and lap weld it. @Sadeem28 This VQ motor fell into lap because I have a junkyard that parts out cars near me and I happened to call them as they just finished pulling a very low mileage engine out of a rear end totaled G37. Ended up paying less than most people were asking for a bare engine with 3x the miles on most websites. If you are still doing work to the car don’t rush on getting the engine now and paying too much for it to get sooner, keep looking around and eventually a good one will pop up.
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Made so pretty good progress on metal work in the firewall/footwell/main rail area today. It’s amazing how much easier it to do metal work with just a harbor freight shrinker/stretcher and metal brake.
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Spoke with Apex Engineered yesterday about the progress of their VQ swap front crossmember, looks like they are making progress and this should be a huge jump in progress towards making VQ swaps even more simple in the long run. As you can see they are sticking to their regular crossmember be sign and have the supporting tube running what looks to be maybe 1 1/2” inches more forward. Looks quality to me so far for a prototype so I’ll be probably one of the first buyers to test it out and write about it here. Also for wiring I’ve been speaking with Matt over at Hexa Garage about his VQ stand-alone harness and ECU tuning, from my discussions it sounds like it should work just as well as ZFever while being 1/2 the price. Another huge step forward in making the VQ swap a more viable option. They don’t have a test engine to check there harnesses on like ZFever does but I think at the price it’s a worthy opponent to the ZFever harness and I think I’ll take the step towards being the first here on Hybridz that I know of to try out and write about using that wiring option unless @Gumiho3 beats me to it. As for my progress in the past weeks I took a break from the frame stuff as it was getting to my head and got mostly done with installing a bottom door skin panel. It’s really not as daunting as it seems.
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@Coelocanth81 Checkout the Drivetrain sub forum for a thread called “Thoughts on Apex Engineered Subframe” or something close to that. It was originally about the standard rear subframe they make, but it has info about both as well as some questions answered by the creator, @ohmster101. There is also a YouTube video of some guys who used the Track Attack subframe on a Hellcat swap Z you should check out. I haven’t seen any updates on the car since then though. I’ve decided to use their standard rear subframe to run a Ford 8.8 and there are a number of people here who have ordered and started installing them but there is a lack of final reviews and videos going over the kits in depth. When I do mine I will definitely do a detailed write up for my build thread.
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Did some more cutting in firewall are before shaping any metal, also going to go to the local Harbor Freight and grab a 30” metal brake and a shrinker stretcher so I can actually get some of these bends looking nicer than my previous ones. I was always under the impression that the elongated trapezoid piece of metal that was on the frame rails behind the tension rod buckets was there to cover up an inspection/access port, but it would appear not. They must just be there for some added strengthening. Anyway, I’m hoping to get these pieces welded in this weekend.
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@rossman That's the plan. Our garage has an old 70-90gal (not sure on the actual capacity but it is functionally larger than my 55gal aquarium at home) air compressor that we got up and running recently, but unfortunately haven't been able to hook up to the individual bay outlets yet because hardware stores aren't able to cut and thread a pipe for us at the short lengths we need to connect the plumbing. I'll probably just run the air hose directly from the air output though once I stop by Harbor Freight to get a portable sand blasting setup. I have looked inside both my frame rails and they really are only bad in the front half towards the radiator support which I am cutting out and replacing anyway, and the visible rust from that photo. I'm gonna clean them up and purchased 2 cans of the Eastwood Internal Frame Coating to spray in there when I'm done along with a few other hard to reach channels.
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Got the damaged part of the firewall cut out today. I need to get some sheets of 18ga metal this week so I can get to fabricating. The main engine bay rail didn’t shift nearly as much as I expected when I loosened it so it should be pretty simple to get lined up again. I'm going to not be putting in a hole for the wire harness just yet because I plan on rewiring the car with modern electronics, and I am a big fan of using bulkheads for wiring. I’ve seen them last the abuse of offshore fishing boats I’ve worked on, so I'm sure they handle the minuscule abuse they would suffer at the hands of a weekend cruiser.
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As somebody who going through the process of tons of rust repair right now too, I can tell you that there is very little you want to just fiberglass over and forget. Maybe a few small pinholes or some pitting around some of the seams can be epoxied or glassed so that way weatherstripping can get a good tight seal, but for that just do metal and get a new rear hatch hinge boot from Zcardepot. Unless you are going for a completely clean and stock look with show quality welds everywhere all that stuff will be hidden and unnoticeable when done. Cut it out and repair with sheet metal it’s pretty much a slightly curved square of metal so not to difficult, if getting the welder inside there is difficult you could cut out the part of the roof rail that holds the dome light and access from the back and patch that up again too.
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So the passenger floor pan is almost completely finished. I’m having some issues with blow through even with adjusting the settings on the welder in some areas so I’ll need to get some copper plates and try to fill those in soon. Today I’m going to start tackling the kick panel/firewall and where my battery metal connects to the firewall, looks like I might need to purchase a shrinker/stretcher for that. Since I plan on doing a whole custom wire harness myself I will be deleting the factory harness hole (and A/C holes) for the time being since I would like to use bulkheads for everything on the firewall to separate all the harnesses and coolant hoses into engine side and cabin side. I recently purchased a set of Marugen Shoukai Fender Flares the member @boostfed. Decided against the Ztrix Subtle Z rear fenders because I’m worried with VQ power and the horrible STL roads that it will eventually rattle cracks in a large fiberglass over fender like that, which I love the look of the Z without fender flares but i do need room for some more meat on the rear tires. For suspension I have settled on doing all of my dealings with Apex Engineered. I’ll be using their Ford 8.8 rear conversion subframe, front suspension and BC Coilovers. They also let me in on the information that they are too developing their tubular front crossmember replacement to hold VQ engine mounts and it should be available in a few weeks. So I’ll try and get in on the first purchase of that and give it a review.
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@Ben280 I agree with you there, the heim joints for the AE kit are significantly better for handling, but it seems that the kit is very track car focused, but sacrifices for a lot of comfort for the street driver (and I live in STL which has the worst roads I’ve ever seen). But that price is really good and the construction seems bullet proof despite the R&D seeming a little rushed even to myself, and I am by no means a suspension expert. I agree again that bolt on style strut/coilover options would be nice, but in the same vain that option on the T3 version kinda sticks you with their coil overs which are good but there are better options available for weld-on available at a similar price. I would love to see AE make maybe develop or tweak this kit into a more road oriented option eventually even if it ends up costing more. But again I’ve never driven a Z that didn’t have stock suspension and it was all shot to hell, and I didn’t find it too harsh to enjoyably drive on Florida roads. So there is a possibility the whole solid construction would actually feel better than a Z with old struts, nearly bound up springs and 50 year old rubber.
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@boostfed PM'd you about the flares
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Got in touch with my cousin who been doing body work for 20+ years and he’s gonna be lending me some tools and a hand for the body work coming up so hopefully it will speed up the progress. I’ll get the floor pan fully welded in and get some progress going on the firewall/battery tray area this Sunday.
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Progress has been slow, only get a few hours each Sunday to work on the Z because works for me going 6 days a week due to staffing issues the past month. Anyway the passenger floor pan is tacked in with a few butt welds around it. Hopefully the driver side should go a bit quicker using what I learned from this process. You will notice some crap welds in the photos if you look close enough, it’s what happens when you forget to turn on the shielding gas for a few tacks lol. I’m doing plug welds along the rocker and butt welds across the rest of the floor. I think I will end up fabricating my own seat mounts for the stock seats.
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I’m doing my slam plate and I’ve been considering using panel bond adhesive for my mine. I have pitting similar to yours in a few areas and already cut out and patched the few area that had holes all they way through. I was thinking of using panel bond extensively over the potted areas and doing a few plug welds around the edges and on the two brackets that go above the license plate. I think the PB should help the rust from returning and some well placed seam sealer should keep water from getting back under there.
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@AydinZ71 The go to people for electronics on the VQ swap is ZFever/Fever Racing in Tampa. They do a whole rewire of the stock harness from a 370Z/G37 making it plug and play into essentially any vehicle, but they specialize in Z’s new and old. The price is around $2200 which is definitely high, but when you consider that it includes a license for the ECU ROM and software (I believe they use ECUtek, $700 by itself) used for tuning that is necessary for the swap it makes a bit more sense as to why the price is what it is. There are a few other companies who offer a similar service at cheaper price but I have never heard of anybody using them in a build for a Z or if they even tune the ECU so those may be a gamble but could save a good chunk of money if somebody makes it work.
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I know that this topic is about the AE subframe and 8.8 swap, but TTT did just release their 8.8 complete rear end swap so now we can compare the two options. However, when I looked at the price for the TTT version it did nearly give me an aneurism. So as it stands for me the AE option is winning in the “not-costing-me-three-months-worth-of-paychecks-department” but I do like that the TTT version has bushings for a quieter street car.
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@AydinZ71 I started a build thread under the Member Projects subforum so you can check out the progress there if you wanna see where I’ve gotten in the past 7-8 months
