grannyknot

Thanks, I've been looking for one.

I wish I had taken better pics, 1st one is before I welded in the cylindrical wall to close up the notch, 2nd pic the notch is in the lower left corner.

Well it's been a few years since I did it but off the top of my head your list looks right, the OBX you are looking for is 10528 and I just had a whiz around the net and I couldn't find one either, not even on the OBX site which is kinda strange. Maybe they discontinued because there wasn't enough demand? If you do find one you know that you will have to tear it down, replace the shitty washer springs and probably reverse the gears, right? I wish I could help more.

Hey Techie, welcome to the forum. Looks like a very nice Z you picked up and the paint is in great shape, maybe just a cut and polish to bring out the depth. Did the PO cut the firewall at all? It just looks like the engine is sitting really far back.

You'll find them necessary if you are ever in a flood, Nissan put them there as drain holes I think. Personally I never fill or eliminate stock holes because I am just the current owner, the car is definitely going to have other owners in the future and they may want to go back to original. Also I don't like the thought of being cursed at after I'm dead

I say get all that work done before hand because you have such a short rust free window before it starts again. The place I used was these guys, https://www.technostrip.com/restoration.html

Sand blasting and chem strip are good as far as they go but will leave all the metal rusting inside the frame rails and sub frame, I dipped my 240 and would do it again but would change the order of work that was needed. Dipping is going to remove 95-98% of the rust, you can never get the rust in the seams between the spotwelds but you will need to seal all that bare steel pretty quickly after the dip. The place I used sprayed the car with a water soluble rust inhibitor that was good for a week to ten days and it worked pretty well. If I did it again I would get ALL of the metal work/welding done before hand and have your shop ready to spray frame sealer inside and 2k primer on the outside. If you are using something like Eastwoods internal frame spray get way more than you think you need, I bought 3 cans and it wasn't even close, 7-8 cans were needed, it disappears quickly. It is a real treat not spending 3 months of your spare time scraping tar, paint, oil and undercoating off. The pics are the day she came out of the bath.

That's excellent work you are doing, it's a pleasure to go through your thread.

Congrats, yeah she's a little rough but that just means you get to spend more time fixing it up, don't throw away that Auto transmission, the bell is worth something to guys installing the 350z 6 spd. Are you going to start a build thread?

^ This but before this heat up the nuts with Map gas (the yellow can) several times each and cool with penetrating fluid, yes there may be a small amount of flame but it only lasts a couple of seconds and you can blow it out easily. I find that heat is the only thing to break that bond.

This is a great gadget that wish was around when I first started swapping engines, it saves a lot of time lying on back under the car. Digital inclinometer, don't buy the $13 ones, just crap, $25 and up for a decent one.

I would concentrate on matching up the driveshaft angles, if those aren't perfect or close to it the car will be un driveable. You may have to lower the diff or tip it one way or the other and angle the engine/trans to point at the diff. When your drive shaft angles are perfect then that is when you start making the engine mounts, at least that is the way I do it.

Hi Jeff, I'm near Tottenham, north of T.O., have you started your build thread yet? We are all about the pics around here, can never get enough. Edit, yes I found it, looking forward to your build. If you are interested in more detail on the ///MZ you could have a look here, https://www.classiczcars.com/forums/topic/50240-thinking-about-installing-an-bmw-m6-engine-in-my-z/

I think this is it, page 3 halfway down, In 1997 I had completed and was campaigning the LT1/T56 powered 240z http://forums.hybridz.org/index.php?/topic/52346-lt1t56-240z/ Bob Maggio had completed the same swap in a 280z roughly six months prior but, as far as anyone knows, it had never been done in a 240. There was no documentation and no HBZ. I was having problems tearing the diff mount. I don't recall how many mounts I tore or how many band-aids I applied. What I remember is, Friday afternoon, 'busting another'... with a race scheduled for Saturday. At the time, I was much more fanatical, and this was an EMERGENCY dammit! All I had on hand was some scrap aluminum, a MIG machine, and a local, cheap auto parts house. In desperation I built the ugliest diff mount in history. If you've ever welded aluminum with a MIG machine, you'll likely empathize with that sort of 'fun'. I was gun shy and concerned about tearing the isolators again. The long nose R200 has four holes right? Why not *TWO* turbo 350 mounts? So there it was, in all it's funk... two trans. mounts, on top of the diff, mated to a soda can bridge, a few hours before flag down. It survived the race. At the time, I was also struggling with driveline vibrations. This led to further experimenting. Pinion angles, lower contact areas, shaft material, and so on. In the end, I built a steel 'bridge' with a single, shim-able, GM mount. I was on mount number three or four by this time. It was simple and I was making progress. I don't recall the specifics, but I remember a few of us talking long distance. JohnC, Rags, Ross Corrigan, Pete Paraska, Jim Biondo, BRAAP, etc. This was before HBZ's time. In fact, it was before Internet forums were generally in vogue. Pete and I began discussing this very topic, and I shared my 'experiment'. He asked me to replicate it for him. So, I made ONE more, expressed my desire to avoid production, and asked him to keep the cost to himself ($20.00!). Pete kept his promise, and posted the mount and prints on his website. Regarding the donation, my relationship with Roostmonkey is top secret The few I built for myself are destroyed. Does this make Pete's a collector item?

That is probably Vintage Dashes? They have a nice product but for me on the other side of the continent and a different country the price is... a lot. I think that layer of carbon fiber is going to make all the difference, a few guys that have followed similar dash repair procedures are starting to see cracks along the old cracks. I'm planing on using a weave carbon fiber so those valleys never show up again. Who has the ugliest dash?

I didn't know it had a name I just saw some aftermarket bolt on "horns" for newer imports and thought that to make them really effective that they should be welded into the car. I put a bmw s38 in the Z and that bloody engine is so tall I knew I would never get a strut tower brace over top so started looking for other ways to stiffen the front. As it turned out the car is much stiffer now then it would have been with just a strut tower brace.

Very nice, there's a few hours. Mine looks similar to yours at the start, was the bedliner in a rattle can or sprayed by one of the Linex places? What brand of padded dash filler did you use? I was thinking about using carbon fiber as well, good job.

Here is a later pic with everything welded in, I think I did what you are recommending.

And the exhaust ports and header.

I have only ever done Option 1 and it works well, I like to have to the poly snubber on top actually touching the diff so there is as little room for it to move as possible.

That top frame box is a very difficult piece to find, you maybe able to find a used one from a wrecked Z but they are hard to come by. I would drill out the spot welds on that piece, remove it and repair it as best you can. Here is some of the reinforcement I did to my car. Nothing was welded yet , just test fitting.

A valve seal may not have been pushed on all the way, or a broken ring. You could retorque but it probably won't help, one way or the other the head has to come off but a compression and leak down test is what you need right now.

Do you think there is a possibility the car was twisted while the rockers and quarters were off?

I don't know of any rotary s30's but I'm pretty sure those will have to be custom built engine mounts, what is often done is you start with either the s30 steel and rubber engine mounts or the Mazda steel/rubber engine mounts and then just weld together an adapter to match them up. The Mazda forums would be your best place for answers on rotarys.

I thought I would give it a full month to let the grease soak in, the red grease is Redline assembly lube, the dark grease is from wiping my finger around the ball joint of my DD. The fabric came out much better than I thought it would, there is still a light stain from the dark grease and the Redline is almost certainly just the dye in the lube. If these were cleaned off soon after it happened I'm sure you would see no traces. This was done with clean white T shirt cotton and Brakekleen, keep rubbing until the cotton comes away clean.