So after buying the Z in February I've finally decided to get started on my l28et swap. My current goals at the moment are to simply get the swap running mostly stock and converting to Megasquirt after. Today I began taking the front end apart and removed the cowl and the fenders just to see what rust was hiding under them.
Car before
After (camera phone + me moving = fail, I know)
Driver side
Passenger side
As you can see there's tons of surface rust along with rot in the bottom corner beside the doors.
Also discovered the previous owner decided to hide these beauties in the wheel wells by screwing on some sheet metal and covering it with undercoating
Driver side
Passenger side
Thankfully thats just about the worst of it. The rails under the floors are mostly solid but I still plan on welding on some baddog units. Also managed to get most of the harness disconnected and removed the radiator as well. Going to try and get the engine and tranny out by tomorrow and begin stripping the engine bay so I can spray it with rustoleum. Surprisingly there's zero rust in the bay including the battery tray and I'd like to keep it that way.
The l28et is probably the only real progress I've manged to make so far. Spent most of the summer tearing it down and even though it seemed it was rebuilt at some point because of the .5mm oversized pistons and crosshatch on the cylinder walls, I decided to throw in new rod and main bearings, rings, gaskets, timing components, and a kameari 1mm metal headgasket to bump up the compression. All that's left is to make some block off plates for the egr and aac valve and finding a large enough bolt to fit in the hole left behind the emergency release valve.
Some goodies that came in the mail recently
Fidanza aluminum flywheel, Centerforce 240mm dual friction clutch, and a Treadstone TRV25S intercooler. Also planning on picking up a Hobart Handler 140 to replace my Harbor Freight special 90 amp flux core welder so I can actually do some decent welding.