Oddmanout84
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Posts posted by Oddmanout84
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Well, P-38 #5000 "Yippee" came off the assembly line as the only bright red P-38 in existence back in the 40's, and went on to do multiple publicity tours etc. So I guess Red Bull isn't too far off painting one up in shiny colors.
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Damn you page load error!! You made me post the same thing twice!!!
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If I had to go with a pre WWII race plane though, the GeeBee would be it. Ugly, sleek, dangerous... what's not to love?
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If I had to go with a pre WWII race plane though, the GeeBee would be it. Ugly, sleek, dangerous... what's not to love?
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Damn you Hyundai, and your feminine wiles!
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If you are talking about small holes, just glass them for now. you need to cut out to a good, clean square of unrusted metal when it is time to weld in a patch anyhow.. why not simply, cut out the entire fiberglassed patch when that time comes?
The fiberglass floor repair is commiting yourself (or a future owner, beware of Karma) to fixing it later at an increased amount of difficulty. In all honestly, if its properly prepared and you don't wait TOO long) it isn't that much more difficulty.
Is it a "bad" thing to do, most certainly.. but if your talking short term "keep my @#$% car dry!!" repair, just go ahead and do that. Just, cut a slightly larger patch out when its metal time.
Oh yeah. this would be a VERY temporary fix. I'd be surprised if it lasted more than 6 months. As for the car.... I've put more time, sweat, blood (and money) into this project than any other I've previously done. I can't see myself shortchanging it, or selling it in the near future. If I could have it my way, I will be passing this car down to my future son/daughter (whichever I'm cursed with) in the future. My current "better half" has promised me that she'll never try to force me to sell either the Z or the Harley, but we'll see.
I am hitting all the rust I find with converter, so it will be for all intensive purposes GONE, though I could be wrong. Hopefully I won't have to remove a terribly larger amount of metal when I patch these areas with welds.
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nice thought but for me one of the things I liked about these gauges is this statement
*For your LIFETIME, as long as you own the gauge- we guarantee it!
http://www.speedhut.com/warranty_page.htm
So I am not going touch/open the gauges just install them as I don't plan on sell my car in my LIFETIME
In that case, don't worry. You can test the theory after The zombie apocalypse when we're all undead anyway.
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Those two songs only appeared on one Metallica album, Garage, Inc., which was specifically a cover album. They didn't try to take credit for writing any of those songs.
I'm staying out of the Led Zeppelin debate, just wanted to set that straight.
Guess you're right about that. I just really hate Metallica...
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Ok, I know I'm getting this thread a bit off topic, but I can't help but share this. Hopefully you guys will appreciate it, especially if you're into the Japanese animation thing. I found it several months back while searching WWII aircraft clips on youtube.
The plot is Axis-centric (but not "evil"), and (even if there was no sound, and you didn't know it was animated/produced/written in Japan) obviously shares a heavily Japanese point of view. And some plot elements are a bit out there. However, it is the most beautifully animated clip of WWII planes I have ever seen, with incredible attention to detail. I really enjoyed it, and if it wasn't so damn hard to find a copy of it I would own it. The "movie" is divided into 3 parts about 9 minutes each. Enjoy.
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Aw crap... now you've gone and done it. I want to play IL2 but my power machine desktop is still down....
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*eye twitch*
You....
...bastard.
The P-47 is the airframe for me, I know a lot of people will hold up its contemporaries as better, but I have my reasons.
*peers closer at photo*
Wait.That's CAF HQ in Midland, isn't it? I've been in that hangar numerous times. At least, it looks very similar, save for the lack of banners hanging from the rafters.
Yup! At least, I know it was a CAF museum. I have no idea where it was in Texas though, somewhere between Pecos and Dallas off the I-20. *Looks at google maps* Yeah, most likely Midland. When I was there they were also in the middle of restoring a B-29 in the back of the hanger (of which you can see a wingtip, engine and prop in the background of the first picture).
Don't get me wrong, the jug is a great plane. P-51 used to be my favorite, but its spot in my heart was superseded a while ago. After hours and hours (too many!!) of playing IL2: Sturmovik, I came to love the P-40E. That plane may be slow as crap, but boy for a non-radial engine plane it sure is tough! However, even that (and the P-38) are only my favorite US planes. Call me a kraut-loving bastard if you will, but the spot in my heart for favorite fighter of all goes to the FW-190A and its later non-radial ("Dora" and Ta-152) varients. The sheer power, turn rate and ungodly weaponry earns them that right.
I can never be the next Erich Hartmann, even if I tried (missiles are for p*ssies), but at least I have IL2 on my computer.
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Oh, dammit... You guys opened up a huge can of beans by starting this thread. I'm a sucker for classic aviation, though most of my knowledge lies in WWII aircraft.
I actually took these pictures almost 5 years ago, a few days after graduating from flight school. I was in the process of driving my Z home from California when I happened across an aviation museum in Texas just off the highway. After looking around the place, I went into the hanger and started poking around. They had all sorts of planes, including an Ilyushin and a Spanish Bf-109. Then I came to this one.
Not only was this the closest I'd ever been to a P-47, but I'd also never seen one in such perfect condition. Its by no means my favorite plane, but god it was awesome. And MASSIVE!! Its pilot came from behind me while I was snooping around, and after letting him know I was just out of flight school and was impressed with the aircraft, he let me get some photo ops.
It just so happened that he used to be a Marine as well, and I had actually seen him fly overhead during an airshow a day earlier in Arizona as I drove through the state. Talk about coincidence!
One of the coolest days of my life.
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And take a look at a ot of Metallica's older stuff. A lot of those are songs that they didn't write (Whiskey in a Jar, and Bob Seger's Turn the Page for example). And they complain about people stealing their music, to the point of pulling songs off of youtube which fans turned into background music for their personal videos....
Hearing that Zepplin did that though... wow...
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+1 to EVERYTHING people have replied with on this thread.
It could be much, much worse. Check my thread out in this section (*New* Z Project). My car was (I believe) in California and the southwestern states for its whole life before I bought it. Nothing but a tiny bit of surface rust in the usual areas. Once I took it here to CT, it sat cocooned in several layers of waterproof tarp top to bottom over bottom to top with several moisture evaporators that were changed out every year. Water still managed to pool underneath. Over the course of almost 4 years like that in New England's environment, my car degraded to about what yours looks like right now. NOT EVEN FOUR YEARS!!! These cars rust fast, and I'm willing to bet that car is relatively fresh from Cali, or has been sitting in a very dry storage area for 10 years. Just take a look at the majority of the Z cars you see from around here (whatever few you may find still in existence). You're still sitting on a gem, regardless that there's a lot of work ahead of you. A Z car in New England, even one in that condition, is worth more than $500.
My work has been slowly progressing on my Z since August/September when I unwrapped her, and I'm sure I could have gotten much farther if I didn't take a couple month-long breaks and really put my nose to the grindstone. I'm willing to bet you can have it running by summer if you really try. Just set your priorities.
Kill the rust. This can obviously be done while you take things apart. A rotisserie would be awesome, but its not absolutely needed if you don't mind getting dirty crawling under the car. I don't have one, I'm doing just fine (although I really wish I could). If you search some of my posts, like in the budget ideas thread http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=128858
I've posted some interesting and cheap ways to remove rust.
Suspension and bushings, while you kill the rust. You might as well, it'll make the car handle a lot better, and your shocks/springs/bushings are likely mush by now. I'd also add that you might as well buy some new spindlepins and lockbolts for your rear transverse links. Those things are a hooker to remove, and likely will get destroyed in the process unless you buy a spindle pin removal tool (and even that might not work).
Worry about engine swaps last. Obviously this depends on your level of experience, but its a lot easier to learn about the car by fixing the stock parts (that you're going to keep) first and then adding new shinies. I'm by no means telling you what to do (and I'm relatively new to this myself), just suggesting. That L6 motor you have in there has some potential to it, and unless its already screwed up, they're near bulletproof. I kinda regret jumping the gun a while ago and getting an extra L28ET. It now sits in my garage doing a great job of keeping the house from blowing away. Hopefully I'll be rebuilding it soon, but I'm getting the rest of the previously mentioned items out of the way first. I probably could have held off on the purchase and better spent money elsewhere.
I wish you the best of luck in your project. Hopefully we may see each other down the road at a local Z meet (whichever ones exist... so far I only know of CTZCC) if we can get our cars back on the road.
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Probably someone sprayed oil or wd-40 in there a while back, and it's now gummed up, if you take off your door panel and unbolt the mechanism, pull it, and you can spray it out with brake cleaner, wipe it down and graphite it.
Me? Spray out the latch mechanism with WD-40 to see if I could fix it? Noooo...
Oops. Yeah, I did that. And come to think of it, the more times I've done that it has gotten worse than when i first bought the Z. The mechanism IS turning all the way though, the problem is when its in the "closed" position, whatever "catch" that's inside will not keep it in that position if any pressure is applied. I've tested this multiple times with a thick screwdriver. Hopefully its gummed up from the oil as you say, and not too worn. That's interesting though about the graphite. I always thought the dark residue in there was weargrease. I'll have to remember this for when I clean it out and reinstall it.
The interior plastic paint I'm using should NOT chip though, if the labels on the cans are accurate. I've used two products for this, Krylon Kolorbond and Duplicolor Vinyl/Fabric spray paint (from Autozone). Both are supposed to not coat their targets exactly like regular paint, but actually DYE the plastic, so the color becomes part of the plastic. Pretty cool. The Duplicolor was used on my seats, and it did an excellent job of turning the vinyl trim black, and as much as I've messed with it, the color will not rub or flake off. As for the inner fabric portion of the seat, it worked terribly. The color went straight to the bottom inner portion of the fabric but failed to dye the fuzzy upper area. Perhaps its because I tried to use light gray for that area, though, which made the final color a milky brown. I might as well test the black on that area now, because the seats are going bye-bye sometime in the near future anyway.
Here is an example of the difference
And here's the original color on the flipside. This panel was sun-bleached, spotted, and stained before I painted it.
This new coating does NOT feel like its going to chip.
And I can definitely get away with just welding in patches on the floorboards. The only reason I've seen fiberglass as a feasible temporary fix is that the rust holes I've cut out are only about the size of a silver dollar, at their worst. From what I've seen on other Z's, I lucked out big time in comparison (even if it still sucks for me).
I also got my proportioning valve in the mail today! Yay! I can finally hook my brakes up and bleed them!
But wait. Aw crap... I looked at the caps for the master cylinder and realized something.
They're wired. And I'm guessing there's a switch inside each of those plastic probes that detects my fluid level. The problem? It looks like there's still some residual "brake-fluid-turned-grease" coagulated inside. Something tells me that might interfere with operation... ugh... I also have to hope that my current master cylinder (still bathing in a bucket of DOT3) is going to hold up. The seals looked good, but only time will tell if I should have just ordered a new one.
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Well, if you're interrested in welding stuff you could do what I did. I took a class at the community college here just to learn how. then I went to home depot and bought a lincoln 135 (largest 110V welder) As part of the class they had you do your own projects so I got to work on my own project. (at the time it was a rock crawler bumper) but they taught me a lot of tricks for how to weld, n really you didn't have to do any studying. it's far from brain surgery, n I was probably smarter than 3/4 of the class. it's a lot different taking a class for fun, than to learn a carreer.
Anyway, from there I've learned how to put what I learned to use and to expand on that through these and other forums. You'll find on here proper methods for welding in body panels, or even replacing floorboards or just patching holes. if you don't know something, just ask, people are generally happy to help. I would recommend taking a class. most community colleges are cheap or free on the "trades" programs anyway.
Don't use Por-15 on it if you're going to try to weld it later. Por-15 I've found is near impossible to remove, that's tough stuff. it's why I'm using it as a first layer for my undercoating. When you weld, you need clean bare metal. Yes an angle grinder w/ a wire brush is your friend. You can have someone do your welding for you too. it's usually pretty cheap, esp if you have a friend w/ a welder. if you were in abq, I'd weld it for you.
Anyhow, You're doing a great job! nice cleanup in the interior. Are you going to paint the interior too?
Phar
Oh yeah. I've welded a few small things before, but that was years ago in school. I forget exactly what it was though. Some silly tech ed project. I have no doubt in my mind that I can learn to weld well enough in a short amount of time, the only thing that's stopping me is that I don't have the money to drop on a welder. My uncle and an auto shop that I used to work at both have welders, and I'll probably be using theirs once the car is street legal again. Right now though I need a temporary fix, as both locations I will need to drive a decent distance to. I'd rather take the Z to my uncles, honestly, because he's been working on cars his whole life and is very ingenuitive when it comes to fabricating parts. I trust him more than any other mechanic, and I'm sure he could teach me a whole lot more. That and I could spend the night, and my aunt is a good cook! lol.
Yes, the interior is going to be painted. Out with the brown, in with the black. That krylon plastic/vinyl paint has worked awesome so far in converting a lot of my interior trim pieces from the stock brown color, so it should work well for the rest. Not only was black a good personal choice, but also any stains that won't come off the brown are completely covered up. I'll be using 3M rubber undercoating on the floors for now, as I don't have POR-15 on hand and as you said I don't want to try to remove the stuff when I get to welding later. Whenever I get the floor patched, down the road I think I'll be putting in some sound deadening mats. Otherwise the car is going to sound really "tinny" when going down the road.
I also really hope I don't have to get a new latch mechanism for the passenger side door. It will not latch closed anymore. I tried moving the striker on the body frame outboard, but that's not the issue. Something inside the actual mechanism is allowing the latch to come undone with even a light pull.
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I can see some annoying adjustment procedures needing to be used to get these aimed right, not to mention I doubt the effectiveness of cheap headlights/foglights (let alone the fact they're shining through a smoked light cover). But whatever floats your boat I guess.
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Steering rack and swaybar reinstalled, front of the car back up in the air, blah blah... kinda boring stuff, and nothing of note that would make for exciting pictures. Getting the sway bar links (with new urethane bushings) to fit onto the control arm was an exercise in frustration, as it was on the rear ones. Those long bolts just aren't long enough, so as before I rigged up a stupidly complex array of wooden blocks and jacks to compress them so I could fit the locknuts on the ends. There's probably an easier way but... I also reset the alignment back to what it was, good thing I took pictures of the threads (in relation to the inner portion of the rack) before taking the rack apart! I was way off on my initial adjustments before I looked at the pics.
I've removed the headlights from their buckets as well. As the be expected, the portion facing the tire was covered in a lovely layer of surface rust. More annoying; the rust extended to the bolts holding the assembly apart, so it was quite some work to get them out (turning phillips heads into standards with a dremel). That and readying the splashpan for painting is what I'm into now.
Oh, and I guess this is picture worthy;
Its not entirely done, but 99% of that sticky black tar sound deadening is gone. I spent many hours chipping away at it with a hammer and putty knife. Found even more rust hiding underneath.... But its not terrible, mostly just surface. Soon I'll finish this and recoat the interior once the rust is taken care of.
The stock ignition relay has also been replaced. The newer Nissan unit looks much more durable, and better yet, it was still a simple R&R job!
New Ign Relay;
Compare that to the pictures of my original relay. Much better.
More updates to come, soon.
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If its anything like the Bond car from The Spy Who Loved me, I want it!!
There's a project fit for someone on HybridZ; a Z that goes fast AND goes underwater!
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I'd love to buy this game just for the Z, but it would take $55 out of my car fund for a USED copy at Gamestop!
By the way, are there any other styling options for the 280Z in that game besides the hideous ones? (The black one you have there and stock are the only good ones I've seen...)
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I'd recommend a 33 gal compressor at the least for painting. I got a Craftsman one from Sears which is probably the minimum.
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Alright ive had my 1977 280z for about 2 years and i was wondering what the best rout was on the motor.. i was wanting to put a v8 in it. i really want to put a turbo on it, ive always loved the sound of a good turbo. so i was wondering what my best bet was on putting a turbo on a v8 in the datsun. i was wondering if it would fit in there. i was really wanting to run dual turbos on the v8. so will it fit with 2 turbos. or would it be better to run one turbo. i want to get at some much power as i can out of it.. its been 2 years in the making and i cant make up my mind on what i want to do with it. so all the help would be great. Thanks
TT V8 Z:
POWER>weight
There is such a thing as too much... unless you're making this into a drag car. Otherwise you're looking at a LOT of work just to make the car handle right.
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Those look like fog lights sold in Autozone, lol.
Tips for modifying,upgrading,or restoring a Z on a budget.
in Miscellaneous Tech
Posted
Electrolytic Rust Removal Clip Gone?!?!?
Wow... that's disappointing! I can't believe they took it down!!
I can't find the same clip on youtube, but it was a clip from a show called Truck U. Here's another clip showing the process.
This is how to do it, on a much smaller scale. I used a large rubbermaid container, a 12V car battery charger at 2 amp current, and a large piece of rebar that I bent into a coil that snaked around the perimeter of the rubbermaid container. I didn't bother with the cola at the end, because it would take a lot of cola to submerge 2 rear LCAs, and I don't believe in wasting drinks, lol.
Note; Do NOT EVER, during this process of rust removal, allow the positive end alligator clip (assuming you use a battery charger like me) come into contact with or submerge into the solution while you're running a current through it. If you do, you can kiss that thing goodbye as it will corrode at an accellerated rate and be rendered useless. Always clip it to a portion of the rebar that is above the water's surface.