Stock Car Mafia

I say live large and shoot for a full tube chassis with the body skin draped over. Either way I bet you can get your money back out of it if you decide to ditch and run.

I am looking for someone looking to part with their 39 spline axles and companion flanges from MM/Chequered Flag Joe. He does not currently have any of these for sale and this is what I would prefer. PM me if you have them available. Thanks, Wade

I just used 383's tool tonight and it worked like a champ! No stripping of the threads and couldn't be happier. Thanks again.

Tonight I was able to ge home and start ripping at the rear suspension. I unbolted the rear brake lines, removed the retaining clip, removed cotter pin from emergency brake, removed retaining clip, and pulled it out. I'm a little burnt from the process tonight so I won't go in to too much detail on the removal. The dreaded project of the night were the damn spindle pins. I really didn't think I would get it all apart and get to this spot tonight but I was in overdrive tonight. the spindle pin removal tool that I purchased from 383 240z worked GREAT! I started with the passenger side. I forgot this tends to be the bad side for most cars but it didn't cross my mind at the time. The locking bolts came out of both really easy. Keep in mind I've been spraying penetrating oil on and off for a couple months. I used the tool on both ends to work the pin back and forth a couple mm's first. Torching and hammering each time. I left the spindle pin nut on one end so I could tell if the pin was moving and not stripping the threads. I did this about 2 times and then just gave 'er hell. It was a darn good arm workout to get it out but 15-20 mins later I had it! The driver side was cake and took literally 5 minutes to get out. It was as clean as a whistle too. I WILL NOT be putting these back in however. I started reading about the fastenal bolts replacement and probably will be going this route, without the use of a locking pin as others have. Now I'm left with a pile of metal. Next goals: 1. Get struts sectioned and welded up. 2. Remove old bushings, ball joints, and tie rods. 3. Send parts off to powdercoater. Still considering colors for this. Black or a medium gray to change it up. 4. Install new bushing and reassemble. 5. Possibly tear in to the R200 CLSD and check tolerances and install the new clutch discs. 6. Depending on the Joe's axles, these could possibly go in too, and would call for new stub axle nuts. Might as well replace the bearings and seals while I am at it.

Discount Tire didn't have the wheels until Monday but had them done around noon. After work I picked them up and man, are they meaty! I coulnd't help myself and went ahead and gave them a coat of plastidip. As I'm leaving the car blue, I think the black wheels will compliment the car through contrast. These suckers are WIDE! I will tell you if I wasn't motivated yet, just seeing one tire on the car was enough! I also starte the process of disassembling the front suspension. This was pretty straight forward and I didn't take too many pictures as my hands were greasy as shit. I will note that my 4 phillips screws that hold the dust plate on were a pain in the ass and seized. I almost stripped one so I loosened them all up by grabbing them lightly with a pliers. I will look at replacing these with some stainless bolts. Heat and rust penetrant weren't enought to loosen these. The outside bearing on the hub seems fine. I am wondering if anyone can shed some light on how to check the rear bearing. There were 2 shiny rings on the inner hub that I would assume are caused by wear. The bearing feels fine however. I bought a cheap tool from Harbor Freight to clamp the springs and remove the top assembly. Both fronts are apart but I didn't have a big enough cresent wrench to remove the gland nuts.

I sat down for an hour last night and got the 3 smaller gauges torn apart. The faceplates are quite easy to get off. The clock glass is glued in place. I took a washcloth and taped on it in a circle with a screwdriver. It only broke a tiny bit of the plastic/glass off. As for the other 2 gauges, there are 6 little plastic tabs that were melted over the back of the faceplate to keep it intact. I took my carbide bit with the dye grinder and ground off 3 of the 6 tabs that I could reach. The rest were easily broken by hand and taken apart. The next options are deciding how to mount these damn things. I know some have slide the gauges in from the front, while retaining the front OEM peice from the back. The does a great job of keeping the gauge flush and uniform for all three. I on the other hand really like the look of the gauges being recessed in the dash a little bit. The backside of the OEM faceplates are angled which would make this more of a challenge. I turned them so they would be angled towards the driver but they don't sit really nice against the backs of these. It would take some solid mounting to prevent these from vibrating around or moving. But I definitely want to come up with a solution to make this work. I'm not sure if these would be set back too far for visibility, but I am going to keep brainstorming on this and I'd like to try something new.

I had a couple hours on Saturday to work on the booster and MC. I ended up taking my booster in for a replacement at O'Reilly's. The stock MC had leaked on it and I didn't want to chance needing to take this apart again. As most people have done, you need to elongate the holes to match the diameter of the stock brake booster. After that was done, I was going to swap out the bottom ports so I could reuse my stock Brake lines. It turns out that my MC was not stock and it was something I didn't catch initially. These fittings are supposedly out of stock but I did find them and they are on the way (Nissan #46038-B5012). I taped everything off and used engine enamel for paint. Semi Gloss. Let's hope this MC doesn't leak! With time I will get the plunger set correctly and mounted back on the car.

Great find on the install on the 240Z! I've missed your thread for a while but I see your question on the ground control setup. Did they get back to you and were you able to get that sorted out? What instructions did they send you? I was given the instructions for a 240Z front and rear but they just hand wrote "same as early 280Z" even though mine is from 1978 (built in Sept. 1977.) They are having me cut 6" up from the spindle on the fronts and they have 7" up for the rears. Now I'm worried I may have the wrong diameter pieces as well. I in fact are going home to tear apart and rebuild my front strut tubes tonight. I cannot comment on the MR2 struts.

Very nice write up MECH-E. I'm curious to see how this comes along for you! Overall I really like the design of the kit. I did write up a bit on this kit as far as fab work needed in my build thread but didn't dedicate to a specific thread like this. I went with the LS3/C6 Corvette oil pan on mine and I had to cut and clearance the motor crossmember to avoid any rubbing with the pan as the motor "twists". It was too close for my comfort.

I don't recall how good your original paint looked in the engine bay but if it is anything like the exterior, you have nothing to worry about!

Going to pick up the wheels and tires today. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna plastidip the wheels and I think this will contrast the lighter blue color better. I am totally putting the wheels on for shits and giggles I got the rebuild brake booster yesterday as well. I'll be cleaning up the MC adapter plate and possibly painting these items before putting them back on the car. Man the engine bay is so empty right now it is extremely tempting to paint that too just to make it look presentable. But hell I'm kind of digging the old school look at the moment!

Hey I just had a quick question for you. When the shop rebuilt your diff, did they use a new pinion nut? I am reading through the rebuild manual and don't see any verbiage regarding the need of a new one. I'm just curious. I'll pm you my cell phone number in case you don't want to muddle up your build thread

Got a friendly call from Chequered Flag Joe tonight and talked for a while on the shortened axles and companion flanges. There are no others that have called with interest about the 39 spline companion flanges and stub's. He's got a shipment coming in for the 27 splines flanges so that is the route I will go now. I will have to keep my eyes for anyone looking to sell their 39 spline combo down the road.

Continental ExtremeContact DW's are on order through Discount Tire. They are 275/40/17 all the way around. I am dropping the wheels off today and they can get them put on when the shipment comes in. I just simply don't want to sit around waiting for the G2's to come out.

I was able to pull the brake MC and booster out last night. I think the MC was leaking out a little and ate away at the booster. I would assume the booster is still good for the 1" Wilwood MC swap so I will just throw some fresh paint down after I clean it up. I was gone all weekend so I had about an hour to pull this stuff off. The weather has been gorgeous up here in MN! We should see around 60 today. I've been laying in bed a lot thinking about the car as of late. I am seriously debating taking the suspension off and going through to sandblast, paint, adding the new bushings and get my coilover on the darn thing...I just need to start ripping it apart.

Great find Keith! I don't think you can ever have enough of these cars

I received 383 240'z tool and the machine work turned out very nice! I might not be using this for a while, but it should work great. He was able to ship really fast too. Very quality work!

Didn't have too much time last night but with getting the transmission and drive shaft back I wanted to get the new clutch components put on the motor. I took the time to clean up the mating surfaces of the block and tranny. With a 12" clutch, I had to press (hammer) in the dowel pins to align the pressure plate. I ordered a set of GM flywheel bolts so all I had to do was torque down in a 1-4-6-2-5-3 sequence and torque in three phases: 15-37-74 ft/lbs. I used the alignment tool to set the clutch disc. Don't forget to clean the flywheel and pressure plate really well with break cleaner to remove any machining grease from the surfaces. The pressure plate is guided on with the three pins and red loctite was added to the 6 bolts. They are torqued in the same sequence above and in 3 torque phases as well: 20-40-52 ft/lb. I don't know why this broke off but the top dowel snapped off when adding the plate. The other two helped align the plate, so I don't think I am risking too much by still running it with a broke dowel. Of course the broken piece was removed to prevent further damage Next was getting the slave cylinder ready for install. I am using the Russell clutch adapter fittings from Summit (RUS-640281). They come as a pair but I only used one. I can sell the other one to anyone who is interested. The clutch line adapter was easy to remove by knocking out the small pin that keeps the adapter in place. I removed the OEM o-ring as well and used the one supplied with the Russell fitting as I am not sure how similar the two are. A 12 mm wrench takes care of the bleed line adapter. I purchased a 36" remote speedbleeder from Tick Performance and the adapter and crush washer were supplied. The clutch line was bought from Summit and is Russell brand (RUS-655090). I took the lines back off to install the slave. I added a bit of blue loctite on the bolts just to be safe and used the proper German method for torque: gutentite. For anyone that may be wondering I bought this flywheel holder tool off of Ebay (Screamingchickenauto) for 25 bucks. I was going to weld up a tool of my own prior to getting this but finding time to source out some teeth and to fabricate it....I said screw it and just shipped this to my door. Came in real handy and the bolts are supplied. The starter shield was bolted up and then the starter was torqued to 37 ft/lb. The last step was mating the tranny to the motor. Honest to god this was not very fun at all by myself. I've done it before but even making sure the clutch disc was centered made this tough to align both pieces properly. The last inch is always the hardest

Got the call from the tranny shop. It turns out that the slip yoke in fact is not a true fit for the T56 out of my car. He did say he found a couple output shafts from a 4L60-E and those fit in perfectly. The splines on the yoke were a few thousandths off, so he took the time to work with a dye grinder and sander to get the slip yoke to go on. I will be contacting the manufacturer after I get the bill for this and see if they will be willing to offer anything for me. I won't say much now as we are all human, but things like this can be quite frustrating. Hell, I am just happy to make progress and move forward!

Wow April 2nd is coming quick. I kind of regret not doing much of anything the last month now! I think you should be sitting well to make that deadline. If the weather is nice, I should be there!

What gauge metal did you use? Did you seam seal where you have it bolted all the way around? How good is it at keeping noise out or does it rattle? I need to tackle this at some point and any tips would be greatly appreciated

I am going to bring the transmission and the driveshaft in to a shop tomorrow for them to look at it. They are thinking it could possibly be the output bushing but hell, they will have to tools to find out more than I ever will. I just keep staring at it in my garage.

I had some time to look in to this yesterday and I think you are on the spot with the DW's. With using yours as a daily it seems to be a good fit. Maybe there is a little more sidwall flex with these and therefor less corner "stability" but most don't push to this edge. I am not sure if I will wait for the G2's even though I'd like to try them. You'll have to provide some feedback here next week when you take it out since the weather is going to be nice

Which tire did you go with on those wheels? I've been trying to order some new 275/40/17's in the new NT555 G2 series but they haven't released them yet. I've heard good things about the G2 but is there a reason you purchased what you got?