flatout

you may have mentioned this at some point previously, but what ECU is this going to run on?

a project car is never "done" but we sure do love upgrades. You dont realize how small these old cars are until you park next to something modern. your bosses BMW was probably huge next to the Z

congrats sir, hopefully the weather in your area is nice this time of year and you get get out and put some miles, (or kilometers) on it (never been to Netherlands so unsure if you guys use miles or Km)

Well that laser is pretty handy. you do great work. keep it up.

Been a busy couple weeks but been chugging along. Got the fuel system started. mounted the ethanol content sensor, fuel filter and fuel pressure regulator. ordered line/fittings twice and still came up short on fittings and line. hopefully the last of it arrives today so I can finish it. Got the rear brake caliper bracket machined up from a high alloy steel. Due to the design i had to come up with i wanted a high alloy steel to be nice and strong. Got the clutch line made up and bled it. clutch seems to work even tho i just bled it solo. i'll get the wife out to get it perfect but it does work. I got the exhaust mocked up and tacked together. Need to come up with a nice tip to get it out just past the bumper.

sir, your SoCal is showing, what a clean chassis, starting with a chassis that clear sure would be nice. up here in new england we certainly dont get that. I browsed thru a couple pages. Great work. I'll have to make it thru all of them when i have a few minutes. love the design, prototype, create, mentality.

I started my build thread on here for that same reason. Builds, conversation, and sharing the car culture passion. Unfortunately, it seems most of that is gone with most forums. I have a couple real niche cars so the forums are a few old heads that want to keep that alive but everybody just ends up on social media for the instant gratification or whatever. It would be nice to see a little more activity. I think its worth just a small comment when somebody makes the effort to post something. it makes a difference. A comment, a question, some feedback (keep it positive is possible) This forum has so much information imbedded into it which Im sure these social media people use when google brings them here but as soon as they get what they need, they are gone. not realizing that someday that action will lead to the information going away. The 240sx world lost Zilvia recently for this same reason and that really hurt. I'll keep posting until i can't.

Here for my weekly update. Engine and transmission are in. Whole drivetrain is in for good. (hopefully) Finished welding up the turbo manifold and added a tial 44mm wastegate. Need to header wrap it and install for good. Fuel cell is in. need to secure all the panels in, make filler neck, run lines and wire pumps/sender Started making up some oil and coolant lines for the turbo. Put in the radiator and intercooler assemblies. Welded some fitting to a modified factory coolant wrap around tube to hook up the heater core. made a little -8an line to connect to the heater core block. Throttle cable is in and mounted to the pedal. Finished 240z tail light conversion with some new "euro" style tail lights with a carbon 3 pc surround. Got the two door latches in so they stay closed on their own.

thanks for the photos and description. It may just be the factory had more variation than we'd expect from modern cars but the 70s where a rough time for the automotive quality so its possible. I do also understand that I am mixing two different brands on to a 50+ year old car. With the T3 drop downs being billet they do not have any forward or backwards motion so the width of the arms need to be pretty spot on.

They did send me another set of control arms which was nice of them but they are also a bit short. I did make some modifications to make them work. the kit is supposed to use 8 washers per side but i needed more to align the toe adjuster up, I do have T3 spindles so that may be part of the variation I was seeing. So I machined some spacers because stacking 15 washers was not my favorite design. The spacers tightly fits over the spindle and then takes up about an inch of space and allows 5 washers for "adjustment" The guy from apex did called me and we chatted for a bit about some other design concerns I have. Which was great and he took it well. Apparently they just aren't good at measuring things. They said they are going to try and make me a shorter set of front control arms aswell because the front setup at its absolute max shortest setting is still .375" wider than the stock assembly which doesn't allow me to use any of the roll center or control arm adjustments with my wheel and tire combo. I was hoping to correct geometry with everything being adjustable but that's not the case since the crossmember mounting points are wider than the factory one so I had to max everything out to its shortest point to even fit. With that said I have been plugging away at stuff, brake lines are ran, rear suspension is in, engine is assembled. adapter kit for the trans is machined, body panels are getting put on. started on the interior, everything takes so long. painting brackets and hardware and aligning everything but i am very happy with how its coming out. I was told the car came with a 240sx diff, its actually a j30 diff so it has a 3.91 gear ratio. That may be a slight advantage so not to mad. Anyway, after all this reading. enjoy some photos.

interested in the power window kit, my cage makes my window crank a bit of a challenge so i was considering a window kit aswell.

engine looks great. Really loosing confidence in APEX parts.

The dash looks fantastic. nice job on the entire interior refresh.

The more research I do the more horror stories I keep seeing so lets hope they get their stuff sorted out. I am in manufacturing and product development and i would never let these type of issues out the door. If you have the retro suspension kit it may be a different style arm which uses heims on the inner mounting point. Which i hope they updated the rear heim joint angle because from what I've see its on a big angle so any length adjustment needs to reestablished the correct "washer shims" which is a terrible design flaw. The arm and subframe is there own design so with a blank canvas this should be easy to make right. This is the same measurement between both stock and their arms. its the inside bushing stop to inside bushing stop. stock is about 16". Theirs came in about 15.5"

APEX said they would have a set made up by friday but haven't heard from them. Added a photo showing the APEX control arm length issue. Other bushing is lined up and its about 1/2" short. Put the rest of the rear together so i could sit it on the ground with the wheels and tires. T3 r200 short nose kit and rear sway bar. Got my tires in so got them mounted and installed for some motivation. Since I am using 300zx rear drum ebrake. I decided to use a 240sx ebrake handle (since I have this combo in my 240sx). Modified the handle to fit in the stock Z location. Mounted the cable holder thru the floor. Made a couple small brackets to hold the cables in the correct spot. Adjusted and works great. Also added a couple photos of the brake setup.

looks like a great starting platform for whatever direction you decide to go with it.

I heard back from APEX and they are making and sending me a new set of arms that is correct. Not sure what happened but mistakes happen. Not ideal for timeline since I need to roll the car out of the shop next week so I'll have MacGyver the stock arms back on with mismatched hardware to make it a roller for now.

Got all the suspension bits unboxed and layed out. Have a combination of APEX and techno toys. Choose parts based on what I liked the designs features of and the car came with most of the techno rear bits. I am currently working with APEX to find out why the mounting points on the rear control arms are 1/2" shorter than the stock ones so they aren't a bolt in deal with the techno drop brackets. I actually don't think they would work with a stock setup either so assuming there is a defect so well see what they say. I can modify them if needed but for $500 id rather not have to so well see. Machined a ridiculous set of caliper brackets. I was talking with a local motorcycle racer and he said hed had some large pieces of titanium hed donate if i wanted to make my brackets from Ti. So a little redesign and a good amount of machine time later we have these ridiculous caliper brackets for the wilwoods.

finished stripping and cleaning the underside and inner wheel wells and sprayed with some raptor liner. The raptor liner is popular around the youtube builds and I can see why. sprayed nice, covered nice, cured up nice and looks great. Taping up the fresh paint was a pain but came out great.

Thanks. Interior is gonna be, black carpet in the front half. (unsure on door panels based off what will fit) Rear half will be a combination of the semi gloss charcoal grey that the cage is and some black with the raw aluminum bead rolled panels around the cell. May carpet the wheel tubs for a more "finished" look. The color goes real well with gray/black.

Long week number like 200 but happy with the my progress. Made a tweak to a color based off a cadillac cts5 v blackwing. Its a bit more "copper" tone of orange than I was picturing with the modifications but I am very happy with it. As soon as I started pulling the masked off areas and was seeing the contrast with the grey I loved it. Did get some fisheye on one door so I'll have to fix and respray that at some point and a couple sags/runs in the clear to sand out, but I can make some serious progress on the build now. did get the engine stripped down as well. Bearings, rings, valve springs and a gasket kit have been ordered to freshen it up. but otherwise everything measured out good and seems like a good starting point.

spend tons of time last week doing body work. I am TIRED of sanding. Saturday got the whole car in epoxy. Spent 13hr sunday, and 5 hours monday, block sanding and some final little body work touches. Weather got cold for some reason so taking the next couple days to dial in the last of the little details and hopefully later in the week get some color on this thing. I thought i had a good size garage until I need to hang 16 things from the ceiling for painting. A friend let me park my truck at his house. My 240 i just keep moving in and out of the garage. and have the dailies living outside in the driveway during this process.

very cool. new tool are always fun. Love seeing how people process a challenge and overcome it.

Trickflows are a great choice. I have a turbo 351 so not a direct comparison but when I switched from GT40s to 11r 190s it made a massive difference. Unrelated to the engine. I weighed my stock 280z door today. Its gutted so I can paint them. so no glass, regulator, handle, lock, hardware, window frame ext. just a empty door shell. 34lbs.

it didn't occur to me that it could be something specific to this page but mine has been painfully slow for at least a month. Just assumed it was something to do with my internet.