v8wannabe2

To remove the rear bumper struts, I needed to drop the gas tank to unbolt them from the body. After that you can patch the holes in the rear as mentioned above.

Besides the fulltime job and 2 daughters I like to entertain myself with other garage projects. I learned to weld replacing the floors on the Z and it kinda branched out into other stuff. Here's a couple of the larger projects, the eagle I got hundreds of hours into This I built a few years ago: There's a bunch of smaller projects but I won't bore you with those. I just accepted a new job (time to get off the road) and it will mean a move 1 hour up the road....looks like packing up the house and garage will be a project for the next few months.

Told ya so . Great news thanks for sharing. I suspect that this has reminded you both of what's really important in life and created a new appreciation of each other....fantastic, you made my week!

I replaced my front lower pieces a few years back and I butt welded them for the reasons you stated. Spend lotsa time getting a nice fit with even gaps all along the way. I'm sure you know you want to spread out the tacks jumping around on the patch to avoid heating/warping the panel. I used a 110v fluxcore mig to do mine. I painted the car black and you can't see any seams and there is very little fill in there. That's probably another benefit of not overlapping, you can tweak the seam with a hammer and dollie easier.

A little off topic, but it was built for a Peterbilt. My brother in law asked me if I could fix the visor for his truck. I told him I would IF I could do whatever I wanted with it. It was pretty badly cracked so I welded in a length of 1/4" rod to reinforce the front lip, then I welded and ground down all the cracks. Then I painted it up for him. A few nites later I made the flame hood ornament for him. He was pleasantly shocked when I gave him back the visor and completely blown away when I pulled out the hood ornament. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of it on the truck. Here's the pics:

I scored this set up off EBay a few years back. Looks like they cut up the original fittings and tigged the threaded pieces to them. Sorry not sure of the size, but the pic may help with that (a bigger version of this pic is in my Album, along with a few more pics)

Have you taken the door panel off and adjusted and oiled the moving (pivot points and slider track) parts yet? A few years back I did this with my manual windows and was amazed at how much it improved the ease of use. You may have some unnecessary resistance in the mechanicals from 25 years of use....just a thought.

Here's a pic of mine, 11' long 30" wide, 1/4" steel top. The legs are 2" square tube with 3/4" nuts welded to the bottom that I can adjust by raising/lowering the 6" bolts that are the feet. The backsplash is a piece of aluminum that I lit on fire.

Jon, there are prayers on the way from Canada. Stay positive, 25 years ago my Dad found out that he had MS....He's 82 today and quit playing hockey at 75 (he played goalie). Another buddy of mine had a quadruple heart by pass....he was out of bed in 2 days, home from the hospital in 2 weeks and back to work in 2 months. They both had a "this won't defeat me" attitude. There are lots of great stories out there.....your wife will be the next one.

Great thread! Here's my story, In 1983 my exbrother in law showed up with a 76 280,thinking he was going to impress me with it. I was into muscle cars at the time (previously owned a 66 satillite convertible with a 383, 69 400 firebird, 70 340 Duster). Well! we had an absolute blast that day flying around corners like never before. I bought the car from him a few months later and drove it for 5-6 years. Eventually I bought a 81 280ZX and sold the old 76. I should have looked closer at the car and some major rust problems caused me to sell it. I was Z less for the next few years until a neighbor's friend showed up with a 76! I immediately went over to him and told him that when he was ready to sell the car to come see me first. About 3 months later he did. The Z story doesn't stop there. I drove the car around Calgary Alberta for a few years then took a work transfer to Halifax Nova Scotia (about 3000 miles away). Onto a truck and a train and the Z was on th east coast. The house we had there had a single car garage with a pit and I bought my first mig welder to start fixing the car up. I got lucky when I was there and bought an old Z race car with triple mikunis, a new header, bigger sway bars and a bunch of other goodies. fast forward 3 years and I'm no where's near done when I accepted another transfer to a town outside of Toronto Ontario (1500 miles west). I had to throw the car back together to get the moving company to move the car and when we arrived in Ontario I tore it apart to pick up where I left off. What started as patching the floors had turned into a major resto/mod at this point. This gets better, after 3 years in Ontario I transferred again back to Calgary again and the car was thrown back together and on the truck 1 more time. It's now traveled across Canada and back, about 6000 miles. And here we are today 4 years later and it still sits in my garage, check my album if you want to see some pics.....not quite on the road yet, but I am determined it will be there soon.

Thanks Some-Guy, I'd seriously consider upgrading to a grade 8 at least. I hate to think of what might happen after a few years of bumping and banging under there. Just my 2 cents worth.

Good job, I love those low cost / no cost improvements. What type of bolts are you using? Are they hardened steel?

Have you run a spyware scan lately? I downloaded a free version of Ad-aware and clean 20-30 pieces of spyware every time I run it. If you have a bunch of this junk running in background it will eat up your memory and make a fast machine run a lot slower.