Dan Juday

You stole my idea! I think it looks great. Makes the nose look longer. My "air" VR has the rear quarter openings filled in too along with some mods to the tail panel. But hey, I can't give all my ideas away.

Fast? Yes, it must be. But it wins the prize for most difficult to change air filters.

Welcome to Hybrid O&R! There is good info on this in the archives. Do some searching and reading. Short answer is your Z is a unibody. You must reconnect your wheelhouses to the original steel quarters to retain the structural integrity of the body. Once this is properly done then you can bond the glass fenders overtop.

Actually, Leonard (FL327) was the first guinea pig. With his 327 V8 (and his rambuctious right foot) he tore his diff crossmember in half with the combo of a solid front mount and bushings in the back. Another note: it's not the material the moustach bar is made of so much as whether or not you use bushing with it. Aluminum or steel neither is going to flex in the vertical (twisting) axis. I believe it depends on how hard you push your car and how much torque you have, and how sensative to NV&H issues you are, as to whether you will have problems mixing solid and flex mounts. Obviously there are several testimonials here from credible people who are mixing mounts without problems. And there are good logical arguments for not mixing, as well as at least one recorded failure from mixing. Choose for yourself how you want to go and let us know your results.

He's used pics of my car on his site to sell his glass. John Washington and I had to threaten legal action before he would remove them.

A metalic burnt orange would be sweet. Didn't Jag do an XK8 in something like that? On the other hand if letting your lady pick the color will get her excited about the car it's well worth it. Second best joy we can share with our girls is our Z car, right?

Run a search on "Ron Tyler front diff mount". This is the type I'm using. I'm convinced that it is the best solution for us V8 guys as it lets you lower the nose of the diff more that other types for better u-joint angles as well as solving the torn mount problem and it totally rubber isolates your diff.

You should be able to remove the two nuts on the back of the diff and the bushing bolts and get the bar out. Just support the diff with a floor jack. If you are still having trouble remove the bolt on the front diff mount and then you can shift the diff forward. That should do it. And yes, remove the rubber but leave the steel sleeve in. As for the steering coupler, I just completed doing the same thing to my Z tonight. What a royal pain indeed! If you have the nuts off jamb a big screwdriver in between the "puck" and the lower section and pry it apart. The upper section, as Terry implied, will slide up into the steering column. Don't try to swap the directon of the bolts when you put it back together. The nuts and lock washers wont clear the u-joint. I had mine almost completely installed before I realized this. ERRRRRGGG!! And lastly, make sure when you reassemble you haven't rotated your steering wheel 180*. It is posible to do this and it will be upside down. Oh ya, Terry's way, sans the puck, will work just fine too. But your steering wheel will need to be resplined as it will be 90* off.

You're getting good advice. I hope you didn't pay much for that short block. IMHO it is only good as a teaching tool. Welcome to HybridZ!

Just about everything we do to our suspensions makes it harder on the wheel bearings. Wider wheels leverage more twisting loads on the bearings even if the original offset is retained. Change the offset, either inboard or outbourd, and you increase those loads. The Z uses conical bearings up front and cyclindrical (ball bearings) in the rear. Just guessing I'd say the rear cyclindrical bearings could withstand more twinting loads than the front since the bearings have contact to the races over several angles from 0* to 90*, the fronts have contact at only one angle. This is only a theoretical guess though.

That looks awful!!! I wouldn't do it. Here's the thread. http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=89137&highlight=Taillights

Camber plates wont help with that. They will just tilt the tire in with the strut. You don't need much clearance between the tire and the strut. 1/4" is enough. I'd just order the wheels with a little less back spacing or use slip on wheel spacers. This is all dependant on whether you have enough room on the outside to move the tire out anymore.

I ran 3/8" aluminum (fitting steel lines is a major ordeal fraught with much pain and cursing) supply and return lines. I used the original path and the stock rubber clamps. On a '73 this is through the tunnel. On the latter 280's Nissan ran them along the frame rails. Either location, IMHO, has it's pluses and minuses. I decided that since Nissan had put them there and supplied the nice little clamps for me it was probably a reasonable place for them to be. On the clamps I just removed the rubber piece, clamped the two sides up in a vice and drilled out the smaller holes to bigger ones. On the ends where I had to deviate from the stock locations I also used the rubber coated clamps. Worked great.

Andy, you dug this thread out of an old pile. All the fiberglass, four fenders and the vent scoops, came from Reaction Research except for the air dam which is an MSA piece modified to fit the flared fenders. Center (or centre for you Euro chaps) exit exhaust tips were a sawzall deal. Check out Eric's site for pics on how it was done. http://zparts.com/showcase/djudayv8proj/index.html Here's the site for the mag. http://www.kitcarbuildermag.com/ Thanks for the kind words.

Vallejo is 45 minutes from Rio. I'm having family up also this weekend. I won't be able to break away to leave town but if you guys would like to stop by maybe Saturday night on your way back from the drags in Sac we could grab a burger at Shelbys (the hot rod drive-in here in Rio Vista). Same place that was in the mag with the picture of my Z. That would be cool to surround the place in V8 Z's. P.S. Thanks Alex for the heads up.

Might look something like this kit from Reaction Research.

John, what is it that actually happens that ruins the handling when the lower control arms start pointing up? In the front we can relocate the pivot points higher on the crossmember. The rear is a much bigger challenge.

You might try looking at the junk yard at some later 280Z's. These had three point retractor style belts. I mounted some belts from a Honda in my 240 but that was not a bolt-in. Wish I had taken my own advice.

I'll share.

Just a note on the tranny not shifting with the motor running. Do you have your drive shaft in yet? If not that will do it. Something about the output shaft free wheeling that cheeses off (tech term) the synchrows or something. Anywho, my car did the same thing. Bolt up the drive shaft and them futts with the clutch.

A full duel exhaust is a little bit of a challenge. It's finding room for that second muffler. A lot of guys cut a section out of the spare tire well to make a space for it. Plugs are no problem. Easier to get to then a lot of cars that came with V8's. I ran an oil filter relocater kit just to make fitting the exhaust easier. Changing the oil is easier now too. It's not manditory, just don't do what strotter did. When you pipe the exhaust (or have a shop do it) just be sure you make room to get the filter off. Do you have the JTR book yet?

Even if you get your car back running you still have one more major hurtle. You live in California and your car is a '79. This means you will have to get the swap legitamized by the state for emission controls. This can and has been done before but it's still a hassle.

Sad to hear these things about T.E.P. I like the design of their strut braces. I called to ask about what type of steel they where made of. The voice on the other end replied that it was "regular steel". "Uh, ok, wall thickness?" Again, just "regular". (roll eyes)

Junk yard an a little fabbing... http://www.ifn.net/users/danjuday/mirror12.jpg