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HybridZ

1977 280z restomod


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  • 4 weeks later...
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Motor is completely stripped down and i'm prepping to fab the motor/tranny mounts. Last year I helped my brother build a crane for one of his projects and now it temporarily lives with me. The second pic is a fun picture of all the metal I've cut out and replaced so far. The last three pics are the angle iron reinforcements for the front frame rails. They aren't fully burned in yet but they are square to the existing rail.

 

I should have taken a picture of the kit, but I'll be using this for the motor and tranny: http://www.randyellisdesign.com/GM-LS-Series-DIY-Caged-Bushing-Tubular-Race-Motor-Mount-Kit_p_85.html

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More progress getting the engine and transmission in and squared up. A large floor jack makes an excellent dolly for the motor and transmission to be moved around. We used the crane to hoist it up, then used sawhorses, various sized wood, and plywood, and got the motor leveled and in place for the mounts. I didn't take a picture, but once we got the motor leveled, we leveled the car in the rotisserie to the motor and tack welded an angle iron piece to the rotisserie so it wouldn't move. The last two pictures are fabbing up the transmission mount.

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I'm still working on the transmission cross member, and I might have gone overboard with it... I mentioned earlier on that my frame rails weren't level to each other, and now trying to get the transmission in place it really shows. Each side is a different length to account for the difference in height, and how the floor pan replacement's went in (the humps). Last picture is the cross member tacked together. I am probably going to trim some more of the side "skirts" that we put on the sides to allow for my exhaust tubing room.

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I am doing something similar, but had planned on still using the GM mount and rigidly mounting the crossmember from rail to rail. One thing I can say for sure... I dont think she is going anywhere ;)

 

Do you have a gallery or build thread somewhere? If you have some pics i'd like to see what you're up to with your car!

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  • 5 weeks later...

Update-o-rama time! I've done a few things since posting the last pics, so i'll break it down post by post.

 

Started to get some surface rust I wasn't too happy about on the exposed metal, so I hit it with some rattle can self etching primer. I'll figure out something better when it comes time to really paint everything and get it cleaned up.

 

 

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This is under the top fender area on the driver side. The more I wire wheeled it, the more holes popped up. I cut it out in stages so I would have some templates/reference to go by. There was rust underneath as well which was eliminated. I ground down the welds (since it seems like water can run off in this area) and primered this as well, but didn't get an after picture for some reason.

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Next up, and kind of an area I've been dreading is the under cowling support. Again, the more I hit it with a wire wheel the more that showed up. That's probably a good thing though, better to find it then miss something. I will come back later and add nuts to the areas that were broken off here. I'm thinking nutserts will probably be good and easy to put in once I line everything back up.

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Driver side under cowling pics. This is where I'm at right now. I ended up buying a bead roller last night (finally... wish I had one since the beginning!  :wacko: ) to finish up some of the contoured pieces.

 

The inside area of the under cowling, where water runs into, has a lot of heavy surface rust. I can't find any areas that are completely rusted through (silver lining?). My plan is to just clean it up as best as I can and paint it with a rust converter/encapsulation paint, and really try to get all of the nooks and crannies.

 

If anyone has an opinion on what to use I'm all ears, as I have yet to buy the paint. POR15 seems like a good option but I understand it has some potentially heavy health risks and can be quite nasty to apply. Eastwood sells some products in spray cans that would probably work, and some of those have remote hoses you can attach (like their interior chassis spray which I've already purchased).

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Got the bead roller up and going, and out of the box it wasn't very good with 18 gauge sheet. I had previously read about the cons of it and what others did to fix it, so I modeled some of the improvements. The first pic is the roller, second pic is where I welded a bolt on top of the tensioner bolt (easier than a ratchet over and over), third pic is the reinforcements I added to the frame, and the bolt I added to the adjustment on the back. I tested out a couple of the dies with some scrap metal then tried my hand at the real piece. The 4th pic is the comparison of the factory piece vs. my piece, and if I may say so it came out pretty good! Next few pics are test fitting the piece, and then everything cleaned up and primered.

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Next up, A frame pillar rust. There was a couple of small pin holes and some surface rust visible. I started removing the top most piece in small pieces, to see where I could stop cutting, and ended up removing the entire piece. I thought the entire A pillar section was rotted out. Fortunately, after a heavy wire wheel session, it was all surface rust and actually not that bad. I fut out a piece large enough to inspect inside and then fixed the small pin holes. After I remade the top plate portion and welded it down. Next up is the rust down the inside of the door frame.

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Edited by Dingo
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Driver door rust down to the rocker panel. This looks like rust that set in under the weather stripping. Fortunately it didn't extend too far and was a fairly flat and simple piece to put back in. That curve at the bottom of the door is  formed perfectly around a 4.5" grinder disk :lol: I think I posted before pics a few posts back.

 

 

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Passenger side A pillar rust. I saw a couple patches of rust stick out of some areas, but nothing had penetrated or made any obvious holes. Just to be sure, I started by cutting off the top of the A pillar support to take a peek. Lo and behold, there was some wicked surface rust in place. Since this side was in better shape than the driver side, I gently removed the piece so I could salvage it for a pattern. After it was all said and done, I ended up reusing the same piece I cut out after it was cleaned up. Once it was in place I sprayed inner frame paint up the A pillar, then flipped the car upside down and did it again so it would run down towards the roof.

 

Edit - I wanted to say, on one of the pics there's a bunch of black dots. I put those in place to identify the spot welds I need to cut out as I'm going along.

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Edited by Dingo
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Drive side rear window (between B and C pillars). This one ended up being a bit worse than I expected. There were 3 layers total, and I was able to clean up the bottom layer without needing to replace it. The second layer, and final top layer were completely eaten up underneath. I also had to fix a couple of small holes around the curved/swooping part of the window.

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Rear hatch striker plate/lid rust. So this area was the most obvious rust spot when I purchased the car. The rust hole all the way through to the interior of the hatch. Part of it was so rusty I didn't really have a good reference on how to rebuild a couple of spots, so I half way just winged it, and used the other side as a guide. It's not finished yet but I'm close.

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Hatch driver side corner rust. I'm going to break this down into multiple parts, since it's sort of related, but close by. Both corners on the car are rusted all the way through. I tried to cut out the minimum (which was still a lot), and also cut it out as square for ease of rebuilding.

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