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very wide 17x14 wheels


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Fresh meat from tirerack. Never used them before, but they were the most affordable, and had the best selection of tires and quickest turn around time. Nobody in town had anything this large, without going special order.

So tirerack drop shipped the tires to Firestone out by me. They then called me up told me they had them, and I dropped my wheels off tonight. They were all kinda in awe on how big these tires were, and of course... they asked what car was it going on? Provided them the pictures, and they couldnt believe it was going on a Datsun. I showed them a picture of an instagram follower I have who is also running 345x40, but in an 18. I think their heads blew up at a that point.


toyo proxes TQ - street/drag radial 345x40x17

 

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Edited by AZGhost623
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That is absolutely amazing that you have the skills to create panels like that. I bet you could line up some guys to buy those from you. Looking forward to seeing the fronts. Make sure you plan the opening for the front while turning the wheel back and forth to allow an adequate opening for caster changes. Make them have more clearance in the front than you really think you need. Great stuff!

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Saturday work:

 

Lots of prep work on the rear quarter fenders. Cut the top fender away showing the inner fender. Sawzall'd the inner fender into 1" widths and cleaned up the metal for welding. Interior removed/opened up to ensure nothing caught on fire and could be watched with a water bottle just in case to put out any flare ups. The driver side has an antenna line that runs over the hump. I deleted it out. The passenger side has a cable harness. Disconnected it under the passenger seat, and pulled it out through the body to the rear of the car. We tied a string onto is, so it could be easily pulled/fished back into the car after everything was welded up. The interior of my car is trashed, but it gives some good access to the inner fender to do some body sealer and/or some insulation. John at Ztrix.com did the welding, looking good for someone who claims to be an amateur welder! :)

 

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John rounded down the metal pieces because it was pretty sharp after we wiggled the tabs and they broke off. This way anyone working under the fender might not accidentally cut themselves. 

 

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Traced the outline of the new quarter panel with a marker, and then used some wicked SEM epoxy on it to seal it to the car (30$ per 7oz bottle). It has a 90 minute cure time, so it gives time to work with the part for fitment. Used dry wall screws to screw into the panel and into the car to hold it into place while it cured. When it cures, its hard as a rock... serious industrial grade stuff!

 

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Fitted the tires, and trimmed as necessary. Took it for a short drive around the block, making it squat to see if anything rubbed, and trimmed as necessary again. That was pretty much the day which seems like simple tasks, but the prep work takes forever! I drove home on surface streets, hitting potholes and other things on purpose just to make sure if it was going to rub somewhere it could be trimmed.

 

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That was Saturdays work... 7 am until about 5-ish. Had to be home before dark, because I have no headlights!

 

 

 

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Sunday Work:

 

Sunday was getting the front fenders rough fitted, and the imsa nose fitted. Lots of trimming work. This was the first time John ever cast this mold, so we were learning a lot of of these as to what needed to get done. Lots more measuring drilling holes, and trimming. The hardest part was lining up the fender headlight buckets to the gnose buckets and getting the headlight centered. That took A LOT of time figuring out how that was going to work.

 

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The front tires didnt work. With the adpater on it, it didnt fit and hit the corners. We felt it best to not trim the fenders as it would ruin the look. So I went back to my 16x8 tires as a temp solution. Ill get the front hubs converted to 5 lug hubs so that will remove the 2" adapter I have up under there and will suck the wheel in. It will then be right where it needs to be.

 

 

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Ill get some better pictures where the body doesnt blend into the floor so much later this week. Its a 20ft beauty queen right now. Lots of work still needs to be done. Im going to start getting pricing from a body/paint shop to see what its going run as well as getting a wrap done inlieu of paint. If anyone has any good suggestions for paint/body shop in greater phoenix area, please let me know! :)

 

Big thanks to John Washington at Ztrix.com for all the help and assistance. This entire kit will be for sale up on his website once he gets it updated. Im sure it will include a lot pictures from this build as well as more that I didnt include up here.

Edited by AZGhost623
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  • 1 month later...

Yeah, a little. Work gets really busy so I haven't had too much time lately unfortunately...

 

So its all put together now as far as the body goes. I have a ton of body work to work on with this car now. I have slowly been collecting stuff to complete the work thats needed. Some of it is going to be a major pain in the ass. I have to sand down the trailing edge of the front fender, use some fiber glass stock and "kitty hair" and/or bondo to then build up the edge and shape/contour it to the door so that gap looks right. You can see it in the picture below what Im talking about. Also some bondo work up on the front nose is needed. Right now its a 20ft beauty queen. Im sure im more nit picky just because I have looked at it so much to see what I need to do.

 

I have gotten a couple quotes on paint job, dip, and wrap so I have quite a few options to chose from.

 

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Not sure if I mentioned this or not, but the rears have a 9" step lip which I really like. Some of the modern wheels are just flat all the way out. The step helps break it up in my opinion for a nicer wheel look. You can kinda see from this picture (sorry its not bigger). I figured out the offset since I kept getting asked, and its -63. Yes, I do have the original center caps too which are unobtanium if they get lost. So Ill only put them on for special pictures and such.

 

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My temp wheels I had up front got sold real quick. So I have some 14" wheels up there now, just to roll around. Its not drivable at all... I got the Silvermine motor 5 lug hubs to do the swap so I can put the HRE505 wheels back up front. Ill have proper clearance when I do that. I knew that Im going to have to have the front wheels machined (center bore opened up). The local datsun crew recommended a shop here in town that can do that, but I have been super busy with work I forget to give them a ring.

 

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The center bore is 73mm on these hubs. The center bore on the HRE505's are 58mm. So they need to be opened up.

 

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No worky... ah the joys of hot rodding :)  I knew this was going to be an issue, but I wanted to be able to take the hub with the wheels to the machine shop so they had the actual part to work with. These are single piece billet aluminum hubs and are not very heavy at all. Should help with more weight reduction in the end when they get swapped over. It might be kinda difficult to see, but there is PLENTY of space to do this modification.

 

Plan on sending a note to myself tomorrow to make a call to the shop so I can get this scheduled.

 

A friend of mine is doing a swap on his Z... and then it got me all wired up to pull out this Rebello 3L and go with something else... My dream swap about be the BMW S54 motor (3.2L Inline 6 found in the M3's)... but I digress...

Edited by AZGhost623
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  • 3 weeks later...

So I shined up the wheels real nice for this install front hub install today finally. I still cant get small hard water spots out. Im no expert at wheel cleaning, but Im definitely going to be learning on how to make these puppies really shine. The back side has years of brake dust build up. Reading online, looks like I need to get a "gel" based product as the mothers stuff just wasnt cutting it. Not bad for 20+ year old wheels tho!

 

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Wheel Specialists out in Tempe, AZ took a week to get the center bored out. But the new hubs fit very nicely, a little tough to put on but not too bad. You can see the rear of the wheel here as well.

 

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So my biggest FAIL came to be, where I thought the new 5 lug hubs would just continue to use the old rotors, I dont know why I thought this, I was more focused on the wheel side tho.... The new hubs from silvermine have a late Z31 bolt pattern on them for the rotors. So I need new rotors now, and possibly new calipers. I have the toyota 4x4 calipers on now. The late Z31 hubs are vented so they are thicker. I thought I could just run down to the parts store today and get some new rotors, but doesnt appear that way right now until I can figure out if the caliper will work or not. So everything needs to go back together so I can park it again. 

 

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Edited by AZGhost623
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  • 2 weeks later...

Well I finally got the 5 lug conversion complete this weekend. Im very happy how everything turned out, and I think it looks great with all four corners the same now. Ill probably start some small body work next weekend, but with it being fathers day Sunday not sure where Ill end up. With just white spray paint, everything, and I mean everything sticks to it, so its extremely dirty. Ill strip it all off now that I got a p paint eater, bondo in some sections, and repaint it. I hope to have the real color done in August, and and possibly, be at JCCS in September with it, if everything comes together as planned. I need to get the front driver side fender back over to ZTRIX to get them to fix trailing edge on the fender so it can be trimmed out right.

 

But here are some final pictures.

 

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Awsome. Do you have any pictures of the back or a before and after of the back?

 

Unfortunately I dont have any before pictures of the back.

 

 

Damn, that turned out nice.

 

Thanks! Im very happy with how it turned out.

 

My hope is to have the body work finished up here soon, and then painted in time for JCCS in September. Going to go with a metalic midnight blue, or a metalic wine red color. I actually liked the factory #611 metalic wine color they did, but since my wife said it looks brown, thats all I see now.

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  • 3 months later...

Doing a lot of work over summer months in AZ. Had a very hard time with body work, as the second hardner was added to bondo I had literally 10-20 seconds to work with it in 110 degree heat in my garage before it hardened up. So I have stripped the car down to metal, and blended in the rear quarters as well as other work. Lots of work on weekends to get the GNOSE repaired as well since this piece had some really bad spots in it. (300ZX Pop up headlights were cut out, had to patch and fill it)

 

Met a cool dude here in town through the local Datsun club who is going to finish up all the rest of the body work and a few other things I want him to do and get it painted. The paint color alone on this car ran me $1000 for what I wanted. A more modern take on the original metallic red wine color. Probably about 7-10k worth of work to still do on this thing on the body along with prime, block and color the car. I surely must be a crazed Z nut to spend this much $$ on an old Z. I seriously feel like I am on pimp my ride or something because someone else is doing the work for the first time and I know its going to be crazy awesome when its finished.

 

Anyways, took it out for a drive last night to get a tank of gas in it, and then drove it out to his shop where he will have it for the next 30 days.

 

http://imgur.com/a/dLfJm

Edited by AZGhost623
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  • 1 month later...

Getting close! There's a lot going on, with minor changes, but here are a few snippets. You might be able to see some of the changes in this picture below.

 

Should have paint next week! And then that process starts with sanding all over again.

 

 

 

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RAIN GUTTER DELETE. If you look carefully you might see some hot pink on the roof support. Apparently when we got down into it a bit, we found more. Car was hot pink at some point in its life... some people!

 

 

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Rear Valence fill. Its sitting odd because a jack is under the drivers side.

 

 

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Z Emblem Quarter panel delete:

 

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Edited by AZGhost623
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Some contour work on the front gnose to the fender and trying to make the front flow a bit with the rears.

 

Drivers side is somewhat done. The passenger side was trimmed, but not fully contoured yet for comparison. 

 

 

 

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Im thinking it might need to sweep in a bit more, but so far i think it looks a lot better and lost that catfish look it had before.

 

 

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Before comparison. You can see how much has really been trimmed off that flare on the nose to fender transition.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Saw your pics on IG.   I am @sean70240z, you must be happy with the way it turned out.  It looks good.  Congratulations.

 

Thanks man! Im super happy with it. Literally thrown together within 24 hours to get it there. Paint isnt even finished yet, the painter who was supposed to cut/buff it quit on Friday. So the shop said to just take it and they will finish with the cut/buff/clear later. That is literally paint booth paint only!

 

Color is Arena Red. Super car color. Saw it on a Porsche 918 Spyder and knew it was the color I had to get. Per Gallon price was 1000$ for the color alone. Go big or go home right? :)

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