1977 280z driving project from the Netherlands

[Mitchel0407]

Hello everyone and welcome to my 1977 280z project! I will be using this thread to document my journey with this car and all the little thing that will be done to it to ultimately restore and modify it to be my dream car.

 

I bought the car last week at auction for the decent price of €20.500,- kind of on a whim as this has been my dream car ever since I first learned of there existence (thanks Wangan Midnight and the Devil Z, I know its cliché). Yes €20k is a lot of money but a mid-condition one sells for over €32k here in Europe nowadays.

 

 

(You can see which side I tied up and which side my dad tied up 😂)

 

 

What drew me to this car was the paint (absolutely not perfect and needs a repaint at some point but looks good enough for now), the goodies like new wheels and tires, new wooden steering wheel, factory 5 speed gearbox, R200 diff and the claim that the engine was rebuild 10 years ago. Although when picking up the car it turned out there was no documentation what so ever.

 

The car runs and drives and is in fairly decent condition but currently has no valid inspection (called APK in the Netherlands) as the previous owner stats it’s because of the car running rich. Of course it has a cracked dashboard, some small surface rust forming and is missing bolts all over the car but these are all thing that can be fixed over time.

 

 

 

For now my main goal is the fix some little stuff and get her on the road so I can start to enjoy the car. So naturally I placed the car on my Quick Jack lift and ordered a bunch of parts from Z-Services EU in France.

 

 

There are a few thing I like to address before taking it in for inspection. The hood doesn’t open as the cable brackets are missing, the door hinges need rebuilding as the doors won’t close properly, some general maintenance and fixing some sweating oil seals around the car.

[FastFloridian]

1 hour ago, Mitchel0407 said:

Hello everyone and welcome to my 1977 280z project! I will be using this thread to document my journey with this car and all the little thing that will be done to it to ultimately restore and modify it to be my dream car.

 

I bought the car last week at auction for the decent price of €20.500,- kind of on a whim as this has been my dream car ever since I first learned of there existence (thanks Wangan Midnight and the Devil Z, I know its cliché). Yes €20k is a lot of money but a mid-condition one sells for over €32k here in Europe nowadays.

 

 

(You can see which side I tied up and which side my dad tied up 😂)

 

 

What drew me to this car was the paint (absolutely not perfect and needs a repaint at some point but looks good enough for now), the goodies like new wheels and tires, new wooden steering wheel, factory 5 speed gearbox, R200 diff and the claim that the engine was rebuild 10 years ago. Although when picking up the car it turned out there was no documentation what so ever.

 

The car runs and drives and is in fairly decent condition but currently has no valid inspection (called APK in the Netherlands) as the previous owner stats it’s because of the car running rich. Of course it has a cracked dashboard, some small surface rust forming and is missing bolts all over the car but these are all thing that can be fixed over time.

 

 

 

For now my main goal is the fix some little stuff and get her on the road so I can start to enjoy the car. So naturally I placed the car on my Quick Jack lift and ordered a bunch of parts from Z-Services EU in France.

 

 

There are a few thing I like to address before taking it in for inspection. The hood doesn’t open as the cable brackets are missing, the door hinges need rebuilding as the doors won’t close properly, some general maintenance and fixing some sweating oil seals around the car.

 Beautiful Z, it’s in great shape for an almost 50 year old car. I like those wheels too.

[Mitchel0407]

4 minutes ago, FastFloridian said:

 Beautiful Z, it’s in great shape for an almost 50 year old car. I like those wheels too.

Came with four almost brand new tires and the original wheels on also pretty good tires. The original wheels good use a repaint tho.

[Mitchel0407]

 Had a busy weekend working on my girlfriends car (brakes, oil, alternator, water pump and timing belts) but yesterday I had some time left to work on the Z. The car was running rich so I ordered a cheap AFR gauge to measure the air-fuel ratio of the car. I installed the gauge in the engine bay for now with the power wires just clamped to the battery as I can’t drive the car till I get my inspection done.

 

I read some threads about the EFI Z’s running rich or running rough in general so I cleaned the contacts on all the electrical plugs and readjusted the throttle position sensor. The contacts of the AFM and the cold start valve where actually pretty corroded but cleaned up nicely.

 

 

For good measure I also decided to change the spark plugs and do a compression test. O boy was I glad I did that. The spark plug in the number 1 cylinder turned out to be a different one without a manufacturer name. It was also heavily cracked and the spark plug wire wasn’t even attached! (am I glad I ordered new once). The compression was pretty consistent from what I could tell but my battery and probably also the alternator are dying, only to be caped alive by my battery charger. The engine cracks very slow with the sparkplugs in (even only one) and when dialing back the idle the engine can’t keep a consistent rpm. It even died after a while.

 

 

I the end I just jumped the battery with my girlfriends car witch helped a lot. After the cleaning the car also ran much better with an AFR of 11.2 and after warming up for a bit it changed to about 13. When revving the car to about 4000rpm the AFR changed to about 15. I’m not very familiar with AFR ratios but 13 at idle (after warmup) seems pretty good to me and hopefully lets me pass inspection. But for that I still need to wait for some backorder parts from Z-Services.

 

[Mitchel0407]

I spend the last few days cleaning the electrical connections and timing the ignition again as it was out of spec. The car runs way better but the AFR gauge still shows 11,5 at idle. I'd like to bring that down (or up depending how you look at it) to 14,7 as the car stinks of gas. The previous owner mentioned that that was the reason it didn't pass inspection (auction company didn't mention that). I tried messing with the idle air mixture screw but that didn't help. When turning clockwise a bunch the car did start to run richer but when turning anti clockwise it didn't get past 11,5 AFR.

 

 

I did notice the ignition coil is a 1,5 ohm unit with a total resistance of 2 ohm with the external resistor. I believe it needs to be closer to 1 ohm total so I'll probably replace the coil with a 0,5 ohm one.

 

[Mitchel0407]

O boy has this been a productive month for me!

 

Shortly after buying the car the engine started to turn over slower and slower and losing all power even though the battery voltage was good and hooked up to a trickle charger. So I decided to replace both the starter and the battery. It turned out to be just the battery but the starter was pretty cheap so I didn’t mind.

 

Next up I borrowed my dad’s borescope to look inside the cylinders. The cylinder walls looked great but the pistons did have some carbon buildup. This can be explained by the car running rich for a long time and not having been driven a lot the last few years. I did see oil running down the cylinder walls on four of the cylinders but I’ll be replacing the head- and valve cover gaskets once those come in. I also tested the compression again and this time it came back to a stable 125 psi on all six cylinders.

 

 

After this I dicided to put my focus back the rich idle problem. A more detailed story of that journey can be found in the two threads linked below. The thread on the Classic Zcars forum has a bunch of information about the (working of) Datsun/Bosch AFM’s and replacement units for them.

 

https://forums.hybridz.org/topic/139136-77-280z-running-rich-at-idle/#comment-1251600

https://www.classiczcars.com/forums/topic/69530-77-280z-running-rich-at-idle-afm-screw-doesnt-work/#comments

 

In short I found out one of my problems was that my AFM was bad. As the original Datsun 7 pin units are none existent in Europe and I can’t find anybody that can rebuild the circuit board on one I decided to head down a massive rabbit hole that is the undocumented world of Bosch L-Tronic AFM’s. During my research, documented above, I came across a 2011 Australian forum post that mentioned an Toyota AFM. The part number (F201 13 210 (197100-3420)) came back over here as from a 1988-1992 2.2i GT Turbo 12V Ford (USA) Probe (Mazda 626) for €25,- from a junkyard. So I ordered it immediately to try and test this theory out.

 

The Ford/Mazda/Toyota AFM is larger than the Datsun unit but can be installed by stretching the factory rubbers slightly. The pinout and internals are practically the same and don’t require modification (even the electrical plug was plug-and-play!). The resistance values are different than the Datsun AFM but the output voltage values to the ECU are the same. By tightening the spring (gear) inside (clockwise) the car started and ran perfectly.

 

 

During this process I also replaced my Bosch spark plugs for NGK BR6ES with a 1,05mm gap and the ignition coil for a 0,6 Ohm Flamethrower 2 unit just to be sure. I also replaced the fuel pressure regulator for a new one and cleaned the injectors using an ultrasonic cleaner and spraying high pressure brake cleaner through them. The car did run a lot better and more stable after all of this even though my idle was still very rich and the idle air screw didn’t seems to effect the idle AFR much.

 

 

This lead me to a leaking and faulty AAR valve which I blocked off on both sides. My vacuum was good and the fuel pressure was slightly low at 28 psi on my cheap Chinees gauge. I suspect the injectors are just bad and will need to be replaced ad some point but for now the car runs pretty good.

 

[Mitchel0407]

As to keep the technical stuff a bit separate I decided to post the next bit as a separate comment.

 

Last Tuesday I temporarily insured the car and drove it over the highway to S2 Classic Cars in Hengelo (The Netherlands) as they are a highly rated classic car restauration shop in the area with a beautiful showroom to booth. There I had the car thoroughly inspected in preparation for the APK (something like state inspection, MOT or TÜV). This gave me some good and also very bad news.

 

The good news, my work on the engine paid off as the car drove great with good AFR readings while driving and an CO emissions gas reading of 2,4% of the 4,5% allowed for this model year. The inspector also noted that judging by the other reading the engine was very healthy and in great condition.

 

 

The bad news on the other hand reviled that the chassis of the car was is much less of a condition. Both left and right frame rails are rusted thru which they tried to cover up at some point with underseal. They where also both dented badly in the front by improper jack usage and the passenger side frame rail had a big rust hole in it.

 

To add on top of that the inspector noticed the rear axle was crooked. This caused the drivers side rear wheel to stick out more with an toe out and the passenger rear wheel to have way more negative camber. The inspector couldn’t find anything at this time underneath and suspects the chassis might be slightly twisted or crooked. To know for sure I will need to find a shop that has the proper equipment and reference measurements to measure to chassis.

 

I’m quit mad about both these things as they will cost me a lot to fix (at least they are fixable so thank god). More over the car was advertised and sold to me as “…without rust and free from structural damage.” by both the seller and the auction company. The auction company even inspected the car before it got accepted into the auction and wrote the advertisement texts for the car. Because of this fact, and the surprise bill for thousands of euro’s, I’ll be taking legal steps to try and claim at least some of the costs of the repairs on the seller and auction company.
 

[jhm]

Oh, that is so unfortunate -- sorry to hear about the rust and structural damage.  I hope you are successful in the legal claims against the seller and auction company.  Sadly, that is all too common on these old cars....it's quite rare to find one without those types of issues, especially in climates like yours.

 

This project suddenly got a lot bigger; but it sounds like you are up to the challenge!

[Mitchel0407]

I am planning to fully restore the body, repaint and preform upgrades but I was hoping to al least enjoy the car a few seasons and to take it at a slower pace.

If it is in any way possible I would like to keep the car for as long as I can. The S30 Z’s have and always will be THE dream car for me and now I’ve driven it for a bit the bug has only bit me harder.

I would love to just throw a bunch of money at the car as I do have some reserves but those are supposed to help me at least the next 50 years. For a bit of background, I’m only 25 and my right leg got crush in a motorcycle accident about 3 years ago. I’m doing good now and am walking on both legs again but the question is for how long that will be the case.

[Mitchel0407]

Time to update the build threat again. Things are moving slow at the moment but none the less progress is being made. I have contact with two local body shops in the area for the frame rail repair and to measure the body to see if it’s twisted in any way. One of the body shops is specialized is classic car repair and restauration but will probably be quite expensive but none the less a representative will come by to look at the car this week. The other body shop is a more generic one that also does a lot of classic BMW’s and has done some paint work for me in the past. There hourly rate is a lot cheaper, I know they deliver great work and I know they sometimes are willing to do cash work.

To save money on the body shop hours I decided to bite the bullet and order a bunch of parts from Apex Engineered which should arrive somewhere next week. Deciding what to buy was quite difficult as the shipping rate varied a lot but in the End I got the shipping down to $284. I all I bought the frame rails, front fender braces, front and rear control arms, steering knuckles, front crossmember and the rear strut brace.

As importing stuff from the US is pretty expensive I decided to place a bigger order then what I strictly needed to maximize the value for my money. As the car needed to get welded anyway I ordered the front fender braces as well to reinforce the front of the car as they weren’t that expensive and seemed to me as a worth wile upgrade. As for the control arms my main reasons for buying those was to delay any major body repairs. If my body turns out to be twisted repairing it would turn into a full on restauration project. I do plan on restoring and repainting the car some day but not now, so as a temporary solution the adjustable control arms allow me to tune the effects of a twisted body out a bit. At some point I would like to get the full Apex Engineered Retro Mod suspension so this will give me a great starting point to work from anyway.

To save some more money at the body shop I will strip down the interior and remove the fuel lines myself before sending the car of for welding. But before doing that I still have a chance to fix some small stuff surrounding the engine. My backorder from Zservices in France finally came in together with a used Bosch AAR from a Porsche 944 as my original AAR turned out to be broken. So last week I took the valve cover off to adjust the valves and replace the gasket as it was leaking a lot of oil. Good thing I did as the valves where very out of spec. The adjusters where a pain to get loose but after that adjusting them was very easy.

 

 

I put everything back together with some new NGK spark plug wires and started her back up. Even with near freezing conditions the car started right up and idled better then ever before. The engine still runs very rich at idle and I suspect it might be an injector issue but other then that the engine runs great and the emissions are within the limits so I will place that issue on hold for now.

 

My plans for the coming weeks are to strip down the interior, remove the fuel lines, front fenders and doors. This will also give me the opportunity to clean and inspect those parts of the car for more hidden surprises. I will also repaint the fuel lines as they are full of undercoating and try to restore the dashboard as with any Z mine is cracked. As for the doors I want to rebuild the door hinges and maybe try and reupholster the door cards as mine are actually of a 2+2 and have a giant hole instead of a second door latch. I’m hoping to get the car back on the road after this so I can finally start to enjoy my 280z this spring.