Tibby's 280z project log.

[Tibby]

I picked up a new project to go along with my Z32 that is currently waiting on paint. I found this 78' 280z in Orlando for a good price so I'm going to try to rescue her. Rust wise it's not in to bad of shape. It is rotting in the usual areas with lots of bad rust repair attempts. The PO had the car shipped down from Michigan but did not have the time to give it what it needed. From what I gathered from the conversations with the PO is the car was destined to become someone's race car. After it was sent to the body shop to be fixed up it was then abandoned by the body guy part way through the stripping. The PO had it shipped here to finish it up. He made some attempts to fix her up but just didn't have the time with his schedule. The PO decided to let the car go for a little more then his shipping cost so someone could enjoy it. I hope to rescue her.

 

The Plan:

Step 1: get it running on the L28 and swap in a 5-speed if the auto is toast.

Step 2: Rust repair (cut and weld)

Step 3: Body and paint. Currently planing candy red with black powder coated trim. I'm tossing around the idea of ZG flares.

Step 4: LQ9 / T56 swap; I would like a mild 400/400 street car.

 

Observations so far:

Passenger side floor is rotted but the drivers side looks to be salvageable with patching. I will be gutting it to find out. Frame rails have some soft spots but not nearly as bad is I've seen in the past. Both doglegs are rotted and have been been filled with Bondo. There is some rot around the lower rear. I have not found any deal killers in the body work so I hope to keep this chassis on the road. There is an incredible amount of surface rust!

The electronics need sorting. The ignition is wired to a push button start. The engine loom is in rough shape and I have't even looked over the body wiring yet.

I kind of like the wheels, but the tires are shot.

The interior is also rough but not unfixable. The carpet is gone and the dash has a cap thats cracked and a mat covering the cap. It will need a new cap. I might swap a new dash or leather wrap. I have't decided yet.

 

 

I will try to document each step of the way and keep everyone fed with lots of pictures

 

-Ron

[Tibby]

Small rust update

The good:

I pulled the carpet and the false floor out to check everything out and it turns out the floors are in great shape. What I thought was rot at first turned out to be the sound deadener peeling up with what looked to be kitty liter under making the crunch noise when I pressed on the carpet. After some metal prep and some POR-15 the pans should be good as new. Besides the surface rust this chassis is turning out to be quite a gem.

The bad:

Something in the wiring is stopping the starter from working. Even after fixing the obvious wiring problem the ignition will not trip the starter. I re-wired the push button to try to get it started but the engine won't turn over. I will put a wrench and a breaker on the crank pulley bolt to see if the engine is seized as soon as I pick up some of my missing tools.

 

Plan changes: (<- I do this a lot)

Depending on the outcome of the engine test I might be swapping sooner then planed. In the mean time I will be stripping the interior down to recoat in POR15 as well as add new sound deadener in prep for its DD duties. I plan to keep this car for a while so the more rust proofing that can be done the better.

 

Any questions or comments are welcome.

Edited November 5, 2010 by Tibby

[akeboshi]

got any updates? im curious about your project because it looks like deja vu to me! is that my car?!? lol

OMFG look at the engine wiring!

and by the way are your floor pans all warped and dented up? mine are like that too.

 

good luck with your new gem man.

marcus

[Tibby]

The 280z is still sitting in my driveway except now its sans a motor and transmission. The engine turned out to be seized so I yanked it. Upon searching for a new engine I ended up buying a 73 240z and a 77 280z bring my Z total to 4. Between the 3 s30's I should have 2 280's to mess around with. The 240 that I picked up will be stripped and parted into the other 2.

 

My PS floor pan is warped and I have no idea why. It looks like someone tried to jack it up by the pan because it bows up a slight bit.

 

I will have a bigger update soon. I'm on my way to the shop to do some work on my Z32. I need to clear it out one of my bays so I can get all my s30's in one place to start working on them. While I'm there i'll have the camera with me

 

Ron

[Tibby]

Picture update: 1/23/11

Z32:

I went to the shop today to check on/play with my Z32 before work. It is a 91' Slicktop. I've had it striped all the way down primed, smoothed, re primed, dried for 6 months, then wet sanded. It's at the storage shop right now in travel form with glass and lights installed. I will bring it to the main shop on Thursday to pull the glass and lights, strip that last bit under the rear lights, then let the painter take over. Before anyone asks I requested that the lower valance area be left untouched for me to work on. I never got around to it. I'm such a slacker.

 

 

77' 280z:

Here is the new 280 that I picked up. No interior. No drivetrain. No suspension. Good motor. Good wiring. The chassis is rust free with the exception of the floors. They will need patch panels. All of the other damage is isolated to replaceable(non welded) panels.

 

 

 

OMG No rust in the dogleg / rockers!

 

 

73' 240z:

Ah, Here is the sacrifice to the Z gods. My parts car. Everything that can be striped and reused by the 2 280's will be kept and everything else will go up for sale. Bumpers are OK but I've see much nicer. Interior is Fair for a 40 year old car. Carpet is junk. Console is not cracked but dash is. Carbs have been rebuilt. Driveline and suspension are complete. Chassis is shot.

 

 

 

Amendment to "The Plan": <--- told you this happens a lot.

The 77 will be getting the suspension and drivetrain from the 78 and will be built up with the stock L28. The best condition parts will go into it after a good freshining up. The 78 will get the suspension and drivetrain from the 240 to get it rolling. The 240 will either be scraped or turned into some odd creation yet to be determined. This will give me 2 running 280's. Then the modding will start.

 

Ron

 

[Tibby]

Hooray! The Z32 is painted and back to the shop. Most of it anyway. As soon as the 99-spec fascia is done getting shaved all of the remaining parts will be brought in and she will become whole again. My painter still needs to wet sand and buff but it looks far better then most factory paint as it sits. I will try to get better shots up soon.

[Tibby]

Progress:

I got the front suspension swapped over to the 77 last week. Everything went pretty smooth except for the tie rods. Stubborn little buggers. The poly bushings went in without problems. I went with the burn and sawzall method as it was familiar to me from doing the solid sub-frame bushings in the Z32. It took about 10mins per side to remove the old ones. I had hoped to do more freshening up of the parts before bolting them back in but since I will be pulling it all out again soon I decided just to let it ride. When I finally pick out a Spring/Strut combo I like it will all be pulled and painted correctly.

The rear came out faster then the front but has yet to go back in place. I will be spending Extra time here as I do not want to pull the diff again. After cleaning the diff I was surprised to find a big "K" cast into the top of the diff housing. This puppy has been swapped. I'm assuming its a 4.11 2 pinion open diff but I will open her up next time I'm at the shop to verify. I'll be praying for a Subie LSD. Between the "K case" and the MN47 head I'm starting to believe that one of the PO's knew what they were doing.

 

Opinions wanted + some rambling:

I'm trying to decide on some suspension mods. I will not be doing any track days so I tossed the coilover idea out the window due to the higher cost. I like to set it and forget it for a street car. The obvious choice was the Tokico Advanced kit for cost and simplicity but I'm not a huge fan of progressive springs. The only linear springs I can seem to find are the ones offered by AZC. Most of the info or pics I can find are for 240's and from what I can tell from the spring rates it was designed for the 240. With the 280 being a bit heavier I would expect a slightly higher rate offered. I could very well be off my rocker and the springs could be a perfect match for the 280's heft. I just cant seem to find definitive info. If anyone has some experience With the 280 and AZC springs please let me know.

The other issue I'm running into is wheels. I absolutly love the 5-zigens on my Z32. I keep finding myself trying to make them work on the 280z. The wheels are 17x9(+35) in the front and 17x10(+40) in the rear. This leaves me with 6.4 and 7.0 back space respectively. I would have to go with a adapter to make the lug conversion. Most adapters I find are 2" thick. Adding the adapters would bring me down to 4.4 and 5.0 effective BS. I'm pretty sure that the fronts will clear a stock spring perch but the rears will not. From my understanding anything over a 4.5 will not clear the stock perch. I'm iffy about using the adapters as it is, and the thought of putting a spacer on top of that terrifies me. Even if I bit the bullet and went with the coilovers to get the space I'm not sure this combo would fill out the ZG flares I'm planning on. I'm still doing research on this but if anyone wants to throw me a fish feel free

 

That's it for now,

Ron

[cockerstar]

Ron, it sounds similar to the set-up I'm running on my Z right now

I have Tokico Illumina shocks, with the 280z linear handling sprigs, cut as per John's sticky thread here. I did cut 1/2 coil more than he specified for a slight drop, and may go back and cut more.

 

I'm also running 4-5 adapters, and I believe they are 2.5" thick.

Let me know if you'd be interested in them, as I'm considering switching over to some rotas

Edited April 6, 2011 by cockerstar

[Tibby]

Shoot me a PM with details about the adapters.

[Tibby]

It's been a while but the Z32 is keeping me busy and I keep rethinking selling it. If I hold on to it I'll have to change my swap plans around. We will see.

 

I destroyed my Diff mount... The Diff was sitting on a dolly with the drive shaft and mount still attached. I needed to make some space real quick so I grabbed the drive shaft and pulled the diff(on dolly) across the shop. The mount snagged a crack in the concrete and fell to pieces. If it wasn't for the bracket hitting the wheels of the dolly I might not have even noticed. It was that shot. Now, I was going to replace the part anyway so I was not heartbroken. What this did was give me something to walk over to my wife and say "It's broken, I need a new one." and not be accused of wasting money on performance parts. So I promptly ordered a R/T Diff mount from Roostmonkey. The mount is a fabulous piece that I would recommend to anyone. I will have my painter throw it in the booth with the next black car he paints to get some protection on it.

 

Now the R180... There is no more R180. I picked up a R200 and mustache bar from a C/L ad and will be putting that in the car. I never did get a tooth count on the R180 and odds are I will not open it up again until I go to sell it.

 

When I purchased the diff the seller (Thanks Harold!) had a set of brand new rebuilt Toyota 4x4 calipers that I couldn't refuse. He also tossed in a set of scrap yard 240sx rear calipers for free if I took the fronts. Done deal. The 280 will get 4 wheel disk brakes ahead of schedule.

 

The other item he had to offer was a MSA SBC mounting kit. I passed on it at the time but am still tossing this idea around. I have a 350 TBI motor with 700r transmission available to me for peanuts if not free. The engine has 43k miles on it and only a few 1000mi. on the transmission. Now I really wanted to go with a gen III / IV motor for a more modern design but this would solve the budget crisis caused by keeping the Z32 and still allow me to go V8. Choices choices.

[Tibby]

It's been a while.. where do I start? I got kicked out of the body shop. Well not really kicked out. My better judgement told me to get the hell out of dodge. The Owners (the painter and the manager) are getting a divorce and the business had become one big weapon. The painter had been working doubles and weekends just to keep his head above water while the manager siphoned the money out of the checking account. I could tell things were getting weird months back and started pulling my stuff out of the shop. Currently things have become stable and they are still open but it just feels uncomfortable being there. Sadly I did not get everything out before the sh-t storm. They still have my front bumper for the z32 as well as my 2 parts cars. The bumper has been there waiting for over 6 months now and I don't have any real hope of it getting done soon. The parts cars are sitting behind the building and I'm not sure they even remember that they are back there. I quietly sneek over pull what I need and slink away before they notice. Luckly there is no money to be made from the parts cars so the manager will let them sit until I tow them away. Good times. On the bright side this whole process had got me motivated to learn paint and body. I picked up a 60gal 5 hp compressor a HVLP gun and a DA and jumped right in.

 

My goals are to get everything I can into epoxy and ready to be top coated by a professional. I might try my hand at a few bits first but the end goal will have some heavy pearl or crystal and I'm not confident I can pull that off on the fist go around.

 

 

Enough of all that on the the 280. I got all the suspension in as well as completed the R200 swap. While it all was apart I replaced all bushings as well as the spindle pins. To try to keep myself from motor shopping I decided to get the engine running before moving any farther into the body work. First step: get it turn over. First problem: I don't have a transmission or flywheel installed. I started to install the automaitic flexplate and quickly realized that I had lost 2 of the bolts in the process of vacating the shop. I don't want to go back to look. My options are buy 2 bolts or do a 5-speed swap. I did what any reasonable person would do. 5-speed swap.

 

 

Member JSM had exactly what I was looking for so a deal was struck and off I went to pick it up. I try to make it a point not to go to Orlando but for some reason that's where all the Z's and parts happen to be. This drive did nothing to change my mind. It poured the entire drive like it was following me. It finally cleared up about 15 miles outside of O-town. Despite the weather and traffic we made good time and had to kill about an hour so my wife decided to go to one of the outlet malls to shop for clothes. While we were checking out at the back of the out door mall that storm came by to say hello. I'm no stranger to rain and lightning but in a mall full of tourist you would think it was the Zombie Apocalypse. After wading over hordes of scared tourist with 2 kids and wife in tow we finally were back to the car and on the road again. OK only 20 miles out I should only be 15 mins late. Wrong. All those scared little bunnies are even worse on the road. When I wasn't waiting to get past an accident I was driving 10mph on a 6 lane expressway. I finally arrived almost 2 hours late still soaking wet from the run at the mall. JSM was a pleasure to deal with. We pulled the transmission off the motor and striped the plate and bolts that I needed. We chatted for a few and on my way out JSM kept thinking of thing I might need. We just kept tossing more things into the car. See this Is while I love Z people. You can't go get anything without leaving with a bunch of extra stuff that you might need. No changed deal no extra cash just a desire to keep one more on the road. Thank You JSM.

 

 

I promptly installed the transmission to get her fired up. To my suprise the ignition is stuck in the on position. No matter I can just hot wire the starter for now. I jumped the solenoid and the hot post with a screw driver and was rewarded with a dull drone and no movement. Bugger. Ok swap in a spare starter. Success. I can turn it over! Now lets put gas in and see what it does. I flip the door open and put the key in... denied. Aftermarket gas cap and I have no key. This is now getting annoying. I tried every trick I could with the tools I had to get it out but in the end I forced it out and buggered up the spout enough to justify replacing it. Discouraged I called it a day. This morning I snuck over to the shop and pulled the ignition switch and fill tube off the 78 parts car and swapped it into the 77. I had to swap out the bad switch on the 78 ignition tumbler but it was quick and painless. Happy with myself I poured 2 gals of gas in it and gave it another go. It turned over without issue from the key but It didn't fire. I noticed that I couldn't hear the fuel pump turn on. I checked my links and they are all good. Next I moved on to the plugs under the passenger seat. I have 12V going to the pump. My only conclusion is a bad pump. I will get over to the shop soon to pull the good pump off of the 78 and give it another go shortly. I really want this to happen soon so I know weather or not I'm shopping for a V8.

 

Until next time,

Ron

Edited October 7, 2011 by Tibby

[Tibby]

THE 280 RUNS!! sort of. I had to fix some wiring but it fired up today. It is only running on 3 cylinders due to the fuel injectors not firing. I and going to try to clean them up before replacement just to make sure its not just the connection. I was expecting huge amounts of black smoke but from what I observed there was no smoke of any color or strange smells. Lets hope it turns out to be a good runner.

I replaced what I suspected to be a bad fuel pump but that wasn't the reason it wasn't running. I feel silly admitting this but I was a victim of the red ECU ground wire. Who decided that that would be a good idea? "All ground wires are black. Everyone got that? Good. Make this one red." Bah. Once I tracked that down it fired right up. The bad fuel pump did actually test out bad but swapping it out was just a bit of luck from leaping before I look. Just for giggles check out this Pump wiring from the parts car.

 

Needless to say, I cut all that out and spliced the wires together with solder and shrink tubing. While I had the iron out I removed the fusible link from the ECU and replaced with a blade fuse. I kept the new link(Blade fuse) and ground(now black) removable from the ECU harness with Gold plated bullets. The connectors are the same ones that I used for my RC truck which saw over 100 amps and went under water on a daily basis. They should hold up fine in the Datsun. I hate tracking down electrical problems due to poor quality of connector.

 

I will upload a short vid of it running as soon as I find some hosting.

 

-Ron

[neotech84]

Great job. Sounds like you have a handful of things on the table but you seem to balance pretty well.

[Tibby]

Great job. Sounds like you have a handful of things on the table but you seem to balance pretty well.

 

 

Thanks. I do what I can with the time I have. Which brings me promptly to the next point.

 

 

I need the cars off the shop property! If anyone needs anything let me know before they go off to the crusher. My 73' is still mechanically complete with a lot of good interior bits. Its got 3 screw SU's and I was told it was a good runner. PM me a offer if anyone wants to buy anything. When I get some Photos I will set up a classified ad.

 

 

Iv'e had some free time this week so I have been able to spend some time with the 77' going over things. I have found a few more rust spots but nothing major. Most of the car is spotless but I will get into why later. The driveshaft has been installed and went in without issue. Both axles are bolted up but I do not have any nuts for the diff side flanges. The "K R180" that was in the parts car didn't use flanges so I didn't have anything handy. Brakes installed but still untested. The engine now runs smooth with all 6cyls firing. 2 of the stuck injectors freed themselves and 1 had to be replaced. There is a bad splice for the #2 injector so I will have to get that fixed shortly. Hopefully I will have it together enough to take it for a lap around the block soon. I'm getting excited.

 

 

I have been looking into the wheels that are on the car :

From what I can tell they look like Dan Gurney Victories. The rim is 7" lip to lip and its 14" diameter. Western wheel made this exact style wheel in 15x5.5 but I can not find any identifying marks on the one I pulled. One site I found listed that American Racing also made copies of it but like Western it should be labeled. The only thing I found was a sticker labeled "SEMA SPEC 5-1A". They are not the most attractive wheels but they sure are light and period correct. If there are any old school wheel experts out there who can help feel free to chime in.

 

Iv'e always wondered what the black tar stuff all over the rear interior of the car was. Its sticky and gooey and gets all over anything you touch it with. I assumed that it was sprayed to cover up something one of the PO's didn't want to be seen.

While I was sitting in the car a few hours ago just enjoying the sound of the engine running. I noticed all these little plastic plugs everywhere. I remember seeing one or two of them when I bought the car but never really questioned it to much.

I don't know why I suddenly gave a damn(exhaust fumes?) but I started looking for them and they were everywhere. This is good News! I read about this from a piece about Dan Juday's Car. Link to PDF. The brand is different but I imagine the product is about the same. This particular brand is Tuff-Kote Dinol. This means my car is protected from the inside so I should just have to worry about the outside. This will work perfect with my plans to use 3M's Panel Bond in lou of welding for the body repair. No worries of anything catching on fire and I don't have to wash away my rust protection. It's win-win.